The Birth Of Abrasivism:

Death Defiance & Intentional Programming

This was originally a tweet, posted August 10th, 2022 @ 3:07pm.

There I was, sitting on a table, in excruciating pain, when my doctor said, “You’re gonna die, dude.”
No fluff, no chance, total straight face.
My lab numbers had just come back, my internal organs were going through systematic shut down.
My vagus nerve…

A nerve responsible for our general health on multiple levels had received near-fatal damage, so had my spine, my brain, my pancreas & several other key systems. My blood pressure at rest was a consistent 186/165 & 110 bpm. My triglycerides, ldl, diabetic markers all out of nowhere went from a normal / healthy range into those of a 600 pound man due to the accident that damaged all of these other systems. (Pancreas damage caused most of these problems)

The doctor had said, he’d never seen anything like it – and this? This was my checkup AFTER my emergency surgery that was supposed to turn everything around, and make me healthy again.

The surgery would go on to be diagnosed as an official “failed spine surgery”, and actually made many things far worse than pre-surgery. It had kept me from dying though, so I am grateful for it, but…
During this surgery, they accidentally gave me a staph infection that caused an abscess, major scar tissue on my spine, and infected the remaining disc they’d discectomied away during surgery.

They did fix the nerve issue that forced emergency surgery where out of nowhere…
I could no longer pee. (that was fun) You get a few days of that until you go septic & die,
hence the emergency surgery…

The nerve roots at my L5-S1 (right at hip level) were crushed by the impact in the accident, & that same disc had herniated 3.2 cm down the spine (stage 4) in a crazy “never before seen” sequestration. My sacral joints were both “permanently dislocated”, so I make a violent popping sound when I lean sideways. Adding the staph damage to this was no good. They tried a discectomy & laminectomy where
they chop off the failed disc & hollow out space for the nerve roots in the spine.

As I said before, these attempts failed & were further wrecked by staph infection & scarring. Add in the post surgical abscess & spinal cord scar tissue, and it was good times for all (except me).

At least the doctor made a fortune though, so it’s not all bad news. 😂

Side note: My anesthesiologist looked like Lurch (the Butler) from The Addams Family. Imagine meeting this dude, who’s about to gas you out and walk beside you as you’re wheeled into surgery.

I woke up pre-recovery room well ahead of when I was meant to, screaming at the top of my lungs (in pain) before I was even fully conscious. Imagine waking up to your own screams, in a strange over-lit, sterile looking room, alone, and in 10/10 pain. So they sedated me…

They didn’t do any further work. I was supposed to be let go that day, but ended up staying 2 nights because something went wrong. The surgeon refused liability or possibility of a surgical-related problem, and paperwork covered his ass, so I re-learned how to walk, & then I left.

Going into surgery, I was in a constant 7/10 pain, leaving the hospital my pain has never dropped below an 8/10 again, and is often (at least daily) at 10/10. It’s been almost 7 years of these levels of pain. My pain tolerance is incredible, and although I qualify for disability, I’ve refused to take it.

3 days after surgery, I started riding horses again, and less than a week later was on a flight to a speaking engagement. I train wild mustang horses, live ranch life (hard work daily), and spend hours helping students improve their business To say my pain tolerance is abnormally high is an understatement worthy of a single adverb. shoutout to @JoshuaLisec (resident adverb disrespector).

I had to re-learn many things since the accident, & after my surgery. The kinds of things that if you learn without this level of trauma, put you WELL ahead.

You’re likely wondering – what accident could have caused such epic levels of damage, pain, and trauma to ones body? I was on my way to a personal training session, when a child, from blind driveway lurched himself into the road on a bicycle. In front of my jeep was a decision…

Do I stay straight, hit the brakes, plow through the child, and hope he lives?

or…

Do I swerve, guaranteeing the safety of the child, but risking my own life?

I chose the latter.

It had rained the night before, so the road, though dry, was slick like oil.

So when I swerved, the jeep slid through the oncoming lane, & into the grass. It hit a berm, & the jeep was airborne. The momentum ripped the seatbelt of that old 80’s jeep right open, and out I went.

Flying out the roof, and landing head first on the pavement at 40 mph…

I mean, I guess I did a tuck and roll (yay ninja shit, lot of good it did. lol) because I actually separated my right shoulder, took a massive concussion. The impact was so severe however, that the shockwave travelled my whole spine & blew out the base (L5-S1) disc, dislocated the sacral (hip) joints, and crushed the nerve roots in my spine as well.

