Comeback Stories

Darren Waller talks this week about living life with a greater sense of urgency.

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Sarah Blondin shares some incredible heart-centered wisdom and what she learned during the lowest period of her life. Listen to a deep discussion on the tragedy and pain inherent to life, as well as the love and joy, and why everyone is in the process of rediscovering their heart.

• Sarah grew up exposed to the struggle of addiction early on. She had supportive parents and a good household, but growing up next to a recovery center and seeing human pain on a constant basis led to her internalizing the pain.
• We are born as children seeing a sea of pain without the ability to articulate or deal with it, and that’s part of the reason that we are seeing so much disconnect and fading out today.
• Sarah recognized that people don’t want you to see their pain. As a society, we ignore and suppress pain and avoid shining a spotlight on it. She recalls a time in Vancouver where she encountered a man on the street that became aggressive and threatening, and how all the people around her turned away and ignored what was happening.
• Covid has exposed a lot of the unresolved pain and trauma in society because we don’t have any idea how to process it. 
• Sarah had an English teacher who helped her see the magic of writing stories to take people out of their experiences. 
• Sarah has had three major low points in her life, and she noticed that each one came with the birth of a more expanded version of herself. The first was when she was working in Vancouver, and even with her early success, she felt painfully out of integrity with herself. Her second happened after moving to the country where she had a near-psychotic break with reality and her third was an extremely dark period in her life.
• Since she has been through the depression, the reality shake-up, and the anxiety Sarah feels like she’s been rattled as deep as she can go but now she’s able to stand stronger because of it.
• Transformation is extremely painful. We have to shed the layers of who we are to become who we can be.
• It’s about surrendering and re-finding your ground and going back to your life the best you can. You need a ritual or process to open a deeper relationship with yourself, without that you risk a neurosis that you might not escape from.
• Sarah had always been a writer because that was how she processed the world. Whatever you do quietly on your own time is probably the thing that has the gold dust that is going to help the world.
• Sarah started her work and put it out into the world in order to help herself, but other people connected with what she was doing organically.
• None of our problems are unique. We all struggle with the same problems. Sarah doesn’t ask what other people need to hear, she asks what she needs to hear. 
• We are all working to excavate some sort of gift within us that we can offer back to the world. 
• When you go through the Twelve Steps, it gives you the tool of service that gives you purpose and freedom and the ability to stay out of your own way.
• Sarah has been in a deep state of gratitude recently. Even pain can be a gift when you embrace the love on the other side. As you get older you gain the wisdom of learning that the learning never stops.
• If Sarah would send a message to her younger self, it would be “it all hurts, but you can handle it.”
• Meditation is the practice of admitting what is happening inside of you. It allows you to see the things that you’re holding in your body without even knowing it. As long as you choose and become disciplined in something, it has its own unfolding.
• We don’t have to worry so much about how our pain gets healed, we just have to see it. Maybe we are all supposed to be a little more messy and show up for the process.
• Awareness is the first step to creating any sort of change.
• The nice thing about seeking refuge on your yoga mat is you don’t have the distractions to prevent you from feeling something. It’s all information and it’s there to teach you about something. 
• Is the price you pay for listening to your fear worth the sacrifice of living in alignment with your heart? Going towards the things that are uncomfortable lead to the greatest revelations and transformations.
• Pain hits the heart first. We are born with our mother’s pain within us and we can’t walk ourselves through it.
• Men have trouble living in their hearts in particular. Something happens in the world that teaches young men to abandon their heart.
• If you’re just starting this journey of intimacy, don’t come at it thinking it’s going to be easy. Accept the invitations as they come.
• Sarah’s comeback story shoutout goes to her husband who has been there to support her and anchor her from the beginning.

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Donny is back this week with Monday Motivation Raw. In this hot take, he shares his keys to recovery, no matter what you might be recovering from. He covers topics such as: honesty, open-mindedness, willingness, gratitude, and the importance of staying in the middle of the herd. Donny & Darren created these short, but powerful Monday episodes to help you start the week with the right mindset and perspective. We hope you enjoy!

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Lisa Bilyeu shares the wisdom she has learned in her journey from stay-at-home housewife to millionaire business co-founder alongside her husband, Tom Bilyeu. Learn how Lisa took a chronic and debilitating health issue and turned it into the foundation for extreme ownership in her life, and why she believes the mindset she discovered at her lowest point was the key to her success.

