Family Planning, Preparedness, Sickness, Small business preparedness
C’MON MAN WHAT’S YOUR STORY?
C’MON man what’s your Story is a man’s point of view with coping with grief, loss of a loved one, addictions and life’s struggles. So glad to have your on our Podcast this week Chris Robinson!
“Recovery is not a death sentence, addiction is”, Unknown
“Addiction makes good people do terrible things”, Unknown
C’MON man what’s your Story? Our interview on Talking Taboo with Tina today is one where we should embrace the man’s point of view when it comes to coping with grief, loss of a loved one, addictions, and life’s struggles. They don’t need to define you as a Man, and make you less of one, but truly make you the Man you are today! With scars and all! “For every wound there is a scar, and every scar tells a story.
A Story that says I survived”, Fr. Craig Scott
“The scars you can’t see………. are the hardest to heal”, Astrid Alauda
Check out this incredible interview with, Chris Robinson who will tell us HIS STORY!
Y’all you won’t want to miss this one!
Because there might be something in our wonderful broadcast today that resonates with you or someone else that you would like to share this with.
C’MON man what’s your Story? We have a special guest on our show today. His name is Chris Robinson. He’s from from beautiful Texas.
us, and I’m anxious to go there. Again. It’s a beautiful place. He is. Our title today is Come on, man, what’s your story, that’s for sure. And it’s perfectly perfect for the show today.
One thing that we can all count on is that we’re all going to get sick or disabled, or lose something or lose everything, or perhaps pass away from disasters, tragedies, or in the blink of an eye. And that’s what we’re all here about today. Because we want to show you that it doesn’t have to be complicated, that you can save your photos, you can save your documents. And you can save all of your information so that you and your guest user can make sure that your bills get paid, or that they know where your documents are when needed, or you know where your documents are. Or that you have your photos all saved on a backup drive. So you don’t have to worry if your house goes up and smoke you that that’s my primary concern that when you lose everything, you have lost your life. And there’s nothing else that we can do to repair that. And so we take that painful Aftermath out of that tragedy. So if you haven’t, we will also have a link below for all of the shows notes on our blog, if you would like to also read the broadcast. So welcome aboard. I’m going to bring on Chris and have him.
Hi, Chris. Hi, Tina, how are you? I’m awesome.
Today, how are you doing in Texas? Great. We’re doing great. We’re staying warm. I would love to be there right now. And I want to introduce you you deserve a great introduction with your wonderful story.
C’MON man what’s your Story? He is the author of C’Mon man. He’s a counselor, he focuses on Adult counseling, as well as marriage counseling. Now, after this wonderful journey that has put him into this place in my life now, as you know, I can’t believe you take on the challenges faced by men. And men definitely see things in a different light when things happen. And I’m so anxious to interview today to hear your story, Chris.
And I’m really looking forward to it. So where did it all start for you? Well, for me, it all started, you know, I was I was raised in a little town called Maplewood, New Jersey. And when I was 11 years old, my father’s business transferred their headquarters from New York City to Houston. It was a oil and gas company. And so when I was 11, me and my two brothers and three sisters, and our parents loaded up, moved everything down to Houston
in August in Texas, which was a shock in itself, getting off plane and feeling that hot blast that Fern Oh.
And so we made this transition in August of 1971.
And we’re adjusting we’re trying to figure out who our friends are. We’re getting into school and feeling a little bit disconnected. And it was in November of that year that a trauma hit our family and you talk about things changing in the blink of an eye. Nothing could be truer in our story because as we got settled in and we were looking forward to Thanksgiving Day, in November of 1971. And my brother had been out with some friends the evening before after work. And they went out in a car they had been drinking. There was a car wreck and my brother was killed
in the early morning hours of thanksgiving and 1971 and so were they all killed in the car, Chris?
No, no, my brother was the only one killed. Another one was injured, and the two other people in the car, you know, survived.
But my brother was in the in the front seat and that was before seatbelts were required. And you know, just to unfortunate tragedy. So that is the beginning of our story in Texas. And well, how old were you then? I was living at the time. And my brother was my brother was 15. Oh, wow, he’s so young. Yeah, right. Right. So you had that horrible knock on the door? Yeah. And actually, as an 11 year old, you know, my next oldest brother and I he was probably 13 at the time, and he and I had a room together. And we were looking forward to the Thanksgiving Day Parade in Houston. That was our plan for the morning is we were going to get up, get dressed, go down to the parade, come home, have our Thanksgiving dinner. And so, you know, when my mom came into our bedroom, man, I was I was fired up.
Just just ready to go. And we could see immediately that something was different, something was wrong. And that’s when she she told us what had happened. And it was just like a, a numbness that overcame our entire family. Like an unbelief. Like it’s it can’t be just it’s it stunned. absolutely stunned. And yeah, I didn’t, I didn’t even know how to process anything. And if we consider that in the in the 1970s.
Counseling was absolutely not a thing. Right, that if you were in counseling in the 1970s, it’s because you had some kind of a serious mental disorder. And that’s not something that anybody was going to talk about. Right? No. And you usually went to a facility somewhere. Right, right. And so we were left to all deal with it. In the best way that we knew how. And I was the youngest of the six children. My my oldest sister was actually in town, but she was in her freshman year of college at that point, and so she dealt with it far differently than I dealt with it. You know, she she did, she spoke to people about it, she spoke to my parents better. She spoke to her friends about it. She She grieved, she cried. For for me and my brother, you know, 11 and 13. We, we didn’t even know what to do. We didn’t know how to respond to this. And, and so it’s really interesting to look at how it affected each of my siblings. Yeah, differently. Especially boys, you probably weren’t given the opportunity to really cry and let it out. And you had to be tough and strong. And yeah, yeah, that was it. We just we didn’t even know what to do with it. And so for me, that’s essentially what happened is I just, I just pushed it down.
People around me people at my school that heard about what happened, it was on the news and Euston. And it was like, nobody knew what to say about it. And so since they didn’t know what to say, it was kind of like that I was avoided.
C’MON man what’s your Story? Right, like the plague because, you know, it’s just we don’t know what to say. So we’re just going to go down the other hallway, you know, and that kind of thing at school. So it was it was really interesting, as I look back on it now, and realize how I did cope with it, which was in an unhealthy way.
I pressed it down until the point where I was about 14. And then at age 14, I was in in high school and started drinking at that point. And in Houston in 1971. Nobody was checking your ID, you know, if you walked into one of the corner stores, you could get a beer, you know, that wouldn’t problem or you could give somebody money to walk in and get you a beer and then be glad to hand it to you when they came out. So I I started drinking when I was about 14. And found that, you know, I enjoyed that. And drinking, some of my friends then got their their driver’s license at age 15. And so they would take us out to two bars, in strip clubs, you know, and in all these places, like I’d say they would, they would let you in.
And when you know, when you think about what’s going to get 14 1516 year old boys going,
it’s gonna be the, you know, eroticism of strip clubs, and then there were porn bars in Houston. And so we wound up going to some of those. And that created another addiction. For me, and I tell the story in my book, that I’m fortunate that I did not become addicted to drugs or alcohol. And the only reason is because I also enjoyed sports, I was an athlete, and doing two day workouts for football in August in Texas, did not go well with being out and drinking heavily the night before. No, it kept you more on the narrow road. Yeah, so So from the the, you know, alcohol, I was able to say, Okay, I can’t do that and play my sports, but I also had this exposure to porn that I could do without any problem. And, you know, nobody knowing that nobody finding out about and that really kind of developed into an addiction that, you know, carried into adulthood.
To the point where, you know, hours would be spent viewing that you would go, you would go through the the shame and the guilt, that that, you know, a gambler goes through a shopping addict, goes through an alcoholic goes through a drug addict, goes through addiction is addiction, right? Because you have the craving to do it. And then after you do it, you’re like, why did I do it? Why did I do? Yeah. And it’s one thing, you know, to do that when you’re in college, and single and kind of living your own life. But then there’s another level of guilt that comes into play. When you get into a relationship and you get married, and you have children. And now you’re spending, you know, hours, supposedly working late. But that’s not what you’re doing. Right?
Yeah. And so you’re you’re taking away time from your family, there are some times where you’re taking away time from your employer. And so yeah, there’s there’s a lot of guilt and shame associated with that. And then oh, by the way, add on one more complicating factor, you know, if you label yourself a Christian
will now you know, there’s a whole another level of guilt that I shouldn’t be doing this, I know better. I know, I shouldn’t be doing this, this, you know, sinful behavior, and all that kind of stuff that goes along with it. And you just start heaping guilt upon guilt.
And getting to the point, you know, hopefully we’re you recognize that, why this is really, really bad for me, and I and I need to change something. And there was a point that I was kind of forced into that, to that point was, what do you think that, you know, it’s interesting, because I, I, I was always involved in the church from the time that, you know, my wife and I were married. I was involved in the church, and I happened to be, I don’t know, that’s probably, you know, 20 years ago, at a church where they were focusing on recovery from addictions. And you know, for some reason, they asked me, Hey, would you be willing to serve on this committee be a part of this group that puts this together? And I said, Yeah, sure. I’d be glad to do that. You know, they saw me as a, you know, a leader of the men’s groups in church and things of that nature.
And chronic. Back there. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Like, okay, I’ll do it. And in the very first meeting, the leader of that group, who was an alcoholic in recovery, said, Hey, I think that we all have our addictions.
Things that we just can’t control.
And if we’re going to be genuine and authentic in this group, is we go into helping people in their recovery.
Maybe it would be a good idea for us to just kind of go around the table and say, Hey,
What? What is your addiction? or What was your addiction? and Tina, my heart just started pounding. I mean, I mean, I could feel myself getting good. I never talked to anybody about this. I hadn’t talked to my wife about it I nobody, right? And so here I am, at this group of table with about eight people, and the only thing that I can be thankful for that meeting is that he started on the person next to me, and went around so that I’d be the last.
C’MON man what’s your Story? God forbid that he should start with me, because I couldn’t even hear my heart was beating through my ears.
It’s like hiding in the classroom when the teacher says, who knows the answer to this question, and you’re like, can I? Where can I hide? I literally, I felt like a caged lion. I felt like a wild animal that had been trapped. And just pacing back and forth. That was feel I was looking for a way out. I was I was thinking do i do i get up and leave right now excuse myself from the meeting?
Wedding, I was everything you do everything physically that you could experience in anxiety and panic I was experiencing in that moment. And when it finally came around to me, I told him, You know, I do have something that I’ve struggled with, but I’ve never talked with anybody about it. And I just said, I can’t speak with this group about it. Before I speak to my wife about it. Good for you. So I went home that evening, how many were in the group, there were about eight of us in the group.
And so I went home that evening, and sat down with my wife and really had the toughest discussion with her that I’ve ever had, I didn’t know how she was going to react to it. And she was so overwhelmingly gracious, she just looked at me and said, You’re my knight in shining armor. And I would say, Wow, even with this, even even with this. And that really, I think is the point at which my recovery began. Right? Because when we have an addiction, and we keep it secret, we keep it in the darkness. It has complete control over us. But once we shine a little bit of light on it.
And we find out, Hey, you know what, we were safe in doing that, that there are people who want to help. And I was able to go back the next week, and let the group know what this was. And the group who has experienced addictions, looked at me and said, we understand. We get nice, that’s why we’re here. And so the experience that I had was one of encouragement and support.
Because it just so happens that I was doing it around the right people. It wasn’t my plan, you know, if you don’t want to talk about a backup plan. Now there was not for this. No, there was no plan for this at all. And what’s interesting is that
it began to change who I was right. So when I look back, and and I look at the loss of my brother in how that changed the trajectory of my life, you know, what would things have been like? had that not happened? And they’re even, you know, every Thanksgiving morning? Still today? That’s the first thing that I think about? Yeah, my brother. Yeah, right. But there There comes a time where, for me, you know, I can’t tell anybody how to grieve or what are the right stages for them. But for me, I was able to arrive at a point where tears of sorrow turned into tears of laughter in remembering our relationship and remembering the stories that we had together of our of our life together, albeit short, he was somebody that I looked up to greatly. And so, you know, seeing how that impacted me and seeing how it impacted some of my siblings as well because they had their own struggles, you know, a sister that dealt with alcoholism, and other sister that poured herself into work completely total workaholic.
And so we dealt with things differently. And it changed the trajectory of all of our lives. But what’s interesting is I never would have I don’t know that I would have been experience that level and feeling of love and forgiveness and grace.
Had I not been through that path of addiction? Right I that I went down of some sort? Yeah. Right. Right.
And so, you know, that began to change me. And then as I, you know, went on in my career and things happened professionally, then then change continued to occur unexpectedly, right in the blink of an eye.
That’s, well, hopefully, it was a good change.
What do you think would have been different if your wife had been upset and flew off the handle and not be supportive in that instance? You know, I think that it would have made me want to keep everything in the dark. I, I probably would not have gone back to the group the next week, I would not have had the courage to do that. If I had been rejected, if I had been judged, if I had been condemned in coming out about this. Why would I want to do that again, to anybody else? Right. I will just keep that my secret.
Because it hurts too much. Yeah. Yeah. It does hurt too much. And you don’t want to experience that kind of pain? More than one? Yes. Yeah. And so I think that I probably would have just kind of withdrawn a little bit.
I think that it would have changed my marital relationship.
You know, when I felt judged and condemned instead of unconditionally loved.
I think that that this actually strengthened our relationship. And I think that had that not been my wife’s response, then it probably would have served to erode the relationship, right?
In your case, it wasn’t anything that was going to hurt her or hurt you. Whereas drugs and alcohol could impact
yourself as well of those that you love. Yeah, I guess in that instance, it could be a little bit different. But just having that support is just beautiful. Yeah. And we think that and this is where I start to get into the mindset of men, right? Is that we think, well, this isn’t hurting anybody.
Well, it is it because when we look at porn, we’re we’re watching people who, in many, many cases, did not choose to be doing what they’re doing. We get into the idea of sex trafficking, you know, and when we’re watching porn, like it or not, we are more than likely supporting sex trafficking, right? When we’re watching porn, it changes our view of
the opposite sex. Right, its objective, its objectifying.
C’MON man what’s your Story? And it changes our view of healthy relationship and healthy sexuality. Right. And so I for the longest time, you know, did this with the idea that it’s not hurting anybody? Right. Right. But yeah, but it was changing me mentally.
