Latest / Motivation Mindset Podcast / Before You Overthink, Watch This: Unlock Your True Potential

Transcript

Before You Overthink, Watch This: Unlock Your True Potential · Motivation Mindset Podcast

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You start putting yourself in situations that suck, you'll find yourself.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: You'll find it real quick. It's the only way to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: find yourself. You don't find yourself. If you like bench
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: pressing and you be press all the time, what are
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: you finding out?
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: If you like to swim, that's all you want to
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: do is swim.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: What are you finding out?
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Put that you know?
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: People always people talk about triple down on your strengths.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: That's the weakest in the world. No triple down your weaknesses.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Find out something about yourself. You right know that the good,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: you know the happy. That's why on my facebe papause.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Why don't you talk about good times? You know how
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: to get through that motherucker? You don't need You don't
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: need to want to tell you how to get through
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: that's happy, that's easy. I want to tell you how
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: you can help yourself get through the times that suck.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Real life. This is real life.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Ninety percent of your life will suck, ten percent will
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: be happy. You may be lucky and have a lot
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: of money, have a great ass. Woman all this, trust
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: me one on one with that guy. He's missing something.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: His life still sucks because he hasn't faced something that
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: bothered him his whole life. Something is still eating that mother.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Up, almost everybody, everybody eating you up. But maybe you
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: found a good way. How I did.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Growing up on how to ignore that voice as saying
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: you ain't facing some shit.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Period.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Man, I'm not special. I just stopped listening. I listened
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: to that voice. This is why I talked so freaking aggressive.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: People say, man, do you believe in God? You cuss
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: so much when I say, is letting you know what
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking?
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: If I try to make it all pretty. And that's
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: not what my life was.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: It was a violent, violent struggle daily to get where
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: I'm at today. I'm not gonna water down. I mknocking
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: water down. It wasn't fun. It ain't fun today. I'm happy.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: I was twenty four years old when I realized I
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: was broken inside. Something had gone numb in my soul,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: and that numbness, that lack of deep feeling, dictated.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: What my life had become.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: It's why I quit going after my goals, my biggest dreams.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Whenever things got hard, quitting was just another detour. It
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: never bothered me much because when you're numb, you can't
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: process what's happening. To you or within you. I didn't
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: know the power of the mind yet, and because of
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: that I had ballooned into a fat ass and taken
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: a job as a cockroach sniper in restaurants. I had
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: my excuses, of course. My numbness was a survival mechanism.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: It had been beaten into me by my father. By
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: the time I turned seven, I developed a power mindset.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Going numb was how I took my beatings and maintained
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: some level of selfride respect.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: Even after my mother and I.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Escaped, I continued to be stalked by tragedy and failure,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: and numbness was how I coped with the fact that
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: losing was.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: All I ever knew.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: When you're born a loser, your goal is to survive,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: not thrive. You learn to lie, to cheat, to do
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: what it takes to fit in. You may become a survivor,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: but it's a miserable existence. Just like the cockroaches I
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: was assigned to kill. You find yourself scurrying in from
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: the shadows to claim the bare necessities while hiding your
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: true self from the light at all costs. Born losers
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: are the ultimate cockroaches. We do what we have to
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: and that attitude often enables some pretty severe character defects.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: I certainly had some.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: I was a quitter, a liar, a fat, lazy mother fear,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: and I was deeply depressed. I could feel myself unraveling
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: a little at a time, fed up and frustrated, bitter
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: and angry. I couldn't take much more of my sorry
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: ass life. If I didn't change, and change soon, I
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: knew I would die a loser or worse. I might
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: end up like my father, the hustler, who was one
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: quick twitch away from violence. I was consumed by misery
