Chances are very good that snowboarder Kevin Pearce, critically injured in a training accident will return to snowboarding. He may even go on to win a Gold medal one day. Pearce, thought to be a possible gold medal winner in the Vancouver Winter Olympics didn’t compete this year. He struck his head in a training run on New Year’s Eve 2009 and suffered a traumatic brain injury. He can’t walk unassisted, has trouble speaking, and has a long recovery ahead of him. But the discipline and drive that made him a world renowned athlete will come into play as he heals. That, and a loving family – brothers and parents who love him, doesn’t hurt either.

“You can’t let the bumps and bruises affect you,” Jeret Peterson said before the 2002 Olympics. “You’re toast if you do.” Peterson should know. Perhaps no one in these Olympics has come further or done more than Peterson to go for Gold. His sister was killed by a drunk driver. His best friend committed suicide in front of him by putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger. He was sexually molested as a child. And when he had a shot at gold in the 2002 Olympics, but came in seventh with an imperfect landing he went to a bar to burn off his frustrations. A bar fight got him kicked out of the Olympic village in disgrace. He received over 500 pieces of hate mail, retreated into alcoholism, lost all his sponsors and gave up skiing to work at Home Depot. He was left to deal with his demons alone, except for his mother, who was on his side. Most people would have bet against his turning his life around, but here he is – at the 2010 Olympics, sober, stronger, changed.

Olympic Athlete Nicola Coles and others have atrial fibrillation. That’s a serious heart condition that can lead to all sorts of problems. Yet still they compete.

Speed skater J.R. Celski stunned crowds at the 2010 Olympics with a bronze medal. Only five months prior to his win he was bleeding on the ice at the U.S. Trials. A bone deep gash on his left thigh, six inches wide and two inches deep spilled so much blood on the track he thought his career as a skater was over. The blade was still stuck in his leg, and only an inch away from his femoral artery. Doctors would later use 60 stitches to close the gap. He would not return to the ice at all until eight weeks before Olympic competition.

“When I was laying on that ice, I was in defeat at first,” he later told CNN. “I thought my whole career was over. But I guess in those moments is where we truly define ourselves.”

Over the years the best stories to come out of the Olympics, for me anyway, are the stories of the things the athletes overcome and how in spite of death, disease, injury and all kinds of trauma, they manage to focus on their sport, on what they have to do to win, not just to compete.

They compete with bad backs, torn muscles, intense pain. They display an almost inhuman ability to overcome incredible odds. Is it all really just to win? Is it all for a Gold Medal? Or is it for what it represents? Many of those who don’t make the podium are a half-second off the gold medal time. Some days something as simple as a snow flurry, a drop in temperature, a mis-step is all to it takes to turn four years of focus into one moment of failure. Why do they do it? Why does anyone fight to defy the odds, to work through the pain, the fear and the sacrifices to win a medal, start a business, overcome a disability, find a loved one, save a nation or a people (Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King). It’s not for the money. There are easier, safer, saner ways to make money. What motivates us? Or better – what drives us?

I think J.R. Celski said it best:

“When I was laying on that ice, I was in defeat at first. I thought my whole career was over. But I guess in those moments is where we truly define ourselves.”

HOW we define ourselves in the darkest nights, not the brightest days, is who we become. As someone else once said, ”Hard times don’t build character, they reveal it.“

Who are you in the darkest of nights? Who do you want to be? How will you define yourself as you face YOUR demons?

Seth writes, “We say we want one thing, then we do another. We say we want to be successful but we sabotage the job interview. We say we want a product to come to market, but we sandbag the shipping schedule. We say we want to be thin but we eat too much. We say we want to be smart but we skip class or don’t read that book the boss lent us.

The contradictions never end. When someone shows up and acts without contradiction, we’re amazed. When an athlete just does the sport, or when a writer just writes the words, we can’t help but watch, astonished at the purity of their actions. Why is it so difficult to do what we say we’re going to do? The lizard brain.”

Martha Beck had the same questions. So did Stephen Pressfield. But Martha takes a different approach – one that says the Lizard is our friend (and I truly believe that). The Lizard, she explains, protects our essential self – keeping us from being successful cubicle monkeys and clinging to dead-end jobs. The Lizard, exists not simply to screw up our lives, but to point us away from mediocrity and towards Nirvana. If we are happy wearing Poodle skirts, eating funnel cakes and dating a guy with a mullet, our Lizard will indeed sabotage that polyester slack suit, fresh produce and five veggies a day and the Marine hunk with the buzz cut.

When we begin to see the Lizard as a brain with access to our true being, as the gate keeper to happiness, not the reptile with the party pooping agenda, we begin to understand why it’s really there. Men call it “resistance,” and women call it “possibility.”

