Woodard Wednesday: The first time I should have died

Not the lightest of titles, is it?  Better than, "the second time I should have died," right?  Or the ever popular, "why didn't I die that day?"  We could go on, but perhaps I'll tell you why I am being so morbid...

I almost died...

More than once...

My favorite color is yellow...
(I'll periodically try to lighten this up with stupidity.  Now felt good for dose one)

Easter is soon approaching, this year marking my 17th anniversary of what feels like borrowed time.  Easter Sunday of 1999 could have been my last day.  This is a story of fear and crisis, acts of desperation, facing the unknown.  Oh yeah, I am in it too.

And since I am telling it, I'll be the dashing prince.

close enough

Approaching sundown I took myself, along with my 10 year old cousin, to a gas station to refuel the beast.  I drove a Dodge Ram pickup with tricked out wheels that were stylishly low to the ground and glimmering with chrome.  They had also somehow done something jazzy to the muffler so I sounded like quite the badass driving about.  Epically stupid.

Perhaps I was compensating for something?  For more on that, please see the blog penned by my police chief grandfather entitled: "My grandson goes to what kind of bars?"

I digress...

I was a student at the time, knee deep in undergraduate work.  You know what I wasn't knee deep in? Money.  Quite the opposite.  That day I worked an extra shift at the veterinary hospital to earn $20 in cash.  And no, it wasn't a lot of money back then either.

Getting to gas station, I went inside to prepay the $20.  With my wallet freshly emptied, off I went to fuel my dude-mobile.

Just as the ticker on the petrol machine was approaching the magic 20 buck mark, a man approached me very aggressively.  He was dressed in baggy jeans, a t-shirt, and a red handkerchief tied just under his eyes.  His approach was intentional.  He had an objective.

He also had a gun which promptly found it's intended target, my chest.

In a crisis, people say amazing things happen to them.  Time stands still.  Everything becomes clear.  They suddenly find a superhuman ability to channel a hidden martial artist and kung fu their assailant's tookus.

Yeah, none of that coolness happened for me.  I did all I knew to do: hold really still and hope the bad man would go away thinking I was not so interesting.

Strangely, he seemed to be incapable of waiver.  Our dance continued.

With face half veiled and gun at the ready, the young man demanded my wallet.  I complied.  He instructed me to open my wallet and show him the contents.  I complied.  Upon seeing the empty reality of said wallet, he demanded I produce some cash or he would kill me.  I could not comply.

I had no cash.  The only cash I had was used to pay for my gasoline.  He didn't believe me.

"Give me your money or I'll fucking shoot you."  I didn't doubt his sincerity.

Remember how I said people can do cool stuff when faced with a crisis?  Want to know my superpower?  It's impressive.  I stayed super calm.  I also achieved superior vision.  My calmness and my super vision gave me some critical tools.  What did I do with my calm?  What did I see?  The tale will tell itself, dear reader.  How are you supposed to click on the annoying add at the bottom of this post if I tell you the good stuff now?  Let's continue.

I explained to the man that I had no cash, which he could see for himself.  Being a non-smoker I kept loose change in the ashtray of the car, which I offered to him, to which he seemed unimpressed.  After a few rounds of give-me-the-money-you-don't-have-or-I'll-turn-you-into-a-less-alive-person,  he finally conceded.  The day was won!

Or not so much.

He asked me where my keys were.  I calmly told him they were inside the ignition.

Perhaps this is a good time to remind you of a detail of the story from earlier.  Remember who I had with me?  Yeah, my 10 year old cousin.  Guess where he was from the beginning of the story up until now?  If you guessed the passenger seat of my absurd truck, you are a big winner.

Nothing like a front row seat to this show.  So glad I was able to open his young eyes to some culture.

Our villain told me to get into the car.  At this point I realized the gravity of the situation.  Had I been upset by this point about my current pickle?  Oh yeah!  But when I saw the fear in my 10 year-old cousins eyes, I suddenly realized how bad a pickle this really was.  I'm talking super spicy pickle here.  The one you had better not touch your eyes for at least an hour after eating.

