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Another 26 episodes of the Do a Day Podcast are done, and I thought it would be a great time to pause, reflect, and take stock of all we’ve taken in with Season 2 of the show.

If you’ve been listening all along, you know how great and powerful these episodes have been thanks to the amazing guests I’ve had on. If you’re new to the show, this is a great way to get a bit of an overview of everything that’s come out this season (but the best way is to go back and listen to them all!).

Key Ideas in the Episode with Bryan Falchuk

• I went through each of the amazing guests that have been on the show
• Steve Gordon showed how falling down may be necessary to reach new heights
• Robb Holman talked about the power of letting go so we can find meaning and purpose
• Lindsey Heiserman inspired us to not let our past stories be part of our right now
• Charise Colbert shared her journey coming out of domestic abuse
• Sara Quiriconi talked to us about how to live free of all the cancers in our life
• Syd Finkelstein on how to be a Super Boss leader
• Ariana Robinson Danquah shared how to rise up when you’re stuck in the middle
• Jon DeWaal gripped us with his story of falling off a roof and how that helped him see how to get through life’s toughest transitions
• John Zeratsky talked about what he discovered to achieve the most, and it has nothing to do with productivity
• Josh Perry taught the power of gratitude even in the face of life’s greatest challenges if you want to come through them thriving
• Mark Crandall shared his trauma story to help us see how facing our trauma’s allows for growth
• Adam Schaeuble got us all fired up, and he also inspired with his approach to reimagining your life – and making it come true
• Sandy Vo talked about her journey to find clarity and peace despite a foundation of turmoil
• Cornell Thomas is the epitome of the “What’s Next?” attitude winning over the “Why Me?” mentality
• Sandra Younger taught us her Come Back approach to be a victor, not a victim of tragedy
• Jenn Swanson talked about her journey off loss, gratitude and realization that you are your best investment
• Howard Jacobson shared how losing his father inspired his mission to fight diseases of ignorance with the wisdom of lifestyle
• Brooke Siem retold her amazing journey navigating her way out of a life of medication for mental illness into a life of discovery
• Tanur Badgley showed how to become a person of purpose through his journey starting with a fall off the side of a mountain
• Gary Bertwistle talked about the power of authenticity and discovering your mojo
• Frank King went into how thoughts of suicide taught him to go after what he really wanted, and why so many people need support as they face moments that lead them to these thoughts
• Mary Shores talked about the power of serving others as she went from dented to thriving
• Nick Elvery shared his journey from addiction to peak performance and what sparked the change
• Jaime Jay got vulnerable as he retold his story of multiple experiences with homelessness to being in a place of gratitude and contentment
• Dai Manuel talked about the importance of living as you need to, from your own perspective
• Blaire Palmer showed how the greatest thing we can bet on is ourselves
• Dov Baron forced us to look at what’s really going on, magnifying it, and then using that insight to truly grow

Links

• Website: www.bryanfalchuk.com
• Get The Big Goal Exercise
• Facebook: @bryanfalchuk
• Twitter: @bryanfalchuk
• Instagram: @bryanfalchuk
• Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast on iTunes

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

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Key Points from the Episode with Dov Baron:

• Dov helps individuals and companies build their ability around leadership, with a specific focus on purpose-driven leadership
• Dov was born into a ghetto in Northern England into a huge family where he was the oldest child
• He committed to leaving when he was 14 because he saw terrible things all around him, and knew he didn’t want that for himself
• Dov believes there was something within him that allowed him to see the world with a different perspective than those around him, and he saw himself not fitting in in many ways. Some people see that and decide to conform, while others realize they need to move on, which is how he responded to not finding a place to fit in.
• He left home at 15, and left England at 21. At that point, he had been married since 16 and had a child. He didn’t leave to get away from them, but rather to stay true to his long-standing desire to leave what he had come up in and going along with the clarity of his desire to leave and grow.
• He set out on a journey to study with different spiritual leaders around the world. He didn’t just study the religions and their philosophies, but immersed himself in their cultures and societies to really take in their messages.
• Dov got into speaking to companies about leadership almost by accident when a client asked him to come speak to his company.
• He opened his first talk by saying, “Put your hand up if you’re a racist.” He was certainly provocative, but it set the audience up to be surprised by their biases and how they stand in the way of their ability to truly lead.
• After several years of going full force speaking and burning out a bit in the 80s, Dov and a friend of his go to climb a mountain in Whistler in British Columbia, Canada in 1990. They climbed Brandywine Falls, and Dov wanted to climb behind the waterfall despite the height, wet rocks and steepness. After getting behind the falls and being soaking wet, he wanted to go off the path and free-climb on the rocks to come down.
• While climbing, a rock let loose, hit him in the face, and knocked him off the cliff, sending him tumbling down 120 feet to the ground. After an extraction effort, he got to a local hospital, where the numerous injuries were listed off with loads of broken bones and damaged organs. Dov was transferred to a bigger hospital, and in the ride there, he employed the practices he had been studying like meditation.
• Upon arrival at the hospital, they found nothing broken below his face.
• He had a very long, drawn-out recovery where he died five times. Unlike what you hear about near-death-experiences where there’s a light, Dov saw darkness, and felt a fight or a struggle to get back into his body. In those moments, his daughter who was by his side described the setting as like a movie where it was very loud with the commotion of the hospital and then suddenly going silent.
• Dov raised the idea that these big events change your life. His view is that they actually don’t. Instead, they magnify what you really are – all the anger, frustration and other feelings inside him that he hadn’t dealt with came to the surface.
• It isn’t about coming back. Back doesn’t exist. We can only go forward to what’s next or what’s new and make that work.
• He realized there are only three paths: go back (which he realized he couldn’t do), stay where he is and be the victim, or find a way to move forward. That means finding the meaning of his life. He realized he had never really found his purpose and needed to.
• He realized what mattered to him was around helping other people find their purpose.
• The change does not come in the devastation, but rather in the choice point after the devastation when we realize we will not be the same, we won’t go back and we won’t stay stuck.
• You know you are living your purpose when the work you’re doing will impact the lives of people whose names you don’t know, or better yet, names you will never know. 
• Once you find it, then the real question is whether you’re willing to live it. A good sign that you’ve hit on the real thing is that living it scares you, which Dov sees as a good thing because it pushes him.
• People talk about fear of failure, but he doesn’t see it that way. He think we are actually afraid of how we will look in the eyes of others, will we be embarrassed, will people judge or reject us? When you’re purpose driven, you will be rejected, so you need to recognize this rejection is what you’re really afraid of so you can get over that fear.
• We got into what makes a great leader, and Dov summed it up in this one idea – the job of a leader is to create more leaders, not to create followers.
• The advice he gives people to move forward is simple. Stay curious. If you think you’re there, you’re not, so keep looking and wondering.
• Sometimes the move loving thing you can do for someone is not to be complimentary, but to call them out on the carpet for not living the life they were meant to live.

