Latest / FINE is a 4-Letter Word / 77. (S3E3) From Badge to Behind Bars: How Joe Kelley Turned His Life Around

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77. (S3E3) From Badge to Behind Bars: How Joe Kelley Turned His Life Around · FINE is a 4-Letter Word

• 0:02
  Hey, my friend. Welcome to Fine is a four letter word.
• 0:06
  My name is Lori Saitz.
• 0:08
  I'm an entrepreneur, mentor, founder of Zen Rabbit, and your instigator in saying fuck
• 0:13
  being fine. This show is for those of you who are done living with the dumpster fire
• 0:19
  and are ready to find the tools and courage to transform to step into more success and
• 0:25
  fulfillment in both your personal and business life.
• 0:28
  You're in the right place for stories of self discovery, gratitude and connection, and
• 0:34
  to help you strengthen that connection to your own inner guidance, you'll find each
• 0:38
  episode has an accompanying meditation.
• 0:41
  Now let's get into it.
• 0:45
  We talk about never settling for fine, but today's guest had a life that was decidedly
• 0:50
  less than fine.
• 0:52
  From first responder to drug addiction and jail time, Joe Kelly has seen and experienced
• 0:58
  some seriously difficult times.
• 1:00
  He learned the hard way what it takes to turn your life around.
• 1:04
  And now he shares what he learned through his own company, obtaining mastery.
• 1:09
  His life's work is to help others unlock their potential and achieve true greatness
• 1:15
  from the depths of despair to the heights of success.
• 1:19
  Joe's story is one of resilience, recovery and redemption.
• 1:23
  With his book Badge Bars to Beyond.
• 1:26
  Joe is here to provide the tools and coping skills to help you turn your life around.
• 1:32
  So if you're ready to start your journey to a fresh, new outlook on life, you've come to
• 1:37
  the right place.
• 1:38
  Today's episode is sponsored by Zen Rabbit.
• 1:41
  If you'd like to find peace of mind amidst the chaos, and no matter what's going on
• 1:46
  around you, you'll find a whole bunch of free resources like meditations and articles
• 1:51
  at Zen Rabbit dot com.
• 1:53
  And while you're there, if you're curious about how you might stop working so hard and
• 1:59
  achieve more success at the same time, get a copy of the five Easy Ways to Start Living a
• 2:06
  Sabbatical Life.
• 2:07
  It's a short guide to working less and living better.
• 2:11
  Find it all at Zen Rabbit.
• 2:15
  Hello and welcome to Fine is a four letter word.
• 2:18
  My guest today is Joe Kelly.
• 2:20
  We were introduced by a past guest, Sabrina Victoria, and I'm so excited that she
• 2:26
  introduced us because you have such an amazing story and I'm so eager to get into
• 2:31
  it. So welcome to the show, Joe.
• 2:33
  Well, thank you for having me.
• 2:35
  My pleasure. So the first question I always start out with for everybody is what were the
• 2:41
  values and beliefs that you were raised with that contributed to you becoming who you've
• 2:46
  become?
• 2:47
  Yeah, awesome. And it's a great question because I think a lot of the values and
• 2:50
  beliefs that I was raised with, you know, got me to a certain point in my life and then
• 2:56
  they stopped serving me at a certain point in my life, you know.
• 2:59
  So my I'm from north, I'm from the Northeast, I'm from Massachusetts, Boston
• 3:05
  area, Cape Cod is where I was born and raised.
• 3:08
  You know, family was a big part of growing up.
• 3:12
  Even people that weren't even blood related, that were close to the family were aunts and
• 3:17
  uncles.
• 3:18
  I have that, too.
• 3:20
  Yeah. Yeah. And we were you know, we were taught, you take care, you take care of your
• 3:23
  own, you know, And you know, other people can make mistakes.
• 3:27
  And, you know, you might have looked at them differently, but when it came to family, it
• 3:32
  was blood was thicker than water type of thing.
• 3:35
  Those were the what was instilled in me.
• 3:37
  But also, you know, athletics for me was a big thing.
• 3:41
  I didn't come from a very affluent family.
• 3:44
  A lot of my cousins, and there were a lot of them because I'm Irish, Cape Verdean.
• 3:49
  And when you're a Cape Verdean, we have a lot of cousins.
• 3:52
  Okay.
• 3:53
  So, you know, that was big.
• 3:54
  That was big as well because everyone played sports, you know, And also being from
• 3:59
  Massachusetts and I live in Florida now, the one thing that I see that's big different
• 4:03
  when you're taking out of an area and put somewhere else is and I notice it a lot now
• 4:08
  is the northeast. It's a lot blue collar.
• 4:11
  It's very blue collar.
• 4:12
  I was taught from an early age that to get a job with that was union.
• 4:17
  That was union benefits, you know, I mean, security.
• 4:22
  And it really didn't matter, you know, the amount of money that you are making it more
• 4:26
  it meant more to have the benefit aspect of it, you know.
• 4:30
  And most of my family were all yeah, most of my family were all first responders, you
• 4:36
  know, And obviously when you get into my story, you mean I thought I had arrived, you
• 4:40
  know, and that was the king job for me.
