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Mark Crandall’s is a story of uncommon adversity and triumph. At age three, Mark was taken from his biological mother by the Department of Youth and Families and placed in the foster care system. He lacked the tools and supports to manage both his grief and his new reality in society’s margins. From the pieces he conjured stories about his own worth. At around age 12 Mark began contemplating whether or not to just give up.

Throughout his early childhood, Mark’s behavior stood out to others as being abnormal and aberrant. He began to engage in criminal activity, acting out his aggression at the expense of those closest to him and society at large. Years of counseling and various combinations of medications could not correct the feelings of inadequacy and separation within. Mark began to self-medicate with substances; thus began his spiral into painful, chaotic addiction. Mark found himself in and out of youth detention centers and other correctional facilities. He lashed out at those who would protect and support him. Though, even in his lowest moments, Mark recognized what others saw: There was greatness in even him.

In 2007, Mark found a spiritual program of action in which he began overcoming the many traumatic moments of his childhood. He also began the process of repairing the damage that he had caused others through his efforts to navigate life. Mark found freedom in an introspective process which informs his Transformational Life and Business Coaching and drug and alcohol Interventions. Mark is trained in some of the most powerful transformation practices available, all of which he uses in his work with others.

Mark has re-written the story of his life and has dedicated his life to empowering others to accomplish the same. Mark obtained a Masters Degree in Social Work (MSW) in 2014 and became a Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor (LCDC) and Licensed Master Social Worker (LMSW). Mark spent seven years working with disadvantaged youth and providing individual and family counseling. He has conducted many successful Interventions for families in his work and has mastered the art of Transformational Life and Business Coaching. Mark is a master of conducting interventions and empowering the intervened client and the family to heal from drug addiction.

Mark’s success as an entrepreneur has made him a highly sought-after Transformational Life and Business Coach. He and his carefully curated circle of Transformational Life and Business Coaches do not believe that anyone lacks motivation; what they may lack, instead, is vision. We recognize that with vision and the proper mindset, anything is attainable. Mark has proven this principle in his own life by building a six-figure company within five months of its start; by publishing his renowned first memoir Eulogy of Childhood Memories; by leading fruitful corporate workshops;  and by inspiring a following through paid motivational speaking events. Mark learned with help from a long line of coaches that his past did not have to define his future. Mentors taught him how to break through real and imagined barriers and access greatness that lies within each living person. Mark considers his greatest assets to be his learned and organic abilities to bring out the potential within all of his clients and to guide them as they achieve their dreams.

Key Points from the Episode with Mark Crandall:

