Wednesday morning at 9:35am, I rolled over and woke up with this sense of panic and my mind started racing. I rolled up and reached up and I touched my left eye to feel it super swollen…and it all came back to me.
I remembered that I got back to my hotel room at 3:30am. I picked myself up off the ground outside of a bar in Nashville because I had been hit in the face.
I’m about to be on stage in front of 20,000 people with 8 years of equity in this business where people know you are. People ask to take pictures. The panic goes from my gut into my face and I just roll over into the fetal position to which I see sitting next to the nightstand, a three page note that my pregnant wife had written me at 4am begging me to make a change.
I said “That’s it, I’m out. Let’s change our flight and go home.” As embarrassed as I was, how embarrassed did I make her! She said “No, you have to stay. You need to be here.” I wanted to run away. That’s the easiest thing to do, quit. Jump out. The going gets tough, let’s get the hell out of here. I could have disappeared and nobody would have known. My wife told me that “If this is going to change, you have to stay.”
So I sat there for a little bit and wrote down a post, took a very attractive picture of my black eye, and posted it to social media. Tears streaming down my face and I just waited. All of a sudden, I had a million comments from people not only supporting and sharing their own stories with me, but talking to each other too.
We worry so much about what’s going on with us that we don’t realize nobody is really going to judge us because everybody else in the room is worried about what’s going on with them.
You have the power to become a leader today when you raise your hand and say, “This is what I struggle with, does anybody else want to come on this journey with me?”
Last Tuesday, I and 20,000 other Beachbody Coaches descended upon Nashville for the largest Beachbody Summit convention in the history of ever. I was more excited about this Summit than any other I’ve been to in the 8 years that I’ve been a Beachbody Coach. You see, I was being recognized as a 13 Star Diamond Coach and a new member of the Millionaire’s Club so I was flying high. I was so excited that I decided to have a drink or two at lunch with my wife and a couple of friends. Well, what went from a celebratory drink or two at lunch devolved into just me out by my lonesome without a friendly face in sight at some bar in Nashville getting punched squarely in the face for something that I probably deserved.
That next day was one of the worst days of my life with the overwhelming shame and embarrassment I felt that was made even worse when I saw the three page note my pregnant wife wrote me at 4am begging me to change. She was, and still is, right. I need to change. I have a problem that needs to be dealt with and pushing that shame under the rug wasn’t going to change anything. So I started my new journey by posting what happened on my social media profiles and to my team apologizing for my actions hoping and praying that I didn’t let anyone down.
The amount of support and well-wishes has been overwhelming. Not once did anybody judge me. I got hugs and prayers, it was amazing. I am once again reminded why this is one of the best communities in the world because they see that there is greatness and awesomeness in you even when you can’t see it yourself.
If you’re going through something like I am, it doesn’t have to be drinking, and you think that you’re the only one, you’re not. We’ve all got our issues, we’re all on our own journeys fighting our own demons, and you don’t have to struggle with it alone. If you’re struggling and in a dark place, I would love to help you. It will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done and it will immediately be the most rewarding thing you’ve ever done.