Either you die and you are reborn again new. Or you suffer the slow grind of forever living a life you don't want to be living.
When you realize you're running a race you don't want to be in, you have to make the choice.
Chris Forrest made that choice.
I want to share some of his story with you today.
If you find yourself in a similar position, you can know there is a way through. You can know that, the path you may end up taking is probably very different than you realize. And you can know that, when you take steps into uncertainty, and you have that fear and feeling of wondering how the hell it's going to all work out ...
That you are ok.
It's supposed to be this way.
And when you slow down to acknowledge that, you may just realize, you're no longer running a race you don't want to be in.
Chris's story starts off like so many.
He went hard and fast, he worked his ass off, he pushed, he applied force at every turn, he ground ground ground.
Sure he had a little burnout here, and a little fearful struggle there - but he was in it.
And then Covid hit.
"I had a gym. It got really really big, really really quick."
Because of local laws surrounding the Pandemic, Chris's situation was exacerbated greatly.
"I was gone, 16-18 hours a day, just to try to keep the gym open, for like 2 years."
Eventually the dynamic became too challenging for their customers, and over time their customer base dwindled to the point where the gym had to be closed.
Necessity then drove him online.
The dynamic now was one of speed. One of great fast short term need.
"I knew I had to get money really quickly. One to pay out the debts for the gym and two, to support the family. It was like October 2021 and I had to get money for Christmas. So I went into the online world and online coaching and health and fitness very quickly and very fast."
I would wager that every Entrepreneur reading this has been in that space, in one way or another. Where you have a driving need, and you feel like with vision and application of force and speed you can achieve what it is that you need and want.
But the harder you grasp, the more things slip from your fingers.
The beginning of Chris's online coaching experience would look like a great success to many people.
"I went into the online world and online coaching and health and fitness very quickly and very fast. I found a mentor. And it was higher ticket coaching and I put the word out that I was doing it. I signed 30 people in four days.
It was really cool, Yeah. I get to support the family and everything, but I would never do that again. It was just so hard. What happened was that speed become like that dopamine hit. And I kept chasing it."
This is the flaw inherent in comparing your journey to others. You don't see what is happening behind the scenes. You don't see how the outward result doesn't necessarily serve what it is the "successful" person needs or even wants in life.
In addition to the coaching, Chris had also taken on a part time sales job in order to maintain the level of consistency his family needed from him.
"I kept chasing these massive highs, like big sales and all that kind of stuff. And then also it took a sales job just to support both needs. And that was 14 calls a day. It was the same sort of thing. It was very pushy, very hard. I think I only lasted 12 weeks before I burnt out on it."
Burnout is the story.
Driving hard fast and with force lead Chris to burn out.
"It was still just like that whole thing, force. I was just forcing it, trying to push it really, really hard. I started just not enjoying the coaching anymore. So I started taking calls away, started taking things away."
And it was by perhaps sheer fortune that, in a state of burnout, knowing - with the clarity from his Wife - that he was pushing himself beyond any reasonable measure and that what he was doing was not sustainable ...
Chris discovered Bumpers.
"My wife actually kind of called me out. She goes, you can't keep going like this huge push and this massive collapse.
It was the Bumpers book. And then raising the floor. It was like something clicked. Like it's sort of the stuff you kind of know it. But the way he said it, I was like, that makes so much more sense. And it feels way more enjoyable."
This was the inflection point.
The point where Chris realized he was running a race he didn't want to be in. That he hated what he had built. That he had to make different choices if he wanted to not just be happy and support his family sustainably, but also to hopefully live a life of purpose and fulfillment while doing so.
He dug into Bumpers and followed lessons from there. Going through the fundamentals we teach in TGA - slowing down and shifting to raise the floor instead of constantly chasing higher highs.
And within this he found himself wondering ...
What would this all look like, if it was fun?
And that's when The Arena1 showed up.
As Chris put it,
The Arena ended up being just the obvious next step for him at the time. He had burnt out many times, he had hit a wall, he had discovered new understanding and a possibility of a new way of doing things ...
All that left him was the doing. Taking the next step by Engaging the Field2 with this new understanding and these new questions.
"I think I wanted to be in a community doing this philosophy pretty much. So being part of that world... The Arena was just like the next logical step where I could have a place and accountability to come in and practice to unlock the next steps.
The idea of just playing in The Arena ... I was like, it's just such a cool concept in the way it works ... The Arena is where if I come in and share, I don't know what the next step is, this is probably going to tell me, this is probably what you need to do."
