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44: Principles Govern Promises w/ Stephen Scoggins · Harder Than Life

• 0:00
  I'm Kelly Siegel and this is harder than life a podcast about self-love self-awareness business and health We tell outrageous stories and boil everything down to simple practical advice. You can start using today. Let's get living I
• 0:15
  After overcoming homelessness, Stephen Scoggins became an award-winning, successful serial eight-figure entrepreneur of many multiple businesses, a highly sought-after international speaker, host of the hit podcast, Unstoppable, and founder of Scoggins International, a national home for media events.
• 0:33
  And empowering education. As part of that endeavor, Stephen has taken over 30 years of setbacks, failures, breakdowns, losses, successes, and comebacks, and transparently uses them to provide simple yet effective step-by-step exercises to help entrepreneurs, leaders, and achievers become unstoppable in all that they do. His insights...
• 0:52
  have also been featured on NBC, CBS, Forbes, Entrepreneur, and many other notable outlets. Learn more at stevenscoggins.com and be certain to follow him on all his socials, which will be in the show notes. That's the marketing version of Steven. Let me tell you about the man I'm learning about and that I call friend. Steven Scoggins is warm, kind, loving, generous, and brilliant.
• 1:16
  I could listen to you speak for hours. I am extremely excited to have you have him live in the building here in Detroit, Michigan. Let's go. Thank you for making the trip. And words cannot express how grateful I am that you flew in. And as I told you on the ride here, I feel loved. I appreciate that. You are loved. Yeah. No. Gosh, me, baby, blushing stuff. Oh, excuse me. Sorry. You blush with stuff. There you go. Now you sound like a radio DJ. Yeah. Let's go.
• 1:46
  No, no. And now I'm super excited to be here, man. You know, Stephen, the beauty part about what the heart of the life is doing for me and not only for charity is that I get to meet wonderful people like you. So, again, I can't tell you enough on how much you appreciate. You're a busy man. You got a lot going on. And you flew into Detroit. You'll be here less than 24 hours. I fed you. But I made it. Yes. You're a man of your word. And as I said to you in the way here is anything you ever need, you have a brother in me. And I'll be there in a second.
• 2:16
  Rock on. Where people have to go check out the Unstoppable podcast where I had the host of interviewing you and bringing you to Raleigh North Kakaileki. Oh, we had a blast. That was a good time. So I've read your book, The Journey Principles, and we're going to review it in detail today. Even though it was written years ago, what's your story and why does your story matter? And I want you to deep dive into it, not the surface level stuff that we all know and love. Be vulnerable. Well, I have no problem being vulnerable. That's like part of my brand.
• 2:44
  I tell the truth. I can't help myself, right? So I don't know. My story, I joke around all the time, but my story reads a lot like Forrest Gump, right? Or Joseph from the Bible. Like I've been thrown in the pits. I've been raised up in a palace. I've done this, that. I've had to confront my ego, my arrogance, my humility. I've had to confront the depths of insecurity that I think we all face from time to time. That's so good right there. We're going to deep dive into that because...
• 3:12
  That's what everybody resonates with. So long story short, and I'm sorry, you have to get the abbreviation. We have to have time for the show. I told every story that's in the book. Long story short is I was raised in a broken home. And that's unfortunately in today's time is not super unique.
• 3:31
  There's a lot of single-parent households nowadays. I specifically raised largely by my grandmother, at least my formative years, the years that I remember. My father suffered from alcoholism for a number of years. Fortunately, he wasn't an abusive alcoholic, but he was an alcoholic all the same. Well, you had me right up until that point. You're explaining my life. My mother, at least at that time, suffered from, well, I'll say suffered from, had...
• 3:58
  telltale signs of mental illness at some level. Now, she grew up in a very, very abusive household. Not with my grandmother specifically, but with grandmother's boyfriends along the way and some other things. So she's went to some pretty dark places. Fortunately, both of my parents now are very healthy people. They've done a lot of work on themselves, which is interesting because they didn't start their journey of working on themselves till I started my journey of working on myself.
• 4:24
  Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. So the interesting thing about that is, is a lot of times you give other people permission to become their best self. When you actually pursue becoming your best self, run that back. Very simply. You give other people the permission to become their best self. When you choose to become your best self, basically first. Wow. Right. Your, your oxygen mask, right? Um,
• 4:53
  And, you know, we'll get into it in the story, but essentially nine years old, I unfortunately find my mother unconscious. Ambulance comes and then my mother disappears from my life for a number of years. Raised by my grandmother from then on around 11, 12 years old, grandmother passes away from cancer. Now, keep in mind, at nine years old, she was diagnosed with cancer.
• 5:14
  And then we proceeded to like literally grab chairs. She would taught me how to grab a chair, pull it up to the stove, turn the boiling water on and make oatmeal and macaroni and cheese and hot dogs. Pretty much anything I could boil. If I could boil it or if I could pour milk in it is what we ate for a long, long time, essentially. And at the time, now keep in mind, I don't know if your average nine-year-old doesn't have the mental acuity.
• 5:36
  to like really do much other than watch cartoons, color books, toys, like they're the focus of different. So I was forced at a very, very young age to step up and become kind of an adult, so to speak. Now I wouldn't say I was an adult at nine years old, but like I started having to take care of other people in the house at that time, including my little brother. Now she passed away at 11 and,
• 5:58
  About that time, my father promised me martial arts lessons, which unfortunately I never got, to go move in with him in a little town called Fuquay, North Carolina. Uquivarena, they call it. And my mother and brother went to Florida and stayed there with my grandfather for a while. And, you know, that was interesting because, you know, hindsight being 20-20, like my youngest brother for a long, long time was very angry at me because in his mind I had abandoned him.
• 6:26
  Right now, in my mind, I'm freaking, I don't know, 11, 12 years old. I don't know what I'm doing. Right. But literally from the, I think I moved in with my father on a Thursday and the following Saturday I was on a construction site carrying studs. And every night, every weekend, every holiday from then on that we weren't in school. I was in the, I was in the construction field.
• 6:51
  And a number of years went by doing that. So by the time I was 16 years old, I could actually run a framing crew. I could read a set of blueprints. I could frame a wall. And my dad would disappear for a couple hours for whatever reason. And I would have these guys who were, you know, probably 30%, 40%, 50% older than me having to take instruction from a kid, right? But they couldn't read the blueprints, and I could read the blueprints. And, you know, I'd...
• 7:18
  I already had a very driven spirit about me, and I don't know if that was, I still don't know where that comes from directly, unless it comes from a God that I believe in, in general. And the reason is, is because that wasn't part of my DNA in the early onset.
• 7:35
  I just got super competitive. Maybe I was trying to prove myself to these older guys, right? Like that I could do it. I could grind. I could get it done. I remember this one time, you know, you used to kind of measure yourself by how many studs you could carry, right? So this, you know, so this guy, you know, is obviously bigger than me. He basically puts, wraps up 20 studs stacked on top of each other under his arms. And what do I do? I do 12 on top of my shoulder, right? Yeah.
• 7:58
  I'm about to crush my little body. Right. But anyway, so that was my life for a while. I'm about that time, about 17 years old. I met my first mentor. I could physically met him. Got my name, the old man, Myrick, Steve Myrick. That's my dad's employer.
• 8:11
  And one afternoon he pulls me down off the framing crew and puts me in this white Jeep Grand Cherokee with a big old gray bumper. That's literally on the left hand side. I always had a big dent because it's always backing into stuff. And he puts me in there and I remember just being so thankful. He asked me to come down, get in the car and just enjoy the AC because it was blazing hot outside. Got in the car and,
• 8:33
  And he very quickly looked at me and he said, I got a question. I actually have a couple of questions for you. But I didn't know if I was about to get in trouble or like, what did I do? He said, the first one is, what is the difference between a rich man and a poor man?
• 8:49
  And I was like, well, duh, with money. Rich man got money. Poor man don't got money, right? And he got really kind of like snappy and kind of angry a little bit. Almost like he wanted to hit me. And he goes, absolutely not. Absolutely not. It's the way they think. And then he asked me a more powerful question. Now, before I go to the next powerful question, I want to cover something really quickly. I want to go back two years from that conversation in which my dad had his first business.
• 9:17
  And had done really well with his first business. With the exception of managing finances in such a way that, well, you have to pay taxes. And unfortunately, the government reminded him of that in the middle of a downturn. And it got nasty quick. And I remember watching my dad's, unfortunately, his business going under and him, you know, dealing with the emotional side of that. Because that's, you know, especially with men, we tie our identity to whether or not something succeeds or fails or whatever. Yeah.
• 9:44
  Especially money. And, you know, he had a big family at that time. There were five of us. Myself, my half-brother Daryl, my half-sister Brandy, my half-sister Jasmine, and then my biological brother who moved in later on. So it was five of us in the household. So it's a house of five.
