Latest / Daily Influence / 809. Beyond Survival: Andrew Minuto on Resilience, Recovery & Rebuilding Your Life

Transcript

809. Beyond Survival: Andrew Minuto on Resilience, Recovery & Rebuilding Your Life · Daily Influence

• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Daily Influence, your daily dose of positive influence.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Brian Smith founder of IA Business Advisors and co-author of the Iain team series.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Each day we share stories and insights to help you find be and build your influence in a positive and responsible way.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm Greg Clino, partner at IA Business Advisors, and co-host of Daily Influence.
• 0:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Be sure to follow, subscribe, and share Daily Influence with someone who could use a little extra positivity today.
• 0:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: And make us part of your Daily routine, whether it's during your commute, on a walk, or an quiet momentous for you, because you're influenced matters.
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to Daily Influence, I'm Greg Lino.
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Before we dive in, I want to share a quick note.
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: We recently launched the Smart Advantage Newsletter, which offers practical insights on leadership, accountability, workplace culture, and building a stronger business delivered to your inbox weekly.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you're looking for simple, actionable ideas, you can apply in your business or leadership role, you can find the link to subscribe in the show notes below.
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now let's move into today's conversation where we'll continue exploring the ideas, actions and influence that helps us lead and live with greater influence.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Today's guest is Andrew Minito, author of Fatally Resilient, a memoir exploring addiction, grief, cancer, fatherhood, identity, and the complicated reality of rebuilding a life after it has been repeatedly dismantled.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Andrew has faced addiction, the loss of both parents to cancer just 79 days apart, divorce, and a difficult fight to reclaim his role as a father.
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Multiple career reinventions and two battles with stage three metastatic cancer.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: But this conversation is not simply about what Andrew survived.
• 2:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's about what he learned when survival was no longer enough.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Today, we will explore how adversity changes the way we see ourselves.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Why resilience must include accountability and support, and how we can intentionally use difficult experiences to become more responsible leaders, parents, colleagues, and members of our communities.
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Andrew, welcome to daily influence.
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, Greg.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for having me.
• 2:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Andrew, people may first encounter your story through a list of extraordinary hardships, addiction, the lossable parents, cancer, divorce, career disruption, and the fight to reclaim your role as a father.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: But before we focus on what happened to you, who were you becoming before those experiences?
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: And what early influences shaped the way you understood success, identity, and self-worth?
• 2:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, before any of that, I was your typical child.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had a very typical upbringing and not even typical.
• 3:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I had a very nice upbringing, fairy tale ask, if you will.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing that would have foreshadow would have eventually happened to me.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I always was a child who did what he was told, stayed at a trouble.
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I always had exceptional grades.
• 3:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it was always determined that I would be the academic one of the family.
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I knew I was going to college before I even really knew what college was.
• 3:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: That decision was made for me.
• 3:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I always found success and everything I tried, which you know as a child is mostly academic things a few sports here and there.
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: I always found success.
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as far as who I model success after, that would have to be my father.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: My father always told me that as long as you're doing something that you enjoy, works not work, that that's the true definition of success, once you love what you're doing to the point where it's not even a job to you.
• 3:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's probably always strived for, but unfortunately many things got in the way of that.
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: You said that resilience is not simply about surviving.
• 4:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's about rebuilding your identity after life changes everything.
• 4:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'd like to explore what that rebuilding required from you.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: So during addiction, grief, and major personal setbacks, how did you learn to distinguish between accepting responsibility for your choices and defining yourself by your worst decisions?
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, up until 2019, it was the latter.
• 4:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I looked at anything that happened to me as a punishment.
• 4:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I grew up Catholic, I'm still Catholic, but just the way I interpreted what I was told about Catholicism as a child was if good things happened to you, it's because you're a good person and a bad thing's happened to you, it's because you're a bad person.
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And once bad things started happening to me, for instance, both my parents becoming terminally ill. And around that time, my life stopped making sense, I wasn't getting good grades in college.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Essentially, I just didn't know what was going on in my own.
