Do A Day with Bryan Falchuk

This is the final episode of the show! After 128 episodes, I have decided to practice that I preach, and make the tough call on priorities and pressures in my life, which means this show will be setting with the sun today. Whether that's forever or for now is not relevant because "forever" is not happening today. With all the demands on my time, I have been facing my own burnout – something I've had as a central theme in many episodes in this show. To protect and love myself, I've taken an inventory of all the things that I am committed to, where they are in the grand scheme of building toward my goals, whether they've served their purpose, and how I might be able to move forward without them. Though it was a hard decision I've grappled with for several months, ending the show here made a lot of sense. Do a Day is not going anywhere, however, with all the resources at your fingertips, as ever. You can still get the book in paperback, Kindle, Audible, Apple Books, Google Play Books, Nook and more. You can still do the Do a Day Masterclass, or sign up for 1-on-1 coaching with me. And the entire back catalog of episodes of the show will still be available for you to go back, listen to, and grow from. With all the stories and inspiration in the 127 episodes that I've released before this final one, I know there is at least one spark that every person in the world could use to start the flame that lets you Go Out and Do It! Respect for all my past guests: Season 1 I kicked the show off sharing the story of Do a Day. Charlie Gilkey shares about how being smart makes you strong. Evan Ruggiero reminds us through his cancer batter that rising up even when half of your world vanishes is possible. Amy Schuber taught us that you are the inspiration you seek. Ryan Caligiuri shared his mantra that there are no set backs, only set ups for what's next. One of my favorite artists, MC YOGI, talked about how all things grow in darkness Anne Sugar shared her battle with cancer as a way to see how you can trust your body even when it betrays you. Chris Wirth hit on his message of never quitting on living the life you deserve. David Ralph reminded us about the power in our lives if we connect the dots. Claude Silver shared her story (for the first time) of why she is who she is today and how that's showed her the importance of Heart in leadership. Elizabeth McCourt talked about the empowerment we can take from building our own resilience. Josh LaJaunie shared his story of overcoming extreme obesity--not just for himself, but for the world around him. Michael Nulty talked about his multiple suicide attempts and how he found rebirth out of depression. Mark Metry shared the importance of taking responsibility for your life and what you can achieve as a new person. My good friend, Aaron Keith Hawkins, talked about how we need to have influence over ourselves if we want to influence anyone else. Kelsey Abbott helped us Find Our Awesome through self-confidence and curiosity. She also gave me a quote I've used almost daily, "What you I say is about me. What you hear is about you." Dorie Clark reminds us of the important of perseverance and consistency if we want to achieve our greatest goals. Sonya Looney, world female mountain bike endurance champion, was just awesome, but had a key message around vulnerability and honesty with ourselves. She also gave me another gem of an idea around being stuck. Rather than being negative about the feeling, she recognizes it's a sign of something big being about to happen. Tim Fargo talked about the humility and balance we can find in unexpected places like failure. The amazing Dr. Jason Brooks shared the importance of being dedicated to finding your purpose and its transformative power on our lives. Jen Arnold shared her story around food and her weight and how that inspired her to change how we look at wellness and knowing ourselves. Lee Havern shared how he overcome depression and recognized the interconnectedness between mental and physical wellness. Emmitt Muckles left us charged up and recognizing that prosperity has nothing to do with money. Terri Levine, who lives in extreme, debilitating pain, showed how you can still find power and heart and use that to create something. Leigh Martinuzzi talked about finding his hidden Why and what that can unlock. The great Dick Vitale shared a power packed message of inspiration and making the choice to get up and move forward no matter what hits you, as he's done throughout his life. Season 2 Steve Gordon showed how falling down may be necessary to reach new heights Robb Holman talked about the power of letting go so we can find meaning and purpose Lindsey Heiserman inspired us to not let our past stories be part of our right now Charise Colbert shared her journey coming out of domestic abuse Sara Quiriconi talked to us about how to live free of all the cancers in our life Syd Finkelstein on how to be a Super Boss leader Ariana Robinson Danquah shared how to rise up when you're stuck in the middle Jon DeWaal gripped us with his story of falling off a roof and how that helped him see how to get through life's toughest transitions John Zeratsky talked about what he discovered to achieve the most, and it has nothing to do with productivity Josh Perry taught the power of gratitude even in the face of life's greatest challenges if you want to come through them thriving Mark Crandall shared his trauma story to help us see how facing our trauma's allows for growth Adam Schaeuble got us all fired up, and he also inspired with his approach to reimagining your life – and making it come true Sandy Vo talked about her journey to find clarity and peace despite a foundation of turmoil Cornell Thomas is the epitome of the "What's Next?" attitude winning over the "Why Me?" mentality Sandra Younger taught us her Come Back approach to be a victor, not a victim of tragedy Jenn Swanson talked about her journey off loss, gratitude and realization that you are your best investment Howard Jacobson shared how losing his father inspired his mission to fight diseases of ignorance with the wisdom of lifestyle Brooke Siem retold her amazing journey navigating her way out of a life of medication for mental illness into a life of discovery Tanur Badgley showed how to become a person of purpose through his journey starting with a fall off the side of a mountain Gary Bertwistle talked about the power of authenticity and discovering your mojo Frank King went into how thoughts of suicide taught him to go after what he really wanted, and why so many people need support as they face moments that lead them to these thoughts Mary Shores talked about the power of serving others as she went from dented to thriving Nick Elvery shared his journey from addiction to peak performance and what sparked the change Jaime Jay got vulnerable as he retold his story of multiple experiences with homelessness to being in a place of gratitude and contentment Dai Manuel talked about the importance of living as you need to, from your own perspective Blaire Palmer showed how the greatest thing we can bet on is ourselves Season 3 Dov Baron forced us to look at what's really going on, magnifying it, and then using that insight to truly grow Episode 056. Transporting From Darkness to Your Future Vision with Sarah Centrella Episode 057. Accept Where You Are to Move Forward with Natalie Jani Episode 058. Accepting The Gift of No Regret with Kirsty Salisbury Episode 059. Surrendering to The Facts To Realize Opportunity with Madeleine Black Episode 060. The Power of Worthiness from Within with Dr. James Kelley Episode 061. Redirecting Your Life by Realizing You Matter with Fernando Flores Episode 062. Shifting Your Choices to Shift Your Life with Michael O'Brien Episode 063. The Therapeutic Power of Running with William Pullen Episode 064. To Be Safe, Loved & Worthy with Terah Harrison Episode 065. Find Your Voice Through Mindfulness with Bruce Langford Episode 066. The Power of Being Prepared with Jay Gabrani Episode 067. The Human Connection of Storytelling with The Ridiculously Human Guys (Gareth Martin & Craig Haywood) Episode 068. Life is About Creating Yourself with Lonnee Rey Episode 069. Honor Your Emotions to Choose the Path Forward with Karen Millsap Episode 070. True Success Comes From Our Spirit with Nichole Sylvester Episode 071. Bonus Episode: Reflecting on Doing 3,032 Days with Bryan Falchuk Episode 072. Do the Time to Change Lives with Coss Marte Episode 073. Life as an Inquisitive, Crooked Journey with Mark Nepo Episode 074. Seeing the Gift of Adversity with Marcus Aurelius Anderson Episode 075. Find the Answers Within to What You Need with Michelle Bronson Episode 076. Life's Challenges Can Illuminate Our Path with Sharon Falchuk (my wife!) Episode 077. Loving Yourself Enough to Come Back After a Fall with CrisMarie Campbell Episode 078. The Paradox in Connecting to The World's Needs with Erik Bergman Episode 079. Sparking the Inner Fight to Make Change with Marcus Smith Episode 080. Internal Validation for What We Need with Maggie Berghoff Episode 081. Smash Your Anxiety by Embracing Change with Jesse Harless Season 4 Wally Carmichael joined us to talk about true abundance Ryan Stratis of American Ninja Warrior joined us as he struggled with the question of what he does going forward, and ended up announcing retiring from ANW after the episode aired Steve Austin joined to talk about trauma leading to shame that festered and lead to a suicide attempt Carlee Myers talked about ways to remove the stress we face in life that ends up defining our existence Michael Levitt, a good friend and beautiful human being, shared how to remove and recover from burnout in our lives Drew Taddia joined to share his personal story of perseverance and hard work to achieve what you really care about James Roberts, a Paralympian, who shares what he learned in not letting a disability block him from doing things he loved and staying fit and healthy Susan Clarke, whose partner CrisMarie Campbell came on last season, shared her journey with trauma and cancer and what she built in her life from that struggle Serena Sabala talked about her experience growing up with a father with mental illness, and how we all need more awareness of mental illness and the tools to protect ourselves from it in our own lives through staying balanced and healthy across the spectrum Carol Hanson talked about the power of self-image, which came from her battle with Anorexia Singer-Songwriter Jackson Gillies, who American Idol fans will recognize, shared his journey with Type 1 Diabetes and HS, learning to listen to his body and what it needs to keep these conditions under control Kacie Main, who Gave Up Men for Lent (which is the name of her book), talks about finding out who she really is on the back of a relationship ending, that redefined how she lives her life Justin Stenstrom joined to talk about how he struggled intensely with anxiety and depression, and the journey he went on to find tools to manage both of them, which he details in his latest book Emi Kirschner talked about her path through divorce and business to understand the power of knowing yourself and being comfortable with that if you want to succeed in business Sam and Paddy Cullinane, the Not So Perfect Couple, talked about their marriage story, which includes divorcing at one point, working on themselves, and coming together in a beautiful way that they share to help other couples love better Mariah Heller, who suffers from Elhers-Danlos syndrome, lives with chronic pain every day and developed approaches to physical fitness that respect that pain rather than worsening it Nathan Todd, who was born with Cerebral Palsy, talks about the power of the labels we choose to put on ourselves and how they can hold us back or allow us to move forward Episode 100 was my chance to bring together two of my favorite people, Cornell Thomas and Michael O’Brien, to talk about resilience and connection in a seriously beautiful episode Sunday Burquest, who was on Survivor Millennials vs. Gen-X, talks about her non-stop struggle to survive despite loss and hardship throughout her life, and her battle with cancer before going on the show. Sunday is battling cancer again right now, so we are all thinking of her and pulling for her. Carolyn Colleen shared a very powerful story of abuse and extreme hardship, including leaving an abuse marriage with a toddler to live in a shelter and build a new life that lead to not only great success and achievement, but powerful tools to get through extreme hardships and struggles we all face Emily Gough, who was surprised to find that her boyfriend had still been seeing his ex, who he moved across the street from Emily and his house. She ended up traveling on her own and learning so much about herself in the process Paul Stretton-Stevens, who has been medically retired three times in life, talks about how we can view these closing doors as the end, or see what else we can do to move forward Andrew Hood battled with extreme anxiety as his finances fell apart but he had to put on a happy face and seem fine to the outside world. When his wife and father brought him out of the shame of hidden pain, his open sharing of what he experienced changed his life and others Lakshmi Dev Bowen, who grew up with abuse and a struggle with sex, drugs and alcohol, then found a re-centering through yoga, which completely changed her life. Season 5 Episode 108. Finding Your Road to Health with Tamar Medford Episode 109. Breaking Into Your Life with Michelle Dickinson Episode 110. From People-Pleasing to Self-Worth with Jen Gutfriend Episode 111. The Power of Asking with Crystal & Mark Hansen Episode 112. From Darkness to Radiating Love with Minh Minh Garner Episode 113. Facing Anger to Move Past Trauma with Amanda Huffman Episode 114. Looking at Yourself with Purpose with Paul Forchione Episode 115. Starting From Where You Are with Rosalyn Palmer Episode 116. Devotion to Caring Genuinely with Tyler Tolbert Episode 117. Compassion & Perseverance to Survive with Ethan Zohn Episode 118. Rebelling for Something Greater with Shelley Paxton Episode 119. Responsibility for Who You Get to Be with Ali Moore Episode 120. Embrace Your Vulnerability to Grow with Kate Harvey Episode 121. The Choice of Mindset with Zulma Berenice Episode 122. Creating Clarity & Control for Your Legacy with Vicki Wusche Episode 123. Personal Responsibility for Your Life with Kim Sutton Episode 124. Finding Your Reason to Breathe with Sarah Ross Episode 125. Creating a Fertile Life with Erica Hoke Episode 126. The Art of Human Care with Dr. Hassan Tetteh Episode 127.  