Beyond Recovery: A Life of Service

When I was recent­ly in India, I met an inter­est­ing tour guide who shared a phi­los­o­phy that life is bro­ken up into 25-year chunks: the first 25 is learn­ing, your edu­ca­tion. The sec­ond 25 is earn­ing. The next 25 years is the seek­ing of truth and under­stand­ing, and the last 25 years is as a wise sage, able to give wis­dom to others.

So, when I think about tech exec­u­tive and coach David Greer, whose sto­ry of addic­tion and recov­ery is being shared in this three-part series, I can see where he is on his jour­ney. This last seg­ment fol­lows his tran­si­tion from truth and under­stand­ing to a new phase of wis­dom and service.

When I asked David about the dif­fer­ence in his inter­nal expe­ri­ence of life and work, today, he talks about being more at peace, much more in touch with what he feels.

“I remem­ber walk­ing at the beach, hold­ing my youngest son’s hand, brain­storm­ing in my head the next ver­sion of the soft­ware we were going to be releas­ing. Even­tu­al­ly, I did get present but a lot of exec­u­tives and entre­pre­neur leaders…making big things happen…can relate to that. We’re con­sumed by what we’re doing…an addic­tion to…and get­ting our kicks from the work.”

Con­scious Choices

Because of the12-step recov­ery pro­gram and ther­a­py, he’s much more aware and faster to catch when his mind is focused on work or else­where – and much bet­ter at mak­ing a con­scious choice.

David talks about con­scious liv­ing here.

Lessons & Insights

All of us, on our growth jour­neys as lead­ers, must – at some point – reflect on our choic­es oth­er­wise we get in our own way, or the busi­ness will destroy us. We need these pieces of aware­ness to help us get to the next lev­el, to thrive and to be bet­ter ver­sions of ourselves.

David talks about some of his insights:

• Iden­ti­fy­ing his taskmas­ter spir­it (TMS). Like an octo­pus on autopi­lot that gets a lot done, this is so deeply embed­ded, he didn’t real­ize when all eight limbs were mov­ing at once. Now much more aware, he can decide whether he wants to lean into his taskmas­ter spir­it, rather than being on autopilot.

“It’s great for pro­duc­tiv­i­ty but, on the oth­er side, (it’s a) prob­lem that caus­es burnout. I lit­er­al­ly have inter­nal con­ver­sa­tions: ​“Hey, TMS, nice to see you. You can stand down. You don’t need to be on guard right now. We’re OK. You can just chill.” More about David’s TMS and work­ing with it below.

• Iden­ti­fy­ing the voic­es in his head. Root­ed in a ther­a­py method­ol­o­gy called Inter­nal Fam­i­ly Sys­tems, all the dif­fer­ent voic­es in your head either help us or get in our way. When you unpack and can sep­a­rate your­self from each one, you can bet­ter rec­og­nize them and then choose when they are of val­ue, rather than run­ning on default. More on your Inner Crit­ic here.

• Life and lead­er­ship are about service.

Part of the work every­one does in the 12-step recov­ery pro­gram is to be of ser­vice to oth­ers, in the hope they can relate to the expe­ri­ences shared and feel the strength to stay sober. And that’s influ­enced how he now sees leadership.

Less col­lab­o­ra­tive and more like­ly to micro­man­age, he’s now more invest­ed in what he can do to help the peo­ple he works with be mas­sive­ly suc­cess­ful. David talks about lead­er­ship evo­lu­tion and being of ser­vice below.

A Life of Service

Now 67, David plans his life in five-year chunks, tak­ing a one-step-at-a-time approach.

That includes con­tin­u­ing to work in his coach­ing prac­tice for the next few years, with­in the amount of time he wants to work, mak­ing sure he has time with his wife, chil­dren and grandchildren.

“It turns out, for me, not work­ing hard is real­ly hard work. (Like a) thor­ough­bred race­horse, I just want to run hard.” David talks about what’s next here.

His big­ger pur­pose is to share his mes­sage to oth­ers, like in the con­ver­sa­tion we’ve had in this inter­view, to help oth­ers who are strug­gling with their men­tal health or addiction.

“Please reach out for help,” he offers. ​“I know how hard it is. Go to my web­site. Email me or call me and I’ll do a free one-hour coach­ing ses­sion with any­one who wants it.”

Ulti­mate­ly, the great­est thing we can do, in our lives, is to be of ser­vice and help oth­ers. And David, now in the sage part of his life, has much to share.

You can watch the full inter­view below and to David’s web­site, if he can be help­ful to you. https://​coachd​j​greer​.com/.

Resources

• From Your Oxy­gen Mask First:
  • Chap­ter 1 Live an Amaz­ing Life
  • Chap­ter 6 Deal with Your Emo­tion­al Junk
  • Chap­ter 7 Man­age Your Men­tal Health
• Alco­holics Anony­mous to help peo­ple achieve sobriety.
• Al-Anon for peo­ple who are wor­ried about some­one with a drink­ing problem.
• Adult Chil­dren of Alco­holics for peo­ple who had alco­holic par­ents or fam­i­ly dysfunction.

Oth­er Blogs

• Shared Expe­ri­ences are a Cat­a­lyst for Connection
• Sev­en Year on: Man­ag­ing Your Men­tal Health
• Are You Liv­ing an Amaz­ing Life?
• An Inter­view with Some­one Who Had a Close Call
• A CEO Burnout Story