Update 5: Cancer's mental setbacks, podcast, now Himalayas

The sections:

• Section 1: ‘Have Ideas. Do Them’ reflections & notes (you may have seen some of this on social)
• Section 2: Updates on Uncharted Spirits, Teaquila Farm, Mavericks, Cancer
• Section 3: Your thoughts, feedback, and involvement

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Has Ideas. Does Them.

• I recorded a podcast episode with Steve Chou of ‘My Wife Quit Her Job’. He was a friend of mine from 6-7 years ago when I was focusing on ecommerce. He usually records episodes around ecommerce / business, but he brought me on to discuss my situation and my thoughts on how entrepreneurs can avoid what’s happened to me. We discuss the 4 pillars of: healing nutrition, healing stress, healing immune system, and healing identity and how they apply to entreprenuers. It was the first time I talked at length about it all and I’m sensing that this conversation will become more regular in the coming months. I will link to the episode when it comes out.
• I plan to start recording my podcast (Has Ideas. Does Them.) in early 2023, so I’m starting to make a list of who should come on my show. This is one of my asks at the end of today’s newsletter.
• A phrase many of us use too often and one I’m vowing to never use again, ‘I just want to get through x...’. Here’s what I wrote about / posted yesterday...

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About 10 days ago I said to my wife, ‘I just want to get through this month’

And instantly realized how problematic of a statement that is for many of us.

I’ve said a version of this probably hundreds, maybe thousands of times in my life...’I just want to get through...[this day, this week, this month, this session, this class, this game, this x, this y, this z, etc].

How many times have you said something like that?

I’m never saying anything like that again.

I was told at diagnosis that ‘if the medicine doesn’t work, you’ll have 6-12mos to live.’

So saying, ‘I just want to get through this month’ means I’m skipping ahead and my 12mos to live is now down to 11months.

Why would I want to ‘get through’ something just to lower the amount of months I have left?

I had never thought twice about that saying...until I was given a possible timeline on my life.

That was a very sobering realization.

I have since thought about this statement every day / night since I said it and I’ve come to a few conclusions. Whatever it is that triggered me to say something like that...

1) ...is likely stressful and I don’t have the mental fortitude to embrace the stress in a way that is challenging and good for the mind / body...aka eustress (distress is bad and, if chronic, opens the door to disease...like cancer).

...or...

2) ...means I’m doing things that are NOT true to my authentic self...and I shouldn’t be doing them.

It’s most likely a combination of the two.

I always thought I handled stress and adversity well, but a statement like that tells me I’m not where I need to be to truly embrace the life I have and find happiness in each moment, whether it’s stressful or not.

Obviously, I hope my timeline hits 60 more years, but we have no idea when our number will be called, so optimizing for both 1 & 2 is where, I think, happiness can be found in whatever time we have left.

Since I made the statement I started re-listening to books about mental toughness, started new ones from recommendations I’ve been given, and started looking at each commitment I’ve made to make sure it’s helping me live out my authentic self.

There’s no how-to in this post, just an observation...but if you’ve ever said something like ‘I just want to get through x...’ then I highly recommend you evaluate how you handle stress and if you’re truly living your authentic self.

I’ll be writing more about these two things in the coming months as I learn more and, hopefully, my findings / experiences is helpful to you in some way.

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Uncharted Spirits Updates

• Our first ‘Supply Run’ mission was supposed to be to remote villages in Laos, but we were reminded that March/April is crop burning season there and it would have been brutal, especially for my lungs. So we’re switching Laos to the fall and moving the Himalayas ‘Supply Run’ to this March/April.
• We’ve completed the first round of signups for the 4th member of our ‘Supply Run’ team. We have narrowed the list down from 15ish to 5ish people. Video chats start this Monday and, hopefully, we have our 4th teammate identified by 11/5/22.
• While we likely have our 4th teammate in this group, if you want to be considered for the fall ‘Supply Run’ mission (likely Laos), then go here and sign up (then fill out the survey that is auto-emailed to you): https://www.unchartedspirits.com/supply-run-spring-2023
• Project planning for the ‘Uncharted Spirits Bar at Teaquila Farm’ starts this week. Build starts on 11/19 and, hopefully, finishes ~11/26 when we host our first ‘Death Meetup’...aka ‘Burritos, Dudes, and Death’. It’s not as dark as you think it sounds, promise haha.

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Teaquila Farm Updates

• Preparing the garage & office for family and friends coming to help with the bar build and hang.
• Greenhouse project planning begins this week.
• Compost system project planning begins this week.

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Training for Mavericks Updates

• No updates this week. Just maintaining fitness level for now.

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Cancer Notes

• This last week sucked big time. We went to Colorado for few days for stillness (this was great) and then I went on to Orlando to see family, then down to Miami for work. While it was technically a work trip I used it to see fam, friends, and find out if I felt comfortable traveling. It was amazing for me in the moment. But my routine was thrown off big time, mainly because 99.8% of the food options available are absolute shit, I didn’t do high intensity training, and no ice baths. Because I struggled to find a good way to feed myself right, which meant less calories which meant more weight lost. I’m down ~17lbs since diagnosis. I don’t have much more to lose.
• While the trip was good for me to get out of the chaos of the last 90ish days, returning home and getting back into my ‘recovery protocol’ was tough and it mentally set me back. I kept asking, ‘Have I slowed my recovery progress? Am I regressing? What’s this new feeling in my body? Is this the cancer growing? F*ck me, what did I do?’. It’s an absolute mindf*ck and yesterday was a pretty big setback day mentally and emotionally. I get a string of 10 good days and then one day where I just lose it and I lay there thinking about death. Thinking about death can be good, but it’s also hard to face alone sometimes (hence my soon to start ‘death meetups’ starting on 11/26). I’m feeling back to my routine, but man it’s been hard the last 5ish days.
• One of the biggest issues in this journey is the lack of ‘turn by turn’ directions from people I talk to. Instead of saying ‘do this, then do that, then do this’, most people I talk to go, ‘look into x, y, z.’ Make no mistake, I'm super grateful for all of it, but I have little bandwidth to do the digging all the time...so my mind defaults to 'please, someone, just give me the f*cking steps' (it's a stress / emotional response). I’m gonna try and make it a bit easier for others. I talked to someone on Wednesday that was diagnosed 3wks ago with nearly the same exact cancer I have and I asked, ‘hey, would it be helpful if just wrote out a step by step checklist on things you can do now?’ and he goes, ‘man, that would help so much!’ It’s a list on exactly how to start healing nutrition, healing stress, healing immune system, and healing identity. I consider this a regeneration checklist. I’m writing this checklist for him tomorrow. It’ll work not only for others with cancer/chronic disease, but will help those without start to guardrail from experiencing it themselves. Do you want me to send it to you?

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Your Thoughts, Feedback, and Involvement

Here’s my two questions for you today...

• Who would you love to hear from on my podcast? Be bold. Any person can go on the list. Want to hear from Elon? David Goggins? A friend of yours with a great story? Who should I add to my list?
• In the cancer section I referenced the turn by turn directions regeneration checklist. When I’m done writing it for him, would you like a copy?

Have Ideas. Do Them.

Chad

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Ps...I'm putting asterisks in the f-word, but soon I'll likely stop that and just write it out. If you don't like f-bombs, might be a good time to unsub haha.