• Mark shared his story, one of trauma, addiction, felony and transformation.
• He started with his first memory, when he was two and a half, was painfully hungry and asked his sister where his mother was. His sister told him she was at the diner, and he remembers feeling anger toward his mother, and why she gets to eat but he doesn’t. That feeling kept recurring anytime he saw someone else with something and he didn’t have it.
• His mother struggled with drugs and his father left before Mark had any memory of him.
• He shared various stories that shaped him early on while he was still with his biological mother, culminating in when he was taken away from her and put into foster care with people who would end up adopting him and his sister.
• His feeling growing up wasn’t that the situation he was born into was broken, but rather that he was. He felt that something was wrong with him, and that was why he was getting dropped off at random strangers’ homes, going hungry, not having clothes that fit, being physically hurt and ultimately not being “wanted” by his biological mother, or not wanted as much as she wanted her drugs.
• That lead to a very aggressive way to live, which his adoptive parents bore the brunt of, as he swore to never let anyone hurt him the way his mother hurt him. He would hurt them first or make sure they never got a chance to hurt him.
• His biological parents were on his mind all the time, and why he wasn’t like other kids. Why wasn’t he like them, why does he have these two families, why didn’t one of them keep him and care for him, why did his mother keep promising to come and yet never show up?
• He either spent all of his energy in relationships waiting for someone to leave or pushing them away so they leave anyway.
• At 11, he tried beer after seeing other people looking happy drinking, and he wanted that. It didn’t stick right away, but after a few years, he figured out what did make him happy after he started smoking marijuana.
• As a pre-teen, he had his first thoughts of suicide. He thought about what the world would be like without him and that no one loves him. That’s not common for a nine to 11 year old, and he didn’t tell anyone about it. But around that time, he started to act out even more. He started setting fires, killing and torturing animals and other things. He holds a lot of shame about what he did, and is still working through those feelings today.
• He started to smoke weed daily, and started stealing regularly to support his drug habit or just because.
• The way he puts it, at nine years old, he had all the traits of a serial“å9 killer.
• He ended up in a group home at 11 years old, which actually made things worse as he was around really bad behaviors and learned how to do even more bad things.
• He went to high school after the group homes now armed with knowledge of all these new drugs he learned about, how to get them and how to use them, he felt he was on a mission to get drugs and that defined his high school years. Truancy, intoxication, anger and bad behavior. He said he was on a daily mission to quiet the voices in his head about how much he hated himself.
• We talked about whether marijuana is a gateway drug. While this is debated biologically, we both agreed that behaviorally, it is. When you break down the barriers and stigmas, your aversion to a darker path diminishes. And now you are connected to a world with access to more and more of these things, so you can easily go down that path. For Mark, that’s how he got into heroin. His weed dealer was out of weed, but offered him, “something better instead.” He obviously would not have been in a position to start doing heroin without having been looking for weed.
• Mark described his first experience with heroin and how it was the first relief he ever experienced from the extreme turmoil and pain he felt inside. It also lead to his being thrown out of his mother’s house and the path that eventually landed him in jail.
• He did a year in county jail, and did a lot of reading in there, including David Peltzer’s various books like A Child Called It and Lost Boy. He realized while in prison that he would one day be an author and transform lives. He just wasn’t ready to do it yet, but the seed was planted.
• After getting out of jail, the pain got stronger and the voice of anger inside of him got louder, which eventually lead him to use again. Once he started again, he quickly spiraled out of control to heavy use and criminal activity with police chasing him regularly. Not after long, he was back in prison, and views his second time as rehabilitative. Interestingly, he was high the entire time, so he doesn’t mean it like that, but they forced him to get his GED, which was the first step to going to a court-ordered, year-long strict rehab program that saved his life.
• In rehab, he was introduced to a number of tools that changed his life as he began seeking. He was taught about meditation, religion and various books by people like The Dalai Lama and Thict Naut Hahn. This is when Mark really began to transform into what he is today, and found the tools to help others do the same.
• Mark shared why he doesn’t like the term, “Self-Help,” and prefers to talk about people needing empowerment. It changes the idea from being that you’re broken from being that you need to amplify your best.
• Looking throughout history at the greatest religious leaders and teachers of enlightenment, you find consistent back stories of pain and suffering leading to great insight and inspiration.
• Mark realized through this that he spent his entire life playing the victim. Being a victim is not the same as playing a victim. He is a victim, but that is very different from acting like one. Playing one is about blaming all future outcomes and reactions to life on experiences of the past. It’s the difference between, “This happened to me,” and, “This happened for me.”
• You can’t make a choice if you don’t realize there’s a decision to be made. He had to have a wake up to realize that it wasn’t working. He said the worst place he can get to is one of, “I know.” Thinking that way blocks him from seeing what could be or how he can grow.
• To grow out of your current thought patterns, you need empathy – the ability to see what someone else is seeing. You need different thought patterns to see other ways forward.
• Mark said something that stopped me in my tracks, “The truth doesn’t need defending.” If he is defending something, then perhaps there’s something going on within him that the defense is signaling since if what he was saying was true, it wouldn’t need any defense. Defense is a signal to him that there’s growth to be had.
• Mark gave a challenge to the listeners to pick a moment to advocate with themselves regardless of what they think the other people in the interaction will think.