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was an in control of my own life and work.
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I saw that as a reflection of me being punished for being a terrible person.
• 5:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's when we still going into the years where I went into a downward spiral.
• 5:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because I really thought, I was just a terrible person.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is God showing that to me.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's not an anti-Kathalsism comment, right in the like that.
• 5:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm still Catholic.
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I still attend Mass.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I've learned to distinguish between the difference.
• 5:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Once I realized that it only was hurting me in the long run.
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was only cheating myself out of a better life because people will tolerate so much before they either block you out or just simply move on from you.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I had to find that out the hard way.
• 5:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've been written out, I've been outcasted.
• 5:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've been asked by several people, essentially, to just not be a part of their life anymore, but while I was still making bad decisions.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And after a while, I was looked around and it was just me.
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: My parents had died, my brother and sister had moved away, back to the other side of the country where we grew up.
• 6:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: My wife had left me and she took our child's and for good reason, I was making very, very bad decisions at the time.
• 6:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I realized it's just me.
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And no matter how good of a person, I think I am, which I do believe, to this day, I still believe, I've always been a good person.
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've just haven't made the best decisions.
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I realized there's nobody left to help me.
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I really needed to get to the root cause of why everything happened the way it did, why I continued repeating things despite not wanting to.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: and I relapsed three times.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now even though I've only spent two collective years in my life under the influence of drugs and alcohol, I still went back to it three times.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the last time, I didn't want to do it.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: That might sound crazy to somebody who doesn't understand addiction, but I remembered going through the thought process of everything that would happen knowing exactly who would walk out of my life.
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm knowing exactly what consequences I would face, occupationally, a residentially, maritalie, if I picked back up, and I knew exactly what would happen, yet I did it anyway.
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that was really the eye-opening moment for me to really do something about how my life was going.
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because like I said, I didn't feel in control of my life for a very long time and that was direct proof of it.
• 7:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was physically not in control of my life anymore.
• 7:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: What was the trigger or the tipping point that helped you realize that?
• 8:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And what did you do about it at that point?
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was, I had a wonderful encounter with the local police.
• 8:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I said that sarcastically.
• 8:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what drove me into recovery was coming to that realization that I just mentioned that I was no longer in control of my life.
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I went back to drugs despite not wanting to and doing it anyway.
• 8:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I experienced something called spiritual bankruptcy for the first time, where I've been physically bankrupt, I've been like, bankrupt, respect to my health, with respect to nobody wanting to talk to me, but at that point in time, I was a public school teacher.
• 8:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was teaching special ed, which was one of the most rewarding experiences in my life.
• 8:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember a particular day realizing that most of these children,
• 8:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I taught in the title one school, which means it's a free and reduced lunch for at least 80% of the children.
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most of these kids come from broken homes.
• 9:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the highlight of that day is being in my classroom.
• 9:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because I had the same crap of kids for three, as six, seven, that eighth grade.
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And for six, seven, and most of, like part of eighth, I was good.
• 9:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was in recovery, but I relapsed during the summer.
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: that these kids come to my room as for a break from their life because the attention that I give them and how much I care about them, but at this present moment, at this present time, all I can think about is where my next trick is going to come from.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember that hitting me like a ton of bricks in the classroom.
• 9:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wow, what did you do at that point?
• 9:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was around that time that my
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: then wife told me we would not be getting back together.
• 9:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: She gave me three chances to not go back to Joes and I squandered all of the night.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know I never blamed her for leaving.
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I was on the verge of losing everything.
• 9:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I already lost my wife.
• 10:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I already lost my child.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't in control of my job anymore.
• 10:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I wound up over doing a substance one day and
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: like psychotic paranoia state and because I think I'm such a great person and I think that something bad was happening.
• 10:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: What did I do?
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I pulled a fleece while I was leaving school.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I wound up with a DUI, a poly substance DUI, which the school district doesn't like when their employees get poly substance DUI's on the way home from work.
• 10:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I had my first legal consequence then and there was something about that experience in jail and there's nothing happened to me.