Links:

• Website: FullMontyLeadership.com
• Podcast: Leadership and Loyalty
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DovBaronLeadership
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheDovBaron
• LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/dovbaron

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Key Points from the Episode with Blaire Palmer:

• After a successful career in journalism at the BBC and elsewhere, Blaire took the leap to go off on her own as a leadership and business consultant nearly 20 years ago.
• After a couple of decades in her independent practice, she decided she needed to shake things up in her business and life, and decided to take a year with her daughter and dogs to travel around Europe and experience things first hand – something she calls her Brilliant Gamble.
• She could have looked at all the reasons not to do it or barriers to doing it, and say it’s rational to let that idea fizzle. There were risks that it wouldn’t work – that her business couldn’t keep running while she’s on the road, that they would run out of money or any number of things that would make it a failure.
• Blaire decided she needed to rip the band-aid off, take away the connections to not going full-force forward, and go for it.
• To do something that’s hard, you have to make the status quo so uncomfortable that the pain of change is less than the pain of staying put.
• She and her daughter bought a camper van and drove all over Europe, having experiences first hand. At the same time, her daughter was home-schooling (or van-schooling) and Blaire ran her consulting business. The logistics of the travel meant she had to learn two things:
  • How to make her business run even if she only had a couple of hours of solid internet connection to make things work
  • How to let things go when things just didn’t align for it all to go smoothly (e.g. files not uploading fast enough).
• Interestingly, the forcing mechanism of the logistics taught her really well how to see what 60-70% of what you’re doing isn’t translate to being valuable so she could make smarter choices than she used to.
• Blaire says she’s made it impossible to do the wrong thing by putting barriers in place, like the demands of running her home, home-schooling her daughter, etc. That keeps her on top of making the right choices with her priorities and keeping from going back to 9+ hours of desk work each day.
• We talked about the idea of control. While Blaire wouldn’t say her day to day is 100% in her control, her overall life is. There are things that come up that are not of her choosing, like illness in the family or emergencies that pop up. However, the life she’s living is of her choosing, and that’s the most important form of control.
• She came away from the trip with several key pieces of knowledge:
  • You won’t know until you go. Waiting to be ready won’t teach you what you need to know. Only embarking on the journey will reveal what the journey is going to be about, whether you’re ready or not!
  • Changing your situation won’t change your state…but it will reveal what state you’re in​​. Changing your life is not the end of the journey. External changes (new house, new job, new location, etc) are only the start of the emotional and psychological journey you’re thinking about.
  • If you’re alone you’ll go home. Most of us think we can do this on our own but we need a community.
  • There’s no such thing as a balanced life…just a balanced mind. ​​No amount of money or time will make you feel good about your life unless your mind is balanced, you are present in the life you have and you appreciate that everything is just right already.
  • Rolling the dice is your job. Where it lands isn’t. Change is unpredictable and we must learn to accept that the journey is never what you thought it would look like when you took the first step…but, that’s the fun! You throw the dice but you don’t control where it lands, only what you choose to do once the numbers are revealed.
• Fear of failure and fear of success are huge barriers for adults. She advocates to have a worst-case scenario plan so you know what you can do if things don’t work, but most of our fears about failure are unfounded. The only time you really fail is if you stop playing the game.
• We talked about whether some people are wired to be able to take brilliant gambles than others. Blaire has seen people who are definitely more risk averse or risk tolerant, but it’s never too late to change. We need to ask, if we aren’t going to do something that gives us joy and challenge now, when might we do it?
• I asked if it’s about the fear or missing out or the draw of opportunity. Blaire feels it varies by person.
• Instead of believing something isn’t possible, you have to believe that it is, and ask the questions about it from there. If it was possible for me to do X, how would I do it? What might I have to do to make it happen? This helps draw us past the barriers and toward the way to make the possibilities work. Frame from possibility to find solutions rather than failures.
• We did talk about the word choice of “Gamble” in the name of what Blaire did. It shouldn’t have to be a gamble to take a chance on ourselves and going after what we really want. We should be the best place to bet on, so that’s what makes it brilliant. And it’s a gamble to sit still and stay with what you have now – we just don’t usually see it that way.