Creating a Growth Movement from Pain with Justin Schenck Links: My website: gnmlive.com My Books on Amazon Facebook: @BryanFalchuk Instagram: @BryanFalchuk Twitter: @BryanFalchuk Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Justin Schenck is the host of the top rated podcast the Growth Now Movement and founder of Growth Now, LLC which is a full service podcast production and coaching company. He has been named a Top 8 Podcaster to follow by Inc. Magazine and chosen as an ‘Icon of Influence’ in the new media space.   What started out as something fun to do in order to connect with top influencers and help one or two people along their journey, has grown to become a podcast that is currently getting played in over 100 countries every single week and ranked in the top 15% in the world.   Justin now works with some of the worlds elite entrepreneurs and business owners like Fabio Viviani, Sarah Centrella, and Cindy Eckert. He is also the host and creator one of the most exciting live events for entrepreneurs and forward thinkers; Growth Now Movement LIVE!   None of this started from greatness. Justin had the deck stacked against him growing up, with difficulties in his family that should have relegated him to being a statistic rather than a success. The inspiration and purpose he found along his journey fuel the message he shares in his work and in this episode today.   As a note, this episode was recorded before the live, in-person event was cancelled due to the Corona Virus. GNM Live was changed to a virtual event.   Key Points from the Episode with Justin Schenck: Justin started a podcast four years ago with his show “The Growth Now Movement,” not knowing quite what it would be, and it has become a movement. He ended up building a podcasting production and consulting business as a result, too. He also ended up creating a live event out of what was coming from the podcast, called Growth Now LIVE. Justin has had the desire to be an entrepreneur for a long time, which is what his podcast has allowed him to be. He adopted the famous saying, “Live happens for me, not to me.” That didn’t come easily when you look at what Justin’s life was like. His mother was addicted to opiates, his father was in jail, and he had a 1.7 GPA. If you look at the statistics, each of his parent’s situation meant he had a 50% chance of being an addict or going to jail himself. He chose not to live that way. He read the book, Who Moved My Cheese, and realized life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. At 19, he was working in a direct sales business, had done well in his role, and started to manage people. This is where the entrepreneurial spark was lit. An employee came to him and said that, while he would have made more money working in fast food, what he learned by working for Justin was worth far more than that. In that moment, Justin realized that he wanted to inspire and guide people full time, and he should pursue making that his life’s work. He put together an event company to do personal development events, and had some success. One over-leveraged event that failed to sell enough tickets to pay for itself ended up killing the business. What he learned in that experience about what he needed to learn still was invaluable to his future success. He also learned that the right response is not to just quit. Justin’s entire life was never just handed to him, so he chose to keep fighting and learn from this failure. The learning was not instant. Right afterward, he called his mother and told her he was quitting. She pointed out that he didn’t fail, but was instead heading in the right direction and needed to keep heading there but with new knowledge. Just because you didn’t get what you wanted out of the current situation does not mean you aren’t headed in the right direction. We talked about his mother’s addiction, and interesting, despite what she was going through, she was still Justin’s rock and there for him through it all, even to her ultimate death at the hands of her addiction. She taught him that our rock bottom moments are the start of so much greatness. It can also be the end for people because you feel like better is impossible. But what actually matters is the choices we make in those moments to make things better for us and the people around us. There is choice and direction all around us. The key is that we have to listen (don’t just hear it, but actually listen and take it in). On the back of his mother’s death, he went on a three month, black-out-drunk bender. He kept going out drinking all night to keep from sitting in the pain, and feeling it. He had a mentor and coach who asked him where he was going one night, and when he said he was going drinking, she told him, “No you’re not. You’re going to sit and you’re going to feel this tonight.” While it was incredibly painful, when he woke up the next day, the weight of the pain was gone. He realized that, when we hit rock bottom, we can go through pain, and we can feel like there’s no way out. But it can end, and it’s up to us to decide when that moment is. He chose growth. He uses the Rule of 1% – he chooses to get 1% better every day, in his relationships, finances, health, etc. He reflects at the end of each day to see where he made progress, and if he didn’t, what he learned from not making it, and what he can do differently. And if he feels that he did nothing in a day, he has compassion for himself and realizes he can still get up the next day and be better. If you focus on 1% each day, you end up with exponential growth in a year. We look at other people, and think, “I want that. I want what they have.” Justin says we need to stop looking at other people because it only makes us feel bad. It’s a waste of time and our potential. What are you cultivating for yourself? Focus on that rather than what the other person is doing. Justin’s events were born of his podcast, and spawned a series of seminars in the early days. As he and his partner were working to launch the podcast, he got the call about his mother, who he dropped everything, drove 7.5 hours, and went to see her before she passed. He promised her he will make her proud and this will not go unnoticed. As the show started, his partner was talking about business, and he was talking about the self-improvement journey and values. The show changed into what it is now, with Justin hosting solo, and went further into this purpose that came from the moment when his mother died. We talked about the pursuit of money or impact, and Justin firmly believes that money is just a reaction to our impact. He said it really well, “I’ll impact a million lives before I have a million dollars.” With that intention, it’s not surprising to see that he’s clearly somewhere around that level of impact given that he’s close to his 300th episode, and gets thousands of listeners to each show he does, meaning there have already been over a million times his show has been taken into someone’s life. We got into the details about the upcoming Growth Now Movement Live, which is happening on September 25-27th. He named a number of seriously impactful people, some of which are doing keynotes, and some are part of panels. This includes people like Nick Santonastasso, Anthony Trucks, Justin Wren, Natalie Jill, Adam Schaeuble and others. None of them is paid to do it, which means they’re all there because of the purpose of it, which is part of why it makes sense to call it a Movement. The big difference with GNM Live is that the speakers are all intertwined in the event and the people, and you see it in the posts people share after the event. They name all the great people they connected with, and that includes the speakers, who they are doing more than just tagging in a post. These people have genuine connections on a personal level. As Justin says, it’s what happens in between the margins, where we get to make the direct relationships we thrive on in life. Links: Event website: gnmlive.com Website: growthnowmovement.com Podcast: The Growth Now Movement Facebook: @GNMPodcast Instagram: @JustinTSchenck Twitter: @JustinSchenck Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Dr. Hassan Tetteh is a board-certified heart and lung transplant surgeon, best-selling author and popular speaker who inspires people to focus on the heart of all that really matters in life. His life-changing perspective came from growing up as a kid on the streets of Brooklyn to serving as a combat surgeon in the deserts of Afghanistan, from his time as a visiting scholar in the Congressional Budget Office to his success as an 18-time marathon finisher on two continents. Having overcome his own near-death experience, Dr. Tetteh never ceases to “go the distance” in all he does. He recently published his first book, The Art of Human Care, which he gives the backstory and insights of in this interview. Key Points from the Episode with Dr. Hassan Tetteh Dr. Tetteh is a thoracic surgeon, and does a lot of heart and lung transplant surgery It’s hard work, but incredibly rewarding when you think about the difference it makes in someone’s life He is a Navy surgeon, and has deployed at times of war and combat, and visited over 50 countries with the Navy and personally He’s gotten so much out of that travel, including coming home to appreciate what he has Dr. Tetteh’s book, The Art of Human Care, explores not just what the philosophy is, but how it came to fruition Dr. Tetteh is the child of West African parents, and had wanted to be an artist growing up, and pursued that path, including getting into art school His father was not ok with that as a career path, and told Dr. Tetteh to follow a science and engineering path, attending a school focused there In his junior year of college, he got exposed to and contracted Meningitis while at Johns Hopkins, where he was interviewing for Medical School He was misdiagnosed by the school infirmary, so he got worse Two friends went looking for him when they couldn’t find him, and found him almost unresponsive in his bed, and took him to his hospital He ended up spending weeks in the hospital, with the thought that he had an acceptance letter waiting at home from Johns Hopkins being the thing that kept him fighting The purpose of becoming a doctor was so strong in him that it kept him going Another thing that saved him was an ER doctor who took his case seriously and really working on a proper diagnosis when Dr. Tetteh himself could not speak or help them figure out what was wrong He was always a very curious person in life, and saw science as a way to explore and explain things, so it was how to engage in his curiosity That early experience as a patient in an extreme case, and the kindness, support and compassion that ER doctor showed him left a mark on Dr. Tetteh that informed his path to becoming and being a physician, as well as his sense of what he talks about in his book That and his work with patients facing death has informed his sense of always appreciating what we have, never taking life for granted, and working to sustain it The book is something he’s really been working on his whole life It is specifically called the Art of Human Care, and not just Care or Medical Care, because it’s about being a human as you provide care for another human We all care for fellow humans every day, not just as doctors or in any other role or career Are we helping people discover their purpose and achieve it? Giving personalized care for any human being is so important No individual person can give the kind of overall, holistic care where people can thrive, so it takes everyone coming together This forms the three pillars of human care Purpose Personalization, and Partnerships Dr. Tetteh reflected on the suffering he's had in his life, and what it's taught him about how to be a human and care for others so that we can have a lasting impact beyond the years we get to spend on this planet Links: Website: http://www.drtetteh.com Book: The Art of Human Care Facebook:DoctorTetteh Twitter: doctortetteh YouTube Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book,Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event  

