THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED

I was on fire with the Podcast and then out of no where I abruptly stopped releasing episodes. This is why – I went too hard, too fast and my body had to force myself to slow down. I had a physical response to the stress I was experiencing due to taking on more than I could handle. I’m a one man orchestra when it comes to all things Steezy Studios as well as being a student and a practitioner when it comes to Self. I’m personally an ever expanding work-in-progress and so are the creative aspirations that I try my best to bring to fruition, and nothing about the two are frivolous. On the surface, recording and editing two to three episodes a week may not seem like a lot but when you dive deeper into the mental and emotional bandwidth I exert while trying to shape, mold and verbally express these highly charged segments is what makes it extremely taxing. – This is something we all need to pay attention to because it’s the road to burnout and health issues. The human brain can never override the human body when it shoots off S.O.S flares in the sky. It’s literally telling us to Save Our Ship!

When I record and open up so freely and transparently about these extremely personal issues, experiences, battles or beliefs, it’s like I’m reliving the initial events all over again. Though I’m not physically back in that space and time, my mind and emotions are, which then causes my nervous-system to react by sending signals through my body. All of the ‘slow down’ signs were there but my false sense of control wouldn’t let me take my foot off the gas. At first, my back started hurting and I just figured it was due to sleeping wrong or my posture while running. Then my arm started feeling tense and tight and that’s something that used to happen a lot to me when I was under the constant pressure of deadlines in the past. It got worse once the anxiety started to seep in and I was finding myself on the cusp of full blown panic attacks. I would self-sooth, focus on my breath and bring myself back into alignment for a moment then slipstream right back into my momentum. When I’m in this ‘beast mode’ I’m so consumed by the velocity of my pace that I forget to enjoy the actual race – And sometimes I even forget what I’m racing for.

Then, one morning a little over a month ago, I woke up and couldn’t speak normally. My tongue felt numb and in the way. It was a foreign sensation that I’ve never felt before and heavily impaired my speech. I couldn’t pronounce my words clearly and I sounded as if I was drunk. It was by far one of the wildest stress induced physical reactions I’ve ever had. And how fitting, the thing that I love to do, the thing that is so important to me, the thing that I was so lit up about is the one thing that was rendered unusable. I couldn’t talk freely, I couldn’t communicate, I couldn’t express myself with my words. I felt like a bucket of water was thrown on my fire to record content. I was forced to acknowledge and respect an interesting and powerful realization, this podcast not only has the power to bring me tremendous joy, it also has the power to bring me suffering. You can’t escape the contrast in life or the poles of opposites. Nature came and snuffed the flame, but rather than seeing it as a terrorist  attack, I decided to decipher the message it was trying to tell me.

Now that I can talk normally again and without any residue of the reaction, I can see so clearly that the message was this, – ”Danny, stop trying to expedite the timeline. You are so focused on the progress that you are missing all of the gifts and beauty in the process. Pause, take a beat. Be present with what you are doing in the moment and why are you are choosing to do it. Find joy in every piece of it. From the second you start running to the time it takes for you to break through the ribbon at the finish line, there’s a space for celebration. Celebrate the ‘doing’ just as much as you celebrate the ‘done’. This work isn’t meant to be rushed, it’s meant to savored. – And just a little side note, Danny, you have no control of how fast the external results of your work will unfold for you. You only have control of how you show up as a result of the internal work you’ve done. Take actions today for what you want tomorrow while staying anchored in the NOW. The payout today comes as a feeling, the payout tomorrow comes as a reward. ”

-Danny