I asked our gunned man if the kid could get out of the car.  I didn't know what was about to happen, but I thank God I had the wherewithal to figure that it shouldn't have a witness.  The man agreed and I instructed him to get out of the car and go inside.  There was that calm stuff again.  I was really getting good at this.

I was told to start the car.  I did.  I was told to get out of the car.  Done.  I watched as this stranger with a covered face and a gun got into my car.  I stood.

And here is where my second super power really made itself known.  My vision became something otherworldly.  I swear I could have taken detailed images of things miles away and remembered them in perfect detail.  I could have seen colors in that sunset that an artist would have only dreamed.  Everything in my body shut down except my vision.

And what did I see?  How did I use this gift?  What did I memorize?

I saw the face of this young man.  I saw his eyes.

We had the briefest of moments where our eyes locked, him now sitting in my truck with the door ajar and gun still truly aimed and ready, me just a pace away.  In my memory now I would swear it lasted for minutes, that glance.  But I'm sure it was only a second or two.

This is a tale of fear and crisis, acts of desperation, facing the unknown.  That is what I saw in that moment.  I saw depth.  I saw sorrow.  I saw anger.  I saw panic.  I saw terror.

May I live 1,000 years and never forget those eyes.  And may I live twice as long and never have to see them again.

***Chad pauses for a breath and a moment of reflective appreciation***

And that's it.  That is where the story ends.  The rest is just little details that are inconsequential now.  Our intense moment of connection ended as briefly as it began, he closed the door and drove away in haste.

But one last little detail so as to not keep you wanting.  The police officer who arrived on the scene sometime later became a source of information, that night and beyond.  He told me great things, things that added quite significantly to my tale.

Turns out, the situation I found myself in that night was part of a gang initiation.  To catch us all up, a gang initiation is some sort of action or duty that a person is tasked with doing.  Once done, they have earned their right into a lifetime membership of their gang.  I won't go into details here, but people will go to great lengths to join some of these gangs, often finding them the only source of hope and salvation for their life situation.  But that's another story.

For this particular gang, the initiation was exactly as I've written out above.  Hold up a person, steal their wallet and money, take their car.  Oh, just one last bit: you were also supposed to shoot your victim in the chest before driving away.

About a week later, exactly that happened.  At another gas station less than a mile from mine, a man was carjacked near sundown and shot in the chest.  He was pronounced dead on the scene.

The cop who helped me that night offered this information.  He said I should have been that man.  He said that the assailant was most likely the same kid that held me at gunpoint.  He said his interaction with me would have been seen by the gang as a failure.  He did not complete his mission.  No shot was fired.

When I think back to that day, and even as I sit here writing this now all these many years later, I am filled with so many emotions.  A reminder of the preciousness of life.  A sincere and palpable fear that still echoes in me today.  A sadness for the reality of this young man's life.

My eyes were opened that day.  My vision was given to me.  I saw.

I saw how easy it would have been for me to have died.  I saw how easy it would have been for him to have pulled that trigger.

That day I saw, but today I see.  I see that my life is precious.  I see what I have available to me.  I see my life for what it is: a chance to wake up in the morning and smile.  I see my purpose.

17 years ago this Sunday, I saw.  Today I still see.  And what I see is beautiful, beautiful beyond words.

May my eyes close only after they have seen all they are destined to see, and only then, close peacefully and with the knowledge and contentment of a life fully lived.

Thank you for reading.

Woodard Wednesday: Stop trying to get better

Quick!  Think of all the things that are wrong with you.  What do you suck at?  What is that habit that you are always trying to break?  Or try this on for size: what would your closest friends/family say are your weakest attributes?

I'm willing to bet that it didn't take a lot of hand wringing and head scratching to come up with a list.  We are all so incredibly aware of our weaknesses, feeling the acuity of the disappointment or pain when said weakness rears it's ugly head for the world to see.

