Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everybody,
and welcome to today's episode
of the NeverPeak Project Podcast.
Today we have another fantastic guest episode for all of you,
so grab a cup of coffee, sit back, relax, and enjoy
as we have a great discussion about overcoming trials
and realizing that it's never really too late to start.
In today's episode, I'm joined by a very special guest
that was a guest on a podcast I have been a guest on
in the past.
What I really love about the podcasting game
is that a lot of us kind of like, it's not sharing guests,
but it's also very nice to kind of see who everybody else
is working with and interviewing,
because you already know that they're kind of primed,
that they have a great story to tell.
This guest that we have on today was on my friend
Paul Breyley's podcast, Off the Comma.
His episode will be linked in the description
of this episode, but he reached out to me on LinkedIn
and shared a little bit about his story.
What I noticed is that there were quite a few parallels
between his story and my own story.
Just to kind of give a sneak peek,
it's a lot to do with running and making the decision
to be better and make shifts in your life.
Our guest today is Mark Wiginton.
I could read the whole bio that I read out
or the prep sheet that I sent to him,
but I think it is best for Mark to go ahead
and just introduce himself and tell us a bit about
why you're here and what you're hoping to share today.
Awesome, thanks for having me.
I really appreciate you sharing your audience with me today.
And I like what you said about podcast hosts
wanting to kind of share their guests
because you know what you're getting.
And this kind of the same thing is true
on my side of the table.
I mean, it's listening to you and Paul talk
really helped me understand that we'll be able
to connect really well.
And I think our stories are really similar.
I think you're probably at around the point in your life
when I went through some really dramatic changes
in my own life.
And that's a big part of my message is that,
you can get into your early 40s, into your mid 40s,
even later and start again.
So that's really the message I'm here
to help communicate today.
I work as a coach, I left full-time business
where I've worked in sales and consulting and training.
And I've worked as a counselor.
Maybe we'll spend a little time talking about my time
working at the jail and here in Austin, Texas.
And some of the lessons learned there,
but basically just have a well-rounded career.
And now I'm in the phase where I'm bringing it all together
through coaching and helping other people grow.
Gotcha.
Let's talk a little bit about that past.
I don't think I caught the working in the jail part.
Let's frame what you've done in the past
through the lens of what led you to that career path
and like what was important to you value wise
about doing the work you were doing.
Oh my gosh, that's our whole hour right there.
We'll keep it tight.
So, I mean, the reality is that since early in my career,
I've really kind of worked at the intersection
of psychology and business.
And I was in the Air Force for a while
and I went back to school and got a master's degree
or a bachelor's degree in psychology.
Met my wife, got married, came out, moved to Houston.
And at night I worked in the Locks Psych Ward.
And in the daytime, I worked as a trainer
for one of kind of the first big Silicon Valley startups,
helping people learn how to use these new electric
computerized telephones where you could like press two
buttons on the phone and put people on hold.
I mean, this was a long time ago.
And people really freaked out about the technology.
And so I was using more of the skills that I had learned
getting my bachelor's degree in that job than I did,
you know, kind of at night, working with people
who were really struggling with their mental health.
Fast forward a little bit, that company after six years,
you had a chance to take a sabbatical,
a six week sabbatical or a 12 week sabbatical.
And I took 12 weeks and went back to school
and got my master's degree, came out,
went back to work for about a month and said,
this is not my path anymore.
I also kind of in that window of time,
I went to rehab and had some life changes
that were tied into that.
And I came out and I started working
in community mental health here in Austin.
I got my master's degree, I got my license as a counselor.
I worked in community mental health
and that included working kind of full time at the jail,
but in a mental, in a rehab unit that was inpatient
inside the jail.
So think about that.
People who are not super highly motivated
to work and I really learned and grew and stretched through
that.
I also worked pretty much in every mental health setting
that there was every mental health facility
in kind of greater Austin, greater central Texas,
just trying to make a living.
And ultimately got to a point after about seven years
where I went through a really dramatic life change
that led me back into the business world.
That then kind of the rest of my career
was in the business world as I went through.
And that life change was really kind of a critical spark
for me that led me on the rest of my journey.
Gotcha.
And to clarify that life change,
that was the sabbatical that we're kind of talking about.
Is that the genesis of it or how does that?
Yeah, so that was the start of it.
So I went to, so I was a little out of order there
and then I went to rehab.
I came out, I went on the sabbatical
that the company paid for and that led me to master's,
to get my master's degree.
And I started right then working in,
I worked with a therapist in private practice.
I worked in every setting you could imagine
in community mental health.
And a lot of my focus, Ranger, I mean, honestly,
at that point, a lot of my focus was helping people
learn to live kind of an abstinence over life, right?
I was, again, working,
like the psychologist that I worked in in the office,
that was the emphasis of that practice
was helping people learn how to live chemical free.
Again, working in the jail and the rehab center,
working in outpatient centers kind of all over town.
And I was working pretty consistently in helping people
learn kind of the key elements of recovery,
the first phases of recovery,
and most importantly, helping people learn
how to work their way through relapse.
And the thing that,
I talk about the second big turning point
and after I went back to school
and seven years later going back to business,
and what really happened there for me was that I relapsed.
