Good morning Reader,
Each morning, typically before the sun rises, I open my journal to center my mind, body, and spirit for the day. I always start in the top right-hand corner to remind myself what day it is. This morning I am going to write, "Day 729 of Day 1 of sober life, and I love it."
Tomorrow will be two years, alcohol free for me. Day 730 of Day 1 of sober life. And, yea, I love it!
Tomorrow is also Labor Day here in the states, reminding us that summer has come and gone. The pools close. One more cookout, maybe, before the grill gets covered for the year. The day marks another moment when the calendar starts filling back up and the last stretch of the year begins whether you and I feel ready for it or not.
Earlier this summer, I had a chance to work with the leadership team at Liberty Pumps in Bergen, NY, leading them through our Honor Yourself workshop. For these three hours, the participants and I gave everything we had. It was real, at times intense, and I worked hard to conjure up the energy and passion I have for helping every individual in the room live fully alive.
And then it happened.
Thirty minutes after the session was over, I was out in the back parking lot in my RV, thinking it was time to change clothes and get back on the road to head to my next stop. I have to tell you, soon, almost immediately after I stepped into my summer home on wheels, I crashed. My body started a rapid descent of exhaustion topped off with the feeling of loneliness in a way that was familiar, but I couldn’t explain.
I mean, what is going on? I had just spent three productive, inspired, and meaningful hours with some of the best people on the planet, all of us with a fire lit within us, and yet, thirty minutes later I didn't have the energy to blow out a match.
My mind raced to the familiar part, having experienced this same crash over the last several years after many presentations and workshops I’ve led. It's crazy really. Prior to 729 days ago my default, when that physical exhaustion and debilitating loneliness set in, was to reach for not one, but multiple Double IPAs.
Alone. In my room to get myself feeling like myself again.
But, as you know, that is no way to get to feeling like yourself again.
This time was different. Rather than reaching for a cold one I reached out to none other than Taylor Swift. Well, not exactly but here is what I did.
Sprawled out on the bed in the back of the RV, I grabbed my phone and asked Claude, how could Taylor Swift give everything she has, pouring her soul out to an arena of 68,000 fans night after night and not crash as I have here in Bergen.
For the first time I started to understand what's called post-performance crash, fueled by a chemical high of dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline, and cortisol. Prior to 729 days ago, I would reach for double IPAs because my under-supported nervous system was seeking a quick chemical regulator to fill the dopamine deficit. It worked so effectively that every time, that same choice moved me further away from being whole and aligned.
Here in the Liberty Pumps parking lot, I was gifted another moment, and another choice. Water, fruit, a text to connect with someone I care for, and a nap.
I'm often asked when it comes to my time without double IPAs, how do I feel, am I proud of myself. Maybe I should be, but I am really not proud of not drinking.
I am proud of what not drinking has done for me.
Once I turned my decision to live fully alive into a moral duty to myself, not drinking was the natural outcome. Proud of not drinking, no. Enjoying life more fully when there is no pull to reach for the escape. You bet!
The pull was gone. Not muted. Not resisted. Gone.
Honestly, I have not declared that I will never drink again. In fact, I'm pretty sure I will enjoy double IPAs again in the future, just not now. Nor will I consume them in the way I did in the past because being true to who I want to be in this moment is what is important to me.
There's a word for what happened in that parking lot. It's the word this newsletter is actually named for, and if you've been wondering, now you know: Moment One.
The word Moment comes from the Latin word for movement. Not just any movement, and this is important, but the smallest amount of movement a scale can tip before it counts as a shift.
We are talking minute. Minuscule. Tiny.
Now, the word one, at its root, means being made whole again, coming back to something you'd gone apart from.
So, Moment One is not the biggest, baddest, boldest, most transformative thing you could possibly do.
On the contrary.
Moment One is a chance, this small and ordinary moment, to be true to who you already are, right where you're standing.
This moment.
This one small choice in front of you to make.
And each of these small choices are either a -1 or a +1 choice.
A month ago, in front of a room of distributors in San Juan, I said something almost as a throwaway line: "I haven't drank in a couple years, but man, when I used to do double IPAs, I made a lot of minus one choices."
I didn't understand how true that was until I sat in that parking lot in Bergen and felt the whole shape of it. Every hotel room, every six-pack, was its own moment, and each one turned me a little further from who I already knew I was underneath it.
What happened in that RV was one more moment like all the others, arriving the same ordinary way they always do.
Today and tomorrow, you might be at your own version of that room in Bergen, not the crash after it, the giving. A table full of people you love, one more swim with the kids before the pool closes for the year.
Tuesday will come the way it always does, without asking whether you're ready. If it lands harder than you expect this year, it might be that same post-performance chemistry, the natural comedown after a weekend of pouring yourself out for people you love.
Tuesday morning will be a moment one. In fact, every moment is moment one.
Our lives are made moment to moment, in thousands of small decisions a day, and each one is a choice between +1 fidelity to your true self or a -1 small turn away from this truth.
A +1, or a -1. Neither is dramatic. The choice belongs only to you.
A moment is the right size for one honest act, one thing that matches what is already true in you. That truth is what the yearning has been pointing at all along, the unsettled pull you feel and cannot yet name. That act is how you honor yourself, and it happens this small.
This newsletter carries the Moment One name now, and I'm glad it found you here, in the last week before the year fills back in.
When this moment passes, another arrives, and it is moment one again.