• 10:02
  We have a nice home. We're in a nice community. We're doing all the football things on the weekend. And that part of life was really, really good. Well, in this grand scheme of things, my dad comes to me. This is about to lose the house. And I just remember him crying and being like, I always remember that Scoggins never get ahead. They always just get by. Okay, so I want you to hold that thought in your mind for just a second.
• 10:25
  Fast forward all the way to being back in this Jeep Grand Cherokee with Steve after asking me the first question. And then he asked me the second question. He said, Stephen, do you want to learn to think like me or do you want to continue thinking like your father? So if the truth about success or achievement or blessings or fulfillment or happiness or joy or mercy is tied up into how we think,
• 10:55
  then if we don't have other people to help us understand how to think differently or how to think better, we will never achieve those things. Well, that's why you're here. And if you think about it, that's so many programs, those limiting beliefs in your head. Your dad just said that, that, that every time you tell me that story drives me crazy. It's so someone thinking like that, you know, you heard my daughter at dinner last night. What do I say to you? Yeah. You are a seagull and you are unstoppable. Unstoppable. That's why I love you.
• 11:23
  Well, and she won't know the benefit of that. Like, she won't fully know the benefit of that for another 10 years. Yeah, she thinks it's cute now. Yeah, she's kind of, dad's being gooberish, kind of like, you know. But she's, it's seeping in, much like Steve Myrick's stuff seeped into me over time. I shared with you guys at dinner last night two other little byproducts of that story. The first of which is a few years ago, I did a DNA thing.
• 11:45
  And then that DNA thing through ancestry and all whatever, you know, I figured out where I was from and I was half Viking and Scotch Irish and, you know, Norwegian and all this kind of cool stuff. A hundred percent badass. I, you know, I don't know. I don't know how many five foot five badass Vikings there are, but Hey, you know, I'll take it. But no, so we go, you know, but the interesting thing about that was is I could not find in 400 years another Scoggins that had managed to become a person of influence and a person of affluence.
• 12:15
  I like that. And if you take those two things, put them together side by side,
• 12:20
  it's all directly correlated to Steve Myrick, Susan Batts, which AKA Mama Wama, I'm sure we'll get into. So you read it. Yep. And then one or two other people along the way that really poured in. Do not go into her because she's had some great one-hiders. Yeah, she's amazing. Unfortunately, neither one of those people got to see everything. They passed away before. They're watching. Yeah. They're watching. And the second thing was, other than the 400-year thing,
• 12:48
  Um, you know, when we were discussing stuff over dinner last night and just having a good old time, catch up with friends and hanging out with your daughter and whatever, we, we had a blast, but we also realized that the journey to get here is often very difficult and people give up along the way. Whereas the journey to stay here actually becomes more meaningful.
• 13:10
  in that you have a better appreciation of influence. You have a better appreciation of affluence. You have a better appreciation of what healthy boundaries are and healthy self-esteem is and a better chance at worth and all kinds of stuff like that. Well, everybody sitting at that dinner of Sands, my daughter, of course, has been through some shit. Yeah. And you could see light bulbs going on. And everybody's head like, oh, oh. We're going to dig right into this a little deeper. Your book starts off...
• 13:40
  You even revert back several times to this, to the overpass where you were contemplating taking your life. I was within seconds of taking my life. I was going to say, that's the question. How close were you to actually doing it and what stopped you? Yeah, so I was within seconds of it. You have to understand what led me there. So hold on, let's set the scene again just because that long wind it is. You have this kid who grew up real rough.
• 14:05
  He's made it in life and he got a little bit of bad news and almost talked, thought about, you know, ending it. Well, yes, the rough upbringing, a rut up and down kind of like, uh, construction environment. Steve Mark gives me a chance to build a business with him. Um, I do very well, very quick, um,
• 14:27
  My character, my integrity was not ready for to wear the mantle of what that was. That led me into a toxic relationship, which led me into tens of thousands of dollars in debt, which then led me to ultimately becoming getting seriously depressed, anxiety ridden, stuff like that, which then led me ultimately becoming homeless.
• 14:45
  For a time, for a season. Grace, just to say again to read, this is a highly successful man right now. He's being modest. He's very well off financially. So to hear the backstory is a privilege. So thank you for being vulnerable. Keep going. My honor. You know, it's interesting. The part that led me to the bridge. So I looked at the military as being my last ditch effort. Right? I'd failed at everything else.
• 15:13
  You know, I squandered an opportunity. I didn't take full advantage of the gift that was given to me. I was the definition of what's called the prodigal son, right? I was given everything, given a huge opportunity, given a chance to change my mindset, given a chance to not follow in, I would say, the traditional Scoggins footsteps. Not saying, and Scoggins, like, I don't know.
• 15:36
  I gotta be careful because those that are my fan members that are also Scoggins, like they all live a very nice life. Like everybody's worked really hard to, you know, be successful in their mentality and modality. Right. The difference, the core differences is for me in the specific timeframe, I was looking at the fact that nothing I had done up at that point had worked. I had always been the caretaker for everybody. I had always been,
• 16:04
  I'd always been the first one to step into the foxhole if somebody needed some help. And I thought I had a buddy of mine. His name was TJ. He had joined the Navy. Gosh, probably two years earlier than me and my cousin, David, who had joined the Navy and they were constantly in my ear, man, I'm traveling everywhere. I'm, you know, one of them was a Japan. The other one was in China. Then they would be somewhere in the somewhere near Greece and then somewhere near Vietnam. And what was the problem that you couldn't get in? We'll get there. Okay.
• 16:35
  So long story short is I, I finally agree. They connect me with a recruiter. They both knew they both had the same recruiter that was actually based in Raleigh, which is obviously where I grew up. And sure enough, I go in there and I'm, I got like, I want to be a seal.
• 16:52
  Like, I don't want to play around. And, you know, I was getting advice from other people. It's like, well, you got to make sure when you're telling them this, they have to put it in. Apparently, you put it in a contract. Like, it's a written document. You know, otherwise, you end up, you know, peeling potatoes and all this kind of stuff. And keep in mind, you still have to qualify, right, to be a SEAL in general. So, long story short, as I'm going through this process, I'm getting in the best shape of my entire life. Like, I was better shaped now. I'm in good shape now, but I was in better shape then. Stephen Goggins. Yeah, right.
• 17:22
  I almost could have been right. And yeah, so I spent six or eight months doing that. I'm dyslexic and have a touch of ADHD and a few other learning and what they would consider learning impairments. I have learned that that's actually the tool that created the ability to solve very complex problems very easily for me is the fact I've always had to be I've always had to look for the other angle. Right. And I wouldn't have that without the dyslexia or without the ADHD. Right.
• 17:48
  I wouldn't have it. The ability to hyper focus and everything else. So long story short is I had to take the ASVAB two, three, five times. I had a GED at the time. I don't have, I have zero idea if this is still, this is still the way it is, but I had to take the, the G, I had to, I had to pass the GED, which I did. Once I passed the GED, then I had to take the ASVAB once, then twice, and
• 18:12
  And then I had a third time to take it. Okay. So I go through all of this training and all this kind of stuff. They bring in a former Marine, Frogman, like what would be the equivalent of a master chief in the Marines to the Navy SEALs. They also bring a Virginia Beach former retired Navy SEAL to come in and pre-train me before I even went to go to boot camp.
• 18:37
  So I was already doing the things where you're in the pool and they're smacking the thing against your face and you're tying your hands together. And, you know, in scuba diving, there's a there's something called a BC and the BC is like a it's like a it feels like a vest and a life preserver. BC in the Navy, it's like a string in a tank. Like is the most awkward, weird feeling thing you can ever put on. So anyway, I go through all this. I'll go through all this training. Keep in mind, I've always known failure. I've always known pain. I've always known hurt.
• 19:07
  And then I go through all this training thinking this, I'm finally going to beat this MF-er. I'm finally going to have a life that matters. All the way up until the day that you're supposed to go to MEPS. All right, so Military Enlistment Processing Center.
• 19:23
  And I go in there and you're supposed to get all your shots, do your final physical, they kind of do all your final paperwork. A lot of times, at least in Raleigh at this time, it was like inside of MEPS, you would have people from different branches that were also enlisting. Some would be for the Navy. Some would be for the Marines. Some would be for our army, et cetera. And I'm in a room.
• 19:41
  And they had these little tables that look like a little desk where you kind of like slip into your chairs, like a little desk thing or whatever. And I had a duffel bag. And inside the duffel bag, I had a red Timberland T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and essentially a Walkman and a broken Nokia 5160 phone. Right. It was paid for minutes.
• 19:59
  And I'm thinking, finally, I'm getting out of here. And ironically, I was supposed to come to Michigan for boot camp. Funny. Yeah. Which is kind of funny. I'm here. Yeah. So. Full circle. Like, because full circle. That's right. And yeah. So I, you know, I was excited. And, you know, that was short lived. About 30 minutes later, a guy walks in and military whites for the Navy and
• 20:23
  I joke around in the book. They kind of reminded me of Tom Cruise and a few good men because he was like kind of like that kind of look. But he was very matter of fact. He just called me by my last name. He's Coggins. Come here. And I went to get up and he said, no, grab your bag. And he proceeded to take me to a different room and proceeds to tell me we can't let you enlist. Now, I've just spent the last year of my live training. I'm in peak shape. Like I'm ripped.