• 10:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would literally just sat in a cell with very 15 other people from 36 hours, but there was something about that experience where it's something snap inside of me and where I said, I don't ever want to go through this again.
• 10:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't ever want to feel this and the amount of guilt and shame that was just cascading through my mind and body during that experience.
• 11:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: just made me want to do anything and everything to never repeat that.
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So once I got out of jail, I got on a plane and I went to treatment in New Jersey, across the country.
• 11:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then I remember sitting in the detox and asking myself, like, am I a good person?
• 11:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because I clearly, my framework for thought does not work thinking that I'm a great person.
• 11:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then I thought, at this other thought, what if it's not a question of if I'm a good person?
• 11:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: What if I'm just missing something?
• 11:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that really paved the way for me to change the way I live my life.
• 11:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it comes down to not doing things alone anymore.
• 11:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was raised in a particular way, in particular culture.
• 11:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's never as far help to never talk about how you feel, to stuff it deep down.
• 12:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that doesn't work for me.
• 12:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I really wanted to add a change that awareness can create a turning point.
• 12:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: But awareness alone does not create sustained change.
• 12:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: People need a practical way to move forward for someone whose identity has been disrupted by illness, loss, addiction, divorce, career change or any other life, need your life transitions.
• 12:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: What practical framework would you offer for rebuilding?
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: exactly what I just said about not doing it on your own.
• 12:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: So everybody's familiar with at least the first step of 12 step meetings where you have to admit that does a problem.
• 12:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I've known since I was 17 that I've had a problem.
• 12:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've never denied that.
• 12:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've always openly admitted that.
• 12:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the biggest question, how come my attempts at recovery and 12 step never worked out before 2019 at the age of 31?
• 13:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's because the admission I made, the awareness I needed, wasn't that I had a problem.
• 13:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was that I can't do this on my own anymore.
• 13:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, it took me having nobody around me to realize that.
• 13:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: But that's probably what I would offer to somebody who is struggling or whatever the case may be as far as the mentality.
• 13:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's no sense in trying to do it alone.
• 13:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's no extra trophy received for trying to do it alone.
• 13:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And another thing that really stood out to me is the importance of admitting something once it starts eating at you.
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the reasoning behind that is what something goes from mind to mouth to somebody else's ears it becomes solidified.
• 13:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: They can't evolve anymore.
• 13:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: My biggest drivers of addiction and negative emotion were guilt, shame, fear, and remorse.
• 14:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I always felt like nobody could relate to me, nobody to understand me, so I always kept my mouth shut, never spoke about how I felt.
• 14:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now as a result, whatever the initial thought was, just keeps evolving and evolving over time.
• 14:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Until it becomes something that's ridiculously out of proportion and not even close to
• 14:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: and getting as many people as it's about people generally care about you and that is how the those are the building blocks of resilience actually getting over the problem not just getting through it.
• 14:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: framework gives people direction.
• 14:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: But difficult seasons often test us daily rather than, you know, one dramatic decision.
• 14:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: What specific habits, boundaries, or support systems, help you remain grounded today?
• 14:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Can you walk us through the practices that you rely on when these things bubble up?
• 15:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't ever let things get to a point that it's not in my control anymore to do it to take action.
• 15:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: The moment that something's bothering me,
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or I have things built into my life that are just routine, so that it's just likely to be caught in the first place.
• 15:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: For instance, I still participate in 12 step meetings.
• 15:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't go with the same frequency that I did when I was first in recovery.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, I do still attend therapy at the same rate that I did when I first entered recovery.
• 15:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was doing a group therapy recently on negative emotions,
• 15:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I still do individual therapy as well.
• 15:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now outside of therapy, there's a couple of things, a couple of fail safes in my life that help me remain grounded.
• 15:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: One, whenever I am experiencing any kind of unsettling thoughts, I always tell somebody.