What are mine?  How much time have you got?  Seriously, the list goes on endlessly.  I truly do, and am in no way playing the martyr card here, have so many weaknesses and character flaws that I can't imagine listing them all here.

Perhaps some day I'll write a nails-on-the-chalkboard post that highlights some of the juiciest ones.  But for now, I am far too cowardly to list them.  And yes, lack of courage to talk about certain things is indeed on the list.

Let's take an example.  Let's say that hypothetically, in a parallel universe, a friend of mine has a habit of procrastination.  Poor bastard...

If you don't know who this is or why he is pictured here, kindly do not tell me about it.

This friend just loves to put things off, like to the point you would swear he was getting paid for it.  Regardless of when a project is due or when a deadline approaches, this idiot is waiting until the absolute last minute.  He usually waits until he has to pull an all-nighter furiously cleaning his apartment before guests arrive the following morning, again hypothetically.

He might even pay several thousands of dollars to take an exam to become a certified specialist in his field and not start formally studying until the night before the test.  There is only one conclusion here: I have dumb friends.

So what should this friend do, you ask?  Traditional thinking would ask him to beat that flaw out of himself.  A really solid and frequent self-flagellation should do the trick, right?  He can beat this with enough will power and structure, if he is willing to work hard enough.

But what if this characteristic is just really part of who he is?  He might hate it and wish it wasn't so, but imagine a scenario that my friend just accepted who he is and stopped trying to be someone he isn't?

Or better yet, instead of just accepting his total terrible fate, what if he focused on things he was good at and poured energy into those things instead?

Crazy talk, I know.

This is a good time to drop a bomb here: this friend is actually me.  Whoa!  Plot twist of the century.

I hate that I procrastinate.  I hate that I burn myself doing it once, and then do the exact same damn thing the very next day.  Every year I wait to train for an Ironman until it's too late to have a great race.  I wait to study until the night before the exam, even though I tell my students that is a sure way to fail.  I wait to write the Woodard Wednesday blog until 10:02pm on Wednesday night.  You see where I am going with this.

I have tried to fix it.  Set calendar reminders, meet with people that make me accountable, wake up extra early (who were we kidding on that one?), punish myself when I would falter, punish myself more severely when I would continue to falter, drink myself into a stupor.  Surprisingly none of them worked, not even that last one.

Why?  Am I just not motivated enough?  Did I not try enough?  Am I inherently just a lazy twat that can't get it together?

The answer: yes, all of the above.

I have learned that all the self-loathing in the world won't fix my issues.  Paradoxically, the self-loathing much more often gives me a good reason to feel annoyed and sorry for myself.  You know what happens then?  I put things off so I can adequately feel sorry for myself a while longer!

OMG, I even procrastinate procrastination!  It's a sickness.

And with all of that said, guess what?  I don't give a hooey about it anymore.  It's just what I do and I love that about myself.

Instead of focusing on a trait that is bad, what if I went tits out and focused on traits that were good?

Check this out: I just took a long-ass quiz called Strengths Finder 2.0 (no, I don't get paid to tell you this, but my people are going to look into it...  right after I find some people to be my "people" that is totally going to get going).

I'll save the results of the quiz for another blog, but here are the highlights.  I am good at some shit.

It might have been slightly more technical than that, but that was totally the gist.  Not only am I good at some shit, I am REALLY good at some other shit.  Like, for real.

Reading the evaluation results from this book was incredible for me.  It described me perfectly and told me what I am good at.  One might think they already know.  One might be wrong.

And so that is my theme for this week.  Instead of trying to be something I am not - instead of trying to stop a bad habit - instead of utilizing major self-hatred for my failures - instead of all of that, I am devoted to nurturing the parts of me that are already bad ass.

Because maybe, just perhaps, if I focus on the things that are so great about me and try to do those more, I won't have as much time and energy for the bad things anymore.  Wouldn't that be a rosy little side-effect.

