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Transcript

Doing the Impossible Thing with Craig Richard · Reclaiming Consciousness

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: Part of my journey is that twice I've been through really tough depression and anxiety.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_03: And first of all, I want to say I feel that's a real gift that I got to experience that because I had no idea what that meant before it happened to me.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's a big proponent of my message that don't speak about something unless you have experienced it for yourself.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_03: And don't make up your mind about anything unless you've experienced it for yourself.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_03: I like the idea that we live many lifetimes.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_03: And if that's true, I believe that we choose circumstances to have a particular life experience.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_03: That we don't have to do it, but that's to me part of what being in our flow is that we have a life path that we want to fulfill certain things.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like way off my path.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_03: And my angels were like, bro, you need to wake up.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_03: You're not following what you wanted to do.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Reclaiming Consciousness.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Elise Bassine, a trauma and breath work expert and creator of the Metamorphosis Method, the only methodology bridging the gap between spiritual healing and clinical trauma work.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: For many years, our consciousness has been hijacked by societal and cultural programming, religion, the media, and familial and ancestral trauma.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: In this podcast, you'll discover my unique perspective on trauma healing and how it is the gateway to fully reclaiming your consciousness.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: You'll hear stories and teachings that expand your mind as you discover how every relationship challenge, business block, or limiting pattern is an invitation to reclaim the parts of your consciousness you unknowingly gave away.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Get ready to go deep.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now let's dive in.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Hi everyone, welcome back to the show.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: So this week I have a very interesting interview for you.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Craig Richard reached out to me.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember how we ended up connecting, but his story was so unique and fascinating.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really just a story of never giving up and perseverance and having a dream and making it happen no matter what the odds are and no matter what anybody tells you.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not even going to tell you the whole premise of it, but you'll hear it in the interview and what he did and what he accomplished.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like there's probably another conversation that him and I have to have because I feel like there was so much more we could have talked about, but he's just such a dynamic, interesting character.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you're gonna feel really inspired and get a lot out of this conversation.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I know you're going to enjoy it.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: Just a couple quick things here.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: We have the Metamorphosis Method certification starting in just a few weeks.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: The group that's forming is incredible, as always.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: This certification is where you learn my methodology that includes breath work facilitation, my trauma healing tools, and the energy work tools that I've created to create transformation with clients in a very predictable, permanent way.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: And after 24 years as a breathwork practitioner and all of my over a decade experience working with trauma, I've developed a methodology that is different than anything else that's out there.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: This is very different and more comprehensive than any breathwork certification you'll find out there.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason why is because when people use breath work, trauma comes up inevitably.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: And you need the tools and the ability to handle the trauma as it comes up so that your clients can get the best possible result.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that is what I will give you in the certification because my methodology gives you a method, a process to be able to pinpoint and dissolve the trauma that comes up inevitably in the healing process.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: So this is more than a breathwork certification.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: I've really closed the gap between clinical therapeutic tools and somatic healing tools.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: So you really will walk away with a very comprehensive system and process to create predictable and permanent results with your clients.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: So if you already work with clients or you desire to, this system will revolutionize the way you do it because you'll be able to infuse it into what you already do.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't yet work with clients, you'll be able to take it and integrate it with your own magic, your own unique medicine that you're meant to share with the world and have a very reliable way to create results with your clients.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, there's so much out there now in the online space with people saying that they can heal trauma and they do this and they do that, but really don't have the training, the skill set, the knowledge, or the experience to bring people to a predictable result.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: And this will give you that skill set, knowledge, and experience.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, it comes from decades of studying breath work, transformational healing, and then also working with traumatized children for over a decade and you know, having a master's degree in counseling psychology and all of that.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: So you're really getting a very solid skill set and knowledge base that you can take and build a practice on.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we do talk about business, how to structure offers, putting yourself out there, all of the things.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: So people really walk away from the certification, having everything they need to build a practice and also feeling super confident in their ability to work with clients, which is the most important thing.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody walks away feeling ready and confident to work with clients.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Even those who walked in really questioning whether that was going to be the case for them.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I feel very confident in that and I'm very proud of the curriculum that I've built and all of the knowledge and information that's there.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: So please reach out to me if you'd like to chat about joining.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, we start in a few weeks.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's a six-month certification program and reach out to me so we can chat about if it's a fit for you and if and how it will benefit you and your specific situation.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I will leave it there.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Enjoy the episode.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, everyone.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to the show.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm super excited to introduce you to today's guest.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I know we're gonna have a really fun conversation, and I'll let him tell you a little more about himself.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: But today I have Craig Richard with me, who's a keynote speaker and international music artist.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: So welcome to the show, Craig.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Elise.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_03: Great to be here.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it's great to have you.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: So let's just dive right in.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: I know you have a really interesting story.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd love to hear just a little bit about your story and just how you ended up where you are now and some of the biggest challenges that you went through that kind of shaped who you are now.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_03: I was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and two things really made me who I am.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_03: My mom was uh a music teacher, so that kind of lit the spark inside of me to become a professional musician, which has made my career.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_03: I've traveled to 150 countries now on tour and gotten to play with some really cool artists.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_03: My dad was a mountaineer, quite well known in Colorado, and he climbed Mount McKinley in Alaska twice and down in Peru.