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Josh Perry is a former professional BMX athlete, motivational speaker, and certified holistic health consultant that’s fighting 4 brain tumors. His strong motivation for living his best and healthiest life stems from a brain tumor diagnosis & surgery in 2010 followed by 2 additional diagnoses. After overcoming the surgeries & treatments, and realizing he most likely has a genetic predisposition to accumulating tumors, he immersed himself in research on how to enhance the health, performance, and longevity of his brain. Since choosing to change his life and follow a ketogenic diet & lifestyle, the growth of the tumors have stopped and he feels better and more fulfilled than he has ever before. Today, Josh has left competing to start his health coaching business as a way of exploring his passion for helpings other improve their brain health and become the most successful versions of themselves. Josh also teamed up with the Athlete Recovery Fund to start raising awareness and funds for a non-profit BMX/Wellness event focused on raising direct funding for direct patient care through education, sport, and faith called the Brainy BMX Stunt Shows

Josh shares what really helped him take back control of his life. Vision & goals are what helped him overcome adversity and become successful, still living with 4 tumors today. His tools are Gamma Knife Radiosurgery, a ketogenic diet/lifestyle, and leaving the competition side of BMX to pursue his wellness-focused purpose purpose, Brainy BMX. Josh feels strongly that health is internal and we all have the same choice in our life and that’s our perspective.

Key Points from the Episode with Josh Perry:

• Josh has taken a step back from his pro BMX career to focus on sharing his story across podcasts, public speaking and his health coaching work. And he’s doing that all with four brain tumors that he’s managing through a mix of the Keto diet, the right mindset and medical intervention when needed (mainly Gamma Knife technology)
• He hit on the hidden transition in his retirement from the pro BMX circuit around a loss of identity. His world has been Josh Perry the BMX rider, so aside from not riding in competitions, he’s faced the question of who he is today. He still rides at an incredible level because he loves it, but he isn’t actively competing.
• His dream was just to be a professional BMX rider competing, but didn’t realize what he’d be exposed to all over the world through the travel he’s done, for example performing for the troops in Afghanistan.
• In March 2010, he was training a jump he was working on. He was worried about under-rotating and ended up over-compensating and over-rotating, which resulted in a crash that landed him in an urgent care center to get his head scanned.
• As a background to this crash, he had been having intense headaches for a year with pain so severe it made him nauseous. Whenever he went to the doctor about the headaches, the doctors sort of blew it off since he was so young, and just gave him pills for the headache pain.
• But when he got the scan after his crash, the news the doctor shared was not something he expected at all. He was told, “There’s something in your brain that isn’t supposed to be there.” And after that, things became surreal and he was almost detached from his surroundings. He called his mother to tell her the news and couldn’t even speak.
• He felt complete broken and out-of-body.
• The urgent care doctor told him he not only would never ride again, but probably would never walk again, either. That was what really set the shock in.
• He sound learned that he had a large tumor on top of his brain that had wrapped itself around his optic nerve, which was causing his headaches and vision issues. It was so severe that, in a month or two, he wouldn’t have woken up again.
• After his surgery, which took over six hours, he was riding again after five weeks, and was competing again seven to eight weeks after that.