• Lisa was brought up in the metropolis of London but has Greek roots and would always go back to the village where she grew up each summer.
• It was from Lisa’s father that she learned the foundational lesson of working hard and putting in the effort is how you achieve something. Coming from nothing doesn’t define who you can be, it just means that you have to believe in yourself and put in the work.
• Many of us grow up with the belief system of what our parents pass on to us, which is pretty much what happened to Lisa. Even with her big dreams of making movies in America, she found herself falling into the lifestyle of the stay-at-home wife before starting Quest Nutrition.
• Lisa was bullied as a young girl and struggled with a painful internal belief that she wasn’t good enough and all the insecurities that come with that.
• Lisa’s mother was her first real teacher. She chose to stand on her own after divorcing Lisa’s father, and seeing her be empowered while raising Lisa and her siblings showed her what was possible with hard work.
• Looking back at her mother’s story, Lisa realized that she had body image issues and lost her way later on. 
• In the early days of starting the business with her husband, Lisa quickly learned that picking herself back up was her superpower and she built the confidence that if she didn’t know something she could learn it.
• Lisa’s experience with helping her mother get healthy again is the origin story of the content that they would begin to create and where Impact Theory was born. 
• If you don’t believe something is possible, you might as well give up now. If you do believe it’s possible, you are going to overcome the obstacles that get in your way and stop making excuses. Mindset is the key to the comeback story.
• The most difficult point in Lisa’s life occurred during the early days of Quest Nutrition when the work involved 24 hour days and plenty of hardship and success. Right at the moment where things started to take off, Lisa couldn’t eat much of anything without feeling completely awful. With more money than she ever dreamed, Lisa was more miserable than ever.
• She realized that the fact she was sick was her fault and she needed to accept responsibility for the situation and take control of her own health. She started tracking everything about what she ate instead of taking a pill to solve her problems. This expanded out into the rest of her life and is how Lisa lives now: complete ownership.
• For Lisa, there was no rock bottom. It was just 8 years of a life that she didn’t want, despite the fact that it wasn’t a bad life. Even though she didn’t want it, her mindset fell into the narrative of her childhood.
• Lisa used to say that she couldn’t do something, but now she says she could do it if she put in the work but maybe she doesn’t want to. There is nothing out of your reach, and that mindset is incredibly empowering. Instead of running away from your weaknesses, you need to shine a light on them and focus on shoring them up.
• Mindfulness gives us the space to make better decisions and make fewer mistakes. 
• It’s not about when we fall, it’s about how we get back up. Society tends to focus on the fall and use it to define people, but we need to move past that and focus more on who we show up as each day and who we are trying to be in the future.
• Lisa is most grateful for her husband, everything else in her life could go. From the beginning of their marriage, they focused on doing what they needed to do to build a happy successful marriage, not just being married.
• If you have a common goal with your relationship, you can communicate with each other and trust that criticism, feedback, or complaints, are in service to your shared goal. Like a business partnership, each person has a role and responsibilities and they execute them together like a team.
• As long as we keep nurturing, loving, and growing at the forefront they become the foundations for a relationship.
• Relationships are like sports, they take practice and work to become good at.
• If Lisa could say something to her younger self she would send her an emoji that would make her laugh. Lisa believes that her hardship and struggle made her into who she is now, and embracing that hardship is empowering for her.
• If you’re not feeling confident right now, start by asking different questions. Break down the thing that you want from your perspective, instead of from someone else’s perspective.
• Don’t focus on the “shoulds” and take them out of your vocabulary. Not asking yourself the hard questions forces you to stay exactly where you are, whether you like it or not.
• Lisa’s comeback shoutout goes to herself. At the end of the day, your comeback story starts with yourself.

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Paul Vautrinot tells his incredible story of living as a drug addict in the flood tunnels below Las Vegas and how a “conversation with a cricket” became the turning point in his life. Learn about how Paul now helps other addicts escape and get their lives on the path to recovery like he did. 