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_03: And he was one of the first uh people that brought modern technical rock climbing to Colorado.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_03: So when I was a kid, I started climbing in the Garden of the Gods, which is this really sweet spot in my hometown.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's got these beautiful red rock sandstone formations, and that was the second thing in life I knew I loved.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_03: And um, the climbing has really taken me on some crazy adventures.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_03: I I was climbing at an expert level by the time I was 19, and I was getting ready to do El Capitan, which is in Yosemite, California.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_03: Have you been out there before?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Not to Yosemite.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't been there.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_03: Epic place.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_03: Everything is huge.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_03: Waterfalls are huge, rocks are huge, the bears are huge.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_03: But uh El Capitan is 3,000 feet.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_03: It takes four days and three nights sleeping on the side of the rock to get to the top.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_03: And uh yeah, I went to train for this, and I was in a place called the Black Canyon in Colorado, and I just had an accident.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_03: I took a fall in a very unlucky way and shattered my right leg.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: I was climbing with my cousin, his name's Ken, who's uh my climbing partner, but it was a weird situation where we couldn't get help.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, so this is when you were 19.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: Let's see, the accident happened in 2006.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_03: Is that yeah, that sounds right.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_03: That was 19.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_03: Basically, down inside this canyon, we just couldn't call for help.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_03: That was kind of always our backup plan is hey, we've both got cell phones, we've got different cell phone providers.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: One of us is gonna be able to call someone if we have an accident.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_03: But we didn't realize down inside this deep canyon that we'd lost service.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_03: And it's a very remote place, so we had no choice.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_03: I had to crawl out on my hands and knees with a shattered leg out of this super wild canyon.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_03: And that really was the first event in my life that just showed me a lot of deeper meaning, you know, just about how precious life is, how much I'm willing to fight for it, how much uh I love life.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so life really took off after that in many ways.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_03: That was definitely the first event that started to really shape who I am today.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Did you think you were gonna die?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how did you get out?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: What happened?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_03: It's hard to describe just how treacherous this rescue was because it's inside a canyon where you go in climbers' trails, which are not hiking trails, they're basically like steep chutes of like loose rock and boulders to get into the canyon.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_03: They're unmarked trails.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_03: There's two spots in this particular area where you have to descend down fixed hanging ropes that are permanent.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_03: Someone's put them there, and you have to put it through your harness and your devices and lower yourself down.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: You're not meant to go back up unless you have special devices that are used to climb ropes, which we didn't have.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_03: So it was just this ongoing thing over 18 hours to get out of the canyon.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_03: And while it was happening, we were just in survival mode.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_03: We just did what we had to do to keep going.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_03: But reflecting on it afterwards, uh, I realized we had so many things in place that really contributed to our success.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: For sure, one was just that we are positive people.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_03: This is such a funny conversation I love to have with people about the power of positive thinking.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_03: And it gets all this weird rap.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, just trying to think positive is not gonna do anything or it's not gonna change your life experience.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_03: I totally disagree with that.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think like everything that starts to become a thing, then people take it and make it into like something it's not, you know what I mean?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think of it more too as like a positive perception.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: You had a perception probably of that reality in a positive way.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like you decided to perceive that as we're going to get out of here, or like you're you decided to see it that way.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like that's really important.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: But then it gets conflated with, oh, I'm just gonna ignore everything shitty in my life and think positive and things will get better.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that probably doesn't always work.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: But what you're saying is absolutely true.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if you were in that moment and you were like, oh, forget it, I'm gonna die, that probably would have happened.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's like uh global warming.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's like people look at the power of positive thinking as, well, maybe it works and maybe it doesn't, and maybe I should think about it in a woo-woo sense, and maybe it is very practical.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_03: And with having a good outlook on life, it's so obvious.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_03: If I have a choice in life, do I choose to try and make things better, or do I actively try and choose to make things worse?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_03: It just seems like so black and white to me, to be honest.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you probably naturally are like that and have had moments in your life that have showed you that.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_03: For sure.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, many of us, especially that have had really difficult pasts, we've been conditioned to view the world as against us and dangerous.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, it can certainly be a psychological aspect that's, I want to say out of our control, but certainly that was given to us, especially growing up, that we may not realize.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_03: Again, I love your whole thing about reclaiming consciousness.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_03: This is such a great example, is that if we have negative patterns and they just continue to show up on our lives, there is a missing bit of consciousness to realize that we can turn that around, basically.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that you have a part in creating it.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's the hard thing for people because you can't imagine it's like, why is this happening to me?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then in order to really shift it, you have to be able to take responsibility for the fact that you're the one creating it.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: But that's the hard part.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's totally terrifying to look at the fact that we're in control of our lives.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_03: It means that all the things that we don't like about our lives that somehow we are responsible for, and that's a really hard pill to swallow.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: It is, yeah.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, it's like the most powerful thing ever, because then you have complete agency over your life.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_03: That's been my protocol since I was maybe like 13, and I kind of woke up at a very young age, which was just realizing that this was just like this big playground life, and that I really had so much influence into how this experience is going to go.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: I'm reminded of this guy I grew up with.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_03: He always said, I'm the most unlucky person I know.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_03: Nothing works out for me.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_03: And I'd never heard someone like kind of say a mantra like that out loud, and it caused me to think about what my mantra was, and it was so obvious it was things go right for me, I am lucky.