• 4:43
  My sight was always there being a police officer for three years.
• 4:46
  But in Florida, it's quite different.
• 4:48
  You know, Florida is more of an entrepreneur state.
• 4:51
  Yeah. You know, where it's you work more for yourself.
• 4:54
  It's not work harder, it's work smarter, you know.
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  So it's been it's been a big change in a change for the good.
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  So those were the core values is, you know, family, you know, God and you know, basically
• 5:10
  working.
• 5:11
  Yeah. So and I think it depends on the area of the state.
• 5:14
  Like I don't know that we could say like all of Massachusetts and all of Florida, but I of
• 5:19
  course, have had similar experience.
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  I lived in Florida for South Florida for 11 years, too.
• 5:23
  And it is a lot of entrepreneurial spirit there for sure.
• 5:27
  Yeah, it's nice. I love it here.
• 5:29
  So cool. So.
• 5:30
  So this is what you grew up with.
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  And then when you got to be an adult and you were looking for a career, how did that path
• 5:38
  go? Like you said, you went into being to be following in your family's footsteps of
• 5:43
  becoming a first responder.
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  I was going to say, how did you get to the point to choose where which which which part
• 5:49
  of first responder you were going into?
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  Well, all my family were mostly firefighters, nurses or this and that.
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  I had one uncle who was a police officer.
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  My dad always says you took a left instead of a right because they joined the police
• 6:03
  department instead of the fire department.
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  But for me, you know, like the first question has values and stuff, you know,
• 6:09
  athletics and family and that stuff that that got me to college on on scholarships for
• 6:15
  football and baseball.
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  It worked me for a very, very long time.
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  And then when I graduated college, you mean I always wanted to do something where I
• 6:24
  didn't have to sit behind a desk?
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  You know, I wanted to be able to use my athletic ability.
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  I loved helping people.
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  I like growing up the authority figure, you know, as a police officer, being able to
• 6:36
  actually make decisions and help people, you know?
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  So growing up in that environment and all that talk and my dad's, you know, radio going
• 6:44
  off in the background and, you know, the excitement of something new every day, you
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  know, obviously as a kid, I didn't take in everything that comes with that.
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  I just saw all the glorious type of stuff that goes with that and how it's on TV and
• 6:58
  all that stuff. You know, Little did I know all the extra stuff that comes with it as
• 7:03
  well. So my first job, my first job was DCF, it was called DSS back then called the
• 7:10
  Department of Social Services.
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  Now it's called Department of Children Family.
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  I worked there for. Six months for the state of Massachusetts, working with adolescents
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  and chins, the chins unit, truancy and stuff like that.
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  And then I got into the police academy, you know, So, you know, it was a vision from a
• 7:27
  young, young boy playing cops and robbers.
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  Family, family background with that.
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  And then it came to fruition, you know, after six months after I graduated from
• 7:36
  college.
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  So And now talk about, as you just referred to, it's not exactly what you envisioned as a
• 7:43
  child that it was.
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  What did you find out?
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  How long did it take you to find that out?
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  Very quickly, You know, very quickly.
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  You mean because, you know, I obviously I just wrote a book.
• 7:55
  It's called Badge Bars to Beyond.
• 7:58
  And a lot of that extra stuff played into.
• 8:02
  You mean my fall from grace, so to speak.
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  And, you know, being a police officer or a first responder, You mean we see a lot of
• 8:10
  stuff that, you know, ordinary people don't see?
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  I mean, I'll probably see more stuff, you know, over my years than than a single person
• 8:19
  sees sees ever.
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  I mean, and that stuff affects you.
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  I mean, it affects you internally.
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  You know, especially if you have children.
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  You mean anything to do with kids?
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  Whether that is fatalities of any kind, whether that's car accidents, crib deaths or
• 8:37
  anything else. You mean there's a lot of the non glorious parts of that job that come with
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  it. And it's also, you know, for me, it's stuff that I always stuck inside of me
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  because as a first responder or a police officer and I think it's a little bit better
• 8:53
  today, but there needs to be a long way to go with it is.
• 8:57
  We're we're taught to give the help, not ask for the help.
• 9:01
  Yeah. I mean, in in these cases a lot of the times is if somebody does come forward and
• 9:06
  they in they're having emotional problems around that, you know, stigma comes with that
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  too, because you're carrying a gun, you're the authority figure, and they're going to
• 9:14
  make it out to be that it's more than what it is.
• 9:17
  When we all need to talk, we all need to open up about the things that we see.
• 9:21
  Otherwise it's going to get worse and worse.
• 9:23
  Right. And for me, that's exactly what happened.
• 9:26
  I was living in my uniform.
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  The divorce rate within police officers is very high, you know, because of what I just
• 9:34
  said. I mean, we see a lot of things.
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  We don't talk about it.
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  We don't make a big deal about it.
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  We think we become immune to it, but we really don't.
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  Those behaviors come out in a lot of different ways.
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  And for me, it came out with being distant at home, you know, distant with with my wife,
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  my ex wife now, you know, distant with my kids.