• His biggest struggle coming back into competition was just around confidence and whether he was ready and able to do it. He worked on that actively and got himself back to where he was before the surgery. It was very much an action-oriented approach.
• He found inspiration from his mother’s battle overcoming colon cancer and also reading Lance Armstrong’s book and recognizing how he won most of his victories after he had cancer. That helped him realize he wasn’t done yet.
• He learned so much through this experience about himself and what he can do that he believes he wouldn’t have learned without going through this experience with the first tumor. He doesn’t think everyone needs to face something so dramatic to learn these lessons, but he feels he did.
• I questioned whether the fast movement to action helped him be positive and overcome it, which isn’t something he’s thought about before, but he does believe this is a crucial part of the puzzle. Had he sat longer before the surgery, he would have had more time to ruminate, worry and let his mindset slip.
• He talked about how worrying can lead to bad choices, like when he crashed. He was worried about under-rotating when he flipped, and he ended up over-rotating and crashing. Worry about going too far left can mean you shift too hard right, and fail. Mindset and fear can lead to the outcomes we’re fearing in the first place.
• Two years after coming back from his first tumor and surgery, a routine MRI found two new tumors that were not operable. He was told he could try radiation, but that didn’t sit well with him, so he researched other options, and found the Gamma Knife, which uses targeted radio waves done on an out-patient basis, which is what he has been using to fight his tumors since finding it.
• As he was getting fully back into BMX competition, he blew out his knee at a competition, and rode with it that way for two years with it in a brace because he didn’t want to stop riding to get it taken care of.
• His girlfriend, who was a trainer who he met through working through his recovery, pushed him to address his knee problem by getting surgery, and eventually he agreed to do it, timing things around BMX events. Recovery was expected to be six to eight months long, but his recovery went much faster, which he credits his physical fitness and diet with.
• He came back into competition and got up to 10th in the world and then, during another regularly MRI scan, they found two more tumors, and realized he has a genetic condition that predisposes him to develop tumors in his brain and spinal cord.
• Since then, he has used a Ketogenic diet to stop the growth of the tumors and promote brain health, and so far, the tumors have not progressed. As this episode comes out, he will have had his second annual scan to see if the tumors have stayed the same size or even shrunk, so we’ll all be thinking of Josh as we listen to this.
• He shared some of the science behind why the Keto diet is so helpful, which is about providing alternative fuel sources to brain cells that are damaged, for example by concussion (which Josh obviously has dealt with given his profession).
• Ultimately, Josh’s goal is to inspire change in perspective to help people see their lives in a more positive outlook but ultimately to prioritize the health of their brain. He shares his story to help inspire that in others, and has started to share more mindset pieces than anything.
• He’s using his health coaching to help make this impact, as well as public speaking to try to touch large groups.
• He’s not looking to just inspire people, but inspire them to take action and change.
• He’s also working with the Athlete Recovery Fund to create the Brain BMX Stunt Shows, which are wellness BMS events to educate and raise funds for brain tumor and injury patients to provide direct funding for them. Josh and his family benefited from the Fund when he got his diagnosis, so this is a way to give back.
• Books we mentioned: Buddha’s Brain and The Ketogenic Bible