And as a guy who had just spent
the last seven years of his life,
sober, active in 12 step programs,
teaching other people how to do it,
when I relapsed, my world really kind of collapsed.
While I was in a place where I was really able
to talk to people about what it meant to relapse
and give yourself grace and move forward,
I wasn't able to give that self to myself,
that give that gift to myself,
because of my own perfectionism and whatever other issues.
So I decided that I really needed to leave the field
and I went back into the business world
and spent the rest of my career in the business world.
And I had a pretty another major milestone
that happened in my journey that led me
to kind of the next phase of my life through my 40s,
my late 40s until I left full-time business
a couple of years ago.
I think something that I've noticed by having conversations
with so many different people is it,
there's so many different aspects and things
that you've talked about so far
that even just these small segments sound like a lifetime.
Yeah.
And you're like, this is just a piece of it.
This sector, this part, and like there's so much more to do
and so much more to live.
And I think that that's just something that I'm kind of
not noticing for the first time,
but it's almost like that it's adding like an extra
solidifier to where it's like, okay, now this thing
that I've noticed is more solid now.
Does that kind of make sense?
Yeah, I think that's really true.
I mean, I have listened to a few of your podcasts
and about your journey and the exploration
and understanding that you kind of came to
in those 180 days ish that you were walking
across the country having the time to reflect on yourself.
I mean, I think that leaves you profoundly changed, right?
And opens people's eyes to seeing things
in a new and different way.
I think the same thing is true in my life
and in the experience of, if I continue that journey
that I talked about before, when I relapsed
and I went back into the business world,
I was a very different person.
I was very much back out, as they might say in the program.
And I spent the next eight years really kind of living
almost a double life.
I found work that had me on the road.
So I was working as a consultant, as a trainer.
I was always gone.
I was always away.
I didn't have a good foundation behind me.
And ultimately I got to a place where I needed
to make a change in my life.
And honestly, Ranger, ultimately what happened to me
is that I got a DWI while I was working on the program.
I was working on a job.
And if I was crushed seven years earlier
when I had a relapse and had to make a change away
from something I'd been working on for so many years,
I was devastated when that happened.
It was really, it was a catalyst for major change.
Today I kind of see and understand that.
But back then, I mean, I was just devastated.
Now with reflection, I can see that a lot of those things
that happened that I thought were overwhelming
and devastating, particularly throughout my life,
it turns out that those were the best worst things
that ever happened because they led me
to this place of change and helped me learn and grow.
Now, when I was in the big hairy middle of it, no,
I didn't feel that way at all.
He was like, oh no, right.
But it led me to major, major changes.
So going to rehab was the best worst thing
that ever happened to me.
I couldn't believe I was in that place.
Having that major relapse was the best worst thing
that could happen to me.
I just could not, I could not comprehend
that that happened to me.
And I was so ashamed and so tied up in guilt.
The DWI was the same way.
It was like, oh my God, what have I done with my life?
And it led me, that was about,
so that was 20 years ago, it will be 20 years ago this year
that that happened.
And my life has just been totally transformed
by that experience.
Gotcha.
So to kind of pull it back to something we were talking
about near the beginning of the call,
I think that this kind of,
I think the theme of what I'm gonna ask
is gonna kind of care into the next part of our conversation.
But you said that you worked a lot with technology
and kind of training folks on how to use new systems.
You know, it sounds like going,
just advancing systems over time.
And you kind of mentioned
that you think an apprehension to change.
Or people were a little bit scared of it
or not sure about it.
It seems like a lot of people's first reaction to change
is no, or it's scary, or there's that apprehension.
Why do you think that is?
Well, it's pretty normal.
You know, I mean, we get comfortable
in the situation that we have.
We're working through it.
You know, I work now in kind of in my coaching practice,
I work with a lot of people who are in transition,
people who are kind of in their 50s,
maybe a little bit older than that,
that are really kind of in that place
where they're making those changes.
And there's really kind of three phases.
I'm gonna name them,
but they don't always fall in this order, right?
So the first thing that happens,
typically though this does fall first,
the first thing that happens
is there's some kind of dramatic ending, right?
There has to be a dramatic ending
in order for somebody to be comfortable enough
to start even considering making a change in their life.
Something happens.
And then you kind of move into a phase of the messy middle.
And that's where you're kind of sorting it all out.
You're trying to figure out what does this mean?
You know, what are my next steps?
What do I have to do?
It was so comfortable back here,
but at the same time, there were real challenges with this.
And I kind of want to move forward,
but I don't really know where to go.
It's like, and a lot of people use the example
of the chrysalis, right?
Of the caterpillar turning into the butterfly.
And if you open that chrysalis,
it's all gooey and kind of nasty in the middle.
But ultimately this butterfly comes out of it
and that's the new beginning.
So you go through those three phases.
They aren't necessarily kind of in any particular,
I guess they're actually in an order,
but there's not a structure to it as you go through.
Like you can like be in the messy middle
and then go, oh yeah,
I'm in the middle of this big giant change.
And then you realize that you have to let go
of something in the past, right?
So then you wind up having the ending,
even though you're kind of already sorting through
what you're doing.
Or you might be reaching forward towards something.
When people are changing careers, a lot of times,
it's like my first comment to them or question to them
is are you running away from something in your past job?
Are you running towards something in the future?
You know, and kind of understanding the difference.