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  You know, it affects us in a lot of different ways that we don't know how to
• 10:00
  handle. And all we are taught is just to keep moving forward, you know, just to keep
• 10:04
  moving forward. And a lot of my story, you know, badge bars to be on the high level view
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  is I was a police officer who got hurt on the job, got prescribed high, high, high
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  amounts of pain pills because of who I was and my status in the community.
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  They gave me more and more.
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  I became addicted to them.
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  I ended up losing my job over them.
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  And I'll tell you how I lost my job was.
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  The chief sat me down and said, you know, we heard some things are going on.
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  He said, If you need some help.
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  And, you know, I like throwing this out there because he did offer me the help.
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  But my mental state of mind at the time was, here's my friend who's also the chief of
• 10:43
  police sitting me down.
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  Now he's at the chief of police position setting me down.
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  Yeah, not the friend.
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  And all I heard was tell me everything you know so I can fire your ass.
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  I mean, that's what I heard.
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  Because now all that guilt, all that shame and everything else was sitting inside of me,
• 11:00
  and I was afraid of loss for everything that I worked with at that point.
• 11:04
  Yeah. And you bring up a good point there in that what we hear is through our own filters,
• 11:11
  we interpret our own story is running in our head.
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  And this is a big issue when you're talking about communication between other people, you
• 11:20
  know, communication issues, because what somebody says and what they mean may not
• 11:26
  filter through properly because we're looking at it through our own lens.
• 11:29
  Yeah. Because, you know, basically as we get into it on my trainer and NLP, I do a lot of
• 11:35
  work with people across the country, but this is what we do is the information that
• 11:38
  comes in. We delete, we distort, and we generalize information based on our value
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  system, you know, our upbringing, our experiences and everything else.
• 11:49
  And obviously when somebody sits somebody down who's under the influence of a narcotic
• 11:55
  and everything in my experience is up to that point.
• 11:58
  You mean the fear set in you?
• 12:00
  I mean, so I was I was prepared, you know, not in a in a negative way, but in a way to
• 12:08
  protect my position, my family, my income at all costs possible, you know?
• 12:14
  No. Knowing damn well what I was doing was not right.
• 12:18
  But by that point in this in my story, you mean I was hooked.
• 12:23
  You mean one? I was father of the year when I was on something and I was like pushing a
• 12:29
  bowl of cereal over when I didn't have anything.
• 12:32
  And the problem became when the insurance companies ended up red flag in me probably
• 12:37
  six months down the line after giving me all this medication and the doctors just
• 12:42
  prescribing and prescribing and prescribing stuff I shouldn't have been on in the first
• 12:45
  place. But they prescribed it and they never told me when they first gave it to me.
• 12:50
  Here, take this and watch out for it.
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  And I didn't know anything about addiction.
• 12:54
  I didn't all I knew that was when I took this pill that was the size of my pinky, that
• 13:00
  it made me be able to go to back to work faster.
• 13:04
  It took away all those internal feelings that I was feeling.
• 13:08
  And then when I didn't have anything, everything that I was feeling prior to ever
• 13:12
  picking up that pill came back tenfold like ten fold.
• 13:16
  Right? And it was, you know what I mean?
• 13:18
  Yeah. Because you didn't have any other tools and they were giving you a tool that was
• 13:24
  serving many purposes, but they didn't tell you the downside.
• 13:27
  Parts of it, obviously, that you just said that.
• 13:29
  But yeah, so anytime somebody is given a tool that helps them cope with feelings that
• 13:35
  don't feel good, they're going to take it and not want to give it back.
• 13:41
  Yeah, exactly.
• 13:42
  In the in the and the result of that was, you know, I got red flagged and I didn't have
• 13:47
  anything and I needed something now to then just feel normal.
• 13:51
  It wasn't like I was getting high.
• 13:52
  I needed something just to feel normal, to be able to go to work, to be able to be an
• 13:56
  active member of society, you know?
• 13:59
  And I did the next best thing, you know, this is where the dishonesty came in and
• 14:04
  everything else is.
• 14:05
  I would, you know, tell my wife I needed a new bulletproof vest, I needed new boots, I
• 14:11
  needed a gun holster, I needed this.
• 14:13
  And then two months later, because I had to pay for stuff from people I knew from high
• 14:16
  school to get what I needed.
• 14:19
  And I'd be walking around in the same raggedy old shit, you know?
• 14:22
  I mean, who am I fooling?
• 14:24
  I mean.
• 14:24
  Right? And she didn't question that.
• 14:27
  You know, I think I had our head spinning in terms of what what to believe and what not to
• 14:32
  believe, because some stuff was you mean left at the station where I changed there and
• 14:36
  this and that, you know, and, and the thing is, is, you know, for me after that, you mean
• 14:44
  I eventually resigned forthwith, forcefully resigned from the job my wife left me.
• 14:50
  She emptied our bank accounts, probably rightfully so, because of the stuff that I
• 14:54
  was going through. And, you know, I was I was at a I was at a position in my life where
• 15:00
  everyone that I knew wasn't talking to me.
