The Eagle and the Dragon

by Chris Duffin

  I didn’t want to wait that long. I knew I couldn’t do anything else for a week so, the day after surgery, I set my alarm, got up in the morning, and took myself to my tattooist for a nine-hour session. We only stopped when my artist was exhausted. I did the same the following day, and the one after, and continued until my tattoo was complete. I figured that if I had to lie around all day, I might as well lie around on a tattoo bench.

  My tattoo artist was fantastic. Most artists don’t have the stamina to complete nine-hour sessions for several days straight. If they tried, they would succumb to physical or mental fatigue. The work was painful, covering my sternum, ribcage, and armpits, but I wanted to get it done. I had a vision in my head, and I wanted to realize that vision as quickly as possible. Doing nothing for a week would have felt like a total waste of time to me, so I chose to use the time productively. By the end of the week, I had a fresh new tattoo and I was ready to recreate myself once again.

  Theme: Building a Legacy

  Everything you’ve read so far in this book is about a different version of me. I hope you’ve found the stories I’ve shared with you both inspirational and instructive, but please understand that they no longer define who I am today. As I continue to reinvent and reshape myself, those past identities feel like old skins, long since shed. Today, I live with deep purpose, molding the world around me in a positive way. I choose to live each day in a deliberate, conscious fashion. If you didn’t know a single thing about my past, you could look at who I am and what I’m doing in the world and know that it represents a true image of who I am. I’d like for you to be able to say the same thing for yourself.

  The work I do today, the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning and animates my life, is building the legacy I wish to leave when I depart this world. It’s my way of honoring Pat and my father, who passed away with nothing to their name and almost no one to remember them. In this chapter, you’ll read about the process of paring down my identity until I became exceptionally clear about who I am and the extent of my vision. That process also involved cutting ties with some people and situations that no longer represented me accurately. I left a successful career, stopped interacting with some people I had been close to, and removed all obstacles that were holding me back from expressing who I truly am, in business and in life.

  You might be surprised at the clarity with which I am able to make difficult choices that alter the course of my life. You may feel that such ruthlessness is unnatural, even robotic, and that life is never black and white. I counter that indecisiveness and apathy are the products of self-ignorance and of a comfortable world that coddles and indulges us. I urge you to consider the consequences of living a life that is not aligned with your true self and your purpose. The fear you feel today is nothing compared to the eternal despair of coming face-to-face with who you could have been and realizing that you failed to answer the call. As Kurt Vonnegut eloquently said, “Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, ‘it might have been.’”

  At times, letting go of people and roles that I once held dear has been extremely painful, as have the challenges of developing a business from scratch and pushing the boundaries of my body’s capabilities. That pain is much less excruciating, however, than the pain of continuing to live out of alignment with my true purpose.

  While it may initially seem morbid, I invite you to consider the inevitable day when you will lie on your deathbed and meet your mortality head-on. What will you regret not doing? What parts of your life consume your valuable, limited time and energy? Will these things still have meaning to you on the last day of your life? If these questions aren’t enough to wake you up, go and spend some time with someone close to you, who is coming to the end of their life. Ask them what they regret and what they would do differently.

  Don’t leave anything on the table.

  Eating My Own Tail

  By the time I left my job at the hydraulics company, I knew it was time to get to work and build my purpose in this world—helping people discover their strength in all its forms: physical, mental, emotional, and even spiritual. In short, I knew that I wanted to build an organization that would help people live better through strength. While the intention was clear, I could also see that there were numerous obstacles in my path. I had work to do, stripping away everything that was not essential before I could express the core of my being through work and family life.

  The first element that needed to change was my career. I had a lot invested in my professional identity, with multiple advanced degrees and almost twenty years of hard-won professional experience. I was respected and sought after in my field, with an exceptional track record of delivering massive change in a sustainable fashion, with the buy-in of everyone involved. That wasn’t an identity I could simply walk away from. I needed to make sure that I was putting in place structures that would remain active for years to come, ensuring that the work I had done would continue and the people whose working lives I impacted would continue to have meaningful and well-paid jobs.

  One of the toughest elements of this process, much tougher than putting in place a framework that allowed me to transition to a new working environment, was divorcing Lisa. In previous chapters, I’ve described the many benefits she brought to my life. I’ll always appreciate those qualities and I have only positive words to say about her influence in my life. She’s an incredible woman and the mother of my first two children. Ultimately, however, her outlook and mine are very different, and those differences made us incompatible as partners.

  I thrive in the midst of change and chaos. I love to be in situations where I’m pushing boundaries and influencing the world. Sustaining that mindset, however, takes a lot of energy. In my home life, I need the support of someone who thinks the same way as I do and feels equally comfortable with change. Lisa preferred a more solid, stable, environment. While that’s a perfectly valid approach, it became clear to me that we wanted different things. I wanted to press on and create something new and bold in the world, while she wanted me to slow down and consolidate.

