Fear Is a Mental Hurricane

Kindness is the shelter

It was 6 am as I made my way blurry-eyed down the elevators and proceeded along the unavoidable path that led through the casino of the Flamingo Hotel. Las Vegas might be one of the only places you can wake up and wonder if you’re still dreaming.

I weaved my way through an amusement park of slot machines, looking for the way out of the neon and chime-filled maze to find the hotel fitness room.

I’ve never had the slightest attraction to gambling with a machine, and I’ve harbored judgment of those who do. Noting that thought, I laughed at myself when I considered my entrepreneurial track record. The number of times I’ve rolled the dice on business ideas using our family finances came immediately to mind.

Was that any better?

I’ve always maintained that betting on myself was a superior form of risk, but if I added up all the bets that failed, I was likely further in the red than anyone pulling handles in that smoke-filled lottery farm.

I did eventually make it to a treadmill in the exercise room and went through the motions. Sometimes that’s the best you can do.

As I left the fitness center behind me and exited through the glass doors into the labyrinth of shops and restaurants in the hotel, I noticed someone get up and start walking toward me from an adjacent cafe. It was a woman I didn’t recognize, but she was looking at me purposefully as she approached with obvious intent.

It had been 24 hours since my presentation for the AFOP conference—the Association of Farm Opportunity Programs—in Las Vegas. With tens of thousands of bodies passing through the historic landmark of the Flamingo every day the chances of running into delegates from one particular group are slim. But as the woman got close enough for me to see her conference lanyard, I realized she had attended my session the previous day.

She didn’t know it, but I was struggling.

I had received a message right after that keynote announcing my next speaking engagement was being canceled. Hurricane Helene was swirling and pounding its way to landfall on the gulf coast, the destination of my next event. Public safety is, of course, the number one concern—but a series of recent gambles on my business had made the fees for this upcoming gig critical to my cashflow. Now I’d be flying straight home on my own dime without the trip earnings I was counting on.

Entrepreneurial life is full of ups and downs. There’s no guaranteed paycheck coming until each job is done, and you live with the constant knowledge that your financial standing can turn upside-down from a single phone call, text, or act of god, like a hurricane. For many of us who are self-employed, money is the measure of how we’re doing—it becomes the foundation of our value, worth, and security. I was feeling the deficit of all three.

I had woken that morning with my computer still open next to me, the battery dead, and sleep hadn’t felt like much of a recharge, because my mind was preoccupied with what I call “pillow math”—survival-laced cash flow calculations that entrepreneurs often indulge before and after sleep in an attempt to find scenarios and strategies that will create enough peace of mind to actually rest. But my brain and stomach was in knots from tangling with it.

In short—I was caught in my own hurricane.

Mental fear is an extreme, unexpected form of climate that comes upon you suddenly and interrupts all of your cognitive travel plans. You abandon your map and start visiting thoughts that were never on your itinerary, looking for solid things to hold onto as the winds of your imagination try to set you off course, seeing sights in your head that weren’t featured in the brochures, and hallucinating obstacles in the vision-obscured distance that don’t really exist.

Fear in an unavoidable form of inner weather that anyone who wishes to pursue a worthwhile and heartfelt purpose must learn to navigate. Turning toward a purpose, toward something greater than ourselves, is the doorway to real life.

But real life isn’t for tourists.

A real life grounded in purpose isn’t predictable, easy, pleasantly guided, reliably scenic, or free of potholes. It doesn’t leave or arrive on time. There will be rough terrain and days without meals—but that’s all part of transcending tourism. And we need to know that. Otherwise we’ll think something is wrong when we hit a part of town that isn’t prettied up, where there’s garbage in the street, where homelessness is on full display.

Tourist thinking had gotten the upper hand with me and I was immersed in it when I noticed the woman—who was now right in front of me—was speaking. Her words were deliberate, soft, and impassioned.

“I just wanted to tell you how uplifted I was by your presentation,” she said kindly. “You gave me the inspiration to keep going.”

I looked in her eyes and saw the same humanity that was present in her fellow delegates the day before. I tried to remember what I had said to her group, but it was a blur. I don’t really know what’s going to emerge in my keynotes anymore. I lightly plan them, and then set those plans aside when I walk into the room. The content of my presentations are co-created with the attendees, by what shows up in the room when I pose as a terrible server, and by how they respond to the invitation to examine their habits under stress. The research I’ve done on the organization, the conversations I’ve had with the leadership team, and the mood of the room all go into a blender and produce a surprise emergent experience.