• 15:03
  The love of my life was gone.
• 15:04
  My kids weren't a part of my life.
• 15:07
  All those feelings of shame, guilt and everything else that that that I had done up
• 15:11
  to that point. We're hitting me like a ton of bricks.
• 15:14
  Instead of picking myself up, you know, I got angry and I said, Well, I'll show you.
• 15:19
  I'm like, I've been ten years or nine years on the job.
• 15:22
  At that point, you know what I've sacrificed.
• 15:24
  You know, I started pointing the finger.
• 15:26
  I got angry.
• 15:27
  And, you know, the next year of my life was the worst year I ever had in my 47 years of
• 15:34
  my life. I caught so many different charges because I didn't have any money.
• 15:38
  I still needed what I needed to be normal and to act, not to feel like I was crawling
• 15:45
  out of my skin and going into, you know, those many times I would put my gun in my
• 15:49
  mouth, but excuse my language.
• 15:51
  I didn't have the balls to pull the trigger, Jimmy, But I did not want to live.
• 15:55
  I wished every day at that point in my life that I wouldn't wake up the next day.
• 16:01
  So I have to redo everything that I had to do to get what I needed.
• 16:04
  It was it was a terrible existence.
• 16:06
  It was like Groundhog Day, right?
• 16:08
  Oh, every there it is.
• 16:09
  Every day. It was Groundhog Day of doing things.
• 16:12
  And I'd always say that I'll do this, this and this, but I would never do that.
• 16:17
  And I'd always cross a line, you know, to get what I needed because.
• 16:22
  Go ahead.
• 16:22
  No, I was just going to say, I talk about this a lot and it's you couldn't trust
• 16:28
  yourself because you were not keeping promises to yourself when you said, I'm going
• 16:33
  to do this and then you didn't do it and you'd cross another line, Yeah, we break
• 16:38
  integrity with ourselves when we do things like that.
• 16:41
  Yeah, you mean.
• 16:42
  And I was I was a shell of who I used to be.
• 16:45
  You mean at that point?
• 16:46
  And long story short, I ended up getting charged with trafficking.
• 16:50
  I caught I got caught with 200 and, like, 30 perc thirties, charged with trafficking.
• 16:55
  I was a police officer, high ranking police officer who ended up going to prison.
• 17:00
  I did two years in in prison.
• 17:04
  And let me tell you what, like two weeks into that stay, I kind of woke up from
• 17:10
  everything that's going on and I said, Fuck, how how the hell did I.
• 17:14
  Get here. It was like my life flashed before my eyes.
• 17:17
  Raised well.
• 17:19
  College graduate, high ranking police officer.
• 17:22
  Within six months, I'm sitting in a cell going, How the fuck did this happen?
• 17:27
  You mean after I had some clarity, you know, and that was the transition.
• 17:31
  I was awake, you know, my my daughters were everything to me and none of my decisions.
• 17:38
  I could say that, Hey, you know, nothing.
• 17:40
  Nothing is more important to me than them.
• 17:43
  And honestly, in my heart, that's how I felt.
• 17:45
  But my actions up to that point weren't dictating that because I was so consumed with
• 17:50
  what was going on on the inside and trying to self medicate and everything else that
• 17:55
  nothing else mattered.
• 17:56
  Yeah, you know, because I couldn't be who I wanted to be.
• 17:58
  I have so many questions, so.
• 18:01
  Sure.
• 18:01
  One, you said in the beginning that family is everything and blood is thicker than
• 18:07
  anything. How did your your family, beyond your wife and your kids like how did they
• 18:14
  respond and did they know this was going on and how did they support you after they found
• 18:19
  out?
• 18:19
  Yeah, it's you know, you read some in the book as well, but my father, she has the same
• 18:25
  name as me. It was very hard on him and he was very strict with me.
• 18:30
  He, you know, when I went through and got caught up with stuff because of who I was, it
• 18:34
  was a juicy story to the media.
• 18:36
  All of my stuff was posted front page of the paper.
• 18:39
  So you can imagine being the football baseball star, you know, and all this.
• 18:44
  And now for the first time in my life, I wasn't on the front page for good news.
• 18:48
  It was for bad news.
• 18:49
  You know, it was all nonviolent criminal offenses, but there were still felonies.
• 18:53
  You mean anything? Over $250.
• 18:56
  So my dad, you know, totally shut me down.
• 18:59
  He was very hard.
• 19:00
  He took my ex-wife's side in terms of trying to push.
• 19:07
  I wasn't ready, you know, So I was always trying to manipulate and he wouldn't allow me
• 19:12
  to manipulate. So he stood his ground.
• 19:14
  My mother.
• 19:16
  My mother would always give me the shirt off her back.
• 19:19
  I mean, she was a huge enabler, but I don't say that in a bad way.
• 19:23
  I needed both.
• 19:24
  I needed the love and I needed the stillness.
• 19:27
  But as I get older and obviously the stuff that I know, people do the best they can with
• 19:32
  the resources they have.
• 19:33
  Absolutely.
