Episode 07: The Ordeal (death to birth)
We stand at the precipice of a life or death crisis, with Graphic Designer Troy Coleman as he faces his greatest fears. and succumbs to the experience of death.
Only though this unraveling can the hero be reborn into his future self. A new state of consciousness is needed to give him the power and insight to see his journey all the way through to the very end.
Transcript:
Heather: (00:12)
The ordeal.
Oblivious of the adventures to come in a safe place. The hero begins their journey. Everyday life calls the hero to action. In this episode, we dive into the ordeal or the next 12 months that will follow the hero's journey inspired by Joseph Campbell, through the experiences and tribulations of visionaries known and unknown. The hero stands at the precipice of a life and death crisis. He faces his greatest fears and succumbs to the experience of death. Only through this unraveling, can the hero be reborn into his future self.
A new state of consciousness is needed to give him the power in insight to see his journey all the way through to the end. Today, I am speaking with Troy Coleman designer and creative leader. This is a special episode of a zoom call that was accidentally recorded between two lifelong friends. It's an intimate look into holding space, crisis, and how we emerge changed. Thank you for joining me. I'm mixed metaphor. As we traveled through the lives of many heroes and their journey.
Troy: (01:47)
I, I miss you.
Heather:
I'm sorry Troy. It’s been a shit-show. I broke my foot. Boot. In pajama bottom because I can get my pants over my boot.
Troy: Right (laughs)
Oh, last week was bizarre. Bizarre. It was like a dream. It was like a dream because I have been, so I took so many years to come home and I'm going to cry before the end of this conversation, just so you know. Um, I have made, I made a ritual of coming home. Right. I came home for the, my, the second Bend design conference, my first one. And it was like an awakening. Right. And what I've learned since then is that when you were presented with an awakening you're presented with work, the awakening does not progress. Like you're floating on a boat, right? I say, it's like in my mind, oh my God, my life, this is my life. Now I fixed so many things. I'm going to float along and it didn't take much more than a year to go, oh, holy. I actually made things harder because I had that awakening. And now I have all these realizations and now I have all this work to do. And I don't want to do it
Heather: (03:33)
At this juncture in the hero's journey. Our hero has a deep realization and he begins to enter the phase of the hero's journey called the ordeal.
Troy: (03:53)
What I've learned year after year, as it is incrementally, bit by bit pieces, fall into place. Right? You become aware of you achieve an awareness, but there's missing pieces and you can't just go make those pieces happen. It's almost like they have to come to you. You can't even do work to make them come to you. You just have to just do what you do. And they will come you, but be aware that when they come to you, right. They might come, but then they're not gone. If you miss it, it's not gone.
Heather:
Right. It's there.
Troy: (04:37)
Oh, is that right? Yeah. And so I think, I didn't talk a lot about, um, my past couple of visits that were very hard. I think trying to establish my own space was good. And I learned a lot and I did a lot of shadow work and it helped me as a father. It helped me as a designer. It helped me as a person until it got to a point where I was done learning and I stayed in that space. And then that space became hell. Yeah. Right. Because I, I was done learning what that space needed to tell me, but I stayed in it. And then that's when it becomes your personal hell, right? It's like, I am in a silo. I'm isolated. I'm going to stay here. From a designer's perspective.
Troy: (05:36)
I'm going, oh my God, this is all the same from a, um, a person who struggles to meditate every day and ride my bike every day and work with a coach and work with a therapist. I'm like, ah, it's all the same thing. It's all the same. It's the same thing. I can just, you can twist it. Right. And it's weird and painful. And, but there's joy in that because it's new. It's a, it's like a newness, right. It's like a struggle to grow. And it's like, I want to connect so badly right now with you. And so I'm going to do the best I can, as opposed to, I want to connect you with you right now, but I don't know how, so I'm going to shut down and go to bed. Right? It's like, let's embrace this moment. And I said that the other night, I said, we have sat in silence on the phone in person for so many years. We've never embraced it. Just sit. I don't know what to say. I know what I think I might want to say, but I'm not going to say anything. I'm going to sit with it. Let's sit with it and meditate on it and just be in the space. Um, let's make space for each other to be in, but it's like, it's all in the past month that happened.