  I couldn’t fight on two fronts. I couldn’t win the battle to establish Kabuki Strength at work, then come home and fight with Lisa for the validity of my vision. While I have no doubt that parting from her was the right decision, it was still extremely painful. Not only was I adapting to the loss of a partner, I felt that I was at risk of putting my children in a difficult, traumatic environment, something I never, ever wanted to do.

  As I described in the previous chapter, watching my kids grow helped me to see how bizarre and unconventional my own childhood had been. I was absolutely committed to ensuring that they never experienced the same hardships I did. Yet their mother and I were divorcing. I had seen so many cases of separation or divorce that harmed the children, and I didn’t know how badly my own kids would be affected by the experience. That uncertainty brought a lot of stress, anxiety, and depression into my life. I’m not proud of every decision I made during this period. I made some poor choices. Nonetheless, Lisa handled the situation admirably, and we succeeded in creating a lot of continuity for our children as we adapted to co-parenting.

  When Lisa and I parted, I felt defeated and believed that it would be almost impossible to find a partner who was aligned with my vision. I assumed that I would spend the rest of my life as a single parent, suffering from loneliness and an unmet need to share affection and love. In the event, I was saved from that fate not by my good looks or killer personality, but through the contagious combination of value, vision, and victory for which I had bled my whole life. Fittingly, it was my sense of purpose that drew my incredible second wife, Jacqueline, into my life.

  Jacqueline is a magnificent woman whose heart is perfectly aligned with mine. Her beauty and grace are unsurpassed, matched only by her wisdom and by the fervent love that sustains me through all the craziness of life. Sharing my life with a counterpart like her is a blessing I never exp
ected to find. And I didn’t—she found me. The joy, passion, and love we share is an endless source of strength in a life where I accepted the pain and burden of always creating my own strength.

  As early as age ten, I understood the power of relationships to support a happy, successful life—or, alternatively, to bring pain and dissatisfaction. When we surround ourselves with like-minded people, we amplify our capacities and get to experience the joys of friendship in the context of purposeful living. The opposite is equally true: those whose presence in our lives doesn’t build us up, will drag us down. As I stripped away everything that was holding me back, I also needed to put some distance between certain people I had previously been close to. These were people who I considered friends, mostly because we shared the same interests or hobbies, but whose company didn’t lift me up. Some were negative or emotionally draining. Others lacked drive and vision, negatively impacting those around them. In every case, I came to the realization that I needed to prune those relationships from my life if I wished to move forward. Some were long-standing friends, so this was a difficult thing to do.

  Most significantly, I found it necessary to cut ties with a man who, over the course of our relationship, had become a public figure in the field of sociology. I won’t mention his name here because I don’t wish to give the situation additional oxygen. It’s not clear to me whether his views had become more extreme over time, or whether he simply grew in confidence as he became more famous. What I do know is that, over time, he began to publicly express perspectives with which I felt extremely uncomfortable. I found myself reading his work and feeling profoundly against the views he espoused. Despite our friendship, his belief system and mine were worlds apart.

  I drew strength from my recollection of Pat’s decision to estrange himself from his family. At the time, I found it impossible to understand how he could have chosen never to interact with members of his family again. As an adult, I knew how it felt to separate myself from someone based on an insurmountable difference of values. When I found myself cutting ties for difficult, yet necessary, reasons, Pat’s stance made a lot more sense to me. Understand that some people are part of your history, but not of your legacy. Letting go is okay.

  This multitude of shifts in my personal and professional life brought me face-to-face with the depression that had dogged me for my entire life. I experienced powerful suicidal thoughts and feared that I might become the next in a long line of people on my father’s side of the family to leave this world by their own hand. At times, I began to think practically about ending my life. It was a scary time in my life, especially so because I was plagued by the persistent thought that many members of my family had taken their own lives. More seriously, being the methodical person I am, I planned exactly how, where, and when I wanted to do it. The appointed time came and went, and I’m still here. That’s all I have to say about that.

  To address these issues, I took action and hired a therapist. He worked with me to heal the pain and depression brought about both by my immediate circumstances and by reckoning with my past. A willing and objective listener can do wonders in helping us understand and conquer internal conflict. Vulnerability is only a weakness when it lacks a purpose, and there is no shame in seeking counsel.

  I shared some of the stories in this book with him, and he looked at me, amazed. He told me that he couldn’t understand why I wasn’t dead, in jail, or addicted to drugs. Everything about my upbringing, he suggested, put me at risk of serious dysfunction in adulthood.

  Although this process was incredibly painful, it was absolutely necessary. I needed to free myself from the relationships that held me in stasis before I could move forward and create a new life for myself and those I loved. I had reached a point where anything less than living from a deep sense of purpose was simply unacceptable to me, no matter the cost. Whatever I needed to walk through to manifest my legacy in the world, I would walk through it.

