Bobo the zombie

Last night I had a session with my coach and after going through my journal entries and doing a bunch of reframing, she challenged me with this question:

If you were to die right now and then for some miraculous reason you are brought back to life, then were told you only have 3 months to live, what would you do with this time?

The immediate response from little Winston is "we would go chase after her..."

Why is this important to you?

The experience, that feeling we felt, we haven't figured out a way to do that on our own. Then my thoughts drift and I hear little Winston say "why haven't we chased snow?"

Then my mind snaps back to this statement I have said too many times: I gave up something that I loved, for something that I hate.

I gave up snowboarding when I started my company 10 years ago. Year after year, I went less and less often until I stopped going entirely. Told myself the lift tickets were getting too expensive, in other words I put a price on my happiness.

Little did I know I turned into a zombie. Going through life without purpose, passion, happiness, joy, desire... seeking externally everything that I was lacking inside. I was dead inside.

Back then snowboarding was my passion, the one thing that I put above all else! It came before family & friends, it was the one thing that was absolutely non-negotiable. And I abandoned it for the business.

Having to forego what we want and our hearts desires to stay in a relationship. That's abandonment.

• Mark Groves

I was unaware of what I was doing, but it wasn't like my soul didn't give me clues. I was just blind at that time and unable to pick up on them. I preached to the students in the class I mentored: You can choose to be anything you want to be in life to make money, to have as a career, but NEVER give up what your passion is!

I see the irony of that statement now. How I was projecting myself onto each of those students, totally unaware of the path I have chosen to take.

It has taken 10 years for this to come full circle. For me to finally be able to see that everything I have been chasing after has been inside me the entire time! Unrestricted, free, joy, happy, to be able to fly, to sit on top of the mountain and smell the pine, to chase the snow. To feel alive!

All these feelings she is a physical representation for, so when he answered "we would go chase after her..." now I understand what the words mean.

Thoughts without action remain thoughts, so when I got home I purchased a season pass. What happened next was totally unexpected.

I could feel him start planning how to get up to the mountain.

#chasingbutterflies