Contagious Voice (A.K.A. The Time Travelers Guide To Dragon Riding)

This episode is an example of what happens when you give up control and consciously enter the "flow" state. When I set out to host a podcast, I made no excuses about the fact that the entire purpose was to dig up all my stories and practice telling them in a transparent way both to get the "gunk" out of my system, and maximize the......contagion factor of my voice? That sound right. We'll call it the contagion factor. I caught myself "in my head" about topics vs. doing what I promised myself, which was just letting go and trusting the words to find me. And so....as soon as I noticed I was reaching for topics I stopped, pressed record, and started talking. And "I" think...this is one of the most authentic episodes I have put together. If you want to know what I talked about....well....it was a little about mindfulness, and a little about true wealth, and purpose, and authenticity. But you can find all that out for yourself. Give it a listen. See what you think.

I'm not gonna lie...this episode wanders a bit. I gave my best effort at explaining what I mean by Dragon Riding, and spent some time on how negativity bias does it's best to prevent us from leaving the well worn path of the status quo. I shared some of my truly ridiculous beliefs as to why I would be an utter failure at public speaking. This, in particular I think you might find comical or at the least ironic. I look back now at the reasons I had for holding back and I just have to laugh. Hopefully you will too.

In this episode I tell the story about how a Ferret named Odie saved my life in an effort to explain how pattern interrupts work. WARNING...this is about a very bleak time in my life. If you don't like to hear about betrayal, loss, catastrophic failure, suicide, and drunken trips to the pet store, you don NOT want to listen to this one.

I think we all have moments in life where a window opens into a different future. Something grand. Something meaningful, filled with passion and purpose, and at times....very nearly magical. The trick however, is stepping through while the window's open. Because if it's allowed to close, it may never open again, or if it does...it won't be to those same green pastures. That particular opportunity is lost forever. As they say "destiny waits for no man". This....is the story of the very first time I stepped through the window. To be fair, in hindsight I think I was pushed, but it doesn't really matter. The point is I stepped through, and my life was never the same again.

Did I tell you about the time I found myself bent over and screaming in front of 500 soldiers? No? Ok...well this is that story. Enjoy!

Perhaps the most powerful single word in any language is a person's given name. From a time before your earliest memories it was attached to all powerful emotions, lessons, and events significant to your life. It is the literal cornerstone serving as the foundation of every person's personality. In fact...I think it would be fair to say...(you can decide for yourself) that if you couldn't recall your name, you would be hard pressed to form a clear picture of who you are. In this episode, I tell the story about how I was given a new name, and in the process, an entirely new personality and ultimately...a new life.

I thought this podcast was going to be a progression through time and events as I unearth all the skeletons in my closet and use them to develop "my voice" in anticipation of a speaking career. That still is the purpose, but today I'm flashing back to the very earliest memory I have to share a profound truth I uncovered about myself during a 100 hour Tony Robbins Date With Destiny event.

This podcast isn't turning out at all as planned. It's quite a bit messier and considerably more touchy feely than I intended setting out. I'm having revelation after revelation looking back. In this episode I talk about what happened when I signed up for my high school reunion facebook group and popped in the say hello to all my teenage demons.

It seems to me that perspective is far more important than reality. I might even go so far to say that "reality" is 100% perspective, and the idea that there is an "objective" reality is only useful in theological discussions and has no place in every day life. Let me ask you a question to ground this topic in more practical terms. What would you have done if you (as a high school junior) found out your family was splitting down the middle and you were going to be moving to a new school in a different state....and...."oh by the way......you and your 2 sisters are going to live in a campground...in a camper". Well...what would you do? In this episode I'll tell you what "I" did when my parents told me that very thing. Ahhh....life....it truly has limitless capacity to challenge and surprise. :-)

So I lied to you. Let's just get that clear. But what's worse, I've been lying to myself, and in the process, denying the power of what really happened the second time I was held at knife point. It seems to me that the beginnings of awakening are messy, and you spend just as much time falling down as you do learning to rise. Is it possible we all learn to stand twice? First, physically, as a child...then later as an emotionally mature adult? I don't know, but I think there's a truth in there somewhere. You be the judge as you listen to this episode.

Well....this is the tale of my second encounter with a knife wielding assailant. After several years of training and black belt level skills, as you might imagine, this time things turned out differently. But "how" differently suprises even me. Just goes to show you there's more than one way to handle a pig sticker.