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, a lot of the time that happens to be true because that's that's what I'm looking for.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_03: Whether you believe that we are, this is again like, you know, where I want to make a bridge between the metaphysical world and the practical world, a lot of us are still really living in, is that where our thoughts are, we're going to be looking for those things in a very practical sense.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: We're constantly looking to affirm what our mind is basically telling us that we should expect.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I find this thing that happens, and this has happened to me so many times with my clients, when they are in an old pattern, like an old thought pattern, right?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: And they're moving through the emotions around that because we're shifting it, right?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like there's no way out.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like this is impossible.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: This is never gonna end.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's no way to solve this.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then as soon as we move through the emotions and we we like come out on the other side of it, it's like all of a sudden everything you needed was like right in front of you because now you're able to see it because you're not seeing things through that old lens.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: I see that happen all the time.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: And for myself too, I'll come out on the other side of stuff and I'll be like, oh, that thing that I thought was impossible.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: I know this guy who I can call to help me right now.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's like always like that.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I think a lot of what gets in the way of our clarity around finding our own solutions is that fear is paralyzing.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: Part of my journey is that twice I've been through really tough depression and anxiety.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: And first of all, I want to say I feel that's a real gift that I got to experience that because I had no idea what that meant before it happened to me.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's a big proponent of my message, is that don't speak about something unless you have experienced it for yourself.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_03: And don't make up your mind about anything unless you've experienced it for yourself.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_03: That is true.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, just speaking about the roadblocks, I remember when I had bad anxiety about three years ago, I just literally could not function during my day.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_03: And solutions that may have been right in front of my nose were completely blind to me because I was just in survival mode.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: I want to know the rest of how you got out of there and how that impacted your life.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then I'd also love to hear what led to your anxiety and depression and like how you got out of it.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_03: That's a real important story I want to share with you.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not surprised when two people that love to go deep and talk about stuff, it's like Tangent City, you know, like we need to keep coming back to where we started.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm good at that.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: Don't worry.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so the Black Canyon Rescue, I had a lot of legs up in many ways.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_03: I had a great upbringing, really good parents.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: I grew up in a safe, pretty well taken care of environments.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_03: There was something innate in me, though, that knew that life is good, that the human heart is good, that the earth is a paradise that we live in.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_03: That there was just so many things that I knew as at a young age made this experience so worth it.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just such a gift to be here.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think that was just my automatic mode I was in when I was in survival mode was well, I gonna keep doing the next thing until I literally cannot, because it's it's so worth it to get to the other side.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_03: I'm in love with life in many ways.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_03: I I love being here, I love this planet, uh I love the bodies we get to live in.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_03: I I love our brains that can dream and think.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_03: And I just think it's such a gift to be here.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_03: So when I talk to a lot of people about struggles and and I've been there again, I needed to experience it myself.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like, why when I'm in the hole, when life seems absolutely not worth it, should I keep going?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_03: And it is really hard to remember in the darkest place what is worth being here for because it again with the like the anxiety, depression, it puts these blinders on.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's almost impossible to see anything that's good in life under just this incredible weight and darkness.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_03: But the reality is that nature teaches us everything that we need to know about life, and everything has a cycle, everything it has a life and a death and a rebirth.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I look at these really dark times as a death.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_03: Usually it's a death of the ego or of some emotional scar.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I think anybody that's come of age that's been through anything, whether you're very younger or older, we have at least one memory of a really bad time that passed.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's really good to remember that that everything passes in that that place, it's so hard to remember that, but it is it is the nature of life.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: That's another story just about metaphysical subjects that I'm very passionate about because when we talk about the nature of life and source and God and all that, everything that we know tells us that everything has a death and a rebirth, that when things are dead, they're not gone, they just recycle and come back in a different form.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_03: Going off on many tangents again.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: There, that's okay.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so you got out, obviously.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody rescued you.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: Is that what happened?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_03: I crawled.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_03: Ken hiked beside me.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: We did that for three miles uh for 18 hours until we got to a campground and back to our car.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_03: So as soon as we got to the car, Ken was able to drive me to a hospital.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_03: But that was a whole epic in itself.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: We'd been up for so long, he was so tired he fell asleep at the wheel and almost killed us both.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my god.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, had to pull over so he could sleep to just make it to the next town.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: Got to the next town.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_03: We had crawled through poison ivy for hours recovered in poison ivy, and he thought it'd be a good idea to try and wash it off.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_03: So we go to a KOA campground, and he's arguing with a camp host who doesn't want us let us use the showers without paying him.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like bloody and bludgeoned and disheveled, and dude, give this guy whatever he wants.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_03: I need to go to the hospital.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_03: But we eventually got there and got taken care of.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Was that the turning point for you, or did that lead to like something else happening or send you in a different direction in your life?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm a keynote speaker now, and a big part of my story and my message is what happened after the accident.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_03: I started getting a lot of kind of projection of people that I was on this track to do something really great.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: Climbing El Capitan is like climbing Mount Everest for a mountaineer.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_03: And just I felt a lot of projection from people saying, it's too bad that that was your dream, but now you had this scary accident, you'll probably never climb again.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_03: You'll certainly never climb the most difficult climb in the world again.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_03: And it hit me in such an obtuse way.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_03: These aren't my thoughts.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_03: What are you telling me who I am?