Twelve years ago, Erica Hoke was told that she would never have children. Now she has 4. Complete Miracles! She had every infertility issue that you can name. Including stage 4 Endometriosis fibroids, PCOS and factor V Leiden. Just to name a few. Get the picture? And, although she didn’t know it at the time a double mutation of both genes of MTHFR. She and her husband wanted a baby more than anything in the world. At 35, she was NOT a candidate for IVF and had less than 1% chance of conceiving naturally. So, she opted for aggressive surgery and started researching on how to boost your fertility naturally, and what affects your fertility. What she found would be the beginning of a lifelong passion. What she found was everything affects your fertility. The food you eat, the products you use on your skin, the laundry detergent, your make-up. Everything. So, she started finding healthier chemical free solutions. She started acupuncture for fertility three times a week. Her symptoms lessened. Then one day she got a positive test. Now she’s committed to helping other women and families do the same. Teaching them how to advocate for themselves, educate themselves and take a path that is less sure, but feels better. She teaches them how to REBEL against a system that promotes sick care and recognize ways that they can restore their power and health. Key Points from the Episode with Eric Hoke Erica found herself in her early 30s married, and wanting to start a family She was also one of the 1 in 6 women who suffers from infertility As she and her husband looked into their options, they found that Erica’s case was more extreme than for some, making IVF and other fertility treatments not options for her This inspired Erica’s work today, helping empower and education women about their infertility to help inform those who may be getting mis- or insufficient information about what they can do In Erica’s case, she had been diagnosed with almost every infertility issue know, including Stage 4 Endometriosis, PCOS, Uterine Fibroids, Thyroid Diseases, and a double-mutation of MTHFR and Factor 5 Leiden and Epstein-Barr. She addressed what she could, like removing fibroids, but the doctors said she was not a candidate for IVF due to her age and other issues IVF is often people’s backup plan if they are having struggles with fertility without knowing that it isn’t always an option IVF is also extremely expensive, and people put themselves in difficult financial positions when there may be other paths they could take if they knew about them Erica felt something deep inside of her that she was meant to have kids and to give birth to them, and decided not to give up when she was told IVF wasn’t an option So she dug deep into other paths to work on, including acupuncture, meditation, therapy, visualization, changing her diet and nutrition These are all things that are worth doing regardless, but were especially valuable in Erica’s case Part of Erica’s back story, that is very common amongst women with fertility issues, is trauma, often including sexual abuse This can show up in so many different ways, including eating disorders, poor lifestyles and more This means addressing the mindset and emotional side of the equation is so critical Erica was determined to leave no stone unturned, and that was the reason she was able to make progress and go on to give birth to four healthy kids One thing she found was the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org), to find sources of chemicals that could be impacting her fertility and overall wellness One particular thing she mentioned was The Clean 15 and The Dirty Dozen from EWG, which is an annual list of 15 fruits and vegetables that you can eat non-organic without concern, and 12 that you should not eat if you can’t eat organic (things like potatoes, tomatoes, grapes and strawberries) She moved from what she was putting in her body to what she was putting on her body, like lotions, bug spray, hand sanitizer, soap and shampoo Things put on the skin are in your blood stream within 2 minutes, and in every cell in your body within 20 minutes Erica shared a startling fact - the average woman puts about 300 chemicals in her body daily, and the average man puts about 80 - most of them are hormone and/or endocrine disrupters The one thing she said we can all change out that would be so helpful would be laundry detergent (and dryer sheets, fabric softener, etc) because we’re in our clothes or in our clothes 23.5 hours a day We talked about why visualization helps, and Erica gave the answer clearly - if, in your mind, you don’t see something as possible, then it won’t be It took about 9 months of work across the board to see a change and to feel better She still wasn’t quite where she expected to be for a 35 year old woman in terms of energy levels and feeling well, so she went back to her doctor to ask to go deeper on her thyroid function despite her thyroid numbers looking ok She specifically changed things in her diet and lifestyle to support her thyroid and started to see progress on her energy and overall feeling of wellness Erica had her first child, and then had twins 27 months later, meaning she had three kids under 3 That made things very intense, plus her husband traveled for business, putting more strain on her, putting her PTSD on fire, as she put it She had already been a Type A, intense, driven person, but having the three little kids to care for triggered her emotions, stress and anxiety in a whole new way that she had to work to manage and manage the impact of One thing she learned through all the “bad” things she removed from her diet was that she also needed to look at what “good” things to add, which was the next part of her self-work and a major part of the work she does with her clients For example, if you eat food with pesticides on it, those chemicals kill off your gut flora, meaning you need to look at how to support your microbiome so that gut health-related issues don’t arise We talked about CBD, how it works, what role THC plays in it and what it takes to remove the THC and keeping the CBD functional in your body You don’t want the THC in there because that’s the part that makes the drug a drug, but you can’t simply remove it as the CBD no longer can affect your cells positively, so Erica solved for that with her own CBD product that replaced the THC with essential oils so it is healthy, safe and can still work We talked about how it can seem “hard” to be healthy, but often this is about our not realizing the time and cost we put into the “easy” way we’ve been doing things Erica’s Factor 5 Leiden issue lead to having a DVT (deep vein thrombosis or blood clot) when she was 33, and then lead to pregnancies not taking She shared that some women will suffer multiple miscarriages before their doctor thinks about checking for something like a clotting disease Because it is easy to check for and do something about, Erica tries to raise awareness to safe women from having to go through repeated loss like this She also talked about how we can start to work on the things Erica helps people with bit by bit, and don’t have to hit the hardest things first. We can work into being better and getting better Erica shared her top 5 recommendations for supporting those struggling with infertility Test for Factor 5 Leiden Add a Probiotic Change out your laundry detergent Pick a category and clean up the inputs, whether food or personal care Engage in mental health work Links: Website: http://www.ericahoke.com Facebook:Woke to Wellness Instagram: @woke.to.wellness Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book,Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event    

Who do you have a more intimate relationship with? Your Phone, the coffee machine or your Partner? Did you even consider yourself as an answer? Sarah Ross was on the brink of suicide with Burnout and Stress, but a dying orphan saved her life, showing her that she had a “Reason to Breathe”. Now, Sarah is the UK’s leading Burnout Recovery Expert, International Award Winning Speaker, Executive Mentor and Bestselling Author, who uses her own experiences to help business professionals “Maximize their Mental Health” and build a fulfilling life of purpose with themselves as a top priority in it! Medium Burnout can destroy your life, but with little changes, you feel like you are on fire again! Sarah Ross was on the brink of suicide with Burnout and Stress, but a dying orphan saved her life, showing her that she had a “Reason to Breathe”. Sarah is now the UK’s leading Burnout Recovery Expert, International Award Winning Speaker, Mentor and Bestselling Author, who uses her own experiences with Burnout, Stress and Mental Health to help others avoid the dark place that she found herself in. She  founded “Your Reason to Breathe” as a way to show those burning out at work that there are steps that can help turn the dark and depressing into an empowered and fulfilling life. She mentors Executives and Entrepreneurs on how to Reset, Recharge and Thrive after Burnout using her signature models „B.R.E.A.T.H.E ™”and “Priority Happy”  Key Points from the Episode with Sarah Ross: Sarah helps people deal with burnout and stress, and finding their reason to breathe, which is how she talks about our purpose in life There’s a power to deciding to keep going, to take that one more breath Since breathing isn’t something we have to think about to do, actually thinking about brings more focus to the decision to live Sarah was on a typical corporate career path, working hard to climb the ladder of responsibility and salary She had become the Chief Compliance Officer for a pharmaceutical company, working insane hours and traveling nonstop Her body started to rebel, as she started suffering from increasingly-frequent migraines She left her dream job to move with her significant other, but found herself miserable and their relationship fell apart, leaving her in a place she didn’t want to be in a job she didn’t care about and a relationship that broke down She started to isolate socially more and more to avoid feeling worse about herself by all the comparison to people thriving around her Her migraines had increased to hitting her 25 or 26 days of each month She ended up leaving her job, but only when her boss called out that she was suffering from burnout and needed to stop That voice inside her that had been telling her she was a failure had yet another reason to talk down to her At 37, she decided that she had had enough, and didn’t have a reason to continue living She decided to take what money she had, and spend the next six months seeing places she had always wanted to go to and seeing the people she wanted to see For her, this was a planned goodbye before the date she had set to take her life – January 31st, 2015 Once she made the decision to go through this process and then end her life, she felt freedom and peace She didn’t want people to know what she was planning, so she went so far as to create a facade of a business she was going to start, building a website and creating marketing materials The final part of her trip was to spend her last Christmas in an orphanage in Vietnam Despite it not being a Christian country, Sarah found a Santa costume and gave out gifts to the orphans that day, and spend the entire day happy and laughing for the first time she could remember The final child to see was one who was dying, and was close to taking her final breaths Sarah leaned toward the crib the girl was in, and just watched her breathe Sarah found herself overwhelmed by the idea that this little girl who had been abandoned by her family because of her disability was still deciding to breathe That forced Sarah to take in this message to keep breathing and lead her to find her reason to breathe Something Sarah realized was that it wasn’t just about finding a reason to breathe, but having someone help you find it She stopped the path she was on, and started her path of creating a life that she wanted to actually live She started investing in herself, and finding her voice to share her message For years, she didn’t have dreams, but as she went through this process and got in touch with what her soul actually needed, she found herself dreaming again As the day came that she was going to take her life, she ended up spending it in Cambodia in killing fields from war, which really brought the power of the day to Sarah The next four anniversaries of that day came and went without incident, while the fifth she spent in a conference focused on planning the next decade of your life This was the shift for her where she changed from viewing what happened as not killing herself and instead saw herself as living Links: Website: http://www.yourreasontobreathe.com Burnout Quiz: www.YourReasontoBreathe.com/Quiz Book: Activate Your Life (Get it from Amazon in the US or UK) Facebook: @YourReasonToBreath Twitter: @yourreasonto Instagram: @yourreasontobreathe Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book,Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Kim Sutton is a marketing and business automation mentor who focuses on helping small business owners get away from their businesses and back to the people and activities they love. She is also a mother of five kids, and someone who has worked to create a productive life through learning the power of knowing what to say Yes and No to. And it isn't easy. With major struggles from saying Yes too many times to everyone but herself, including in a marriage where she was marginalized and mistreated. Through those hardships, Kim has set course on a better path, which she shares openly and honestly in this episode. Key Points from the Episode with Kim Sutton: Kim is a mother of 5, including a set of twins Over the last 7 years, she’s had to figure out how to own her space and make room for both the personal and professional sides of her life This struggle has included some very dark lows and some great highs, which helps her help others create this balance and sustainability For Kim, she was overwhelmed by anxiety to the point of being constantly exhausted because she couldn’t sleep Despite being so tired, her anxiety just amped up further, making the problem worse and worse Kim does a lot of work with websites and online marketing, and she shared a good piece of advice Don’t focus on the numbers people tell you because numbers can be faked. You can tell what stories are real, so focus on the stories where you feel they’re right and real. Kim grew up with a strong sense of not being good enough, with one of her parents’ sides having means and the other not, so she saw the disparity and judgment She got her first job at 11, and always had a drive to have a job, support herself, and succeed Her mother threatened her not to attend her college graduation if Kim hadn’t secured a job before graduating Kim also felt the pressure from her first boyfriend, who she dated through college, and insisted on knowing where she was all the time, and made her move to New York after graduation She knew she needed to break up with him when she found out she was pregnant, so they got married and stayed together for 8 years They had moved to Ohio in that period, and she left him with two sons and no job or money The situation with the marriage was so bad before she left, with her husband taking her car keys and forcing Kim to walk their older son to school in the middle of Winter with sub-zero wind chill Kim took her kids, and got a job at Chipotle to make ends meet It was nothing like the kinds of jobs she had before, but she realized you have to suck it up and do what you have to do sometimes, regardless of what your pride