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John Zeratsky was a designer in the tech industry who became obsessed with the idea of redesigning time. He is the bestselling author of Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days and Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day.

John’s writing has been published by The Wall Street Journal, TIME, Harvard Business Review, Wired, Fast Company, and many other publications. John has appeared on stage more than 100 times, including at Harvard University, IDEO, and the Code Conference.

For nearly 15 years, John was a designer for technology companies. At GV, he helped develop the design sprint process and worked with close to 200 startups, including Uber, Slack, Flatiron Health, Pocket, Foundation Medicine, One Medical Group, and Nest. He was also GV’s in-house copywriter, editor, and content strategist; he created and edited the GV Library, which has attracted million of views since 2012. Previously, John was a designer at YouTube and Google, and an early employee at FeedBurner, which Google acquired in 2007.

Originally from Wisconsin, John and his wife Michelle have lived in Chicago and San Francisco. Today they split time between their sailboat “Pineapple” (currently in Panama) and their home in Milwaukee.

Key Points from the Episode with John Zeratsky

• John has been in the startup space for years, having been part of the team at FeedBurner when it was sold to Google.
• At Google, he started to work at Google Ventures, which inserted him into companies they invested in to help those companies scale toward success.
• Through those experiences, he learned a lot about productivity, and decided to dive head-first into it to find ways to become even more productive. He was focused on efficiency so he was making the most of his time while working. He saw this as a good thing, at least at the time.
• Until he realized you can’t just keep pushing productivity as, eventually, you burn out. That inspired him to look for something more sustainable. This is what lead to the journey to his current book, Make Time.
• The trick to making time, if there is one, is to spend less time on the default behaviors we fall into so we can focus more of our time on what matters.
• Mindfulness is a big piece of this approach, but it’s not the only aspect as finding yourself doing something mindlessly might suggest you need to try harder and use will-power to stop doing that. John does not see will-power as a long-term strategy, and I agree with him.
• Instead, he says we should make it harder to get distracted. We need to create the space to become more mindful with the time we have.
• It starts with the idea of self-responsibility, since no one cares about you more than you do.
• Rather than focusing on grit and execution, we should focus on structure that helps us succeed. Instead, we would see ourselves as failures or incapable if we don’t succeed.
• Make the path to success the path of least resistance. As he says, if you are a compulsive gambler, you don’t live next to a casino. Make choices in the structure of your life to make it easier to get to where you want to be.
• He shared the basis of his first book, Sprint, which is about bringing software engineering design sprints into making teams more productive. It was an experiment with redesigning time for teams. Some of what they learned became the framework for his new book, Make Time.
• Speaking of which, what is it? Make Time is a book, but also a strategy for how to make time for the things you want to be doing. It is filled with 87 concrete tactics, but it boils down to four daily steps, which are in a daily loop. They are:
  1. Highlights – what is the highlight of your day that you want to see accomplished, and then build your day around that.
  2. Laser – make the structural adjustments to your technology and physical environment to cut back on the activities you get into mindlessly that you don’t really want to do, like, “Today, I want to spend three hours lost in my Facebook feed.” It’s about adding friction and barriers back oil so you make better choices.
  3. Energize – you can’t make good use of your time if you’re tired, don’t have energy and are worn out. This is about concrete ways to build energy for your body and mind through different things you can do to take care of yourself. These are simple, concrete things you can do in a given day. For example, he shares small ways to bring movement into your day like walking to work at least part of the way (which brought up a convo about my idea of #CUYOP – Commuting Under Your Own Power), or not ordering online but going out to a store to get what you need.
  4. Reflect – look back on your day and note what went well and what didn’t, and think about what you can do differently the next day.
• We talked about a lot of pressure from “Musts” in our life, especially around exercise. You don’t have to workout for an hour to get benefit, and some is better than none, so do something. He cited some research that shows that the majority of the benefit of an hour of cardio comes in the first 20 minutes. And he shared other insights that, if you aren’t doing anything now, try to do just 15 minutes a day, which is a great start, builds consistency, and will start to have impact. You don’t have to stare at a huge effort and cower in front of it and end up doing nothing (that is, Do a Day!).
• John is all about breaking down the big things into small things we can do today. It may not get us where we’re going today, but will get us going towards it, and if you don’t start, you’ll never get there. Looking at something that’s 60-90 minuets seems to be a good place to start. It’s long enough to be a big deal that you have to make time for purposefully, but not so big that it’s impossible (like an all-day effort).
• We also talked about the idea of Someday vs. Today. It’s never “Someday,” but is instead always, “Today.” This is central to Do a Day, so of course I loved it. If you focus on “Someday,” you will never start since it’s always in the future.
• This is really useful for New Years Resolutions, especially. Break down those “Someday” goals into “Today” actions.
• We always know that there is something that we want to be better at, but we don’t always know quite what that would look like if we haven’t started. John talked about the idea of treading water. You know you want to get to land, but you can’t really see around you to know where to go or what getting there would entail. Sometimes, you need to start, get your head above water, and as you get going, you will see more clearly where that goal point is.
• John shared a personal story of doing exactly that. While he and his wife were living in San Francisco and were busy, they started to find that they were having trouble finding the space for what they wanted to do. They started (the key!) to create space for doing just that, and used it to get into sailing, which they enjoyed. The more they did it, the more they were able to make time to do it, and over the course of years, this turned into a complete change in their life. They moved out of San Francisco and onto their sailboat, and cruised their way down to Panama, where their boat is today  and they spend their summers (and they are in Milwaukee, WI the rest of the year). They didn’t start with the plan of doing any of this, but made time, and the goals started to come together toward their current life.

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Jon serves as the Executive Director, transition guide and workshop facilitator at Liminal Space.  Throughout his personal life and professional career, Jon has discovered that handling transition well will allow for a deeper and more fulfilling life.

A native of Michigan, Jon began his career after graduating from Hope College like any other – landing a job that was ‘fine.’ It paid well, offered a comfortable lifestyle, and promised many great career opportunities. But a few years in, waves of discontent just wouldn’t go away. He started asking questions, having conversations, reading and began meeting with a mentor. Over the course of about 18 months, he explored the questions: Now what? and Where do I go from here? It was within this discontent that he started to intentionally explore what the next chapter of his life could be.