So people get really caught up in that whole process
and it can just be really overwhelming.
There's some of the stuff that I've studied
and read most recently on change and transition
says it can take five years to get through
a major life change.
That's a long time to be working through it.
And guess what?
Life changes are happening faster and faster
because of technology.
So people might be experiencing a major life change
every 18 months and it takes five years to get through it.
So we're kind of in this constant state of change,
this constant state of turmoil.
Interesting, yeah.
And something that came up for me
as you were talking about those three phases
was kind of like the phases of grief, right?
That there's the five phases and
they're kind of talked about very linearly
but they happen kind of in tandem
or you kind of get to this phase
and then you go back air quotes around that
to another phase and then you jump ahead.
And it sounds like with,
and I think that's so interesting that major life change
because I was thinking of a job change,
moving, a death, a marriage, a kid being born.
And it sounds like your definition kind of goes,
this is a weird way to put it,
but it's like even less than that
can be a major change with technology.
And I hadn't really thought of that.
Like what would qualify then in,
I guess like the general terms as a major life change?
So there's a bunch of pieces to it.
Let me go back to what you just said about technology
and add another piece to the story, okay?
So the company that I worked for
was a company called Roam
and they ultimately were bought by IBM.
And so when I went to work for that company full time,
I was a software coder.
I had been a contractor for them as a trainer.
I was a software coder.
And the IBM plant here in Austin
was the very largest facility
that Roam had ever tried to change
from kind of a standard phone system
to being these new giant computerized phone systems.
So I was involved in the team.
I helped code things and blah, blah, blah.
Okay, so fast forward, rehab, graduate school,
came out of graduate school.
This is in the early 1990s.
And in the early 1990s, IBM had their first ever layoff.
So career center that was working with them,
I reached out to them and said,
hey, I just worked at IBM.
I've got my brand new shiny master's degree.
I can come in and work in the career center
and work with these guys
because I kind of know a lot of them.
And that was really amazing
because when we changed the phone system
over everybody's telephone number had to change.
And Ranger, people were frequent, right?
They'd been in that office for 20 years.
They had the same telephone number for 20 years.
And before we could even talk to them
about the technology and how to use the phones,
we had to deal with the change and the transition
of what was this like to experience this new,
this new fangled technology.
And these are smart people, technical people.
At this point, these people were building the PCs, right?
The first generation of the personal computers.
So it was really an amazing thing.
So then fast forward, after the layoff,
I go back to IBM and I'm there.
Now I'm working with the same people
who I was working with three years ago
helping them change their phone number.
Now they're sitting across from me in my counselor role
going, I sat down with this company 20 years ago
and they told me if I did a good job,
I had a good job for the rest of my life.
And now I'm 45 and I have to go out
and try to find something new.
So a career change and the technology change
and just the change of habits and process
can be really critical to helping people.
There's a book on transitions.
Bruce Feiler is the person that wrote it recently
and he talks about the deck of life transitions
and has 52 transitions broken up into five categories.
So that gives you a sense of all the different things.
It's not just the big five with death and divorce
and marriage and job changing kids.
There's a whole subset underneath that
that's a really important part of it.
And this latest phase of my life,
the part that's led me to deep exploration now
is a result, like you said, of grief.
I lost my parents last year in a very short period of time.
And that's really taken me on this journey of introspection
and also, like you just said, it's really helped me learn.
It's not this linear thing to go through grief.
I can be walking along in my neighborhood,
doing my walk in the morning or whatever
and all of a sudden a car from one of the local hospices
drives by because I'm at an intersection
and they're turning right and I see that.
And the next thing I know, I'm just
kind of a puddle on the side of the road.
So it just cycles that way.
And that's why I say, while there are phases,
it's not really linear.
You go back and forth continually
through that process of change.
Yeah, and I think it's so interesting the impact
that environmental triggers can have on us
to remember these things.
Like we smell something that smells like grandma's house,
like a random candle or a perfume,
or we see a hospice vehicle or even just a way a lawn is cut.
I'm just thinking such small things that we just
kind of notice and see in our world
and how drastic of an effect that has on us mentally,
emotionally, and can really just change.
That split second can change the rest of the day, week, month,
whatever.
And like you said, it triggers a memory.
Before my mother died, as her life was coming to a close,
she had Alzheimer's.
And that really drives home the point that you just made,
because by the end, she didn't know who I was.
I mean, she had no idea anymore.
And the Christmas before she passed away,
we went to a sing-a-long.
She had no idea where we were.
She had no idea who I was.
She knew every word to root off the red-nosed reindeer.
Yeah.
It's the depth of those grooves of those lessons.
Yeah.
And I don't know if you saw this,
but my grandfather passed of Alzheimer's in 2020.
So I heard very similar stories from my Nana, my Nana Rose,
that he wouldn't remember these things,
but very randomly things would just click.
And there's those brief moments of, wow, this is what it was.
However long ago.
Yeah.
So that's so interesting.
And thank you for sharing that portion as well.
So taking that idea of change, I know
you've mentioned a little bit about your own struggles
with perfectionism and your own.
You're able to award people that understanding or care
when you weren't able to offer that to yourself.
So when it comes to you making the decision to go to rehab,
could you talk a little bit about what that decision was
like for you as an individual?
Yeah.