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_03: And so it was my first big opportunity in life to.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: Look inside and ask myself, who am I?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_03: Who do I believe I am compared to what everyone else seems to be telling me they think I am?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_03: And uh it was just so clear inside of me that doing this epic climb was still my dream.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_03: So while I was recovering, I actually started rock climbing again with a cast on my leg.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my God.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I was able to do it in a way that was safe.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, I didn't want to further injure myself.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: And uh it's been a real theme in my life to do something particularly extreme that people don't at first understand.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_03: That in general has really come to define me of not giving any Fs about how weird people think I am, because it is who I am.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_03: They're the things that make me come alive, and I don't care if you understand it or not.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Really good.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of people struggle with that actually.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_03: Well, the thing is that we're societal people.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_03: We want to fit in, we want to belong.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_03: And so stepping outside of the boundaries is is dangerous.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_03: It feels unsafe.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_03: And it is takes a lot of courage to really claim who we are as individuals.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_03: And but I keep learning as a man, as an adult, that the more I do that, the more I'm met with affection and admiration rather than a lot of negativity that we get when we're younger as teenagers and young adults when we're all just trying to be okay.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, totally.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: So then did you go on still climb another mountain or do another big thing?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_03: Climbing El Capitan was my dream.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_03: And over the next year, following the accidents, I went back to training and as soon as my leg was healed, got right back onto really serious big climbs, 2,000-foot walls.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_03: And the accident happened in May of 2006.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_03: It was exactly one year later, in May of 2007, I did go to Yosemite, and in four days and three nights, I climbed to the summit of El Capitan.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: I did it.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's amazing.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: Was the same guy with you?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, my cousin Ken.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_03: We've been climbing since we were kids.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_03: It's a special thing for me, is that relationship?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_03: So that happened at 19 and 20, and it definitely gave me a lot of fire at a pretty young age to just realize I was capable of doing a lot of things in this life.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think that's why I knew that traveling the world was possible.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_03: And I just this next thing I want to say gets into the more metaphysical aspect of the way we view ourselves and view the world.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_03: We're talking about positive thinking, and being positive is just an aspect of it.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_03: To me, so much of it is true confidence in my power and my ability.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_03: I believe every single one of us is imbued with godlike power.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I just knew inside myself that being a headline musical artist was like some people might say, my dream or what I was born to do.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_03: I like to use the phrase with a lot of things in life, it was for me, my brand, my style.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_03: Like it had my signature on it.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: I totally know what you mean.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: I feel that way about certain things where it's just like you don't even have like a question in your mind.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then what I always say about that kind of thing too is you go that that's true in a sense, because it's not like you think that about everything.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: You don't feel that way about being like a architect, right?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: We feel this way about the thing that like you're supposed to do.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and this is uh a real hot subject.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_03: I love to talk about when it comes to like the law of attraction and manifesting.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_03: There's a really big difference for me, I've realized I get chills as I'm thinking about this between what my mind says is a good idea and what my body, and particularly my heart, says is not only a good idea, but again, my signature for me.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, we all need money to survive in this world, and it can be a very good tool in many ways, but a lot of us are conditioned to think that just being rich is like something that we should all have.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I've realized for myself that that's not true, actually.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_03: Having enough is my signature, not having more than enough is it's not for me.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so I've really come in alignment with that, and so that's always been true for me.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas I think for a lot of us, well, I want to be a millionaire, and so I want to manifest this, I want to manifest this.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's not actually in alignment with your spirit, and that's part of why it doesn't show up because there's just a lot of negative aspects that come with something like that.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: I I know a lot of very wealthy people that are pretty miserable because they have so much pressure and responsibility from that.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, and I always say, too, when it comes to the idea of manifestation, I think the problem for a lot of people is they're wanting to quote unquote manifest things for the wrong reasons.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, well, if I get this thing, then I'll finally feel like I'm good enough.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: Or if I get this thing, then like people will approve of me or whatever it is, and you can't manifest from that place.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that is the problem too.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: What you're saying with this idea of being like for me, a lot of people are not in touch with that because they're still operating from wounding, not feeling good enough or feeling like they have to approve something, or even just programming.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: This is what I should have, or this is what I should want.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: And if that's how you're trying to manifest something, it's not gonna work, at least not in the way you want it to.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_03: My understanding, the whole concept of manifestation is just that it feels so good, it feels so natural.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_03: Again, like this this full body, this is a total yes for me.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_03: I feel so good about this.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_03: And becoming a music artist, it really happened for me that way because I saw somebody doing something that again, I wasn't like, oh, that's really cool.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I would love to have their lifestyle.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_03: I looked at that and I said, that's me.