Links:

• Website: www.abrilliantgamble.com
• Business: www.thatpeoplething.com
• Podcast: A Brilliant Gamble (and hear me on episode 96)
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/abrilliantgamble/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/brilliantgamble
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brilliantgamble/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blairepalmer/

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Dai Manuel is a super dad, dating his wife and currently doing life with his family around the globe. 

He is also an award-winning digital thought leader and author, executive performance coach and certified lifestyle mentor who empowers people to lead a FUN-ctionally fit life through education, encouragement, and community. 

Dai models his work based on 5 F’s: Fitness, Family, Finances, Faith with an overarching roof of FUN, built on a rock-solid foundation of Health. 

As a former partner and Chief Operating Officer of a multi-million dollar retail company, a keynote speaker, brand ambassador, competitive athlete, a family man, and community leader, Dai knows the struggle of the juggle and keeping his health and happiness a priority.

Dai and his family are on a mission to impact one million role models through education, entertainment, and inspiration by 2020. He’s also a good friend who became a mentor to me when I was starting my journey to create what became Do a Day, including pushing me to see what I could create by bringing my thoughts together in my book. Dai is an amazing human being full of inspiration, and he shares that with us here.

Dai’s gifts to help you make life more awesome:

1. Join the free 28-day Whole Life Fitness Manifesto program and learn how to maximize your body, mind, and spirit in 30 minutes a day. www.joinwlfm.com
2. The 99 Bodyweight Workout Guide www.DaiManuel.com/99
3. How to Develop a Positive Mindset www.daimanuel.com/positive-mindset
4. The 10 Most Common Low Carb Diet Mistakes www.daimanuel.com/lowcarb 
5. ‘Why Your Kids Make You Fat’ with the Ultimate Role Model Checklist www.whyyourkidsmakeyoufat.com 
6. 6-Week Done-With-You Lifestyle program – the RBT Shred @ www.rbtshred.com 

Key Points from the Episode with Dai Manuel:

• We touched on the interview we did years ago where we talked about Dai’s transformation from being a fellow “Fat Kid” to being this amazing fit and healthy (and inspiring) man. Like me, his original motivation was about not being seen as the fat kid and having girls like him.
• That set him off on a journey to want more and masking his true feelings with other things – having things, alcohol, narcotics, women and more.
• That reality existed for over a decade until his wife sat him down, looked at him and asked, “Are you being the type of man that you’d want to marry your daughters?”
• That hit him – he wasn’t being that man, and he asked himself why.
• While he initially pushed back on his wife, he did start to reflect and realized how much change was needed, including a lot of self-work. He started to change who he was around and the choices he was making, especially in the career he was in.
• He had the option of taking over the business he was in, and instead, he and his family broke free. Three years ago, they decided they wanted to hit the road, travel and take in the world.
• They set out on a road trip for a year across North America, taking in the world first hand. That eventually lead to moving to Bali (at least for a few years).
• I had to note how different of a man Dai is today versus the last time we talked. There is something so much more profound and open about him after this shift he and his family made three years ago. That experience of the world has clearly moved his sense and understanding of himself.
• We hit on the Buddhist notion of non-attachment, and how that can lead to such strong self-awareness and movement away from the auto-pilot way we tend to live.
• When we get on auto-pilot, we tend to stop questioning things and growing – truly growing. Dai’s hope is that people get the chance to pause and ask those questions so they get to have that wake up moment.
• We touched on the idea of commitment. Part of why they have made things work and grown so much is that they fully committed to the journey. That created a freedom and dedication to going for it and making it work. If you aren’t fully committed, you may do things in a way that holds you back – even slightly – so that you don’t do them well enough to really succeed.
• We talked about Dai’s childhood, with his parents splitting up, being raised by their mother, and his father’s career. His dad had a successful business he eventually sold. After selling the business, his father started having health issues including cancer and lifestyle illness complications. While Dai was traveling around North America, his father’s health declined, so the family went to spend time with him.
• After his father passed away, the family decided to travel to Southeast Asia for a three month stay.
• They rented a home in Bali, and fell in love with all of it – the people, the food, the culture, but mainly the pace of life.  They went back to Canada briefly for business, and then decided to come back to Bali for at least a year.
• We really started to talk about why Bali feels so good. The pace of life there seems to be a foundational point – when everyone is free of the sort of high-paced burden we tend live with, it almost reframes our humanness and how we relate to others and ourselves.
• The amount of growth he and his family have experienced as a result of the lifestyle is so strong and recognizable. The full-conviction and commitment to it has been a key to allowing for this growth.
• We talked about the moments where doing less of the self-work allows for some negative self-talk to creep in. The doubts about career, the future, capabilities, etc creep in.
• For him, he’s gotten to a place where he knows enough about himself and what his capabilities are, so he’s able to reel that feeling back in, but it still happens. He just has the tools to recognize and face it when it does.
• When you have a Plan B, that can be helpful, but it can also be a hindrance. He knows there’s a Plan B for him (he can always get a job), but he doesn’t rely on it or think about it actively as it would hold him back. Because of that freedom, they’re now so far down the path away from Plan B that it doesn’t come up anymore.
• That freedom also has allowed them to see new options and choices they likely wouldn’t see if they were still holding onto the past or the safety-net-style options of Plan B.
• We hit on the big question of whether you make a leap like his cold turkey, as some advise, or get your ducks in a row and build to it. His advice is to live as you need to live from your perspective. It is your life – own it. Some will need more security, while others will grasp onto that security for perpetuity and never make the leap. If something is making you unhappy, then leave that thing as you need to. If you really need to do it, you will figure out a way. You just need to figure out the process for you.