The Association of Farm Opportunity Programs is an underpaid collection of community servants who have dedicated themselves to the support of migrant and impoverished people as they scrape together an existence at the lowest tier of our social system. The farm workers they support are treated with less economic, legislative, and humanistic regard than most any other segment of our society. And yet these are the very people who put the majority of America’s food on the table. Every day these laborers face exaggerated challenges—exposure to chemicals, heat, lack of shade, repetitive strain injuries, poor nutrition, mental health issues, relational distress, and much more—with minimized levels of support.

Simply put, the leaders of the regional agencies that are dedicated to the well-being of these workers are heroes who are providing the shelter of kindness in a cultural hurricane. They stand as advocates in a storm of resistance, and every day work to provide programs that will help educate and train farm workers to improve their futures. They take the role of friends, counselors, caregivers, advisors, cheerleaders, and delivery services to provide practical, hands-on assistance to this segment of the working population.

I listened while the woman told me a story about a local farmer who had given a teenage boy working in his fields a place to sleep and a safe place to keep his earnings, since taking money home resulted in his mother and her boyfriend stealing his savings for drugs, while he was devoted to making sure some of it went to feed his little sister. This off-the-radar sector of need and hidden network of dignity and decency were the real life stories that kept her going.

She described her small town, the heartbreak of becoming “too attached” to those she was helping, and her struggle to keep serving in the face of the challenges—then thanked me profusely, saying that she just wanted me to know how helpful my stories had been.

Stories and sharing them had been the thrust of my keynote.

“Keep doing what you’re doing,” she said with tears forming in her eyes.

But I’m not sure that she understood the profound impact her story was having on me, the sanctuary from the natural disaster of my mind she was providing with her kindness.

As I stood there, taking in her encouragement, I noticed the gale force winds in my anxious mind abate. Our stories exchanged, we were standing in a mutual shelter, we had each other’s backs against fear and doubt, and were both ready to keep going with the comfort of each other’s presence.

One hundred and forty of her colleagues signed up to receive this very newsletter. For those of you reading it now, please know how inspired I am by your example. I thank you for your companionship in the storm.

I’ve discovered that Flamingo’s are extremely social creatures, often forming long-lasting friendships, helping each other find food, and keeping predators at bay. They have a history of surviving hurricanes, remaining steadfast to each other and thriving in new territory when blown across distances by the winds of change.

It now seems perfectly appropriate that we all met at the Flamingo Hotel.

For anyone who is moved by the work AFOP is doing, you can make a donation to their cause here.

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A Unique Tool I’m Proud to Share

The recent “business gamble” I mentioned in the story above refers to a new tool I’ve developed that assists with the identification and collection of your notable personal and professional stories.

It’s called All My Stories.

On the dashboard of the platform we’re keeping track of “community stories.” This is the total number of stories so far captured by about 20 beta users. We had a target of 700 stories by the end of September, but we’re already up to 863 community stories.

This number is critical to the mission of All My Stories, the idea being that every time we identify one of our stories we empower our memory to share it in an opportune moment.

And every authentic story shared with another human being helps to lessen the sense of disconnection that is showing itself in an epidemic of loneliness, polarized politics, workplace disengagement, and mental health decline.

It’s ideal for writers, leaders, business professionals, educators, speakers, entrepreneurs, and even parents.

If you’d like to be part of the beta community using the tool at a discounted rate, you can book a time here and I’ll give you a short tour so you can see exactly how to make use of it.

You have more stories than you think hiding in your past. When you uncover them they become available to inspire others.

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This Saturday at 2 pm PST is our last Honestly Human event for the month, where we come together to practice our storytelling. This week’s session is open to both free and paid subscribers.

This week’s story prompt is to share a story about praise you once received that made a big difference in your life.

You can register here for the session. We’re a small friendly group, so don’t feel intimidated by joining in. You won’t be put on the spot, but you’ll get gentle encouragement and coaching to practice sharing a story if you want to. We can all use more confidence by gaining a good story to tell.

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