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_03: Right there, that that's me.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_03: And so I started to put in the work to doing that, and then all these things that I could not have dreamed up came into place at the right place at the right time to make that happen.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_03: My short story is that I was like a a saxophone player in a backup band for these kind of big artists, and I was putting together my show and feeling so good about it and so easily seeing this vision of myself in that place.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: And then an artist in a venue had to cancel their show, and the guy who ran who ran the venue said, I know you've got this thing.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_03: I need someone to fill this date.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: Can you do it?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I jumped in, and some people in the audience worked with this big agent in London.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_03: They gave him a call and said, This kid's the real deal.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_03: You need to get him on tour.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_03: And so I didn't even have to chase my dream.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_03: My dream chased me.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: It just came from that place of a deep recognization of something that just was right for me.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_03: I like the label just to use it for reference of the matrix when we talk about conditioning and programming.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_03: It is just a great metaphor that I think a lot of us don't realize.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_03: In many ways, I didn't realize my thoughts, my desires were not my own.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_03: They were given to me.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_03: And so there's a lot of deconditioning that has to come about to a lot of how I find what's right for me and my flow in life is just how I feel.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_03: And this is a big part of why taking care of my health has been so important to me my whole life, because I can't feel my body if it's not in good condition, right?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_03: It has to do with what I eat and exercise and sleep, and there's a lot of natural things that go into doing that.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, I wish this for everyone is just for us all to get in touch with what is right for us as individuals, because so much of what we think we want in life is not actually true for us on an individual level.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_03: And again, like you said, a big part of why it doesn't manifest because it's not in alignment with our true selves.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing I'll say about that that I've noticed for people, and this happened for me too, is even if you are operating from programming, there still will be like glimpses of the real thing that you're supposed to do that you're naturally oriented towards.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like for me, for example, like I became a school counselor because like my parents were both teachers, and that was my programming, right?
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: Even though my natural like talent and ability is trauma.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I do, and I'm really fucking good at it.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that's my thing.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: I can look at anybody and be like, I know that I can help that person.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter what it is.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: But my programming was like, oh, I had two parents who are teachers, I don't really know anything else.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I became a school counselor because it like made sense to me.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was like the only kind of path I knew was education and whatever.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: But it was still had the flavor of like my purpose and my gifts.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: But I had to go through that process of doing that.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then as I started to really deprogram and stuff, I was able to just do the thing that I do.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that is a piece of it for people too.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like your programming will still kind of have the flavor of what you're supposed to do.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: But then what I see mostly is like people are afraid to go against the programming.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when they have this like internal struggle of not being able to move forward.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_03: We live in such a heavy reality and world in so many ways.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_03: And it takes a lot of courage to do a lot of things that really should come naturally for us, actually.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_03: To sing our individual song, to do what's right for us on an individual level.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_03: It really takes a lot of courage because we're surrounded by things telling us to play it safe and to do what everyone else is doing.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_03: And that kind of mentality is taking us in a really negative direction and we're starting to pay for it now.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's changing a lot.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think obviously now there's so many more people who are doing what it is that they want to do and not being able to ignore that anymore.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we're seeing it more and more just collectively, where people are just like not able to deal with just the mundane, whatever life they thought life is, they can't deal with it anymore.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: And they have to like honor themselves.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_03: I want to be very clear.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_03: I believe we are in a process of waking up as human beings.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_03: For sure.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_03: What I am saying is that things around us are getting worse and probably will get weirder and a lot worse.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I agree.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_03: For the purpose of us on a larger scale realizing what we don't want so that we can, again, as individuals, choose what we really do want.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, for sure.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_03: I agree.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: I want to hear more about just like your story of struggling with anxiety and depression, and then what caused that, in your opinion, and then how you came out of that.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_03: The first real struggle for me was I got Lyme disease in 2017.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_03: And the really crazy thing is that it came about, like it manifested in my body the night that I was doing my final run at the American Ninja Warrior Las Vegas Finals.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my God.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_03: Are you familiar with the TV show?
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm familiar with the TV show.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know that I've ever like fully watched it, but I know exactly what you're talking about.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's uh it's a really difficult obstacle competition.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: You were on the show, right?
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was on two different seasons.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_03: And in the second season, I went to the finals.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_03: I was one of the top competitors.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_03: There's a whole long story of events, but after the accidents with the climbing and then climbing El Capitan, life really took off in many ways, and that was one of the ways it took off.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: So did you like decide you wanted to be on the show?
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: How did that end up happening?