Links:

• Website: www.DaiManuel.com
• Book: The Whole Life Fitness Manifesto
• Dai’s appearance on my old podcast.
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/daimanuel
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/daimanuel
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/daimanuel
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daimanuel/

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At the core, Jaime Jay is a connector of personalities and brands. He constantly challenges himself to be a better human being. He is also an amateur hockey player and starter good who truly enjoys helping his clients rediscover themselves, their companies and how to realize their “Why.” He has worked with clients across the world, co-founded and run a publishing company, virtual assistant service company, and hosts the popular “Culture Eats Strategy” podcast – a top 100 podcast in the Business category on iTunes. He is the recipient of the Army’s Achievement Medal for Meritorious Service.

Beyond all of that, he is an amazing, humble, giving person. The reason why is rooted in his life story, which started with homelessness, and a rollercoaster experience from there. Jaime shares that story, the lessons he learned and a big piece of himself in this episode of the show.

Key Points from the Episode with Jaime Jay:

• Embracing vulnerability and being true to yourself helps so much in your personal growth and in business. Jaime goes on to talk about how important it is to be selfish, but in a different way than people may think. He means it positively, in terms of taking care of yourself since you can’t take care of others if you aren’t ok.
• This sense of needing self-care started in childhood when Jaime dealt with homelessness when his adoptive father moved the family for a job that didn’t materialize. Jaime and his little brother watched an auctioneer selling all of their stuff as they lost everything and lived out of their car for months.
• He got a job at McDonalds to help support the family, and he would have his family go through the drive-thru so he could give them extra food. He also would take leftover food and give it to his family and other homeless people.
• Through the homelessness, he struggled to meet requirements at school and had repeat a year and ultimately had to get his GED so he could join the Army.
• We talked about the timing of this experience given that he was in the midst of his teenage years – a time when most kids struggle with figuring themselves out anyway. Obviously, that only complicated things.
• Another common issue people deal with after coming back from homelessness is one of the scarcity mindset, which he says has been very much alive in his business decisions. It has impacted him positively around his sense of what being content and ‘having enough’ really means.
• Jaime shared that his family actually was homeless twice as his father was arrested for embezzlement. It lead him to try very hard not to be a burden on his mother and brother, which is part of why he joined the Army.
• On top of the issues with his adoptive father, who also made Jaime feel stupid an incapable so much of the time, Jaime’s biological father left when he was five and was a bad drunk.
• I had to call out the interesting way Jaime has kindness, calmness and gratitude that you might not expect given the tumultuous life he had. He said it stems from his strong desire for no one else to feel what Jaime has felt, so he may go far on the other side of the coin.
• Jaime shared how his brother got addicted to drugs while Jaime was in the Army. Given how inseparable they were, this hit him hard.
• He left the Army to be with his wife at the time, with whom he had a child. When he left the Army, he came home to his wife asking for a divorce, leaving him homeless and penniless again.
• He spent the next decade never really feeling confident or secure, with this unhappiness and fear of what will go wrong.
• From the age of 21 to 30, he was married and divorced three times.
• On August 23rd, 2005, his brother was hit by a semi truck and killed when Jaime’s sister-in-law was pregnant with their second child. That devastated Jaime, and threw him into a backward spiral. That day in August is always so hard for him.
• He started a successful advertising agency in 2006, which was hit hard in 2008 when the economy fell apart. And he was drinking and not saving at that time, which added to everything ending in 2008 with Jaime becoming homeless again, and he had to move back in with his mother at age 38. His perspective at the time was very much one of “The world is doing this to me. Why me?”
• Sharing his story is tough because he doesn’t feel good about what he did or what happened. He is concerned with what people might think about him. But looking at this through the self-care lens, it helps him tremendously to be open about it, and it serves others through those who identify with his story and find inspiration in it for how they can move forward.
• Today, he’s been on a different, empowering and gracious path. He’s surrounded himself with the right people who share his positive, kind values, including his girlfriend of seven years, who has been a crucial part of Jaime’s better life.
• Jaime gave us a challenge. When we feel like someone is a jerk or is behaving badly, look at yourself and your behavior. Did you perhaps provoke that behavior in them? Often, we miss the trigger we are responsible for.

Links:

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Nick Elvery is a Peak Performance Coach who helps CEOs maximize their focus, energy and productivity.

Nick Elvery has overcome over a decade of hard drug and alcohol addiction.  His experience gave him the insight into just what it takes to create lasting change and build a fulling life that allows for hard work and health.