• Paul’s childhood was volatile to say the least. His mother was a prostitute who was addicted to both crack cocaine and alcohol. He moved a lot until he was 8 years old when his grandparents put him with a different family. Despite those hardships, Paul believes that he was generally a happy kid.
• One of the defining moments in Paul’s life was, after a rollercoaster period of his mother getting sober and relapsing repeatedly, he realized that he didn’t have to pour his emotion into things he couldn’t control.
• He came to the understanding that nothing would affect him for the rest of his life. As bad as those emotional highs and lows were, Paul knew that he could just ride out the wave.
• The downside to that is that he has trouble connecting with people. The trauma he experienced as a child put him perpetually on guard, to the point where he has difficulty creating relationships.
• Early on, Paul spent a year with a foster family that showed him what life could look like. This gave him a whole picture perspective and not just his side of the story.
• Every bottom is a trapdoor. Paul’s bottom happened at the age of 24 when he found himself homeless on the streets after everyone in his life refused to take him in. He literally had nowhere to go, but that was just the beginning.
• Eventually, Paul made his way to the flood channels of Las Vegas where he lived for two years and bought into the lifestyle of a committed drug addict. The whole time he had the thought at the back of his head that he was not meant for that kind of life.
• One day, he heard a voice that said that Paul was going to die with a needle in his arm if he continued with this lifestyle. He retells the story of how he was going to escape that starts with his girlfriend swinging a piece of wood at his head and having a conversation with a black cricket and ends with him being arrested by the police.
• Part of what was holding him back was a fear that he wouldn’t be able to live a normal life. Despite how hard his life was, it was easier to keep doing what he knew.
• Paul’s recovery started with Alcoholics Anonymous, where he sat listening to other people describe their stories, and he realized that he had no evidence that AA was not going to help, and plenty of evidence that it worked for other people.
• Freedom House came into Paul’s life during his recovery and he decided to invest himself and do his best. He started off at the lowest level and within two and a half years, he was promoted all the way to Program Director of the organization. It was at that time that the founder of Freedom House told Paul about Crossroads and brought him on to help build that up.
• Many of the social services available to people have a 2-year wait list. Paul believes that there is no reason that we can’t provide instant placement and social help for people that are ready to enter the program, and that’s where Shine a Light comes in.
• Paul is most grateful for his family, which was something that he would never have. His family has shown him the gift of flowing instead of forcing things. His experience has given him the ability to face life on its own terms.
• One of the greatest lessons that he’s learned is that he gets to choose his own level of distraction. If you want something to be important, you can choose for it to be important. If you don’t think it’s important, let it go.
• At first glance you may think you’re powerless, but the very next step gives you your power back. The power to respond with love instead of reacting with fear.
• If Paul could send a message back to his younger self, it would be “it will all be worth it.” If it had not been for experiences, Paul would not have what he has today.
• The advice that Paul gives to people who don’t know if they are capable of escaping their older life is usually the same: There is a better life to live and you have nothing to lose. Your current life is still going to be here so you might as well try to be better.

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Darren Waller shares a few thoughts on consistency - even when the feelings aren't there.

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Matthew Berry explores his journey from being a writer for television and film in Hollywood to the Senior Fantasy Sports Analyst for ESPN and all the lessons he learned along the way. Learn why Matthew believes that problems don’t discriminate, and why pursuing external things to make you happy only leads to misery and depression in the long run and what you should do instead.

• Matthew grew up in a very middle-class family where he and his family moved around a lot. Matthew was always the new kid in class, which was challenging for someone who was socially awkward. It wasn’t until high school did Matthew meet a core group of friends that are still in his life.
• Because he was alone a lot, Matthew became an avid reader and a big fan of sports, which became the platform for his later career.
• One of Matthew’s biggest fears is having things taken away from him. This may be due to the constant movement he experienced during his childhood where whenever he became friends with someone it was eventually taken away from him when he moved.
• One of his earliest memories of pain was being bullied in high school. He recalls a time in high school where his Tennis team played a trick on him and abandoned him at a 7/11, forcing Matthew to walk the two miles back to the school.
• Not counting his parents, one of the first real teachers to see something in Matthew was his tennis coach.
• Problems don’t discriminate. Even with people that seem to have everything in life, we all have moments of gripping doubt and ego and sadness.
• Matthew’s lowest point in life happened after he moved out to Hollywood with the goal of writing for show business. On paper, it looked like he had a great life but he found himself extremely depressed. During therapy, Matthew discovered that, while he enjoyed telling people he was a writer, he didn’t actually like the process of his work and being in Hollywood.
• In order to save his life and get it back on track, Matthew realized that he had to get out of his marriage and quit show business, both of which comprised the whole of his identity at that point. At the age of 35, Matthew found himself divorced and alone in an empty house, trying to make a living running a fantasy football website.
• Matthew was living his life for everyone else, and the trouble with that is that the minute the external thing is over you have to find the next thing to be happy. When Matthew decided to leave Hollywood, he decided to chase happiness instead of chasing the trappings of happiness.
• Committing to fantasy football is what allowed Matthew to find all kinds of opportunities and relationships. Once he decided to focus on happiness, the rest fell into place.
• Matthew is the most grateful for his kids, his wife, and his health. He knows that he has a lot to be thankful for and he doesn’t take it for granted.
• Everyone has their own things that they are dealing with. Sometimes it’s hard to remember, if you are ever feeling bad about yourself turn on the news and I assure you somebody else has it worse.
• Life is not a race, it’s a journey. Everyone gets to where they are supposed to be. Maybe not as fast as the person next to you, maybe not on the timeframe you want, maybe not in the way you expect, but everybody gets to the place where they are supposed to be.
• Matthew’s comeback shoutout goes to his supportive wife who stood by him as he pursued his dream of making fantasy football a real career.

