Chris Plough - Revelation in the Gobi Desert

IgnIte YOur Inner SpIrIt / 13 AdventUrer

ChrIS plOugh

“Curiosity is a seed of liberation, allow it to grow.”

I want to help you know yourself and learn to trust your inner voice. We have multiple voices that consciously and unconsciously drive us. They can be confusing and some lead us away from ourselves. Your inner voice is your Intuition — listen to it and you will live your life well. It will guide you to places that you wouldn’t expect — yet exactly where you need to be.

revelAtIon In the gobI deSert

I am alone for the first time in 42 days. Lying on the floor in the back of Volga, a hulk of an ambulance spray painted in fluorescent rainbow colors. The engine has seized, and I’m stuck on the only paved road I’ve seen for weeks in this desolate landscape within the Gobi Desert of central Mongolia. My friends have left. Dan is gone. Steve is gone. For the first time since we began this adventure, almost six weeks ago, I am surrounded by my own silence. It is suffocating.

I smell the scent of the desert after it rains. I’ve known it most of my life. It tickles a deep part of my brain. I’m brought back to a memory of standing in the New Mexico desert when I was a teenager. Just outside of my parent’s double-wide mobile home...

“No. I’m not going there.” I sit up and scramble out the back door of the ambulance. The sun is moving high in the sky. I look down the long stretch of open, barren road — nothing. I peer around Volga in the other direction

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— nothing. All I see is the vastness and the mirage waves on the horizon as the desert begins to heat up.

I slam my hand against the side of Volga and shout. “Fuck!” My thoughts begin to spiral. I feel myself looking for someone to blame. “How did I end up here? Why am I alone?”

The victim in me surfaces.

And, somehow, I immediately knew… Because I chose this. After nearly 10,000 miles and several days of crawling through broken gravel roads, we found this stretch of asphalt. In my excitement, I pushed the pedal down and cruised this pristine stretch of open road. Flying along at highway speeds! Running with the windows down. Feeling the wind blowing across my face. I had this sense that everything was going to be okay. That all of the challenges and the obstacles we had encountered throughout the UK, Europe, Russia, and Mongolia would be worth it. We were going to make it! There would be a crowd of people cheering us on as we…

BANG! I slammed back into reality. The engine misfired and then stopped. I remembered that the radiator had been leaking for days. Now, with the weather warming back up… Shit.

I coasted Volga to the side of the road. Maybe it wasn’t bad. Maybe she just overheated. Pour some water in the radiator — pee in it if we have to. We’ll be back on the road. Come on! By this point we had overcome incredible odds. The front suspension had broken and was held in place by nylon straps and spare bars from our gurneys. We lost our brakes over a thousand miles ago. There was the electrical fire that destroyed the starter and killed the headlights. The frame cracked when we fell down a ditch in the dark and slammed into a runoff pipe. A door had fallen off. The windshield was shattered like a spiderweb. Then there was that bumpy Russian road where the left rear wheel literally flew off! After all that, there was no way we were going to give up!

“Are you fucking kidding me, 9700 miles in and now we're stuck?” The engine was seized. Steve got out, yelled, and slammed the driver mirror in rage. I simply accepted the facts. Hmm, a change of roles. Last week, I was screaming up a storm and he was the voice of reason. I reached that point of overload, where all I could do was resign, knowing there was nothing we could do but move forward.

In a turn of luck, a vintage Land Cruiser™ approached and without thinking, we jumped up and flagged it down. Immediately we decided that Steve would be the one to jump into the truck packed with strangers, and I would stay with Volga and our gear. He would find a way to get us the remaining 250 miles to

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the finish line in the final city, Ulaanbaatar. I felt torn between my obligation to watch over the gear and my determination to make it to the end. The truth, though, was deeper than that. That quiet voice inside spoke and I, not fully knowing why, simply listened and stayed.

I walked around our unkillable yet broken friend. Gliding my hand across her side. She carried us and sheltered us for weeks. I couldn’t leave her here in the desert… Yet, how long would it take Steve to find help. Hours? Days? Without a phone or network, all I could do was stay there and wait.

My stomach rumbled. I stepped back inside and sat on the floor beside the gurneys. I liked the floor — and had taken to sleeping on it weeks ago, just after we entered the Czech Republic. The gurneys were padded, but the floor was longer and I could stretch out. I pulled down one of my duffel bags and reached in for some local mystery meat snacks that we had scored at our last stop. After my belly was filled, I laid down and pulled an old T-shirt over my eyes to block out the light.

I began to reflect on the last few days and how Dan left. It was unexpected. I appreciated all of the times he had helped me. How useful his Boy Scout knowledge and sense of “do-it” had been. I also thought of how he quit. A few days before, he decided to leave and headed for the airport, to make it home before his classes started. I loved him like a brother, but felt betrayed and couldn’t understand how he could leave when we were so close to the end. Stranded here, I wondered if he was right to leave.