or past tells you about it In that period, she met her current husband They continued to struggle as her husband lost his job, so Kim started a side business as a virtual assistant (VA) to help support the family This kicked off Kim’s struggle with how to say “No” to anyone she met or any request that came through Some people take advantage of this, when they know you’ll never turn them down, and others don’t realize you’re agreeing to things you don’t have the space to take on That struggle drove Kim’s anxiety but also is the teacher for what she’s gained in her self-understanding and realizing how to value herself She said, clearly, she does not want to “Oh well” life Kim had started lots of projects, but never finished any of them as she kept jumping to the next idea or request This is something she calls Chronic Idea Disorder, and is the basis of the book she’s working on Kim has had more than one struggle with extreme anxiety The first battle started with her first business in 2005 (which ended in 2010) She had a full time job at the time, and had to wake up at 5:30 each morning to work her 9-hour-a-day day-job, and then got home and worked on her online business until 3am She had a thyroid issue at the time, too, so the lack of sleep and stress made this worse In 2008, she checked herself into a mental health hospital, who never really dug into her sleep issues and just gave her medication In January 2015, she had her twins, and spent the next 18 months going 20-22 hours a day, non-stop It wasn’t just about the twins as her husband was very involved in their care, but largely driven by her work and her chasing of everything – the Facebook groups, the opportunities, etc And yet, there wasn’t enough money to make ends meet despite that hustle Rewinding a few years, her step-brother died, with it being an open investigation, but appearing to be suicide As an entrepreneur, he was stressed and overloaded and felt he couldn’t turn to anyone, and Kim feels that no one should be in this position So in 2016, finding herself in a similar place, she told her husband, who listened and was there for her to find help She was praying at one point, seeing monsters filling her mind, then seeing a bright white light and an angel wing appear, clearing the monsters out, and she had the best night’s sleep she could remember The next morning, she found something one of her kid’s made for her with an angel wing on her desk despite it being put away somewhere else That was such a clear sign to Kim from God that she had to say no, clear things away and sleep rather than continuing to break up or de-prioritize her sleep for everything else This is where her change came from, starting with sleep, and making more space by saying no to things like texting her clients over the weekend She realized over the course of a year, she only ate dinner with her family 10 times, including the 6 other birthdays in the house, which was a real wake up for her If we have needs, we need to let people know what we expect. This is our personal responsibility, or we should not expect to have what we want or need in life She mentioned a pivotal book in her life, Worthy, by Nancy Levin One thing she realized is that she felt she wasn’t worthy to spend money if she wasn’t the money maker in the family, which she says a lot of women feel in their marriage Kim reapplied many can also feel that when serving someone else in a client relationship, which leads to devaluing yourself There are so many ways we can give back to our community without giving away our 1-on-1 time She asked how long do we give ourselves to beat ourselves up after we’ve messed up? Or how long do we get down? What’s healthy here? It’s about taking responsibility for your life, making promises to yourself, but then keeping them This process has taught Kim personal responsibility and accountability Links: Website: TheKimSutton.com Facebook Twitter Instagram LinkedIn Pinterest YouTube Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book,Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event  

Vicki Wusche started investing in property 2008 and has been named in The Telegraph’s top UK’s 25 most influential people in property. She is an inspiring speaker and author of five books and was even a finalist in the Business Book Awards in March 2020. A regular on podcasts across Europe, America and Canada as well as the UK, Vicki will surprise you with her take on property, finance and the next decade. Since first recognising property as the best strategy to create her financial security, Vicki has shied away from the “get rich” gurus and their flash cars and shiny shoes. Many of her talks have been said to be straight talking and brutally honest. Vicki would tell you that being successful in property takes commitment and hard work. It takes a good understanding of the mar`ket and an even better understanding of the maths involved. Vicki runs both a property training and a property sourcing business. In recent years she has helped clients invest over £5 million pounds and bought over 70 properties. Her investors typically earn 15-20% interest over three years and deals have included traditional buy-to-lets, HMO’s, semi-commercial units, developments, barn conversions and good deal of sourcing. Not bad for a “made-redundant” “single-parent”! When not on holiday scuba diving as her alter-ego The Property Mermaid, she loves having time with her growing family; now with two grandchildren, and recently discovered a love for gardening – COVID induced of course. Key Points from the Episode with Vicki Wusche: Vicki has built a life where she can do what she wants when she wants This comes from the flexibility she has in her work, which helps others build financial freedom so they, too, can work and live according to their terms We talked about how the current situation is very difficult, but also presents opportunities and gifts we would never have found otherwise Vicki hopes we all take away that our values are the most important thing, and we can’t really set or achieve our goals if we don’t know our values Vicki learned hers through a series of what she calls “mortality moments” where you are shocked into seeing what is actually going on and realizing you are a human being Vicki’s first came after a marriage she thought would be great ended with her as a single mother of two kids under three who had left a violent marriage That extreme situation lead her to be able to step back and see what she needs to do to move ahead It lets you step back and see what you are capable of and where the line is that you don’t want to cross because it would be out of line with your values Life is like a merry-go-round, only there are lots of people on it, feeling sick and wanting to get off; it isn’t all cheery all the time She decided that her feelings toward her ex-husband would be to “nothing” him Rather than holding anger toward him, or to offer forgiveness, she gave him nothing, and this proved hard for him but allowed him to occupy no space in her mind Vicki noticed later that there were these messages or hints about what she should be doing with her life Life gives us these messages all the time, and we often miss the cues, but they are there Vicki kept having nudges to get into the Property space, but was missing them despite how obvious she finds them in hindsight Looking back only serves two purposes - to learn lessons from what you’ve done or to acknowledge how far you’ve come so you can move forward Other forms of dwelling in the past can hold us back or harm us What lesson do you need to learn in any moment from your experiences or the people around you? If someone is in your life or you’re experiencing something, and you don’t know why, ask yourself what you are supposed to learn here Vicki shared some of the most important things to bring together to move yourself forward Vicki has written five books now On her website, you can take a series of assessments to get a score and personal report to get some activities to better position yourself for the future, for business or in property investment at vickiwusche.com/scorecard Links: Website: VickiWusche.com Books: Vicki’s author page at Amazon.com Facebook Twitter Instagram LinkedIn YouTube Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book,Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Zulma Berenice strives to live an intentional and mindful life every day. As a Holistic Health Practitioner one of her main objectives is to facilitate her fellow beings lives’ journeys by always providing a supportive role, but especially during difficult and/or trying times. Zulma loves being a Life Coach because of the profound effect even one session can make on her clients. Creating safe space and a connection from one being to another being is her passion for coaching and it has lead her to pioneering in the field of Holistic Leadership Coaching and Holistic Marketing. Zulma is a proud mom of two boys and one German shepherd. In her free time she loves to run and as a self declared nature lover you will regularly find her admiring the beauty around the Florida panhandle. Key Points from the Episode with Zulma Berenice: Zulma and I met when I gave my second TEDx Talk back in 2018, where she was the emcee for the event Her name is of Arabic origin even though she’s from Mexico, and means “full of life.” As a young immigrant in the US, her name was difficult as people weren’t used to it, didn’t know what it meant, and often picked on her for it What it taught her is the importance of our names, and how we can fulfill the meaning behind it For her, that means being full of life Zulma’s middle name, Berenice, leads to her playing with the initials Z and B in her blog name, ZBYoutiful, around the idea of holding onto the beauty we have so we can rise like a phoenix rather than blowing away as ashes Her name and the meaning in it is a big part of why she went into coaching, as was her personal journey Zulma got married and had kids in her early 20s, and as she and her husband were building a life and family, she got sick At 26 or 27, she was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia after years of no one being able to figure out what was wrong with her The diagnosis was difficult because it didn’t bring answers, but did bring a prognosis of pain and limitation for life This was so hard to bear at such a young age, and given that she had a 3-year-old This taught her early on what life with chronic illness is like She described it like smashing your thumb with a hammer, but feeling that pulsing, throbbing pain from the tip of your head to the bottom of your toes all day and night, every day It makes it painful to be touched, making basic everyday actions painful, like doing dishes, washing your hair, or embracing your child She advises those close to someone experiencing chronic pain that, just because the person suffering, doesn’t mean they’ll show it or tell you Chronic pain often comes along with some form of trauma in our past, either as a direct trigger or a long-term contributor to it For Zulma, she believes trauma around her childbirth experience may have been the trigger Understanding this connection informs part of Zulma’s interest in functional medicine, which is about how our bodies and life experiences are intertwined, making it less effective to look at each specific symptom or issue on its own Our central nervous system has three responses - fight, flight or freeze responses - across our entire body We don’t need to be scientists to look into why we feel the way we often do, and we find that fear is often at the root of it Fear is a feeling that’s trying to keep us alive, not harm us For Zulma, in her trauma, she froze When we freeze, our body and its energy becomes stagnant, and we become sick This forms the psychosomatic state of disease in Zulma’s view in how our thoughts and feelings from our experiences can manifest in different illness in different people Zulma was prescribed 10 different medications After the FM diagnosis, she was also diagnosed with Lupus She decided that she wanted to live (or die) on her own terms, and realized that she could help herself and would have to start by working on the fear Some people don’t feel they have the right to question the professionals, but because it is our body and our life, we always have the right to ask questions The Lupus diagnosis, which came in 2010, was especially hard because of all the information you find on it about the impact on your organs, the medication you have to take to live and way life Going back to her childhood, Zulma and her family immigrated to the US when she was 10, leaving everything they owned behind in Mexico This lead to an emotional attachment to hold onto everything, which she didn’t understand in herself until she did her studies for her functional medicine health coach training Coming to the US with nothing also showed Zulma the power of helping others as good-hearted people helped her family when they had nothing and no one in the US Zulma learned that she’s an empath, feeling the pain and need of others very strongly herself A struggle for empaths is knowing how to give help without the boundaries they need to respect for their own needs Today, Zulma is medically Lupus-free, has gone on to have a second child when it looked like her health would mean she could not have another kid due to the risk to her One of the main contributors to this was using biomagnetism, a treatment using magnets to balance the pH in the body Her experience with biomagnetism was so positive that she got trained and certified in it herself Despite her advocacy of that treatment, she also shares that it is only one piece of the healing puzzle, and we need to work on more aspects of our lives and ourselves, which is why she also advocates for and got a degree in life coaching Being an immigrant, being someone who experienced chronic pain, her achievements, degree and certifications are empowering for her and a signal for her family that you can achieve no matter what you go through or come from She shared her perspective in her own TEDx in 2019 Zulma’s father