One of the notable aspects of Chris's experience with The Arena,
Is that he has yet to stand up live and be one of the people sharing actively. Contributing to this challenge is that he lives on the opposite side of the world.
However, Chris has found just being in The Arena to be immensely valuable, and he has taken the initiative with himself (as we all must do anyway), to apply lessons unlocked and learned on the live calls with others.
Shortly after the first Arena call, Chris went through our Recapture & Reallocate3 exercise.
"The recapture and reallocate tools for us first and figured out... She does really well with her job... So the recapture and reallocate was for time and money at that time. And it turned out like, if we had to, like the bare bones, we could make it through. It was only $200 a week, which is bizarre. When we looked, we didn't see it. And we looked at it and it was like, there's this stuff we're just spending, which is stupid. So recapture and reallocate was amazing just for the family side of things."
As Chris explained it, when he stopped doing the sales calls and the coaching, they were worried about making enough money to survive. The recapture & reallocate exercise actually showed them that the gap between where they were and where they needed to be was not only a lot smaller than they thought, but it was achievable by dropping expenses they didn't need to have.
And then he did for his business.
"Then I did it for my online business stuff. And I found like 10 grand on software that I had in case I would use it. And I hadn't used it for ages, like the whole thing. So I said to Kat and I'm like, ah, I just found 10 grand annually in my business. She just sort of tilted her head and looked at me. So [that was] another $800 a month."
Prior to this exercise, they thought they were going to have to do something significant in order to make ends meet. But not only did they figure out they needed a lot less than they thought, they also had all the money they needed sitting right in front of them already.
This is why Engaging YOUR Field is so important.
Chris's engagement with the Recapture & Reallocate process is such a great example, because it wasn't just money he got out of it.
Yes he recaptured $10k annually for his business, and the figured out how to make their short term finances work *without* having to push and burn out again.
But more importantly,
This exercise helped Chris find the clarity and space necessary to finally hear himself and what matters most to him.
"Recapture and allocate time, like how much time do I want to spend and putting those bumpers in place? And what it's going to look like. So I can support Theo, my son through his, to make it better, his autism or autistic journey, like the stuff he's got to learn and creating space for it.
All that come about where it's led me to what I want to do. And it's like literally helping parents creating that space, becoming space builders with a financial space, recapture and allocate tools, and then side hustles to get more income if they need it."
This is why we need to slow down. To step into our own Arena.
Because it's that presence with ourselves in our personal Arena which shows us what is most important.
"The idea that Arena playbook of where you come in, share what you did, what are you working on? And this can unlock the next tool that in itself is amazing. If you've got a big group of people, it makes it individual, which is really hard to do and make people feel like their path is unique to their own, which it should be."
Each of our paths is unique. The Arena, for Chris, has provided the ability for him to discover his own unique path in life.
As we were talking about unique paths and how Chris has found himself doing something now completely different than he has done before, he recounted a line someone had told him in the past and the new meaning that has taken on.
"Someone was saying to me, this is my thing. I tended to just wanted to go on tours all the time. I wanted to follow everyone else's path because it worked for them. And like, the analogy I got told to myself, this guy told me, so you go on these tours, and you come home and you forget it, like you don't get anything out of it.
And what you really want is an adventure. You want the next thing to knock over the next obstacle, the next tree that's in your way, the machete to knock it through. That's what you want."
We trick ourselves into thinking that success and getting what we want in life is by following the paths which have been laid by other people who show that "success" we think we want.
But the truth is, life IS the obstacles.
Life IS walking your own path, whatever it may be.
The happiness and success we can find in ourselves is going on that adventure. It's loving the process of discovery rather than the end result that we have in the past chased.
And often that presents itself as watching other people, and then thinking that we're now finally going to be doing the right thing if we just follow their path.
More than anything for Chris, the driver into The Arena has been a shift 'from thinking to becoming' - to embrace the uncomfortable uncertainty to reveal what is necessary to keep going and living the life he really wants to be living.
"I love learning, but I wasn't taking action... getting in The Arena, literally, and doing the actual work instead of just absorbing the info was a big driver for wanting to join.
I just want to put myself in areas where other people are doing really awesome things... but also just put myself into uncomfortable situations, which are meant to be that way, where I've got to do the work. I've got to come share what I did so I can get next steps."
Now?
Chris's experience with life and work is completely different. Where he used to push and force and drive and chase dopamine and ride highs and burn out and really hate the things he was building,
He has found calmness, and clarity. He has found joy again in what he is doing. He has found a way he can live with purpose and intent in his life.