To to an unhealthy thought pattern. And when that happens, then it was also changing my relationship with my wife. Right? How I looked at her. And so it does have an effect.
But sometimes we don’t recognize it. Yes. Right. And, and it’s predominantly a problem for men. That’s not to make a you know, a broad statement there. They’re absolutely women that that struggle with pornography as well. But it’s primarily men, because that’s, you know, we’re, we’re visually aroused. And so that, you know, that that is an automatic draw for us. And we don’t think that we’re doing ourselves or anybody else any harm. Right.
But don’t you think in the 70s I mean, porn was a lot different than it is today. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, for one thing, it was a lot less success.
All right, I told you that I, for me to to watch porn in the 70s I had to go to a porn Park. Right now I could I could get magazines, you can do that very problem. But tell me Chris, what is a porn bar? A porn words.
Are is is is a bar that you walk into. And it’s like a movie theater where they’re playing, you know, the hardcore pornography and you sit at a table and you’ve got, you know, a waitress serving you drinks and off offering other services as well. Is it all on the screen then that it’s like, the screen there? Like a sports bar? Yeah, right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that’s, that’s what it would be the equivalent of but it was just, you know, pornography. Is that still now? No, I don’t I don’t think so. I think number one, they became illegal. And number two, they weren’t needed because it was so much easily, much more easily accessed. You know, when the internet came along, you know, who needed it. And so now it’s become a, I think this is a $13 billion industry annually in the United States. So you have the strip, joints still. Now, you still have the strip, you know, the strip bars that people can go to?
And they probably Yeah, they do. They still have the adult video shops that, you know, you can go into you can rent movies, they’ve got private rooms, but they I don’t think that they’re allowed to serve alcohol in there. Right.
You know, we timed it, you know, 14 1516 years old. We pull up going and get a drink at the table, get served. And watch.
You talk about unhealthy coping, that was really unhealthy coping? Do you think you when you look back? Why did you go down that road?
Because she threw everything down deep inside? And? And or was it more of, of that social aspect of have been brought into this group of friends? Well, I think you’re just combination of things. One absolutely is suppressing this not knowing how to deal with it. And then looking for some escape from that, you know, we’re whether we know it or not, when our brains are traumatized.
It can, if we look at PTSD, right, the brain is traumatized. And typically what we will do in normal situations is store memories. And they can be pulled back up when needed. But there are some memories that are stored and archived in our subconscious that we’re not even aware of. Now with PTSD, what happens is the traumatic event runs on the loop. You can’t get rid of it. Right. And that’s where the nightmares, the flashbacks, the hypervigilance, the startle response comes from. And so you know, when we’re when we’re talking about trauma, and pushing it down,
it’s going to find a way back up. Right? And so the way that we want to escape from that, we want to find an escape, right? Yeah. So there’s unhealthy and there’s and there’s healthy ways of doing that. Naturally, the healthy way I know now as a counselor is the processing of trauma, which is part of what I do with people who’ve experienced trauma. The unhealthy way is to just find an escape a diversion or distraction, such as alcohol, which was where I went, right. And I found a group of friends that I enjoyed drinking with and one of those friends had a license and said, hey, let’s go down to this bar. And we were like, be okay. And once we saw what we saw on that barn, you look at the impressionable minds of 14 1516 year olds, and, man, let’s go do that again next weekend. That was awesome. Right? And so that, you know, what seems like an awesome experience turns into an addiction because the brain needs that hit. Right. You need that happiness. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. It’s It’s It’s dopamine, right? Yeah. That it’s that excitement that arousal. Whether we get it from
You know, any number of sources, that’s what addiction is, it’s looking for that next hit and then never getting enough of it. Right?
When do you know you have a problem?
You know, sometimes you don’t, sometimes somebody else tells you, you’ve got a problem. Sometimes you get fired from your job. Sometimes your spouse says, either get help, or we’re done. But then there are other times where you do recognize it. You You hit what they refer to in the recovery community as rock bottom, where you just can’t sink any lower. And you recognize that either in the severest forms of addiction, I’m either going to do one of two things, I’m going to die, or I’m going to recover. And most people are going to say, I don’t want to die.
So I need to go find help. Hopefully, it doesn’t get to that point where somebody has to hit that level, on their own, that they might be surrounded by somebody that says, hey, we’ve got you get a get a sponsor, let’s, let’s, let’s work on your calmness.
I mean, you were very lucky. I was just like, it was like the universe came down and said, You know, we’re gonna put you into this group, and you’re not gonna have a choice. Basically, you weren’t really?
And yeah, I don’t know, if you would have done it on your own. You know, like, probably not. And, you know, thank thank goodness that somebody did intervene without even knowing that they were intervening.
Yeah, it was quite amazing. Really. Right. Right. Because so many people have these hidden secrets. And
sometimes they don’t know really, they do. And sometimes I think, in the, the ones that I’ve had guests for, have been given that opportunity, that epiphany moment where they realize that they need to do something, but then they don’t know what to do.
Right. Right. And so it was clear for me that weren’t good choices. You know, and I like this discussion, because one of the things that that we always need to be clear of is that people with addictions are not bad people.
Right? You would think that as somebody who had an addiction to pornography, that I had no moral compass at all. I did. You know, it’s that moral compass that created feelings of guilt and shame within me, but it’s also that moral compass that made me say, I’ve got to speak to my wife about this. Before I speak to anybody else, it’s not that I was a bad person.
I had a bad habit. I can’t imagine the feeling the courage it took you to do that. It scared the hell out of me
to sit down and tell my wife, I have a problem. It’s like and and I’ve been struggling with this for years.
And get the response. I mean, not no hesitation. Just go straight in the eye didn’t blink in said those words of encouragement to me. What did you think you were gonna get?
I don’t know. I thought I guess I thought I was gonna get you know, a, okay, we need to work on this, we need to do something about this, we need to figure out how to fix you. Nothing like that. Nothing like that. Which really reinforced my my value as a human being. Right, because this when you deal with guilt and shame, you deal with self esteem issues, as well. self worth. So in just those few words, is kind of like all of that worry. Washed away.
Right. And, and as I say, I think that that’s where that recovery process.
Began because number one, I knew I was loved. I knew I was encouraged, I knew I was supported.
And then this was followed up several years later, with me losing a job that I had for 17 years. Not because of any problems with the addiction, but because there was a managerial change. There was a new president of company brought in. And so from his own company, he brought a lot of his own people in there was just a revolving door of the existing managers and leaders of that company that left and I was one of those existing. And so it was, again in the blink of an eye.
Session, 17 years, they came in one Friday afternoon and said, You no longer work here. You know, here’s a severance for you. If you would clear your office out. And I was happy holidays. Yeah, yeah. stunned and numb once again. Right. And so drama, another trauma hits you. Yeah. And I think that any time something like this happens, it causes us to have to step back and say, Who am I?
Right? And so this was another one of those steps where, okay, I had I had moved beyond this addiction that had its its talents in me. And now let the devil Yeah, yeah. And now, I was being successful as an executive with this company. And in on one Friday afternoon, found myself out out the door.
C’MON man what’s your Story? And recognizing, over the next week or so, as I was stunned by this, that I had placed my identity
in being with this company, this was the company I’d been with since I got out of college. Yeah. And I always thought my father worked for the same company from you know, for, you know, 35 years from the time he got out of college, my grandfather worked for the same company. And I just figured this is the way we do things. Well, in the 80s, we found out No, it’s not how we do things, values changed, right, corporations were changing, and it was going to be things were based on what are the you know, what are the quarterly returns. And so there was a change that took place there. And I had to take stock of who I was, as a person and recognize that I had put my identity in poured my time, completely into who I was as an employee, who I was as a provider, right. And that was kind of how I was measuring success is income, and how I was viewed by my peers, the level of professional respect I got. And so here we go with another loss, right. So loss can occur in a lot of ways. And in this case, loss of a job that caused me to reflect on who I was, and recognize that my values had gotten totally out of whack.
And in that process, I recognized that I had to reprioritize and that family is first. But doesn’t it kind of make your stomach like go upside down and, and start pulling all that crap from down in your feet that you push down? You know, it just turns everything up again and says hello. Yeah, again. Right. Right. And it’s it does it has you when something like that happens, you reflect on everything, you don’t just reflect on the last year, a couple of years, you reflect on how you came into this circumstance? How did I arrive here?
Did it all start with moving from New Jersey to Texas? What if that hadn’t happened? is an 11 year old? Yeah, I’ve been experiencing any of this what I have had a different, you know, outlook on life, a different worldview?
We don’t know the answer to that now. But what I do know is that we have a choice in how we respond to any of these situations. And, you know, having a plan does help your response. But getting blindsided by things means that you have to be able to step back, think about these things. Talk to Somebody’s about him and determine what’s my direction from here. Right. And so I think that it was that recognition that, hey, things can change in a heartbeat professionally, and I got my values and my priorities way screwed up.
So that when I reached the age of 50, I started thinking ahead now, that seems a little late to start thinking ahead. Yeah, but but, and it is in a lot of senses. But I think that we are, we go through stages of life, where we’re focused on certain things, having a job income, climbing the corporate ladder, raising children, you know, having enough money to put kids in school, and all that kind of stuff. And so I focused on all that stuff. And it was really, when I hit the age of 15, it was by no means a midlife crisis or anything like that. But I started thinking about what does the future hold for me, because when I reach retirement, I don’t want to spend all my time playing golf, fishing, sitting in a rocking chair on the porch, I want to contribute. I want to be an active member of society, I want to be giving back to the community.
And so I, you know, being being a person of faith, I prayed about that for a few years. Literally a few years, I prayed about it for a couple years, I thought I had the answer, that I would go into counseling, and I looked up what it takes to become a licensed professional counselor.
And that was getting a master’s degree, which I didn’t have going through 3000 hour internship, which I hadn’t planned on doing a practicum. Which not.
Especially 50. Right. Right. Right. And so yeah, it’s been, you know, almost 30 years since I’ve been in school. So I shut down the laptop, literally, and just, you know, told God, there’s been a misunderstanding.
I didn’t want this to be hard. I didn’t want I really have to work for this. I can talk to people, I can listen to people. So this, how do I do that? And I went back and you know, prayed about for another year, and it became a occupying thought. Yeah, I mean, during the day, sitting at my desk, and I was in the field of construction, and an executive in the construction industry, reviewing contracts. And I would be sitting there reviewing contracts, and maybe five times a day, I will have this thought come through counseling, counseling. Oh, my gosh, I can’t get this off my mind. And I’m telling you, yeah, I go, yeah, go to bed at night, my head hit the pillow and my mind would just start working on what do I need to do to get an application in for a Master’s, you know, and I wake up in the morning, and the same thing before my feet even hit the floor, I’m thinking about counseling. And so finally, I said, Okay, you know, I give
I checked out some universities, their master’s degree programs, how can I do this while I’m still working, you know, full time in in my industry, and figure that out.
And in in a couple of years later, started into that program, actually, that year, started into the started end of the program. And complete look at you now. Yeah, right, right. So in when I started thinking about that, at age 50, it was not with the idea of early retirement, or quitting the job that I was in or anything like that it was about what am I going to do when I retired age 6567.
But as I went through this master’s program, I became so passionate about what I was learning, and so passionate about the opportunity that laid ahead of me. And the focus for me started coming into working with men, working with men who have had struggles and challenges just like I have and determining where did that come from? Let’s deal with that. Let’s deal with the root cause. Now let’s deal with whatever problems or challenges it might be presenting in your life today. I became so passionate as I went through the studies that as soon as I finished my master’s degree,
I went into counseling full time, into the profession of counseling, I needed counseling as well.
I went into the professional counseling, and now have my my own practice and wrote a book, which, you know, again, that was not part of the plan either. So sometimes it’s just by my willingness to be open to change. And to make a choice, when the right options are presented to me to move forward with those and not to be fearless, or not to be fearful in doing that. And, you know, when I go back to not being fearful, all of that goes back to that moment, when my wife said, You are my knight in shining armor.
I learned there. I didn’t have to be fearful.
But from when you were younger, it brings up that fear. Right? Yeah, yeah. And it’s interesting, because as I got into this idea of providing counseling for men, all of my professors and all the professionals that I spoke with said, that’s a great idea. It’s so badly needed. But you’ll go out of business doing that, because men don’t come to counseling. Yeah, thought, Okay, well, I’m not going to be dissuaded by that. No, I’ve been fortunate enough in my career that I didn’t, I wasn’t doing this for the money. And so I sat at my desk here in my home office
one morning, just thinking about, okay, if men will not come into counseling, how can I reach out to men, and at least give them some tools, some resources, right, for identifying their challenges for normalizing those challenges for letting them know, Hey, we none of us are immune. we all struggle with the same things. We just don’t talk about it, we step it down. That’s why we have heart attacks. That’s why we have the stress. Well, health issues. Yeah, yeah, all these health issues that come into play. So it was really interesting, I started writing down every challenge that I had faced, personally, every challenge that I knew other men had faced where I’d come in contact with, because at that point, I had been a speaker at some men’s retreats and a table leader, you know, talking with groups of men. And what I found at those retreats is that these men, really, without exception, would break down at some point over the weekend, in tears that they had held in for decades, right.
C’MON man what’s your Story? And are recognized while these problems are uncertainties, these struggles are really impacting us. So I just wrote down on the launch sheet of paper, every struggle challenge if I could think of that man had dealt with and essentially, those items became the chapters to this book. Oh, I just started writing about
values, right, because a lot of it was, you know, for me, was my values had gotten way out of whack. And I recognize that with most men, they had lost the compass for their values. And so the focus, yeah.
Right, because when you lose, well, I think, I mean, I’m not a man. But I think love comes into place somewhere in there, you know, and fear, and love will conquer. But fear sure makes the challenge difficult. And yeah, sometimes it’s just all in your head. It has nothing to do with real life.
You’re so fearful from your own past experiences that it’s coming into your real life at the moment.
Yeah, changes perception around things. And you started with a real interesting comment there, Tina, and I’m not a man. Right. The interesting thing is, is that although I wrote this book for men, taking on the challenges faced by men, these are challenges that everybody faces.
The truth is that men and women respond differently. Right? Men are taught by society or culture to handle it, right. Deal with it, deal with it, get up, move forward, quit complain. Don’t cry.