recently passed away, and she shared how people came out after his death to share their stories of his generosity and care for others Zulma reminds us that there is always a choice when it comes to mindset, attitude, response and courage This is what she realized she wasn’t doing, and wasn’t living up to her name So she asked Why? Zulma reminds us that, no matter what differences we have, we are actually the same - we feed hunger the same way, we feel pain the same way, and we can heal it the same way Links: Linktree Facebook: @zbeeyoutiful Instagram: @zulmaberenice & @creativelifemedia LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/zulmaberenice Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book,Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Kate Harvie was born to teach people how to tell their stories. She does this with writing, editing, marketing, brand strategy, and development online and offline. She develops brand narrative and messaging and helps businesses and artists tell their stories on all platforms.Kate stepped into a crosswalk in 2009 to retrieve her windblown hat and was struck by a passing ambulance. In the coming days, she would undergo a series of surgeries, including removing a portion of her skull. When Harvie came to, she was disoriented and confused. She could not remember information for longer than a minute. Her road to recovery was long — and made longer without a proper compass to help her find the way. During that journey, she published ‘Believe It and Behave It’, which tells the important lessons she learned after her traumatic brain injury. The book serves as a blueprint for people who also want to recover from trauma, conquer adversity and take back their life. Key Points from the Episode with Kate Harvie: Kate is the contributing writing for the Universal Hip Hop Museum, and does Strategy & Communications for The Vanderbilt Republic and Mid Heaven Network Her friend’s mother always says, “People who don’t have a job have a lot of time.” What Kate learned is that, when the linearity of our lives goes haywire, we eventually can figure out where we are built to land This is informed by how we grow up, what we learn and who we learn from - whether we replicate, duplicate or inspired by Kate had been laid off from a job in 2008 during the Great Recession A week later, she went to Brooklyn to see a friend, and, while they were walking, Kate was struck in a crosswalk by an ambulance She spent the following two-and-a-half weeks in a coma, had multiple surgeries, and was told, based on NY law, she was not able to live by herself due to the nature of her traumatic brain injury She was left with memory abilities below the 1st percentile, which is similar to an intellectually disabled person despite Kate being 34, having graduated from law school, and being fully independent She had to move back to Ohio to live with her parents during her recovery The five months she spent at her parents was an incredibly introspective and difficult time for her, and then coming back to a version of New York that was very different from what she had left was very hard Kate found herself really wanting to connect with people, but felt like she couldn’t keep asking her friends for time, and when she got it, felt disconnected from the version of them that they had gone on to be while her life was put on pause Feeling left out like that felt very personal, like their going on with their lives was unkind to her She found herself unable to ask for help, and realized that this came from a lack of courage Courage is a part of self-awareness, which you must have to understand anyone else or how to relate to them The tenacity of getting through things is valuable, but can also be a lack of vulnerability that we are mislabeling as tenacity When something destructive happens (bankruptcy, losing a job, being left at the alter), our perspective can change because nothing will be the same We talked about Kate’s volunteer work, which became like her full-time job Someone asked her if she did so much volunteering because she felt guilty or like she had a debt because she was supposed to be dead, which took her aback She thought about whether she felt a debt or was required to volunteer or give back What she ultimately took from it was that time is a gift She shared the notion of “getting to” do things rather than “having to,” meaning that everything you do is a gift When she did volunteer, she felt so thankful that the organization wanted her and gave her the chance to be there, and felt that she was the one gaining from her participation, more so than the organization In a life where she felt disconnected from what was around her, this was a very strong pull For Kate, regardless of the therapy she was undergoing (physical and psychological), she still felt stuck What she realized is that, for progress to be made, we have to figure out what will really work There’s the academic stuff, like eating clean and exercising if the goal is to lose weight, but there’s so much more you must do that will actually lead to success You can go to therapy and respect the clinician, but unless you ask questions and genuinely listen and think about what they’re saying, it won’t help For Kate, it was having the clarity to speak up and say that something isn’t working for her, and she needs help finding something that would help When we decide, actively, courageously, embarrassingly to show up as we are, how we are, that is us showing up in our vulnerability, which we need to embrace This only occurs when we let ourselves tell our stories Trauma is not only getting hit in the head of physically attacked, it’s anything that has you devastated or emotionally harmed We are all living in a place of trauma in the pandemic When someone asks you how you are doing, be honest with the answer Don’t just say, “I’m fine.” Honestly creates ways to make things better Links: Website: kateharvie.com/ Book: Believe It and Behave It Twitter: @glossgal Facebook: @kate.harvie.3 Instagram: @glossgal Tumblr: glossgal.tumblr.com Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book,Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Ali Moore is a therapist focused on helping people – especially young girls and women – face and work through the pain, anxiety, stress and depression they face that holds them back in life. Her work was born of her own struggle after losing a child and pushing harder in her career to avoid facing the pain...until that approach stopped working. Ali is an Advanced Member of The Association  for Evidence Based Psychotherapists and is supported by the British Psychological Society. Ali also holds an advanced Diploma in Coaching as well as being accredited in Mindfulness Based Practise, a BSc Honours in behavioural psychology and a member of the British psychological society. She is a regular expert contributor to media such as BBC3 Counties , The Daily Express and Thrive Global and guest expert for Woman's Own and Sheerlux magazines. Ali is the author of best seller Reconnect Your Life - based on her successful Reconnection Programme. Key Points from the Episode with Ali Moore: Ali is a psychotherapist and coach, primarily focused on women, and helping them deal with anxiety, stress and self-worth So many people today feel lost, stressed and unsure of who they are So much of this comes from comparing ourselves to others, lacking compassion for where we are, and then comparing ourselves to others worse off to try to find a way to feel better, which isn’t healthy Ali trained later in life for her current work because of her own experience creating a need to change her life She had a good job, two daughters, and then lost her son, which lead to a divorce Her career kept going as she got promoted, lost weight, found her now-current-husband and seemed to be doing great After the death of her son, she had gone back to work and her life quickly to move forward, which is what everyone said she should do She pushed really hard to get through She got to a point where she had pushed too hard, and broke It lead to a story she calls, “There once was a chimp” She was getting her girls ready for school She had this random idea that a chimpanzee had escaped from the zoo, and was on the loose She almost called the school to tell them she was keeping her kids home because of this wild chimp, but thinking that thought broke the cycle so she could send her kids to school Unfortunately, the chimp stayed with her, and she found herself checking for him randomly throughout her life – in hotel rooms, in her car, etc This went on for 2 1/2 years, and the anxiety behind it claimed her second marriage, too It got to the point where she knew she needed help, and started by turning to a hypnotherapist who she thought would just make it all go away, which isn’t actually how it works What it actually did was teach her that the way she had dealt with things hadn’t actually dealt with things A big part of the breakthrough was understanding that it’s ok to talk about it Other people are like you – you aren’t the only one who has been through something or not be ok She’s now been a therapist for the past decade, and even found herself going back to the pushing approach, looking for external validation, doing more, etc We can get caught up in the “What’s next” of it all, which Ali was living and working in for years, so moving past that approach can take much repeated, consistent focus and effort What has helped her refocus her effort is to think less about the outward achievements and more about individual impacts she gets to have on people in changing their lives She always asks, “What are you most afraid of?” That fear is what holds us back because we are afraid of what we will be when that thing isn’t there anymore “Yes, things happened to me, they are horrible, but I’m responsible for who I am now, and that’s a big thing” Working with teenage girls especially has been rewarding for Ali, and takes parents who are willing and interested enough to want to seek help for their kids and have the means to get them help But not every parent has the interest, and many who do lack the means, so Ali wanted to solve for both of these constraints Since she herself struggled as a teen, and raised two girls and as a step-mother to another, she decided to setup a foundation called “BeMoore” They go into schools to connect with girls to talk about your position in society, how you feel about yourself, how things like social media impact you, etc They’ve had to change tact given the situation with COVID-19 to get more personalized, training more people so they can do 1-on-1 work since the group interactions are harder to do We talked about the pandemic and lockdowns have impacted so much of our daily life, but that can include good things, like getting people to spend time together as a family as they hadn’t been doing, riding bikes again, etc Ali is building out the foundation more, and also started a community for women to come together, share, support and have common values She’s also busy with her private practice, and is working on her next book Links: Website: www.BeMoore.uk Book: Reconnect Your Life Facebook: bemoorereconnectyourlife Twitter: BeMoore_AMoore Instagram: bemoorereconnectyourlife Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book,Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Shelley is an author, speaker, and transformational coach, who can best be summed up as a burnout fighter and fire re-igniter. She’s rebelling for rewriting the traditional script of success, starting with her new book Soulbbatical: A Corporate Rebel’s Guide to Finding Your Best Life (published by Simon & Schuster). Shelley spent 26 years as a highly regarded marketing and advertising executive, stewarding some of the world’s most iconic brands, including Harley-Davidson, Visa, McDonald’s, and AOL. In 2016 she walked away from the corporate world to become Chief Soul Officer of her newly launched company and ultimately her life. She launched Soulbbatical with the mission to liberate the souls of leaders and organizations by inspiring them to embrace their greatest truth, purpose, and possibility from the inside out. As a certified professional coach, Shelley works with execs at Fortune 100 companies and fellow rebel-soul individuals and entrepreneurs. She has also trained with some of the top teachers in the world, including researcher and five-time New York Times bestselling author, Brené Brown.  