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: and groping for some mental foothold to keep me from
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: giving up for good. The only thing I could come
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: up with was to go back to that house on
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Paradise Road that still haunted me. I had to get
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: to Buffalo, New York and look my father in the eye,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: because when you're living in hell, the only way to
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: find your way out is to confront the devil himself.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: I was hoping to find some answers that would help
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: me change my life. That was what I told myself
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: as I crossed into Ohio from Indiana and veered northeast.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: I hadn't seen my old man in twelve years. It
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: had been my decision to stop seeing him. At that time,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: the court system allowed children to make those decisions once
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: they turned twelve. I made that choice mostly out of
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: respect for and loyalty.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: To my mom. He'd stopped beating.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Us after we left Buffalo, But the one thing that
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: never went numb was how I felt about what my
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: mother endured at his hands.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Still, over the years.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: I had questioned that decision and began to wonder if
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: my memories, if the stories I told myself were true.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: On the long drive, I didn't listen to music. All
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: I heard were the competing voices in my head. The
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: first voice accepted me as I was. It's not your fault, David,
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: None of this is your fault. You're doing the best
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: you can with what you've been given, was the voice
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: I've been listening to my entire life. It's not my
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: fault was my favorite refrain. It explained and justified my
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: lot in life and the dead end path in front
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: of me, and it played twenty four to seven. However,
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: for the first time, another voice chimed in, Roger, that
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: it ain't your fucking fault that you were dealt a
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: bad hand.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: But it is your responsibility.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: How long will you allow your past to hold you
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: back before you finally take control of your future. Compared
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: to the first, more nurturing voice in my head, this
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: one was ice cold, and I did my best to
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: tune it out.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: The closer I got.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: To Buffalo, the younger and more helpless I felt. When
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: I was one hundred and fifty miles away, I felt
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: like I was sixteen years old. As I pulled off
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: the highway and wound through the Buffalo city streets, I
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: felt like I was eight, the same age I was
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: when we packed all our into garbage bags and walked
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: out the door. Once I walked into the house, it
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: was August nineteen eighty three.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: All over again.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: The pain on the walls, the floors, the appliances, and
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: the furniture, all of it was the same. While it
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: looked a lot smaller and out of date, it was
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: still the haunted house I remembered, filled with years of
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: grisly memories and palpable dark energy. However, my father was
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: warm and more affectionate than I remembered. Trunnis was always
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: a charmer, and he acted genuinely happy to see me
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: as we caught up.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: I found myself laughing at.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: His jokes, slightly confused by the man in front of me.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: After a while, he checked his watch and grabbed his coat.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: He held the front door open for his wife, Sue,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: and me as we headed for the car.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Where are we going? I asked, you remember the schedule?
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: He said, it's time to open up. The first thing
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: I noticed about Skateland from the outside was that it
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: needed a paint job. Inside, the floor and walls were
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: chipped and stained, and the whole place smelled funky.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: The office had deteriorated too.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: That sofa we slept on his kids, where my mom
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: caught him cheating on more than one occasion, still hadn't
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: been replaced. It was filthy as hell, and that's where
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: I sat after the grand tour while my father headed
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: upstairs to spin hip hop records in the Vermilion room.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: I felt dizzy and disoriented. It was strange how far
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: the old man had let his standards slip. He wasn't
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: the strong, exacting, demanding figure i'd remembered.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: He was old, weak, soft.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: In the middle, and lazy. He didn't even appear to
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: be that mean anymore. He wasn't the devil at all,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: he was human? Had I been feeding myself a false history?