• 19:33
  I mean, and the problem and that's the resources my dad had.
• 19:37
  That was a resources my mother had when I went to prison, nobody visited me but my
• 19:42
  mother. My dad did not come see me until the last six months before I was going to be
• 19:46
  released. You know, and the big turning point for me, you know, because there's
• 19:51
  there's not just about this story.
• 19:52
  My whole book is based upon what happens after prison and how to build a life back
• 19:58
  that to be successful and everything else and all the stuff I did.
• 20:02
  Since then, that's just a small piece of me because I'm 47 years old.
• 20:05
  I refused.
• 20:07
  I don't care how society wants to label anybody as a felon and put a stigma on
• 20:13
  anything. I love the quote that somebody took the same situation you're complaining
• 20:18
  about and they won with it.
• 20:19
  You know, and I and I when I was in jail, I started to have a little bit of spark back in
• 20:25
  me of in clarity that I wanted to live.
• 20:28
  That was my first thing I didn't want to die in.
• 20:31
  Yeah, I wanted to live.
• 20:33
  And when I decided that I wanted to live, I had to I had to come up with what was I going
• 20:40
  to do. And what I say to a lot of people is I.
• 20:45
  I had to reach for for four things.
• 20:47
  I had to do some things that I had never done before.
• 20:50
  You mean in terms of some personal development stuff, whether that was reading a
• 20:54
  book, motivational type of stuff?
• 20:57
  Yeah, I was just going to ask that question.
• 20:59
  What did you what helped you?
• 21:01
  What tools or techniques helped you turn things around?
• 21:05
  Well, this book I ever read cover to cover, and I'm almost ashamed to say it because I
• 21:09
  was never an avid reader.
• 21:10
  The four agreements.
• 21:11
  Yeah, love the book I loved a lot because it really hit home for me.
• 21:16
  Obviously, with the traditional AA and a I read the NRA, the NRA book, the A book.
• 21:22
  I'm like, Oh, that's me, that's me, that's me, that's me.
• 21:25
  But for me, it wasn't so much about substances.
• 21:28
  I mean, it was more about the root, the underlying reasons of why I was doing those
• 21:33
  things in the first place.
• 21:34
  For me, it was like the perfect storm that happened and it just happened to involve this
• 21:40
  substances. So I can relate on a lot of different levels.
• 21:43
  You mean. And I stopped pointing the finger and I started taking responsibility because
• 21:48
  there was true power and taking responsibility for that.
• 21:51
  I mean, one of the first month I was in jail, I had a hit list.
• 21:54
  I'm going to get you.
• 21:55
  I'm going to get you. But that changed.
• 21:57
  You know, jail doesn't work for a lot of people or prison or whatever you want to call
• 22:01
  it. But it gave me the time I was unwilling to give myself.
• 22:04
  Yeah. You mean it gave me it made me sit with myself.
• 22:08
  It made me evaluate things.
• 22:09
  Right. Which I could never do.
• 22:11
  Yeah. And that's a lot of people have to reach that point.
• 22:15
  Like my program is called Fork Being Fine, because you reach that point where you're
• 22:20
  like, I just can't do this anymore.
• 22:23
  And some people get there, I don't know voluntarily if I on their own and some people
• 22:29
  have to be put in a situation that forces them to look at it like you were.
• 22:34
  Yeah. And it's unfortunate.
• 22:35
  I work with a lot of people that have dependence problems across the country and
• 22:39
  even high executive CEOs, like when I wrote this book.
• 22:43
  This book isn't just about, you know, drug addiction.
• 22:46
  That's part of my story.
• 22:48
  But it is it's about, you know, the bankrupt professional there, reluctant divorcee.
• 22:53
  It's about the fallen leader.
• 22:55
  It's about anybody that has gone through challenges in life that were unsparing,
• 23:00
  whether they were publicly humiliated, whether they were just internally
• 23:04
  embarrassed. I mean, whatever it may be, it's a system on how to build a life worth
• 23:10
  worth living now.
• 23:11
  Right.
• 23:11
  You know, and part of my story was getting out of jail, you know, and when I moved to
• 23:16
  Florida, you know, meeting my wife, where I checked that ego of being the emergency
• 23:22
  response police officer, the athlete, the womanizer, like all that check that ego,
• 23:28
  because everything my values, core and everything else that up to that point served
• 23:34
  its purpose to a point.
• 23:35
  It was no longer working.
• 23:36
  Right. I needed to find other avenues in other ways in order to succeed with all the
• 23:42
  stigmas of what society and a felon and all that and make a life worth living, you know.
• 23:48
  And that's what I did.
• 23:49
  My wife was into a lot of different modalities, whether it was meditation,
• 23:53
  whether it was yoga, whether it was NLP, A Course in Miracles, all that stuff that I
• 23:59
  said to you, you wouldn't catch me dead in one of those things 20 years.
• 24:04
  Well, yeah.
• 24:05
  Because my my ego won an awful lot.
• 24:08
  And it almost did catch you dead.
• 24:10
  Yes, and rightfully so.
