Leading with Vulnerability

1Panic!

On Thursday, December 23, 2021, a few weeks after signing the contract for this book, I was standing in my bathroom brushing my teeth and I started feeling weird. My body was flooded with adrenaline, my vision became blurry, and my heart started beating out of my chest. My resting heart rate is usually around 57 beats per minute and just standing I was about 130 beats per minute, which is the equivalent of a moderate cardio workout. I thought, “This is it. I'm having a heart attack and I'm going to die,” and I was overcome with fear and dread. I felt like a tidal wave of terror just crashed over me.

I screamed for my wife, Blake, who was wrangling our kids for school, and I told her something was wrong with me. I laid down on the bed and then all of a sudden I started shaking uncontrollably. If you've ever seen the Pixar movie Inside Out in which emotions are personified by little characters who live in your body, that's what I felt like. As if there were little creatures who were just pushing all sorts of buttons inside of my body and I had no control. It was absolutely terrifying and the most scared I've ever been.

“What the fuck is happening to me?” was all I could think about, followed closely by “Is this the end for me?”

The next few days were really rough because I wasn't able to hear back from my doctor and I had no idea what was happening to me. Was I actually dying? Was it all just in my head? Not knowing was the worst part.

Things calmed down for a few days ...