Strength Through The Struggle

If you could be a Superhero, who would you be?

I'm not a huge comic book person so I don't even know all the different superheroes. But if I could be any superhero that I know of, I would be Super Man.

Yes, he has all those cool super powers but the most important thing I see in his comic book life, he clearly knows who he is. He uses his powers for good.

I imagine, with a different upbringing by different people he could have been an evil Superman. But when his spaceship landed on earth, he had the good fortune of having good people raise him the right way. In turn, he put his super powers to good use.

The influence our parents/ caretakers have over us in our developing years, along with the residual effect of our shaped identity can and will last a lifetime.

If we are raised with fear or confidence, a positive or negative attitude mindset, or optimism over pessimism we will behave in completely different ways. We will actually become very different people as adults.

That being said, it's very important for us to choose wisely what we think about, listen to, or watch on a screen. It's equally important to choose who we associate with because of what we will be thinking, saying, or doing while being around them.

Our guest this week, Master Chip Townsend, was shaped by not just a life-altering injury in his childhood but what his parents, especially his mother told him about himself. That he had the power to choose how he saw himself and what he was capable of.

That gift of a healthy identity and a "can do" attitude has served Master Chip well. His story is one of Clarity, that turned into Power which in turn has helped him live out his Purpose. There is much to learn from this week's guest. Take a listen here.

So often we don't do things in life because we think, we don't know how to do it. Which may be right, but after you do it the first time, we do something new the first time, we have a chance to keep getting better at it.

One day I was playing with my son Joshua on the floor in our living room. I don't recall exactly what it was. Could have been cars, action figures or maybe Lego's. He was about two-years-old.

My mother was visiting us from Ohio. She was sitting on the couch watching and at one point remarked, "I couldn't do that."

My mother at this point was in her sixties. I thought she was speaking about how it would be uncomfortable for her to get down on the wood floor and play with Josh.

For some reason, I decided to ask her what she meant by, "I couldn't do that."

She said to me, "I wouldn't know what to do to play with him."

I thought for a moment and said to her, "I don't know what to do either Ma'. I just get down here and try to figure it out."

My mother had five children. When the last one of my siblings was born, she actually had five children all under the age of five!

Yep.

My mother didn't have time to play. It was the early 1960's. No disposable diapers. No microwaves. Heck, there weren't even seat belts in most cars.

Attempting to do new things can feel awkward. And in the beginning, they certainly are. But to keep trying is to give ourselves the opportunity to learn and become better at whatever we do.

It's a bit sad that my mother missed those moments when she was young. She did get the opportunity though to learn to play with Josh eventually. Although it was at the kitchen table and not on our hard, oak floor.

Somebody else who knows how to learn and improve personally, professionally and as a father and husband is my guest this week, Rusty Ryal.

Rusty played Major League Baseball and has a lot of wisdom about life, learning, trying new things, falling down and getting back up. Take a listen here. It's good stuff!

Being a parent is tough. It's just challenging try to meet the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual needs of our children. We have an idea of how to raise our kids based on how we were brought up. Then there are our friends and family who have opinions. Lastly, there is the endless list of bloggers, authors and "professionals" telling us what works and what doesn't.

It's not easy to know where all the boundaries are drawn let alone do I have too many or too few?

One thing that is hard to argue with is the need for a child to be resilient. Someone who when knocked down don't get stuck with disappointment but can get back up and move on. The child who when they fail at something doesn't see it as a failure but as another step on the road to get to where they want to go.

Arguably, resilience is the one thing that allows all other good qualities and values to not get swallowed up by failure and disappointment but to actually flourish in a person's life.

What if there is a roadmap showing us not just what Resilience looks like but how to get there?

That is exactly what this weeks episode is all about. Chris and Holly Santillo are the authors of Resilience Parenting, During this episode and in their book, they outline an entire process to understand what resilience is and how we can teach it to our children. Which means giving them the gift of overcoming setbacks, failures, and disappointments in order to live their very best life. Take a listen here.

The Face of Incarceration

The movie Trading Places is a comedy that stars Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd as a homeless man and a wealthy cultured man respectively. Being a comedy there are multiple instances for laughing, however, it was thought-provoking for me the first time I saw it.

The two men are unwittingly transposed into each other's lives. They in turn start to make different types of decisions that reinforce their new circumstances.

The poor man who is now in a wealthy lifestyle grew in self-respect and higher expectations of himself.

The wealthy man who found all his resources taken away turned to anger and feeling sorry for himself and indulging in petty crime.

Was it Nature, their personality or Nurture, their surroundings.

I interviewed a man last week, Quan Huynh (pronounced-Hhhhwen). Quan experienced a pivotal event in his life at the age of 13. A painful event. The hurt and the resulting anger from it stayed with him. And over time it grew into rage and violence. It climaxed in a violent night for him as an adult when he took the life of another person.

The events prior to him taking that man's life shaped him into the person who was capable of taking life.

In the span of one minute, both families would be changed forever.

One minute. One choice.

If the story ended there, it would just be a sad story. A painful story. And a story that you might argue for both Nature and Nurture.