Seth writes, “The resistance grows in strength as we get closer to shipping, as we get closer to an insight, as we get closer to the truth of what we really want. That’s because the lizard hates change and achievement and risk.”

Martha sees the “resistance” not as a force that hates change and achievement and risk, but as a compass that shows us what we really love. When Stephen Pressfield encountered resistance as a major force in his life he was living in a Chevy Van with his cat. (Sound familiar?) He was driving trucks and doing all sorts of menial jobs to avoid doing the thing his soul wanted to do – WRITE. (If I could find the essay he wrote about resistance I’d post it here….if you find it, please do. I’ll link to it.) I read that and it struck me that I was doing the same thing….so I began studying the lizard brain in depth.

Seth writes, “The lizard is a physical part of your brain, the pre-historic lump near the brain stem that is responsible for fear and rage and reproductive drive. Why did the chicken cross the road? Because her lizard brain told her to.” And that is SO lizard brain!! He’s right. The lizard brain is where fear and rage and reproductive drive originate because the lizard brain’s job is to see, record and document patterns that put our lives at risk. The lizard brain exists not to give us hell, but to ensure our survival. When we listen to what it is trying to say (it is, after all the seat of our intuition as well), we survive, but can also thrive!!

Where I will diverge from Seth’s reasoning is in believing that organizations are run by lizard brains. I contend that organizations are run by people who are DENYING THE WISDOM and direction and patterns their lizard brains are trying to share with them. Organizations fear change, risk and balloon popping because past patterns of more failures than successes through this behavior indicate that NOT changing, risking and balloon popping is a better alternative. That is ALL the lizard brain is doing – prodding us with statistics of our experience. Our lizard is a data base of every experience we’ve ever had – good or bad. If risk and balloon popping brought you success early on – guess what? That’s what your Lizard is going to push. Because it works for you. That’s all it does. If you don’t know how to read a spread sheet or interpret data, you probably won’t understand how valuable the lizard is. Ever since you were born that part of your brain has been cataloging information into “safe and fun” or “Painful and scary” and prodding you when you encountered similar situations. From the type of food you like, to whether you’re a breast, leg or ass man, the lizard has controlled it all. But let’s go back to the Lizard’s alarm when faced with a new situation.

IF, at this stage of the lizard’s input you simply decide NOT to change, NOT to risk, NOT to pop, you quiet the brain and shut down a stream of valuable information. Not a good thing. This is the stage where you can either say, “Ah ha! Risk is bad. Let’s not risk.” Or you can have a sit–down with the lizard. And if you do, and if you listen long enough you might realize your lizard isn’t saying “Don’t risk.” The lizard may actually be saying, “You know, we put Fickle Fred in charge of those last three failures. Let’s talk to Fred and see what really happened. Maybe we can put Agnes on this next venture if Fred can’t really account for what happened.” That’s not an option if you’re trying to shut the brain up. Apple doesn’t shut down its lizards. It buys them espressos and massage chairs and says, “So what do you think we ought to do to then?” You don’t ignore or discount the Lizard, you step back – put the fear on hold and listen and look at the data. It’s not the Lizard you want to quiet. It’s the fear you’re feeling. Remember the progression? Our thoughts create our emotions, our emotions create our actions….So, let the THOUGHTS the lizard is having come up. But press “pause” when the emotions are cued.

We are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” As a child I was gang-raped, drugged, tortured, beaten and abused mentally, emotionally, physically, sexually. Not just once – but over 15 years. My Lizard Brain and Amygdala are the size of apples, not walnuts. Seriously. Research shows that trauma increases the size and action of the amygdala. My lizard brain is fear on steroids. It’s like Godzilla, not the GEICO gecko. My lizard brain is why, when I was a cop, that I could walk into a building and tell you where the bad guy was hiding. I could smell fear and “knew” where the danger was – to the point of pinpointing the physical presence without even seeing it. Psychic abilities are so connected to trauma that psychiatrists and science consider psychic abilities as part of a diagnostic for trauma. I could have, should have by many accounts, be drooling in a strait jacket in a rubber room somewhere. But I learned to press the pause button most (not all) of the time. When the Lizard says, “Hmmm….teen-aged boys in gang colors standing on the corner, run away, run away!” I listen – and cross the street or go down another street. When the Lizard says, “Aaagh! Temporary Employment Agency!! Run away, run away.” I reassure it that it’s just for a month so I can make my bills. I understand, or try to, why the Lizard has its panties all in a wad. Then I deal with the data. Usually. Not always. But usually.