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: Was that something where you were like, I want to do this, or did it like present itself to you?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, I'd heard about the TV show through my cousin Katrina, and uh she just said, You're such a wild guy and you climb trees and climb rocks, like you should be on this TV show, you'd be perfect for it.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_03: And you just audition, you send in a submission video, and they decide if they want you on the show.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of it was really fun.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_03: It definitely was a physical test, but there's a whole backstory that I started taking my life for granted in many ways at that point.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_03: I have lived a pretty charmed life, and I definitely started just not counting my blessings.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_03: My big resounding purpose that I've known for myself since I was a kid was that I'm here in this lifetime to do a little bit of everything, to experience it all.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_03: If I've ever had a psychic reading, they all use these exact words.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_03: They say, You're here to do it all in one shot.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_03: So I've had this taking, receiving mentality for a long time as a young man.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_03: And it just all came from this place of, well, yeah, I'm here to experience things.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_03: So it's okay, you keep giving me because I want I want to do it, I want to try it.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_03: But it started to do something to me on a spiritual and psychological level where I started to not be grateful.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_03: I was receiving too much and not giving enough.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_03: And so at the Ninja Warrior Finals, this thing struck my body like a bolt of lightning and just basically turned my my muscle system off right in the middle of the course.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_03: There's a video of me at the Ninja Warrior Finals, and I look like Gumby trying to run across the course.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: So it literally happened as you were doing it?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_03: Literally as I stepped onto the course.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's crazy.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_03: It is.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_03: If you believe in divine intervention, I really think that my angels, my spirit guide was like, this is the time for you to learn this lesson right now.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: So obviously, then you didn't win.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: But do you think you would have won if that didn't happen?
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not sure I was the top competitor.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_03: I was probably in the top five.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_03: I would have gone a lot further than I did.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_03: American Ninja Warrior is a whole other conversation in itself.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just because it has a lot of really amazing things about it, but it has a lot of darkness that comes from Hollywood and production.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: Is that staged?
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's not staged because every run cannot be manipulated.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_03: It is staged in the sense that they really ask you to do a lot of things on camera when you're not doing your run.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_03: And it's all about the boohoo stories and they only show the people that are gonna make the most compelling television.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_03: So if you got a mohawk and your nipples pierced and your face painted, you're gonna be shown, even if your run was number 80 over the person whose run was fourth place and they were a little mousy and not as attractive or something like that kind of stuff.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_03: Definitely happens, you know.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, there's so many reality shows now, and I know a lot of them have a formula, right?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: So they're looking for who's gonna be the villain and who's gonna be the whatever they have, these like characters that they're looking for to tell these stories that are compelling, and they like edit and whatever to create them.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_03: Very crafted reality.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's just like the most paradoxical name because reality TV is not real.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, not at all.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_03: I auditioned for America's Got Talent in 2010, and they said to me, You could win this competition, but we cast your character last season.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_03: They use those exact words, we cast your character last season, the handsome saxophone playing guy.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_03: Like we can't we did it already.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: No, that doesn't surprise me.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: I heard, I don't know if it was America's Got Talent, but it was one of those shows where I heard someone else's experience was like similar but different, where it was like they already knew at the beginning who was gonna be the winner, which is disappointing from uh from an audience perspective, but it's not surprising.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_03: For sure.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, television has just become kind of ground zero for the falsity of so much of what we think and believe.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_03: That's another story.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so back to the the yeah, the depression.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_03: So I I got uh Lyme disease.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I'd been living in Georgia at the time in Atlanta, and I had a tick bite that I didn't realize that's what it was up in the woods about three months before the Ninja Warrior finals.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_03: I thought I'd been bitten by a spider at the time and just shrugged it off.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_03: But uh yeah, right in the middle of the run, my body just gave out.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_03: And that was a super hard time because I started going to a lot of different doctors, whether they were Western or Eastern, and people just had no idea what was happening to me.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_03: They did every test they could think of, and I was just feeling so bad.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_03: Couldn't sleep, my vision was blurry, I felt really heavy.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_03: I would wake up in the middle of the night with my heart just pounding out of my chest, just really bizarre stuff.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_03: And at one point, the last doctor I was visiting said, You need to see a psychologist because if we can't figure it out, then you have a mental illness if you think you're sick, because there's nothing pointing to you being sick.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_03: And for that hopelessness, I went to definitely the darkest place I had ever been to.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: So they couldn't figure out that you had Lyme's disease?
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_03: No, not the people I'd seen to that point.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_03: Everything that made me who I was seemed like it wasn't there anymore.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_03: The guy that was stoked on life, that used his physicality to go do all the things, like just be alive.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_03: I felt like a dead thing.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_03: I felt like a like a vegetable, like a zombie.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_03: And without the motivation and the physicality to do anything, I really started to think, is this worth it?
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_03: If I'm gonna be like this from here on out, maybe I I don't want to do this anymore.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I never thought about how to do it, but I certainly thought suicidal thoughts.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: And um, I had a lot of really great people in my circle that saw where I was at and basically just reflected to me who I really was.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_03: They said, like, man, that we're so sorry for you, we're so feeling for you, what you're going through, and this isn't you.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_03: My story from the Black Canyon was made into a television show.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_03: It was like a famous event of this guy who conquered all odds to save his life and live because life was worth it, right?
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_03: And all these people in my my circle were like, have you forgotten who you are?
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_03: You're like you're famous for this, you know?
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_03: Like, and you're ready to throw in the towel.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_03: Who are you?