This is not about feelings. These are all the things that are messaged to us, as we’re growing up, right? And so we learn to stuff things down, we learn not to deal with it. That’s why these retreats, men would break down because they had been stuffing things for decades, right? Yeah. Now, this is generally speaking, and I hate to generalize on anything, but generally speaking, men are going to internalize feelings. And women do a much better job of externalizing feelings, women do a better a bit much better job of being in community with each other, with nurturing each other with sharing their burdens with each other. Right. And so their response to these challenges, oftentimes is much different and much more successful than it is for men. And so that’s why I titled The book the way I did. But you talked about our life experiences. You know, what, there are women who have gone through the exact same things that I have, right? loss of a loved one, dealing with an addiction, loss of a job, right, and all of these things that begin to shape, how we are who you are, right loss, loss of a fiancé can be just I’ve seen that with quite a few clients, and it’s amazing what an impact it makes in their lives. I’m not sure if it’s because of the age they are, or I’m not really sure. But
it’s, it’s just whoops, it’s just very surprising.
Yeah, and I think that our age does have a lot to do amongst many other factors. With with how we handle loss.
We, you know, we there are some people who are naturally more resilient than others.
There are some people who have more maturity. And when I say that I don’t mean it in a negative way. I mean, emotionally. Yeah, yeah. He isn’t me his 11 year old, experiencing a loss versus my sister at 19 or 20 years old. Right, experiencing the same loss was handled very differently. Do you think there could have been more love amongst in your family to kind of help with that whole?
I’m not saying your parents weren’t or the household wasn’t loving. But yeah, we Yeah, we had a very loving and a very, very tight family relationship. But when this happened, it was almost like a splintering effect. Yeah, because nobody knows what to do. Nobody knew what to do. And we were all trying to figure out how to handle it individually, including my parents. Right. One of the things that was really interesting is that this was a point in time. And it’s interesting to me because I was thinking about this just this morning. This just hit me this morning. That when this happened, it was my mom who came in and told us the news. My dad was broken. Right? He couldn’t even vocalize it emotionally broken. This, this is probably the only time that I witnessed my dad. sobbing. Right.
And I was thinking this morning, how interesting it is that it was in that moment of trauma that the roles reversed. Yeah, yeah. That the woman was brought over as the strength and I and to this day, I don’t know how she did.
I don’t know how she remained strong if she did through that. And my father was completely emotions on sleeve. Yeah. Just Just and so it’s interesting when I say that we were all trying to handle it in our own way. I think that that was part of my mom’s waves that I’ve got to stay strong. I’ve got to keep moving. I’ve just got to put the next step forward. Yeah. And, and so that’s how she dealt with it. My dad Uh, you know, broke down emotionally with this and, and, and, you know, my dad wound up dying at age 58. And a cow. Yeah. And I, and this happened when, you know, they, they would have been in their 40s. But I firmly believe that the trauma and the effect on him and the stress that that put on him, affect his immunity affect his physiological response to health and disease.
Because it broke them down. And, you know, my mom just, you know, found a way to keep moving forward. And each of us siblings, found our own ways, some successfully and healthy. But others of us not so much went through a few obstacles first. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. But But those obstacles can serve a purpose, right? Again, what are we going to do with them. And so we have a choice to make, and the choices that I’ve made, and the very fortunate circumstances that I have found myself in with the supportive tribe, if you will, both my family and my friends, the people in my community, that I hang out with, have enabled me to move forward and overcome, and now turn around and lend a hand of support, hopefully, to other men, who may be going through some of these same struggles. I’m sure.
I’m sure they all are all have their struggles. We all do. what’s right, a struggle of either a past or something job wise, or love wise, or relationship wise, or family wise, or? Yeah, and if we can just shine a little light on it, and say, Okay, this has been hidden in the dark for a long, long time. let’s recognize you’re in a safe place, a safe place. And I guess realized, what am I scared of? What am I scared of? Because maybe there doesn’t have to be anything to be scared about. But I’m making it all up in your own mind. Yeah. And I think that many times, that’s it, you know, we become paralyzed by our fear. way, when, in fact, if we will just talk about it, what we’ll find out is that there’s nothing to be afraid of. Now, it’s not to say that everything, you know, has a has a happy ending. No. But it is to say that, if it is fear that has us keeping a secret in the darkness. And it’s going to affect other areas of our life. And those who move forward. Yeah, and those other areas in our life are not good, we’re not going to be able to live to the fullness and quality of life that we that we want to. So you know, even if we have to address a problem, an addiction, and even if it results in loss of a relationship, we may individually be better off for having addressed the problem. Right, to be able to move forward. Right. Right. But But I would imagine in most instances, it doesn’t happen that way. It’s probably a very small percentage that it doesn’t really go the way you hope it goes, I think. Right? I think that most people who run their relationship are going to be very supportive of each other.
No, it’s been my that’s been my experience. For the most part, you know, obviously being in counseling, I see
everything on the spectrum, right. So that’s why I always make it a point saying that, you know, a fairytale ending is not a guaranteed here for anybody. It’s not guaranteed, but it’s only because you push forward to do it. Make it your own world. Yeah. That you wish, right? You your mind can go the opposite way too. And your world is your oyster. So yeah, you know, what I would say is that when we address our problems, whether unexpected things happen after we address those problems or not, that most times we move forward with a better quality of life. Right? I know that I’m moving forward with a better quality of life. I also know people who have identified addictions that have created loss for them.
But they are still moving forward with a better quality of life right now. Absolutely. They recognize they own their their own stuff, some of the conditions that they created. But they don’t beat themselves up with it anymore. They don’t deal with the guilt and shame they recognize that hey, yeah, it was a mistake, but I’m not going to let it define me. Know, it’s done and over with it’s right. It’s in the past. Yeah, absolutely. What kind of message do you have for the listeners? You know, I think that follow your passion. Take care of yourself. No, I say self care is not selfish.
Think about what you want for your life. Sit down and really do a deep dive into your values. That’s, that’s why I start the book with the exploration of values. Because if we haven’t done that, then everything else is just on shifting sand. Right? So I think that we we explore values, we identify our passions, and then we live into those, we lean into those and recognize that hey, if that’s gonna require change, okay, don’t be afraid of change.
Can be awesome. Oh, yeah, yeah, I look at the change that I made the shift in my careers. And I, I gave up a six figure salary to be dropping, you know, to, next to nothing. Yeah, essentially start and pretty, pretty fearful in doing that, you know, to choose to do that it, you know, age 50? and recognize that I don’t know, you know, I might have another, you know, 35 years on this rock.
You know, do I run out of money or what, and I just thought, you know, what, I’m just, I’m just gonna have faith in this, you know, I’ve prayed about it, I put the work into it, and wanted to go do it. And a year into it, I was looking back and saying, Man, why didn’t I do this? 30 years ago. It’s kind of like practicing as a golf.
In golf for sports, really? Because it, you look at that huge road ahead and think, can I achieve that? I really want it. But can I achieve that? And you have fear? You have worry. And obstacles might get in the way.
There might be less training time or, or, you know, you’re not hitting the ball like you should be doing or you’re all up in your head. I always I always seem to bring everything back to sports somehow. Yeah. But the main thing is, is that when you look at every one of those athletes, right? We look at every athlete that has been going through the Olympic trials and the Olympic athletes. They believed in themselves, they had somebody else around them, who believed in them as well. So So I would say, hey, what, whatever it is that you’re doing. Believe in yourself, surround yourself with people who believe in you. And you’re not set up boundaries, you know, because the people who are not going to be supportive of you, quite frankly, don’t need to be around you. You don’t need to allow them to influence you. So you know, believe in yourself and surround yourself with the right tribe and go do it. Don’t be Don’t be fearful. That’s for sure. Well, thank you. That’s awesome. I always think of being up at home plate trying to hit the ball. And you could have this parent that could be yelling, come on, hit the ball, and then when they don’t, the parent says, again, what’s wrong with you? Yeah, right, right. Or you could have that parent It’s okay. You know, you’re gonna get it. It’s it’s just a matter of practice or timer.
Or whatever you’re working on. Well, yeah. We’ll get it right. The first time Babe Ruth swung the bat, he didn’t hit in a park. But he got to the point where he could point to where it was going to hit it. That’s, that’s amazing, really. Amazing. You know, and I think life is like that, too. We get when we focused and passionate. The world is your oyster
within ourselves. Oh, that’s awesome. Thank you, Chris. My pleasure. It’s it’s beautiful story. I’m sorry that you’ve gone through all of that. And I only say that because I’m Canadian, and I have to apologize.
That’s okay. I’m glad you got one apology. You can breathe now. Exactly.
Sure, I’m glad to share the story. It was an honor to be with you today. Thanks for having Well, I, I I don’t even know what to say about your courage and bravery and bringing that out to the, to the forefront for people. You know, that’s truly amazing. And, and I just love your story.
Everybody, your book description, stuff is all down below. I gotta get my finger out again.
Your information is down below for the book. Come on, man taking on the challenges faced by men. I have put those links down below for everyone.
And I want to thank you for coming on our show. It was amazing. As usual, we focus on real and raw conversations with our listeners, about their journey from a life changing event in their life. That was a life changing few events in your life, Chris? Yeah. Took a lot of turns. Yes. But you’ve had the support. It’s amazing, though.
I wish your wife was right there behind you. I’d say Good for you. Because
I know she’s a part of this too. And yeah, she is spiritually. Thanks. Thanks to her, you know, of how things all went for for you. And your and your your church community and the universe for whatever that looks like for people.
It guides you if you’re listening, ignites you. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So you must have been wanting something a little bit for the universe, or God to come down and say, I’m going to put that in front of you. And you’re not going to be able to say no, right, right. Or, you know, you have a choice right. Now, I’m going to give you a choice. Yeah, you can you can choose what to do with it. Here’s your test. And when that idea, yeah, when that test was thrown out to me, I had a choice to make. I don’t like tests. I don’t like those lessons that they keep giving us.
C’MON man what’s your Story? They’re not always easy, but we grow from No, no, we always learn something from them. That’s for sure. So I would like to thank everybody, take a moment and subscribe to our channel down below. Click on that link. And I just have to sing that song, this time ring, my bell rang my bell from the 70s down below, right there. So just make sure that you click on the bell because it lets notifies YouTube, to put it in front of more people. And that you don’t miss a show that’s coming up, perhaps that you’d like to see next. We have so many cool, cool guests, each and every week, sometimes a few times a week. And just like Chris, no one is Superman. And so expect the unexpected. Because you never know what could happen tomorrow, that’s for sure. If you were thinking of someone today, in your mind right now, while listening to the show, you could reach out by Facebook by Skype by zoom, by actually picking up a phone for that matter, maybe even a text. tell that person how much you love and care about them today, because you don’t know what tomorrow may bring.
So please, I hope that we’ve inspired you and motivated you to start thinking about your unique plan. And our one year list. our one year anniversary, for our wonderful podcast talking to boo with Tina is coming up to our one year anniversary and we are expecting a huge celebration at the end of the month. For the beginning of all guests. I’m really looking forward to that. We are going to bring on 10 of our wonderful guests and we’re going to have a mystery question. And they’re all going to have time to answer that mystery question. And that’s going to be quite interesting because they don’t know what the question it’s, it’s going to be our own Hollywood Squares moment. So thank you. Thank you for sharing your time with us and watching us. I love each and every one of you You
I always end with Carol Burnett. And I know Chris knows who Carol Burnett is.
It’s our their sorrow era. Absolutely beautiful. Carol Burnett, a wonderful, beautiful person and comedian. I’m so glad we had this time together just to have a laugh or sing a song. Seems we just get started. And before you know it comes a time, we have to say, so long. So long, my friends so long, stay safe. And remember that our journey is made up of a whole bunch of storms, so why not be better prepared for the unexpected? Lots of love. Thank you, Chris. Thank you for coming on our show today. Thank you. You’re welcome. Much love. Stay safe everybody. Bye for now.
Chris Robinson, M.A., LPC Summit Counseling of North Texas, PLLC www.summitcounseling.info Speaker/Author: C’MON, MAN! Taking on the Challenges Faced by Men www.cmonmanbook.com 972-822-8338
Accident, Disability Planning, ESTATE PLANNING, Family Planning, Preparedness, Sickness
HIT BY A SEMI-TRUCK & HERE TO TELL THE STORY
Hit by a Semi-Truck and here to tell the story is about the life changing event in “a Blink of an Eye!”
“In the blink of an eye, something happens by chance – when you least expect it – sets you on a course that you never planned, into a future you never imagined.” Nicholas Sparks
So Tracy is here to talk tell us her story. She is a corrective exercise specialist with her own company called the work pain free program, giving women the tools to eliminate pain when no other methods have worked. Well. She has two little ones, a baby and a three year old. So she’s a very, very busy mom, with her job and her job at home. It never stops for us moms. And I’m so thankful and blessed to have you come on our show today. Tracy, thank you so very much.
Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here. And yes, I am in my car right now. Because my my baby is currently in my office sleeping. It all works. We do we we are the best at changing our plans. That’s true. Yeah.
So Tracy, you have quite the story that all of us are so excited to hear about. What did it What happened? And and how did that really change your life?
And and what did you see from that point on?
Yeah, so I was driving one day in 2014. And I was driving across state, I was happy. I was listening to music. I was thinking everything was easy, breezy. And I was passing a semi truck on the freeway. And he didn’t see me. And it was one of those really big semi trucks. It’s like the three trucks that my truck Oh, and he didn’t see me and he started coming into my lane. And I just remember yelling like, Hello, no, no, don’t come into my lane. And he just, you know, basically smashed my vehicle. And when we ran a road, we went to the side of the road, I just remember him running out of his semi truck and just saying you’re alive, you’re alive. And that’s, you know, one of the most impactful moments of my life is, yeah, I was alive. And I recovered pretty quickly, about six months, it took me to recover from the injury from that accident. But then I would say a year and a half later, two weeks into my marriage with my husband, my wonderful husband, the injury relaxed and I was disabled for about a year.
Do they have reasons for that? Tracy?
How does that happen?
Where you have you work on yourself, and then it doesn’t progress continually?
Yeah, so what’s happening there is that your nervous system has a pathway that it goes down. It’s like a hiking path, right. So the more that your nervous system goes down this pathway in its relationship with your muscles, it digs deeper and deeper and deeper into that pathway. So when you are healing yourself, when you’re recovering from an injury, you’re teaching your nervous system, a new pathway with your muscles, a new pathway that doesn’t involve inflammation that doesn’t involve, you know, recurring chronic pain, but it always remembers the old pathway. So in that old pathway is pretty deep, right?
