In 2007, I accidentally crashed my motorcycle and almost died. (True story.)

While I’ve talked about it a lot over the years, I don’t really think about it much anymore. And while I have a lot of scars from the whole ordeal, if we met today and I never told you about it, you’d never know it happened.

I bring it up now because it is a significant mile-marker in my life and created a lot of defining moments in the story of what it means to be ‘myself’, including parts of me where my shadow was, for a long time, hiding in my light.

I made some important commitments to myself at that time that were conceptually forward-thinking, positive, and healing, but were driven from a shadowy place.

Shadowy doesn’t imply evil, or negative, or bad.

Shadowy simply means that some subconscious belief about myself or how I fit into the world was informing my behaviors and actions in ways that I did not realize.

As one might expect, this produced mixed results. 

Three vows to be and do good.

For the sake of time, I’m not going to go into specifics about the accident here, but for important context, I’ll mention that due to the location of the crash and the severity of my injuries, I was taken to Mass General Hospital in Boston, which is one of the best hospitals in the country. The doctors weren’t sure I would make it through the first night. After multiple surgeries and a two-week hospital stay, I required several months of physical and occupational therapy, as well as an additional surgery. (I’m fine now. I promise.)

When the initial flurry of shock and drama passes after a big trauma like this occurs, you enter a long, quiet healing phase during which you’re forced to spend a lot of time sitting alone with your thoughts and feelings.

In addition to the expected grief, heartbreak, frustration, confusion, loneliness, and body-image questions, I remember three distinct themes emerging.

The first was that I was incredibly embarrassed.

In motorcycle culture, there is this idea that it’s not ‘if’ you’ll crash, it’s ‘when’ you will crash. Not only are you expected to dump a bike at some point, it’s also kind of a right of passage. In fact, I had already dumped a bike once in the safe-rider course, so I was already sort of initiated into the fold.

However, I absolutely could not believe that I crashed my bike in such an epic way as to cause myself this level of injury and nearly lose my life. It was an accident, for sure, but It was also entirely my fault. I made mistakes that day that led to that crash. Now, because of my errors, all sorts of people had to take time out of their lives to care for me and worse – worry about me.

I could not bear the idea of being any kind of burden on anyone. I needed to show everyone I was fine, which meant that I had to be fine.

I vowed to heal and be fine and be self-sufficient again as quickly as possible.

The second was that I was not worthy of the investment of having my body and life restored.

Due to a weird stroke of luck, I had exceptional health insurance at the time. All of my medical needs were completely covered. I tried to add all the costs up one day and a very conservative estimate brought the figure to around $350,000 (which is around $535,000 in today’s dollars.)

I said to a friend at the time, “I haven’t even done anything with my life, yet. Why do I have access to all the best doctors and care while others don’t? Why would they spend all that money on just me…just MY body? Hundreds of millions of people in the world live on less than $1 a day! That money could have impacted the lives of SO MANY PEOPLE. Why was it spent on me?”

I could not bear that I had access to some of the best medical care on the planet, and it was being used to fix my broken ass because of an accident I caused on a vehicle that wasn’t even a necessary mode of transportation.

I could not bear the idea that so much effort and expense were being put into my teeny body and small life while there were so many other people with so many other big problems in the world.

I vowed to pay it forward and put as much good into the world as I could going forward.

The third theme was that I shouldn’t feel bad or complain about what happened to me because ‘other people have it worse’.

I had access to the best medical care, I had family and friends who loved me, I was able to take the necessary time off to recover, and I lived in a beautiful apartment with a partner who was able to cover all my material needs.

When I shared this with a friend, they adroitly replied, “Other people may or may not have it worse, but this is the worst thing that has ever happened to you and it’s ok if you feel bad in the situation that you are experiencing.”

Be that as it may, even though I almost lost my life, was in a lot of pain, and my body was really busted up for a long time, to me my situation was not worthy of compassion. Instead of allowing myself to sit in my grief and pain, I was beating myself up about it.

I needed to be ok because it wasn’t ok that other people were even less ok. Ok?!

I vowed to be grateful for – and make the most of, every single day.

 

On one hand, these are excellent vows.

Be healthy, do good, and be grateful. F*ck yeah! If more people made vows like this, imagine what a world we could live in.

Here’s the thing though, at the time, they emerged from a not-great place inside of me. They were deeply rooted in the belief that ‘I don’t matter as much as everyone else does.’

I needed to get myself better so I was not imposing upon them.

I needed to go put good out into the world to pay off a debt to those who didn’t have access to the care that I had, rather than as a thank you for the care I was able to receive because I, too, am worthy of investment.

I needed to put good into the world to make up for feeling bad.

 

Does it matter what’s motivating you if you’re focused on positive results?

It definitely does.

I mentioned in my last post a list of things I’m working on to support my evolution as a person and a leader. This includes taking the time to get really honest with myself about who I am so that old stories and limiting beliefs don’t block my growth path or hamper the impact I seek to generate.

This includes uncovering where my shadow and my light are tangled up.

Let me be clear, these vows did produce major positive results.