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_03: And just because of the heaviness of the disappointments and everything I was going through, I'd I'd forgotten who I was for a time.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_03: But they helped remind me, and I just remembered.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_03: I I remembered that I am in the driver's seat of my life, and that no matter how hopeless this seemed, that there was a way out of it, even if I couldn't see it yet.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_03: So I didn't give up looking for people that could help me.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_03: And I got turned on to a Lyme specialist in Atlanta, Georgia called Longevity Health.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I took a trip down there, they did some tests, and they just said, like point blank, you have Lyme disease.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, really?
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_03: Because I've been told I don't by like three other people.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: Why is this such a confusing thing?
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like perpetually confused by why doctors can't say whether you have Lyme disease.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: What the hell?
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, this is like something people have whole podcasts and channels.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: I know, I know.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I did talk about it once with someone else on my show.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: Can't even remember, but yeah, it's so crazy.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_03: The short answer is that it's very elusive and the illness operates in a way that is very hard to detect through Western medicine.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: Got it.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_03: And for that reason, our Western mentality says if we can't get a handle on it, we're just gonna ignore it or say it's not a real thing, basically.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: The way that they look for it, essentially, I'm guessing from like blood tests or whatever, it doesn't always show up.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_03: It's one of those things where you can have tests where there's like false positives or false negatives kind of things.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_03: Even if you catch it early on with the Lyme disease test you get in a in a regular doctor's office, it's always like a crapshoot whether that's actually telling the truth or not.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_03: The way that you can know is if you get a big bullseye rash from a bite, it looks like a giant red circle around a bite.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_03: And that's a telltale sign that you've been bit with a tick that had Lyme disease.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: Got it.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so there's a lot of ways for people to figure out you have it, whatever state you're in, but they are specialists.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_03: They're people that are very well researched and versed on how to look for it and all that.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so I found someone to help me and got treated just in time.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_03: And I got my life, I got my health back because I didn't give up and give in again.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_03: But I really had to remember, you know, I thought that everything I'd been through, this epic survival adventure, okay, this is gonna live in me for the rest of my life, but no, I that was a physical test and a and a mental test.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_03: This depression was an extreme emotional and psychological test for me.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: Was there anything else that like helped you shift it on more of an emotional or spiritual level?
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, thanks for asking.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_03: I love the movie Inside Out, it's a Disney movie.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, because it has such a powerful message that really.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: Spoke to me from that time.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_03: So in the movie, the emotion joy is trying to run the show all the time.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_03: And with anger and especially sadness, is like, no, no, no, I got it, I got it.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_03: We don't want you around.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_03: You don't feel good.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_03: Just let me take care of everything.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_03: And this little girl, her life falls apart because she doesn't get to experience her emotions when they're needed.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I mentioned that because what really helped me heal and get through the depression when I was ready to hear my friend's advice to not give up was that I really let myself feel the sadness.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_03: I really went there instead of trying to cover it up or ignore it or do a lot of things we do, like drugs and alcohol, or what all kinds of things to ignore those bad feelings.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_03: I let myself ugly cry every day over the disappointment of my life being taken away from me.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_03: And there was a day that I was sitting with my dad in our hot tub at our old house, and I just was crying and crying.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, I know you're gonna get through this, and we're behind you.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_03: And I just continued crying for another 10 minutes.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_03: And then I can only describe this as I felt like I cried my last tear.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_03: And some voice inside of me said, It's enough now.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_03: Now we can come back up because you've honored this feeling so deeply.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's enough.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I jumped out of the hot tub.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't even dry off.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_03: I threw on my running shoes and I ran up the street in our neighborhood.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_03: And I had this vision of like walls in front of me.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_03: And every time I got to a wall, I would just like break through the wall and just saying, I'm done.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not gonna be in this place anymore.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_03: I'm taking my life back.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_03: And uh this beautiful black bear crossed in front of me as I was running through the street.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_03: This is in Colorado, and uh that day really was the turning point because I let myself experience it and then knew that it was time to come back up.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_03: I'd been through the death, it was time to be reborn again.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the feeling of your emotions is so important.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's like the whole premise of my work, honestly, is like most of what ends up becoming our struggles or problems in life is a result of unacknowledged emotions and suppressed emotions.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: And like when people feel safe enough to feel them and move through them, then it is over.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like, kind of you experience okay, you move through it, and then you get to the point where it's like you're done moving through it, and then it's all processed and integrated, and then you can move forward.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: So then what was like the rebirth for you?
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like what happened next?
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that day happened before I found the help from the Lyme specialist.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_03: So it was in me totally again back to manifesting and mindset.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_03: In the pit of my depression, I was looking for everything to affirm that life was bad and that I was a victim and that it wasn't worth doing anything about.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_03: When I processed my sadness, knew it was enough, was ready to move on, my mindset completely flipped that day to go back to hopefulness, solution finding, movement, light, all of the young things as opposed to the yin.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_03: And it was it was time to get back to life because life is for living, life is for movement, for doing.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it is for being too, but yeah.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_03: So it was through my new hopeful mindset that I was open and available to continue looking for an answer.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_03: I continued my research and got turned on to this person who helped me.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_03: It was that hopefulness that I switched to that was able to just really bring me back to the light again.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then is that when you started with like your music career?