• 20:53
  I would dare say I probably had another three pounds of muscle that I don't have right now. And I was eating right. I was, I was, I wasn't doing great. It's funny. I wasn't doing gratitude walks, but I was doing walks. I was doing runs. I was in the sun. Like I was swimming. I was, you know what I'm saying? So the dopamine levels and all the serotonin, like my, it was at the peak. And then it all got shattered the moment. So we can't let you enlist. And I'm like, well, why? Why?
• 21:19
  He said, well, you know, unfortunately, because you have a GED, you have to score a little bit higher on the ASVAB to qualify, and you missed it by a few points. So I can just take the ASVAB again. Like, you just roll me. I'll just take the ASVAB. He said, well, unfortunately, during the physical, we also realized that you have scoliosis at the top of your neck, and you're going to have back problems all your life. And, yeah.
• 21:38
  And unfortunately we can't put you in an environment where we can expect you to carry and run and do all these different things that a SEAL would have to do or even a normal enlisted person would have to do that has a normal, you know, job within the Navy. And, you know, you're going to have all these back troubles and all this kind of stuff. And I was dumbfounded. And somehow along the way, I was able to leave the room, hold it together. And then by the time I got to the door to exit the building with my bag.
• 22:09
  I literally started crying or weeping on what you dare say. And I talk in the book a little bit about having that voice that you see in the cartoons on one shoulder. Like one's like an angel voice and the other's like a little devil voice. One of the things that I discovered is your insecurities, your self-worth, your hurt, your pain always yells, but your truth always whispers.
• 22:35
  So in this particular thing, as I'm going through this scenario, all I'm here is you're going to be, you're always a failure. I told you so. You never should have tried. Like all the different kind of negative things that a lot of us, if we talk to other people the way we talk to ourselves, we wouldn't have any friends. That's the truth. You know what I'm saying? You wouldn't, you wouldn't be my friend if you, if I would tell you what I say about myself. Exactly. But I mean, but it's, it's, it's.
• 23:00
  It's all human beings. It's not that one person has it figured out. It takes training, right? Your mental training is as important as your physical training. I would say more important. Yeah.
• 23:13
  Since I met you, I would say it's more important. I've been physically trained for years, but it isn't until the last six, eight weeks that I've been really grinding on my mind, and you've seen the change already. So I'd argue that it's mental. So I would say, yeah, it's definitely mental, and that time frame was totally mental for me. So it just so happens that the MEPs station was two blocks away from a bridge that I pointed to you when you were in Raleigh.
• 23:41
  440 and 440 and capital Boulevard intersection. And all I knew is in that moment, all I had known was failure. All I'd known was challenge. All I'd known was adversity. And I knew I didn't want to live my life the rest, the rest of my life that way. What I didn't realize at the time is that I had a choice and how that would change. So all I wanted in that moment was for the pain to stop. That's all I wanted.
• 24:05
  And I wasn't sure. And I, you know, so I make my way over to the bridge. I kick off my shoes and I'm sitting on this tubular rail that's kind of sitting there. And was the pain of failure at that time? I'm not sure where the pain was a compounding pain. It was, it was what I was saying to myself. It was the fact that all the things that I had done, the guilt, the shame of like Steve Marik gave me a business, bought me everything that I needed to start it. And I squandered it.
• 24:34
  Squandered it. So 1997, you were 20 or 19? I'm 47 now. So 97, I think I was, without doing a calculator, I think I was 19. Yeah, around 20, 1920. And regardless, all I knew was I wanted the pain to stop. So I got on the bridge. And remember I told you on the left-hand shoulder I had this yelling. I call it evil, call it devil, call it whatever you want. It wasn't healthy. And on the right-hand shoulder I had this quiet whisperer.
• 25:04
  And as I'm sitting on the rail, this, this left side of me is like, and this, I actually think the people that were contemplating suicide go through this exact experience each and every time. It's why it's always so many times when people do take their own lives, unfortunately, that the families can't understand why they couldn't help or what they couldn't do. Like it's, it's because it has nothing to do with them. Right. It has to do with a perspective shift and the ability to reframe in the moment and some other things.
• 25:32
  in this particular category, this voice was so loud that I got ready to push my, and my goal was to push myself off, to time it, and this sounds horrible, but to time it in such a way that I would get smacked by a Mack truck or something along the way. I know it sounds horrible, but that's, I just wanted it, like if I'm going to do this, I don't want to feel it, right? Or if I feel it, I want to be like, You don't want to walk away from that thing. Exactly. Or maimed or whatever. So anyway, long story short is, and I know I keep saying that, but the story keeps going. The reality is,
• 26:02
  just before I got ready to nudge myself off the thing, that whisper said, you might want to at least say goodbye and I love you to a few folks. And I was like, hmm. And I pulled out this Nokia 5160 phone with a broken screen and my grandmother had got me because we had no idea all that crap we could confiscate it the moment I got to boot camp.
• 26:24
  But she got me that phone so I could call her when I got there to learn. I was okay. And this is my four foot 11 grandmother, right? She's the one that told me that good things come in small packages. And so does dynamite. And, um, I pulled it out and I started dialing a couple of, I tried my mother, I tried my father and I got busy signals or whatever, you know, different rings or in some cases, answering machines back in the day, the old answering machines that had like a, there were actual box, like sit on your coffee table. I'm old. Yeah. We get you in trouble. Cause somebody could overhear your messages when they play in back or whatever. But, uh,
• 26:54
  No, I had a couple of those. I tried to call my grandfather, who later played a huge role in helping me understand faith and setting me on my journey to go find truth within faith, not just accepting whatever was being told to me or how I was brought up. He's like, you need to go find these answers for yourself. So dig past the answers that you want, right? Which we and I have talked about several times. Oh, that came up a lot last night. Well, you know, you put me at the table. So...
• 27:22
  So I tried those three people and I tried one more. And then, um, with every single phone call, with every single phone call that didn't pick up or whatever, the other voice on the left hand side. See, I told you, nobody loves you. I told you no one cares. You could, I told you, you don't even need like the stuff that was coming out of that voice. Is was so dark. Um,
• 27:46
  that I have to believe at this stage in the game, it was a spirit and it was a literal spiritual battle, right? Now think about it this way. Most people that I know that go through very difficult circumstances that are able to come out the other side of it, go on to do really amazing things. So if something wants to prevent you from doing really amazing things, it actually brings light and love and peace and entrepreneurship and amplification to the world.
• 28:13
  then it's got every reason to try to take you out or get you to take yourself out. Okay. So I just put that as a little tidbit. It's like what's going on in, in this country right now with the infighting is if you want to make, you want to stop advancement, get infighting and that's what seems to be happening. That's crazy. I never thought of it that way. So when you're internally conflicted, you aren't advanced. Disunity is always caused by the ability to only focus on self.
• 28:41
  So if you're only focused on yourself in a healthy way of it is selfish capacity, not a selfless capacity. Right. Which is maturity. So the delta between selflessness and selfishness is maturity. Okay. You're so brilliant. So you take all that. You roll up into one.
• 28:57
  I'm on the bridge. I literally, this voice is like on my left-hand shoulder, and he's yelling at me or whatever. And the little voice on my right, or my other shoulder over here said, maybe you should try Mama, Mama.
• 29:12
  I'm going to stop you right there because I don't want you to steal the thunder. Mama Wamba was your girlfriend and high school girlfriend's mother. High school girlfriend's mother that adored you. Her daughter broke up with me and she kept on. She was the first toxic relationship. No, actually, no. The relationship was good. Her mother would have said. No, no, no, no. I'm talking about with the girl.
• 29:37
  Which girl? Her daughter. No, her daughter was great. I thought that she was the one. No, no, no. That was barbecue girls before her. Okay. I had them wrong. I'm wrong. I'm wrong. But wait, wait, wait. I don't want you to go into my mom. I, I, I.
• 29:47
  I know you might think I'm crazy, but the book reads to me like a love story. I believe you've been married and divorced twice. Now, yeah. Most recently being a true love story that reluctantly and sadly ended. Yep, true. When you didn't really want it to. So I want to put that out there. And you just said that this morning. So I wrote that last night. This hits home for all of us. We've all been there. What did you learn from this story?
• 30:12
  But specifically, how can this too shall pass and what comes next will be better fit into the fold? And just, I teeing that up for the audience because that's what Mama Wamba said. Yeah. So take it over from there because I didn't want you stealing that question because that hit me huge. Because I say this too shall pass all the time. But I didn't add the second part, which was brilliant. So go ahead. So again,
• 30:40
  go back with me just a second back on the bridge, brokenhearted, uh, suffering more, far more on the inside than ever, than ever was suffering on the outside. And that little voice says, call, you know, consider calling mama, mama. I pick up the phone. She's the only person that answers the phone.