I healed my body quickly and accomplished several physical feats that my healthcare providers did not think were possible.

I started teaching singing lessons in earnest at the end of 2008, putting me on a career path that has allowed me to help thousands of people unlock their voices, build confidence, and ripple out their positive impact on the world.

I developed a lot of resilience and a powerful ability to see the good in any situation, make lemonade from life’s lemons, and feel grateful for whatever comes my way.

Amazing!

At the same time, though, the belief that I was not worthy of compassion or investment or care that was underpinning all my choices and behaviors also:

• Caused me to boom and bust through cycle after cycle of giving to depletion and burning out.

• Subverted my ability to appropriately nourish and resource myself, ask for or receive help, set meaningful boundaries, or recognize when I was being taken advantage of.

• Operate in a ‘get out of everybody’s way’ leadership mode rather than embracing my inherent personal power and circumstances and using them as an asset in creating a larger-scale impact.

Ultimately, this undermined my ability to even adhere to my vows.

Instead of giving and caring from a place of nourished strength, mutual respect, and reciprocity, I was attempting to hold everything up by myself, putting everyone else first, while at the same time becoming weaker and weaker.

I did this over several years, and eventually, as you can imagine, major problems arose.

For instance, operating in this way prevented me from sustainably scaling my first company. This caused boom and bust cycles in my income and compromised my self-sufficiency which I was so keen to prove.

It also put a cap on the number of people we could work with at any given time, limiting the amount of good I could put into the world.

As I pushed through, ignored my body and health, and was absolutely not fine. I developed feelings of resentment and injustice which drained my energy, blocked my gratitude, and tarnished my sense of purpose.

All the good I thought I was doing for all the people involved became much too heavy for me to carry.

I had to put it down or I would collapse. (Or maybe I had to put it down so I could collapse. That’s an exploration for another day.)

In any case, I decided that the healthiest and most responsible thing I could do at that time was to close that company, let it all go, and then go figure my shit out.

And so I did.

And here we are.

And I definitely don’t have all my shit figured out.

But I can tell you with all certainty and clarity that…

Awareness leads to change.

I closed that company almost 9 years ago. I mention that only because, like the motorcycle accident, that event was also a major mile-marker in my life, and it set me on a whole new, long, and windy path of intentional personal growth.

I also mention it because I carried a lot of those same problematic beliefs and behaviors into my next company, InnerVoice Studio, as well.

I was so convinced for so long that I wanted to do good and help empower people that when the operational puzzle pieces just wouldn’t seem to connect in the right way, I would find myself cycling between trying a new business tactic and dropping into defeat and despair.

It took a while – and quite a bit of strategic effort, to finally get to the realization that I was just in my own way…again.

So I had to get real and ask myself, ‘who am I and what do I really desire?’

Somewhat to my relief, but not totally unexpectedly, I learned that:

• I am a person who genuinely seeks to put good into the world and help empower other people.

• I am also genuinely grateful for my life and my ability to see the good in whatever comes my way.

What I desire is to balance and align the work I do with other people more effectively with the reality that I, too, exist – a human and a soul with material and emotional needs.

The good news is that I’m not starting from scratch. I’ve made a lot of progress over the years that I can continue to build on going forward, and I have picked up a lot of new tools to use, too.

Along the way, I’ve developed some new vows to support me in this effort.

• To move forward in all I do with as much clarity about my intentions and choices as I can, and be on the lookout for things that pull me out of alignment or integrity.

• To remember that self-care and community care work together. That in order to support others I need to be supported, too. And to practice remembering that I don’t need to be in service to others in order to justify needing support or having my needs met.

• To continue to practice treating myself as an equally worthy partner and person in my life. To allow my needs and desires to take their full and rightful place on the list of priorities.

Patience, compassion, practice.

When I started this post, I knew that I wanted to explore the connection between the motorcycle accident and low self-worth. (To be honest, there are way more layers to this and I could write many more posts about it.)

Through this process, I was actually kind of surprised to uncover this particular entanglement between negative self-worth and choosing to be and do good…and the mishmash of outcomes it contributed to.

I’ve accomplished a lot that I’m really proud of, and at the same time, it’s frustrating to admit that I’ve gotten in my own way a lot of the time, too.

Although it can be challenging to look at these old versions of myself and it brings up some difficult emotions, I am also able to offer myself heaps and heaps of love and compassion when doing this type of work.

That Sam led me to this Sam. And this Sam will lead me to the next Sam. And on and on we’ll go.

We all do the best we can with what we know and the resources we have at the time. Life unfolds over time and we must be patient with ourselves while we learn new things and put them into practice along the way. If we stay committed, things get easier and we get smarter and the quality of life for us and those around us goes up.

To me, it’s totes worth it. 🙂

(And no, I don’t drive motorcycles anymore. But never say never.🏍) 

So then, what about you?

Does any part of this sound like a version of your own story?

Are you aware of any areas of your own life where your shadow and light get a little tangled up? Or where your good intentions maybe originated from a weird place?

I’d love to hear from you about your experiences.