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Harnessing New Horizons: Louis Stokley's Transformation from Military IT Specialist to Veterans' Health Advocate · Your Thoughts Your Reality

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Welcome to your Thoughts, your Reality with Michael Cole, the podcast that shines a compassionate light on the journey of veterans battling through life's challenges.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Michael is a dual elite certified neuro encoding specialist in coaching and keynote training presentations dedicated to guiding military veterans as they navigate the intricate pathways of post-deployment life.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Join him as we delve into the profound realm of neuroencoding science, empowering these brave individuals to conquer universal battles procrastination, self-doubt, fear and more.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Together, let's uncover the strength within you to re-engage with families and society, forging a new path forward Society forging a new path forward.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Hello, hello everybody.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Hey.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: So today I have a very special guest.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: I have Louis Stokely and really, really happy to have him on.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: We're going to be talking more about something a little deeper today, and so I want to give you a little more information about Louis, and then we'll have him dive in.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: So Lewis was born into a family where duty, honor and, honestly, service were more than just ideals.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: It was the way of life.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: So he served the 25 Bravo IT in the US Army for six years six and a half years, excuse me and continuing his professional journey with the Department of Justice.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: He transformed his life through fitness, nutrition and mindset coaching, eventually becoming a life coach dedicated to helping others.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: That's awesome.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: So Lewis also founded Operation Dream Big, a soon-to-be non-profit offering emotional and mental healing resources for veterans.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: So we've got a lot to talk about Lewis.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: So, if you can, why don't you just start off and tell us a little bit about yourself, Cam?
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: why don't you just start off and tell us a little bit about yourself?
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: So I, as you stated, I grew up in a military family uncles, mother, father, stepdad all military.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: I just had the example.
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: And to add to it, they were all Army.
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: So every single one of them was Army.
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: So you can guess which one I decided to join when that opportunity showed up.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: And it was a long road.
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: You know I grew up with a pretty rough life.
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: You know a lot of different inconsistencies and lack of stability in different areas and through it all.
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: You know I always had different influences from the military and things like that get me through.
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: Basically, I joined the Army at 17, after trying less than a semester of college and realizing it just was not for me.
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: I just couldn't vibe with the people.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: I couldn't vibe with working my butt off to pay for that education.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: That didn't fulfill me at all.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: And so I said the best way to get my independence, the best way to move forward, is going to be what I already know the military.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: So that's what I ended up doing and so I joined.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: I'll talk a little bit about the challenges and stuff like that eventually.
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I joined the military and then after that I served for exactly six and a half years.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: I did my first deployment on the back end of that service, so for the last year and a half that's where I was deployed pretty much that time frame.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: And then I got out straight when I got back After the military, which I had my wife.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: She was pregnant when we got out with my son and I had a daughter.
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: I have an older son too that I've adopted.
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: He was my stepson, but he adopted him back when he was three or four years old.
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: I decided to look for the next step while I was deployed, which was getting into government service.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: And so ultimately, after getting out of the military, took my family from Fort Campbell, tennessee where I was stationed, packed it up, moved into the DC area, worked for the Department of Justice for 12 years 12 long years, wow yeah Before transitioning out of that.
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: You know the circumstances weren't very good, but I can get into that stuff too as well and ultimately after that I left there, joined the DOD and in between that area where I'm in the Department of Justice, I'm struggling with my technology addiction, my addiction to video games and things like that.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: Because after I got out of the deployment, I just didn't come back the same, and my way to deal with it was to pour into the video games.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: But it was to the detriment of everything except my career.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: So naturally I excelled in my career.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: At 25 years old I was a gs14 in the government, so that's pretty almost unheard of to get to the 14 level that early.
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: But I had done a lot of high, high profile projects and things like that.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: Patterns and stuff just makes sense to me when it comes to technology and coaching, which we'll get into.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: So I hit the addiction.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: I hit my rock bottom there and I had this one rock bottom moment for my wife to kick me out after discovering the exorbitant amounts of money I spent on that habit and I realized I needed to make changes.