• 24:13
  You know, And I say to myself, I'm you know, I'm a religious man, I'm Catholic, and I
• 24:18
  believe in God. God brought that woman into my life.
• 24:21
  Maybe because he knew that for me at first it was, oh, I want to get close to her, You
• 24:27
  mean? So I'm like, Oh, I'll go to that with you.
• 24:30
  Sure, no problem.
• 24:31
  Right. But when I went to it.
• 24:34
  It caught me.
• 24:36
  It gave me tools and NLP, which is neuro linguistic programming, which is a fancy word
• 24:43
  for the road map to the mind.
• 24:45
  It changed my entire life because I'm a very skeptical person.
• 24:49
  It allowed me to get rid of limited beliefs.
• 24:51
  And you can imagine how many of those there were.
• 24:54
  It allowed me to release anger, sadness, guilt, you mean.
• 24:59
  Which I was just a walking throne of all that.
• 25:02
  And it allowed me to release this stuff within a matter of like, 90 seconds.
• 25:07
  Yeah, that's how.
• 25:08
  Powerful it is. It's really powerful.
• 25:10
  And it's all of the releasing of all of that, I know you'll agree with this is that's
• 25:18
  what matters like that you are no longer carrying it.
• 25:21
  You can't be responsible for what other people are carrying or feeling towards what
• 25:26
  you experienced.
• 25:29
  It's about forgiving and releasing yourself from all of those feelings.
• 25:33
  Yeah. True forgiveness too.
• 25:36
  You mean because not, Hey, I forgive you.
• 25:38
  And then, like, you know, behind someone's back, it's about true forgiveness.
• 25:42
  Yeah, I mean, and how can I expect people to forgive me for stuff that I've done in my
• 25:47
  past if I'm unwilling to forgive other people, you know?
• 25:51
  And at the end of the day, I can only control what I do.
• 25:54
  I can't control anybody else.
• 25:56
  I can't control my wife.
• 25:57
  I can't control my mother.
• 25:58
  You know, I try to control my kids.
• 26:01
  You know what I mean? I can only control me and my response to things.
• 26:05
  And before in life, when we were talking about values, I was raised like eye for an
• 26:10
  eye. Like I was the type of guy that I'd see you.
• 26:13
  And you looked at me wrong. I'm like, You got a problem now?
• 26:15
  I had to do a total transformation of who I was because that stuff was no longer working
• 26:21
  for me. Right. You know, it's the same thing.
• 26:23
  And I and I don't like to pigeonhole either.
• 26:26
  No. My story is about dependence, and I help out.
• 26:28
  A lot of people across the country get into different facilities.
• 26:32
  I do a lot of sober coaching and stuff out there, but I don't pigeonhole myself to that
• 26:37
  because I'm so vast in so many other ways.
• 26:41
  Like we I help, you know, successful CEOs improve their bottom line through
• 26:45
  communication skills, you know, in terms of marketing and stuff like that.
• 26:50
  My true passion is just helping anybody in general, regardless of what they're going
• 26:55
  through, regardless of what they're facing.
• 26:57
  You mean? I faced a lot in my life.
• 26:59
  And the one biggest thing that we have out there, and I think you'll agree with Lori, is
• 27:03
  coaching. Coaching is out there, but it's so underused because you have to have humility
• 27:09
  in order to jump into that.
• 27:11
  And humility is the ability to ask for help.
• 27:14
  Just because somebody comes for me, comes to me for coaching doesn't mean that I'm any
• 27:19
  better than them.
• 27:20
  I mean in life, right?
• 27:22
  It just means that I have some expertise in a certain area that they may need assistance
• 27:28
  in. Right. They may have expertise in another area that that I'm going to learn
• 27:32
  from. You know what I mean?
• 27:33
  Right. Right. And it comes back to your whole thing about humility, asking for help,
• 27:38
  because whatever thing they're facing at this moment, they just need a hand.
• 27:45
  Yeah. And a lot of people, you mean, tend to hold on to the problems.
• 27:50
  And I was one of them.
• 27:51
  I was that guy that when I when I, when I was going through things before I had a
• 27:57
  change in mindset and everything else, I wanted to tell you all about my problems.
• 28:00
  I wanted to justify my problems.
• 28:03
  I wanted to I would tell the complete stranger, hey, you know, look at look at my
• 28:07
  problems, look at my problems, you know, and just buy them, right?
• 28:11
  So I can move forward in life like they labeled me a felon.
• 28:15
  I can't get a job now. What am I going to, you know?
• 28:17
  Yeah, well, and then the interesting thing that happens with that is the more you focus
• 28:21
  on those problems, the more problems you get to focus on because it works the opposite
• 28:26
  way, too, right? When you're focusing on the good stuff, more good stuff comes in.
• 28:32
  I wanted to ask you a question about your move to Florida.
• 28:35
  Was that because were you I mean, obviously people move to Florida because it's warm and
• 28:40
  they want to get out of the snow.
• 28:41
  But but did you move to get through a change of environment so that you weren't going back
• 28:47
  to the same environment in the fear that you might fall back into the same old patterns?
