25/03/2023
Day 8 and beyond: integration
The integration phase is rarely address in story telling.
So you conquered a mountain?
And then what?
Well this was actually (and continues to be) a big part of our Godzone planning and experience - landing the plane and bringing home the gold.
My nervous system took a good couple weeks to process what happened on days 4 and 5. Extremely vivid dreams, waking yelling out to Ben, Greg or Brenda, searching my bed for gear, even walking out the front door thinking the streetlights were the team’s headlamps!
Hectic.
On one occasion back in Adelaide, in the dead of night as I scrambled about the bedroom, Shannen tried to convince me that I was home and I eventually came to partially accept this reality. I went to the toilet, but on my way back to bed, still made sure to find my headlamp “in case I need it”.
A post traumatic stress response for sure.
Add on top of this, the post-race blues. An intense come-down from 7 days of massive adrenaline, cortisol and dopamine highs.
Luckily a) I was expecting the lows and had a plan for accepting and navigating this stage going into Godzone and b) I had two teammates who are life coaches and mens rites of passage facilitators!
As a full team, over daily (in NZ) and then weekly (zoom) sessions, we deeply shared our personal experiences of the race and how we were going to channel our lessons and learnings into other outlets in life - business, relationships, family, community, work and other physical pursuits.
From this integration process, I feel that shifted from coming home with the ‘story’ - “I left part of my soul on that mountain” to “I carry the power of that mountain in my soul”.
This simple reframe holds life-changing potential.
I won’t list the ways in which I will channel this power into physical manifestations.
All I’ll say is…
Watch this space.