Key Points from the Episode with Shelley Paxton: Shelley is a “liberator of soul,” which means she’s a coach (and author and speaker), with a focus on the idea of rebelling Shelley spent a lot of her life rebelling against a lot of things, finally rebelling against corporate America, which she was entrenched in What she learned is the power of rebelling for something instead of against something so we can be the ripple that causes a wave of change Rebelling for something is spacious, free and forward-looking while helping you find your purpose When we rebel against something, it’s about things external to us, while rebelling for something comes from within In her career, Shelley had a series of great roles at great, brandname companies, working all over the world including Turkey, India and other places On the back of a difficult divorce that lead to great struggle and suicide attempts, Harley-Davidson came to her to be Chief Marketing Officer, which felt like a complete rebirth in a very rebellious way at a quintessentially rebellious company What she found was that she was ignoring the voice inside of her that was saying “You are making decisions out of alignment with who you are.” She was “shoulding” all over herself, and paid a price every time, with health issues, nightmares and more While at Harley-Davidson, she had a nightmare where a force was pulling her through the building her apartment was in, into a room that was dark and cold, with the outline of a door to a closet, with a dog she had once had behind the door, suffering, dying She kept having the dream multiple nights a week, and it was having a strong impact on her In response to the dreams, her doctor suggested she start meditating every day, which helped her unravel the true meaning of the nightmare, which was around nurturing, caring for and respecting herself Shelley hid this struggle for so long before getting help or telling people about it, using alcohol and business to numb the pain When we aren’t numbing, we can reconnect to our soul signal to help us weather the storm This is where the idea of Soulbbatical comes in as Shelley left Harley to find herself When you realize that the way you have been living for 20 years is not actually connected to who you are, it can be shocking and dismaying It left Shelley with questions about who she actually is A Soulbbatical is not about going to amazing places around the world, and expecting these locations and  experiences to be the solution It’s about tuning in and doing the inner work yourself Early on during this period her Soulbbatical, Shelley realized she was keeping herself busy, because that’s what she knew how to do, and this was keeping her from the work she needed to do She realized she needed to do things she’s passionate about - writing, travel and photography She locked herself in a house in New Zealand, and just started writing In the midst of this, she lived through a 5-day long, epic monsoon, which forced her to stay inside even more than she had been and really go deep She mentioned the tool of an “I am” poem, where you write about what you are from a place of where you want to be and feel empowered It lead her to the idea of what if everyone had to write what Shelley calls an “Iamafesto” where we write about what we seek to be What if we thought about lives as brand, with our most important work being representing our personal brand? What we we be? How would we see ourselves? How would we live those values? Shelley recommends a bit of a self-audit exercise by asking two questions What would change in my life right now if I were being 100% true to me? What am I pretending not to know? She suggests an exercise where you split a paper down the middle, and write what fuels your soul on the left, and what sucks your soul on the right Then take a step back, take the list in, and see what scares or inspires you, what you can learn to change, etc. How can you find more space for the Soul Fuelers and remove some of the Soul Suckers Links: Website: soulbbatical.com Book: Soulbbatical: A Corporate Rebel's Guide to Finding Your Best Life Instagram: @soulbbatical Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book,Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event  

Ethan Zohn is a humanitarian, inspirational speaker and television host; former professional soccer player; cancer survivor and advocate; winner of the hit reality television show, CBS’sSurvivor: Africa; contestant on season 40 of Survivor: Winners at War, author and inventor; and co-founder of the global non-profit, Grassroot Soccer. He has found purpose through his humanitarian work and community involvement, and believes that a better and healthier world can be achieved through education, advocacy and inspiration. In 2002, Ethan used a portion of his Survivor: Africa winnings to help found Grassroots Soccer (GRS), an adolescent health organization that leverages the power of soccer to educate, inspire, and mobilize at-risk youth in developing countries to overcome their greatest health challenges, live healthier, more productive lives, and be agents for change in their communities. To date, the organization has reached over 2.9 million youth in over 60 countries with critical health information, access to health services, and mentorship. Ever the tireless and creative promoter, in 2008, Ethan embarked on a record-breaking 550-mile journey on foot, from Boston, MA to Washington, D.C., dribbling a soccer ball the entire route, to raise money and build awareness for GRS. In 2009, as a fit, active, 35-year-old former professional soccer player who had traveled the world on behalf of the international health community through Grassroot Soccer, Ethan became an unlikely face of cancer. Diagnosed not once but twice with CD20+ Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in the span of several years, Ethan endured years of aggressive treatment, including two stem cell transplants. Never losing optimism, spirit, or humor despite extraordinary rigors and setbacks, Ethan used his journey and considerable platform to connect with others – young adults in particular – and offer much-needed inspiration, advice, and comfort. Ethan is a graduate of Vassar College, and he has played and coached soccer professionally in Zimbabwe, the United States, and as a member of the US National team for the 1997 and 2001 Maccabiah Games in Israel and 2004 Pan-American Maccabiah Games in Chile. In recognition for his work Ethan was awarded the 2004 Nkosi Johnson Community Spirit Award by the International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care, the Heroes Among Us Award from the Boston Celtics and the Massachusetts State Health Department, and the Auxilia Chimusoro Award from the US State Department in Zimbabwe. Key Points from the Episode with Ethan Zohn: Ethan’s philosophy in life is service over self, making happiness real for other people Leading with compassion and empathy versus business and money creates an authentic, vulnerable leader Ethan won the show Survivor in its third season, taking place in Kenya, Africa He went in with this intention to lie, cheat and steal to win, but once he got out there, he realized that wasn’t who he was, and couldn’t play that way He realized how much you need to know yourself and play in alignment with that or it won’t work out Ethan grew up outside of Boston with his parents and two older brothers When Ethan was 14, his father passed away from colorectal cancer The community reached out to support his mother, him and his brothers, teaching him the importance of supporting those who need you He played soccer in college, and then went on to play professionally in Zimbabwe, Africa After winning Survivor, Ethan co-founded a charity called Grassroots Soccer to help raise money and create support for those dealing with HIV and AIDS in Africa Ethan himself ended up with a cancer diagnoses (Lymphoma) at age 35 while training for the NYC Marathon Being diagnosed with cancer was such an eye-opener for Ethan, especially in his AIDS work, to really appreciate what it means to get that diagnosis and face a battle for your life He also learned the impact of philanthropy and support at an even deeper level and how  much it means not to have to face a life-threatening challenge alone He does a lot of public speaking, including talking about failure a lot, which may be surprising given what he’s achieved His path was all born of failure, as jobs didn’t work out and he had nothing to do, so he and his friend worked on Survivor submissions, landing him a spot in Season 3 He was asked to join Season 40: Winners at War, and got back into the show to see how it changed since the last time he played (Season 8: Survivor All Stars) In Season 40, there was an island you go to when you’re voted out called The Edge of Extinction (EOE), which acts like a purgatory where you can quit but are also fighting to get back into the game, which creates a mental struggle every day This mirrors so much of the mental journey of fighting cancer that Ethan experienced – having to choose to stay in the fight with the temptation to just give up and not face anything anymore, feeling alone on an island and more He got so thin and was emotionally ravaged, his wife came out to visit during the Loved Ones Visit, and saw his struggle There was a log challenge where they had to carry 20 logs across the island before sun down, and Ethan passed out while on log 16  He expected people who take advantage of his going down since they were all competing for $2 million, but they rallied around him and helped him finish, which was a great reminder of the humanity that can transcend even that level of financial gain Ethan lives by the saying that you never let a crisis go to waste For every crisis in his life, he’s chosen to focus on it and do good through that situation He shifts the failure mindset into one of not trying, so rather than worrying about the failure, he thinks about all the things he’d miss if he never tries, whether that’s achievements or learning experiences When he was diagnosed in 2009 with Lymphoma, he made a choice to be public about it, working with People Magazine to chronicle his journey The public battle, which he won, setup a strong sense of failure 20 months later when the cancer came back He had felt built up as a hero and source of inspiration, and then felt like he failed those who were looking to him when it didn’t work This resonates today so much as there are so many things people are going to be trying and failing with home schooling, work, how to get food, stay safe and healthy and so much more It feels foreign, scary and uncertain – things Ethan understands all too well, but he also sees himself prepared for because of his cancer journey There are only two things in life that we have to be completely certain about We are all going to have to die, and We are all going to have to live until we die That means we have to ensure we live the life we want to live Acceptance is key to survival – once you accept what you’re facing, you can move to the next phase where you get to see a path to the other side It’s ok to just survive something, just getting through this is ok – advice that’s so relevant to the current situation Links: Website: ethanzohn.com Cameo: https://www.cameo.com/ethanzohn Facebook: @ethanzohnsurvivor Instagram:@ethanzohn Twitter: @ethanzohn Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book,Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

When Tyler Tolbert was a kid, he dreamed of being a part-time NBA basketball player, a part-time artist, and a part-time minister.  When he noticed he was playing guard, forward, and center for his basketball team in junior high (he was guarding the water bottles, leaning forward, and sitting at the center of the bench), he decided that he wasn’t going to cut it in the pros. When art kept him from straight A’s, he decided he wasn’t going to be filling Picasso’s shoes.  The truth is he wasn’t gifted for those two professions, even though he does love to watch some good basketball, especially the Kentucky Wildcats, and he loves some good art, especially Thomas Kinkade. One gift that God gave him is a passion for connecting with people and connecting them to Jesus, so God used that to lead Tyler into the ministry.  So he’s living the dream at First Christian Church in Columbus, IN, where he serves as the Outreach & Discipleship and it excites him to help people grow in their faith. He loves meeting and getting to know the stories of people of all ages. Tyler, resides with his beautiful wife, Megan, their kids, and their Miniature Schnauzer, Zoe, in Columbus, IN. Key Points from the Episode with Tyler Tolbert: Tyler and I met on the course of the 2015 Chicago Marathon, where we both supported each other through what was a tough race for each of us In anything Tyler does, regardless of how it’s going for him, he asks what he can do to help someone else While this is a great way to give back, it’s also about the uplifting feeling it brings him, which helps him get the mind out of the trap it can get into when any of us is struggling Tyler is a minister in Indiana, currently focused on youth ministry for middle school and high school kids as well as helping people with outreach to others to help He spoke about the change in outreach where it used to be purely about love, but with the tone in our society today, it has come off as judgmental or pushy in many cases, so he tries to help people see how to share with and care for others in a respectful way that’s about building a genuine relationship over pushing ideas Sometimes, we treat people more like projects than people when trying to bring them to our way of thinking, whereas Tyler wants to create a friendship rather than a project Growing up, Tyler’s older brother, Travis, and he were always in church as his family was very involved in their local community He enjoyed his time in church, but didn’t really understand what it all really meant until he was 8 and his brother was 9 Travis was diagnosed in February, 1999, with a brain tumor Tyler’s parents were away with his brother at the hospital frequently, battling the cancer Tyler of course didn’t understand so much of what was going on, but could tell this was all a serious thing given the physical impact on his brother and the time he and their parents would spend in the hospital There was so much Tyler didn’t see or understand since he was at home with other family while his parents walked through everything with Travis In a way, that was a gift for Tyler, who was too young to fully process the gravity of the situation It came to a point where treatment was becoming less successful, and it became clear that ultimately, it would not succeed Through the Make-a-Wish Foundation, Travis wanted to meet his idol, Michael Jordan, who was also Tyler’s idol Unfortunately, they weren’t able to meet Jordan, but got to go to Indiana, see a baseball game, go on a shopping spree, and go to a Pacers game and meet the mascot As soon as they got back that night, Travis was really struggling Tyler woke up the next morning, August 6th, 1999, and he heard his parents up very early He walked down the hallway to his parents’ room, and realized this was the moment when his brother was going to die, just 6 months after his diagnosis The EMTs came to try to help, but weren’t able to make it better, so their parents invited family and friends over to be with Travis in his final moments so he could feel love and support Before he passed, Travis had decided he wanted to live the time he had for God, even if his life is shorter than he expected, and got baptized That commitment and faith had a strong impact on Tyler, setting the stage for the path Tyler took A couple of years after Travis died, Tyler felt a change in his feelings about it He felt that God helped him go from being bitter about losing Travis to seeing the beauty in the life Travis did have and the impact he got to have This was the moment that Tyler himself felt the shift and decided to go down a path to join the ministry Tyler admitted the truth that, no matter how close your relationship is with God, or how positive and supportive you are for others, you can still have moments of doubt and struggle in life, which he has himself on occasion We talked about the balance of being helpful to others, yet not accepting help for ourselves If we value helping others, why would be cheat others out of the blessing of helping us? Tyler closed by sharing a Bible verse about the comfort we receive from God, and how we should be sharing that comfort then with others who need it Tyler encourages people to reach out to him for help or to talk about all of this, regardless of what you believe Links: Triple T and Me interview series on YouTube Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book,Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event  