• 30:57
  And interesting about the interesting thing about her is she had a smoker's voice. I say, hey, Stephen, is that you? What are you? What's wrong? Come tell me where you at. I'm coming to get you. Like she instinctively knew, instinctively knew that I was in trouble and I didn't even utter a word.
• 31:19
  And then of course I'm, you know, and she's like, what's wrong? I'm coming to get you. Right. Kind of thing. And then, and as a stubborn 20 year old boy, you're like nothing. Well, no, I just, I was like, no, I just, I'm just calling, you know, I'm just calling to tell you, I loved you. I love you. And thank you for everything. Cause literally there was a time in my life, uh, while I was dating her daughter was when my family was going through a lot of financial stress, a lot of financial bankruptcies and repossessions and foreclosures and everything.
• 31:47
  All that garbage. And even though that my family was trying to provide, they really couldn't. And which is why I went to work so early. I'm gonna drop out of high school at 17. I pay the bills, period. And I got a lot of heat from that. I even got a lot of heat from that from mama, mama. Like I remember her, the day she found out I dropped out of high school, she called me and lit me up on the phone.
• 32:06
  And I think she knew, but I also think she didn't know how bad we were financially. And I was sick and tired of the roaches. I was sick and tired of the freaking lights getting cut off and the water getting cut off. And having the last ditch effort put all the water and the utilities and the kids names so you can keep turning the power back on. Like just...
• 32:25
  asinine stuff that, that we do when we're not in a, so we're back on the bridge. I, this is so good. I'm trying to, she says to you, she asks, anyway, what does she say to you? After she, the reality is, is we go back and forth for, I don't know how long it could have been an hour. It could have been 10 minutes. I don't know. Um, cause a lot of that was a blur, but she, she, she,
• 32:46
  Makes me make her a promise. The interesting thing about her in this promise is she and Steve Mark are the only two people on the planet that if I promise them something, I would do it. At the time. Now it's now. Oh, yeah. Now it's more of a part of who I am. But at the time, my upbringing was such that you didn't have to follow through.
• 33:07
  At least that's what I witnessed. Probably the only two you respected here, really. Yeah. So she gets me, again, after going back and forth just to save some time, to agree to call her at 9 a.m. the next morning. All right. What's the significance of that? In order to call her at 9 a.m. the next morning, I have to completely leave that bridge. Mm-hmm. Brilliant.
• 33:29
  You see what I'm saying? She's brilliant. She says one more thing. That's what I just said. Oh, yeah. She's got one more. And she says, you got something else I want you to do for me. I'm like,
• 33:42
  Okay. You know, crying. Okay. Whatever you say. She's like, I want you to repeat after me. I'm like, everybody listen to this. This is the good. This is grant. I want you to listen to this too. I can't even see your face. This is good fire. Go ahead. She goes, I just want you. I said, what? She's like, I want you to repeat after me.
• 34:03
  And I'm like, she's like, this too shall pass and what comes next will be greater. Boom. And I was like, huh? She's like, say it. I said, well, fine. This too shall pass and what comes next to be greater. And she goes, say it like you mean it. She had me screaming at the top of my lungs. This too shall pass and what comes next to be greater. Now, here's what you need to understand.
• 34:27
  She was a person of quasi faith, meaning she believed in a God, but she was confused about who God really was or should be. Okay. To any one of us, which is the journey that we all face is like, who is, what is this real God? Okay. What is this real divinity? What is this real spiritual nature inside of us? What is the spirit, the spirit of love and redemption? What is this? What is this really? Right.
• 34:52
  In just a few words, she encompassed all of humanity. This too shall pass. We all are going to go through things that are going to knock us on our butt from time to time. But if we keep going, the other side of that is a greater. Okay? She didn't know that she was being prophetic, literally predicting the future.
• 35:15
  Because three weeks, well, two weeks later, I found my real faith on the litter box. I have no idea if you want to go there today or not. You want to go to the litter box? I can't. If you want to hear the litter box story, read the book. It's called The Journey Principles. No, we're not going there. But in the week after that, I started the business from the trash piles of a construction site.
• 35:34
  We talked about this, Steven. You know, she was just being herself. Yeah. And that's what you see the real successful people in the world. They're just themselves and it just comes naturally. From the moment I met her to the moment she passed away in 2016, she acted as a mother figure in my life. Ah, that's good people, man. Right? That's good people. I mean, so much so that when she was going through chemotherapy, like even her daughter allowed me to come to her daughter's and husband's house at the time and help take care of her. Mm-hmm.
• 36:05
  So now that we're getting deep, I'm going to paint a picture for you. You did the bridge, man. Nobody's done the bridge on a podcast. Look at you. We're a lot alike. You said to me on the way, you're like, I'm going to give you my secret. I'm going to find things that nobody else asks. I'm the same way because if they can Google it, I don't want to do it. So I'm going to paint a picture for you. And Stephen, if this is too much, just tell me you don't want to talk about it.
• 36:31
  You were a young man witnessing your parents' divorce. There was a particular weekend when your father wanted you to go to a family reunion, but your mother refused. Father barged in the house and forced you and your brother into his car. There was more to it. What emotions does that bring up for you? And if you want to. Yeah. So let me clarify a little bit. I've had, obviously, since 2014 when the book first came out.
• 36:53
  And I've got several other books in the pipeline. So I just wrote, it activated something for me. Yeah. Because violence to me, that's why I'm a big guy. So this is, this is, this is where understanding how toxic relationship actually works. So it started with,
• 37:12
  My father's weekend to have me and me and my brother. Wait, wait, wait, back up. It started with him not paying child support and mom holding you guys. So that's not, but see that I learned it later on. That wasn't a hundred percent true. Okay. Okay. She was, he was paying child support, but he was giving it to my grandmother who was actually raising us, not to my mom who wasn't even in the house. Oh,
• 37:29
  Even though legally he was. I'm just saying. But either way, it's like it's how many times have you heard this? And it's toxic. Exactly. Like you said, it's like, listen, no kid has a dollar figure attached to it. No, you're correct. And I would also say that no kid should ever become the point of leverage between a relationship. Period. Boom. Period. Period.
• 37:52
  The kid was conceived largely, most likely in a loving environment or an environment of connection. Okay. It wasn't, they weren't conceived in an environment of like, I don't, I hate you. Like that, you know. It could have been an interesting story. This guy. This guy. No, in this specific situation, we weren't, we were supposed to be with my father for the weekend. Yeah.
• 38:19
  My mom refused for a number of different reasons. I don't know all of them. This was like the, I don't know, the umpteenth time this has happened. This wasn't like the first time. And, you know, my dad had rolled with the punches a few times. Now, my dad wasn't perfect. None of us are. Especially at that time. And this isn't to knock your dad. I want specifically, just so you understand why I'm asking the question, I want specifically to share the big T trauma that came and how you overcame it now.
• 38:47
  Well, that's today. Yeah. But I think it's important for in order to understand trauma, you have to understand the parameters that surround trauma. And boom, that's what doing the work really is. It's looking into that instead of saying, oh, I'm going to take a drink or I'm going to take some cannabis. You think about how did I feel? How did little Steven feel when dad barged in and he had to make the decision over mom or dad? Yeah. Yeah.
• 39:11
  Yeah, I mean, so again, my dad gets there. He does make his way into the house forcefully. He pins my mom against a wall. And this is not one of his, obviously his shining moments. There ended up being no physical altercation outside of him holding her, but yelling at me and my brother to get in the car. And I'm the oldest. I mean, I got my mom there and my dad, and both of them are yelling at us, telling us to do the opposite of what the other one's saying.
• 39:39
  Um, it'd be so scary. I think instinctively I grabbed my brother and hopped in the car to make sure my mom wouldn't get injured. Yeah. It ends. It diffuses it the quickest. Um, I don't know what happened after that, to be honest with you, meaning like he quickly got in the car. So it wasn't like he was in the, in the house from there 10 or 15 minutes to an hour or whatever. Um, um,
• 40:00
  I know that it hurt my mom for a while that we made a conscious, I made a conscious choice. Do you know that for sure? Yeah. Did you, you had that conversation with him? Oh, yeah. Yeah.
• 40:10
  So she felt abandoned and betrayed? Yeah, you can't. She felt abandoned and betrayed most of her life. And this was another evidence booster of that, right? It's crazy because what could you have done? If you wouldn't have done it, your dad would ask you. You had no choice. Logic is irrelevant with hurt people. Say that again? Logic is irrelevant with hurt people.
• 40:34
  The only thing that is relevant to a hurt person is how they feel in the moment. Victim, betrayal, you name the circumstance. The trick is...