So I have to go.
We're going in the way back machine, right?
I'm 64 now.
And I was 30 when I went to rehab.
I went a couple of times.
But I was 30 when I went.
And it was just, again, obvious that things
had to change in my life experience.
I had kind of gone.
I don't really even need to go through the whole story
because everybody kind of has a sense of what that looks like.
But the bottom line is that I wound up in a place
where I decided that I needed to make a change.
And Ranger, I felt really, really fortunate,
particularly after working in the field
and seeing how so many of the rehab centers worked
and so many of the things that I brought.
Because I went to a place that really focused on behavior.
There was less focus on, for me, alcohol at that point
was kind of the issue.
And there was less emphasis on that.
And there was so much more emphasis
on the behavior and the lessons and understanding
about perfectionism and understanding about isolation
and understanding about imposter syndrome
and how trying to escape those things is,
it was the coping skill that I had
learned to be able to do that.
When I was, I moved a whole bunch as a kid.
And I was always restarting.
And so about the time I was 15, I found alcohol.
And that helped me really reduce my anxiety as I went through.
So by the time I was 30, I went there.
But that was such an eye-opening experience for me
that that's when I said, listen, I
want to find a way to give back.
And that's why I went back to school
and went back to be a therapist.
It's interesting now, kind of going full circle to coaching
and how tight coaching.
They're very different.
Coaching and therapy are very different.
But at the same time, a lot of the skills are very common.
And it's interesting.
We both are working through our own process
with our coaching practices.
And one of the certificates that I have
is one that's specifically designed for people who
have a mental health background and have gone
through the coaching process.
So I find a way to integrate that into my practice.
And it kind of comes through.
But it's also, I mean, if you think
about this whole continuum of maybe therapy
is part of the continuum and coaching
is another part of the continuum and consulting is part
and mentoring all these different elements.
I mean, it's like this big, long sliding scale.
It's not black and white.
You're not a coach or a therapist, right?
You're not a consultant or a coach.
There is a process that runs all along in a common thread.
And the common thread is the kind of questions
that we ask, right?
High-gain questions to get information.
All those different roles have the same thing.
The part that changes and varies is kind of like,
who's in charge, right?
I mean, if you're a therapist, you're
an authority position and a coach,
we kind of come to it as peers, right?
Pretty much we're co-creating solutions with them.
And I think that one of the things I've really
had to learn was as a coach is that it involves
making this major transition from being a problem solver
to being a supporting resource.
As a consultant in the kind of the business phase of my life,
I was a problem solver.
And now as a coach, you're kind of more
of a supporting resource.
I feel like I'm going all over the place.
I hope we're even.
No, no, no.
I feel like that's another interesting thing.
And again, it's like these things
are becoming more solidified.
It sounds like a really big thing is when you're in the weeds,
that's all you can see.
You just see this mess and tangle and this confusion.
And it isn't until you're on the other side of it
that you can kind of look back and realize
that all of those weeds, that thistle, the things that,
when you were kind of stuck in the thick of it,
that that makes up this whole beautiful landscape
that you're able to then take and use to help others
or get through the rest of your own journey
to the point that you're not really in that, oh, gosh,
what did you say, the chrysalis of that situation.
You're out of that messy middle part.
You're kind of next to the peak or whatever
you want to call it, that final part
of that piece of the puzzle.
Yeah, or even just starting again.
I mean, you're just kind of starting again.
That's the thing.
You're getting through the phase.
And again, the reality, looking back,
the reality is that I didn't,
a lot of times I didn't even realize
that I was learning stuff until I had time
to go back and look at it.
I mentioned my mother before.
That's been the real catalyst.
I lost, so my parents divorced when I was very young
and they both remarried.
So I lost my mother, my stepmother,
and my father in a 100-day window.
That was devastating.
But it took me, it's the best worst thing
that ever happened.
It took me into this great journey of exploration
that I've been in in the last 15 months
where I can go back and I can look
and I can see all these threads.
I can see the threads that tie all the different elements
of my life together.
And I can see the consistent part that ran through.
I can see how the benefits of going to 10 schools
before the 10th grade resulted in what I did
in my business life and what made me effective.
I can see that there were things that I learned as a,
there were things that I learned as a trainer
and in my kind of first sales role
that made me more effective as a therapist, as a counselor,
made me more effective working at the jail.
Working with businesses made me more effective
at working at the jail.
And coming out of working at the jail
made me more effective in my next phase.
In fact, when I left the jail
and was looking for like a real job,
I was gonna go work for a training company.
And this was back in the day
when there were one ads in the newspaper.
And I went, you know, I responded to this one ads
and a guy, my resume, I responded, I came in
and the first thing he did was sit down and say,
you know, what the heck is the fact
that you've been working at the jail
for the last three years gonna do for me and my customers?
And I told him, you know,
I explained to him exactly what I had learned
and exactly how I was gonna be able to benefit,
you know, benefit his customers moving forward.
And he said, you know,
I'm an organizational psychologist
and that's exactly the right answer.
You know, and then I went on
and worked with them for a few years
and learned even more there.
And then the lessons that I took in that job
where I went all over the country, you know,
wound up helping me when I worked
and moved into the next phase of my career.
Yeah, I think that's such an interesting like reminder
that yeah, everything that we do is another resource
for us to use in the future.