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: As I lingered in that office, steep in the past.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: I wondered what else I'd been wrong about.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Then, at around ten o'clock, the boss line dropped upstairs
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: and the ceilings started to shudder and shake. Within seconds,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: I heard hollering laughter, and that steady stomping to the beat.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: In the same way a song can take you back
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: to a distinct time and place, that thumping bass returned
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: me to my darkest days. I'd been funneled into a
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: relapse of my childhood nightmare. I closed my eyes and
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: saw myself as a first grader, tossing and turning on
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: that very couch, trying to sleep after working all night
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: and not being able to get more than a wink.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: My mother was there, too, struggling to paper over our
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: pain with home cook dinners prepared on portable electric burners
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: in the cramped office. I saw the helplessness and fear
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: in her eyes, and it brought back all the stress, pain, frustration,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: and depression that came with it.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: Those memories were real, there was.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: No denying it. I was disgusted to be sitting on
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: that couch. I was sickened to have let my guard
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: down and enjoyed my father's company even for a few minutes.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: I felt like I was doing a disservice to my mother.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: And the longer I sat there and watched the ceiling shake,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: the more rage rose up inside, until I was on
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: my feet and racing up a back stairwell into the
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Vermilion room, where my demon was slurping whiskey, the smoky.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: Elixir that gave him his power.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: As a kid, I rarely saw the space in full bloom,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: and while it had lost most of it shine, it
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: was still happening.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: What was once a glitzy nightclub.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Serving funk to a well dressed crowd had become a
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: packed dieve bar flush with hip hop. Trunnis was in
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: the DJ booth orchestrating the energy, spinning records, and sucking
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: down scotch after scotch until closing time. I watched him work, drink,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: and flirt, and the more wasted he became, the more
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: my memory synced with reality. After locking up, I drove
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: us all to Denny's for an after hour's breakfast.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Just like old times.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: More than fifteen years had passed yet the ritual remained
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: the same as ever. Trunis was sloppy as hell by then,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: and he could tell it made me uncomfortable, which ticked
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: him off. While we waited for our food, he glared
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: at me as he dissed my grandparents and claimed they
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: were responsible for the breakup of his family. Liquor always
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: brought his ugliness out, and I'd heard that argument so
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: many times before it didn't have much effect on me.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: But when he started in on my mom, I wasn't
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: having any of it. Don't go there, I said, quietly,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: But he didn't care. He barked about how everyone turned
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: on him and how weak and sorry we all were.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: His spittle flew the vein in his temple. Throbbed Trunnis,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: please stop. Sue said there was something in her tone,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: a mixture of fear and dread that I recognized.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: She wasn't standing up and telling him how she felt.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: She was pleading with him.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: It reminded me so much of my mother and how
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: powerless she felt when Trunnis would rage.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: On and then on.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: He was the type of guy who would call a
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: woman over the house at three point fifty five PM,
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: knowing my mom would be coming home at four o'clock.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: He wanted her to catch them in the act, to
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: show her that he had all the power and would
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: do whatever he wanted at any time a day or night.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: It's the same reason he beat me in front of
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: her and did the same to her in front of
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: me the.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: Very same day we left. Sue moved in.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Yet he often told her and anyone else who would listen,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: how beautiful and smart my mother was, as.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: If she were the one who got away. He needed
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: Sue to feel.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: She wasn't good enough for him and never would be.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: For the first time in my life, I felt for
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Sue and realized that Trunna's specialty was the weaponization of disrespect.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: It was a tactic he used to bully women and
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: children into submission. He knew that once he choked a
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: mother out mentally, they would lose all their fight and
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: self respect, which would make it easier.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: To manipulate and dominate them. That's what he was after,
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: not love.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: He craved dominance and subservience. It was like oxygen to him.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: He harvested souls with violence and rap. He wanted the
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: people closest to him to feel wounded and empty. Decades later,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: my mother still struggles with self respect, decision making, and confidence.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Trunna's face was red from alcohol, his jaw clenched with
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: tension as he kept talking. There was no doubt that
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: he was the bully and abuser I remembered, but not
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: because he hated my mom or Sue, or my brother