Jon came to Seattle in 2003 to attend The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology (formerly known as Mars Hill Graduate School); ultimately receiving his Masters of Divinity in 2007. Through his education, mentoring and the struggles and discoveries of his transitions, Jon found a more natural fit for his career – creating a practice called Liminal Space that combines the often segregated disciplines of spiritual direction, life coaching and counseling. Through this work, he’s come to know and believe in the power of transformation while a person is located in a moment of transition – a liminal space. Though often very challenging and many liminal spaces conjure up many unwanted things, it’s where the most true things in life are found.  It’s where God joins us and anticipates seeing some of the best of who we are, and how we fit into the story.

Outside of Liminal Space, Jon enjoys living life with his wife and three young sons.

Links

• Website: inaliminalspace.org
  
• Podcast: listen to my episode of the Life Through Transitions Podcast (Episode 3)
• John’s TEDx Talk: Two Factors that Make or Break Every Major Life Transition from TEDx Tacoma 2018
• Facebook
• Twitter: @inaliminalspace
• Instagram: @inaliminalspace
• Vimeo

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Keep Growing with Do a Day

• Get the book in print, Kindle, iBooks, Audiobook and more – even get a personally-signed copy from Bryan Falchuk
• Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise
• Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

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Ariana Robinson Danquah is a mother of two boys under 2, a wife, a full-time working professional and the President of a non-profit.

She is the President and Founder of Workplace Lab, a Houston based 501c3 non-profit focused on building employee empowerment and engagement. As an HR professional and business owner, Ariana specializes in empowering people with practical advice on living fulfilling work lives. She has several years of experience in Human Resource management in industry, and business, diversity/inclusion, and psychology research experience that has equipped her to be a credible ally to many.

Despite having an overflowing plate already, she felt so strongly that a population of employees were being underserved as they strive to develop, grow and move ahead in their careers that she decided she had to do something. Workplace Lab was born from that desire and determination, which she shares with us in this episode of the show.

Links

• Website: www.workplacelab.org
• Podcast: listen to my episode of the Workplace Lab Podcast (Episode 16)
• Facebook: fb.me/workplacelab.org
• Twitter: @workplacelab

Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast

Keep Growing with Do a Day

• Get the book in print, Kindle, iBooks, Audiobook and more – even get a personally-signed copy from Bryan Falchuk
• Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise
• Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Download this episode

Sydney Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management and Director of the Center for Leadership at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, where he teaches courses on Leadership and Strategy. He is also the Faculty Director of the flagship Tuck Executive Program, and has experience working with executives at a number of other prestigious universities around the world. He holds degrees from Concordia University and the London School of Economics, as well as a Ph.D. from Columbia University in strategic management.

Sydney has published 20 books and 80 articles, with several bestsellers, including the #1 bestseller in the U.S. and Japan, Why Smart Executives Fail. Based on a six-year study of 51 companies and 200 interviews of business leaders, the book identifies the fundamental reasons why major mistakes happen, points out the early warning signals that are critical for investors and managers alike, and offers ideas on how organizations can develop a capability of learning from corporate mistakes. On Fortune Magazine’s list of Best Business Books, the Wall Street Journal called it “a marvel – a jargon-free business book based on serious research that offers genuine insights with clarity and sometimes even wit … It should be required reading not just for executives but for investors as well.” It has also been featured in media around the world and has been translated into 12 languages.

Professor Finkelstein’s latest book is SUPERBOSSES: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent. Once again he has undertaken extensive research over a ten year period of some of the most intriguing business leaders in the world who all have one thing in common – they helped develop the best talent in their industry sectors, who in turn helped them become the legendary successes they are today. What they did, and how they did it, is shared via fascinating profiles and seven management practices that separate the best bosses from the merely good ones. LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls it “a leadership guide for the Networked Age,” while Jeff Immelt, Chairman and CEO of GE, says “Superbosses gives leaders a playbook to bring out the best in their people.”

Sydney is a Fellow of the Academy of Management, and has had three books nominated for the Academy of Management’s Terry Book Award, the most prestigious such honor in the field. He is a recognized thought leader on leadership, strategy, and corporate governance, and is listed on the “Thinkers 50,” the most prominent ranking of management thinkers in the world. He is well known for his keynote speeches and television appearances, and is a regular columnist for the BBC. He has worked as a consultant and speaker for major companies around the world.