Watching his father’s health decline over his life and eventually pass way really gave Nick a different perspective on the importance of health. His mission is to help CEO’s take back control of their life and health so they can be there for their family without sacrifice the mission of the business.

We talk about the journey Nick went on, the struggle with addiction coupled with a desire to develop as a human being, the moment when he woke up and decided to change, and how his message is helping others today.

Key Points from the Episode with Nick Elvery:

• Nick opened the conversation sharing the challenge he overcame – spending 12 years as an addict of hard drugs and alcohol.
• Like many kids, Nick grew up experimenting with smoking and drinking. At the same time, his father’s health was declining in front of Nick’s eyes due to Multiple Sclerosis, ultimately claiming his life.
• Watching a capable, driven, full-of-life parent degrade like that created a very strong emotional response in Nick, which drove further and further decline into addiction.
• We talked about why Nick fell into addiction, and he talked about ego – the drive many of us have (especially when we’re young) to prove ourselves. This played a big part in his addiction where he seemed to need to prove he could do the most and the hardest drugs. It was a mix of seeking popularity and escaping the reality of his father’s decline.
• The drive to fit in was a big theme for him, leading him to live like a chameleon rather than figuring out who he is and how to live as himself – something he’s focused on helping others are today.
• Only when we become happy with who we are will people respect and accept us since only then do we accept and respect ourselves.
• Everyone ultimately has a want to connect, and Nick felt like he didn’t fit in early on and was labelled as different, so that desire to fit in lead him to change his behavior in hopes of fitting in.
• His addiction went so far that he found himself in Asia doing crystal meth in motorcycle chases with meth dealers – and he didn’t even think that was unsafe or anything at the time.
• Paradoxically, while his addiction was growing, Nick was also diving deeper into self-discovery and personal development after getting introduced to Tony Robbins when he was just 16. It’s as if there was a struggle within him to self-destruct and to self-develop.
• Doing some self-help work was what struck him hard enough to realize just how far he had gone in the wrong direction. It also gave him access to the path to change – a decision he made in a single moment of self-realization.
• The word he ends up coming back to is Tenacity. Living by the tenacity of not giving in is a motto and approach he things we could all benefit from.
• There is a need and value to do self-work that applies to all of us.
• Nick has had a fascination with what makes people tick – what makes people succeed, why we get out of bed, why two people who have had the same experience yet come out very differently.
• Nick’s advice to anyone facing a struggle – whatever it is – is to never give up. Anything you want to create in your life is totally possible. We may not be able to see that alternative, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. It can be scary to look at such a different future, but it is still possible. You are worth saving and you can do it.
• Surround yourself with people who care and see that future, too, and you can create whatever you want for your life.

Links:

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20 years ago, Mary Shores started with an idea. Today, she is a successful entrepreneur with a multi-million-dollar, heart-centered business and a best-selling book, Conscious Communications.

But she didn’t start that way. Mary hit rock-bottom after enduring the loss of her daughter within the first year of her life, and while Mary was still very young.

She survived an unstable past filled with abandonment and instability stemming from her mother’s mental illness, but found within herself the strength to rebuild by founding an industry-changing business. She now inspires others with lessons of resiliency and empowerment nationwide.

Mary shares her gripping, emotional journey as a point of inspiration that, regardless of what we face, we can come through. And she talks about her business, debt collection, to show that regardless of the work you do, you can do it in a way that has an impact and does good. In an industry not known for such things, Mary is proof that you can rewrite the script and still succeed – something she’s done time and time again no matter how things were playing out.

Key Points from the Episode with Mary Shores:

• Reflection has brought an understanding around the theme throughout her life around the fear of abandonment
• Mary was taken in by family in Illinois from her home in Southern California when she was just three years old due to mental illness her mother struggled with
• Later in her childhood, she was reunited with her mother while her little sister stayed with the family who took them in when they were young, creating a sense of separation and loss from the person closest to her.
• At 13, Mary’s mother left again, leaving her alone with her step-father so she chose to go from friend’s couch to friend’s couch throughout high school rather than having a stable home. She looks back on her view of that time as exciting and one framed by strong independence.
• Mary became pregnant at 18, and ended up giving birth to a daughter when she was 19 only to lose her 18 months later due to complications her daughter suffered around oxygen deprivation during the labor and birth process and brain damage that resulted.
• Mary didn’t just lose her daughter, but the process was so extreme because of how drawn out it was, and how much she was exposed to in the hospital; and of course she had nothing at the time as she and her boyfriend basically lived on the floor of their daughter’s hospital room.
• While this obviously was a major trauma, it was also the spark for a resilience that has defined Mary’s life since then.
• After her daughter’s death, Mary went through the lowest point in her life, feeling dented, damaged and like a failure. She decided in that process not to be a statistic and instead started a business. It wasn’t from a place of empowerment, but rather a desire not to be a failure.
• Mary got into the debt collection business, which she says isn’t really most people’s dream or passion. She noted how so many people talk about following your passion, and collections isn’t really that, but there are things that can align to passion regardless of what the actual work is.
• She wanted to be different, and take an approach of positivity-based selling of collections. She focused on the idea of how great it will be to get out of debt while everyone else focused on the same and fear of being in debt in their approach.  She failed miserably.
• Being interested in neuroscience, she understood that people have a negativity bias, so the positive outcome wasn’t enough to overcome the unwillingness to pay in a way that fear can. This all ties to people feeling unworthy.
• Figuring this out was an ah-ha moment for Mary, and she said, “I want the next person I work with to be happier at the end of the call than when it started it.” That approach worked.
• The approach was so successful that Mary started to reach it more broadly, which is what lead her into her work as a coach and author.
• Mary shared one of her favorite quotes, which is by Maryanne Williamson, “A miracle is but a shift in perception.”
• Conscious Communications, her book, focuses on several key things to use to start your path forward. One of the key ideas is Gratitude.
• She talks about the word, “Empowerment,” which gets so much focus, but what does it really mean? It’s really about an internal sense of feeling good.
• All the focus on Happiness has people thinking that we have to be happy all the time. But the reality is, we aren’t. And we aren’t meant to be. And that’s ok. The key is to understand what we’re feeling and why we feel it, and learn and grow from that. But you shouldn’t judge yourself for feeling that way or ignore or diminish it.
• She reminds us of the importance of self-care, which is a buzzword that’s thrown around a lot, but what does it mean? For Mary, it’s about taking time for yourself.
• Cleanse or clog – everything you do in those smallest moments of life is always working to make a closer connection to what you want and desire or to stand in the way of it.
• The choices you make will shape your life forever.