• 40:49
  In order to overcome your trauma, you have to be transparent with yourself on the things that you can actually control. That's so good. Right? And you can't control your environment necessarily. I mean, you can once you put yourself in a position where you are picking and choosing where you put yourself. You can't necessarily choose your family members. You don't necessarily walk into a profession right out of the gate. Right? Right?
• 41:15
  The one thing you can choose day in and day out is how you respond to any and everything. Okay? A hurt person is always going to respond from a place of betrayal, victimhood, insecurity, self-worth, that kind of thing. A healed person is always actually going to literally leave that same environment and say, I wish them light, love, and peace, but this is not healthy for me. Does that bring... You're relatively healed now. I'm in a good place. Does that bring up any...
• 41:44
  Triggers? Not really. I think it means, how did you get there? I'm trying to get there. You have to understand that a trigger is the emotional response of something that happened in the past. Okay. If the trigger is an emotional response that happened in the past, then you have to tie a new emotion to the feeling in the present.
• 42:07
  Okay, so rather than now in order to get to the place of finding the healthy emotion in the present, you also have to become more aware of the circumstance itself. And then forgive your forgive yourself and the other people various that around it that are all tied to it in a different direction. Every single trauma can be healed by choice. I don't care what happened to you what you've been through Viktor Frankl man survived the Holocaust. Okay.
• 42:38
  All right. And his man, his book, man's search for meaning. He says, suffering ceases to be suffering once it has its meaning.
• 42:45
  You see me, the wheels grinding on me on that one. I think you're right. I do. I have to, I'm going to have to, I'm going to text you tomorrow. I'll be like, okay, what about this? Yeah. So another reason that people have a hard time breaking free from trauma is because they keep reliving it. Yeah. The familiar misery. Every time that they get a chance to talk about it, let me tell you how bad this person treated me. Let me tell you what I went through. Let me, you know, so that's why when I'm, when I'm, when people are asking me questions about my past, I try to be very careful with the words that I use.
• 43:12
  It's funny you say that. I'm going to interrupt you. It's just, you've said several times, I've always known pain, defeat, failure, and you use a lot of negative words, but you don't put any meaning in it, but you said that three or four times in this podcast already. Just because there were previous, Stephen. So I've said publicly before that the greatest purpose in life, actually there's three great purposes in life. Okay. Here we go. One of the great purposes in life is,
• 43:39
  Serving the person you once loved. So in this case, Mama Wama. Okay. Serving the person you once lost could be Steve Myrick. The most important person you can ever serve is the person you used to be.
• 43:52
  So everything that I do now, educationally wise, whether it's business or trauma or podcasting or live events or whatever, is me helping little Steven along the way. Eight years old, nine years old, 10 years old, 12 years old, 18, 19, 20, 25. Because the struggles were different at each one of those levels. The problem is, is most people, again, they relive the experience rather than looking at the experience as if you're watching a movie.
• 44:22
  So rather than being the character in the movie that's continually getting beat up and going through bad crap and failed relationships and job losses and all this identity BS that we tap onto ourselves, when you have the ability to sit down quietly, close your mind, and literally look at that experience as if you're watching a movie, now you're the editor. Now there's no emotion tied to you reviewing what you're looking at. And because there's no emotion tied to what you're looking at, now you can see it clearly.
• 44:50
  Now you can see the choices that little Steven could have made or should have made. You can see the wounding in the other people that were part of that story. My good buddy of mine named Chris Licurdo, he's a friend that got me hooked on disc bags and attributes a long time ago. So much so that I went and got certified a while ago. And Chris, I had this interesting coaching call with him one time, a life coaching call. And I was going, I was actually having, I was about to have the breakthrough regarding my mother.
• 45:20
  And this is what pushed me over the edge. We started talking about my past and specifically some decisions my mother made. Chris says, have you ever done your diligence to figure out how your mother was even shaped in the first place? Parents as a whole only do what they know how to do. They can't be loving and considerate and all these different things if they've never experienced it themselves. You see what I'm saying? You can't expect someone to have tactics and skills
• 45:50
  of what to do and how to do until someone has trained them in those tactics and skills. So he asked me this question. He said, okay, well, have you ever done the diligence? I said, no, I have not. So I went and did the diligence. I spent some time with her. I asked about her backstory. I found out that my grandmother was very different to her than she was to me. I was my grandmother's second chance. My grandmother apparently struggled with alcoholism too, and I didn't know that up until that point. It just so happens that the day that my grandmother held me in her arms, day one, she decided to quit drinking that day.
• 46:19
  Dude, you're killing me. That's my next question. I want to talk about Nanny. She's your maternal grandmother, right? Yep. And I said, I realized this when show prepping. This was a question I added this morning. It's my grandmother raised me. And talk about why she quit drinking the day you were born. God's honest truth is I think my brother and myself were her do-over.
• 46:47
  I think she had gotten to a place where she was ready to move on from everything that she had known and all the mistakes that she had made. Now, granted, when you make mistakes, I mean, there's consequences to everything, right? Let me go back to my mom for a second because this is important. With this whole thing, with my going back and doing this research, it took the blame, judgment, and other things that I was feeling, and it brought them to the surface so I could actually deal with them.
• 47:14
  The next thing that I did is I had a follow-up call with Chris, and Chris and I were chatting back and forth. I said, well, what did you find out? I found out this and this and this and this. He goes, well, what do you think about that? I said, what do you mean? He goes, has it changed your expectation of your mother? I'm like, and I had this epiphany. The epiphany was, how could I expect my mom to be a certain thing when she had never experienced a day of love in her life?
• 47:47
  Now, my mom loves me and my brother to death. Now, all right, so here's the next step. He says, okay, I want you to close your eyes. I said, okay. He said, I want you to envision your mom in your mind right now. I was like, okay. He goes, now I want you to envision her wearing a white dress and at six years old. I'm like, okay. Okay.
• 48:09
  He said, no, I want you to imagine her playing in a field, having a good old time. And then now she's going to walk over to a sidewalk and then she's going to, you know, she accidentally trips and falls and skins her knee. And in this meditation, if you will, or this mental work, I want you to look down at your mom. What is she doing? She's wounded. She's hurt. What do you want to do? I want to help her. I want to put a bandage on it. I want to tell her it's going to be okay.
• 48:37
  He said, well, why are you expecting her wounds to be any different than that? So rather than cast blame and shame and all that kind of stuff, all the mistakes that anyone of anyone in my life had made, right? Because I'm just as fallible as anybody else. I've made my own mistakes that have hurt people on the way. And the reality was, is when you start looking at that, it was, it was in that moment, I forgave. I was able to forgive my mom, my dad, and three other people that had deeply wounded me by accident.
• 49:07
  Because I no longer saw my mom as a woman who logically knew exactly what she was doing every step of the way. I saw my mom as somebody with broken skint knees looking for love. Looking to be seen, valued, and heard. And wasn't. Yeah, take a step further too. There was nobody there for her to even whine to. So I resonate with that. And again, now fast forward to my nanny, right?
• 49:35
  my nanny was incredibly loving and encouraging and empowering to me and my little, even my little brother. Um, but she was not that to my mom. And unfortunately I think they had it. Well, I say fortunately I think they had a chance to reconcile before my grandmother passed away. I don't know what, to what degree. Um, but that brokenness of that relationship calls several other mistakes along the way that had devastating consequences.
• 50:06
  So look at that. We're five questions in a row in 50 minutes. We're going to blaze through a couple of these. These are, we talk about a lot. Fear is the absence of faith. You wrote this. Like black is the absence of color and cold is the absence of heat. Fear and anxiety are similar. Our mutual friend, John Gordon, says the answer to all this is gratitude. And you say faith. What are your thoughts on that?
• 50:33
  Gratitude is the art of being thankful for anything in the moment. In order to do that, you have to be really good at reframing.
• 50:42
  So, uh, you have a moment in time and something doesn't go your way. You have the ability to reframe and say, I'm so glad I can breathe today. Oh, that's so good. Okay. Simple. Yeah. It's super simple. Um, and it's, and it's look, everything that I share, the reason that I have a semblance of looking like I'm whole and healthy is because I've been working on this for a long time. I do them. I do reps every single day, every single day. Don't I know it, bro. And yeah.
• 51:10
  But because of that, I tend to attract better people, better opportunities, and better things into my life because of that. So let's go to fear for a second, okay? Fear is nothing more than a physiological response, an emotional response to feeling unsafe, period. You only fear what you think is going to hurt you, all right? Faith allows you to know that no matter what comes at you, it's going to work out for you.
• 51:42
  It has a component of, for me, I got this guy named Yeshua, Jesus. He's my, he's my dog. You know that I've been very honest about that. Um, done a lot of research to, to back up my claims kind of thing, which you, you and I have known, which you know as well, which we won't get into today. But, uh, knowing that, you know, so the, um, the second divorce, okay, let's, I'll just be transparent with you guys. The second divorce.