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: So I went back to the drawing board.
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: I quit the video games cold turkey.
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: Even though they're sitting on your cell phone.
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: You got them on your computer, realized I needed to make changes.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: So I went back to the drawing board.
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: I quit the video games cold turkey.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: Even though they're sitting on your cell phone.
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: You got them on your computer.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: You got them on your console.
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: They're freaking everywhere.
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: It's hard to avoid, but I managed to just willpower through it, listened to my wife and went to a therapist who also helped me with understanding the addiction and the fact that it's repressed emotions.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: There.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: I'm pushing down the emotions and in order to keep it numb, I'm picking up a controller, picking up a mouse, doing whatever, and so throughout that I realized, when I was deployed and before, what made me feel the best was working out with my brothers and sisters.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: We would get up, we would do PT.
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: The gym wasn't fully established yet, so we were doing P90X workouts with Tony Horton.
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: We were doing insanity workouts.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: That's what we did to stay in shape.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: So I picked it right back up again.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: I did what I knew and I started working out.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: All I had was a dinky pull-up bar and some push-up bars down in my basement and I would get up at four every morning and I would work out.
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: I was still working.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: So I had to get up at four just to have an hour to myself to go P90X.
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: I had to go just to have the time to myself to be able to put in that work.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: I would listen to motivational content on the bus rides to work, which was an hour and a half content on the bus rides to work, which was an hour and a half.
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: I would read, I would listen to podcasts, I would talk to people, just naturally soaking in all this knowledge and experience.
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: And ultimately what led to me becoming a coach was just helping my first veteran.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: Now this guy was a buddy of mine.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: Both me and my wife knew him and he basically was having a very tough time.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: Served in the MPs for a military policeman for 10 years, deploying on and off.
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: So every other year he's out there guarding bases, dealing with IEDs, dealing with everything.
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: So you can imagine.
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: He came home with a plethora of issues and he was living in New York.
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: His family wasn't very supportive of their form.
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: Through the conversations me and my wife had with him, we decided it's the Thanksgiving, christmas timeframe.
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: It's tough for veterans.
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: This is the time where, if they're going to make a decision to harm themselves, you know that's the weakest moment to do it because it's tough to be alone on that time so said, come, stay with us I didn't think anything.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: Highest, highest uh suicide rate just during that time exactly, and not even just for veterans.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: For everybody holidays are tough, and me too.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: They were tough for me as well.
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: So we we had him stay over, had no real intention of coaching him or doing anything like that.
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: I just would get up every morning like clockwork, do my workouts, do my training, listen to my content, do whatever I was going to do, even on my days off, when I had all day, and eventually just caught wind of it after a week, you know, I didn't even say anything about it and he came down and said what are you doing?
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: leadership man.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: It's called leadership, people see it.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: It's called leadership, people see it.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: By osmosis, Absolutely, and you're fully immersed.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: You know, I mean you're fully immersed and that's how you make change, you know, is when you get that you know, and when people see it and they say, ooh, I want to be like that, you know.
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: I want to be like Mike or whatever you know the whole thing.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: It you know I want to be like mike or whatever.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: You know the whole thing.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: Um, it's amazing how it's just automatically magnetized or drawn to you exactly, and that's what happened, man is.
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: I didn't intend to coach him at all or anything, but he said what are you doing?
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: I said I'm working out, training, doing what feels good, and we started talking.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: You know, I talked about my addiction and I just got vulnerable.
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: I kind of started to learn the lessons of vulnerability early on Because when I was sharing that story with him, he got the inspiration to join in and to picture this guy.
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: He was around 300 pounds at the time, so he was not small by any means.
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: He was sedentary and everything like that, and we started working out together.