Rosalyn Palmer is an Emotional Wellbeing Expert, an Advanced Rapid Transformational (RTT) Hypnotherapist and a Certified Coach. Rosalyn was one of the very first to train in RTT with Marisa Peer and has become one of the most sought-after RTT practitioners worldwide. As bestselling author of the award-winning self-help book: ‘Reset! A Blueprint for a Better Life’, Rosalyn makes emotional wellbeing accessible to all. Rosalyn is also a co-author of Amazon No.1 bestselling self-help books ‘Ignite Your Life for Women’ and ‘Ignite Your Female Leadership’. Rosalyn co-hosts the popular radio show Girls Around Town on Radio Newark (as the wellbeing expert), has a monthly newspaper column and features regularly on podcasts and in many publications, including most recently Psychology in Practice. She was featured as an Emotional Wellbeing Expert on the Janey Lee Grace show on UK Property Radio. Formerly the MD/Founder of award-winning PR agency RPPR, Head of Marketing for an international charity and with an enviable CV from leading London agencies in the 80s and 90s, Rosalyn has grown from many challenging life experiences. This colour and tempers her writing, broadcasting and speaking. Key Points from the Episode with Rosalyn Palmer: Rosalyn Palmer is an Advanced Rapid Transformational Therapist, which is a form of therapy that is am amalgam of Clinical Psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy and Neuro-Linguistic Therapy Her work is really about digging up the roots of the weeds rather than just cutting the tops off them She is also a coach, but always starts with the therapy to to address the roots first Before her coaching and therapy work, she was a highly successful PR and Marketing executive She is also a host of a radio show and podcast, and writes many articles on top of her coaching and hosting work, all of which is focused on emotional well-being Like her work in PR and Marketing, language is incredibly helpful in therapy and coaching, and how we relate to and support ourselves In her PR days, she handled some of the biggest people in the motivational world, like Tony Robins and Edward de Bono Growing up, Rosalyn came from a family that did not have means, with her parents being grocers who hadn’t finished school Her parents lost their grocery school when the local government decided to tear everything down to clear out the slum they lived in, making things even tougher Once she got into PR, she was in another universe where Mick Jagger, Daniel Day-Lewis and other major celebrities were in the office regularly Her health started to suffer, and she followed a standard medical approach of taking pills Her health had long been difficult, including being technically dead at 18-months old, leading to a constant flow of antibiotics after she had been saved as a baby Adding the stressful lifestyle of PR in London in the 1980s, her body was buckling under the pressure Alcohol was also a regular part of life in those days, throughout the day, adding to the issues The people at work were alternative-minded, and advised her on things like acupuncture and other traditional approaches An Ayurvedic doctor finally called it out, saying how she was doing all these alternative, helpful things but also living unsustainably, and she was bound to have a physical or mental breakdown at any moment At this point, she had built her own PR firm, adopted a child with her husband that she never saw, and sold her company to get out of the race She and her family moved to the Bahamas with money in the bank and Rosalyn looking great (partially due to over-exercising and Bulimia) One day, talking to another mother at her children’s school in the Bahamas, she realized how disconnected to her sense of herself her new life had become And then her father had a stroke, so she flew back to London, leaving her husband and kids in the Bahamas Upon landing, she found her dog run over in the road By Christmas, she found she was really struggling physically and with her energy Despite an All Clear at her annual mammogram, something didn’t seem right, so she didn’t accept it and pushed for more testing Sure enough, she was found to have an aggressive form of cancer, and ended up on the operating table 3 weeks later To help increase her chances of recovery and remission, her family moved to an out-island, with an organic farm and no pollution from other people, cars, etc Her family was miserable there, a hurricane took everything, her father had become suicidal, Rosalyn had another cancer scare, and her mother terminal pancreatic cancer But at least she had all this money in the bank...or did she? Her husband had made a series of bad investments without telling her, and lost all their money She returned home to England 5 years after leaving as a millionaire, but now as a single, unemployed mother without any money just in time to see her mother’s death She was at the bottom, truly, and found it was a chance to build up And she did - she remarried, built a new career, and was thriving again Only it didn’t last - her marriage unraveled, the career wasn’t panning out, and her father died on her 50th birthday A friend suggested Rosalyn would make a great therapist because of all she had been through, and she thought, “Why not?” I asked why it didn’t work out after she reset, and if she could be where she got without it What she realized is that the reset and remarriage came in the midst of too many other unsettled things, so something that was perhaps not quite right felt right and felt like sanctuary Coming out of the marriage and early version of her reset career, she started to work with an international charity for people with Leprosy What she realized having worked with these people at the bottom rung of society, suffering from Leprosy in India with nothing - no where to live, no rights, treated like filth - she realized she had been living the wrong life when she went into her second marriage, and that’s why it wasn’t working She reset a second time, and it was harder in many ways because she didn’t have the visible things to reset from (cancer, death of her mother, loss of her home and money) – she looked fine to the world, and yet was miserable She started sharing her story as part of her intention to connect with her path forward In doing that, her book was born out of that story As her story came out, people started to reach out to her about how they were able to face what they were hiding and make the resets and changes they needed to make Often in life, we want to be somewhere, and don’t want to start from where we are But we do have to start from where we are because that’s just where you are, and that isn’t a good enough reason not to go after what you want That means all of us can press the reset button, no matter where we are Links: Website: http://www.rosalynpalmer.com Book: Reset: A Blueprint for a Better Life (from Rosalyn's site or available on Amazon - US & UK) Facebook: facebook.com/RosalynPalmer.Transformation Twitter: @RosalynPalmer Instagram: @rosalynpalmer.transformation LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/rosalynpalmer Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book,Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event  

As an infant, Paul Forchione was diagnosed with cerebral palsy which is paralyzation of one side of the body. The doctors detected this diagnosis when he was just an infant. They  told his mother he would never be able to walk and she should get him comfortable in a wheelchair. Paul's mother disagreed with the doctor and went on an extreme search to find a specialist that could help him. After months of searching, she found someone that was willing to help. Paul went through intense physical therapy, barely being able to walk. He was put in sports at a very early age and was extremely embarrassed of how little he could move around. He went through a surgery on his foot and was able to gain a little bit more mobility. Craving just to be able to fit in with the other kids, Paul was teased and made fun of. He made a promise to himself at a very young age, that he was going to ignore the negative noise and he began playing baseball. As a young boy, he wanted to be able to play baseball at a high level, my dreams came true when he was able to make his varsity high school team during his junior year as a pitcher. Paul has always enjoyed the underdog story because he was an underdog! As an adult, he has been a high producer in the home loans sales industry and transferred those skills into the coaching space because he wants to help people achieve their goals and be a positive influence in their lives. Paul earned his career coaching certificate and prides himself on influencing others to reach for their dreams and not let anyone put limits on them. To learn more about Paul, you can subscribe to his weekly podcast,  Actions and Limits, which is available on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, and Podbean. Key Points from the Episode with Paul Forchione: Paul Forchione is a motivational coach who dives into mindset, helping people build a positive mindset Paul believes you can do whatever you want to do if you believe in it You have to find your why, or you’re not going to do it or you’ll stop when you hit the first roadblock Paul’s career started as a loan officer, selling mortgages and loan products With the changes in the industry post-2008, he started to lose his passion and interest in the space as he felt he couldn’t help people the way he used to As a result, he took the leap, leaving his job to start helping people build happier lives Going back to his personal story, Paul’s birth was a difficult labor, which resulted in his having Cerebral Palsy due to oxygen deprivation to his brain When he was 2-3 months old, the doctors told his mother Paul’s case was so severe, he should not be expected to walk ever Paul’s mother did not accept that, and sought therapists to help him to walk, with a daily regime from age 1 until he was 8 Given the hard work, he was able to walk, but was still behind other kids Paul remembers being put in soccer at age 5 or 6, where he could barely run while other kids were running laps around the field His parents weren’t trying to force him or put him down by putting him in these situations, but were trying to raise him up He wanted to quit, but his parents helped him feel the importance of the commitment he made to do it, and finish the season, regardless of whether he wanted to quit at the end of the season or not Paul’s father was a huge baseball fan, so a love of baseball grew within Paul He had a desire to play baseball at a high level, but of course never thought it was possible He had an operation at age 7 that allowed him to run, and actually keep going so he could keep up with the other kids It was the first time in his life he felt like the other kids Despite that feeling, he experienced a lot of bullying, especially in junior high, and he spent a lot of time crying at night in his room about why he couldn’t just be like the other kids Something switched in him, and he decided he was going to do what he wanted despite his difference, setting his sights on the Varsity baseball team in high school He realized he can’t control what other people feel about him, but he can control what he thinks about himself, and what that allows him to do Paul started to practice and train relentlessly, and people started to notice Where people had bullied him before, now they cheered him on as they watched his commitment The hard work paid off, as he made the team, and senior year, as a pitcher, batted .300 and pitched a three hit shutout He took that same direction and self-belief, and applied it to his education, getting his college degree He kept flowing with his self-belief and went into a sales role in the loan industry Sales takes a tremendous amount of self-confidence and belief, and Paul went into it with the same direction and energy He found himself to be very resilient to the lumps people take in sales, seeing them as chances to learn and grow He’s found how life is a constant improvement every day that we can make through being aware of it We can be angry and sad - we don’t need to suppress our feelings - but then after acknowledging your feelings, focus on things to be grateful for and achieve When you feel like the world is against you, you have to look at what you might be doing - big or small - that could be contributing to it that are within your control This gives you insight into what you can work on to make your situation better Paul saw a TEDx Talk that vulnerability is a strength, and that really struck him He had been holding back on his story because it embarrassed him He realized instead that it’s actually a strength, and he has nothing to be embarrassed about in his story He’s achieved so much, having run a marathon despite his mother being told he’d never even walk Links: Website: A Call to Action Podcast: Actions & Limits YouTube Facebook LinkedIn Instagram: ACall2Action80 Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book,Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event  