The story didn't stop there though. Quan went to prison. And though he went in angry and violent, there was a day when he started to ask himself questions about himself. Important questions. Hard questions.

One of them was, "Can I be somebody very different than the person I have been?"

Quan's story is about many things. Pain, Anger, Violence… Guilt, Possibility, Hope… Transformation, Redemption, 2nd chances and how does a person carry on after taking another person's life.

I'm grateful Quan shared his story with me. It's a difficult story for obvious reasons. There were a couple of things that I struggled with that I share at the end of the episode.

Yes, there is residual pain in his story. A life is gone. Nothing will change that.

But Quan has become somebody else. He is no longer a man who is a slave to the anger and rage and bitterness that shaped him into a person who took another's life.

Quan chose a different path as his time in prison progressed. He chose to make conscious choices. Hard choices. Painful choices.

Choices that have changed his heart.

And by changing his heart, he has changed the future of his life and all those he comes in contact with.

While he was convicted of murder, he is choosing not to be defined by that moment or his old life. He is choosing not to be trapped in a cycle of pain and violence. His choices are no longer about the past and a hardened heart. They are about the future and the choices of a new heart.

As our heart goes, so goes our life.

Quan made choices to not be forever framed in by his previous choices. He has made new choices that create a new future distinctly different from the other life he created. Choices to help and not to hurt.

Choices that can create a life that can brightly outshine the dark moments of his past.

Mark speaks to Rome Za, a Brazilian Ju Jitsu Practitioner, Life Coach, and Entrepreneur. Rome speaks about his childhood, including immigrating to the US from Chechnya, not being able to speak the language, dropping out of high school, going back to school to become a doctor only to drop out again before graduating as an undergraduate.

The idea of having a baby can be joy-filled with the idea of how wonderful life will be. The arrival is anticipated and celebrated. The pure love we feel holding the child and the smell of a new baby's skin can make the world feel right again. As it well should.

Then reality sets in for many.

Sleepless nights and fatigue start to be the order of the day. The demands of what seems like never-ending attention for the child's needs. And then the constantly changing personality of the new baby starts to show up. And more and more of that personality shows up as they get older and there isn't a manual to decipher that personality or tell us how to deal with it.

Most of us who become parents tend to follow the examples of the parents we grew up with. I mean if it was good enough for me then it's good enough for my kids.

But sometimes, "good enough," isn't really good enough. What if there is a better way? What if I could do some things differently that make raising a child better than what I experienced. What if we could help them more and be frustrated less.

Author and teacher, Paul Prendergast outlines six qualities to focus on as we raise our children. The qualities are meant to reduce Painful Parenting and turn it into something that gives parents a solid foundation to launch their children into the world. It gives children the solid character needed to live in an ever-changing world.

It is possible to reduce Painful Parenting and turn it into a more positive experience for everyone. Take a listen here.

There have been times I felt like I was ten feet tall and bulletproof. And for a period of time, it felt very much real. Some of those times, shortly after I had the thought of being ten feet tall and bulletproof, I was given a reminder that I wasn't. Other times, it took a while for the lesson to catch up to me. Unfortunately for me, I had a high level of pain tolerance, an equally high level of being comfortable with ignorance and a fair amount of emotional hard headedness.

Not learning very quickly from good information when I got it, I would ignore the obvious, which was to change direction.

There have been times when my gut told me to go one way and my mind talked me out of it with a mental follow up a statement like, "What the hell, why not?"

I'm here to tell, if you choose to act on the "What the hell, why not?" thought, after your gut, or your conscience, told you to do something else, you will find out "Why Not!" And you won't like it.

My wife, on the other hand, has lived a life for the most part, that when she got the right information, she didn't question it. She simply followed the right path and frequently avoided landmines that would have gotten in her way.

Me, I've been a little more thick headed at times.

We've all don't it to varying degrees. Made the wrong call. Got kicked in the teeth and made adjustments later. Sometimes, it gets very expensive to not pay attention to what our parents told us, our body told us or our bank account told us.

Today's episode is a powerful lesson in paying attention and following through on information when it shows up. Not later. Not paying attention to the information received, literally became a matter of life and death for Robert "Cujo" Teschner.

Cujo was an Air Force fighter pilot and squadron commander with a wife and children. He was given a bit of a medical heads up but decided it wasn't important at the time. Ten years later, it would leave him fighting for his life.

It doesn't matter how smart we are, or how skilled we are or how many millions of dollars we have. If we don't act on what our gut, or our doctor or our boss is telling us is in our best interest to do so, It can lead to devastating outcomes. Or dodging the proverbial bullet by the skin of our teeth.

Take a listen here to find out how you can dodge that bullet and write a happy ending for your own story.

While Cujo had all these responsibilities and skills as an Air Force Pilot, he neglected to pay attention to some indicators that things weren't performing at such a high level in his body. Actually, Cujo noticed things weren't quite right but thought of himself as bulletproof so he chose to ignore them. And that nearly cost him his life. Plenty to learn in this episode so let's get to it.