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: I had that pull-up bar my wife had given me for Christmas super thin, it was probably rated for around 300 pounds, but he did his first pull-up on there and it was just creaking and bending but he was really struggling to do it and we ended up just doing tougher and tougher workouts.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: We'd be up there in the morning at 4.30 am doing wind sprints down the sidewalk, neighbors and all you know, just cheering each other on, just being veterans, you know.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: And ultimately I started to develop how I help people through helping him, because one of the things I realized he's doing well, he's starting to mimic how I eat because I was eating a different way too, just trying to get myself healthy and doing all those things, and I said what can I do to make sure he continues?
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: I want to make sure that when he heads out I don't have to worry about him.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: That was my main concern and that's the hardest part.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: That's the hardest part, yeah.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: And I didn't even think about where it would lead or anything.
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: I just knew what do I want for him?
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: And I just don't want to worry about his safety.
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: So I said what does he need?
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: He needs a purpose, he needs something to look forward to, something to dream about.
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: I said what do you really want to do after you leave here?
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: And he said you know, and he's like I don't think it might even be possible for me, but I'd like to go into the police academy.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: I still want to serve.
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: So that's crazy, right, 10 years of struggling in that position and he's still in the civilian world, wants to do the same exact thing.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: He wants to go out and serve and protect.
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: So I said let's do it.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: What do you need to do that?
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: Well, he said, for starters, I need to be in shape.
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: And I'm like what does that look like?
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: What weight do we need to be at?
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: It's, you know, sub 200 around there and all that.
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: So we start training, we start eating, we start, I start motivating, I started doing everything like that and basically by the time he left, he was at the right weight, around 200 pounds.
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: He was inspired, he was full of energy, had that to look forward to.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: So, cut to the end, he goes to New York.
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: Back to New York applies to the police academy, to New York applies to the police academy.
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: But because he has PTSD on his mental health record from all the deployments he dealt with, they were uncomfortable with hiring him, so they didn't.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: They didn't let him come into the police academy, even though everything else checked the box.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: Instead of letting it defeat him, though, because of all the work that we did, he said, okay, let's pivot.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: So he decided I'll pivot.
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: What else can I do?
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: So then he started going into security.
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: He would take different security jobs from Craigslist and moved up to security and a mental health facility and security and all these different areas and just succeeding and found his path that way, and that was eight or nine years ago.
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: He's still doing well.
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: He's still doing amazing.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: He even had an unfortunate situation where he became a single father and he still found his way through that situation, losing a lot of what he knows already about being vulnerable and everything else and to be a good father and just continue to support his daughter and do what he needs to do.
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: So I look back at him every single time and I'm like that's why I do what I do, right.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fantastic man.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Thank you for sharing that.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: You know it's an inspiring journey.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: You know, obviously, can you share more about what motivated you originally to join the military and how your family's legacy influenced that decision?
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: OK, so I grew up with a single mother and I say grew up with a single mother, but in and out was my stepdad.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: They weren't always stable.
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: There were a lot of different situations there.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: So essentially my mom, when he wasn't present anymore, would have to work two jobs.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: So I would, throughout her struggle with that.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: I would have different uncles who were in the military.
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: When they were in town they would swing by, just come by to check on them, spend some time with me.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: I would get swept up in their flashy, nice car.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: They'd be coming in uniform sometimes and as a kid I'd just be like starstruck, like this is cool, just be like starstruck, like this is cool, and um, that just gave me a huge impression of what can happen if you're squared away in the military and you have that discipline.
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: And I had.
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: I even had an uncle of mine who was served in the navy and, um, he became head of security to do like different concerts and stuff, and so we he would come pick me up on the weekend and we would take like an hour long drive to wherever he was up, wherever he was working, and I would be able to hang around and watch him actually head up security there and he'd be talking to me different stories about the Navy and how he served and different things like that.
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: And so all those different ideas were in my head.
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: All those different ideas were in my head, but I still was going this track of doing IT because I'm like me and my mom have been struggling.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: My mom, my sister and me have been struggling with money forever.
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: I want to make sure I bring in money.