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Anna David, best-selling author and entrepreneur, shares her story of addiction and depression, and how one word became the turning point for her that allowed her to become sober and build a new life. Hear Anna’s story of recovery and some of the more common misconceptions around addiction, and how she now helps other entrepreneurs tell their own stories of recovery with her publishing company.

• Anna David grew up in a very money-motivated and education-focused family. Because the external view of her family was wealthy and upper-class, she didn’t realize that there was anything wrong or understand the trauma until she was in college.
• Anna’s parents first went into marriage counseling when she was 5 and she remembers being in the waiting room thinking that it would be better if they just got divorced. Even then, Anna felt like hers was an unhappy family and that they would all be better off if they were separated.
• Anna’s addiction was a major challenge for her where she felt trapped between two worlds. She knew that cocaine was killing her by making her depressed, but she couldn’t conceive of a world where she would be capable of giving it up.
• A lack of courage and faith was the main thing holding Anna back from turning things around. Part of her rock bottom was getting tattoos that she didn’t think through or really care about, but when she got the word courage tattooed it became surprisingly meaningful to her. It wasn’t until she found the courage to change did anything improve in her life. A tattoo can become a form of visualization and manifestation.
• One of the biggest initial victories for Anna was when she made up her mind to change and not wavering in her conviction over the course of the next week before she joined a rehab program. Anna had been so isolated in her addiction that she loved rehab and being around people and the process of sobriety forced her to relearn almost everything.
• Building relationships and friendships while in rehab were incredibly valuable for Anna and became the foundation for her sober life.
• Writing was always something that Anna wanted to do. She majored in Creative Writing and worked for a huge number of publications. While she was writing books, she went through the maze of traditional publishing and while it was a dream come true it was also a brutal business. This experience with the struggle of traditional publishing is what led Anna to start her own publishing business where she helps entrepreneurs publish their own books.
• All entrepreneurs need a book. Everybody has a book in them, but not everybody should be writing that book.
• In some ways, it’s harder for people who are addicted but never hit a true rock bottom, because it’s not a quick road or immediately obvious that the addiction is destroying your life.
• For Anna, community and connection are the cornerstones of sober life. We are all seeking community, no matter the approach to sobriety. Sometimes it takes being completely isolated before you realize that you need a community to be happy.
• One of the more common misconceptions around alcoholism is that people think it’s about how much you drink. There are plenty of people that drink more than alcoholics but don’t have the same self-destructive relationship with alcohol.
• Another is that sobriety is all about willpower, but that’s not always the case. Most sober people no longer have the desire to use what they did when they were addicted because of the steps they’ve taken to remove themselves from the environment and habits that caused the problem.
• Anna has a lot to be grateful for now. She is grateful for being able to be a good girlfriend, and for her business to be able to thrive despite the fact that she never believed she would ever make that kind of money.
• If Anna could send a message to her younger self, even knowing that she probably wouldn’t listen, she would tell her “don’t try harder, resist less.” Surrender and feel the relief.
• Many people believe that the key is to keep grinding and figure it out on their own, but the path starts with humility and surrendering.
• Anna would say that God speaks through other people. If you don’t know what to do next and feel like you’re being nudged in a specific direction, pay attention to that and see what happens.

Mentioned in this Episode:

Launch Your Book with Anna David podcast

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Donny Starkins shares his keys to recovery, no matter what you might be recovering from. He covers topics such as: honesty, open-mindedness, willingness, gratitude, and the importance of staying in the middle of the herd. 

Donny & Darren created these short, but powerful Monday episodes to help you start the week with the right mindset and perspective. We hope you enjoy!

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Tom Bilyeu, founder of Quest Nutrition and Impact Theory, delivers an incredible message of transformation and power. Hear Tom’s story of how his dream of becoming a filmmaker fell apart and how he lost his ambition to achieve in life until he had a life changing realization, and discovered his step-by-step formula for fulfillment and success in life.