"There is uncertainty in the product I want to build, but I know what I want it to look like. It just came to me yesterday, which is creating space for parents whether that's health, wealth, that kind of stuff. I had a really hard time of like, how am I going to market that? But, Recapture & Reallocate lead into R3, which has lead me into Stealth Influence.
So, you go play in The Arena. Get proof of whatever it is. I'd had this idea [for a long time] of a podcast ... I just wanted to have conversations, I didn't give too hoots what it was about. I just wanted to talk to people because that's what I like.
To have interesting conversations and see where it leads. But I sat on that idea for a long time. I got this idea from my son - every dinner time without fail, 'mum, dad, I'd like to have a conversation.' And we'd go off on the weirdest tangents you can think of.
Now ... I don't know what I want to coach people on ... but I love holding space for people and letting them work through and solve their problems and the topics are always varied. That's really hard to market."
Like many of us, Chris had an idea that he wanted to do for a long time, but couldn't figure out how to make it happen. How could it be a business if he couldn't figure out how to grow and market it like a business?
The Arena provided an answer.
"Kind of using Stealth Influence ... I asked myself how can I ... stealthily ... get into people's worlds and they can feel the tone and the presence of what holding space with me would feel like?
So I had to get proof. If I hold space for other people in conversations, will people start coming to me because I'm doing it anyway?
Something I wasn't doing before - if I didn't get a sales call (if a scheduled call didn't show up), I'd be like 'oh well' and go watch tv. Just the wrong energy.
So this year it's been about, what are the times I want to do this and hold space? And then just show up and hold space, even if someone is there or not."
That's the whole point of The Arena, of Engaging the Field. It's about embracing the process of discovery in things which can only be discovered by putting them into action.
We often either forget that, or don't ever realize that we can't just mimic someone else and hope we discover the happiness we desire.
We've got to slow down and discover it within ourselves.
Would Chris have ever found this gift and interest and skill of holding space for people if he didn't slow down, listen to himself, and then try it out?
"With the podcast I launched ... I'm going on 4 weeks now so it's only new. The conversations have been super varied - parenting, autism, the depression and alcoholism I went through, that kind of stuff, other people coming on for interviews.
Already people are coming to me to ask questions, asking to come on the podcast and share and hold space with me, and share their stories and their struggles and what they are working on, and I haven't even done the next step (which is marketing/advertising).
This is FUN, I'm really enjoying it. I play over 35 soccer, and these are all Aussie, stoic, beer drinking dudes. They don't have that emotional conversation, we never do. I come in on the weekend before a game and they are all like 'we just listened to your last 3 episodes and they are awesome. It's stuff that no one talks about.'"
Now Chris is slowly, step by step, publishing this podcast and holding space for men who have otherwise not had the space to have this kinds of conversations.
What will that lead to?
But more to the point ...
Could he possibly have pre-engineered this outcome? Because when we look at other people who've had successful podcasts and businesses built around them, it's easy to look backward and think "oh that's how you build a business with a podcast step by step."
But the truth is, all of that for Chris is only possible if he takes each step at a time, tries out each idea in HIS Arena.
No more force.
No more burnout.
He nurtures the process of growing himself and literally making space for the things which matter most to him and his life,
And what he needs and wants is slowly naturally coming to him from that very process.
Is this how YOUR journey in The Arena will look?
Certainly not exactly. Each of our adventures is unique. Each of our paths is unique and can only be uncovered by our own footsteps through it.
But if you do slow down, and step into The Arena, you will find a joy in embracing that uncertainty, because on the other side of that uncertainty is a discovery within yourself and your life which could only be possible by taking that action.
Thats The Man in The Arena - the one who realizes what matters is his path and his steps. Not what others will tell him he can/should/might be. Not how others may paint a picture of success or failure. Only his Arena. Only his path.
If you're ready to walk your own path in The Arena,
First, join the waitlist here: https://guardianacademy.io/arena
The next live Arena is May 30th. We will open the doors to join - for those on the waitlist - for 24 hours only a few days before the call.
And then, if you'd like to check out Chris Forrest's new podcast and the work he is evolving from Engaging the Field in his Arena, follow Chris over here on Substack.4
Wow.
Thanks so much for the incredible write up and the space to have the conversation team.
Just reading it brought me back to the call with Jospeh and I'm all fired up.
Got to go use that energy no in arena - in building a playground for parents to become space builders
Thanks again for interview, the write up, the arena and the tools.