Because it’s gone down that road. So when relapses happen, basically your nervous system gets reminded of that old pathway through maybe something that you’re lifting, or you’re not listening to your body or not listening to warning signs, I call them the check engine lights. And then your nervous system goes, Oh, we’re going to the old pathway now. And it reverts back to that. And when that happens, you never know how bad the injury can be. So usually it happens because we push past the check engine lights or warning signs that our body is saying Hello, I’m having pain, I’m having tension, and then that relapse or that big injury can happen at any point when we’re in that kind of space. And that’s what happened to me. I wasn’t listening to my body at the time.
Yes. And and I think we all do that at some point even with or without an injury. But when so the truck driver was you know, running to your car and your car was did it turn and flip or did you I’m so glad that didn’t I’m so lucky it didn’t we were right next to an area where it could have flipped over. But it did not. So I just I was able to pull to the side and basically get out of my car. And at the moment, and I know you’ve been through an accident to see my relate to this at the moment, I didn’t feel my injury, because that’s what happens when we go through trauma. And when we’re in shock. So it took about two days for me to actually feel what had happened.
So they even offered me, you know, some imaging or to go to the hospital. And at the time, I said, I’m fine. I was just really shaken up. And then about two days later, it’s set in, I was like, oh, okay, my back is injured.
And this is how I’m not supposed to feel. This is not supposed to feel this way. Did you have any head injuries as well, Tracy?
You know, I’ve had had head injuries in my life, but not from this. So that’s my answer. Injured quite a bit in my life, but not a head injury from this accident now.
So you were very, very lucky. You were, you’re being watched over for this particular because it could have been any, anything. Yeah, it I very well could have died. And I remember that day, when that happened. Just being in that shock, that state of shock. And walking around, I think I drank way too much wine. When I finally I think the tow truck drove me to where I was going, you know, all the way to Colorado to visit my friends. I arrived, I knocked on the door. And she opened the door and I was just a mess. And I was just like I was just hit by a semi truck. You know, I was just so shocked. And then proceeded to drink too much wine and went to Olive Garden. You know all of this with a bad injury that I had no idea that I had. It’s so strange when a gentleman can do to us. Yes. Yeah. And but the thing that was playing around in my head just over and over again, is I have to do something with my life. Because I’m here, I have to do something important because I survived something that most people wouldn’t survive.
Absolutely. So that was a real wake up call for you.
When do you think the light bulb went on? Like immediately?
Or was just after you realized what you had to happen?
Yeah, it happened in layers, because I that was a trauma response for me was that, that just like, survivors response of, you know, I’ve survived this, I need to do something, I need to do something. And then in layers, like an onion, I think it slowly just became almost like that movie Inception where they I don’t know if you’ve seen that before, but they have to get the idea like way down deep. For it to really become something. I think that is what happened for me is that it went deeper and deeper and deeper. And now it’s pretty much the core of who I am.
That’s awesome. And it’s like nobody told you that it just came from within. Because it made you realize it’s unfortunate that it takes us sometimes these tragic moments to make us realize how precious life is. So where did it take you from that point to to realize that, did you think, Okay, I’m going to work in this area to help people
that really so once the injury relapsed, so I was in fitness, I’ve been in fitness ever since I was old enough to be in fitness, I’ve always, I’ve always loved it. And I was always a functional fitness expert, right? We’re we’re making the body feel good and feel pain. But once I was disabled, I tried going everywhere. I went to the physical therapists office, I mean, I was barely able to walk in. And I went to the chiropractor, which sometimes injured me worse. I you know, not to say anything against these types of healing, because they’re very effective.
But it did not work for me specifically. And it was a very frustrating and disheartening time, where, you know, I even remember, like we could not I could not stand up for any length of time. At a certain point, I could not even sit up for a certain length of time. And I just remember being so disheartened that nobody seemed to know how to heal my body. And I found out that I actually have something called hypermobility, which means that the body is less stable than the, you know, normal person. So that was one of the reasons why these people weren’t able to fix what was going on. So that’s when I became a CES and I determined I was determined to heal my own body because nobody else seems to know how. So I delved in and became an expert myself, and that’s when I was able to heal what was going on probably within six months. And that’s not to say that relapses don’t exist and that flare ups don’t exist because they do which is you know, a Good image for most people healing from pain that that does happen. But, you know, I’ve had two babies since then, you know, I’m living my life. It’s, it’s much, much different than it was.
That’s awesome to think. But also just to work with someone like yourself to know that if you can get better. And then, because I was wondering myself, you know, I felt really good last year, and then this year, I feel like I can’t do as much as I could last year.
So it’s strange, how sick How do I get myself back to that? Better feeling again? Yeah, yeah, there’s, I mean, there’s so much that needs to be addressed. ergonomics, how we’re sitting, how we’re standing, our repetitive motions, how we’re sleeping, and then all of the muscular imbalances throughout the body that are pulling your joints and vertebrae out of place, causing pain. So it really is a whole pain pie, where if you’re only getting one piece, you don’t correct the problem. I mean, that’s right nutrition nutrition matters, all of these things matter with how inflammation works in the body. So that’s like, my goal in life as a professional is to fill in those gaps of the pain relief industry and why people aren’t healing. That’s my mission in life. So that’s usually the people who come to me are the people who are like, Okay, what I’m doing hasn’t worked, I need something that actually works. And they might even be discouraged thinking, there is nothing that works. And I’m here to wave my flag and say, That’s not true. You just need to do the right things for your body, in a tailored approach to make it work.
For you, um, I realized that I had a concussion or brain injury from the accent accident as well. But in some cases, you know, what they teach you when you go to the clinics is, it’s just, it’s not permanent, it will gradually get better, don’t worry. But they don’t help you like you do, what you’re saying is, you could feel like it’s getting a little bit better, but it might fall backwards a little bit. And then you might go forward a bit and then fall backwards a little bit. They don’t talk about all of that. It’s a travesty. It’s a travesty. It’s so sad to me, that people are not getting educated. Because the way that you heal is to actually know your body and what’s happening in it, you don’t heal.
If a person just shows you how to do a certain movement. If you don’t know how your body is supposed to be functioning with it, or how it’s supposed to be feeling, you’re going to do it wrong nine times out of 10, you’re not going to experience that healing, you don’t heal if you don’t understand the way that inflammation works, and how to deal with it long term. So that’s another thing I’m really passionate about. We need to be educating people to really know their own bodies and what’s happening and how to deal with it. Because you’re right. If people don’t understand the inflammation cycle, if a flare up comes up, it’s very disheartening, scary, and you’re not going to know how to recover from a flare. Because no, you don’t even think that it would happen. You don’t know you don’t understand what what that looks like.
So you’re so right, that I think that it’s such a overpacked system, the pain relief industry is just so over packed and turns into this, you know, cycle of get people in the door and get them out of the door. And it’s really lacking, unfortunately, in in what it takes to have long term lifelong feeling.
Yeah, I can totally see that. Because I know with my issues, it flares up and then it brings you back down again. Because you you’re starting to recognize the good or the good or feeling.
Feel like a little kid the good or feel better.
It’s true, it isn’t good or feeling. And, and the bad, better feeling. And, and they and they really, and it’s it’s true, because it’s honestly, they push you keep saying you know, you’re improving, and you’re getting better and and you start feeling better, and then you drop down again, and I’m not really sure they don’t talk about that stuff. And they don’t assist you. With Oh, it’s you know, like, it should be a gradual? Yes. So is this gonna continue forever?
Right? That’s, I mean, are you asking me if it’s going to my members? That’s what you have, in your own mind. Like, is this going to continue? Right? Yeah.
And we really need to be setting people up with a long term plan for this. That’s one of the goals about my program is to set people up so they get to keep the program after they’re done. With you know, we do six months. be doing intensive work so that people have all of that education, they have all of that understanding they, they know how to move forward confidently, they know the risks, when they move forward, they know what’s probably going to happen with flare ups. And when that happens, they can pull back out their program, and they can use that and they can reach out for support, knowing what tools they need, after they’ve reached that point of maintenance mode and of recovery, because you’re so right, we are just constantly, you know, putting getting people into the office, giving them the immediate tools that they need, telling them, they’ll be fine and then saying goodbye.
And that’s really, that’s it. And so people are so confused, is this going to last forever? What’s happening? Why am I not healing and people just get convinced that they can’t heal, right? Usually the mindset that that brings forth and that kind of inner narrative. And if you don’t believe you can heal, then you’re probably not going to do the things required to take care of yourself. You don’t even know what those things are. It’s just it’s such an unfortunate way that things happen. Yeah. So sort of dealt with that. It’s a it’s Yeah, it’s very cyclical, for sure.
Well, I’m sure there’s lots of people out there have different strains of accidents, that’s for sure. And we just had three generations of a culture in Ontario, Canada, just get hit by us truck, a pickup truck. I think it was on Sunday. I think it happened on Sunday. They were all going for a walk together a family. And this pickup truck went and hit them. Yeah, I didn’t know if you heard that on the news. hadn’t heard about that. So yeah, that’s um, after being hit, you cannot feel bad for anybody that gets hit. That’s just not, it’s not fun. Not fun if you’re walking, and it’s not fun if you’re in a car. And that’s not fun if you’re on a motorcycle. So yes. So how did that change your life with your husband? Because you were fairly newly married at that point? Or not yet, where you weren’t married? At that moment?
We had your accident? The accident, I didn’t even know my husband. But the relapse, which really, that for me is that traumatic moment, right? Where you’re in bed for a year. That’s like the big that almost feels like the accident to me. When the relapse happened. That’s I was two weeks into my marriage when that occurred. So, you know, what do you think you did that change that I pushed past my body’s boundaries, my body was telling me Hello, this doesn’t feel good, you know, my nervous system was going to that old pathway. And then I push through it every time. And every time that I push through it, it just made it worse and worse and worse until the relapse happened. And when the relapse happened, I was doing something very simple. I was just reaching for something, you know, picking something very light up. And then it and that’s what I like to tell a lot of people is when you’re not listening to your check engine lights, it can happen at any time. And it’s you never know.
Um, yeah, China was a lot of your focus to these things can happen at any moment. And we have to be prepared, we have to be listening. So when it happened, when that relapse happened, my husband and I, we, our lives were transformed. And it was the hardest time of our lives. It really rocked every belief that we had, it rocked, you know, it really put us into this place of isolation, where I remember in the time I told people when I was talking on the phone with people, you know, I was just like, I’m just in a dark room all the time. It’s just so lonely. It was so lonely and so much pain and you know, nobody who could help me. It was so hard. What were you struggling with? So, you know, as far as mentally or physically, both, both. So physically, I was having spasms that would not heal just everywhere. And so even if I tried to sit up, the spasms would happen.
And I don’t know if you’ve ever had spasms, but they are debilitating. They It was so painful. And then degeneration in my desks, you know, where it was just this really intense pain where we were like, is this what childbirth feels like? You know, that’s kind of the question I was asking myself. And now I know No, that wasn’t quite that bad, but close. And then just yeah, loneliness, depression. You know, there’s a lot that happens to you mentally when you’re in bed, and you don’t move. You don’t get those endorphins from movement. You don’t get sunshine, you don’t get all of the things that you mean. So it was it was just so much and then you know, isolation. We were in A new area we had just moved when this happened. And so we really didn’t have anybody coming to visit us very often, we did have some who were just phenomenal. But you know, it was just very lonely, very lonely. And really, yeah, very challenging, very traumatic. But when that happened, we, I think we talked about this before, before we started recording, the mindset of this is happening for us, not to us, really became my foundation in life, you know, and that’s everything that has happened ever since when COVID hit, when everything has happened, we’ve just repeated that this is happening for us, not to us, and that has really brought our lives out of the pits, and into this amazing, blessed life where everything has been used for good, you know, this injury, now I get to heal.
So many women, I mean, and men, I’ve, I’ve seen people not be able to function, and then all of a sudden, that pain is eliminated, and they’re able to live their lives. And it’s amazing what has happened. And I think that that mindset was a really big piece of it that this is for our good. And we don’t know what that looks like yet, but we trust it. And then as life progressed, it absolutely worked out. And I think a lot of that was, you know, having wisdom and being prepared. And a lot of what you focus on, really does help bring life into that place of goodness and, and knowing moving forward that if something were to happen, we’re prepared, and we know what to do about it.
Yes, because I think with your relapse, it brings you to this dark space that you can’t explain, it doesn’t matter who comes to visit, you really, I think it gets to the point where you have to get yourself out. And in a lot of my shows I talk about when you go into that space, and you feel like you’re in a really dark room. And you just want to see the light, like literally, that that’s probably used a lot. That statement, but it’s so true, because you want you want brightness, you want happiness, and you want to see the light. And I remember feeling like you just want to walk and you’re touching the walls and you’re touching all around this dark room trying to find this door handle for this door that you know is in that room.
And all you have to do is turn it and then you see a crack in the light of of the door. That’s how I personally felt. Yeah, um, and as soon as you can see the light, it gives you some confidence and some strength to feel. Okay, now I can pull the door open further. Now, oh my goodness, when you see what’s on the other side of that door, it’s everything like you were talking about with your husband, because it gives you this rehab, feeling that Oh, my, you know, it’s everything that you wish for is on that other side of that door. You know, whatever that looks like? Is it a farm? Is it a meadow, you know, is it an ocean, a beach, whatever that looks like, for your personal experience. And I remember that feeling of, of being locked in this room of darkness. But then when I actually saw the door open with the light, it just felt like your brain brought up into oh my gosh, this is where I’m supposed to be going. That’s so good. I don’t know if that made any sense.
Good that hit home. 100%. Really, like that’s still where we’re at. Like, I feel like we are going in levels and then layers with that whole process. Because I think that’s what looks, what it looks like to come out of trauma is to, you know, you see the crack. And so you pull over the door and it’s almost like you can only pull it up and so far each time. And each time you get more hope and you get a more understanding that there’s light in that you can open the door and you get strength and you get revitalized, but I still feel like we’re opening the door. It’s just, you know, which is a wonderful process. I really, really firmly believe it’s a wonderful process. But yeah, I feel like we’re still doing that but just in such a great way where like I see a lot of the light now. Like it’s a lot of light now, but I’m still, you know, opening it further and further.