Like nothing is wasted as long as you're willing
to use those tools and make that conscious decision
and effort to create something out of it.
Right.
And you have to squeeze the juice out of it.
You squeeze the juice,
you squeeze the juice out of walking across the country.
Yeah.
And squeezing that as much as I can.
And you're gonna know more in 10 years
about the impact that it had on your life than you do today.
I guarantee you that, I promise you that.
Exactly.
And I'm hoping that I learned the impact
that it had on others as well
or how that kind of influence
or changed like the overall living and situation
that myself or those around me are also.
And I think that you're in such a unique point
that you kind of have that,
like I feel like I'm very much in that like planning
seeds phase, that planning seeds phase.
And it sounds like you're kind of able to see
how that harvest affected three harvests ago, you know?
Yeah.
But it takes work, right?
I mean, it takes work.
If you look, one of the greatest things I've learned
in the last year is going with all the stuff that happened,
moving away from a life of sobriety basically,
and all the things I've gone through.
I've come full circle back to understand
and to really integrate at a deep level
what those lessons, those lessons of recovery,
those lessons, if you wanna talk about 12 steps or whatever,
but those lessons, they resonate in a very different way
in my life now.
And when I was going through them
and I was talking to people about the fact that,
you know what, you get back up and you move again,
you make the mistake and you move again.
Well, what really was going on was,
but I'm better than that, right?
You, but I'm better than that.
And it was really because I wasn't,
it was really because I was scared to death.
As I go back and I kind of do daily readings now,
and Arringer, I've gotta tell you, in the last year,
I spend more time with recovery literature
than I ever did, right?
And I was like the guy,
I don't know if you've ever been in a 12 step meeting or not,
but there's a lot of times,
there's a book in the 12 step meetings
and there can be somebody who can say,
okay, this is what they meant.
This is what they meant when they said Keystone
and this is what they meant when they said Cornerstone.
And I was that guy, I was like the expert,
but I was also the guy that couldn't stay sober, right?
And now what I'm really understanding is
what that whole thing is about
is you do the best you can today
and then you do the best you can tomorrow.
And if you screw up, you screw up.
You do the best you can and you get on with your life.
And you just, it's all about today.
It's all about living today and not about,
the challenge I had was that I was surrounded by people
that had been sober for 20 years and 30 years, right?
And they often wore that as a badge, right?
And so it affected me and how I dealt with my own situation.
And now I understand, it's like, you know what?
Today, I'm probably not gonna have a drink, right?
Tomorrow I make a new decision and that's okay.
And the field of mental health has progressed
in that way too.
The field of mental health is acknowledging the fact that
total abstinence, about 10% people are successful
in maintaining total abstinence
for an extended period of time.
And they consider that to be a good thing
and they consider an extended period of time
to be a year, 18 months, right?
And what they're learning about is the value
of harm reduction.
And harm reduction is about learning
that things aren't black and white,
learning that there's a shade of gray, right?
Learning that there are different levels all along the way.
So that's true kind of, that's kind of true consistently
throughout life, right?
Is learning, that's freedom from perfectionism.
That's freedom from imposter syndrome.
That's all learning that it's not, I'm good and I'm bad,
you know, or I'm full of shame or I can never give up
or I can never get where I wanna go or I'm frustrated.
That's all black and white.
And freedom from perfectionism is like,
I'm doing the best I can today.
Tomorrow, hopefully I'll do better.
Maybe I won't, you know, maybe I'll have to step back
and take a breath, you know?
So again, I feel like I'm rambling, sorry.
No, no, no, no, I feel like that is such a beautiful way
to kind of like sum that up is that it's,
it really sounds like what you were saying last
is that it's not like the walk across the country,
that it's this huge lofty goal
where there's a lot of moving pieces
and it's very easy to get bogged down in all the details
to the point that you're kind of paralyzed
to even wanna start, which sounds like that would be
a good parallel for a sobriety journey
or just making that decision go to rehab or changing jobs.
Like you're, all these different big life changes
kind of, I don't know, it's very parallel
to that six month journey that I had.
But it sounds like what you're really saying is that,
and I'm curious your take on this,
it's great to have that overall huge, great, beautiful goal,
that West Coast that you wanna get to,
but it's really about every day making the decision
to take a step towards that destination.
And sometimes taking a step forward
might be staying where you are
or having to take a few steps backwards for rest
or for these different,
these pieces that may not feel like progress in the moment,
but when you step back at it when you're at the end,
that was exactly what you needed in order to move forward.
Yeah, so it's all about acceptance, right?
So continuing to kind of move forward in my journey
and managing the same part of the story,
just before I was,
so I spent like eight years working on the road, right?
And not living a healthy lifestyle.
And I kind of got to the point where I was looking
at trying to change my life.
And my kind of throwaway comment is that
there are two kinds of people that are in hotels long-term.
One hangs out in the hotel bar
and the other hangs out at the hotel gym, right?
And I lived in one long enough
that it was time for me to try to move into the other one.
And I discovered first walking and kind of taking care of myself
and then I discovered running.
And then after I had my DWI that was so changing for me,
I really tried to change my life.
And one of the ways that I did that was through running.
And so now I'm kind of in my mid-40s
and I'm starting this journey of learning to run half marathons
and ultimately run marathons.