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: or me, but because he was a sick, ft up
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: old man who didn't believe he was worth a damn
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: and could not and would not help himself. Years later
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: I would learn that he had suffered abuse when he
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: was a kid. His father made him stand in front
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: of a flaming hot coal furnace in a dark room,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: and after a torturous waiting period, his dad would show
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: up with.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: A belt and lash him buckle side first.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: If he moved away from the belt, he'd get burned,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: so he had to accept his lashings and try not
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: to move. He never dealt with his trauma. Those memories
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: festered into demons, and before he even knew what had happened,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: the victim became the abuser. Whenever he got drunk and
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: the party died down, he self soothed by picking on
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: people weaker than him, He beat them up he ran
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: them down.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: Sometimes he threatened to.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Kill them, but as soon as an abusive episode was over,
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: he would erase it from history. The beatings we took
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: never happened. He liked to think of himself as a
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: big man, but never accepted responsibility for anything he did
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: that went wrong, which didn't make him any kind of
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: a man at all. I suppose I was in that
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Denny's booth with him because part of me was hoping
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: Trunnis would apologize, but he didn't think he had anything
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: to be sorry for. He was straight up delusional, and
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: his delusions demoralized all of us. They were also contagious.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: For years, he made me bleed, and he made me
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: doubt myself. He transferred his demons to me through the
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: lashes of his leather belt and the open palm of
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: his hand, And like him, I grew up believing in delusions.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: I hadn't become an evil sociopath, but like him, I
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: never took responsibility for my own shortcomings or my failures.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Sitting there listening to him Rave made my blood run hot,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: sweat beat it on my forehead, and all I.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: Could think about was payback. It was his.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Turn to suffer at my hands. I wanted to make
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: him bleed for my pain. I wanted to beat that
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: motherfucker down right there in Denny's. I was hair triggered
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: close to allowing my father to turn me into a
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: violent maniac, just like I remembered him to be.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: He recognized the fire in my eyes.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: Because it was as if he were looking into a mirror,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: and it scared the shit out of him.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: The weather changed in our booth. He stopped ranting mid sentence.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: His eyes went glassy and wide, and in the fluorescent
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: light of the diner, he looked meek and small. I
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: nodded as I recognized, in that very moment the lie
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: that inspired my trip to Buffalo. I hadn't driven all
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: the way from Indianapolis as some first step towards self improvement. No,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: I was there looking for a free pass. I went
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: to collect more evidence that all my many failures and
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: disappointments stemmed from the same root cause, my father, Trunnes Goggins.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: I'd been hoping that everything I believed all those years was.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: True, because if Trunnis was indeed the devil in disguise,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: that gave me someone to blame. And I was looking
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: for a cop out. I needed Trunnes to be the
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: flaw in my existence in order to claim the lifetime
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: warranty on my get out of jail free card. Trunnis
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: was flawed, all right. He showed me that all over again.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: But he wasn't my flaw. The second voice was right.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Unless I took responsibility for my demons, the ones he
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: put on me, I had no shot at becoming anything
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: other than a perpetual loser or another miserable hustler like him.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: When the food arrived, Trunnas stuffed his face while I
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: reflected on how much power I'd given him over the years.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: It wasn't his fault I experienced racism or barely graduated
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: high school. Yes, he beat me and my brother up
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: and tortured my mother.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: He was a stup man. But I hadn't lived with
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: him since I was eight years old. When was I
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: going to take my soul back from him? When was
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: I going to own my own.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Choices, my failures, my future. When would I finally accept
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: responsibility for my life, take action, and wipe the slate clean.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: Nobody said a word while I drove us back to
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: Paradise Road. Trunnis watched me with a mix of drunken sadness, loss,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: and anger as I grabbed my car keys from the
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: kitchen counter and walked straight out the door. I'd planned
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: on spending the weekend, but I couldn't stand to be
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: in his presence for one minute longer. While the words
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: were never spoken, I believe we both knew that would
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: be the last time we would ever see each other.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: The funny thing was, I didn't even hate Trunnis anymore
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: because I finally understood him. On the drive back home,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: I turned the volume way down on the nurturing voice