• Tom Bilyeu’s life growing up was right in between blue collar and white collar life. He didn’t grow up poor, but did learn the frustration of having to earn the money to buy the things he wanted when he was young. He was diagnosed with ADHD but his mother refused to medicate him for it, which is something Tom is very grateful for. His childhood shaped his work ethic and cultivated who he is today.
• Tom made himself two promises as a child. One he hasn’t managed to keep and one he’s kept very closely. The first was never doing anything that made him nervous, the second was not letting other people tell him what to do, and as an entrepreneur he’s done well with that one.
• Tom has recently started examining just why he is so driven in life. His father had a deep love for cars when Tom was growing up, but Tom always hated the hobby. This led him to wonder if his father could love him if he hated his father’s greatest passion. This anxiety may have led to Tom being so driven to achieve.
• As he grew into his adult life, Tom began experiencing a recurring nightmare of being trapped in a loveless marriage. This was probably due to subconsciously picking up the distance between his parents when he was younger.
• Tom attributes Stephen King as being his first real teacher because King’s books taught him to read. Reading has been the foundation for Tom’s success. His father gave Tom a copy of The Gunslinger when he was young and twenty years later, it still resonates.
• Tom now spends an average of 2.5 hours every day learning or reading, and believes that is what makes the difference.
• Tom’s early 20s were difficult. Tom went to film school before YouTube and smartphones were prevalent, and that’s when he realized that he didn’t have talent as a filmmaker. Despite his high ambitions, Tom felt like he was at a dead end and found himself selling video games with no real opportunities worth pursuing.
• A major turning point was when Tom asked his girlfriend's father for her hand in marriage and he said no. The reason he didn’t want Tom to marry his daughter is that he accurately identified that he didn’t have the drive to see his ambitions through. Tom was lost, scared, frustrated, and hopeless with no idea what to do.
• That shame got Tom moving, which is when he became somewhat controversial. Shame can be a powerful motivator if you don’t let it break you. He started making changes to his life, one small step at a time.
• As a kid, Tom was excited for the future and all the possibilities before him. As a young adult, the reality of being broke and less talented than he thought brought that excitement crashing down hard. The first big narrative shift in his life happened when he realized that he was telling himself that he wasn’t smart enough to succeed in the way he wanted.
• Because of brain plasticity, he began to embrace the word “yet”. Buying into brain plasticity, which Tom refers to as the only belief that matters, changed his life.
• If you invest your time and energy into a skill set, you will get better at it.
• Tom is grateful for his wife more than anything else. Relationships are a compromise and you will make sacrifices when you’re in them, but if you get it right, it’s incredible. The greatest gift that life has to offer is a shared experience.
• Tom pursued the typical dream of getting rich when he was younger, particularly fast cars, big houses, and nice things. After about 8 years of really pushing, Tom was worth two million dollars on paper and realized that he hated his life. Money is very powerful, but it can’t change the way you feel about yourself.
• You’re living in a virtual environment created by your brain and the only thing that is actually real for you is how you feel. This realization led to Tom pursuing experiences that made him feel alive over everything else.
• People usually ask “What would you do if you couldn’t fail?”, but that’s the wrong question. Tom started asking himself “What would I do and love, even if I were failing?”
• There are certain things that are true about humans. We seek status and we are social creatures. If you don’t contribute to the group you will feel bad about yourself and you won’t feel connected or fulfilled.
• Fulfillment, as a formula, works like this: You have to work hard because part of your brain insists that you earn what you have. You should develop a set of skills that are unique to you based on something that you care about, then leverage that skill set to serve you and other people. If it only serves yourself or other people but not both, it won’t work.
• The punchline of life is not success, fame, or notoriety. It is entirely how you feel about yourself when you’re by yourself.
• It doesn’t matter who you are today, it only matters who you want to become and the price you are willing to pay to get there.
• Everything in life is a process. Find something that you find interesting, the thing that gives you more energy than it takes away. Don’t expect it to feel like you are saving the world, but if you find yourself unable to stick to it more than a few times, you may just not be resilient enough to push through the fact that even passion has an overhead.
• When you find the thing that holds your attention and is worth pushing through, start telling other people about it in an embodied way. You’re having a biological experience, and embodying a feeling with excitement and energy will tell your brain that this thing matters. Your brain will justify whatever energy level you bring to the table.
• Treat your desire like a process. Tell yourself and other people what it is you're fighting for, and you’ll end up in a self-reinforcing loop where the harder you work, the better you get, and the better you get, the better you are able to serve yourself and other people.
• We are wired to do something that matters.

Mentioned in this Episode:

YouTube.com/TomBIlyeu

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