Troy: (07:12)
And then I was starting a new, random training program. And I do this. I've always had this mindset on my bike of suffering. Right? It's like the joy is the suffering, the pain and the digging and the, and it's the hurt that we love. Right. And there's a component in that training proven called mental toughness, mental toughness. And I started digging into it. And it's like the voices of the coaches like, oh, this isn't tough, right? They're not like hitting you. It's not like the high school football coach. Right. It's I listened to the first few sessions. I was like, okay, this is meditation. That's all it is. It's meditation focused on these very specific things I want to do. And then I did like the first workout, which was, this is a really hard physical workout. Your legs are going to hurt. You're going to have to focus on these heart rate zones, but we're going to throw in mental exercises for you to do while you're doing this hard focus.
Troy: (08:21)
You're not going to be able to think about your legs. You're going to focus on this thing. You're going to focus on what is the goal? What is the thing? What is, what are you trying to achieve? Who are you doing this for? And they give you prompts on the screen, right? It's like, say this out loud as you're doing this workout. Right. And I didn't take long to notice like five minutes into the workout. All of the prompts were based that I said out loud, where you, you can do this is making you stronger. And it was like, oh yeah, that makes sense. And I realized that my inner coach, every time I've been on my bike, every time I've been in a race, every workout I've done, I've never been discouraged. Right. I've been fast. I've been slow, but I've never gotten to a point where it said, I am not fast enough. I can't do this. It's always been a you boys. You can do this. Or we've got this. We can do it. You can get through this. You D you know, just push harder. You got, this is 30 seconds. You got it.
Troy: (09:33)
And I was immediately shocked back to my I voice.
Troy: (09:42)
You got this. You're an awesome designer. You're a great dad. There's support in you. I'm not good enough. I can't do this. And we isolate ourselves with our voice. Right. And we spend so many years and you can't even, it's not even that we aren't negative, but when we, um, we isolate ourselves when we're not right. So why can't that coach be my creative director? Why can't that coach be my parent. You're a great dad. You up a minute ago, but you're all right there. Okay. You're okay. You'll figure it out. You got this. You're going to do so much great work today. You'll make mistakes, but it'll be awesome, right? Oh, but wait a minute. I can't. No, you're fine. You made a mistake. You got this. And yeah, I am hearing all these things about like, like positive self-talk and I've never heard being able to make that distinction between…. Maybe it's just me. I think there's a workshop here. That's a whole nother discussion. Right? I think that when I talked to myself in first person, I, I'm isolated and I'm small and I'm weak. And I'm alone when I'm like, you, I'm either the coach, I'm a parent. I'm my creative director. I'm another entity and I'm not alone. Right. You got this, you can do this. I think we miss that.
Troy (11:42)
And I don't know what else I was going to mention, but I just, I had no other friends to talk to this about who appreciate it and who get it. And we are so much more than, I mean, we all know this, right. We've been in the design profession for years. We are so much more than we're capable of. And, but I think that we talk so much about using our inner voice to support us. We ignore the inner voice that doesn't, um, prevent us from doing what we want, but needs a coach and thinking of it, that would say, oh, you know, tell yourself you got this. Well, who's telling me I got it because I don't have anyone. Oh, wait, that's me. Oh, I'm not good enough. Yeah, you are. Yes, you are. You’re okay. And you know what? You'll make a mistake. Great. You learn something through that mistake.
Troy: (13:00)
And I want to carry that somewhere. Right. And I don't, it's like, you want to throw these things out in the world. Yeah. Here's a great thing. I learned, Hey, everyone pay attention because I know how you're talking to yourself. I think about that in, right. And I think in, especially from a child's perspective, this idea of play starts and stops. Someone needs to tell you when play starts and stops, right. There's a parent or a coach or a mentor or, or whoever that tells you play time starts now. Okay. Now play time is done. And we're always like, ah, no, I'm not done with play time. It's not save it for later.
Troy: (14:13)
It's like trying to get people in touch with that playfulness every day and getting into that vulnerability. And I think that that's where I struggled to bridge the gap. And I struggled with the workshop I did with Esther when it got to the end. And when it got to being in the vulnerable space, you can't teach that you can't even talk about it. Right. They, you will know when you're in that space because it's going to get you here and you're going to go up and you're going to want to run and you're going to want to bury it and you're going to hide it and you want to go do the next thing, but push through it, sketch through it, draw it. What is it? What does that, what is that feeling? And there's been a lot of work happening in this house in, in an overwhelming sense on so many levels from me as a designer and Sarah and I as parents and kids as kids who don't think they know how to do it or want to do it, I just do it in front of them. [inaudible] That's it. That's where I am. And I want to, it's like, you're, I'm in a space where I think so much about Ben design. I think about all these people, all these designers, marketing, we're putting ourselves out there. I want to share it, but I don't want to market it. I want to talk about it, but I don't want to socially broadcast it. Right. I want people to benefit from it. And I want to stand in front of people and say, this is what we're going through.