• 52:07
  has been more difficult than the first divorce. And I say this really a couple of different. The first divorce, I knew I was marrying somebody I shouldn't marry. Knew it. Our friends knew it. Our family knew it. They tried to talk us out of it. And I was just an idiot. You hear about that a lot. I was the same way. Yeah, it was being in a rush, right? I want to start a family. I want to do this. So you just settle, right? For whoever looks cute and maybe is into you a little bit, right? My second marriage...
• 52:35
  I told you in the car on the way here. That one has been more difficult for me because I actually got to live a love story. Like my relationship with my former spouse, Karen, was phenomenal for five or six years. And then my business went through an embezzlement thing. And then she, her health started declining and then it got compounded. And then light, like it was just one of the things that I've been working through recently, which is why I'm on a six month sabbatical. So I take it anytime I have a life change, a major life change, I take a two week sabbatical.
• 53:04
  with no agenda. And then I follow it up with a six month sabbatical with no dating. You steal all my questions. That was a question later, but keep going. I love that. It's just riff it. It's going. Yeah. So, but one of the things I've been working through is there's a couple of things and I'm still working through this. I'm just, this is me just being transparent. So thing number one that I'm working through is,
• 53:26
  I don't understand how two people can be that deeply in love and still have it end negatively. Well, we can talk for two podcasts on that subject. Well, I mean, I just, you know, it's, but you have to, you have to unwind. Like I have to go back through. Okay. Where did I not show up when I was supposed to, where, where does something start happening mentally, physically? Like, you know, you start telling, but you know, and I've, and again, I'm not going to, I'm not going to disparage either one of my former spouses at all.
• 53:54
  Um, you're the common denominator. I mean, I, I don't know if you, I don't know if you've heard this before, but this too shall pass and what comes next will be better. Greater, greater, greater. Yeah. I didn't, um, you know, but with, with, with my, the other thing I've been working through recently is what did I do to open myself up to certain behaviors? Why was I drawn to certain behaviors?
• 54:21
  Okay, how does someone start off in a very healthy place and not end up in a very healthy place? How does that not... There's a residual... Anytime you go through...
• 54:33
  And I've been, and just so we're clear, I've had several toxic relationships the course of my life. And they've been getting progressively better. Meaning my number one toxic relationship was just, it almost took me out. That's the barbecue girl. Right. And then, you know, I learned a little bit and I apply a little bit. You know, my grandfather told me a long time, he said, make your list. I made my list. And, you know, it had like, you know, this color hair and this color eyes, this kind of shape. And he's like, no, no, no, no. You need character qualities.
• 54:58
  And then he said, what kind of man do you have to be to become, to attract a woman like that? And I've been going, I've been refining that process over and over and over again.
• 55:05
  the main difference between my former spouse and all the dating in between to when, um, I married Karen and now unfortunately we're getting a divorce, which is unfortunate, but it is what it is. I accept it except for what it is. Um, the core difference was, is I went from relationship to relationship to relationship to relationship. Right. Which means I never did the work on me. Right. Um,
• 55:33
  I'm a good dude. I have a lot to bring to the table. Right? And I know that. But I also know my son, who sat me down, my oldest son, who, so all three of my kids are not biologically mine. They're other people's biological children. I just, I helped raise them and they're phenomenal. My oldest son, the day that my soon-to-be ex and I sat down and we told the kids, he wanted to have dinner with me immediately that night.
• 56:03
  Now, one of the things that he said, I won't share publicly because it's private, but one of the other things that was as valuable, if not more valuable, is this. He said, Stephen, you, I got one that called, they both call me Stephen. My daughter calls me dad, but when I'm going through tough stuff, my young son calls me dad because he knows it lifts me up.
• 56:24
  my oldest son said, Steven, he goes, you've been, from my perspective, this kid's 21 years old at the time. This was six, eight months ago. You have been almost a perfect father and husband from my perspective. You were always where you said you were going to be. You provided like nobody's business. We had a great lifestyle, all this kind of stuff. He said, if there's one thing
• 56:54
  there's only one thing you can work on moving forward. Just one thing. He said, it's to be more present when you're present. All we, all we ever wanted was time with you. We didn't care about planes and RVs and houses and cars and whatever. I mean, they enjoyed some of that stuff, right? But they, what they really wanted was my attention. So since that moment, since that moment, I have been Lionsgate on, on,
• 57:22
  being present in every moment so much so that you've, you've had this a couple of times you've, you've text me and like three or four hours ago, by before I text you back, it's because I've now created a different standard for myself to be more present with the moments, which includes, this is a good one being more present with myself. Oh, I like that. Right. So a couple hours a day, it's me and Baldy over here. I got it. I'm going to steal that. Thank you. Uh, I am, uh,
• 57:50
  just attached to my phone, running a business. You know, we make all the excuses. Simple fact of the matter is we were, we're old enough that we owned companies before cell phones existed. Tech. I sold companies their first ever internet. We can set our phone down for a couple hours. Nothing's going to happen. The world isn't. I've been finding myself. I shut my phone off at night now, finally. So I don't get interrupted at night and I need to take. I need to take.
• 58:12
  sabbaticals from my phone i think i think you i'm sorry i'm gonna interrupt you but i think it's important that your audience knows that you need to take a sabbatical with yourself at least an hour a day at least an hour a day i i take maybe 10 minutes and it's my meditation time and i'm gonna double it up because right now i'm i'm struggling to focus yeah so you i've always said that you pray to say but you meditate to listen
• 58:37
  So when you pray, you're verbalizing, you're actually praying. It could be a lot of my prayers that are verbal are gratitude. It starts off with gratitude. It starts off with, hey, can I get clarity on this thing in my life? Can I get some help around this area? Can you make sure you surround me with the right people? Can you give me opportunities to serve? Can you put me in environments where I add value? Stuff like that. And then right after that is when I go into meditation.
• 59:02
  Yeah, we could go all day about religion. That's not religion, dude. That's life. We go all over the place with that. And today, there's so much to you that I'm trying to keep it to your beliefs and your personal. You'll see. The next question, you'll understand. I'm just me, dude. I know. I know.
• 59:22
  I'm just fascinated by you. And I think the, the, if I like you, then my audience is going to love you. I appreciate that. You're just so the depth to you and everything you've overcome. And I probably, because I'm feel like I'm looking into a mirror, except I got here.
• 59:36
  There's a lot, there's a... Your biceps are bigger. And the journey... I don't know if I'm crazy crap about that. And the journey principles, here's the book, by the way, and we'll have a link to getting it. It's old, but it's good. There's some gems in here. You're going to know me. Yeah. This book was just me sharing myself with the world when I wrote it. I should have read this before I came down, but...
• 59:57
  It was everything happens the way it's supposed to happen. And we threw that together so fast. And I left Florida to come see you. And I was just a good. So, you know, what's really cool is if people go pick up a copy of the audio book version of it, um, it's my voice through the book and, but the epilogue, which is where my parents share their. So here's the cool thing that I, so I'm going to ruin it for everybody. The book is actually not just my story. It's actually three stories rolled up into one. And when you get to the end of the book, both my parents, uh, wrote their own portions of the epilogue.
• 1:00:26
  Like I discovered my mom's a writer. Yeah. Like she literally wrote hers. I had to help my dad, but. There was a little miss, not misspelling, but it's something. I lost it in that epilogue. I was going to ask you about it off. But check this out. In the audio book, they voice their portions of the book. Oh, that's cool, man. Yeah. I don't talk to my, that's the only difference. I don't talk to my parents. My father's passed away. My original book did not have an epilogue in it.
• 1:00:51
  And of course, when I gave them the books, they, they sat down and read the book. Now I think they sat down and read the book from the lens of what is he going to share about me kind of thing. But they both came back and, you know, shared some thoughts. And I said, you know what? You have every right to share your portion of the story.
• 1:01:08
  This is one perspective. So when you go and take the whole book and you roll up the epilogue together and you roll it on, it's a complete picture. So make sure that in the show notes we have the journey principles, the audio version, because that sounds awesome. I was reading. You better be on New Carolina twine. I reread mom's epilogue last night and it lost me a little bit because it went from you to her
• 1:01:30
  to dad and it was a loss, but I understood what she was trying to say, but we're going to go, we're going to tread on a little bit. There is a chapter on loneliness where you talk about a Clydesdale horse can pull six tons of weight and two can pull 36 tons, which I love metaphors. I'm a numbers guy. So being with somebody has its advantages. At dinner last night, you, you said you take six months off,
• 1:01:57
  of dating after a relationship ends. It's something I've learned to do. It's not something I was doing all my life. Just so we're clear. I get it. I'm just wondering, like, I'm, you're not going to find me on any dating apps or whatever like that. And you're going to see me on any of that stuff. I'm going to put you on the spot. And this is the question. Are you lonely right now? No. Why is that? Um, I think because I'm happy with myself. Boom. I'm happy with myself. Look, I am for the first time in my life. I don't have anything to prove to anybody. Um,
• 1:02:27
  I built an eight, I don't mean this, and I say I, and I know there's, just so I'm clear, my team with these businesses, they're incredible. And nothing happens without them. But I am the homeless kid who built an eight-figure business out of a trash pile of a construction site. I don't owe anybody any stinking thing.