And I did triathlons and I've done a couple of hundred events
and blah, blah, blah, okay, we can talk about all that.
But what I've learned over time as I've gone through
is that I have to accept the reality of today, right?
I can't look back at even 45-year-old Mark
who starts late, right?
And was never an athlete and never anything like that.
And when I started the journey,
I was like 40 pounds heavier than I am now.
And all that.
But I can't go back and say, gosh,
I could still be faster then, right?
The whole thing is, it's like I call it the ABCs of moving forward, right?
So you have to be able to accept the current reality.
You can't go back and say, gosh, I wish it was different
or I wish it would be different moving forward.
You have to accept the reality of where you are today.
And then you have to build a foundation,
the B is build a foundation based on basic practices.
So if you're a senior athlete,
that means you've got to take time to do stuff like resting
and recovering and stretching and mobility and strength training
and all this stuff that earlier in your life,
you go, yeah, yeah, that's fine.
And it takes away from the time I have on the road.
And then the third part, the C is about consistency.
So consistency, getting out there, doing it every day
or consistently in whatever that means for your new training plan
beats volume, it beats just trying to do a whole bunch of stuff
and it beats intensity, trying to do it super fast.
It beats it every time.
And so, when we broke, you were talking about your goal
of trying to run an X number of miles this year
and saying how it could be overwhelming.
Well, it's overwhelming if you look at all of it.
But if you look at accept where you are today,
if you focus on the basic practices
that you need to go from point A to point B
and you deliver, just do it consistently.
You don't try to do it in big, giant gulps.
You try to do it consistently.
You're going to get where you are.
And I'm sure the same thing happened on your walk.
I mean, you had to be able to stay
focused on the most important things.
It's not like you could go do 100 miles today.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, definitely not.
To make up for the, you know, yesterday I only walked 17.
So today I have to walk 60.
You can't work that way.
You've got to be consistent.
Yeah.
And I think that's a really important piece
that I've seen a lot of others kind of bring up,
kind of comparing themselves to me and the walk.
Something I heard pretty consistently during that journey
was I wish I could do something like that,
but insert all the different reasons.
Right, and a lot of them were around race or gender,
socioeconomic status, and all these different things.
And it's interesting because I had all those same thoughts
when I saw that Mike Posner had walked,
that I compared myself to him and the different tools
that he had that made him different from me
to be able to do it.
And I think that's always such an interesting thing
in that it's, and it's what you brought up too
with senior athletes, that there's just different
considerations that you need to be wary of
because it's your journey.
Right.
Right, like this is what you need.
Like for running and for the walk, in my opinion,
the most important thing is your body, your feet,
your legs, how you are feeling.
If you're pushing yourself and you're forcing yourself
to walk 30 miles on a sore leg or an injured foot
or blisters or all these different things,
it's not gonna go well.
Just like if you twist your ankle on Monday,
maybe it's not a best idea to run Tuesday
or Wednesday or Thursday because you're just going
to exacerbate and make that injury worse.
And then you just really-
You are absolutely right.
What is it, you're cutting yourself off at your feet,
like almost literally,
because you're doing the most important thing.
Whereas if you forget your water bottle or your phone
or an earbud dies, like that's not as important
as the most important thing, which is you and your body.
Taking care of you and learning that.
I mean, learning how to take,
that's probably the biggest lesson out of my athletic
journey was learning how to be present.
Ranger, it's so funny because like,
I've talked about this a bunch of times that,
you know, with other people and it's like this really
weird paradox that, you know, like I said before,
I moved a whole bunch.
As I go back and look retrospectively in the period
from like 1992 to, or the 15 year period ending in 2007,
so back it up to, yeah, to 1992,
I had 20 different jobs.
Wow.
Like I had 20 different jobs, okay.
And part of that was I went through the career change.
Part of that is, you know, from mental health back to business.
Part of that is that when I worked in mental health,
I worked at five different places at the same time.
And, you know, there was a lot of that kind of stuff
that's built into that number.
But the reality is I was constantly moving.
I was constantly frustrated.
I was changing.
Something would happen that I didn't like and I'd say,
screw you, I'm gone, you know,
and all that kind of stuff happened.
And then as I evolved, as I kind of went through,
you know, the challenges of 2005,
I began to discover running, I began to move forward.
The last 15 years of my career,
so from 2007 to 2022, I was at one job.
Oh, wow.
So that's such a major difference.
And the difference is about tuning into who I was.
Movement, right?
When I was scattered, my movement was different, right?
When I was scattered, my movement was all about
going from here to there to there
and never really having any stability.
When I found endurance training,
then movement became purposeful.
And when movement became purposeful,
it allowed me to stabilize my life.
So, you know, I grew and then I saw the changes
that happened in my work performance,
you know, as I got more deeper involved
in endurance training.
The year that I did an Ironman Triathlon,
I was in, that 2007 to 22,
I was in the sales role that whole time.
And the year that I did the triathlon
until the very last year of my career
was the high point of my sales.
So I'm training full time for an Ironman Triathlon
on the road.
And it was also the peak year of selling.
And it's because I was learning how to package my life
in a really different way.
Have you ever heard of 75 Hard,
the program by Andy Frisella at First Form?
I don't know it.
I've heard of it, but I don't know it.
