Leadership Journeys [31] - Chris Federspiel - "This is about the journey and not about achieving the thing at the end"

This is the Leadership Journey series on the Choosing Leadership Podcast.I believe we all have a lot to learn from each other's stories - of where we started, where we are now, and our successes and struggles on the way. With this series of interviews, my attempt is to give leaders an opportunity to share their stories and for all of us to learn from their generous sharing. If you know a leader whom you would like to see celebrated on the show, please send me a message on LinkedIn with their name.In a very candid conversation, I don’t even want to call it an interview, Chris shares so much of his life that we normally keep hidden - not just from others but also from ourselves. He opens up and shares about his childhood, his tryst with entrepreneurship, failure, success, mental heath challenges, and what gives his life meaning. Listen to this conversation to understand who Chris is and his story. We talk about material success as well as meditation, doing more as well as doing nothing, and fear as well as courage.You can find Chris at the below linkshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisfederspiel/https://blackthorn.io/In the interview, Chris sharesI ended up spending a lot of time after my parents split and got divorced when I was very depressed, just sitting at my computer and it helped me be very comfortable with computers.And I ended up finding computers to be very safe. There was nothing that could like physically or emotionally hurt me with a computer.I got diagnosed with bipolar two when I was 20 or 21.Whenever I had to do something interpersonal, I did not deal with it very well. I tended to be very abrupt or brash when talking to people like they were a computer  I wasn't empathetic and I tended to type strong messagesIt was very painful. Going through therapy sucks. I don't enjoy one bit of it, but the benefits of it really helped me in my life.If anyone has a mental illness where there's like heavy anxiety, it helps to do a lot of exercises to manage that it helps to level it out.From the base of the mountain, you can see the mountain, but from the top of the mountain, you can no longer see the mountain. And the concept is about the journey. It's not about achieving the thing in the end. And there's something rewarding about the journey that I look forward to.Boys are taught to not talk about their emotions and girls are taught to shut up. And it's interesting the struggles that men and women have after getting a bit olderThe last company I co-founded, when I sold it when I sold my interest, it really hurt because this thing that I had devoted, like almost every waking hour or two for a year and a half, it was suddenly gone.And it made me realize one, one day, I want to be able to change that dynamic if I can because you hear all these things. If you had a day to live, what would you do? And if your company's gonna go away from you, what would you do? It was a big lesson I learned.