• 28:53
  Great question. So when I first got out of prison, I moved back to my small environment.
• 29:00
  I became a a counselor at a detox.
• 29:04
  At first I was a landscaper, right?
• 29:07
  I took a job landscaping because I really needed to pick up something.
• 29:11
  I used to hide behind trees when cruises went by because I was so embarrassed.
• 29:15
  Right. And then I started to work in behavioral health and that type of stuff.
• 29:21
  The reason why I moved to Florida was because after about a year and a half of
• 29:25
  living at home, I knew that I was capped at home because of all my stuff being through
• 29:31
  the paper because of being a star one.
• 29:34
  In that area and then fall from grace.
• 29:37
  I had a stigma.
• 29:39
  I really, no matter how I try it, I couldn't get away from.
• 29:43
  But the capping point when I was playing around with the idea of moving and I stayed
• 29:48
  because of my kids, I had to.
• 29:50
  They're now 18 and 16.
• 29:52
  I stayed and I tried and I tried and I tried, but I could never do anything in and
• 29:58
  escape my past.
• 30:00
  And I wanted to provide for them.
• 30:01
  I wanted to do some things right then I was I was in a on a boat with my cousin who was
• 30:07
  like my best friend, a family gathering.
• 30:10
  And we both the boat unhooked, unhooked from the bottom of the lake.
• 30:15
  We both were treading a long story short, I saw my cousin die.
• 30:20
  Oh my God.
• 30:22
  While we were both treading water, I barely got saved.
• 30:25
  There's another part of my life.
• 30:27
  I shouldn't be here.
• 30:28
  His five year old was in the water with the life vest that witnessed all this.
• 30:32
  And we didn't find him until the next day.
• 30:36
  And that was the moment I decide he was always my rock, regardless of what I was
• 30:41
  going through in my life.
• 30:42
  He never judge me, try to talk sense into me, my stubborn, my stubborn ass.
• 30:47
  And, you know, seeing him go under and not being able to do anything about it, I ended
• 30:52
  up relapsing for a week.
• 30:54
  It was too much for me to handle, even though I was going through everything.
• 30:57
  I just. I had no coping skills.
• 31:00
  I'm like I was barely holding on as it is not living the life that I've always wanted
• 31:05
  to live and getting back in those feelings.
• 31:07
  And that was a cap for me.
• 31:09
  I ended up reaching out to a friend in Florida who owned a couple of places and he
• 31:12
  knew my background and he said, Joe, just just come down here.
• 31:16
  I went down to Florida with the intention of coming back to the Cape because my kids were
• 31:21
  there. It was just time for me to get away, to reevaluate what am I going to do with my
• 31:26
  life? And I ended up being very successful down here.
• 31:32
  I ended up working a lot on myself.
• 31:35
  I ended up building two multimillion dollar companies.
• 31:39
  I ended up Florida, gave me the opportunity that Massachusetts was never going to give
• 31:45
  me. I mean, yeah, and I took it and I ran with it.
• 31:49
  But more importantly, before I ran with a career stuff, I worked so very hard on
• 31:54
  myself. I invested in myself, whether that was personal development type of stuff,
• 32:00
  whether that was trainings, whether that was certifications, you, me, I just wanted
• 32:05
  change. And the only way for me to change everything on the outside was was to change
• 32:10
  what's going on in the inside.
• 32:12
  And the reason why I love NLP so much is because it helped me through that process.
• 32:16
  Just because somebody wants to get certified.
• 32:19
  A lot of people come to us to get certified in NLP hypnosis time Techniques, EFT or Life
• 32:24
  coaching, and a lot of people come in because they want to make more money and
• 32:28
  that's fine and they want the freedom to do it wherever they want.
• 32:31
  And I love that.
• 32:32
  That's not what I get excited about.
• 32:35
  I get excited about the fact that, yes, you're going to make more money and you're
• 32:38
  going to be able to add to your value.
• 32:41
  I go, But what I get excited about is what they don't know.
• 32:44
  And the fact is, is when you go through certification for, you know, NLP hypnosis,
• 32:51
  time techniques, all that, it's a lot of work that you do on yourself.
• 32:54
  First, the person you come in is not the person you leave.
• 32:58
  Yes, you're going to have shifts, You're going to have emotional breakthroughs.
• 33:04
  You're going to this is the stuff that I work with, clients that were not certify on
• 33:08
  within minutes within.
• 33:10
  It's so I get so excited to see how people change when they come through it and how they
• 33:17
  blossom afterwards that it's so very important.
• 33:20
  And obviously you can see it on my face.
• 33:21
  I yeah, I can hear it in your voice and I can see it on your face for sure.
• 33:25
  Yeah. So, you know, Florida did a lot for me and my current wife.
• 33:29
  I'm be nine years now.
• 33:31
  We've been married three new kids, you know, and that's what I write.
• 33:35
  I wrote the book. I made it.
• 33:36
  You know, it's not a long book.
• 33:38
  I was never an, you know, a person who would pick up and read a book.
• 33:43
  And I know most people don't read books cover to cover.
