Love Your Story: Stories and discussions about personal growth, mindset and living with intention

Episode 203: Today You Choose - It's all about Family: Interview Jason Martin

This is Your Captain Speaking - Life Lessons from the Journey So Far

Welcome to the Love Your Story podcast. How often have you thought about the importance of intentionally making your family - the people you love - the most important thing in your life? Not just in word and intention, but in actuality? 

On today’s show I’m talking with Jason Martin, the author or This is your Captain Speaking - Life Lessons from the Journey so far. As I read his book it was easy to sum up the entire premise - Make Your Family Your Top Priority, and the intentionality of making memories, recording memories, sharing memories with loved ones.

In this heartwarming book he wrote to his family, Jason Martin takes us on a journey inside his life as a husband, father, provider, and a family leader. You will watch as he shows you how to create a life filled with memories that your children will remember for the rest of their lives. By creating a legacy built on the foundations of love, hope, and gratitude, your family will learn critical life lessons to become the best versions of everything they can be. —-This is what we are all about on the Love Your Story podcast - intentionally creating the life we want on purpose. Stay tuned for my discussion with Jason - the Captain of his family, and I think you’ll leave with some ideas for your own intentional family living.

Jason Martin has not experience as a writer, in fact he failed copy editing in college, but he is a believer in dreams and stretching. He is a former sports anchor and currently runs one of the most successful real estate teams in Washington D.C., but above all, his family is his #1 priority. He and his wife Jennifer have 3 human children and a dog named Scooby, and together they live a fun, wild, everyday normal life. Jason writes this book specifically to his family, addressing them in unexpected places. There is not question we are peaking into a compilation he wrote for his family, but in that compilation we see what it looks like to put family first. There is no doubt he wishes to teach, support and leave a legacy for his kids.

Tune in to the audio program to hear my discussion with Jason. You don't want to miss it.

You start out your book with “Anyone who knows me will tell you that above all else comes family.” Let’s start out with why….

To contact Jason or buy his book:

todayyouchoose.com

[email protected]

https://www.amazon.com/This-Your-Captain-Speaking-Lessons/dp/1954801009/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1625763215&sr=8-2

The last section of this book has a list of 9 final lessons. I wanted to end with 3 of them that I liked. #1 - Consistency: Consistency is required for success in life. As you create your best life story on purpose be consistent with those things that really matter. Consistently be there - show up. Consistently be kind. Consistently listen. Consistently sit down and tackle that project. Intentionality requires consistency. #2 What you tell yourself matters - here we are back to the idea that the stories you tell yourself are the most powerful stories you will ever tell. If your self-talk is uplifting and supportive you’ll fly. #3 Ideas to Action - as you intentionally plan what you want in your story you’ll start with an idea. If you don’t put that idea into action it won’t happen. So remember, intentionally living requires you to take action. Even if it takes years to show up. 

Your challenge for this week is to think about your family. Think about the priority they are for you and see if your actions are aligned with where that priority sits in your mind and heart. All these ideas we’ve discussed today are ideas you can teach your family. Kids and help parents understand new ideas and parents should absolutely teach children how to live intentionally. If there is something you can tweak this week to help your kids learn an idea, know they are your priority, or just create a little family love. Do it.

Thanks for being here. If you liked the show, please leave us a review on apple podcasts or wherever you listen. See you in two weeks. 

We create. Everyday we create connection, chaos, possibility, drama, conversation, expectations, money, homes, relationships, works of art, friction, love, stories, or we don’t…

Our power lies in our ability to direct our life story with every choice and every thought.

Welcome to the 21 Challenges - 21 life hacks that have been set up to help you connect, take care of your beautiful self, create possibility, and get out of the dol drums. 

This series of podcasts highlights the challenges one-by-one to give you background on why the challenge was included in the 21, a deeper understanding of the concept itself, and ideas on how to implement it. These simple challenges create big ah-ha’s and leave you with some great new tools to play with.

Today we focus on Challenge # 16 - Give Free Hugs…stay tuned for some loving, touching, feeling. 

Let’s start out with some wisdom from Oprah. Love that lady. She said, “When you make loving others the story of your life, there’s never a final chapter, because the legacy continues. You lend your light to one person and he or she shines it on another and another and another. And I know for sure that in the final analysis of our lives—when the to-do lists are no more, when the frenzy is finished, when our email inboxes are empty—the only. Thing that will have any lasting value is whether we’ve loved others and whether they loved us.”

During the Covid upheaval touch became a thing carefully guarded. That makes this challenge even more pertinent now because we are all a little touch deprived…. even if you have to get creative.

In a world where we can feel alone in a sea of a million people, the chance to hold another’s hand or to be hugged, can be a gift, an anchor, a place where for that moment you are not alone. For that moment you are joining forces. A hug is a human action that allows us to connect, communicate, and exchange energy in a meaningful way. For however long the moment lasts we are unafraid to touch, and that is a beautiful moment; and important moment. In fact, science shows it’s an absolutely crucial moment that must be repeated often.