To stay up-to-date on Professor Finkelstein’s latest insights on leadership and decision-making, follow him on Twitter @sydfinkelstein.

Links

• Website: www.superbosses.com
• Books on Amazon
• Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast

Keep Growing with Do a Day

• Get the book in print, Kindle, iBooks, Audiobook and more – even get a personally-signed copy from Bryan Falchuk
• Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise
• Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Download this episode

• Sara, who just released her first book, Living {Cancer} Free, shared her journey to get to the knowledge in the book, including battles with Cancer literally and cancers figuratively. She aims to help people live free from both.
• Sara’s story started with the kind of identity crisis many suffer from during their teenage years. She had a sense of who she was inside, who she was turning into, and the person she needed to pretend to be to be liked. That battle and disconnect had a toll on her, and lead to the start of her eating disorder issues, including Anorexia and Bulimia. This was one way she was able to exert control over at least one area of her life.
• As Sara got older, those battles expanded into problems with alcohol, which is almost the opposite issue from the eating disorders because this was about losing control and being reckless whereas the eating issues were about controlling her life.
• Sara enrolled in college in Boston, and struggled there, deciding to leave the school and return home after a year. This ended up being a potentially-life-saving decision as it was at home that her mother pushed her to get a strange lump on her neck looked at. It was found to be a cancerous tumor, and Sara was quickly diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma. She began a 10-month program or radiation and chemotherapy.
• While her drinking during treatment stopped for the most part, she still battled with her eating disorders, including going to the gym as much as she could to purge through excessive exercise.
• Interestingly, during her battle with Cancer and despite her continuing to make destructive decisions around food, Sara enrolled in a local community college to keep learning and growing, which I found to be such a beautiful break from the turmoil in the rest of her life. Knowledge has always been an important part of her life, and she decided it was important to keep that going.
• Sara pointed out a really interesting fact about Cancer. Only 5-10% is genetically-driven. That means 90-95% of Cancer could potentially be avoided. While this simplifies things a bit (you could still avoid a genetically-driven Cancer if you find a way to keep a gene from expressing itself, for example), it’s a really powerful statistic to keep in mind and to think about what you are doing in your life that may be bringing cancers into your situation. This is about being 100% responsible for our lives, being the CEO of our lives, which is what Living Free is really all about.
• After beating Cancer, Sara returned to school full-time, pursuing a degree in design, and went into the advertising world doing design. She also returned to drinking and kept making dealing with her eating disorders. She described it as a calm after the storm where she was left suddenly having to face all the emotions she had to push past during treatment. It was sort of a trade off between the control of the eating disorder and the loss of control of drinking, alternating one one day and the other the next.
• When it all hit her during the pause after treatment in this limbo of “what do you do now,” she realized she needed to do something different with her life. This was another point of the conflict between who she is, and she was meant to be.
• Sara shared a quote she’s been using in her email signature about being the CEO of your life, which we mentioned before. She stresses the importance of how this puts responsibility for your actions squarely on your shoulders. And how you should not feel guilty about that or scared of it. If you fall down, it’s up to you to get back up and learn from it so you can keep getting up in the future. Those choices are yours to make. Having that freedom to choose is empowering if you own it.
• Sara lost her job in the Great Recession, which forced her to seek a less expensive workout option to purge with, which is how she was introduced to Yoga, which she initially did not like but noticed was the first time she allowed herself to feel. Part of that was not having the metrics to show her how much she had burned off like she would on a piece of cardio equipment at the gym, and partially because she didn’t take the first instructor she had. This was a good chance to learn that you should follow your sense of fit with anyone you turn to as an expert, and so she tried other instructors until she found someone who really clicked for her. After that, she discovered a real love for Yoga, the control it brings and the way breathing and opening the body worked her in a way she had never been challenged before.
• After several years as a student, she began teaching Yoga, and eventually left her day job to do it full-time.
• As Yoga played a bigger role in her life, she started to get a clearer sense of what Living Free was really about, culminating in her 14-point Live Free Manifesto. A few of them are: Never Settle, Quality of Quantity, You Have the Power to Choose Any Life That You Desire.
• We got into the strong influence the fear of the past and future have over our present moment. The only thing we ever have is right here and right now (obviously this is something that’s right up my alley with Do a Day)
• The way Sara finally cut out drinking was to discover the Why behind her drinking, face that, and then she was able to just stop drinking in an instant.
• We talked about the importance of Play – having a space where we allow our light to shine through, especially as adults. We should let the child in us come out occasionally and just play. It can make space for creativity, rejuvenation and levity – all things we need in life.
• Sara shared a really important initiative she’s doing to provide healthy care baskets for people battling Cancer called the Cancer Care Package. We talked about how people get gifts, which is great, but they’re unhealthy things that would actually feed a tumor’s growth (like candy). You can get the small and large versions of the baskets from Sara’s site.