• 1:02:47
  Other than to be my authentic self, which means about a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago, I started really working, looking at my authentic self. A lot of times there's a deal with my gym time, right? What do I really like? What do I really enjoy? What really ticks me off? What are my boundaries? What are my core values? What do I stand for? What do I stand against? Why do I stand for or stand against those things? And it's that data mining process of understanding yourself is,
• 1:03:16
  If you don't do it, you will never discover your real self, your authentic self, which means you'll never reach fulfillment. You always feel stuck and in behind and life is not whatever. I also discovered that if you have to have another person in your life, you are covering up something that you need to work on in your life.
• 1:03:43
  You, I love you. Love you back, bro. You are, so again, just to summarize, after a relationship ends, take a little time to yourself, get to know yourself. So often, and it's extremely hard in today's environment because of dating apps and social media, we jump right back in to not feel the pain. Feel the pain. Sit in your shit and learn yourself and ask all those questions you just asked and you'll have a much better chance when you jump back in to the dating. I would reframe that slightly different.
• 1:04:12
  So experience your pain, but look for the lesson. Right? So don't sit in your pain, because if you sit in your pain, you'll become a victim. If you will experience your pain, meaning this is uncomfortable, this is scary, this is harmful, this hurts. Like when my wife, Karen, decided that,
• 1:04:41
  we needed to move on kind of thing for the first two and a half weeks. I got my little sports car, took the top off, cranked up, need to breathe and drove all over the place and just cried my ass off. I did. And then I went through my little, my, I would, it's not even a purging. It's just like, I wanted to, I wanted to be aware of two things. Really. I wanted to honor the portion of our relationship was just beautiful.
• 1:05:09
  At the same time, I wanted to acknowledge that the relationship was beautiful. The entire experience was beautiful. Even though it didn't end how I thought it would end or how I wanted it to end, I realized that there was beauty in all of it.
• 1:05:24
  Even the end where the bad behavior starts with two people who deeply love each other or whatever start not being great to each other. Which happens for anybody that's breaking up, period. Breakups. Nobody says, you know what? It's been nice. You've been awesome. I've been good. We'll shake hands. We're going to see other people. All things end badly or they wouldn't end. Well, but in the quote ending of the badness, so to speak, there are lessons to be learned about self and about other people.
• 1:05:55
  that had become higher standards for me that I wouldn't accept in the future. But I've also learned things about me now of things that I need to get kind of cleaned up and kind of shave. And if I want to, if I really want to step into a beautiful relationship again, you mean you just don't want to keep doing the same thing over and over dating me hopping out there right now and just picking up the phone and just dating a bunch of people is not going to fix that. Yeah. I love it. Pastor Matt Fry at C3 church in Clayton, North Carolina said a true love is,
• 1:06:24
  A true relationship leaves one feeling full and encouraged and will have true intimacy. This intimacy is cultivated over hours, days, weeks, and even months of vulnerable communication. This intimacy does not have a physical connection, physical connection at its core. See what I'm saying about this book being a love story. I don't have a question on this. I just, what do you have to say to that? The, the truth is, is,
• 1:06:53
  I used to say this like five, six years, a while ago, I used to tell people all the time that when I was dating or whatever, they were like, well, why do you, why do you not date like several people at once? Why do you only date one or two people at once? This was back when I was dating before, before my last wife. And I would say, well, I discovered that if, if I can connect with someone's heart and all the other stuff, the perks, if you will, come with the game.
• 1:07:18
  Right. There's been a lot of discussion recently on healthy masculinity and healthy femininity. All right. I got a good friends of mine, Henry and Terry and Amar, who are phenomenal people. And they do a lot of work in this sector. And I know that I want to operate in healthy masculinity on a regular basis, which means I'm a driving force. I'm not dominating. Which means I'm safe. Right. Right.
• 1:07:45
  Every woman will step into masculinity if they feel like they're unsafe or not being led well. And when you look at everything in its core, you only get to an energetic response when you put the physical stuff to the side for a bit. And you really get to know that person. I'm going to reiterate this. Intimacy is cultivated over hours, days, weeks, and even months. It's that first three-hour phone call. It's that vulnerable communication. So we're in such a freaking hurry.
• 1:08:15
  Oh my God, I got a sweet text from him. Or we took him on a vacation. And then they automatically jump into having kids. And then they never do the last part, which is vulnerable community. It's because everybody's focused on the idea of what they think something should be, but they're not actually focused on what it actually is. You know what I'm saying? I want to be happily married. I want to have three kids, a white picket fence. I want to have a house at the beach and I want a house in the mountains. And everything I'm going to do is going to be to get there.
• 1:08:45
  And then they get the house at the beach, they get the house in the mountains, they get the white picket fence, they have a couple of kids and they're like, I really don't like my spouse. So true. So they sacrifice contentment and fulfillment for an idea that they don't actually take the time to actually validate as true. Not saying that those things are bad in themselves, because they're not. But...
• 1:09:08
  If those are things that God is going to put in your life and want you to be part of your life, as you and I talk about all the time, it'll be. So why rush the process?
• 1:09:18
  Why rush the process? I'm with you. So I'm going to keep going on this love. Friends, I'm telling you, this is a love book. So much for the guys going to want to read it now. I know. We guys want love too. Hurt people hurt people. When others can't control themselves, they seek to control others. And a way to control other people is by hurting them. I was repeatedly told I was worthless and treated so. What advice would you give someone that is out hurting people over and over? And do they even know they're doing it?
• 1:09:50
  Most are unaware. Some are. What they do about it is stop it. Stop it. You are not gaining by harming. You are not gaining by controlling. You are not gaining by wrapping your insecurities up and trying to have somebody else on a leash.
• 1:10:14
  I'd imagine you being in several toxic relationships, that's what you call them, that they've been hurt a lot. Yeah. I mean, I won't give you specifics and names. I'll tell you that one really struggled with the fact that their father refused to show them affection. One struggled with a very difficult relationship with their mother.
• 1:10:41
  One struggle with a very difficult relationship with their identity. Another struggle with their desire to bounce around from relationship to relationship so they wouldn't like work on themselves. And therefore they're like, well, and this and this person and this person. And like you'd realize the last six people you've been with the same thing has happened. Right. And that's when the common denominator conversation does need to happen.
• 1:11:09
  Right. I've watched people bounce around from job to job to job. Yeah. And, and well, everything I just got here. It's amazing. I love this place. I love this place. This place is so rock solid. It's amazing. Yeah. Right. They're going through all that and they think it's all amazing. And then a month goes by, two months go by, three months go by. Yeah. My supervisor, he's a jackass. Well, I really, they're so gossipy. I really don't like them being around me. Like it's the same BS. Yeah.
• 1:11:36
  You're the common denominator. I'd realized that when I started working on myself, everything else around me started to change. And that's what drew me to you, where the mind was blown, where if you work on yourself, your business will be better. So...
• 1:11:53
  Everything is better. Everything does get better. That's what drew me to Idaho. I have a lot more questions. We're up against it, but these are easy questions. These are quick. We're done with the book now. My favorite color is blue. I see that. I see that. It looks good on you. What do you want your legacy to be? I want it to outlive me by being Steve Mark to as many people as possible.
• 1:12:20
  Just to reiterate, that's your mentor. Yeah, so look at it this way. So Steve Myrick, your audience is hearing his name probably for the first time unless they've been following me for any length of time. Uber successful, but he had quiet success. He never graced news places or social media didn't exist. But he was never going to be the person that wanted to stand out to show up to be seen. Yeah.
• 1:12:45
  You said the story about the $1,000 tip last night where he just, he put a thousand dollars under the plate so nobody could see it for the waitress that was down. Yeah, including the waitress. Yeah. So it's, but what he did do is he changed my life and he changed my life with a handful of principles.
• 1:13:04
  If I did them repeatedly, it would produce consistent results. You see, most people's results don't happen because they're not consistent. They don't put a principle into practice and follow it and follow it and follow it and follow it. Follow it, follow it, follow it, follow it. I mean, easy ones, right? Easy one. Here's an easy one for you. How many of your audience probably wants to be wealthy? A hundred percent. Okay. Number one, spend less than you make. Okay.
• 1:13:31
  And then take what you make and invest it wisely. You got to like the voiceovers he's doing here. That's no extra charge, people. That's right. That's right. But no, seriously. How about just working? How about working? I say... I was just about to freaking lose myself. A principle is just a simple of not...
• 1:13:53
  taking toxic freaking principle could be a drink all the time. It could be. Yeah. That's a huge one. You know, it's like you, you're getting hammered every single weekend. You wonder why your life sucks. It's like, okay, I'm not saying don't drink it. By the way, alcohol screws with your brain chemistry. Oh, you didn't even get into that. So, so, but yeah, no, here's what I want your audience from her. Okay. And I say this from stage from time to time. Principles govern promises.