Troy: (16:15)
And this is how to navigate it.
Troy: (17:09)
Without over validating everything I say, which I do. Having been back in touch with you,
Troy: (17:47)
Making new friends, because of that.
Troy: (18:50)
I'm finding myself executing on things I want to do intuitively. And it’s frightening because it's not what I was told I'm supposed to do. It's not what I saw in magazines that tell me what I was supposed to do. It's not Aaron Draplin or James Victore telling me what I'm supposed to do. Right. It's my own thing. It's like, holy. That's a whole new thing. I need to put that out in a world. Or even not. It doesn't have to be put out in the world. It can be my own thing. It can be my own voice that fuels what I put out in the world that I get paid for it. Right.
Troy: (19:44)
It's uh, and I don't know if it's that it's a milestone year for me, but it's bend opened a lot with my relationship with my partner, with the male relationship, with my children, with my relationship with myself. And it came back to a common thing, right? Having closure around, I have been grieving stage one. What are the stages of grieving? The first one is denial. The second one is anger. I have been in stage two of grieving for 30 years, angry about it. Angry has come out in so many different parts of my life. Anger, anger, so much anger and not knowing why.
Troy: (21:04)
And when we came back to Bend for a couple of days, we, I showed the kids where I grew up, went to the neighborhood. I saw the old house they wanted to go in and I'm like, it's weird people in dogs now. So we can't go in, but they wanted to go to the cemetery. Oh wow. I said, yeah, we can go. Certainly. Okay. It was like, I'll be okay. We went to the cemetery where my mom was buried and they asked, well, where's grandpa Chuck. And I said, well, he's buried in Mount Vernon. And they wanted that story. And I said, well, you know this, you know, he moved back to bend, but when he was on vacation, I've, you've never heard this story. Right. So my dad, yeah, my, so I left Bend because my mom passed away. My dad got very sick with a weird lung.
Troy (22:02)
I know what the lung disease is now, but it's um, neither here nor there. Uh, he moved back to Mount Vernon. So his family and my aunt, his sister could take care of him. So then I moved, I finished my junior year at Mount Vernon, moved back, moved up to Mount Vernon and did my senior year of high school. There went on to Pullman. It was who, and he had moved back to Ben because he was recovering feeling much better. And we were going to go do, um, our Christmas holiday, as we always do, did as growing up in Mount Vernon. So we were, he was in Ben, right? I was in Pullman. He went up there, he flew up there and I was gonna drive over. And he was at my aunt's house and just, he passed away one night. They discovered that pneumonia had settled in his lungs. But because of the complications, they couldn't discern. He perceived no difference, right. Until one night, he just, he couldn't breathe.
Troy: (23:24)
I've been working out something to do, to bring the two together. And I'm a designer, right. I can make a headstone and smash it in half and put one half in one end and one half. And the other, which will be awesome. There's a room on both headstones for more so I can, I can hit it with a chisel on my own, or we can have names and graves, and I want to do an earth transplant ritual. I can pull back the earth, this the grass, dig up earth. Not much on both graves and bring them together. And if there is a double plot in bend, I would love to occupy it just with a marker and even say, talking, I was talking to my cousins and yeah, well, you know, it's that important? Isn't it is important. Now it is because there are markers in the ground and that's the reference I have.
Troy: (24:33)
If they were cremated and scattered in separate places, that's different because they're scattered, they're out, they're out in the world, but they're not out in the world. And whether or not I cognitively think this is important to me. Clearly, it's something I've not been able to close, have closure on. So what kind of ritual can I do to close this space? 30 years later, right? 50 years old, I'm going to get closure around this so that I can do all these other great things. And then, and then what, and then what does Ben mean a minute opens it up right. As a place, as a sacred place for me.