Yes, and I think jumping into it, but always feeling like oh, I might have to go back inside that door a little bit to get some more strength to to when you relapse like you know and it’s funny what hits you to relapse. You know, sometimes it might be a day. Sometimes it feels like it might just be a week. Sometimes it It feels like it’s a month. It’s very interesting how it fluctuates, and the relapse makes you feel, I can totally see where people can slide into addictions and some sort of rehabilitation of an addiction because it’s so easy to fall into anxiety and depression. Super, super easy.
Yeah. And I don’t think that people have the right tools when they’re going into an injury relapse. I don’t think they do. Because when you have the right tools, hopefully a month would not be the case. Like Yeah, matter what if you’re, if you’re recovered, and then go into an injury relapse, if you have the right tools and the right support, you know, my my general guideline, and everybody is different. But my general guideline is it takes about a week for and everybody’s different. But even for really chronic pain, it takes about a week of doing all of the right things, and it’s kind of an intensive process, but all the right things to get onto the other side of that of that flare up or of that relapse, or whatever it is.
And if it’s a more severe injury, it might take longer. But, you know, I think that before I felt very much like a victim to pain, I felt very much out of control of pain, like it could happen anytime it wanted to. And I had nothing I could do about it, except for just to do some practitioner ping pong, and maybe that would help a little bit. And what I love to tell people is you do not, you have more control than what it seems like we have more power over this inflammation cycle than it feels like, it’s just a very in depth process, to be able to mitigate what’s happening with the body. And number one, the number one thing we need to do is to listen to the warning signs, because that is telling you that a relapse is coming if you do not listen. So when you’re sitting and you feel that back pain, even if it’s like a little bit of tension, that’s a check engine light, that’s that check engine light that your nervous system is trying to jump to that old pattern that’s going to cause a relapse. Or when you feel that neck tension, we need to get up and move we need to ice and heat depending on what the age and area of the injury is we need to rest we need to you know, do something called self myofascial release, we need to, you know, shift things up so that we’re not pushing past and I think so many times when we’re busy, we just push, we just say Shush, body, I’m not listening to you, you don’t matter. That’s not what’s happening in the forefront of membranes, but that’s what we’re saying to our bodies. And then our body say, Okay, I tried to warn you, and then it happens.
Well, that’s really hard to do that to your brain. Yeah. Because, you know, I found it easier when I broke my foot in the accident and tore my meniscus in both my knees because I’m, it’s a physical thing. And so you when you get up and it’s so where you’re like, Okay, like, it’s okay, I’ll work on it. But with your head. You, you don’t feel like you work can work on your head, like you don’t realize it. And so you really have to become aware of your body, like you’re saying, to be aware of how you’re feeling and what’s triggering your head. What what are you having trouble? It’s so so hard.
I so I, I have a disease disease, I don’t know what you would call a chronic illness called postural onset technique. cardia syndrome, which affects how the blood flow can get to my brain. It’s called pots. Okay, yeah, you don’t want to say that fast too many times. Yeah. So when when this hits, like I can be in bed, you know, unable to talk unable to get up unable to do anything, because my brain is not getting enough blood flow. my nervous system isn’t flowing. And it’s the same thing. It’s the same thing where it’s, it’s a brain issue, it’s a heart issue. But my body tells me, my body gives me warning signals.
You know, it tells me Hello, this is my little warning signal to you. And when I don’t listen to it, that’s when things get bad, right? I mean, now, with so many things that we’re dealing with, with brain injuries, with musculoskeletal injuries, with chronic illnesses with all of these things are parties are always talking to us. And our bodies really want to be listened to. And it’s kind of this respect and kind of relationship that you know, it is ourselves but our bodies want to have this relationship with us where our bodies talk to us, and we listen. And then our bodies are like, oh, okay, we’re okay. And then we talk to our bodies, and our bodies.
Listen, because there’s that relationship. But when we don’t listen to our bodies, what happens? Our bodies lash out, you know, they’re like, Well, you didn’t listen. So now I got to do something more. So you listen to me. And then when we try to tell our bodies to do something, our bodies are like you didn’t listen to me. I’m not gonna listen to you. There’s no connection and relationship. And that’s when flare ups of all different shapes and sizes happen. And so that’s one of the biggest components of my coaching with people surprisingly is having a with your body again and being able to listen to your body, which is all much harder than it seems like it would be. It seems like the easiest thing in the world. But you, you know, sit in front of your computer with a million projects and a million things you need to do. And then you tell me that it’s easy.
Yeah. When your body talks to you, then you tell me, it’s easy. It’s not easy.
I wouldn’t want to be in your boat with two little kids and having all those issues. Because you? Do you take time for yourself, then do you really take moments to Oh, you, you better believe that actually, today, I dumped self care day, I dubbed it a holiday. And I actually shared it on my stories. I was like, this is a holiday everybody. Everybody do stop what you’re doing and do some self care. Because that’s the only way for me, with my body, which is so sensitive. That’s the only way. And my husband is the most incredibly supportive human being in the world. And I even told him, you know, what are you doing for self care today, cuz he’s so supportive of me doing that, I have to tell him, you know, you plan out your self care, so that you get that too, because we all need it so much. But in the mornings, I have my time for movement, I have my time for reading, I have my time for meditation, I have my time for nutrition. You know, it’s so important to me that I have that schedule in place. And I have that structure where I am taking care of myself, I’m doing corrective exercise for my body, because it will always need it. And then I set my day with a priority, which my priority is being well, first and foremost.
And then it’s taking care of my family and loving on my family. And then it’s my business and taking care of my clients, which I love so much. And they’re so such a high priority for me. But if I don’t have those priorities set, then what happens when my children start screaming or crying? Because they’re the baby and a toddler. They’re wonderful, but they have emotions. They’re human. Yeah. So what happens when they start doing that? And I’m, you know, and I’m trying to get my project done, and I’m stressed, okay, well, I need to make sure I’m well first. So I need to take a moment and breathe and determine what I need. And then my family is second. So if I need to move something, or shift something, they’re important, they are my priority, and then my project, and that helps to really clear things up so that I’m taking care of myself, my family gets taken care of, it doesn’t feel so muddled and overwhelming and complicated, right?
Because the kids can really push push those buttons, you know, for you So, and I, I like to think of it as it really helps me to think of it as they’re human beings with valid emotions. And they’re just trying their best to tell me what they need, they just don’t know how to tell me.
So that really helps me to not feel like they’re pushing my buttons so much as they’re just they have a need, and they don’t know how to explain it. And so that really helps alleviate some of that stress or even like, yeah, it’s not always there. I mean, it’s definitely I have my moments.
That’s for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz it’s hard to get away from them to to get some quiet time for you for yourself. It’s always a struggle for a mom to put themselves first, which is the toughest thing ever. It is so important. But yeah, not even after but yeah, but doable when you’ve had an injury and you have no other choice.
And now that I’m out of the injury, I know how important it is.
Yeah. Did. How did it change for your outlook? Because the trauma with your first relapse when once you got married, seemed to be the worst of the whole time? How did that make you feel about being prepared? You know, are you have you really changed your mindset? Now, because when you’re young, and beautiful, and you’re living your best life, and you have no worries in life, and I remember those days, and you just think you’re invincible, and nothing’s gonna happen to you.
Yeah. And we were talking earlier about this. But it’s such a beautiful thing to realize that we’re not invincible. It really changes the way that we make our decisions. And I think it makes our lives Fuller. And it it just, I don’t know, I think it brings in more gratitude. I think it brings in more wisdom. I think it brings in, you know, more for our children so that when you know if something happens, they’re taken care of. So absolutely. When this happened, it really affected my mindset. It showed me that and I think for me, one of the biggest pieces of being prepared for me is to always take care of my body. And that may seem like a very abstract way of being prepared, but I have to always be prepared for something happening for my body and always take care of it and that’s how I thrive but I I have a condition where it’s called Ehlers danlos Syndrome, I have all this stuff going on where you know, things can fall apart in my body.
And I always have to be prepared with that and always just be on top of it. So I’d say that’s number one for me is just always being prepared for potential of relapse potential of instability in my body potential of chronic pain, and, you know, not in a stressful way, but always taking care of myself and listening to my body so that I’m not getting to that point. And then beyond that, you know, with COVID, hit with all these things have happened, we actually had fires here in the northwest, I think you may have had, I don’t know where you may have to, but when that happened, you know, really became apparent that we’re vulnerable to whatever happens around us, we’re really, you know, at the whim of nature, with this type of stuff. So we formed plans for having our generators having you know, we’ll be moving soon, so that we have more land so that we can have our garden and be you know, more sustainable and have our chickens and have our food and, and so it really did cause us to form backup plans in so many areas of our life, so that we’re not so vulnerable, and we really can be more sustainable within ourselves.
I like how you were able to be better prepared for your family. And you also spoke about being better prepared in your business as well.
Yes, and that’s a big thing for us is we care so much about our clients than if you know, if anything were to happen to me, even with health things, or anything else, we actually hired on a full team of physical therapists or economists, corrective exercise specialists, so that it can still be a well oiled machine functioning and running. You know, if, if I have something happening with my health, it can still be just a beautiful, beautiful team, doing their job healing people. So that’s definitely always in my mind is how can I set things up to be sustainable?
We talk about that in some of the shows as well for entrepreneurs. Because if something happened to your hands, something happened to you not feeling well, if something took you down for a day, or a week, or a month, or whatever that looks like, how can your job? or How can your business continue operating? And we talk about sometimes lining up that other person that could you could work in conjunction with, like another physio therapist with another physio therapist. So if they go on holidays, or if they get sick, the other person can look after that side of things. And I don’t think we do that enough. Because we don’t think anything’s gonna happen. So the problem comes is when you don’t have something hat when you have something happen and you’re not prepared, then who are you going to rely on? You’re going to be calling your clients and saying, I’m sorry, I can’t see you this week or next week? Yeah. But you, you know, then they go off looking for their own person. And now you’ve lost them as a client. It’s like a hairdresser.
I don’t know about you. But when you want your hair done, you want your hair done. Yeah, like you can’t wait a month, you can’t wait two months. When you want your hair done. That’s an end your specific, I don’t know, most people are very particular about the physiotherapist that they see. Or their chiropractor, or hairdresser. They’ve built a relationship with them. And when you aren’t there for your customer or your client. They’re gonna find someone else. Yeah, so yeah. So that’s awesome. How you were able to implement that. So well. What about your personal stuff? What about your family stuff? Have you I’m sure it made you realize a little bit different in that field area area of things, too.
I, I am not as good at this as I should. And I, you know, we have our paperwork together. But we definitely need to do a better job of getting copies to our family, getting a copy of our key to our family members doing more of those things. So I was actually thinking when you were talking about your app, I’m kidding. Go on your app, and look at what you are talking about there and see what else we need to do. Because we’re just in this process. And I think we’re always growing in it. Especially busy life. I mean, I want to say to anybody watching, if you have a busy life, I get it. I get it. And it can be hard to be prepared when you’re busy. And so we try to take it in steps as realistic as we can. And so I’d say that’s probably the next step for sure is yes. delving more into that because we have some we have some of that taken care of, but we need more.
Yes. And sometimes we just need the education like you offer in your business. To understand why do I need that? Yeah. So and then it becomes easier to do it when you Know why, absolutely. But if you don’t know why everything’s like, Oh, I don’t want to do that. It’s like income tax. I don’t want to do that. And can I do it? Like, well, it is what it is like, Oh, well, but it’s not that way. When it happens, it’s like, why didn’t I do that?
Yeah. Yeah, that’s so true. And knowing your why is so important. Absolutely. And knowing that these things can happen. And I don’t think it’s a scary thing, it’s not something to be scared with. It’s not something to be stressed or worried or anxious about, because I, you know, I don’t think that that always leads to positive, change your behaviors, either. I think it’s just having the wisdom of knowing we’re not invincible. That’s a good thing. You know, we just have to be wise about it. And we have to be prepared as much as we can be. And, and Dave Ramsey, I don’t know if you’ve ever listened to him. But he always says, you know, it’s funny how the people who have the emergency fund don’t often need to use it, because something just tends to happen when we’re, when we’re prepared.
It’s Dugard, but things tend to be, you know, less emergency-ish. Yes, things tend to happen when we’re prepared. Absolutely odd thing.
Yeah. And and some people say, well, we’re, I don’t want to do that, because that’s like setting it up. Right happen. But it doesn’t. Yeah, I think, you know, and that’s, I do believe that mindset has so much to do with how our lives form. And I don’t want to go whoo poopoo with that, but I do think that our mindsets do help us create circumstances. And so that’s why I’m just so adamant about you know, it’s not a fear based thing, this is no being afraid that things are just going to constantly happen to us.
This is just knowing that you want to have the best life possible. So how can you form that? How can you make your life just so bulletproof and so solid, and it’s really just such a positive way of life, knowing that you’re taking care of your children or taking care of, you don’t believe that that’s the case, and that that will happen, but you’re ready for anything, I think it’s just a great way of living well, and it feels good, and it feels empowering. Just like what you would empower, you’re giving the tools in a toolbox to someone to empower them to take over their own life. And that’s super, super important when you’re injured, as well as mental and mental injury of some sort, as well as a physical, but also for planning planning gives you that empowerment. Because if you like I was so sorry to hear this morning, that your mom had a stroke, lots of love and prayers out to her. But it also makes you remind you that you could be prepared in your own life, in your own between your partner in you. But maybe you should start having those family conversations with your mom, or your dad, or your brother or your sister to find out.
Do they have their stuff organized? Do they have a plan? Because I’m going to be the one having to look after that point. And time when something does occur? Yeah, yeah. So it makes it more sensible to have a worksheet to be able to have that conversation. And, and find out what their wishes are, you know, whatever that looks like and help them get their stuff together as well. So it helps everybody all around. really does, what kind of final messages Would you like to give our listeners today?
I think that anybody listening in who thinks they have pink doesn’t think who has pain, who has this ongoing, you know, chronic pain or any type of pain, what I want to leave behind is just, you know, you don’t have to live that way. That isn’t life, that even if you’ve tried multiple things, and it hasn’t worked, that’s not the way that life has to be. And you know, the biggest thing that I would say to do is to listen to your body to start listening to your body. And then as far as pain goes, as far as injury relapse goes, as far as all of those things, even you know if you have never had an injury but you have pain that could lead to a really big injury. That’s typically how it happens. So without all of that the biggest way that you can be prepared is to listen to your body when it talks to you and do not push past those check engine lights, do what you need to to listen to your body and respond to it and that relieves pain and protects you to such a high level.
