David Lawson shares the pain he experienced after the loss of his beloved father, and the ensuing anxiety he battled with thereafter. After attempting to bury the pain with work, he realised he had to look inward and heal in order to grow and thrive.
My Awake Warrior’s Journey to Self-Mastery
The youngest of 3 siblings, I had an unremarkable childhood with strict, loving parents. Following in the footsteps of my older brother, I fell in love with hockey and spent my early teenage years traveling from arena to arena.
(Then) one cold New Year's day, while driving me to a hockey game, I noticed my Dad rubbing his left arm. Suddenly, he fell into my lap and as the car veered into the ditch I felt him take his last breath. My dad was gone.
After my dad's funeral I felt numb and detached. While my mother grieved the loss of the love of her life, I had no idea how to process the emotions and grief I was feeling.
As men, our culture neither teaches, allows nor gives us permission to cry, grieve or process many of our emotions.
So I did the only thing I knew how to do - play hockey. My dad and I had talked about me earning a hockey scholarship, and after a lot of early morning practices and hard work I received a scholarship. After four years of long bus rides and sustaining physical injuries, my focus began to shift.
Enter Business World
Launching myself into the corporate world, I excelled and won awards for my hard work, determination and sales performance. Although I did not recognize it at the time, exceeding sales quotas and staying busy left no room for me to process my emotions and grief.
After a few years I decided corporate life was not for me and ventured out on my own, beginning my new phase of life as an entrepreneur in the packaging machinery industry. Applying the same intense work ethic to my new business, although highly successful, came at a price - mental and physical exhaustion.
As my business continued to grow and flourish, so too did anxiety and insomnia. Loving my work and happily married to the love of my life, wasn’t enough to stop the tide of grief emerging.
“If I could make more money, maybe that would make me feel whole”. However, I was left feeling even more anxious and stressed.
Burned out, sick and tired, I found my dreams and life unrecognizable. At this point it became very clear that I needed to make some changes in my life.
I searched for 'corporate retreats' and discovered the Chopra Centre in California. This was the beginning of my healing journey.
To the Life We Choose to Define
My desire for personal transformation led me to India and study with some of the world’s foremost holistic doctors, teachers, and healers. I spent the next eight years immersing myself in healing modalities, each one leading me to a deeper realm of awareness and healing. Grief and anxiety were lifting and losing their grip on my life. From there, profound changes began to unfold. My relationship with my wife deepened and flourished.
I was experiencing peace, happiness and started a new eco-packaging business that grew to 7-figures. As my father was integrity, inspiration and wisdom, my mother was caring, strong and positive and I found out she was dying. In her passing and in my grieving, I discovered my strength, vulnerability and love. Not long after my mother died, my friends started to notice my strength and vulnerability which led to questions on how to work with their life’s challenges and traumas. Between sharing my experiences and listening with compassion and offering coaching they started noticing results in their own lives. Often my friends suggested I teach and share this with others on a larger scale.
This led me to create "Awake Warrior"
Click in to read more:
Comments