I, the big thing with that is that, you know,
you have to work out twice a day
and drink a certain amount of water and no alcohol.
And like, it's like a very, it adds a lot to your day.
But I've noticed when I am on program
and I have that structure, I get so much more done.
And I think that that really, what you're saying,
it like, it helps you package your day, your time
and really makes you focus on what is the like highest
leverage, most important thing to do that day.
Like you're not really, you don't have time to screw around
because you have to focus on what is most important.
What I found interesting about what you're saying
is that by having movement in your life,
by training, by running, being able to move around
is what helps you feel grounded in who you are
and your own personal identity.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, that's very true.
That's very true.
You know, the other part, like when I moved,
I moved forward, you know, from just running marathons
to kind of moving into triathlon,
into long distance triathlon.
And there you really have to learn how to,
you really have to learn how to understand big picture
and be 100% focused on where you are, right?
So, you know, if you're swimming, if you're an old coot
and you're swimming with all the other old coots
in the back of the pack and it's a giant washing machine
and you're in a lake, there's no slides, you know,
you have to be 100% focused on the next stroke
and the next guy and the next piece.
You know, we have to be 100% present there.
When you get out and then you jump on a bike
and now you're gonna go ride 112 miles on your bike,
you have to be 100% focused on every stroke,
you know, every pedal stroke as you go through.
At the same time, you have to be planning ahead, right?
You have to be feeding yourself during the ride
so you have energy,
because now you're gonna go run a marathon, right?
And so, and then you get on, you run your marathon
and you have to let go of everything that you've done
in that day and be 100% focused and present.
And I mean, I think that translated directly into work
because it was the same thing.
You've gotta let go, like as a sales guy,
you've gotta let go of the no, right?
You can't be stuck on the no.
You've gotta be focused on, you know, right now,
what can I do today to move me forward, right?
And that even comes back to the ABCs, right?
It comes back to you accept the reality,
stuff changed after COVID.
You have to accept the reality that the sales world changed
after COVID, people didn't travel anymore, right?
You have to go back to the basic practices
and be focused on how you, you know,
making phone calls and connecting in a new way
and making sure you reach out to people
and just stay present with people
and you have to be consistent, right?
You have to do whatever your goals are
and whatever your milestones are consistently
as you go on through the process.
So it all ties together.
And I think that's why, you know, that's why my life
and I hear you say your life changed based on doing these,
you know, kind of crazy endurance events.
I like how you say it and it's actually kind of one
of my first taglines was ordinary people
doing extraordinary results, right?
Achieving extraordinary results.
I mean, that's something that I believe in
because I'm a normal guy.
I mean, and I've done some kind of amazing things
in my world as you have.
Yeah, yeah, and I think that that's something that I,
a message that I really want to kind of push or promote
and just kind of make people realize is that a big thing
that I talk about with my walk and how I got the idea
for it was I saw, I saw that Mike Posner did it
and I kind of put him on this pedestal.
I was like, man, that's an extraordinary guy.
Like he was able to do all these amazing things
with his music and career.
And now he's walking across the country,
but I'm just a normal guy from California.
And then I saw that Andrew Kivett did it.
And I'm like, he kind of just looks like a normal dude
from Kansas.
And then Mark Dudek, like that's just a normal guy
from Ohio.
And then going back to Posner being like,
he's just a normal guy from Michigan.
I'm just a normal guy from California.
Like there's a trend here that they just made the decision
to take that next step.
And I think that that's something that I saw
across the country in all the other interviews that I did.
Even now, just talking to people on the Never Peak projects
is that there's so many normal people out there.
And I wish that people realized that they have everything
they need in order to create those extraordinary results
for themselves or those around them.
And it sounds like that's what you are doing every day
in your life, that it's not just,
and I guess to connect what you're doing
to the overall purpose of the Never Peak project,
which is to promote the idea that the best is yet to come.
What is it, and this is a question I got from my newsletter
and on social media for you,
and from a few different people,
I'm kind of packaging it up altogether,
is what is driving you to do more?
Why not just do the regular, oh, you know,
I'm doing X, Y, and Z, 5Ks or 10Ks.
Like, why are you doing these crazy Ironmans and triathlons
and all these crazy things?
Like, what is it that's pushing you to continue to improve
and look for the next big thing?
Yeah, that's such a really good question.
And I don't know if I have a really good answer for it.
I was in this constant state of growth, right?
I was renewed.
And I found, I spent a lot of time quitting.
I spent a lot of time in my life quitting, right?
And, you know, I...
So like, when I was, like, I'll go back and like,
when I was 14, you know, I went to military school
when I was 14 and everybody had to do athletic stuff, right?
And I was, tried swimming and I swam like two laps
and my heart rate spiked and I threw up.
And I'm not gonna do that.
And I tried to run cross country and I went out too fast
and my heart rate went up and I had an asthma attack
and I threw up.
And that's not for me.
I was the manager of the basketball team, right?
I was the scorekeeper and the manager of the basketball.
That was what they gave me to be athletic, right?
And then, you know, like I was always moving.
I was kind of stable in high school.
I had different things that were going on,
but I never really had an academic,
I never really had an athletic background.
So, you know, I had a cousin that ran this 12K race, right?
Which is a real odd race, but I ran a 12K race.