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Frank King, Suicide Prevention and Postvention Public Speaker and Trainer, was a writer for The Tonight Show for 20 years, is a Corporate Comedian, syndicated humor columnist, and podcast personality, who was featured on CNN’s Business Unusual.

Depression and suicide run his family. He’s thought about killing himself more times than he can count. He’s fought a lifetime battle with depression, and thoughts of ending his life, turning that long dark journey of the soul into a TED Talk, “A Matter of Laugh or Death,” which you can watch at FrankTEDTalk.com, and sharing his lifesaving insights on Mental and Emotional Health Awareness, with corporation, association, youth (middle school and high school), and college audiences.

As an Inspirational and Motivational Public Speaker and Trainer he uses the life lessons from the above, as well as lessons learned as a rather active consumer of healthcare, both mental and physical, to start the conversation giving people who battle Mental and Emotional Illness permission to give voice to their feelings and experiences surrounding depression and suicide, and to create a common pool of knowledge in which those who suffer, and those who care about them, can swim.

And doing it by coming out, as it were, and standing in his truth, and doing it with humor.

He believes that where there is humor there is hope, where there is laughter there is life, nobody dies laughing.

He is currently working on a book on men’s mental fitness, Guts, Grit, and the Grind, with two coauthors.

He lives in Eugene, OR and speaks around the US, and all over the world.

Key Points from the Episode with Frank King:

• Frank has a backstory of suicide being a very real part of his family. So some may find it odd that he became a comedian, but he sees the two intertwined. As he reminds us, where there’s laughter, there’s life – no one dies laughing.
• He spent the first part of his adult life as many do – working in a fine job that paid the bills, but didn’t pay his soul. It got to the point where he realized he would kill himself if he stayed there. The alternative, pursuing his dreams in comedy could leave him penniless. That’s when he had a revelation that unlocked potential.
• We chose the devil we know rather than the devil we don’t. “Normal” people would look at a bad situation with uncertain outcomes in the alternatives, and they stay where they are.
• For Frank and his diagnosis of Chronic Suicidality, it’s more of looking at a raging brushfire coming for him while he’s standing at the edge of a ravine. While “Normal” people might face the fire despite the certain death, Frank would jump because he sees no risk to it since he’d die either way so he might as well try something else.
• He shared a simple example that clarifies what this Chronic Suicidality means in his daily life – his car broke down a while ago. “Normal” people would look at it as a binary situation where you either fix it or replace it. For Frank, he had a third option – he could just kill himself. Put another way, he always sees a way out, so he uses that to help him pursue possibilities. The key is to find a way to see that vision of potential without having to turn to suicide.
• If he stayed in the job, he would kill himself. If he left and failed, he could still just kill himself. That thought removed the cost of taking the leap, so that’s exactly what he did.
• Frank focused on suicide prevention and support a lot. What he realized is how valuable it is for the person supporting you to really get it, to really understand what you are feeling. Since he has been there, he realized he had to be in that support role.
• What he found is that people need one of two things, and you need to see which they really want. Do they want someone to help them through it and talk them out of it, or to just listen.
• Interestingly, Frank is not reckless in his behavior despite the suicide thoughts.
• He has now been through divorce, bankruptcy and more, and is still standing, which is a testament to the power of support and self-reflection.
• Frank likened someone committing suicide to how a plane crash works. It’s not usually one single thing, but rather a cascade of events. If you can nudge those events even slightly, you may be able to change the outcome, which is his goal.
• We talked about his self-care plan, which helps him relate differently to his Chronic Suicidality. He meditates for 30 minutes a day; after 60 years, he decided to look into medication, which he now uses and realized he actually likes his life; and he lives an active, healthy life and eats a healthy diet. He actually ended up competing in a body building contest shortly after we recorded this episode.
• Speaking out loud about his mental illness is also one of the most beneficial things he’s done. It’s been freeing and empowering in a way he did not expect or understand until he did it.
• We talked about the power of control a lot, and he shared the story of his mother as she was at the end of her life. There was debate about letting her self-administer pain medication when getting too much would kill her. Frank shared the study results on the subject that showed that, when patients are allowed to push a button to give themselves pain medication, they actually use less than when someone else administers it at regular intervals. The reason is control.
• As he’s reflected on his struggles with suicide, he sees how inserting situations where he has control has helped. This is part of why he enjoys his exercise regime because there’s control in it. A 20 pound weight always weighs 20 pounds. In his comedy and speaking work, he may have audio issues, the audience may not be engaged, etc. All things he can’t control or have so much variability in them that it can be unsettling.