In Greater Good Magazine, out of Berkley, an article called, Why Physical Touch Matters for our Well Being said, “The science of touch came of age in the mid-1990s, when two scientists traveled to Romania to examine the sensory deprivation of children in understaffed orphanages. The touch-deprived children, they found, had strikingly lower cortisol and growth development levels for their age group. From the time we are in the womb through our elderly years, touch plays a primary role in our development and physical and mental well-being. New studies on touch continue to show the importance of physical contact in early development, communication, personal relationships, and fighting disease. Although the therapeutic benefits have become increasingly clear, scientists argues that, thanks to no-touch policies in schools and the isolating effects of cell phones and computers, (and now Covid) Americans are touching each other less.” 

That makes this challenge even more important.

In that article, they had some specific research on hugging: “They injected a cold germ into these people who were in the study, and those who had more hugs had a better immune response to the cold virus. (So, touch helps us fight disease.) And then [there are] some studies showing that if you get hugged by your partner before a stressful condition like giving a speech or doing math problems, people do better. Performance is better if they’ve been hugged by a partner before the stress.”

In 2016, I found myself in Ohio doing this emotional intelligence training I speak of so often. Let me tell you about my experience setting up a Free Hugs stand.

Tune in to hear that story...

We come programmed to hold onto one another. We arrive hardwired to grasp hands and give hugs, and if we are lucky and wise, we don’t lose our grip.

This challenge can be adapted for Covid by bringing it in to family members and friends you feel comfortable being close to, but the power of touch, with permission, even with people we may not be close to, like those who walked by our hug booth, was amazing, beautiful, insightful, and one of the largest ah-ha moments that unexpectedly showed up for me. It was so fun and interesting to see how people responded.

Take this challenge and then go to the back of the book and record your experience. What was the hardest part? What was the response of others? What did you learn? How did it feel?

If you don’t already have your book: Life - Living Intentional and Fearless Everyday, the 21 Life Connection Challenges, order your book off Amazon so you can get into all the life-hack challenges, or if you have a group you’d like to do it with, we have the new group platform

Thanks for being here. See you in two weeks for the newest life-hack tip. Live intentional and fearless people. You’ve got this!

Someone at the memorial service on Monday referred to her as a homespun philanthropist, though I doubt she would have liked that description. Her wit was too sharp to fit the mellow image of homespun. As for philanthropist? She once said, “That’s such a pretentious word.”

Welcome back to the Love Your Story podcast. The clip I’ve just shared comes from a woman’t obituary that died probably 25 years ago. 

So many years ago, I can’t remember the date, I ripped an article out of the Boston Globe newspaper called, “She made a difference for a living.” The article is yellowed and brittle, and if I had to guess I’d say it’s around 25 years old. Stay tuned in today’s episode for how Elizabeth Noyce became a one-woman economic development corporation in the 80’s and 90’s, without the Internet, and see what her story means to you.

When Elizabeth Noyce died Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe wrote an article that highlighted her life. I’ve been through many a business class where we are asked to write our own obituary and what we want to be known for/what our business wants to be known for, so we can plan now and reverse engineer what we do. I doubt that Elizabeth Noyce did this, but I’m sure any of us would be very pleased indeed to have a write-up like this done about us after we pass.

Elizabeth Noyce was as unpretentious as her adopted state of Maine. She could walk down …

Tune into the audio program to hear the rest of the article.

One of the reasons we share stories is to show how things can be done. Stories are used to inspire, to initiate deeper thought, to shine a light on things. Today’s story of a woman’s life who lived decades earlier, shines a light on moral fiber, on the extraordinary, on a person who created good in the world on purpose, who forsook her own limelight living for the more understated. You may be thinking, “Sure, If I had millions of dollars I could do good too.” But I have to ask…would you, maybe you would? But now, right now we still have a responsibility to do good. We always have something to work with. We can always do good in our communities - This story is just a reminder to check in with yourself - are you caught in “he who has the most toys wins” mindset? Are you stuck in what’s in it for me? Is looking good and being in the limelight more important than doing good? As Elizabeth Noyce said, we can all just hope to make a little difference in our own communities. Are you creating peace, support for community and neighbors, hope and positive energy? Are you, if you are able, creating abundance for others in positive ways, or are you caught up in the fear, violence, the frantic stretch for control that permeates the neighborhoods and mindsets across the country? 

Might I suggest that for a living, in our own individual ways, that we intentionally strive to make a positive difference. Choose light, choose love, choose growth, choose goodness. Choose sharing. 

In order to create a greater more positive connection, I’ve created the 21 Life Connection Challenges - Group Style. Do you have a group you’re involved in that wants a fun way to connect and create good in their lives and in the world?

Thanks for being here today. Live Big! Live Intentional. Live Well.