Seth writes, “The amygdala isn’t going away. Your lizard brain is here to stay, and your job is to figure out how to quiet it and ignore it.” Sorry Seth. But I read this today and thought, “Oh no. This is SO NOT the way to deal with the lizard brain at all.”

It’s NOT about quieting it, and certainly NOT about ignoring it. It’s about listening to it and acting on what you learn from it. The lizard brain simply identifies patterns and sends a signal to you telling you that what you’re encountering is not “safe” for SOME reason. If you’re not used to interpreting this signal all you feel/hear is FEAR. So you avoid or resist this THING your Lizard is all wired up about. If you QUIET IT and IGNORE IT you will never learn to understand it. You’ll continue the knee jerk reaction, stuffing it down in your attempt to keep it caged. Yeah. It’s hard work to learn to speak Lizard. But it’s so worth it.

Personally, I’m with Martha Beck on this one. I say give your lizard a name. Sit down and have a cup of tea and a conversation with it. You’d be amazed how articulate and astute it is, given an understanding ear. Why? Because your lizard brain can alert you to patterns, things you didn’t realize you didn’t like. And if you listen, and recognize those patterns, you can CHANGE the resistance, find a new direction, take action, cast off the chains and LIVE.

For instance, if your limbic lights go off when you walk into an office cubicle, or go with your best friend to look at bridesmaid dresses, there’s a message there – usually one that says, “Shit. I hate working in a cubicle. I loathe wearing puffy-arm party dresses in unnatural hues of magenta and lime.” So, instead of ignoring that message, or misinterpreting it, consider whether or not your lizard is saying, “You know, the last six times you’ve worked in an office in a cubicle you screwed things up. You screwed them up because you really don’t like working for the man. You’re going to botch this one too. Let’s start our own business selling t-shirts at rock concerts.” or “You really do look like a fool in those darn bridesmaid dresses. Next time, decline the invitation. We’ll put up with it this one last time, but seriously. Learn to say NO.”

Martha Beck encourages her clients to listen to their inner lizard. It is sabotaging us because it knows what we don’t like and won’t do well at. It is a compass. It is a tool. Embrace it. Listen to it. Heed its alarms and find your true path. You can fight it, or you can understand it. As someone who has spent most of my adult life alternately ignoring, fearing and running from or listening and learning to heed the advice of my lizard, and to understand what it knows, I can assure you….you’re better off making it a friend rather than an enemy.

Linchpins are the people who love their jobs because they love what they do. They truly enjoy whatever task it is they perform simply for the love of doing it.

Call it endorphins. Call it “juice.” Call it the nectar of kindness, but there is a joy that is released when we love what we do and do it for the pleasure of doing it.

In sports parlance they say, “He/she loves the game. He’d play even if he wasn’t getting paid.” In medicine they say, “He/she is such a humanitarian.”

But the reality is, people dig ditches, wait tables, cut hair, fix engines, deliver mail, drive trucks, bartend, farm, and yes, join the military because they take pride in a job well done. The sad thing is this used to be the rule, not the exception. People were craftsmen, not employees. Moving from apprentice to journeyman (sound and experienced) to craftsman (brilliant, skilled journeyman) was a rite of passage and status that everyone understood.

In our rush to get rich, become an American Idol or be worshiped we’ve forgotten how to connect with each other and our work. Those pursuing that connective path we call entrepreneurs. Those walking the path we call artists. Those cutting the path we call unicorns. Those embracing the path we call Linchpins.

Celebrate those people in your life today who have found this special niche and embraced it. It may a parent, a partner, a friend or the store clerk who went the extra mile to ensure your satisfaction. Usually unnoticed unless you are the recipient of their passion for a job well done, they will appreciate your appreciation. And if you are a linchpin? Then know that you are celebrated in Seth’s book.

A few weeks ago I committed to a new eating, exercising and health regime. I had to. I felt like I was dying. I had no energy, a deepening depression and constant pain. Today, after a month of giving up sodas, eating NO processed food and no fast food, adding a vitamin supplement and extra B-12, I feel amazingly better. I’m so glad I started as soon as I figured out that maybe my weight and eating habits were the problem. When I told a friend this the other day she said, “That’s great. I want to make some changes too, but I’m going to wait until New Year’s and make it a resolution.”

I don’t understand. Why wait three weeks to feel better? There’s nothing magical about January 1. Waiting to start the year with a resolution doesn’t mean you’re more likely to finish it or do it. You’re actually MORE likely to fail. Resolutions aren’t as strong as commitments. When we decide to change based on a realization that the change is needed, that our lives will truly be better for it, and when we COMMIT to that change, we’re more likely to make that change a permanent part of our lives.