Well...that's it..apparently I'm a fraud. Not in the "I'm gonna take your money" sense, but in the "my personal history wasn't the miserable existence I have been telling myself it was" sense. But maybe you knew that. In fact...I suspect you couldn't have missed it. To me it seems that the whole "negativity bias" thing creates for each of us a blind spot that is only revealed when we attempt to tell our tale and fill in all the available details. When we do that....(when I did that at least) it became blatantly obvious that there was a gaping whole in the middle taking on the precise size, and shape of the heretofore unacknowledged moments of pure happiness. Why is it these things are so hard to notice and appreciate? Is it just me? Or so we all spend nearly 100% of our waking hours time traveling as we flit from past hurts to imagined future hurts in an insane dance trying to tiptoe over the minefield of pain that exists in our lives? Is it also possible that in doing so we miss 100% of the present....the only place where peace and joy actually exists? After all...when we remember joy...don't we experience the pain of it's passing? And when we imagine joy....don't we wallow in frustrated anticipation of its arrival? Could finding lasting happiness be as simple as stepping from the time machine and noticing the joy that can truly only be experienced in the moment? And if we stayed in the moment...would we learn to see pain as the rare and fleeting thing it appears to me to be?

Remember all the times you wished you knocked the school yard bully right the f--- out? Well...this is that story. Only it didn't end the way I thought...and in the end, I'm not sure who ended up being the bully in the long run. What do you think?

This is part 2 of "The Things We Learn From Peanutbutter And Cheerleaders" (or was it the other way around?) I'm STILL telling the origin story. Yes...STILL...but if you're listening this far then you know that I'm doing this as part of a project to develop the "voice" behind these stories and refine the "moral" of them as it were. The ultimate goal being to develop content for my speaking career. So there I was....recently duct taped and slathered in Jiffy then marched home to the beat of a stick whacking me on the head. Where...OH WHERE...could it possibly go from here? You'll just have to listen and find out. :-)

This story...like all really good stories...begins with me being "peanut buttered" by a cheerleader. Not my finest moment, but in a way, that moment (or at least the decisions following that moment)gave me a first fleeting glimpse of my purpose. (I'll let you chew on that one for a moment). I think you'll see the episodes are starting to come together in a consistent format now as I dig through the past and attempt to knock the dust off my origin story. In this episode I get into the topic of "threshold events" and how our lives can pivot in any moment based on the actions we take in response to the feeling "enough is enough!"

Well...I did it. I talked to my Dad about what he remembers from the incident in the woods involving the 2 men holding me ar knifepoint. Now I can share that story with a clear conscience. If you are squeamish about hearing stories of childhood abductions and the terrible things people are capable of, I encourage you to listen all the way through to hear what took place just as the unthinkable was about to happen.

Yet another day has gone by where air have avoided having what I anticipate to be a painful conversation (sorry...nobody here but us chickens) with my Father about what he remembers of his part in the terrifying incident that happened in the woods all those years ago. In an attempt to find some personal sense of closure with the issue in this episode I let you listen in on my internal monologue as I walk myself through the process of transforming a sense of panic into a sense of happy anticipation.

Still working on developing my "voice" for these stories. This episode is another component of my origin story where I experience my first "15 minutes of fame" as they call it. I'm maybe 8 years old and anxiety induced mutism (A.I.M ?) strikes again leaving me alone and stranded on the side of a road. A stranger found me, and what happened next made the front page of the local newspaper. (Remember those?) :-)

In this episode (along with trying to figure out the software) I tell the story of my first attack of what I'll call anxiety induced mutism. I'm sure there is a technical name for that but as I'm not a shrink I'll leave it at that. I was 6. I was laid up in traction at a military hospital in Germany. I was alone in the middle of the night....and I REALLY had to pee!

Still trying to figure out podcasting. In this episode I talk more about my backstory and how an incident with botched anesthesia left me awake and agonized but unable to speak or move during a terifying surgery when I was 6. , and how it affected my personality growing up.

This is the first episode of the Contagious Voice (A.K.A The Time Travelers Guide To Dragon Riding) podcast. At this point I'm just trying to figure things out. I don't know how to do a podcast or even how to set one up, so this is me starting to start. I'm learning as I go and sharing it with you, so you'll hear what I think this podcast will be about and a very little bit of my backstory which at the moment is as close to rock bottom as I care to get. Thanks for listening, my faithful audience of Zero. I love every none of you. :-) PS..that's not a typo. There are no listeners yet. Ground zero baby!