Thank you That’s that’s really beautiful because it could be fiber mile myalgia or it could be all sorts of different things that are causing you the pain in whatever area that is. And it’s, it’s understanding your body and knowing the signs? And is that what you really help with this, to help people understand the signs, we help with everything. I mean, our program really is built to fill in the reasons why people haven’t been able to heal, and the reasons why people keep having pain. So a part of that is coaching them through understanding what is happening with their bodies and how to stop it. That’s a big part of the coaching. But then we also do ergonomic evaluations, creating a pain free workspace, right, because that’s a big root of the problems. Or if people sit in their cars or sit on the couch, we do ergonomic coaching for those things. We do physical therapy, we do corrective exercise where we’re correcting every pain point head to toe, because so often people can only get one pain point covered in a physical therapist or a physiotherapy office.
So we make sure that we’re correcting everything happening from head to toe. And then we also give that video tutorial program where people can keep that for the rest of their lives to fix all it’s happening from head to toe in a really specialized process. And then we also ship massage tools to them so they can do self massage, they can release those angry muscles. And we do a lot of a lot of coaching around the mental, the mental issue of you know, just not listening to our bodies and not being able to respond the way we need to. So it’s very comprehensive, but it’s wonderful and and we love the process of seeing our people.
That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s really awesome. Well, thank you listeners. I’m Thank you, Tracy for coming on today. From beautiful Vancouver, Washington. You’re only a hop, skip and a jump away from me today. No, we’re close by. Yes, absolutely. And we’re both in Vancouver, but a different country. Different Vancouver. So funny. Oh, thank you. And listeners, please like, share and subscribe. Take that moment and really think about maybe you could be sending this video to somebody that you know that struggling. Tracy’s information I have made sure that we’ve put down below in the description box. Because as you know, as we’ve talked about in our show today, nobody’s Superman, and no one is getting out of this life alive. And I hate to say that, I did want to say one thing really quickly I was interrupt, you know, anyone is having pain, you can join my facebook group where I share tutorials, free education resources, like the whole goal there is that no matter what you have a path forward and you have education, you have resources. So that’s on Facebook, the work pain free community, feel free to join everybody’s welcome. So that’s a really great resource.
So I wanted to add that in.
Awesome. Okay, I’m sure I have that link as well down below for everybody. So that might be a start for everyone to join and then get the feeling of the community and, and pursue it from there. That’s awesome. Thank you so much. Stay tuned for for the next podcast or live video that your backup plan and talking taboo with Tina. That sounds a lot of tease. And that’s what we’re all about. We talk about the real raw conversations, the taboo subjects that we don’t normally speak about. And that’s what we’re all about. So I really appreciate Tracy you coming on our show. Thank you, our listeners as well for listening. And I always end our show with Carol Burnett because she’s just a wonderful, wonderful person. So I’m so glad we had this time together just to have a laugh or sing a song. Seems we just get started. And before you know it comes a time we have to say so long. So so long listeners.
Thank you, Tracy. Much love to you and your mom sent her love lots of love and wishes from us. And all our listeners send out prayers to Tracy’s mom for her struggle with her stroke. I hear she’s doing well. So let’s keep that road going there for her. And for our COVID people. I hope you’re recovering well and stay safe. Lots of love. And if you are listening to the show today, and you are thinking about someone special in your life, please send out a message. Pick up the phone, send them a text, tell them how much you love them. Because you don’t know what tomorrow will bring. You don’t know how that might change tomorrow. So do that today. Stay Safe Be Kind till next time
TRACY RODRIGUEZ WITH WORK PAINFREE COMMUNITY
www.instagram.com/tracyrodriguezces
www.facebook.com/groups/workpainfreecommunity/
Accident, Disability Planning, Family Planning, Sickness
RE-WRITE YOUR STORY AND MAKE IT HAPPEN!
Re-write your Story and make it happen, our interview today with Paul Forchione, a Mindset coach that focuses on self help. He has a guide on his website. He was born with cerebral palsy. And I’m so blessed to have you on our show. very honored that you came on to our show to talk more about your journey.
“Cerebral Palsy slows me down, but it ain’t stoppin’ me!”, Unknown
So that other people that are struggling with with family friends themselves. That, you know, there there is a light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. So would you like to start with? Where’s it all started for you, Paul?
Well, first off, Tina, thank you so much for allowing me to be on your show. I’m so excited to be here.
I love live, you know, anything can happen live. So I love that. So thank you very much. So you alluded to me having cerebral palsy. And if your viewers don’t know what cerebral palsy is, it’s lack of oxygen to the brain at labor. And as a result of this lack of oxygen to the brain and labor, it can leave one side of the body paralyzed and affect your speech. Can you no slow up everything. And this is permanent, this does not go away. Well, when I was born, I wasn’t moving the right side of my body very much. And obviously my mom was concerned. So she took me to the doctor’s for testing to see what was going on with me. And after some testing was done that I was tested for having cerebral palsy. And at the time, the doctors thought it was so severe that they thought I would never ever be able to walk and when I got to a certain age, it would be a good idea to get me in a wheelchair because that was going to be my life going forward. Well, thank goodness for great mom. She didn’t go with that diagnosis. She got her their opinions, found a physician that thought they could help me. And that’s all my mom needed. So from then on physical therapy every single day. And with this physician’s help, I was able to walk at age three. I don’t really remember that. But obviously that was a huge feat because these other doctors thought I would never ever be able to walk and I was walking. So right then and there. That was awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Like I said, I remember it. So it affected your right arm and your right leg or both. Yeah, or halfway through my body. Thank goodness never affected my speech. But it affects my right my right side of my body from my arms all the way up to my legs. Yes. No, my right legs, told my right side of my body. Yes. That is correct. So so to walk if you were alright with your left leg, but you just, it wouldn’t coincide with your right side, I guess.
Yeah, I mean, I walked with a little bit of a limp and I hold my right arm a little bit differently. But overall,
I’m pretty pretty mobile. Yeah, awesome. That’s amazing. Um, as I was, as I described, I had a cat who had cerebral palsy and his both back legs wouldn’t work. And so he was like, he was a skater. And he moved his front paw up and he took over and he could get around like crazy. He even almost ran, but he couldn’t go to the washroom very well standing because he’d fall over. But yeah, so I understand. I understand.
Yeah. So like I said, I don’t really remember walking at three. But obviously that was a huge Feat. But I do remember being put into soccer when I was five or six years old. And at the time, I probably could run about 25 to 50 yards. And obviously these other kids can run laps around the soccer field. They’re actually playing soccer. I’m basically staying there and I remember seeing my mom, this is ridiculous. I’m basically standing here these other kids are playing soccer around me and I’m just standing it I don’t want to play soccer anymore. I want to quit. And I’m I remember my mom telling me this. She said if you don’t wanna play Software anymore, that’s fine. But you need to honor your commitments.
So we need to finish out the soccer season. And after soccer season, if you don’t want to play soccer anymore, that’s your prerogative, but we need to finish out the season. So that’s what that happened. I’m 40 years old. I’ve never played soccer since. But I did finish out that soccer season. So I got a big break, when I was about six or seven years old, I got surgery on my right foot to tighten up the tendon in my right foot. And give me a little bit more spring in my step and kind of take away the pain that I was feeling when I was running, and then test this out yet. But I remember switching schools around this the same time, I was probably in first grade, I believe. And I remember my first day of physical education. And we did our stretches. And the teacher said, Okay, guys, now run a lap. And I’m thinking to myself, here we go again, I’m going to run 25 to 50 yards, and I’m going to have to stop and these kids are going to see it. And they’re going to start to tease me because that’s all I could do. But because of my surgery, it was different. I remember going past that point where I normally have to stop. And I remember seeing myself, come on, Paul, you got this. But keep going keep going.
And I finished the lap with these other kids on the outside. But I kept it nice and cool. But on the inside I was like yes, yes, yes. The first time in my life where I just fit in. I didn’t stand out like I normally did. And because of the surgery, things got easier for me, but I would not consider me easy. I switched schools, and middle school junior high. So my 12 or 13 years old. And that’s a tough age period just being you get alone. That’s a tough age, because they already had their cliques. They’ve already been to school together for years and years. They don’t have any they don’t have any time for any new kids. So I was a new kid. Plus I had a disability I walk with a little bit of lip, and I hold my right arm a little bit differently. So it was brutal getting into the school. Very as bullied.
Well, yeah, because kids will pick on every single day and they can pick on anything right for you. They’ll find something to pick on. Oh, yeah.
Absolutely. And I was an easy target. I was an absolute easy target. They were picking on me. And I was raised Catholic. So my mom wanted me to go to Catholic High School. So around the same time, I take an assessment test to see where I was at academically to see where they were going to place me when I got to high school. Well, I must have bombed the test is when I met with the principal and my and my and my mom, the principal says to us, we’re going to put Paul at the lowest level possible. And I don’t expect much from him. He does not seem like he’s college material. Yeah. So I go back to school. The next day, I go back to school I was in the weekend when I took the test and that met with the principal, go back to school Monday, I’m defeated. I’m bullied and teased, you know, now I feel like I’m stupid to on top of this, right? And I’m crying myself to sleep pretty much most nights going, Why me? Why do I have to be different? Why can I just fit in? Why can I just be one of the other kids. I don’t know what really came over me. But I was sick and tired of feeling anger and sad all the time. Because those are my go to emotions. And I knew deep down they were not my go to emotions.
But because of the environment I was in those were the emotions that were coming up most of the time for me, and I was tired of it. So I thought to myself, what can I do distract me from these feelings? What if I set a goal for myself and I could focus in on the goal. And I could kind of ignore the noise that was happening all around my my world. So I thought what could I do? What? What goal Can I set for myself? And at the time, I love baseball. So I said okay, what if I tried to make my varsity high school baseball team? So I said, Okay, let’s go. So I played fall ball, winter ball, spring ball. And if I wasn’t doing that I was throwing a tennis ball against the wall. And I was doing this constantly. I’m students over and over and over again. And the beautiful thing about this, Tina, I know this now, I didn’t know this when I was doing it. But I know this definitely happened now, I changed the energy that I was putting out to these other kids. I had my shoulders back my head up. And as a result of this new energy that I was that was showing to these kids. In turn, they were giving me a different energy back. Instead of bullying and teasing me they start rooting for me. So my my middle school to junior high career was much different from my high school all because of my energy shift all because of I changed the way I perceived myself as a person. And as a result of this hard work and this new energy shift.
I was able to make my varsity baseball team as a junior and a senior. Yeah. Yeah. And I graduated, I graduated high school. And I started to really think about what that principle said to me many, many years earlier about not being college material. Because when I played when I was in high school, I pretty much mailed it in I just did enough to stay eligible to play baseball because I thought to myself, well I’m not college material. Why waste my time studying any harder. It’s wasted time just do enough to get by and graduate. And that’s exactly what I did. But I started to really think about that goal I set for myself, being a varsity baseball player. And I was able to accomplish that when I made that goal in junior high Middle School. I thought it was near impossible. I thought I wasn’t going to do it. But I did. So I thought to myself, What if I set another goal for myself? What if I made a goal to say to myself that I am college material. So I enrolled into a junior college because that was the only place that would accept me at the time. And I got myself a math tutor, I got myself a regular tutor, I went to the map, I did this, I did everything I needed to do to increase that GPA. So I took my 2.0, barely 2.0 all the way to 3.5, where it was out able to transfer to a four year university where I was able to graduate college.
And I so wanted to go back to that principle and say, see, see, you’re wrong. I am college material. But you know, in the end, I should probably think this principle because in my head, I don’t know if I would have had that motivation to really go after and I had her voice playing in my head, when I would have these dark moments like this is too hard. This is too hard. And having her voice saying I’m not college material. I’m not college material. And I just wanted to do it so bad. So I did it. And so she gave me the motivation. So I thank her for giving me that motivation. And it was it was huge, huge in my life. Now I graduate college, I have no life experience whatsoever. I have no idea what the heck I want to do with myself at all. No clue, no clue. I had a family friend who was a CEO of a bank. And he said, Why don’t you become a mortgage loan officer, I’ll hire you. And I’m like, why not? I got nothing else going on my life right now. Let’s try it. Let’s go for it. So I get in. And right off the bat, no one wants to talk to me. Oh,
I’m going back to my days in junior high. I feel what the heck, nobody wants to talk. Yeah, like this is crazy. And I quickly realized the problem, why they didn’t want to talk to me. And the reason why they didn’t want to talk to me is because they knew I knew the CEO. So they knew was the name.
I knew it wasn’t because of my talents. So what they were going to do is they were going to chew me up and spit me out because I had no business being there. So I thought, Okay, well, let’s dig in and prove them wrong. So I had, I had a great attitude. I never complained about the workload, I did whatever needs to be done to get the job done. And from afar, because they didn’t want to talk to me, I was observing what the top loan officers did on a daily basis. And I remember my first day of wanting to go out in the field and get loans for the first time. And the CEO, my family friend stops me goes, What are you doing? And I’m like, I’m gonna go out and get loans. And he has a concerned look on his face and says, No, no, no, no, no, you are definitely not ready yet. We need to get you some more training, which is more training, then we’ll send you out in the field. I’m like, No, no, no, no, no, no, I’ve got this. Let’s go. Let’s go. So he’s like, All right, go. So I want and I fell on my face constantly.
I didn’t know. He was right. I needed way more training. But I just kept going falling on my face. I was getting used by these sites. I had no idea really what I was doing. But slowly but surely, I started to figure out the value I could add to these clients. And once I started to learn that slowly, but surely, I started to get loans, loans, loans, loans, loans. And two years later, I became a top producer in this company. And the people that didn’t want to talk to me when I first got there. And now coming to me asked me questions on how he was able to get so many loans at such a short period of time. It was such a great feeling. And I really, really enjoyed the mortgage interview for many years, but then 2008 2009 hit, the economy just tanked. I would get a job. And the whole company would go belly up, I get another job and the whole company would go belly up. So I was really losing the luster of being in this industry. And I remember one of my last places I was at, they hired this motivational speaker to talk to our sales team to kind of motivate us get us get our sales numbers up. And the guy blew me away. The guy was awesome. So I made a point to talk to him after to tell him how great of a job he did.