I’ve been watching and rewatching all the episodes of The Biggest Loser. Every person on there went through an incredible amount of effort to be on the show. They beat out thousands or possibly millions of other applicants, endured tests, questions, paperwork and who knows what all to get their coveted spot. They ALL change because they decided to change. They committed to it.

Waiting or playing around with making up your New Year’s resolutions is just fooling yourselves. If you are deciding to change something because everyone else is doing it, after all, it IS New Year’s!!! Then don’t bother. If the resolution doesn’t spark a commitment to the action you’ll fail anyway, so why waste your time and create one more thing to feel bad about. If you’ve found something you want to change, then change TODAY. Commit to it. Don’t wait.

I am lying in bed right now, sick with a sinus infection, and wondering if exercising will make it better or worse. As soon as I find the answer I’ll either rest or work out. I am COMMITTED to losing 100 pounds and to getting in shape. That means working out twice a week with weights and doing aerobics three days and resting one day. It means changing the way I eat (five times a day instead of twice and always eating breakfast). It means changing what I eat (no sodas, no processed food, no diet anything). It means becoming detail oriented and planning meals and workouts and keeping to a strict schedule even when I don’t “feel” like working out.

I CHOSE to do this. I have committed to it. I am sharing this information with you because I am committed. Later, I will post my “before & after” photos because I want to be held accountable so I will finish this process. I can’t think of anything more mortifying than to post a before “Fat” photo and never have an “after” photo to post with it. Like the pig, (And thus the bacon photo) I am committed to a “breakfast” of health.

What are YOU committing to? Share it with me. Please. Post it here and keep us updated.

Far too many people believe that “being authentic” means someone who agrees with our viewpoint, but being authentic means being true to yourself, your experience, your beliefs, integrity, thoughts. The more authentic you are, the greater the power of your story.

I’m speaking at TED Global 2009 on July 21st for six minutes about  … my experience being homeless in 2006. I’ll post that speech here after I give the talk and there’s a TED.com link to it. But in the meantime, this is a story I wrote for Seth Godin’s Triiibes Case Study ebook. (The ebook is free. You can click on the link below to get the entire book. There are many talented, gifted storytellers in it.) The ebook accompanied the release of his book, “Tribes” which came out October 2008. It’s about a one-legged homeless woman who “led” her tribe of homeless people:

The need to be in a tribe isn’t limited to status, income level or occupation. Belonging is hard-wired into us.

Lines for free meals start forming at 10 a.m. for the noon lunch – a sandwich, a piece of fruit, a glob of potato salad or macaroni. Lines for free medical treatment – anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, HIV cocktails, start forming at 5 a.m. for doctors who arrive at 9 a.m. Being homeless doesn’t mean you don’t have a schedule any more. It just involves more waiting, usually in longer lines and usually with people who talk to dead relatives, scratch their crotch, howl or simply stare while they wait. But even among the down and out, tribal leaders emerge.

Joyce did. An amputee with a leg lost to a freight train after she mistook a train yard for a bedroom early one morning, Joyce still soldiered on from her wheel chair outside Denver’s homeless headquarters. A self-proclaimed “crack head” and admitted addict, Joyce none-the-less ruled her “tribe.” In filthy purple sweatpants and sweatshirt, face grimy with weeks of unwashed dirt, she wheeled her wheelchair up and down the line of homeless people, addicts, recently released prisoners, the mentally ill and the morally bankrupt and plied her skills.

“Gotta match? Gotta cigarette? Joe I gave you some of my crack last night you owe me a cigarette.” When Joe claimed not to have any, 10 minutes of cajoling and wise cracks managed to produce a half a pack in spite of his initial pleas. Up and down the line she went…collecting cigarettes, food, a ratty scrap of a blanket. She stopped fights, calmed tears, stared down men four times her size as she rolled along. Her empty pant leg dragged the street as she leaned forward again and again to reach for a cigarette. The cigarettes that disappeared under her thigh would reappear slyly, almost magically when someone else needed one. The rag of a blanket she had begged from a man lying in his own vomit turned up minutes later, wrapped around an infant whose mother had simply tossed its dirty diaper in the street. This went on for four hours.

But when the doors to the free-clinic finally opened, Joyce disappeared. She was not waiting for medical care. She was tending to her tribe. This was the only time of the day they were all together and it was almost safe to do so. Yes – her tribal skills, the barter, the connecting, the networking and support were probably 90 percent self-survival driven, but it showed me that even when people can’t sink much lower in life the drive to belong to a tribe – even a tribe comprised of the mentally ill, the addicted, the walking dead and the criminal – is there. We still need to belong to something – if only to stay warm for the night, fed for the day or to be needed for a smoke.

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