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: in my head and tuned into reality in.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: Place of excuses.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: It was time for ownership of exactly who I'd become
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: in all of its ugliness, and that meant acknowledging that
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: my thin skin was definitely part of the problem.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: All of us are.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Circumstances in life we don't have any power to control.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Sometimes those things are painful, Occasionally they are tragic or inhuman.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: While the accountability mirror, which I tagged with sticky notes
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: filled with real talk, daily tasks, and a few bigger goals,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: had helped me get to a certain point.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: Those fixes were surface level.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: I'd never attempted to dive down and solve the root
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: cause of my problems, so I crumbled whenever life asked
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: me to dig deeper and persevere in order to achieve
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: something that could lead towards sustained success. I'd spent my
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: entire life in surface waters, hoping that my luck would
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: change and everything I'd dreamed of would fall in to
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: place for me. That night, on my drive home to Indiana,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: I accepted the hard truth that hoping and wishing are
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: like gambling on long shots, and if I wanted to
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: be better, I had to start living every day with
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: a sense of urgency, because that is the only way
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: to turn the odds in your favor.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: Reality can be a motherfucker.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: When all of your excuses are stripped away and you
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: are exposed for exactly who and what you have become,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: But the truth can also be liberating. That night I
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: accepted the truth about myself. I finally swallowed reality, and
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: now that I had, my future was undetermined. Anything was
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: possible as long as I adopted a new mindset. I
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: needed to become someone who refused to give in, who
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: simply finds a way no matter what. I needed to
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: become bulletproof a living example of resilient. Think of a
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: packet of seeds scattered in garden. Some seeds get more sunlight,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: more water, and are planted in nourishing top soil, and
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: because they are put in the right place at the
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: right time, they can rise from seed to seedling to
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: a thriving tree. Seeds planted in too much shade or
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: that don't get enough water may never become anything at
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: all unless someone transplants.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: Them, saves them before it's too late.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Then there are those seedlings that look for the light
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: on their own. They creep from the shade into the
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: sunshine without being transplanted. They find it without anybody digging
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: them up and placing them.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: In the light. They find strength where there is none.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: That is resilience.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Once we're born, our natural instinct is to look for
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: ways to thrive. But not everybody does, and sometimes there's
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: a damn good reason for it.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: I was brought up in darkness.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: My roots were flimsy, I was barely tethered to rock
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: hard ground. My spirit, soul and determination weren't nourished in
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: the light. But on that ride home, I realized that
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: only I have the power to determine my future, and
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: I had a.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Choice to make.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: I could continue living in the haven of low expectations,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: where it was comfortable and safe to believe that my
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: life was not my fault or my responsibility, and that
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: my dreams were just that fantasies that would never be
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: because time and opportunity were not and would never be
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: on my side. Or I could leave all that behind
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: for a world of possibility, much more pain, unfathomably hard work,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: and zero guarantees of success.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: I could choose resilient.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: At twenty four years old, a powerful force was gathering
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: within me to be unleashed. I would soon call upon
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: it to complete two hell weeks, become a member of.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: The Seal Teams, and complete.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: Army Ranger School, I compete in ultra races and break
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: the world pull up record. Thanks to that one night
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: in Buffalo, New York, when I accepted my fate and
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: became determined to tap into my resilience, I found the
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: will to transform myself into the grittiest motherfucker ever, to.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Find light where there was none.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: I had never been a pow like John McCain and
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: countless others, but I lived like a prisoner in my
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: own mind for the first twenty four years of my life.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: Once I'd liberated myself and begun to evolve, I learned
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: that it is the rare warrior who embraces the adversity
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: of being born into hell and then, with their own
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: free will, chooses to add as much suck as they
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: can find to turn each day into a boot camp
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: of resiliency. Those are the ones who don't stop at
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: good enough. They aren't satisfied with just being better than
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: they used to be. They are forever evolving and striving
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: for the highest level of self. Eventually, I became one
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: of them, which is why I was honored at the
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: Vefty Convention.