Links

• Website: livefreewarrior.com
• Book: Living Cancer Free on Amazon
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/livefreewarriortv
• Instagram: @livefreewarrior
• Twitter: @livefreewarrior
• Vimeo: Live Free Warrior
• YouTube: Live Free Warrior
• Pinterest: Live Free Warrior
• LinkedIn

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Keep Growing with Do a Day

• Get the book in print, Kindle, iBooks, Audiobook and more – even get a personally-signed copy from Bryan Falchuk
• Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise
• Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

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Charise’s 5 questions

1. Who are you?
2. What do you believe?
3. What are your gifts?
4. What type of relationships are you nurturing?
5. Who or what are you allowing to control you?

Links:

• Website: goldenlifeliving.com
• Podcast: listen to my episode of Golden Life Living Podcast (My Episode)
• Facebook: fb.me/goldenlifeliving
• Twitter: @goldenlifenow
• Instagram: @goldenlifeliving

Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast

Keep Growing with Do a Day

• Get the book in print, Kindle, iBooks, Audiobook and more – even get a personally-signed copy from Bryan Falchuk
• Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise
• Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Download this episode

Lindsey Heiserman is a personal trainer and life coach with over a decade of experience working with a wide variety of clients. Her mission is to empower you to live life on your terms with health and movement as the foundation.

The foundation of her training and life philosophy is Mind, Muscle and Movement. Engage your mind, Strengthen your muscle and Experience movement.

When not working with clients you can find her training for obstacle course racing, adventuring and traveling around the United States, hanging out with her fur babies, drinking coffee, and enjoying Minnesota winters.

Links:

• Website: lindseyheiserman.com
• Podcast: listen to my episode of Mind Muscle and Movement (Episode 73)
• Facebook: @lindseyheisermancoaching

Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast

Keep Growing with Do a Day

• Get the book in print, Kindle, iBooks, Audiobook and more – even get a personally-signed copy from Bryan Falchuk
• Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise
• Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Download this episode

Robb Holman is an internationally recognized leadership expert, executive coach, keynote speaker, and bestselling author who has a heart for authentic relationships and a true talent for equipping people with the skills and the knowledge necessary for their success. His work has been featured in top publications like Inc., Forbes, and Fast Company and endorsed by many of the world’s top leadership thinkers.

With passion and exuberance, Robb’s dynamic teaching style has successfully led thousands of business owners, executives, and leaders through his exclusive and proprietary method of Inside Out Leadership™ Coaching. In helping his clients learn how to connect with their unique life’s purpose, they are finding success in a way they never expected – from the inside out!

As a lifelong serial entrepreneur, Robb has founded numerous, highly influential organizations, both for-profit, as well as non-profit. His current endeavor is as author of bestselling book, Lead the Way, and CEO of Holman International, a global leadership consultancy revolutionizing the way business leaders operate.

Fun fact: Robb used to be a professional basketball player!

Links

• Website: robbholman.com
• Facebook: fb.me/robbholman1
• Twitter: @robbholman
• Instagram: @robb.holman
• LinkedIn
• YouTube

Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast

Keep Growing with Do a Day

• Get the book in print, Kindle, iBooks, Audiobook and more – even get a personally-signed copy from Bryan Falchuk
• Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise
• Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event