And I was there when she finished and I said,
next year I'm gonna do it with you.
And I was still on the road and I was really heavy
and I was still kind of dealing with all of my stuff.
And we did that.
And then we sat down at the end of it
and we looked at each other and went, you know,
it's like another 5K, a little more, 6K, whatever, eight,
to be able to run a half marathon.
And so we went out and we ran a half marathon together
and we did a couple of those.
And then I just, I got to this place where I said,
I think I can do this.
And I tried it, you know, and I tried it
and I wasn't happy with my results.
So I tried it again and I tried it again.
And before you knew it, I was there.
And then I got to a place where I said, you know what?
Now I'm 49, right?
And I don't know how to swim.
Cause when I was 14, I gave up.
I don't know how to swim.
So I'm gonna learn how to swim before I'm 50.
And I went in there and I started swimming
and I started breathing and learning how to get through it.
And the first time I jumped in the pool,
I did two lengths of the pool, you know,
and was hanging out on the side.
And by the end of that year,
I swam 1.2 miles in open water.
I did my first half Ironman.
So I just found this new drive
that I had never, never found before.
And it expanded my confidence in myself,
my belief in myself, like you just talked about.
You're an ordinary guy.
You went out and did this extraordinary thing.
And it's the same, it's exactly the same thing.
And so then it became such an integrated part of who I,
it became an integrated part of who I was.
I mean, I wasn't the party guy anymore.
I was the guy that was running.
I'd go to a customer's office
and the first question they would ask me would be,
so what's your latest run?
You know, two years later,
if I get calls from my former customers,
the first question is still running?
Because it became part of who I was
and I learned how to integrate it, right?
So I learned how, if I was gonna do a presentation
on business development,
I would use my training plan for the Boston Marathon
as an example of how I was gonna do it.
So, you know, it was, it's just this drive
to continue to get stronger and stronger,
to stretch my limits to a new way.
And then, you know, honestly,
what's the far end of that story?
I haven't done, I've done,
did like two short triathlons after,
I completed the Ironman.
I did it, the first time I tried
to complete an Ironman, I failed.
And, you know, I gave up in the run.
I had problems with my system.
I sat at the airport with my wife.
She looked at me and said,
you're doing this again, aren't you?
And I'm like, yeah, because I didn't finish this.
And two years, it took me two years
of really focused training and prep.
I went out, I accomplished it.
And then that part of my life, for now,
at least that part of my life has been over
for, you know, a few years.
But I'm still running, I'm still doing, you know,
in the last, you know, I did a marathon last year.
I did six halves in like 16 months.
And it just, it brings me alive and brings me joy
and helps me stay present and grounded.
That's a long-winded answer, sorry.
No, I think that's a really great way to put it.
It's that it's, there's always something to strive for,
but it's always more so about that.
It's not just that external thing.
It's about what you're creating for yourself on the inside
and what you're creating for yourself
in order to use to create more for yourself.
100%.
I couldn't do an Ironman for anybody else.
You couldn't walk across the country for anybody else.
You had to be internally focused.
I had to be internally focused.
I had to find my own reward for it.
I had to be validated by myself and not by the outside world.
That kind of work and consistency and commitment it takes
to do what you did, you can't do it for other people.
You can only do it for yourself.
There's not an extrinsic reward, an outside reward,
only an intrinsic reward that can make it work.
That's my belief.
I think that's a fantastic way
to kind of wrap up the conversation, honestly.
That's a sound bite if I ever heard one.
But Mark, thank you.
And for this conversation, a lot of the questions
and the way that I was kind of trying to structure
the conversation came from questions I received
from my newsletter, The Peak.
If anybody's interested in joining the newsletter
and would like to find ways to get more involved,
go and hit the link in the description
to sign up for the newsletter.
That is gonna be the best way to find out
about when our next podcast presenters are,
upcoming events and everything else,
walk and coaching related.
But Mark, is there anything that you want to
let our listeners know about best way to follow you
or anything that you have coming up?
Sure, the best way to connect to me is through LinkedIn.
And you can reach out through Mark Wiginton.
And will that be in the notes, the show notes as well?
All of Mark's contact information,
everything about him will be in the show notes,
website, LinkedIn, everything.
Yeah, focusing on, my website is focusing on results.
And as you heard in the conversation,
that's what we kind of do is focus on
where we're trying to go, what we're looking for.
I've really enjoyed my time with you today, Ranger.
Thank you so much for inviting me onto the call.
Of course, I thank you.
I'm glad that my call for guests on LinkedIn
provided you so quickly.
I was worried that I'd get like a lot of like
random bot accounts or anything,
but the first person was you and it was very quality.
So thank you so much for your time
and for sharing a little bit of your magic
with our listeners.
Awesome, thanks.
Of course, and to everybody listening today,
thank you so much for your time and attention
and for really taking the time out of your day
to get a little bit better yourself.
The biggest message here at the NeverPeak project
is that the best is yet to come.
So thank you for investing a little bit of time
into yourself to create another peak in your life.
If you'd like to stay updated on all things
within range coaching and the NeverPeak project,
again, our newsletter link is in the show notes.
And as always, remember that the best is yet to come
as long as you are willing to make the decision
to never settle, never quit, and never peak.
Thank you guys.
I'll see you all next week.