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Gary has always had a passion for innovation and creativity. His career has spanned the retail, music and radio industries. Gary’s drive comes from having people and organisations think differently to generate new ways of doing things.

As a thought leader in innovation and creativity, Gary has helped companies of all sizes, in all industries and categories, to look at how they currently do things and address what needs to change in order for them to think differently and maximise the ideas that currently exist within the business, with the view to making the company more successful. He is often called when companies or individuals lose their mojo.

Through easy to understand, fun, interactive speeches and sessions, he presents to a wide variety of clients in the areas of creative thinking, mojo, marketing, strategic facilitation, and innovation to improve performance and help us be at our best.
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Gary has written 6 books, a number of which have become best sellers, and won the Speaker of The Year Award for TEC (The Executive Connection) in both 2007, 2008 and again in 2012.

In addition to his speaking commitments he also established Australia’s first ever creative thinking venue The Ideas Vault at The Entertainment Quarter in Sydney, co-founded Australia’s leading cycling foundation the Tour de Cure in 2007, writes a blog called The Espresso, in which he scours the world to find interesting tips, tools and news to give you a new or different perspective on the world in which we live, and hosts a popular new podcast series on iTunes called The Mojo Radio Show.

Key Points from the Episode with Gary Bertwistle:

• Gary bought a farm in his home of Australia, and in driving back and forth to the city from his farm, he went through all of his music library, and decided to listen to podcasts, which sparked a desire in him to start his own (after a previous career in radio)
• Getting to hear the real authentic person behind the outward person is what Gary really craves in all of his interviews, and key to finding why someone has their mojo working
• When Gary and two friends were putting together their charity efforts and had to select what to focus on, childhood cancer became so clear because kids get cancer despite not having lived a life of smoking or other behaviors people normally ascribe to cancer.
• Gary has also focused on the impact on all of those around the person with the diagnosis, and Gary has worked to support them, as well.
• While money helps, we can also really help people by being of service to them, sharing a message or being a support
• While he was deep into raising money for cancer research and treatment, his father was diagnosed with cancer
• A doctor friend of his told him that cancer is a formidable foe, and we have to be as aggressive with it as it is with us. He took this advice to his father to ask him, yes or no, are you going to fight this? If yes, then we are really going to fight, so let’s do it.
• Not only did Gary work to raise money to fight cancer, but he has become a fire fighter to help save farms like his own from wildfires in Australia
• He heard about people going out to fight these fires, and felt a strong sense that you cannot hear about this and not do something yourself.
• He also had a very clear desire to do it because it was hard. The draw of a real test was a big part of what drives Gary to go after new goals.
• Gary talked about the life of a volunteer. He and his peers work all day as farmers, getting up early and working hard all day. Then they get the call to fight a blaze, and go fight it until the work is done only to get up early again to work on their farm. They do it for no pay, and no time off afterward. It’s out of the pure desire to help. He saw this first hand fighting a blaze that nearly took his own home if he and his peers didn’t stop it just feet from his kitchen window.
• Doing truly fulfilling work like this is such a part of his world, and so rewarding in a way that he can’t imagine not having it in his life.
• It’s important to model the right kind of values and behaviors. When kids see us doing right, they will follow.
• When you focus on the process of giving back, it changes the trajectory of your life, the scale of what you do next, and your whole approach to your world and what’s important. Our children then get to change their trajectory through the example we set, which makes it even more important.
• Gary likes disruption and being different. He reminded me of the idea from Mark Twain that, whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s probably time to pause and reflect.

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Tanur Badgley is a school teacher, blogger, and host of the People of Purpose podcast. He is fascinated with understanding the unique gifts he has been given and how he is shaped into a higher purpose when he chooses to live with full appreciation of those gifts. He believes we all have these gifts and can use them to unlock our infinite potential through pursuing our purpose. Tanur started his own path to purpose after a near-death experience falling at Yosemite National Park at the age of 19. Three years later he finished out college without a plan or a purpose to pursue. He found himself working a soulless corporate sales job, battling with depression from a devastating breakup, and eventually lying a dark room in the cold Minnesota winter after suffering his second major concussion. After three weeks of healing in the dark and two months of rehabilitation, Tanur was able to learn how to truly listen to from  his heart. During his work disability, he put in motion everything he needed to move to Thailand. and become a teacher.  In September of 2015 Tanur moved Phrae, Thailand where he taught and tutored English to 400 local 5th and 6th grade students from surrounding villages. He wrote nearly everyday in Thailand regularly publishing themes of his learning in his widely read Student Of the World Blog. He infused his blog with what he learned about himself and the world through teaching in Thailand, volunteering on an organic farm in Cambodia, trekking to Mount Everest Base Camp, sitting for a 5-day silent meditation course, and his month-long yoga teacher training certification course in Rishikesh, India.