• 1:14:19
  If you want to live a promise of a beautiful relationship, beautiful finances, beautiful spiritual life, beautiful, insert whatever stinking thing you want in that blank. There is a principle to guide you there. Where do you find the principles? You find the principles from people that have character, integrity, and have already done the stinking work.
• 1:14:42
  And you say, hey, how did you get from here to here with this one thing? And most of them will tell you. Oh, yeah. Right? So principles govern promises. And when principles govern your promises, you'll end up creating a life you love. And then if you do it well, it'll overflow into other people. And as a result, you will create a legacy that outlives you, which is going back to Steve Mark, which is like your audience now knows his name.
• 1:15:07
  which means his legacy moves on, lives on, and he's not on earth anymore. Well, Steve, your legacy is going to live on because you're doing the same thing and paying forward. I mean, we've been humble. We haven't got dug into what you do, but you'll go research and follow him on Instagram, follow him on social media. You're doing some remarkable things. Let's skip into define happiness for us. Define happiness. Happiness is the ability to feel fulfilled in a daily basis.
• 1:15:35
  what's the difference between that and success? What fulfillment success? No, between happiness and success. They're not the same. Uh, they're not the same for me for sure. Um, fulfillment is not based on my accolades or things that I've achieved. Fulfillment is being happy with me. So what is success? Uh, success is the ability to create overflow for others. Oh, Oh,
• 1:15:57
  I've never heard that. I just made it up. That is a good scoggins here. What's your biggest fear? I'm talking fortune cookie. Why don't you tell me? My biggest fear. I don't know that I'm in a fear place anymore.
• 1:16:14
  I mean, there's things I'm concerned about that I'm watching. Let's dig into this for just a second because I'm the same way. I've lived a horrible childhood, a horrible... I live a good life now, but I don't fear anything. I used to fear death. Good. When you're doing the work, do you fear...
• 1:16:33
  I fear something happened to my child. I think when you're doing the work, you fear that the work is not going to pay off. But it will. Because when you start doing the work, there's some pretty dark places in the work. I don't... But I don't think... But it's fleeting. It goes back to John Gore and the faith over fear. You guys talked about it on his podcast. And they're both...
• 1:16:53
  believing in something in the future, I'm going to believe in faith. Yeah. What I'm saying is that's not normal. Normal human behavior is, I evaluate my entire life based on where I'm living right now. Oh, no, no, no. I did it for a day and it didn't work. Exactly. Yeah. Hey, I worked out today. Why am I not bigger? Yeah, but I don't know that I've...
• 1:17:12
  Hey, that's an answer. Yeah, I don't know that I'm in a, I don't know that I'm going to reflect on that probably when I'm flying home, but I don't, I don't, I can't think of anything that I'm afraid of or fear. There are things that I want to work out, but there are, I'm the rest of my life is holding my life with an open hand. Surrender. Right. So if you, if you're, if you're, if your fist is closed, you can't receive, right? So if you hold your life and everything with your open hand, you're good.
• 1:17:37
  I'm looking for what you asked me last night. If you were offered a mulligan in life, what would you do over? And don't give me the personal development, nothing, because there has to be something that would be. If I had the maturity, I wouldn't have betrayed Steve the first time. That's a good do over, dude. If you read the book, it talks about that. I would be as successful as. I see. I don't know.
• 1:18:06
  That humbling of that phase and a few other phases were so pivotal in who I am now. I feel like I'm richer now than I've ever been, and I don't mean money. I mean, like, with myself. Like, I'm 5'5". I used to get crap all the time because I'm short. Somebody walked up to me like, dude, do you realize how short you are? No, I had no idea. No.
• 1:18:31
  Right? You know. You should grow your hair out a little bit. Yeah. You don't want to see my hair grow out because this bald head turns into a big island instead of islands. If you could have dinner with one person alive or dead, who would it be and why? Jesus. That's a good answer. That's David Meltzer. He's the same one. I said we could have a Seder. Yeah. Jesus. Jesus.
• 1:18:51
  Jesus for a lot of different reasons. One of the things that I love is for those that will take the time to go read the book of John specifically. John does a really good job of balancing his humanity with elements of his divinity. And you get a whole lot, you get a greater perspective of who he was and what he was about. Because most of what he was about and what he actually said and what he actually would want us to do as people that follow him per se is completely different than the world does. Completely different. I find that.
• 1:19:21
  book of John to be very, I can read it over and over and over again. If you could create one law that we all had to, had to follow one universal law, what would it be and why it's already created? What is it? Love one another as I have loved you abide in my love. Okay. Love. Yeah. Mine's love everybody and tell the truth. Yeah. Love everyone. Love everyone as I have loved you. It's also the, it's also the pivot of treat people. I want to be treated. Stop hurting people and expect your, your love to be your, you not to get hurt. Like it's,
• 1:19:51
  Also known as be kind. Yeah, I think the number one thing for humanity is realizing that we're our own worst enemy. We do make this life much more difficult than it needs to be. We really do. Tell us something you believe in almost nobody else agrees with you on. That Jesus and quantum and energy and soul resonance are all tied together.
• 1:20:17
  Like I firmly believe that Jesus is my savior and there was repentance and redemption there for sure. A thousand percent in my life. However, I also realized that the soul has a frequency that resonates. And if we had the right lighting in a, in a clinical environment, we would see the soul resonating off of our body that follows the shape of our body. And you can tell with people who pray and meditate on a regular basis, there is a higher level of frequency within the resonance of the soul itself that can now be captured on film.
• 1:20:44
  Which means the soul, your consciousness, is not tied to your brain or your heart. It's tied to something different. Ooh, you guys got deep on that with John Gordon. I remember that one. I love that. If you can go listen to the podcast with John Gordon and see it on the unstoppable. And those in different levels of faith are like, no, you're talking new agey. I'm like, no, I'm talking science and talking Jesus. I mean, Jesus walked up and touched people and they'd heal. I mean, I don't mean it bad. He was doing something.
• 1:21:13
  Energy exchange. I agree. I actually do agree with that. If you were to give your, give an 18 year old one specific piece of advice, what would it be? One piece of advice. Cause it's a lot. Cause I had 18 year olds for a while. Live your life by principle. And principles. Finally, final question. What's next? By the time this airs, we'll be winding down in 2023. What does 2024 look like for you?
• 1:21:41
  Uh, 2024, I hope we'll, uh, bring a new level of different things. So, you know about my unstoppable startup program. So it's a program where I take five figure entrepreneurs and I help them build eight figure empires. Um, it's both in an online school format, but more importantly, the live event that we do, I'm hoping to bring that back this next year. Um, I'm hoping to bring that back in a new live event facility. Um, if not, I'll be in Raleigh. If, if, if I'm in a new live event facility, I'll be in Utah. Um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um,
• 1:22:07
  But the reality is I feel called to help entrepreneurs win at a holistic level. There are a lot of different conferences that most early stage entrepreneurs can't afford. So all of our stuff is designed to be super easily attainable. Because again, I'm serving the person I used to be. So the person I used to be didn't have a whole heck of a lot of money to invest in stuff. But if I can teach them about their identity, their worth, their security, get around their arrogance. In fact, I've always said that there's really only a handful of things that cause businesses to fail.
• 1:22:37
  Impatience, arrogance, ignorance, and insecurity. Wow, that was a bomb. Way to say it again. Impatience, arrogance, insecurity, and then I had to write the other one down. Yeah, ignorance, impatience, arrogance, and ignorance. So they're ignorant of what they don't know. They're arrogant about what they can and can't achieve. Okay.
• 1:23:01
  They're often driven by insecurity, so they make stupid business decisions because they're driven off emotion, not data. Now, some of the biggest mistakes I made was not making data-driven decisions.
• 1:23:11
  And, you know, impatience was the other one. Impatience. So that the insecurities. So in my leadership meetings, we talk about our insecurities, like literally, like it's we've had conversations with some of our people at national technology management where they're like, I've never talked about this at work. This is weird. That's when I know my culture is working. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, it's, it's another level of honesty.
• 1:23:33
  Um, and entrepreneurs, they think it's the next sales hack, the next funnel they build and next this side of the other thing. The reality is that they can master these areas, all the other stuff will flow.
• 1:23:44
  I agree. All right. We have reached the end, and I thank you so much for coming here. And let's go get some food. And I want to please rate and share this podcast. Also, I do my best to respond to the comments on all social platforms. So if you want to see me do more of something or less something, leave a comment. Each and every episode is sponsored by National Technology Management, the easy and best IT company to do business with, delivering peace of mind.
• 1:24:09
  With technology every day, visit TrustNTM.com for more info. And until next week, be unstoppable. Let's go. And harder than life. Thank you for listening. Please rate and subscribe to Harder Than Life. And let's take this to the next level. Get connected at the links below.