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: I don't want the same thing for myself, right?
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: So you know, I go through all these different IT programs in high school and stuff like that.
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: And I didn't.
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: I'm not, I was definitely not the best student.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: I'm extremely intelligent, extremely smart, but school just wasn't the place for me.
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: I was struggling with ADHD and different things like that, but I was an extremely smart kid.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: My mother, even at one point in middle school, said, because of the adhd, which they did brain scans and all this stuff.
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: They said your brain's messed up, blah, blah.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: She said let's go with the meds, let's do the therapist, let's do all that.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: She did it for a while, but I rebelled against it.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: I would stop taking the pills, act like I'm taking them, what kids would do when they really don't want to do something.
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: I was the type that would do that.
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: So she we're looking at each other in frustration one day just sitting at the kitchen table because my grades are crap and I've got the attitude and everything like that, and she said we're going to do something different.
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: She took that military mindset that she did seven years in the military and since gotten out and she said let's just work at this every single day and we'll attack it with training.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: And so every day we would sit at that dining room table, to my dismay, doing all the work, the math, the English, everything.
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: She had an extreme love for English literature, so we'd be reading classical literature like Tom Sawyer.
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: We'd even go back as far as Shakespeare.
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: We'd do different stuff like Edgar Allan Poe.
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: On the weekends me and my mom were sitting there like we do now, binging Netflix shows.
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: She would pull up British TV where they speak lots of proper English and all that and plays and stuff like that, and so it just sort of you know, it groomed me to speak and write at an extremely high level at an early age and I kind of took that with me and it also taught me that if you can work twice as hard as most people would have to.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: You can succeed even with ADHD, which turned into a superpower, because I have all this crazy energy.
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: But now I have the ability to focus it.
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: Because I know if you attack consistently every day and you have something that inspires you, boom, that energy from the ADHD becomes something that helps you, whereas other people that struggle it's like where do I go with this energy?
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: What do I do?
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: And you know, and that's when they start failing at life, failing at relationships and stuff like that.
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: So all of these different things come about to say you know, I'm like I tried to.
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: I tried college for a little while, even though it didn't work for me.
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: I realized I'm not going to be able to support myself financially or help out at home doing any of this.
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: I also knew that the military might be a long shot for me, because I had a terrible history in high school where I did street racing for a while.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: So, long story short, when I go to sign up for for the army, I am going in with five reckless driving tickets.
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: So at the age of 17 I had five reckless driving tickets.
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: How it wasn't in handcuffs, I don't know.
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: Those cops would just look at my young self and see something I didn't see, because they'd be like just go on, we're gonna write you up for this, but I'm not going to take your car, I'm not going to put you in handcuffs, you can go.
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: So I go and finally decide I want to sign up for the military.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: That was a blessing, right.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: I mean that they saw something inside of you.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: You know, even if you didn't see it yourself yet, you know it's pretty cool, exactly.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: And I didn't even think anything of it either.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: You're not at that age.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: I mean at that age.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: it's a reflection later on that you're like wow, I'm guessing that the Army did not want to put you in a tank.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: Well, here's how it went, man, this is the craziest part.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: My recruiter was a tall, six foot gentleman that was in the Army Rangers, one of those guys that is just intimidating to look up at him.
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: And I go up to him and I say you know, I want to join the military and I thought he's going to be like you.
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: No way.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: He's like okay, sure, let's go through it.
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: I take my own asvap the test again and I score 120 on the asvap, which is actually an extremely high score.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: 120 or higher is actually really high and you can basically get any job you want around that score.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: And so they realized right away this dude is just naturally intelligent, you know.
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: And so they threw the judge you by the book right out the window, you know.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: They just looked at me for what that score was and said let's pour into this young man.
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: I was already kind of in shape because I had done track for my first two years of high school, so that wasn't a problem either.
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: He said okay, what else you got going on?
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: I said well, I got some legal troubles going on with these reckless driving tickets.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: They're expecting me in court at such and such time.