• 33:45
  I wanted this to be read, cover to cover.
• 33:47
  So I made it short enough where where it wasn't overbearing.
• 33:51
  It's not going to you know, somebody who looks at it doesn't read.
• 33:54
  They're going to be like, Oh, I can. Yeah.
• 33:56
  You know, it's it's a book that tells a little bit about my story, but it also gives
• 34:02
  tangible tools that you can take away to apply to your life now.
• 34:07
  And it's an introduction to who I am and what else that we can offer.
• 34:11
  Yeah, Yeah, for sure.
• 34:13
  And in all honesty, I haven't read the book yet.
• 34:16
  However, it is at the top of my list.
• 34:18
  I got I got a stack of books over here and I'm really eager to get into it and.
• 34:24
  And to read what?
• 34:26
  And I was very excited.
• 34:28
  Yeah, I was very excited.
• 34:29
  It made number one best seller on Amazon, not on the bestseller list, number one.
• 34:33
  Best seller. It was like four weeks in a row, and I think it's still still in the top
• 34:37
  100, which is unheard of.
• 34:38
  Congratulations. That that is an amazing, awesome accomplishment.
• 34:42
  Tell us the name of the book again.
• 34:44
  It's called Badge Bars to Beyond.
• 34:47
  It's how I came back from sinning to winning, written by me, Joe Kelly.
• 34:52
  And you can get it on Amazon.
• 34:54
  I'm going to put a link to that in the show notes.
• 34:56
  I'm also going to put a link to how people can get in touch with you if they want to
• 35:01
  continue a conversation, which is tell me that.
• 35:04
  You can go to our website.
• 35:07
  It's called Obtaining Mastery Dotcom.
• 35:10
  And if somebody wants to talk, you can book a free, free consultation on the call or even
• 35:16
  if you just want to talk.
• 35:17
  You can also find me on Facebook.
• 35:20
  It's Joe Kelly.
• 35:22
  That's my author page or you can find me Joe Kelly and my personal page.
• 35:26
  I'm an open book, as you can tell.
• 35:28
  Almost all my dirty laundry has been aired out over the front pages of papers.
• 35:33
  But here's my big thing, Laurie, is I feel and I and I truly feel this, that if I can be
• 35:37
  vulnerable about my situation and there's a lot we didn't cover and there's a lot of that
• 35:42
  I don't mind talking about to anybody.
• 35:44
  If I can be vulnerable about my situation, maybe that's going to help somebody who's
• 35:48
  dying silently, you know?
• 35:50
  And I don't mean to be like, you know, so far left or so far right, It doesn't mean
• 35:55
  that you have to be dying.
• 35:57
  It just means that you need to.
• 36:00
  You know, you have obstacles that you need help with in life.
• 36:02
  So I have so enjoyed this conversation, and I think there's a lot of value out of here.
• 36:08
  Yes. Your story is is somewhat sensational and not to get caught up in that part of it,
• 36:15
  because the the lessons and the the learning from this is universal whether you've been in
• 36:22
  your position or not.
• 36:23
  Right. So thank you so much for sharing.
• 36:26
  Before we go, what is your song, the song you listen to and you need to get an extra
• 36:32
  boost of energy.
• 36:34
  For me, it's Eye of the Tiger.
• 36:37
  I'm a big, rocky, Rocky movie guy, you know?
• 36:40
  So I like anything that's inspirational, inspiring and motivational.
• 36:45
  And for me, that's always been a great movie for mine.
• 36:49
  So any time that I need a hype song, I'm walking in, I like, I like to listen I to the
• 36:53
  tiger.
• 36:55
  I love it. I love it.
• 36:56
  We're going to put a link to that in the show notes as well.
• 36:58
  So lots of good information in the show notes.
• 37:01
  Once again, Joe, thank you so much for joining me on Fine is a four letter word.
• 37:06
  Thank you, Laura. I appreciate you having me.
• 37:09
  Wow. Joe really got vulnerable in sharing his story here.
• 37:13
  I didn't bring it up in our conversation, but as he was talking, I was thinking back to
• 37:18
  Andy Overton's episode at the end of season one.
• 37:21
  She had been a police officer on a dangerous path as well, although with a different
• 37:26
  outcome. Here are today's five key takeaways.
• 37:30
  Number one, acknowledging the inglorious parts of life we choose to pursue is
• 37:35
  important to avoid a life of regret.
• 37:38
  Number two, this topic of asking for help and how difficult it is for people keeps
• 37:43
  coming up.
• 37:44
  The perceived shame is even greater for those who are used to providing support for
• 37:49
  everyone else.
• 37:50
  Joe mentioned his definition of humility as the ability to ask for help.
• 37:55
  Number three, when you tell yourself there's a line you won't cross and then you cross it,
• 38:01
  you destroy your integrity and lose trust in yourself.
• 38:06
  Number four understand, everyone is doing the best they can with the resources they
• 38:12
  have. Forgive them.
• 38:14
  And number five, you can try to control other people.
• 38:18
  But at the end of the day, the only one you can control is yourself and your response to
• 38:24
  things.