Andy Chaleff - The Last Letter: Embracing Pain to Create a Meaningful Life

The Last Letter

by Andy Chaleff

Copyright 2018 Andy Chaleff

ISBN 978-1-63393-705-5

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the author.

Review Copy: This is an advanced printing subject to corrections and revisions.

Published by

210 60th Street

Virginia Beach, VA 23451

8004354811

www.koehlerbooks.com

All the photos you see in the book were taken by me (including the photos on the cover). The location and date for each photo can be found in the index at the end of the book.

The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I dont know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesnt everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Welcome

The secret to life is to die before you die

and find that there is no death.

Eckhart Tolle

When people ask me what I do, the simplest, purest answer is, I prepare people to die. Im not talking about people in hospice care or people with terminal illnesses. Im talking about everyone, at every stage of life.

I am a coach and mentor, but primarily a friend. I spend about six months a year traveling the world to work primarily with CEOs and what society would label as people of influencethe kinds of people you would find on magazine covers. I generally spend a week with clients, living in their home, dealing with marriage, family, and business issues. Usually, problems at home bleed into the office, so it doesnt make sense to separate the two.

When I explain what I do, I often get the obvious question, What qualifies you to do this?

My standard response is to laugh and say, Nothingexcept that Ive done it for the past ten years.

My work always comes from word-of-mouth, based on peoples experience with me. My wife tells me I have been retired since she met me when I was thirty-seven years old. Her definition of retired is never doing anything you dont want to do. Based on that definition, I certainly agree with her.

I am quite intentional about how I perform my work. First and foremost, I am myself. I say everything thats on my mindand I do mean everything. I share my observations, without reserve or applying a value judgment. At the same time, I am deeply principle-driven. I make my principles explicit so everyone can freely test them for themselves.

I do all of this while staying emotionally connected. I do not teach. I learn with my clients. I never ask anyone to do anything Im not doing myself, or am unwilling to doincluding breaking down in tears at what may seem to be inappropriate moments. My willingness to be completely vulnerable with clients comes from accepting my own pain. If I had to state the one thing that qualifies me to do this work, it would be my willingness to allow myself to be present, with the depth of all of my emotions, without fear, shame, or guilt.

In essence, I have turned my pain into my strength and made a business around it.

This book is my story about how I learned to face my deepest pain, accept it, and allow it to guide me in creating a meaningful life. And in my story, I believe youll find reflections of your own story, and glean lessons that will help you create your own meaning in life.

I grew up with an abusive father and an unconditionally loving mother. My mother was my rock, my safe place, my source of emotional connection. She was killed when I was eighteen years old. That indescribably traumatic experience set the context for the rest of my life. I spent years trying to numb myself and run away from that pain. What I eventually discovered is that, no matter where I went, my pain was always with me. There was no escape. Eventually, I had to face my pain and ultimately, learn to embrace it. When I did so, it became my own greatest teacher.

From my observations of others, I know Im not alone in running away from pain. Ive observed that much of what people view as the pursuit of happiness isnt a pursuit at all. Rather, its an attempt to escape pain. The irony is that in running away from pain, we simultaneously push away joy, peace, love, and connectionthe very things we want most.

After thirty years of traveling the world and living in seven countries in search of happiness, I have realized that we humans are all very much alike. We all laugh and cry, celebrate and grieve over the same universal things. We all yearn to be seen and valued. We all ache for genuine human connection. We are all doing our best to make sense of this crazy life.

And in the middle of it all, we run into one of lifes greatest paradoxes: It is precisely in our suffering that we find peace and the understanding of our universal humanity. Thats where we truly see each other. Thats where we can hold each other in compassion.

Yet in spite of this, we constantly find ways to avoid and escape the pain, heartache, and uncertainty of life. We escape into addictive substances and behaviors to distract us. We escape into TV, materialism, and partying. We escape into workaholism, achievement, obsessively climbing the corporate ladder. In short, we do anything and everything but allow ourselves to face reality and feel our real emotions.

As I said, Ive been a master of escape myself. What I discovered is that, when I stopped running away from my pain, I was able to learn from it. What if suffering isnt there to plague us, but rather to teach us? As long as we run away from it, it cant teach us what we need to know to find peace. A meaningful life is not found beyond suffering, or in spite of it. Rather, it is found precisely in it and because of it.

For much of my life, sadness sabotaged and crippled me. But Ive slowly learned to transform sadness into vulnerability and then action. I am often confused when I hear someone say, I dont feel like my life is meaningful, which is usually followed by a discussion about what they do for a living and what they think needs to change. My thought is, if you want a meaningful life, simply consider everyone whom you love in your life and the fact that they may be gone tomorrow. Sit with that fear and vulnerability.