Shaking myself awake, I stretched, walked around Volga to the shade, plopped down into the dirt, and leaned against her side. I remembered the choice I made four years ago. The choice to quit a safe and secure job, working with a team of people who were like family. Yet how boring and unfulfilling each day felt after we were acquired by a large billion-dollar corporation. Going from leading a rockstar team to being a cog in a bloated machine. I once spent an entire day ignoring email and surfing the web. No one noticed. No one cared. And that was the day I heard that quiet voice. I knew I had to leave… but I had no idea what to do.

With the bright-eyed naivete of a 29-year-old, I quit. No real plan. I cashed out my 401k and decided I was a consultant. I knew technology like the back of my hand. Yet I knew nothing about business plans, networking, sales, marketing, or accounting… but I was inspired and determined!

My saving grace was that I had a stellar reputation from the start-up I had left. Consulting with a large company selling logistics software, my skills became in demand. I was often the only one who could solve the technology

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problems that many of their customers were having. Soon I was being flown around the world to fix things. The UK. Sweden. Singapore. Australia. All across the US. I couldn’t keep up.

There were also many parts of the software that I had no idea how to configure. I needed help. The business grew dramatically after I partnered with my friend and colleague, Sam, so that we could run our company together. He knew how to configure and use the software, and I knew how to to install and optimize it. The best of both worlds. More importantly, he understood processes, procedures, and deadlines, while I was a by-the-seat-of-my-pants and envision-the-future guy.

Together, we grew. The first year ate up my savings. The second put us in the low six figures. The third in the high six. The fourth, in seven. Now, we had a dozen friends working for the company and I began to design our first hosting infrastructure. Everything was going straight up!

And then… it happened. Friday morning after Christmas, there was an early phone call. I was tired and grumpy. As soon as I answered and heard my grandmother’s voice… my heart sank. It was about my parents. I went numb. I barely heard her speak. The next few weeks were a blur. Each time my emotions came up, I told myself, “Not now.”

Soon enough, I was back in Philly and focused on work. After all, I had this company that depended on me. We were growing and I was so close to living my dreams. I went heads-down for months, working 60, 70, 80-hour weeks. Waking up in the middle of the night to solve problems. I began to sleepwalk through life. I traveled, laughed, and took funny photos in all the hotels. I convinced myself I was having fun too.

Then the economy tanked and the recession began. I wouldn’t admit defeat. I began to work even more. I stopped exercising. I stopped hanging out with my friends. Nearly everything I ate came from a convenience store. Payroll made my stomach churn. I sunk every penny I had into the business so that I wouldn’t have to fire my friends. I couldn’t look like a failure. Unwilling to ask for help, I was going to pull us through with sheer willpower.

I began to spiral. Downward. At night, I would take my motorcycle out recklessly — jumping railroad tracks and riding into oncoming traffic. One night I totaled it and limped away with a fractured ankle. I laughed it off. My friends thought I was adventurous, but I knew the truth. I had stopped caring about my life.

A few months later, at a Halloween party that my dear friend Zita was throwing, a seed was planted. Another friend, Bob, told me about the Mongol

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Rally, where these crazy folks drove insane vehicles all the way from Bristol, United Kingdom to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. I laughed it off. Yet, my inner voice wouldn’t let it go. Soon enough, I was convinced that one way or another it was happening. I recruited Steve and Dan to come along and spent the next nine months preparing my company to run without me. This time I was able to ask my team for help, and was amazed and relieved at how well they stepped up to the challenge.

That is how I ended up here — sitting against a fluorescent ambulance, alone, on the other side of the world. It was getting late and I knew from experience how cold the desert could get. I stood up and walked through the back door. Reaching into my duffel bag to grab a long-sleeved shirt. And that’s when my hand grazed it. That cold and angular piece of glass that I had been avoiding this whole time. I had stuffed it away, in the bottom of the bag, and banished it to the back of my mind. I knew it was there and yet I had tried to forget about it. Until now. Through all of the challenges, the blowouts, getting lost, breaking down — it was what I had really come for.

I wrapped my hand around this precious memory and pulled it out. Beams of light prismed through the glass and cast rainbows on the floor. I ran my fingers over the etched letters, “In Loving Memory of Rob and Louise Plough.” I allowed myself to look deeply into the photo of my parents embedded within. I remembered the day my sister gave it to me and thinking then that they looked like ghosts, trapped in glass. Tears welled up in my eyes. I wanted to hold it together… I didn’t want to break down. I felt my inner voice speak deeply, telling me it was time.

I am ready. This is why I am here. I know what I have to do.