  One man who remained in my life throughout this period, and who has been a stable rock of support during turbulence and chaos, is my business partner, Rudy. We became fast friends around the time we launched EPC together, and we have continued to work together ever since. Rudy is not only my business partner, he’s also my friend and mentor. He’s an incredibly successful businessman who holds multiple powerlifting records, and who continues to shatter perceptions about what is possible. At seventy years old, Rudy can squat nearly 500 pounds, bench press more than 315 pounds, and deadlift almost 550 pounds. He is a living, breathing testimony that age is just a number, and that it’s never too late to start cultivating strength. Rudy began to train when he was fifty-five and is breaking world records to this day.

  In addition to being highly successful and driven in his own right, Rudy provides the balance that allows me to function as the creative hub of the business we run together. As I’ve pared down my life, I’ve handed off the operations side of the company to our excellent team, and my focus is more on product development and the long-term vision of Kabuki Strength. To do that, I need to stay away from day-to-day operations. Rudy handles all the finances, contracts, and negotiations, and I trust him 100 percent. He’s a rock and a father figure to me, and the balance between his contributions and mine has been an essential element of the unprecedented success of our business.

  Devoting Myself to Grand Goals

  It was the morning after a severe depressive episode. I woke up, shot a video, and posted it. The video was titled Grand Goals. In the clip, I explained that I was retiring from competitive powerlifting. I had competed at an elite level for sixteen years, set world records, and achieved almost everything I wanted to achieve in the sport. I wasn’t going to stop lifting, nor retire from my public role as a strength coach and educator, but it was time to draw down the curtain on my competitive lifting career. In its place, I would chase things that excited me, build my own platform, and express myself through lifting in ways that felt truly authentic.

  Before I departed the stage, however, there were some goals I wanted to achieve. The first was to deadlift one thousand pounds. Due to my injuries, I knew that this wouldn’t be possible within the rules of a competitive environment. Outside those restrictions, however, I felt that it might be. I no longer needed the validation and satisfaction that comes with winning a competition. I needed to do this for myself.

  My retirement from competitive lifting came for the same reason as my divorce, my separation from significant people in my life, and the shift in my career. I knew that I could accomplish more by stepping out of an environment which had begun to feel misaligned with my vision.

  Defining these boundaries and choosing mindfully where I invested my time, energy, and strength was foundational to this transition. Together with the leadership team at Kabuki Strength, I began to set up fundraisers to support charities I believed in. For example, I set up an event to raise money for a charity serving homeless people in the Portland area, particularly single mothers. The same charity also invests in a boys’ house, supporting boys who have struggled with homelessness, sexual abuse, and other related issues. I was able to combine the delivery of financial aid with some speaking and motivational work for a large group of the boys living in this house. Using my strength to support people struggling with poverty became a cornerstone of my practice and continues to mean a great deal to me.

  I succeeded in deadlifting 1,001 pounds, a Guinness World Record. I’m the lightest person ever to deadlift in excess of one thousand pounds. Only five other people have ever achieved the feat, all of whom weigh at least 140 pounds more than me. There are two different styles of deadlifting: conventional and sumo. I’m the only person ever to deadlift over a thousand pounds using the sumo style. I’m also the only person ever to complete repetitions with a bar weighing one thousand pounds. I completed close to three repetitions. As of 2019, all of these records remain unbroken.

  When I realized that I could perform unique feat
s of strength to raise money for valuable causes, I broadened the scope of the charities I supported. For example, I lent my skills to the Oregon chapter of a charity named Special Olympics. To promote their cause, I undertook a thirty-day campaign in which I squatted eight hundred pounds every day for thirty days. No one had even lifted such a heavy weight so frequently, so this challenge was picked up by local media and garnered a sizeable following worldwide.

  When individuals with special needs become involved in powerlifting, they often experience profound satisfaction. As their strength increases and the size of the weight that they can move increases, they see a tangible shift in what they can do. No one needs to congratulate them; they know that they’ve done something good and that they’re improving. This self-awareness has a huge impact on their self-confidence. In addition, completing such unusual and difficult exploits provides a demonstration of what Kabuki Strength stands for. We coach people to develop robust strength, to recover quickly, and to sustain performance levels that others might dismiss as impossible. When I undertake a fundraiser, it’s not only about delivering money to those who need it. It’s also about teaching people that they can go beyond their perceived limitations.

  During my thirty-day squat challenge, I filmed videos each day detailing my preparation and rehab. I also appeared as a guest on various podcasts, talking about what I was doing and using myself as an example. I don’t like to tell people what they can do unless I can demonstrate the value of it for them. It’s much more powerful to say, “This is how I did this thing that no one thought was possible,” than it is simply to offer advice.

  I haven’t completed every challenge I’ve taken on, but I’ve always documented them so that people can see the process and, hopefully, become inspired. For example, I set myself the goal of deadlifting 880 pounds—almost a world record weight—every day for thirty days. There are only a handful of people in the world who can deadlift 880 pounds, and most of them can only do it a few times per year. I managed to do it seventeen days in a row.