I encourage you.  Make your list.  In all their slimy details, what are the things you really despise about your behavior?  Make it good and really worth looking at.  Then, promptly toss it in the toilet.

Who are you, really?  What are you incredible at doing?  I promise, there is one thing at least.  According to this book I mentioned, you've got 5 of them.

Dare I ask you to change your paradigm?  Dare I ask you to stop hating yourself?

Nah, you're right.  We had it all figured out before.  Let's keep doing it that way...

Woodard Wednesday: Watch your language

I am becoming increasingly convinced and irrefutably sold on the importance of language.  

And even if I just used the word “irrefutably” wrong, who cares?  It sounds cool when the first sentence is about language.  I needed a big word.

What I mean by that is not the particular language that we speak, but the language we use with ourselves.  And yes, in case you are wondering if this is going to be another Oprah-like blog entry, brace yourself for something AHHHH-MAAAAAA-ZIIIIIING!

I am a professor in a doctorate physical therapy program.  It is my honor to teach one of my favorite topics in the whole world, orthopedics.  Another name for the class: Evaluation and Treatment of the Musculoskeletal System.  In real person terms that means I teach about muscles and bones, and what to do with them when they say “ouch.”

On day one, I start with an activity that has nothing to do with muscles and bones, but also everything to do with muscles and bones.  Stay with me…

On that day I find the biggest muscle bound beau I can find in the class.  In PT school, there is usually one guy or gal that looks like they lift Volkswagen's for fun on the weekends.  I’m happy that my fitness capabilities give me the option to run away from them before being crushed or tossed about like a doll.

I ask that student to stand in front of the class and hold their arm out.  They are given the following information and instructions: “I am going to attempt to push your arm down several times.  I am asking you to not let me win at all and to use all your strength to keep your arm lifted as it is now.  No matter what, do not let me win.  Do you think you can do that?”

At this point, the class is interested to the point of visible salivation.  Look at how scrawny Dr. Woodard’s arms are.  This is going to be EPIC!  I’m convinced they are all planning my violent demise but just won’t admit to it.  This gives them a glimmer of joy, as surely the result of this contest will be a humiliating defeat for the guy grading their exams.

I now tell the student with his arm raised, “as we do this first test, I want you to think very clear thoughts.  Those thoughts need to be: ‘I am strong.  There is now way my arm is going to drop.  My muscles are huge and powerful.  I am a badass and can do anything.”

Without fail, I can hang from this outstretched arm, jump up and down on it, bite it, and absolutely not move the thing.

I then tell the student, “as we do this second test, I want you to think very clear thoughts again, but this time those thoughts need to be: ‘I am weak.  Even though I am going to try to hold my arm up, I will fail.  My strength is not enough to hold up to this challenge.”  I remind them they are not supposed to let me win and push their arm down, but to think those negative thoughts.

Without fail, I can break their position using 2 fingers.

Naturally, the class is devastated that I was not humiliated.  Vultures…

Did this super muscly weight-lifting student just get less strong?  Did his muscle atrophy and shrink?  Why did he get weaker, just by thinking weak thoughts?

The answer: our thoughts create more of a reality in our lives than another other force conceivable. 

That is true for this students shoulder and arm muscles; it is also true for every damn thing we do from moment to moment.  It is that simple. 

My question to you, and something I’d love to actually hear back about: what thoughts are you thinking that are making you weak?

“I’m too fat.  I hate my life.  The people at work are out to get me.  My boss is a douche and is trying to make me miserable.  I’ll be single forever.  I’ll never pay off my debt.  This race/run is going to be slow and painful.  I won’t qualify for Kona today.  That sushi last night gave me salmonella, or at least herpes.” 

You say those things, you are those things. 

Why are we so nasty?  Not to each other, but to ourselves?