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: I have all of these fines, I'm probably going to have to pay and I don't know if this will allow me to join.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: And he's like no problem, let's, let's work on that, let's deal with that.
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: And I was like what?
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: And here's what ended up happening.
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: This, this six foot something guy, puts on his dress uniform, goes to court with me, walks with me to the courthouse, stands in front of the judge, gives this speech about me and says he's working really hard.
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: This young man deserves to join the military.
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: He's really trying to turn his life around.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: Can you help him out with the fines?
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: Do what you can do and keep in mind I had no clue how I was going to pay the fines.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: I didn't know how I was going to pay the funds.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: I didn't know how I was going to pay.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: I was like, even if he reduces it by however much, I don't have the money to pay.
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: So in my mind I'm like this is it.
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: I guess I'm just not going to get to join.
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: And so the judge says okay, I'll reduce it.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: You know, the judge gave me that scared straight speech.
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: You know you can turn your life around blah blah blah beach.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: You know you're gonna turn your life around blah blah.
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: So he waves us off, you know, and says go ahead, go go to the cashier and pay your fines.
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: And as we're walking up to the line and we're in line, I'm like there's, there's no way I can pay it.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: And we get up to the lady.
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: I hadn't said anything to him, he didn't even ask.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: He pulled out his own card.
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: Yep, he pulled out his own card, paid all the fines for me and, um, I wouldn't be in the military or probably be where I'm at right now if it wasn't for what he did that day.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: And that's one of the things that inspired me.
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: That's what inspired me to go at it and join.
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: Is just that guy taking a bet on me like?
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: that that's.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: That's fantastic.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: You know, again, sometimes we don't see our potential, we don't see who we are, and sometimes it's really amazing to see ourselves through other people's glasses.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: You know what?
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: They see, it's uh fantastic that.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: That's a just beautiful story, man.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: That's all I can say.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: It's a beautiful story.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: Thank you for sharing that.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, um, yeah, that man.
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: That man changed the trajectory right there, didn't he, yeah, he did he did and go ahead, oh and and then like and it's not like I didn't pay for the crimes you know from back then I spent the first three years just without a driver's license, but I was still just grateful as hell.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: So I was like, wow, all right, fantastic man.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: Thank you again for sharing that.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Truly, lewis, it was a great story, if you will the vulnerability of both of you him saying you know what?
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: Know what?
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna open up my heart to this kid.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: I see something and and obviously you sharing the story.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: So thank you, it's awesome, no problem, hey, so, uh, we're at about 22 minutes, so I'm gonna skip through some of the other things we're going to talk about, because I want to get to, um, some really important stuff.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: so, um, I'd love to hear about the support really.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: I, you've been married 16 years, heading on 17.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Congratulations, I want to hear about.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: And you have three children, I believe correct Yep, okay, so I want to hear really how, with your transition so you've been in the military, you're getting out of the military, and as far as the transition period, um, how did your family support you um coming out of the military with?
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: Um, you know the battles and then, of course, the addictions.
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: uh, so here's the the thing about me getting out and the thing about how I handled emotions.
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: Until I really learned which is much, much after the military I kept it all to myself.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: So, for instance, I have social anxiety you never guess now, because I've done all the work but I have social anxiety, or had whatever you want to say.
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: And one of the things I would do is, when my wife would invite people over this is post-military and they would all be just hanging out downstairs I would retreat upstairs to the bedroom, turn out the lights, grab a controller and play video games.
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: Whenever it was time to go to any type of social events, I would avoid it or try to make the time as low as possible so I could just get out of there and just get home and my family, my wife and kids.
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: They did their best.
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: But you know, as as with my role as a father and everything like that, I thought one of the things I had to do was just keep it to myself and act like nothing was wrong and just keep driving forward.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: And then you compound that with if I make enough money, if I'm successful enough, oh, that'll cover everything up too.
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: That'll make my relationship with my wife and kids.