I left Volga, crossed the road, and kept walking. I walked and I walked. Until Volga looked like a toy truck behind me. I came to a mound of dirt that seemed out of place. I knelt before it and closed my eyes. Holding the memorial, I plunged into all the memories that I had locked away. That call from my grandmother. Flying to Montana for my parents’ funeral and living in their home for the week with my grandparents, uncles, aunt, sister, and friends. Enjoying their company yet feeling disconnected. Unsure of every step. Moving as if the floor beneath me was crumbling away. Entering the church. Standing before their caskets. Looking at them. Mom first. Then dad. They didn’t look like them anymore. They were empty. I didn’t know what to feel or how to feel.

Clutching their memorial to my chest, I felt a wave of grief roll through me

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and I cried. Tears streaming down, no longer held back, falling into the desert dust. I surrendered to my emotions. I sobbed and wailed. I yelled out at the Universe. I felt all of it. Pain, rage, sadness, and hurt. Abandoned, left behind, unprepared, and terrified. Stuffed down for years, pushed away by work and keeping busy. All coming up and all coming through.

I couldn’t tell if it had been minutes or hours as my tears waned. I came back to myself and felt a deeper peace. One that I had forgotten. I dug into the soft earth of the mound and laid my parents’ glass tribute in the hole. I thought back to the last time I had seen them and their smiles. The spark in their eyes. Unconditional love and support. I spoke some words softly to myself and covered them up. I let them go.

As I stood up, I felt different. I knew that I had experienced an inflection point. A culmination of events from which the trajectory of my life would be forever altered. I decided to aim away from self-destruction and toward a meaningful life. Then I realized that I had no idea how to live such a life. Right there, I promised myself that I would keep exploring until I understood how.

As the sun began to set, casting pink hues across the clouds, Steve returned with something I never would have imagined — a large truck with a ‘whocan-fuckin’-believe-it’ crane! Steve was a hero. We stood there and watched Volga get picked up by a crane and loaded onto the flatbed. We made it to Ulaanbaatar, and, though everyone else had already finished and gone — Steve and I celebrated.

The decade since that revelation in the Gobi desert has been incredible. Beyond my previous dreams. Some amazing — my company continued to grow into eight figures, giving me the financial freedom to explore. Others were hard — I chose to face many fears, traumas, and uncomfortable truths along the way — yet always worthwhile. Fortunately, I chose not to do it alone. The first step was finding communities where I was accepted as I am and encouraged to continue growing. Ones where I could share my lessons and help others. Relationships that are mutually caring and invested in.

I explored traditional and non-traditional means of understanding myself. Journaling, meditation, psychedelics, adventures, travel, and nature. Plus all the therapies you can imagine — talk therapy, hypnosis, NLP, EMDR, brain scans, group retreats, yoga, physical trauma release, philosophy, spirituality, plant medicines, indiginous rituals, energy work, and more. They each helped me understand myself in different ways. These gave me the tools to understand my conscious and unconscious. To feel decades of emotions that had been repressed. To break out of cycles of depression and suicidal thoughts. To clear away the

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confusion and noise. To see myself clearly, accept, and integrate. To trust and love myself, then my community, then humanity. To help others do the same. To live a meaningful life. To more clearly hear that voice inside and trust it.

Now I share my experiences to help a sleeping generation wake up and understand themselves, be themselves, listen, and express themselves. As you become curious about yourself, you’ll learn to differentiate the voices and patterns that guide you. The inner voice, Intuition, is often quiet and patiently guides you toward experiences and relationships that will help you grow. Be open to hearing your inner voice and know that it will guide you to exactly where you need to be. Trust that it will help you live your life — the one only you are capable of living. A fulfilling and meaningful life that is uniquely yours. I wish that for you. Big Love.

IgnIte ActIon StepS:

Be curious about yourself. Imagine what’s possible. Feel it. Allow it, don’t judge it. This is how you learn from everything that happens in your life. If you do only this, you will continue to grow and evolve.

Listen to your inner voice. Do whatever helps you tune in. Journaling. Walking. Meditation. Playing with your pet. Driving. Just don’t tune out. Don’t distract. Give it time. Three minutes, an hour, a day — whatever is right for you.

Find a community where you are accepted as you are. Be exposed to new ideas, continue to grow, and help others with your wisdom and experiences.

Explore different ways of understanding yourself. Stick with the ones that work for you and be willing to try new modalities as you grow and evolve.

Be gentle and patient. Treat yourself as you would treat a loved child. Guide yourself with compassion. Accept your stumbles. Celebrate your wins, including the tiny ones.

Chris Plough – United States of America I help us know, accept, and be ourselves. Conscious Pioneer / Chief Soul Officer https://chrisplough.com

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