And he told me he started as a life coach, my life coach, what Matt heck is that? And he explained it to me and I’m like, you know what, maybe that’s what I want to do. Maybe that’s where I want to go with things right? So on the off time of being in the mortgage industry, I was getting my coaching certificate I started telling people Hey, I want to start to get into this coaching and then people just your me ago okay life coach, go out and save the world. But make sure you get some loans at the same time. But yeah, so this was going on. But then things got really serious, right, I got all my licensing. I got my website up and I was gonna do it on the side to get get to Get going at it. And I remember the legal team coming to me and goes, What? What are you doing?
And I explained what my plan was. And I’m like, this could be a conflict of interest, we’re gonna have to get back to you. I’m like, oh, that does not sound good. And they came back this five page report of what I couldn’t couldn’t say, while I was working at this bank. And I thought to myself, there’s no way I’m going to get any traction in the coaching world, if I follow this to the tee. So I’m going to have to make some changes. So I spent a year changing the way my spending habits paying off my debts knowing full well that if I’m doing this, I’m not going to make money for quite a while. So I changed all that up. And then I quit. And people were like, what in the heck are you doing? You just made president’s club at the at this bank, one of the highest honors and you’re quitting? I go, yep, I’m quitting. They’re like, this life coaching thing. This ain’t gonna last man, this is a flash in the pan, you’ll be back and I’m like, okay, so so I left and and for a while. I wasn’t doing well at coaching at all. I it was, it was very, very hard. And I thought they were right, I’m gonna have to go back.
Then I really had this realization of how am I allowing these people be vulnerable with me if I’m not going to be vulnerable with them? See, Tina, the story told you about having cerebral palsy. I wanted to bury that story. I want to tell anybody that story. Because all through growing up, all I wanted to do is fit in I didn’t want to stand out. I didn’t want I just want to be treated like everybody else. So just even bringing up the cerebral palsy almost put me to tears because I just didn’t want to go there. didn’t want to go there at all. And when I walked with a lip, I made up some stupid story like, oh, softball, injury, something silly. That works. Yeah, exactly. And, but but I thought, you know what, the only way I’m gonna do attraction in this business is if I’m vulnerable, if I share my story and where I’m coming from. So I started doing that. And the amazing thing about that is I remember my first client, my first client comes up to me goes, Paul, I don’t have cerebral palsy. But I have this. And I feel like you can help me, because you’ve been there before. I want your help. And it just built from there from just being vulnerable. And that brings me to today talk with you.
Yeah, it’s not the truth, though. I mean, what did you like about doing the mortgages? What part of that business Did you like?
I’m a people person. So I thought it was so cool. That on a Monday morning, I was driving to place to place not in a cubicle selling, you know, and I thought, Oh, this is this the best. These other people are in a cubicle Monday morning. But no, I’m driving around la trying to get loans, seeing different places. It was amazing. I loved it.
You have the freedom? Yes. Now, did you find people prepared with their crap? did you die? Because my clients? Yeah, cuz then.
No, no, no. I mean, it was. But yeah, a lot of them were not prepared. Yes, I agree with that. Yes.
They don’t know what they’re spending. They don’t know what they have for documents. They don’t know where their last T for slip is for their employment. They don’t know where, what their last income tax assessment was. I mean, I could, the list goes on. I’ve helped so many people. I’ve never sold mortgages, but I have sold real estate and I’ve sold insurance. And I’ve talked this to people all the time people ask me, Well, what do I need to have ready to ask about a mortgage? Like, what do I need to ask, what do I need to have prepared? Oh, I don’t know where that stuff is. So yeah. And so what did you find about 80 90% of people are like that?
Well, it was just really sad. Because part of the record part of the requirement that we required at the banks that I worked at most of them anyway, you had to have at least two two months reserves. So in other words, if you were to lose your job, you’d be able to make your your your mortgage payment, property taxes and insurance for two months while you’re looking for other work. And the sad thing that that I found, when I’ve asked these people that, you know, I need bank statements showing two months of this, and a lot of them said, we don’t have that. And I thought, wow, that’s sad. Because what like we talked about backstage was, you know, that backup plan, if something were to go wrong, what do you do, and if they don’t have two months to pay their mortgage, if something were to go wrong, they’re going to be in a lot of trouble. They’re probably going to have to sell their home.
Well, not only That, Paul, but just think of it if if one of them ended up in the hospital with COVID, unable to talk, and how does how do people if you have no money in in a reserve to be able to pay those bills that need to be paid? So when you come out of the hospital, your world is still there, as you know it. You know, can you imagine if, if somebody is not going to be looking after that stuff?
I yeah, it’s just it’s a scary thought. But unfortunately, they’re, you know, they’re so focused on the right, this moment that they just can’t go there, they can’t go there. They’re just looking right in front of them. And they’re not gonna look any further. And and I find that a common theme with a lot of my clients are great people. They’re great people great, love them great family, people love their family, and do anything for the family. But they’re just not thinking ahead.
Right? No, that’s awesome. And I’m sure you enjoyed that part with working with the people that I love.
I love talking with different people from different backgrounds, you know, we talk about food, talk about sports, whatever, you know, just got to know where they’re coming from. And it was really cool. You get another perspective in life it was right. Now, that’s awesome. how you’ve been able to go from possibly not walking to being one of the top sales people to now switching and coaching? And how do you think that’s affected people that you work in working with? Now? How do you find that? Does it always come out with you with every single client?
I mean, it’s such a passion of yours really. And truly, even though you didn’t want to talk about it, because it had a lot of hurt. Yeah, with it. Um, but now, look at you go. Look at how much you’ve accomplished. So amazing. And to be able to help others, right. Yeah. And I think that Oh, yeah, yeah. And I think that the thing that that I have that’s helped me is, is that empathy factor that they know, I’ve been through the struggle. So when they, when I’m talking, they know where it’s coming from, it’s coming from the soul and the heart like I’ve been there, I’ve gone where you’re where you’re at right now, I know how hard it is. So that empathy factor is huge on when I talk with them. And then when I have to be strong with them, because, you know, sometimes I have to snap them out of it.
You know, they get in this pattern of negativity, and I need to snap them out of it. They know where I’m coming from, they’re coming, that I’m coming from a place of love. Because I’ve been there I’ve been with the negative thought thinking too. And I have done things in my life to help me with that negative thinking when that happens, what I need to do, and I now now give that information to my clients, because it’s daily is something that you never master. It’s something that you have to work on every single day. And it’s so so important. self love, what you tell yourself on a daily basis is extremely important. Because if you’re not right there, how are you going to be able to take care of your family? How are you going to be able to accomplish your goals, because when I’m angry, and I’m sad, I’m not very productive at all. So I’m not well ready to take on my feet, help out my family, or go after the goals I want to go after are given a real goal at my job or start my own business, whatever, whatever it is for that person. I’m not there if I’m always angry or sad.
And that’s true, you can’t think you’re working at a very different functional level. What do you find now with working with people? does it bring up? I mean, you probably work with it every day, of course, this mindset, but I remember going to a baseball camp. And a coach told us once because when you go up to bat, it’s like life. You might be scared of that pitcher, they might have switch pitchers on you. And now I can hear all the kids yelling Oh my god, she’s so good. You know, when my girls were playing, and I say stop worrying about her and start worrying about yourself. Don’t Don’t even think like think the ball is super slow. It’s a beach ball coming at you think that she’s the worst pitcher ever? And and just change your mindset when you go up to bat like you’ve got this. And yeah, it’s funny how I always come back to hitting the ball at that point, because it’s all what’s in your mind.
It’s almost not anything of what you do with the bat. I know it is but you have to of course hit it in the right place and everything but, um, but it’s just so much more with your mindset. And I remember this coach was saying Oh, Hey girls, if you you put 10 dimes in your right pocket in the morning. And that night, you see how many of those coins are switched to your left pocket. And by doing that, every time you have a negative thought, you take one of those times and you move it into your left pocket. And so you become more aware of your negative thoughts and trying to switch them. Because you know how darn hard that is to first recognize that you’re thinking negatively. And secondly, how do you get through that negative thought, and that’s what you’re talking about, is trying to be more positive thoughts. And I don’t know if you’ve ever heard that before. But that was one baseball coach that gave us that tip.
I love that I think that’s a great little exercise to do, and I see what it’s doing. Because it’s all about awareness. That’s what you were saying, right? There’s aware, hey, I have these, these thoughts in my head, you know, well, maybe I shouldn’t have these thoughts in my head, maybe I should change it. But the first thing that has to happen is you need to be aware of these, this negative thinking that you’re thinking about yourself. That’s number one. And once you start to be aware of these thoughts, then you can change that pattern of thinking. And I love what you said about the baseball because you’re so right. You can’t control who they put out as pitcher, you can’t, they could be the best pitcher wherever they could be the worst pitcher, whatever, you can’t control that. But what you can control is your mindset, you can control what you do at the plate.
Well, how you handle yourself. So how I handle myself at the plate was you know what I’m going to do. And if I strike striking, out swinging, and that’s how it’s going to go down. And I can hold my head up high, because I did what I had to do. And you know what? It got me this time. But you know what? The second at bat, it’s going to be a different story. Right? Because now you’ve seen it. So now you can hit it. Right? Absolutely right. Yep, that’s exactly right. You’re right. It’s funny how it everything comes back to sports, isn’t it? Well, for me it does, cuz I love sports. But yeah, I mean, so that’s the analogies that come up when I’m talking with my clients. So I have one client, and she’s awesome, but she doesn’t know sports at all. And I’ll bring it up these analogies to the sport, start with the sports. So it’s kind of fun. We have a kind of a fun little dancer about it.
Yeah, but I find it does. I I’m not really sure why it does. But it does for business it does for your personal life. Everything that I’ve learned over the years, it’s all seem to have come from sports. It’s very strange how that happens. Next, sports. Yep. So you focus on self help. So that Sure. So you’ve been able to either help people with their relationship moving forward because of self help. And you’ve been able to help people with their own business or whatever your whatever you’re finding with clients.
You know, it’s the funniest thing about the whole thing is, they’ll come to me for whatever, you know, their business or relationships or whatever, but down deep, and all starts with that the person inside themselves. And when they start doing that, when they start to evaluate themselves, and start to change the way they think about themselves. All the other stuff comes into play, they start to have better relationships with their family, they start to do better at their work or start a new business they have they have, they have the motivation to do it. Because it all starts within ourselves. And it’s it’s huge. I like to use this analogy. You know, when you’re going on a plane, and the students goes over the safety things, they say, make sure you put on your mask first, before you help anybody else. And that’s the same thing in life. You got to make sure you’re right first before you start to do anything else. Because if you don’t do it that way, you’re going to be going in quicksand, it’s not going to be very productive. So you need to stop what you’re doing and worry about yourself. It’s not being selfish, it’s unnecessary to get to where you need to be Take care of yourself first, and everything else will fall into place. After being a mom.
I think that that’s a hard concept. Because as a mom when you have little kids anyways, you don’t think of yourself first at least I know I didn’t. That was obviously mistaken. part because I think that you can only be as strong as you are for yourself for your relationship. And then for your family. I guess it goes like that. But you don’t want to analyze it like that when you’re in it. You know, you don’t think, Oh, I’m not doing my own stuff for myself today, because you’re, you’re just you put all your efforts as a mom to your kids. And I, I’m not really sure how you can do you have clients like that, where it’s a struggle.
Being a mom, I’m a man, I’m not a mom. But that’s one of the hardest jobs to be as a mom, I bottom line, it is very, very hard. But one thing that I know that that helps, is stop feeling guilty when you take care of yourself, if you can stop just doing that. So stop feeling guilty, things will come into play, and you know what your kids will be in a better spot. If you do it that way. It is truly the case. When you feel good about yourself down deep. Your kids will see it they feed off your energy, especially when you talk about little kids, they feed off that energy so that they know mom’s not right, that affects them too. So it’s super important that moms take care of themselves, get that massage that you’ve been putting off, don’t do it, don’t put it off, get it go on that vacation with your with your with your husband, for the weekend or whatever, do it. Do those things, because it’s gonna make a huge difference in your child’s life.
Yes, I sometimes tell the story as a mom, because I remember my daughter, I think my youngest one was about I want to say 10 or 10, I guess. And I remember one morning and she said Oh mom, my girlfriend, my my friends coming over to play. And I said okay, well, I didn’t realize that having my flannel pajamas still on. not sexy at all. And here she comes in the door with her mom, all dressed to the hilt, black leather jacket, you know, black pants, black leather pants, like, high heels off. And I’m just like, oh my god, I have to go and hide. I can’t see her with my yucky flannel pajamas on and see her out the door. And I just, I just did it anyways, I had no choice, I had nowhere to hide. So at that point, that was kind of a wake up call to me to be honest, to say, Why do I feel so bad? Even in flannel pajamas? What’s wrong with me? You know, like, you don’t have to be all dressed up all the time. You don’t have to, you know, um, but yeah, that was a hard learning curve. For me. And I think a lot of moms probably feel the same. Because I don’t know, if you’ve experienced this, but going to the school and you see it, there is a true quite a few movies about Bad Moms. And they all have to do with school. Because we are we’re always always trying to compare ourselves to others. And I think you have to stop doing that as well.
You can’t compare yourself to anybody else, it’s just impossible to do, you do not know where somebody starting line is. And you do not know where their finishing line is. So stop comparing. Just try to be the best person you can be. And if some if you feel like somebody is ahead of you ask for help and say, Hey, how’d you get to that level? What did you do to get there? And because most of the time they’re gonna be flat, and they’re like, oh, why don’t you think I’m at a high level? Because in their head, they’re like, well, I don’t feel like I’m at that high level. And then but they’ll they’ll be like, Oh, well, I’m going to help you. And they’re going to feel good about helping you. So it’s, it’s so important than to throw that out. That’s it goes back to the self help self esteem. Don’t compare yourself to anybody else. You just just don’t know where they’re, you don’t know where they were their heads out, you don’t know what’s going through their head, they have their struggles that you do not know about. So don’t go there. Right now, the best person you can be and things will come into play.
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s hard to do course as a mom and all the stuff that you have to do but I wish I would have known you way back then. To to make my life easier, that would have been lovely. And so moving forward. Do you get a lot of people with their own businesses because that’s like having their own other family on the side and that’s a that’s a struggle for time management, their own life and working their business.