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: Good, that'll make all these things good, but, as you can imagine, what happened instead was, you know, it created this atmosphere where I really didn't know my kids, didn't really know my wife, so they didn't have the opportunity to really support me.
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: In the beginning they essentially were able to start supporting me as I started kicking the addiction and I started opening up, because one of the first things we did was, during my process of recovering from this video game addiction, was I sat down at the advice of our therapists and everything like that, going through lots of therapy at this point, said you need to bring your family in and allow them to support you, so tell them what you're going through.
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: So I explained I have this issue with the video games.
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: Haven't you noticed how I ignore you a lot when I'm playing this game and these things aren't taken care of and I'm just a different person, I'm not very nice and all that when I'm not playing my games.
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: And you know I said that's what's going on.
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: So when you kids, I don't want you guys to have to put down your video games and your entertainment and stuff and I need you to stop asking me to take part in it with you.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: We're going to have to do other stuff, we're going to have to make adjustments.
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: This is what I'm dealing with and they started to be more mindful of that, like when we were looking to, for example, we're looking to go somewhere and somebody might suggest Dave and Buster's, and the kids will be like, oh well, that's not going to be a good place for dad to go.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: So they jumped in and they started and you can imagine for me, being a veteran who says show no weakness, be tough, suck it up.
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: All those things.
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: You know I'm like when they would do that stuff, I would feel extremely uncomfortable and I had to just start opening up and let my guard down and realize that they really care about me.
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: Up and letting my guard down and realizing they really care about me.
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: It's not like it's not a one-sided relationship where they depend on me to drive forward and bring in money and do all those different masculine things.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: We're expected to do it.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: I can depend on them for stuff as well.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: I cannot do this by myself, and so they started to support me in that way.
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: My wife did and my kids did that's fantastic and you know.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: You hit on a couple of things that you know.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: How do I say this?
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: Well, veterans, we all know I mean they're conditioned for a reason to figure it out yourself.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Don't ask for help.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: Weakness asking for help as a weakness, rub some dirt on it, whatever.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: So the the just the aspect that you got through that and realized you know what and I say this all the time to people I coach and train and so on asking for help is more courageous than sitting in your own shit every day.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: And once you get past that, the whole game changes and I'm sure you can attest to that.
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: Doors just open up.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: They just open up for you.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: So thank you for sharing that.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: So, um, we're, we're getting closer on time and I love okay, you know what, I'm not gonna go past that I gotta say I love your kids, I love your family already.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: Your kids literally and I'm getting chills right now, I mean literally, man, you're how, how blessed are you?
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: I ask myself that because there are people that are millionaires with money, like on all these different categories.
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: But I got blessed in two areas health and health, mental and physical and then relationships.
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: I've got an amazing marriage and nobody believed in me and my wife.
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: We got married when I was 19.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: Nobody believed in that, you know, and for lots of different reasons, even racial, and we just I just saw something.
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: I just knew that that was it for me and, and I don't know she I don't deserve it because I've done my fair share of messed up stuff in my recovery and throughout the marriage.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: But she's always been that shining light for me and she is the type that has no filter, and so that really helps for me, who has my head up in the clouds, which is important to have somebody in your camp, even if it's not your spouse or your kids or whatever.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: That can be a better sounding board.
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: They look at things as a devil's advocate for you Are you really thinking straight on this or that?
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: And they tell it like it is, because those are the people that actually it might be painful to hear what they have to say, but if you just consider it for a second, you might get some growth out of it.
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: You know, and that's what I've had the whole time.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, how many times have you I call it getting getting your ass picked with love.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: So they mean well, but it's like, hey, come on now.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: So how many times in life have you said, oh, what the hell.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: And then later on you're like, oh, thank God, they said something said oh, what the hell.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: And then later, on, you're like?
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: oh, thank.
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: God, they said something Many times, and not even just my wife and kids.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: Even in the military too, I had NCOs that would just do that for me, you know, and so I just kind of learned the value of it.