The likelihood of surviving this accident (40mph, headfirst into pavement) is 1/10.

I’m that guy.

Typically that one guy, dies from complications. I’ve refused thus far, and still plan on living I was heavily concussed, and was 100% in shock from the accident, so they took me via ambulance to the hospital.

The docs had no idea how I was walking, though my speech and cognition were both jacked up. All of these abilities diminished over the next few weeks, as did… My ability to empty my bladder. Rushed into surgery, which failed, and made things worse.

I’d started losing my ability to speak, to think in coherent words, and my legs would randomly drop out while walking, so I’d end up on my hands, at random, without warning. My hands would (and still do) spasm and release their grip on things I’m holding causing me to embarrass myself dropping shit all the time. It’s much better now, but still happens on occasion.

It’s been almost 7 years since the surgery.

Every day, I’m in 8+/10 pain, but I’ve found ways through meditation, exercise, diet, supplementation, & yoga / stretching to stay functional & actually improve functionality day by day. That’s why I’m able to train wild horses by myself (and with my wife) at a national competition level.

Some days, like today are absolutely brutal – to the point where I can’t function physically, so I turn to writing, in hopes of serving other people. I had to relearn to think, speak, write, and walk because of the head trauma I suffered. The docs had put me on a program of opiates & muscle relaxers, convinced I would die soon. I kicked those cold turkey after being physically hooked on cancer-patient-level amounts of morphine & oxycodone.

Now, Advil is my most hardcore pain reliever. Meditation was, and still is key…

The hardest thing was learning how to function, & perform at life, with leverage enough to rebuild momentum. My income went to Zero after the accident, while having a high revolving-debt lifestyle. Business tanked, and costs of doing business kept attacking… The bills added, the credit cards maxXxed, the medical bills stacked. My ability to out-grind or hustle past competition was diminished, if not fully destroyed. I was fucked.

First, I taught myself to read again, using simple kids books. Then speak (thanks to my patient wife) I went through a slurring phase, and where I just couldn’t spit out the words in real time. I had to learn to process thoughts in English again. Hard to explain, but I basically could only think in images, and words just wouldn’t form for coherent ideas to come out.

I couldn’t sit at a computer for more than 10 minutes at a time because of headaches, and how bad my legs & back would scream in focused pain. So I couldn’t think like I used to, I couldn’t work like I used to.

This is where most people would simply give up, claim disability, and be sad / mad that life was unfair. I was raised to not accept L’s unless I’m dead – so I used it as an opportunity to use what I’d written in my first book, The Final Fight I used my manual to re-teach myself how to think & communicate. From there, I worked hard on rehabbing my body, and getting functional.

Then I built a standing desk so I could work longer, and got a laptop platform so I could work, laying down on the couch or bed. I looked up methods for how to work with more leverage, and applied what I’d done in the past for scaling with employees, at a baseline level for simple tasks. Not giving up was critical.

Accepting fate, but changing it’s meaning was another key factor.
This had happened, nothing I could do about that, but I could change my reactive meaning of the event into empowerment instead of victimhood.

That’s what I did.

It was a challenge.

It was an obstacle.

…and as the Stoics say, “The Obstacle IS The Way.”

I rebuilt myself, and my business from the ground up. Through pain-maxxxing, failed surgeries, massive debts, and more I kept pushing myself to higher levels. Which brings us back to the original tweet in this thread.

“You’re gonna die, dude.”

I was scared…
I called my wife, told her what he’d said. She mourned on that possibility with me, but then she asked,

“So what are we going to do?”

My answer was not to accept what was handed to me, at face value. I turned a death sentence into possibility… I asked why I was going to die, he showed me the test results, then I got to work. Studying diet & supplementation to counteract the problems that the tests uncovered. I could accept and die, or accept & change. The doc had no options, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any.

I had to research.
I had to test.
I had to not give up.
I had to be strong.
…and so i’ve been.

People have asked me how I keep going, how I changed so much. What choice did I really have? Accept defeat? Hell no. What does that even mean? Die? No thanks…

This is NOT the way of the Abrasive.

Determination.
Objective observation.
Intention.
Accepting help.
Studying.
Tenacity.
Testing.
Recording results.
Grit.
Pragmatic realism, with an optimistic filter. (No more “I can’t”. Instead it’s “How can I?”)

These are the way of the Abrasive.

This is the path of inevitable success.

This is what I live my life by.
This is what I teach my students.
This is how we make the world a better place.
This is Abrasivism.