Yeah. I get a lot, I get a lot of people, a lot of other coaches, that they come to me that they’re starting their business, and they want to know how I was able to do it, how they how they can implement it. So that’s, that’s a huge thing. And a lot of them are running their tail around, you know, because they’re, you know, they’re struggling, they don’t have that many clients. So they want to do everything for their client, and they’re not making any money, and they’re spending eight hours, 80 hours a week, and they’re not making any money. And, and that’s the wrong way to do it. We got to set plan the boundaries, set boundaries, that you know what, at 7pm, that’s when I have dinner with my family. And that’s not negotiable, I have dinner with my family, I don’t care what the client needs at 7pm, I have dinner with my family, whatever that boundary is for that person. But there needs to be set boundaries and set times of work. You know, like some of these people want to get into business because they you know, they want to have spend more time with their family, well, then you know what you need to schedule that into your into your book. So then when a client calls you and says, Hey, I want to schedule a call, or schedule an appointment at 3pm, on a Friday, are you available, you look at your book and say, unfortunately, not I have an appointment. And that appointment, you know, they don’t need to know, but that appointments with their family or whatever, whatever it is, that needs to get linked into it. And when you when you do that you become more efficient in that time period. Because you know, this is the time where I need to work. And I need to make it happen, because this is the time I set forth on it. So that’s a huge difference is is is good time management, setting up a schedule and setting up boundaries.
And that’s super hard within the social marketing world. Because you know how long it takes to do your marketing portion, if you’re doing it yourself and not handing it over to a person to do it for you. Especially for people that are listening that have new businesses. It seems like you’re constantly doing the social media. So you have to take time and block that off as well, I guess because otherwise you’re constantly doing it.
Absolutely. And one of the other things I want to mention about social media, I have clients that like are terrified to do videos, they actually make it 100% perfect. And I tell them stop with the perfect and get it done. Because when I watch videos, you know those idiosyncrasies are what makes me catch my eye when it’s too perfect. I’m like, Yeah, I like things to be authentic. And when there’s a little off, you know, if something goofy happens, and they’re able to laugh it off them as a human being and I think that’s important. So if anything about the social media aspect of it, stop trying to be perfect and just do it and not worry about what other people are thinking about you. Because the right people will connect with you. If you’re authentic yourself. There’s going to be people that are want to connect with you because you’re authentic to yourself. So you’re telling me that all my goof ups, other viewers, because you’re you’re you’re being human, that’s what we want, especially in podcasts, we want to see who you are as a human being. We talked about this earlier about being vulnerable. And I think if you were loot to is you want people to be human. You know, we’re not superheroes, nobody can relate to superheroes, because we’re not. So we want to connect with people. We want to know them. You know, warts and all. And when you see somebody here, here’s somebody warts and all, you’re like, you know what, I can connect with that person because I went through a similar struggle I can relate to that, where the person is going through or if I gaff Oh, I get to you know, I had a presentation where I gasped, so it all connects. So yes, all the all, although all those little goof ups make who you are.
And it’s it’s a beautiful thing.
Oh, thank you. It just reminds me when I do confer up to try to see that Irish accent I I’m going to try and do it in front of the mirror a few times to see if it comes out. Right? You have it in your head and it just doesn’t come out the way you want. But go for it because you can laugh at yourself. That it’s all fun, right? People were like, Oh, you know what, I tried to do an Irish accent and I couldn’t do it too. So your Irish accents better than mine. So it’s the sorts of dialogue.
Um, what do you think that men in the world can do? Do you get a lot of men clients? Are you getting a lot of women clients?
You know, it’s funny, we talked about the 6040 women men thing and it’s, it’s for me, too. I have even though I’m a man 60% of my clients are women. And I think it’s what you’re alluded to is I think women are more accepting of their feelings and are willing to go deep. But you know what, what I’m finding out though, is you know, we bash on the millennial generation a lot for various reasons. One thing I want to give the millennial generation a props on is the man is they are a little bit more in touch with their feelings than other generations of men. And I think that’s a good thing. So some of my millennial clients that I talked to, are very in touch with their, with their, their feelings. And I think that’s a good thing. I think that one thing that the millennial generation, I think is doing a great job of is they’re, they’re highlighting mental health. Other generations I don’t think highlighted as well as the millennial generation has done it. And I think that’s huge. I think that get the elephant out, talk about the elephant in the room, you know, talk about suicide, talk about these issues. Because the more we talk about it, the more we can help each other.
Well, because they’re out there, you can’t, you can’t avoid it now. I mean, there’s suicides, there’s overdoses, there’s childhood issues, I don’t know, where what do you say that you work on the most with people childhood issues, or relationship, or tragic things that have happened to them in their life, you know, it’s all a various different things for different people. But it all comes back to their limited belief inside their head, it’s all starts right there. And that’s what happens to work out there. They come from me for all different things.
But when we, when we tear off the onion, it comes back to to self love. And that that limited belief that we need a break. And once we start breaking that limited belief, then we can really dive into whatever goal is because the funny thing is, when we after we break that limited belief, then all of a sudden, their goal is actually something different, because they come to me with some modest thing that they want to do, because they don’t want to tell me what they really want to do. Because they’re telling me that so they, they tell me this mid level goal that they want to do. But really they want to, they want to climb Mount Everest. And now that I broke that limited belief, now they feel more comfortable. Say, you know what, Paul, that really is not my goal. And I go, okay, what’s really your goal, and it’s something much, much higher. And that, to me is very rewarding, that we peel back that onion, and we’re gonna really go after the things that we really want to go after.
Yes, because you can’t go after it. If you don’t have focus towards it, I guess is really truly
the fact.
What do you feel? Is has it been difficult with any certain type of clients to actually find and dig down deep inside to find out what is the real issue?
Yes, I find that some clients if they had the self sabotage, where like, we feel like we’re going down the right road. And then I talk and then we have another call. And then they’re like, but I, but um, this but I’m that I’m this. And this set, the self doubt talk, like, we talked about this, we’re not that these are all just thoughts, these are not your reality. They’re just things that come in your head, don’t make them reality, your mind doesn’t know what’s reality or not. So if you focus in on what you want to focus on, your mind’s going to go there. I use this example all the time. When you buy a car, and all sudden, you’re driving that car down the road, all sudden, you see that same car that you just bought all over the place. Because your mind’s looking for it. It’s the same thing with the positive and negative mindset, your mind goes with what you’re thinking about. So it’s, it’s all about training our mind focus in on what we truly, truly want, and the positive things that that happen, you know, that could happen in our lives? Absolutely.
And that’s so true. Because if somebody said, Oh, did you hear about that new app out? Or? or whatever it might be? And you say, No, and then all of a sudden you see it everywhere? soon as somebody mentioned.
Yeah. Um, what?
How do you rewrite your own story?
Are you rewrite your story, it all starts with, again, with us. On You know what? giving ourselves grace and knowing that, you know, we’re not perfect people, and we’re going to fail, but be okay to fail and keep moving forward. The reason why I talk about rewriting your story is because from from obviously, as an infant, somebody wanted to take the pen from me and write the story they thought I should be doing, right. And all through my life. I refuse to give up my pen, because I wanted to write the story that I wanted for my life. And that’s what I want for my clients. Take back that pen and start writing the story that they want for their lives, not for their spouse, not for their kids, but for who they want to be. And these you start doing that. All these great things are gonna start happening. Oh, that’s beautiful.
What do you feel that people have beliefs when you’re talking to them that it’s just too high of a goal? Like you need to make steps towards that goal? Or do you find people are limiting? Or do you feel that sometimes people have too high of a goal to reach?
Well, first of all, I’m forever ever to say to anybody that they have a too high of a golden reach, you know, who am I to tell them that they can’t reach that goal? Heck, no. But we need what we need to do is we need to start to break that big goal down into smaller goals, step by step by step by step so we can reach the top of the goal that we want to reach. If we just go, Hey, I want to climb Mount Everest, and that’s what I want to do tomorrow, you’re gonna have a rough COVID. But if you practice for six months of, you know, climbing other mountains and and getting your body prepared for it, then the task is not so daunting, because you did the work you put in the time. And that’s what it’s all about is is just, what’s that next step? Are you okay? You got that big goal? I love it. Let’s go, what’s next step? What’s the next thing that we need to do? What is that, and that’s what we need to be focused on. It’s good that we have the end goal. But after we have that goal set, then it’s just step by step by step and to be patient. So often, we are not patient, we are not, we want things right away, we want things instantly. And you know, what if it’s, if it’s a lofty goal, it might take years to get, and you got to be okay with that. What you need to do is enjoy the journey. Enjoy the now getting there. I use this analogy. I love analogy.
So that’s why I throw out a lot at you. When you see a kid building Legos, right? The most fun they’re having is when they’re actually building the Legos, building something, you know, they may have fun, after the fact to show their parents what they built. But when they’re having the most joy is actually when they’re in the moment building Legos. And that’s what we need to do. When we have a goal, we need to enjoy building those Legos. That’s the that’s that’s the secret sauce. It’s not actually the goal. It’s the journey to get there. That’s the that’s that’s where you build the character is going after it and and setting that goal and taking action. Because I’ve set so many goals in my life where you know what, I didn’t reach it. But you know, and now looking back, though, and you know what? I’m glad I didn’t reach it, because because I went through this journey. And now I want to go this way. And I wouldn’t have I wouldn’t have thought of that if I didn’t go through this journey path.
What about people that want to get to those goals, but they’ve had so many times of failures before that’s such a hard, because your mind automatically goes back to those previous failures, like every time you go up to bat, and you strike out, you know how some people, I don’t know if any listeners are out there that have played baseball, or softball, but you go up to bat and you get into these funks of not hitting the ball. I don’t know what happens. But obviously your mind focus isn’t there. Because you wouldn’t be in a funk. You just, you’re just struggling with life. Every time I get up there, I can’t do it. So you can’t do it. Right? It’s just keeps on occurring. Just keeps on Well, my past history says I failed at doing that. So I can’t go down that road.
So how do you do that?
So you look at anybody that you think, quote unquote, is successful. And whatever that is, it could be in relationships, it could be in business, it could be in anything. And I’m going to tell you right now that every single one of those persons, people failed over and over and over again, probably more than other people failed. But you know what, they were okay with it. They were okay with failing and getting back up, because it one step closer to their goal, one step closer to going you know what I learned from that? Thomas Edison. I, you know, I don’t know how many inventions he had. But there was 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of 1000s of failures for him. But he kept learning from those failures. And I think that’s extremely important that we that we that we know that that we all fail, if you’re not failing, you need to set a higher goal for yourself. Because that’s where that’s where the learning, that’s where the growth comes into play is failing. Because you learn so much failure when things go right. You really don’t learn that much. But when things don’t go right, you learn so much more. So I challenge you to get uncomfortable and set these lofty goals and have failure be an option.
Be just part of the journey. That’s right. Yeah. Did you have any final notes that you would like to mention to the listeners? You’ve had many, many good ones. But yeah, well, I developed a Facebook group called rewrite your story. And we, we have people all over the world. And we have a safe space where people can tell their stories with no judgment. Please, just help each other and push each other up.
And we do monthly meetups, where we get together, we have a topic, and we just lift each other up, and we’d be vulnerable with each other. We tell people, you know, what, this month has been really good for me, this is what I’m going through. And what is discovered is another person will say, you know what, I went through that a year ago, and this is what I did. And you’re like, Oh, really, I’m not alone. Other people go through this. So it’s a beautiful thing. And people are developing friendships out of it. People are developing professional relationships. They’re doing business with each other. So it’s a great thing. So if you’re in the Facebook world, rewrite your story, we’d love to have you The more the merrier.
Oh, that’s beautiful. Because I think people need that support. You know, he definitely need to know that you’re not the only one struggling or not the only one to fall down on their knees and, like, beg for mercy sometimes. Please, please listen. Yeah, so no, thank you for sharing that. And I have included that in the description box below for everybody, as well. Oh, you remember that? You? Yeah, remember the grip? I think? Yeah. See ya. And I think by talking with others from around the world, it just shows that you can feel those feelings and that you can move through them, I guess, you could say, and that you have people behind you doing the same thing. That’s, that’s awesome. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so very, very much for sharing your unbelievable story that you, you know, you struggle with on a daily basis. But I shouldn’t say struggle, because you don’t. You don’t allow it to inhibit you. You don’t allow yourself to struggle with it. You think of it as a moving part that turns?
I guess, I don’t I don’t know how to explain that. But. But, yeah, I just find it fascinating. And you’re so motivating and inspiring. I hope that all our listeners have, you know, can overcome their tweets I’ve talked to I’ve had a lady on who had a leg amputated from cancer. I’ve had people that have been raped, and I’ve had people on the show that have been mentally abused, and car accidents and so many wonderful things have come come out of issues. And I did want to mention that having a backup plan. like Paul here had many different choices. And part of it isn’t always just financial, but it’s spiritual. And it’s about loving yourself and being able to win once you love yourself, you’re able to do many things in your career in your relationship, and possibly in your backup plan because you’re going to feel a little bit more secure in yourself to to be better prepared for those that love you. Because everybody has people around them that love them. And they want to be better prepared because they know they’re not Superman, even though they think they are. So thanks so much, Paul, for coming out to our show today. You’re a delight to have on I feel honored that you’ve come out and I’m looking forward to more fun things in the group on your Facebook group and, and listeners, please like share and subscribe down here below. Paul’s gonna make me sing my song about clicking the bell. Ring that bell ring that bell down there in the corner. Ring the bell and push the subscribe button. There you go. I did it just for you.
Thank you, thank you. song from a 70 ring. He just need that little background music to go along with it.
Well, people don’t realize that you know they don’t realize they can like the button and share it And they don’t realize that there’s this bell I know my sister even said what are you talking about? What’s the bell? So there you go.
Thank you so so very much for coming out to our show today. I hope that we’ve inspired you. You can be the Superman but only when you’re prepared for the unexpected because everyone has a story that will bring you to your knees and be the survival guide. And that’s what Paul’s doing for everybody. He’s had a quite a story that is brought him to his knees and now he’s out there helping others accomplish their goals and their missions and their passions in life. Thank you so very much, Paul, thank you so very much. So stay safe everyone. Be kind. Till next time. Bye.
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