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: I just learned.
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: I'm still learning because sometimes I still get triggered by it, you know you get mad and all that.
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: But then when you finally put the emotion down for a second and say, was there anything valid to it?
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I am kind of screwing up.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: And I'm just going to say what you're human, what you still have emotions.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: But here's the cool thing, lewis, and I'm just seeing it.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: I know we've talked before, but I'm really seeing how you've done the work and there's always work to do, man but you get the ego out of it and you go back to the baseline and that's fantastic.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: And man, to have daughters that say, hey, no, this isn't good for my dad, let's think of something else, instead of just saying, yeah, I want to go there, that's just fantastic.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: So we're running over time, but that's okay, because it's my show.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: I think it's really important I want to talk about I'm looking through my notes because I'm skipping around Operation Dream Big, incredible initiative.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: Can you tell us more about that?
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: I know you're almost to being a nonprofit, so tell us a little bit about that, if you will.
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: Operation Dream Big was born out of my desire to help the community that I feel like needs that help the most.
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: I've been a paid coach for seven to eight years nutrition, fitness, health and every single time throughout those eight years, believe it or not, I have veteran brothers and sisters that will come to me and say we need help with that stuff.
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: Right, I'm not feeling good, I'm not all right.
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: And they just reach out you know, through whatever I'm posting things and just open up and I was like, well, to work with me, you know it's going to cost this and this amount.
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: And they will always be open, vulnerable and honest and say I just don't have it.
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: I have to kind of choose between feeding myself where I'm living and paying for your program so that I can try to get healthy and get to a better place.
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: And after a while I just kept picking other categories to work with business owners, professionals, things like that and ultimately it just kept coming back around like somebody, a higher power, is up there saying this is what you're meant to do, this is what you're meant to do.
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: Look, look, look.
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: I'm like well, how am I supposed to support my family doing that If they can't afford family doing that.
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: If they can't afford to help me, they can't afford to pay me to do that.
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: And ultimately, operation Dream Big is the result of me saying screw, fuck the money, for lack of a better word and let's go with impact, let's go with helping people that actually need the help.
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: I was given all of this knowledge even through middle school, grinding with my mom every day all the way up to now.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: I learned everything intuitively.
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: I needed to know to get anybody healthy and help people heal from all sorts of stuff like arthritis, fatty liver, depression, all these different things, and I'm like they could really use what I have to teach and I said, okay, I'm just going to start doing it for free.
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: So the beautiful part is I'm in the process of taking Operation Dream Big, which the goal is to help veterans become physically and mentally healthy, using an online community and an online course structure that they can follow step by step, to learn 100% of what I know with 0% money out of their pocket.
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: You're a veteran, you need help, you come on here, you join the community, you go through this course curriculum.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: I'm in the process of building that for them, but I'm putting everything I know out for free already, just straight up on TikTok and YouTube, just giving all the knowledge already so that veterans, if they are really in the desire to improve themselves and heal up, they don't have to wait for that.
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: They can already go to my social media accounts and start soaking in that knowledge and learning about things like mastering your emotions.
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: I call it emotional mastery.
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: It's the fact that if you don't have mastery of your emotions, being able to interpret them, being able to transfer them, knowing where the lowest level apathy is, where the highest levels are and what that feels like, you're kind of stuck.
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: You know you're going to keep going back to those horrible patterns you're in and just teaching them all of those different things in this course.
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: Now, here's the big vision for Operation Dream Big.
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: We're building this course.
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: Now, here's the big vision for Operation Dream Big.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: We're building the course.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: I already have people that are helping me out with all these different things and when it's ready, I'm just going to let everybody in there.
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: I even built a building a community.
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: I just started on school on that platform that was called School S-K-O-O-L, and what we're going to do is build a course that's so powerful that the VA will take this and make it standard issue for every military member that's getting out of the military.
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: That's who I talk to all the time.
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: He took it upon himself to make the logo.