Troy: (25:27)
And it's, it's I, I think because of the nature of our industry, I strive to want to package this and put it in front of people and not to sell it. But this fits so many things I go through as a designer, as a parent, as an athlete has human, right? How do we perceive our space in the world? How do we establish memories in the physical world? How do we talk to ourselves? And how does all of that either hold us back or move us forward.
Troy: (26:24)
Leave that question. I'm left there with that question. And for some reason, having since been back from bend, I've been reunited with three or four people who I haven't seen or heard from, from high school, randomly on social media. Right? It's like the algorithm knows where I was. You might be friends with this person. It's like, oh my God, I'm going to click on that. And now I'm going to leave a tirade of content in your, my introduction to you. I think I've felt disconnected since I left. Right. I've never been, I was never connected to anything when I was in Bend growing up, but I feel more connection to there now than I do to anywhere. Any other place I've ever been because something's happening. Right. It's almost like there's a, it felt like coming back to Bend design was an awakening, not just for me, but in the community. Right.
Troy: (27:44)
If you could tap into it and still need to make a living, right? So, but we're in a world now where you can work from anywhere. They've said, we've we realized we worked so great remotely and everything is awesome. And all the parents are going, single people in their three bedroom apartments are doing great. I'm homeschooling not doing great, but being able to establish that space. Yeah. There's so much there. So being in a space where you're hit with so many realization and so many things, you've meditated on become reality, right. They manifest in the world and you're like, oh my God, I want to share this with everyone. How do I make this a thing that I can talk about? How can I bring these struggles forward? Right.
Troy: (29:08)
And I think the biggest one that's hitting me is how we talk to ourselves. And that goes on every level of every grade school kid to a new college, to, into a junior designer, to a CEO at apple, right? How do we talk to ourselves? And how does that affect what we put into the world? And how does that affect how we physically and mentally feel and exist? And what's really important. The huge thing, things like I, so, so much of the stuff I want to talk about goes so far beyond your, the logistics and personalities and things you need to know to make your business's success. What do you need to be, to be peaceful in the morning? And how does that work for you as a designer, from a designer's perspective, how is this useful for you?
Troy: (30:18)
And I just internalize it right now and see what happens. Cause it's so new. And it's like, it's almost like you get to a point where you are able to be productive, but you don't care about being productive. Yeah. I got all my stuff done. I had didn't even have to focus on, I'm going to smash it today. I'm going to be right. I'm going to get through today and I'm going to do the things I need to do. Oh, look at that. I got some stuff done and I got more stuff done. Oh, Hey look. And we found some new ideas. That's awesome. I could not have projected that in the morning when I set out my goals for the day. Like my goal for the day is to be open. And if I'm open, great, if I'm not, then I'll be open tomorrow.
Troy: (31:15)
It's been a weird year. And coming back to bend for two days, unplanned and unrehearsed and unrealized, I think that was the biggest one that was unrealized because I've regionalized that visit and planned every day, I've scheduled every ride of skid of the conference. This is what I'm doing. This is how it's going to work. Oh no, I'm going to leave fulfilled. They just breezed into town. And it was like, I'm going to do what is the, where I live. That's where I lived that rock pile. I made that round bile still there. We're going to, if all the rock piles are still there, they've probably been rebuilt that knocked down and rebuilt. But the pile is still there. We watched Godzilla in the alley, it can pan theater. It was 32 degrees and they loved it.
Troy: (32:16)
We did all the things and I showed is right. It was just, yeah, it felt like a homecoming more than what I put so much process behind over the years. So I want to do something for Ben design it. I don't even know what, I don't even know what to pull from that. And I still am dying to do something completely disconnected from that, doing a photography, architecture walks through history tour of downtown Ben. But again, not this year, I just, I want to, I know, I think that it's the, um, part of it is finding you. You want to find comradery in feeling the same things that you're feeling, but also at the same time, knowing that other people are feeling what you're feeling, and they're not saying everything right. It's like, I know you're feeling this as a designer. This is how I get through it. And it's not, this is how you get through it. This is how I get through it. This is how I approach these things. This might be a valuable tool for you. I don't know. I kind of want to come home. I get it. I've been hearing that from you for awhile. Yeah. I know. There's other people may be willing to come home. Right. Have let's move to bend the tacos at Spork Awesome. Hey, there's more, let me talk to you about summer and winter. Yeah. That's where I've been. That's the space I have been in and I love you so much for letting me share that space with you. And that's not what I intended in. You created space for me and I appreciate that.
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