A couple of things about this episode that I found fascinating. This idea that sometimes we think we are bulletproof, and it serves us and other times it can literally be our undoing.

Flying missions to defend our country takes a skillset and mindset that is very unique. Yet that same mindset, applied to his body, eventually derailed his Cujo's career and impacted his family and especially his oldest son in a dramatic way.

The second thing that I found especially useful was the idea Cujo shared about how his mindset of, how can I still win? Rolled right into his personal life. He took his health problems and applied that mindset so he could heal and also build a new career taking all of his military experience and his challenge with his health and turn it into something that is helping others.

Cujo, in my mind, is a hero for more than one reason. His commitment to finding a way to not just overcome but to succeed and thrive is something we can all model.

That's it until next week. See you then and remember to Live, Learn and Love.

It's easy to get our lives focused on keeping ourselves entertained. There is a massive marketing machine out there everywhere you turn not to mention how the human mind is so willing to cooperate.

Buy this and you will feel great!

Go on this vacation and your kids will have memories for a lifetime!

Drive this car and people will know you are somebody!

Own this, buy that. It never stops. And it is all too easy to be sucked into its energy to consume, consume, consume.

But life wasn't really meant for us to be constantly entertained or on a quest of consumption. There is no lasting value or meaning there for us to build a fulfilling life.

Damion Lupo is a guy who took consumption to an extreme for the average person. He regularly spent $75,000 dollars a month on fun, food, housing. Can you imagine that? He spent more money in a month, every month than most individuals make in a year.

Eventually, his life bottomed out though. His fortune was lost and his family was gone.

Once the ability to consume and be entertained went away, he, in turn, felt an emptiness inside of him. And that brought the pain.

Luckily life is filled with new beginnings. Opportunities to learn and bounce back from tragedy or mistakes.

Damion decided to get help for the next part of his journey. He found a trusted mentor. Damion, in turn, started to ask himself the same question every week. "What is True?" And that went on for two years as he rebuilt his life around values and purpose, contribution and connection.

Damion showed us, once again, what life is all about…

This hero's, or heroine's, journey to come to grips with what truly matters most in life. Overcoming our weak spots that trip us up, greed, self-serving behaviors, the desire to take short cuts. And in turn, find wisdom from our experiences to bring us to the next part of our life. A life of Connection and making Contribution as a way of life.

If you're married, you can probably agree with me, there are going to be problems.

I'm not negative on marriage. Quite the opposite. But with expectations of each other, the addition of children, money issues, different sexual needs and levels of desire, there is no shortage of challenges once we have tied the knot.

I've found nobody is immune to the Class 4 rapids, whitewater river raft ride we call marriage.

Many, if not most of us, buy into the American Dream of the big house, the job with the big paycheck and the big life of vacations and the perfect home. Because we can't help but drag our own baggage into this big new married life, all of the above eventually leads to big problems, big fights and the day when we ask ourselves, "How did I get here?" and "How do I now get out?"

Yet we got into this marriage for a reason…

"I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this person."

For those of us who don't want to give up on the commitment we already made, it frequently makes sense to get help.

Help with clarity.

Help with communication.

Help with healing.

Help with a unified vision.

Help moving forward together.

Lance and Brandy Salazar are my guests on this episode. They have hit the rocks more times than they can count and were ready to divorce. A frank conversation between Brandy and a friend of hers led Brandy to reconsider the wisdom of divorce. Instead, she talked with Lance and they chose to begin to rebuild their marriage together one step at a time.

They did it! Not only did they do it but Brandy and Lance now help others to build their failing, so-so or even good relationships into what they call Legendary Couples.

This episode was full of honesty, transparency, and SOLUTIONS! If you want to rebuild your marriage, regain trust and be able to rely on each other again or more, the first step is to click on this link and listen to this episode.

For the most part, if we get those positive experiences early in life, we can better learn how to handle the negative moments and experiences later in life.

But what happens if early in life you have experiences that teach you insecurity, that the world isn't a safe place or that you aren't loved? You can spend a lifetime feeling like you don't fit in or you can never have what you want or measure up to those around you. The negative self-talk from those experiences can create handicaps in our lives keeping us away from much of the best parts of life.

Fear, while frequently seen as a negative can actually work to our advantage if used correctly.

Fear, when worked in the positive, can be used to drive us and our lives, away from the negative or harmful and to the positive and helpful. In my own experience, not wanting to be the type of father I had in my youth drove me to make different choices than my father. Choices that helped me to make an experience in my son's life very different than the one I had growing up. Those choices helped me be the kind of father I wished I had.

My guest this week, Mary Shores is a fine example of overcoming childhood trauma. When I asked her, what helped her overcome the adversity in her own life, she said it wasn't positive thinking or empowerment. It was straight up fear. Fear of not being able to have the type of life she believed others were having. And that fear came directly from her experiences growing up.

Mary believed she was handicapped to some degree by the circumstances she grew up with. Yet she found a way to use her fear to drive her to success, happiness, and fulfillment. And she did it one step at a time. Growing into a powerful woman, mother, CEO, and author.

Take a listen.