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: So if you ever go to any of my pages and you see that logo with the boots and stuff, that's what he created because he heard the vision and saw what was supposed to happen here, and so ultimately, the goal is to build this community, gather results, to see all my veteran brothers and sisters winning, show that to the va and say this is what you're missing.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: I get it.
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: You know, you're trying your best.
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: You don't know what's needed here to lower the suicide rate.
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: To help these veterans out, this course will help because they can already start doing a lot of different things before they even get out and then, while they're getting out, they don't have to struggle for five years, 10 years, 20 years.
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: Some people don't even make it past five years because they may make that choice to take themselves out of the picture.
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: And the suicide rates are.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: You know, the first 10 years are the highest suicide rates, because that's why I focus on transition.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: That's what I do, because they don't have a plan.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: There are lots of reasons.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to get into it right now, just because of time, but with something like this, it would be fantastic.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: Let me know if there's anything I can do to help with that stuff.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: Of course, reach out.
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: Of course I'd love to partner up and help any way I can with you.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: Likewise.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: So a couple of things really quick.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: Likewise.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: So a couple of things really quick.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: How do people reach?
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: you Best way to reach me is that, coach Lewis, on most of the popular platforms TikTok, instagram, youtube I'm all over there.
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: You're going to find a different flavor on each one.
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: If you're looking for something that's longer and more thorough, definitely check out the YouTube.
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: I'll just run you through my different processes on there so by the end of the video you know what to do.
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: And then on TikTok you're going to get longer bites of everything, and then on Instagram, same thing.
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: But all of those different platforms are the best place to find me and if you stay tuned on those, when Operation Dream Big goes into its own online community, you'll hear about that too and have the join there.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: Fantastic.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: Thank you for sharing that.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: So we always do three tips to get veterans and their families further faster.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: So give me three quick tips, if you can.
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: Three tips I would give is for a veteran member that's transitioning out.
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: Number one is look for positive communities to join, especially veteran organizations that are positive, because you do have ones that harp on the negative a lot and take you back to this place that you don't want to be.
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: That's not going to be healthy for anybody.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: So even before you get out, look for a positive community.
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: Number two do anything.
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: You can, even small steps, to establish your own routine, independent of what you do in the military.
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: So before you're even getting out, set up one small thing you consistently do every day and build on it Nature walk journal, something that makes you feel good, so that when you leave the military the bottom doesn't fall out and you fall by the wayside.
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: You have some structure that you can hang on to.
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: You're going to miss that when you get out.
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: And then the last thing I will say is what Operation Dream Big is about.
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: Just discover what your big dream is, what your purpose is, by trying things.
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: You have to become able to try a lot of new things so that you can figure out who you are and what your purpose is.
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: Amen, man, love it.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: Fantastic tips.
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: And I just want to add you know, a good coach can walk you through to really find out things that really draw you and give you that purpose in life as well.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: So I mean, you have to do the work, you'll figure it out, but they can kind of guide you through some of that stuff.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: So fantastic tips.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: So I want to just remind everybody at the top right-hand corner there's a blue QR code Scan that there's free e-books, that I've written lots of resources for veterans.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: Please join.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: That we have Facebook groups Again.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: Don't sit there by yourself.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: Reach out and get into a community.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: So thank you very much, louis.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: I want to say thank you.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: This was fantastic.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: I to a community.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: So thank you very much, lewis.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: I want to say thank you.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: This was fantastic.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: I'm so glad we got the time and got you on here, so we'd love to have you back if you're good with that.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: Always Awesome.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: Okay, everybody we are out of here, all right.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on another insightful journey of your Thoughts your Reality podcast with your host, michael Cole.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: We hope the conversation sparked some thoughts that resonate with you.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: To dive deeper into empowering your thoughts and enhancing your reality, visit empowerperformancestrategiescom.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: Remember your thoughts shape your reality, so make them count.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: Until next time, stay inspired and keep creating the reality you desire.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: Catch you on the next episode.