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now what always prevented me from doing that is I thought I was going to be an inconvenience to somebody or I thought I was going to get made thought of or I would experience some type of be made to feel guilty feeling that way that's just that's just unfounded thought that's never happened before so like when I when I when I let those thoughts out when I talk to somebody about it they become concrete and they can't evolve anymore because
• 16:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just simple maintenance at that point.
• 16:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: My track record has proven since 2019 that there's not much else that I have to go through, like I'm scheduled to go through or might eventually go through, that I haven't already, and my life hasn't fallen apart once since 2019.
• 16:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I have that framework that rigid kind of schedule to thank for that.
• 16:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: your answer also raises an important issue.
• 16:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Resilience is often praised as though enduring is more always admirable.
• 17:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, your book suggests that resilience itself can carry a cost.
• 17:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: How can people recognize when resilience has shifted from healthy, perseverance into isolation, emotional and boydance overwork or refusal to ask for help?
• 17:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: One thing I think is necessary to point out is when you think, when you hear about resilience in the media, it's always celebrated, it's always inflated, it always sounds like this, this grand thing that people should have, and I tell you I would give anything to not need to be resilient, I would make that trade tomorrow if it was presented to me, because they don't tell you what happens after you get through the obstacle, they only, by
• 17:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: They show crossing the finish line, but they don't show what happens once you get in the car and go home.
• 17:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there's a lot of trauma that comes along with being resilient.
• 17:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's many things I've survived that I wish I hadn't.
• 18:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not saying that as in controversial, I wish I wasn't here moment.
• 18:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just legitimately wish I hadn't gone through that.
• 18:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because simply surviving something isn't that difficult.
• 18:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Cancer was rough, but all I had to do was show up the first time I did it.
• 18:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had enough people helping me with all I had to do was wake up and show up.
• 18:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have to put in any work, I didn't have to lift anything.
• 18:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: But once it becomes a problem, once it becomes too much of one's identity, and I reached this area, is once surviving doesn't mean anything anymore.
• 18:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, once the meaning of life, uh, becomes cold into question, once, um, the expectation is something else is going to happen.
• 18:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just need to prepare for it once, um, there's just no enjoyment in life anymore.
• 19:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm able to extract, uh, joy from anything because that, uh, feeling, I feel like at any given moment, something is going to come and take it away.
• 19:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there's no sense in, enjoying it, and I realize that's, that's not a way to live
• 19:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was very resentful towards as people I did now because somewhere in my mind I have these these expectations of the roles people going to be having my life if anything happens to me and not many of those roles will fulfilled.
• 19:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And just the life loss just meaning so I had to I re committed myself to therapy and and joining a good group again to get to the root of all that.
• 19:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's just, it's just not a fun way to live life.
• 19:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And especially when people look at you like that.
• 19:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they don't mean it in a bad way.
• 19:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they mean it with older respects.
• 19:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: They just look at you as the guy who will grow, who has bad things happen to them.
• 19:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's almost pitiful.
• 19:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Looking back on it now, I'd rather be defined by the fact that I got through it and I have the ability to have a smile on my face when I couldn't do that before.
• 20:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the time spent in between my two cancer diagnosis and the time spent, like a majority, after the second cancer diagnosis, I wasn't capable of smiling.
• 20:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Life wasn't something I enjoyed.
• 20:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was something I did because I was required to.
• 20:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: By required, I mean, showing up to work, having to pay back medical debts, had to work as hard as I can to earn a higher rate of pay, just so I can survive.
• 20:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: because everything comes with a bill, everything comes with a course.
• 20:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's something that how many people realize surviving cancer wasn't free.
• 20:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: The perspectives that you have would probably have been difficult to accept earlier in your life.
• 20:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Looking back often reveals what experience could teach us in advance.
• 21:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you could go back and speak to younger Andrew, the person who was searching for identity, through achievement, relationship or escape,
• 21:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would tell him directly, pending that younger me was listening.
• 21:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Figure out who you are and people will stop telling you who to be.
• 21:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because one issue that was really rampant my life up until 2019 was I had no idea what it was.
• 21:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was always the guy who met expectations.