Sports psychologists have known this since sports were invented.  When you have positive psychology, you perform better in sports.  Check out this link from the American Psychological Association: http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/sport-psychologists.aspx

So, how does this work?  The answer is clear.  It’s pixie dust…

The actual answer might be more complicated than that, but that chat could go on for chapters and chapters, and frankly, I should be working instead of writing this blog.  Ain’t got no time for that.

The simple answer: your body is under the control of your brain and nervous system.  Obviously for simple things like wriggling your toes, but also for the amount of force production and efficiency of movement.  The strength of a muscle contraction is directly controlled by how many neuromuscular junctions are firing per unit area of muscle and dumping excitatory chemicals into each other.  The more "happy juice" your brain squirts into a muscle, the stronger it will contract.  The happier your thoughts, the more "happy juice" you've got at your disposal.  See, biochemistry is actually not all that hard.  

You try to run a race saying internally that you suck the whole time, guess what?  You are going to suck.  You try being the student at the front of the class told to hold up their arm while thinking you are too weak to do so, your arm will fall. 

You try being a person living a happy and fulfilling life, but all the while repeating to yourself how miserable you are and how there is no hope, misery and hopelessness will continue.  This isn’t my opinion, it’s just a truth.

I challenge each of you readers to do the following.  Every day, physically write down 3 quick things you are grateful for in your life, and then one short paragraph about something happening in the last 24 hours that made you happy.  If it takes more than 3-4 minutes, you are trying too hard.

Here is mine from today:

Grateful for:  1) my adorable dogs who slobber on my shoes 2) my career that I freakin’ love 3) people who take the time to read my blog

Happy moment in last 24 hours: today I made my students laugh.  During the course of an intense lecture with really heavy material, I got them to laugh at me or something I said.  I was able to share a sliver of knowledge to make them better healers someday, but I did so in a way that they were able to smile.  What a gift is that for me to have access to?  And even better, I got to laugh right with them.  They might have been miserable all day, but in those moments, we were all laughing.  We were happy together.  Because of their presence, I had joy.  And perhaps even momentarily, my presence brought joy back to them in kind.

That’s it.

There is a growing body of literature and science on this stuff.  The science of happiness and positivity.  You want to change your life, read this book: The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson http://www.amazon.com/The-Slight-Edge-Disciplines-Happiness/dp/1626340463

Go ahead, tell me I’m a hippie and smoked too much dope in college and have clearly shorted out my brain.  Tell me all this is crap and that thinking happy thoughts won’t make your life better.  Tell me about how miserable you are and there is no hope. 

Just don’t be upset that after you’re done telling me that, I smile at you so genuinely and purely that you are convinced I am mentally compromised. 

I am happy.  My life is unbelievably amazing.  I have everything.

Those things are true because I, you guessed it, tell myself they are true every damn day.  I do so without pause and without wavering conviction.  Why do I believe in it so much: because telling myself these things has manifested exactly what was promised: happiness, joy, contentment.  

I had a hard enough life in year's past.  I am grateful for those times as I learned the power of sadness and depression.  But I am more grateful to be what I am now: the thoughts in my head and absolutely nothing else.  

Thank you for reading...

Woodard Wednesday: I'm scared to write this

What are you afraid to do?

Ok, I'll go first.  I am afraid of everything.  I'm also afraid of nothing.  I'm glad we had this talk and I could be so insightful.

Let me explain.  I have some scary things going on in my life right now.  Let's focus on those so I can work myself into a martini-for-lunch-needing-frenzy.  Here's a list: living alone and being single, watching my baby-boy (Mick) getting old, taking steps to open a new clinic with a team of people depending on me to succeed, and the completely rational fear of a rogue tree branch falling on my head in Central Park during a run ensuring certain death.  It happens; I've heard stories...

me as a cute baby, except it isn't me at all.  totally could have been though so I don't like your judgement

The first point of living along and being single.  The last time I was single, Facebook hadn't been invented.  How's that for some perspective?  Back in my day (yes I just said that) you would go to a loud bar and order overpriced drinks, stewing in your misery and hoping to find someone who's misery resonated with yours.  It was poetry.  How did you know if their misery matched yours?  You would go over and say something sexy, yet mysterious like, "where did you buy those pants?  I like them but find that corduroy chafes me like sandpaper."  It was simple, beautiful, and markedly awkward.

