In this vlog recorded on Easter Sunday, Tony Stark Policci runs up a hill near his daughter’s house, describing the surrounding Arizona landscape. He then recounts a recent work‑life conflict: a client deadline threatened his plans to attend a family dinner and game night. Recognizing a recurring all‑or‑nothing, catastrophizing mindset—rooted in his recovery from addiction—he chose to bring his laptop to the family gathering, work until dinner, enjoy the meal, then finish the project afterward. He reflects on a recovery principle that treats setbacks as replaceable problems rather than crises, and emphasizes that situations need not be framed as either/or. He promises to share intentional techniques in upcoming videos, invites viewers to consider areas in their own lives needing transformation, and signs off with gratitude and a blessing.
Chapters
Okay, so today is day 17. It is Easter Sunday, and I am at, uh, near my daughter's house, and, uh, she's got a little mountain at the end of their street, so I decided to go on a run and scale this mountain. You probably can't hear me because I turned the phone. I'm near my daughter's house. There's a mountain at the end of the street, and I decided to go on a run and scale this mountain. Let me show you what it looks like. All right, so that's Phoenix off in the distance. There's Tempe. Over there's Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa. Those are the Superstition Mountains. Apache Junction's out there. Saguaro Lake, Canyon Lake, Apache Lake are all past those far mountains out in the distance. All right, so I don't know if you guys could hear any of that because when I turn the phone, the microphone goes the other direction. So here's what happens, what's happened over the last couple days. The, the focus on What I'm grateful for has continued. Friday night, I bumped into a bit of old patterns. So I was working on a deadline for a client, and we had plans to go to my daughter's house with both my daughters and boyfriends and one of their friends from college to have a dinner and a game night. But I was working and I knew I was not going to be done. I had this deadline I needed to finish for a client. And the same thing happened the week prior where I ended up missing out on a celebration dinner because I had work that needed to be finished. This time I just asked my wife, rather than saying I'm going to stay here— I was— the disappointment was coming up. I was so upset, like I could feel it. And I said, how about I just take my computer and I just work there. So that's what I did. And I worked up until it was time for dinner, sat down, enjoyed dinner with them, went back, spent another half an hour working, finished up my project, came back, and then got to enjoy the game. So one of the habits that I've noticed about myself is that I have this— and you know, some of you know that I was an addict I recovered. And, but there was something that I learned in recovery. And it's, I don't know how to put this, but there's, we have like the saying in recovery, like when an addict or an alcoholic, you know, breaks a shoelace, they call suicide prevention. When someone who's not breaks a shoelace, they just replace it. Well, there's this old habit of kind of all-or-nothing catastrophizing. Maybe that's what it's called, where if I sense that something is not going to go right, then everything is going to go wrong. And you know what? That is just stinking thinking, right? And so Friday, when I started feeling like I'm going to miss out again, those were the messages going through my head, you know, old tapes. I'm going to miss out again. I, you know, I've got this work to do. I've got these clients that are depending on me. I've got to get this done. So I'm going to miss out on what I want to do, the things that matter. And the truth is, like, it doesn't always have to be either or. Sometimes it can be all, right? It's just a matter of being innovative, stepping into leadership, being creative. So, um, last week when I did my Sunday video, I said that I was gonna share some techniques with you guys over the coming week about what I was doing intentionally. And my judgment is that I just sprinkled a few things. I didn't really give a lot of feedback, although the video that I did Thursday night on day 14, I do feel had some powerful truths in it. So I'll continue to add some of those this week as we go. And in the meantime, I'm really curious for any of you that are following this, you know, what are you doing? What is it? What is an area in your life that you need to step into and have a transformation? In the meantime, I want to push my body to keep running and run back down this mountain and get to my daughter's house, which is— let me see if I can get over there and show you where it might be. It's down there. Probably makes no difference to you. All right, anyway, thanks for watching. God bless.