Just over one year after moving Tanur found himself much happier and whole. He decided not to renew his teaching contract opting instead to choose an indefinite period of vagabonding and couch-surfing Southeast Asia, the U.S. and Canada through family, friends, and followers from the U.S. and Canada. This period lasted for 15 months. It was in this period that Tanur created, launched, and began hosting his People of Purpose podcast in October of 2017.  He felt compelled to go beyond himself to begin a project that shares the stories and wisdom of all the wonderful purposeful people he had met throughout his personal journey into purpose. People of Purpose features guests who live with a high degree of intentionality, are leading communities for positive change, and are treading a path that is very authentic to their passions and purpose. The podcast constantly inspires him and those listening to better align intentions with actions to live a more fulfilling and inspired life. In its first year the podcast has featured 30+ guests and 40+ total episodes. People of Purpose (PoP) has expanded to now include a regular newsletter where Tanur shares what takeaways on what he’s been experiencing and thinking about to grow in his purpose and how they can be applied to your life too. The podcast has now added a private coaching practice called Path to Purpose. Tanur expects a fully-interactive, comprehensive online course will be made available in 2019 that draws from the practices he’s learned from his guests and his personal path of purpose.

In July of 2018 after 15 months of traveling, teaching online, and finding odd jobs Tanur moved to San Francisco, California. He is completing an accelerated one-year Master’s of Education program and teaching credential as a full-time student and 7th grade social studies co-teacher at an urban, public- charter school in San Francisco. He is driven by the purpose he can express through through each of his endeavors and projects and the consistency of learning and challenge that helps him grow in his purpose which is “to be a conduit of God’s love by accepting everything he is, opening himself to learning challenges through difference, and using his gifts to live purposefully in order to help others find their purpose and fulfill their potential.”

Key Points from the Episode with Tanur Badgley:

• Intentionality and purpose are the key themes to both this interview and Tanur’s life journey.
• Tanur talks about decisions to experience via immersion so you get full-in rather than dipping your toes into things is how you can really grow. We talked about the intersection of immersion and introspection.
• When Tanur was 19, he, his younger brother and father spent part of their summer hiking and climbing in Yosemite National Park.
• His brother took a route off the path, which landed him stuck unable to get down from where he had gotten as many of the rocks he used to climb up had loosened and fallen out. Tanur went to try to help him, and ended up stranded on a small ledge with his brother. He tried to go for a ledge above them, grabbed hold and started to make it up until rocks let go under his hand as he was one grab from the top, sending him spinning head over heals over and over again as he tumbled down over 100 feet. He landed on his butt, but had hit his head multiple times, and finally stopped in the waterfall they were climbing by.
• While the wiser choice would have been to stay on the ledge and wait for search and rescue, he chose a bolder path which ended up being the foolish path.
• Tanur soon passed out from his injuries and head trauma while his brother was still stuck on the ledge. Their father finally made it to the top via a safer route and then saw what happened and quickly went to get help, which took seven hours and took them into night time.
• He remembers moments of consciousness where he was frustrated that the help was focused on him while he brother was still in danger. Tanur saw himself as being as hurt as he could possibly be while his brother could fall off the ledge.
• He had whiplash, a concussion and fractures in his cervical spine as well as deep tissue injuries to his butt – all of which he still deals with today. Somehow, in the moments after the fall, he felt a lot of peace. He made it, he was still there, and he was overall ok, which gave him a sense of not squandering his opportunity in life.
• To get to a point of not squandering opportunity, he needed to know his purpose in life, and sought to learn more. Of course, that needed to wait slightly while he recovered from the damage to his body and brain, and was totally reliant on his father to care for him for several weeks and even more as he worked on the injury to his brain.
• Three years later, Tanur found himself in a similar situation – he got another concussion while playing basketball. He was angry and it was impacting his decisions and behavior, so it wasn’t surprising to him that he ended up in a situation where he would get hurt. He had lost his grandmother, broken up with his girlfriend, and was in a sales job he did not like, which just meant things were boiling up inside of him, and because his life wasn’t aligned with what he cares about, he wasn’t making progress in dealing with everything.
• With the space from all of it that his doctor’s note excusing him from work for a month due to his concussion, he dug into the self-work to face the pain and anger. Through his work, he focused on how to live a life that wasn’t for someone else but was for his own interests.
• He dropped everything and decided to move to Thailand to become an English teacher, meditate and live in a more peaceful way.
• He also used the time to finally move forward from his last relationship. We hit on the irony of how bad relationships can be harder to get over than the good ones.
• He is clear that he wouldn’t be where he is today if not for the travel but even for the concussions. He finds himself thankful for both of those experiences.
• His work as a teacher showed him how it is the most proactive force for good. It’s about saving lives before they go down a bad path, if you see it that way. He sees it as requiring you to be a role model and a constant life-long learner who builds up themself to keep growing. It’s about connecting with people as more than just a transaction but a true relationship.
• Tanur talked about a very interesting struggle to fit in the box of society enough to actually fit into the world while also being removed from the game of it enough to be able to be fine if it all goes away or trouble befalls you.

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