Things have changed.  Now, I have learned, you go to a loud bar and order overpriced drinks, stew in your misery hoping to find another miserable being.  But do you talk to them?  Oh no!  That's bordering harassment!  Now, you log in to any number of social apps on your phone and communicate with the people digitally.  Did you catch that?  You are sitting in the same bar, like 10 feet away, but you communicate through an app.  Holy hell, I am getting so freakin' old.

Why am I afraid of this?  How could I not be?  I'm basing my search for potentially finding my new mate on the merit of my phone auto-correcting my spelling.  The potential love of my life might block me because I mention that I am "getting over being sick" but actually reads "getting over being a ...."  You see why this causes anxiety?

I'm also afraid to see Mick, my super-pup, getting older.  He's a yellow lab and coming up on his 12th birthday.  For you non-dog people, that's like 247 in human years.  It's natural and a part of life, but twice a day I give him more pills than taken by someone who watches Dr. Oz.  He's been with me since he was 9 months old after being abandoned in a dog run in Brooklyn.  Knowing he is in the final bit of his life freaks me out.

And finally, building out a new clinic with a team of some of the best humans on the face of the earth: scary as hell.  If it was just me in this business and I failed, no problem.  I can dust myself off and return to a life of professional nose-picking spa services.  There's good money in that and work, work that I prided myself in for many years through college.

But having a team adds a whole new layer of hair-losing/hair-graying stress.  If I fail, what happens to them?  If I somehow miss my mark of perfection, surely their lives are ruined and no hope exists for them.  Reasonable assumption, I think.

Side note: if you are reading this and are on said team, please roofie yourself now so you forget what you just read.  Gentle suggestion, but powerful.

That's a scary list, and I haven't even started to tell you about that itchy rash.

So, why would I have started this post by saying that I am also not afraid of anything?  The answer is clear...

I am delusional.  Proudly so.

I might be single forever, or I might not.  Mick will move on to his next journey, perhaps today, perhaps in several years.  Symbio PT will succeed, or it won't.

Regardless what happens with these points, along with the myriad of other fear generators, I will still be me.  I will wake up tomorrow morning, or I wont.  I will still have this precise moment to live fully and experience the miracle that is my every breath.

I will not be afraid that said miraculous breath is tarnished with the aroma of day old coffee.  I will reach boldly for that breath mint and marvel at the profound simplicity of my life!

But here is my biggest fear, and this shit is real.  I am terrified of the following image: me on my death bed many many years from now, surrounded by those I love in my final moments in this reality, and realizing only in that moment that I lived a life unfulfilled because I was too scared to confidently attempt my dreams.  Knowing then, when the time for action has passed, that I missed my opportunity to possibly achieve greatness because I once decided it was safer, less scary, more reasonable to chose one path versus another.

That scares me more deeply than anything else I can conjure up.  Living a life of safety and comfort, because I am afraid, is a life wasted.  I decline that option, thank you.

My dream, the image that makes my eyes well with tears as I write this, is me on that same bed with all the same people, laughing to the point of pain at all the times I tried something and absolutely, without question, completely messed it all up.  Made a total ass of myself.  Totally crashed and burned.

I have come to realize that a full life is not one of safety that is governed by fear, but rather a life of adventure and trial.  A list of experiences, successful or otherwise, that made me face my fear and decide to cower or stand tall.

2015 was a year of transitions, an opportunity to realize that new realities existed.  2016 is a year to confidently march myself into that new reality.  To show the world that I will either succeed or have a hilarious story to tell.

I look forward to telling you that story someday...

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
Frank Herbert