• 21:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: I relied heavily on all this for validation.
• 21:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had a major fear of inadequacy.
• 21:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know how to self-validate, so that's what I did through, through achievement, through throughout the case may be.
• 21:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I intentionally did something good to somebody, would be proud of me, therefore I would feel proud of myself because somebody else did.
• 21:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I would feel whole.
• 21:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the problem with that is, one becomes very controllable, one becomes very manipulated, very easily.
• 22:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And one begins to measure himself by the standard set by other people.
• 22:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's also no way to live life, because by definition I'm living by the standard, somebody else has set for themselves, projected out to me.
• 22:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not somebody else on me.
• 22:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: So until I find a set of expectations that are realistic and make sense for me as an individual, then my life is not going to make sense.
• 22:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: In 2019, I figured out who I was, and by definition, people stopped telling you who to be.
• 22:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's also because I was able to set boundaries as well.
• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, one of the most profound things I've ever heard is the government, the saying you teach people how to treat you.
• 22:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember, I was told that because I was complaining about the way, I don't even remember who it was, but the way somebody was treating me.
• 23:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the counselor told me, you know that you taught the person that and I was like, what?
• 23:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they were like, you'd let that happen?
• 23:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I said, well, yeah.
• 23:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: He said, did you do anything about it?
• 23:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: No.
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: What do you think that person learned by you not doing anything about it?
• 23:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: That it's okay to do that.
• 23:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that just blew my mind.
• 23:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: So between figure out who I was, take around who I was.
• 23:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: learning how to self advocate and establish boundaries, my life improved dramatically.
• 23:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's amazing.
• 23:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, for the person listening who feels that life has taken away the future they expected, what is one intentional action they can take today to begin building a life that they no longer want to escape from?
• 23:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: A better life is always available to you.
• 23:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's always
• 23:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: something that I do or I did was I was very very attached to how I thought my life was going to go down.
• 24:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: The easiest aspect of that is not having my parents die.
• 24:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I couldn't accept reality but one that didn't involve my parents there.
• 24:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that was something that kept me going into that downward spiral into a direction at the very least was my parents not being around and I
• 24:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I lacked the ability to let go of the vision I originally had.
• 24:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I just needed somebody to tell me that that's okay.
• 24:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's okay that life isn't going to work out the way you thought it was.
• 24:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was something within me that I just thought was like life's going to be awful now because it's not going to be what I thought it would be.
• 24:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: But that's not necessarily true.
• 24:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because at any given moment, so one stays true to self, true to the people that one
• 24:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: One's always in control of one's own life, and as long as one remains in control of one's own life, whatever life that you choose to build will always be one that you want.
• 25:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And at any moment, you have the power to change that.
• 25:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: That is great advice, Andrew.
• 25:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for showing us that resilience is not about pretending we are unaffected by what happened to us.
• 25:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's about deciding what we will build from what remains and accepting responsibility for how that rebuilding effects of people around us.
• 25:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: If our listeners want to get in touch with you, what does the best way to do so?
• 25:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Email's best.
• 25:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Andrew Dominor of Gmail.
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll put that in the show notes.
• 25:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Andrew, thank you so much for sharing your stories and advice.
• 25:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm so grateful for you and congratulations on all the work that you've done for yourself and for writing your book and sharing your story to help positive influence on someone else who could really use it.
• 25:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
• 25:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: And to everyone listening, consider one area of your life when you've been enduring rather than intentionally rebuilding.
• 26:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Choose one specific action you could take today, ask for support, have an honest conversation, establish a boundary, repair a relationship, or take the next measurable step forward.
• 26:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Your influence is already affecting someone.
• 26:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: The question is whether you will use it deliberately, positively and responsibly.
• 26:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for joining us for daily influence.
• 26:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: If today's episode inspired you, please share with someone could use a little possibility today.
• 26:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Remember small actions, create big impact, keep showing up, leading and growing one-day-to-time.
• 26:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Until next time, stay inspired and keep having a positive, responsible influence.
• 26:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Bye-bye.