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_03: The full story of that is I'd quit my music career during that time.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_03: In back to this thing about I was taking my life for granted.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_03: I thought, oh, all right, I've already traveled the world, I've played with a lot of artists I dreamed of playing with when I was a kid.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_03: Let me do something else with my life.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_03: The life that I was living at the time was totally from my mind.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of people around me said, you know, you look like an actor, like you should be an actor.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I was thinking, like, yeah, that sounds cool.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_03: Like, actors are famous and they make lots of money.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_03: And if people think I could do it, maybe I could do it.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_03: All up here, just this bullshit thing that wasn't mine.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_03: And so I quit music and moved to Atlanta to pursue acting.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_03: And so I really believe that my angels delivered the Lyme disease to me to wake up and to teach me a lot of things.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_03: Number one, I was taking my life for granted.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_03: Number two, I was totally out of my flow at that time.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_03: I like to think that life is half free will and half fate in a sense.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_03: I like the idea that we live many lifetimes, and if that's true, I believe that we choose circumstances to have a particular life experience that we don't have to do it, but that's to me part of what being in our flow is is that we have a life path that we want to fulfill certain things.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like way off my path.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_03: And my angels were like, bro, you need to wake up.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_03: You are not following what you wanted to do.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, I feel like I got struck by a big bolt of lightning to wake up.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_03: And after the Lyme disease, my best friend Nick said, I feel this is up to you, but I feel that you are just dishonoring the gift of your music.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_03: And now that you've learned your lessons, you can come back to it in a whole new way.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_03: And that was true.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_03: I was just like this flashy saxophone player when I was young.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I've loved to sing and play guitar my whole life, but always been afraid to do it in front of people.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_03: And I really put in the work, and now I'm a professional singer and guitarist, in addition to a saxophonist.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_03: And so I really turned a corner with so many things in my life.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_03: That really was the period of being a young man in my mind.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_03: Post-Lyme disease was being a man.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_03: So much appreciation for for all the blessings I have doing the things that are really me rather than things that are from my mind or ideas from other people.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_03: And it was an event that really changed my life, even more so, I think, than the Black Canyon experience.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think like when you have to pull yourself out of something over a much longer period of time to obviously, I know with the Black Canyon thing, you did have to like recover and all of that, but this is more um elusive in the sense that it's like coming from within you and you have to find who you are, not like with anything that you do outside of you, where it's like you kind of have to find an identity that has nothing to do with like the things that you do.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like who you are.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's what was occurring to me when you were talking about it.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was like this invitation for you to find who you are beyond these things that you identified with.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_03: That's a great observation.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_03: And a big part of my story is that I learned to do things, impressive things, for the sake of getting people to like me for a long time.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_03: I lived a really big life in many ways because I thought I would be rewarded for it.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_03: I really was like obsessed with this hero mentality.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_03: Well, if you're like a heroic figure, then everybody will love you.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_03: And then post-Lyme disease, a big part of my wake up was I want to do things because I love them, regardless of what anybody thinks about them, whether they're negative or positive.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_03: You said earlier about this mentality of what did you say?
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_03: Something about that we do things in order to be accepted, basically.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: Approval.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_03: Approval, yeah.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_03: The book for me is okay, but I love the film The Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_03: Are you familiar with this?
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_03: It's very much about doing something that we love regardless of what the outcome will be.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_03: I do what I love because that's the end of the road.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_03: I found the love in it.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_03: There's nothing else to be done with it.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_03: What other people think, whatever they give me or don't give me, is totally not attached to my joy of doing something in life because that's where the love is, right there.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's very important.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like I needed to hear that just now.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_01: So that that I think that's a perfect way to like wrap things up too, because it is, it's funny.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_01: I was talking to somebody earlier about a client just made a couple like decisions of how she's going to move forward in her life, which was huge and really amazing decisions.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I think on the back end of that was like this fear of what if it doesn't work out in the way that I envision it, or what if I took all this time and energy and money to do this and I disappoint myself or other people.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, those are all those fears that we have with what you just said.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: You immediately take that away because it's like you're just doing it because you love it and you want to, and that's all that there needs to be.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I love that.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I feel like there's so much more we could talk about.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: We probably should have you on again.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_01: I want to talk about American Ninja Warrior.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, we'll we'll have to have you back again.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: But would you be able to just share where people can find you and connect with you?
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, all the connections are through my website, craigrichard.com.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_03: If you want to find my Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn, it's through there.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_03: And if you just want to learn more about my life and see the Black Canyon story, the Ninja Warrior videos, it's all right there, Craig Richard.com.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then where do you play music?
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: Is it that's more internationally?
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_03: So uh these days a lot of my shows are done on cruises.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, cool.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I get flown to these beautiful destinations around the world, have a couple of shows, and then when the ship is docked in these ports, I get to just go out and have adventures and explore.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's pretty great.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: What a life.
• 54:20
  unknown: Yeah.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for being here.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: This was awesome, and we'll definitely have to continue the conversation.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_03: My pleasure, Elise.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's great speaking with you.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: You too.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for being here.
• 54:35
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• 54:42
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• 54:49
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• 55:01
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• 55:05
  SPEAKER_01: See you next time.