[podcast src="https://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/15168368/height/90/theme/custom/autoplay/no/autonext/no/thumbnail/yes/preload/no/no_addthis/no/direction/forward/render-playlist/no/custom-color/f89c1c/" height="90" width="100%" placement="top" theme="custom"] Amanda is a military spouse and veteran who served in the Air Force for six years as a Civil Engineer including a deployment to Afghanistan. She traded in her combat boots for a diaper bag to stay home with her two boys and follow her husband’s military career. She is the host and creator of the Women of the Military Podcast sharing the stories of women who have served or continue to serve in the military. You can learn more about Amanda at her blog Airman to Mom. Amanda is a military spouse and veteran who served in the Air Force for six years as a Civil Engineer including a deployment to Afghanistan. She met her husband while attending college and they served on active duty together until their first son was born. It was then that she traded in her combat boots for a diaper bag to stay home. Amanda is now a mom of two boys and continues to follow her husband’s military career. She has lived in New Mexico, Ohio, California and currently resides in Northern Virginia. She published her first book in 2019 titled Women of the Military, sharing the stories of 28 military women. In 2019 she also launched her podcast also titled Women of the Military. On the podcast there has been representation from all five military branches and featured stories from the 23rd Secretary of the Air Force, the Women Air Force Service Pilots to present day. She has been published on multiple military sites and magazines, has been featured in a number of podcasts, and she was a panelist speaker at Podcast Movement in 2019. You can learn more about Amanda at her blog Airman to Mom. Key Points from the Episode with Amanda Huffman: Amanda, who was an officer in the Air Force, hosts a podcasts called “Women of the Military” to share the stories of other women veterans and build community amongst them She had been blogging after leaving the military and becoming a stay-at-home mother In 2017, she did a series on deployments, and put out a call to get people’s stories, and got those of many women telling their stories This was surprising as many female veterans did not feel comfortable sharing their stories, but when another woman asked, the response was stronger. She took the stories people shared to create a book of them called Women in the Military To keep the project going, she started interviewing those who were willing to share their stories without anonymity for her podcast She talked a lot about the feelings when you come home after serving, and finding that you couldn’t really understand what it would be like until you live it, and you realize how much of your identity the military was Amanda started her military career in ROTC while in college, with an interest to be in the military sparked in her after September 11th, which happened her senior year of high school The military gave her a purpose and alignment of beliefs that she had not had before as she had felt lost before Amanda was tasked to Afghanistan with the Army to work on roads, bridges, retaining walls and other public works projects in conjunction with the Afghan people While Amanda has been shot at, her experience with PTSD is not a result of that. It came from treatment within her base. The treatment, harassment, lies, manipulation and anger drove her PTSD. To understand why being mistreated can create PTSD, it’s important to remember the context of everyone’s lives being at risk. When Amanda was asked to do something she knew wasn’t right, the officer who requested it of her started spreading lies about Amanda in conjunction with another woman on base. There were many examples of how this played out, but the key issue being the repeated manipulation and disrespect in the context of lives being at risk At the same time, her husband also got into a masters program in Ohio, and moved there from New Mexico and bought a home while she was in Afghanistan so she came home to a home she didn’t know When she looked for help, the response was focused on whether she was suicidal, which she wasn’t When you aren’t suicidal, help becomes harder to get in the military and the response turns more to just dealing with it Today, after therapy, Amanda knows this isn’t the right approach or answer When you’re in it for so long, it’s hard to see that it can be better or that this isn’t normal, but therapy helped Amanda see that it can be better She didn’t get help until after her kids were born The switch that told her she needed help came from getting extremely, irrationally angry and knowing she can’t be that way for her kids She kept getting in the car to go her therapy group, but would talk herself out of it, and eventually decided to just drive to the meeting without allowing herself to think Once she started sharing, the flood gates opened up as she recognized she was in a community of others who were in similar places and could be supports for her from a place of understanding The cycle before was to calm down, but not talk about it again, so no progress was being made. Now it became about getting it out and talking through it. The last step of most 12 Step programs is to give back to the community, which is what the podcast is for Amanda Amanda originally thought a measure of being ok is to never get angry again What she’s come to realize is that people get angry, and that’s ok. It’s about what we do in those moments and how we handle it. The first step is to recognize that you have a problem and that it’s ok to not be ok Amanda’s story is a great reminder that we shouldn’t be comparing our difficulty to someone else’s as justification for ours not being valid or something to address because someone else’s seems worse She mentioned a book by Gary Chapman called Anger: Taming a Power Emotion, that helped her see that anger is a good thing and you can control how you use it and react Links: Website: Airmantomom.com Podcast: Women of the Military Podcast Book: Women of the Military Facebook: @airmantomon Instagram: @airmantomon Twitter: @airmantomom Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book,Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event    

Meet Christine Minh Minh Garner.  She lived in fear, raised in a doomsday cult.  In the 16 years since her escape, she has learned to overcome the fear, live her life by design and is deeply passionate about guiding others to live a life of fulfillment as she has done. She shares her story and her message with all the Day Doers out there to help us remember that we can move past even the darkest moments. Love. Empower. Radiate. Key Points from the Episode with Minh Minh Garner: Minh Minh is a co-founder and owner of a commercial security company She also has developed a business to help people find their purpose and build their vision for the life they want to lead, doing coaching, running workshops and putting out content and guidance to help people get there Her work on vision and purpose is a result of the struggles she and her husband had in their security business early on They were serving their customers well, but the financials of the business were failing, threatening not just their livelihood but also their marriage This was made even more pressing because they had their first child at that time This forced her to dive deep into who she really is, triggering a passion for self-discovery as she clawed to get out of the hole she was in As she says, she had to change in order for her business to change She started vision boarding, which progressed from being surface-level to being more tied to who she really is and what matters most to her She starts by helping people first understand and put down on paper their purpose Connecting purpose and passion is where we find fulfillment in life Minh Minh’s back story brings another profound layer to the idea of finding your purpose and fighting to connect with it Growing up, she was the second-youngest of six children of Vietnamese immigrants When she was seven, her mother took her and her sister to a cult, walking away from her father and the life they had The cult told followers that the world was going to end, starting with the coasts, which is where Minh Minh and her family were living (in Portland, Oregon) The only way out of it was to follow the cult’s profit, including moving to one of their three enclaves, with the one in Idaho being where Minh Minh ended up Five of the six kids went, but all but Minh Minh and her younger sister ended up being kicked out of the cult From age seven to seventeen, Minh Minh was isolated and indoctrinated They spent their days praying to God – a god who she was taught to fear because he was going to smite the world and she will not live past her mid-teens She and her sister were pulled from school, kept in a house with only one window not boarded up, dead bolted from the outside, with no phone or other means of communication with the outside world Her father vowed to come save them, but the cult moved her and her sister further away, deeper into Idaho so he couldn’t find them She started to grab change or loose dollars where she could, trying to save up for a bus ticket to go back to Portland, find her father, and come back to save her sister When she was 15, she got close enough to try to make a run for it, snuck out of the house and made her way to the home of a police officer who said he would come back to the house with others to help them When that happened, her mother convinced them that everything was ok and she would put the kids back in school and there was nothing to worry about While that didn’t bring her salvation, it did get her back out of the house, and gave her some joy in interacting with other kids during the day She made friends with a girl who made reference to God as, “Heavenly Father,” which confused Minh Minh She was told God was angry and spiteful, but this friend talked about God as loving, and knowing us each personally and deeply This was the time that Minh Minh’s mind escaped the cult despite still physically being there One day, a friend of her mother’s was at their home, and Minh Minh worked up the courage to say she doesn’t believe in their views anymore Her mother overheard, threw a pan across the room, and shouted, “You’re not my daughter anymore. Get out!” Minh Minh called the friend who had talked with her about God, who called her mother to take Minh Minh in That began her work to get to know God, and see his mercy and love rather than the vengeful anger It also set an example for Minh Minh around forgiveness Today, she does not hold anger or blame toward her mother and the cult, but instead forgives her It would be too heavy to bear that burden of hatred and anger, giving up her own joy Forgiving her mother has allowed Minh Minh to live a happier life even if it has no bearing on her mother Going back, you can see how the idea of vision boarding was present along the way, in how she saved up for the bus ticket, with a vision for something that may have seemed impossible she had to take steps toward every day The idea of planning her life when she was assured there was no future or life for her is a blessing and opportunity she realized she gets despite what anyone said Today, she shared that joy with others through her work teaching people how to do vision boards, connect with their purpose and live as they wish they could Links: Website: minh-minh.com, markvictorhansen.com & crystalvisionlife.com Fulfilled Life Workshop: minh-minh.com/workshop Put Your Purpose on Paper exercise: minh-minh.com/purpose123 Facebook: @minhminhgarner Instagram: @christineminhminhgarner Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Mark Victor Hansen is probably best known as the co-author for the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series and brand, setting world records in book sales, with over 500 million books sold. He is also a prolific writer with 307 books authored or co-authored. Mark also worked his way into a worldwide spotlight as a sought-after keynote speaker and entrepreneurial marketing maven. He is a charismatic speaker having spoken to 7,000 audiences in 78 countries. Crystal Dwyer Hansen is a business strategist and successful entrepreneur, speaker, and author in the US and China. Crystal, also known as the “celebrity coach,” is a certified life coach and wellness/nutrition expert, whose personal coaching, speaking, CD and video programs, books, and articles have helped people all over the world. Crystal is a Member of the International Coaching Federation and the founder of Crystal Vision Life and Skinny Life®, a wellness company. Crystal is also the author of Skinny Life: The Real Secret to Being Physically, Emotionally, and Spiritually Fit. Mark and Crystal are heavily engaged and invested in clean, renewable energy through ownership in two companies, Metamorphosis Energy and Natural Power Concepts, based in Hawaii. The Hansen's join the show to talk about the idea of their latest book, and the first they wrote together, Ask! The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny. Key Points from the Episode with Crystal & Mark Hansen: Mark and Crystal Hansen joined the show to talk about their new book, Ask! The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny. Crystal opened talking about how the book begins, with a fable of a woman named Michaela, who lives a difficult life after losing her parents and everything she owns A being comes into her life and teaches her how to ask and build opportunities rather than staying afraid and constrained Mark chimed in about the genesis of the story, and how important it was to include it as it is in the book Mark is one of the authors of the Chicken Soup for The Soul series, which includes 309 best-selling books and is the number one selling series in the world Crystal is a transformational life coach, clinical hypnotherapist and author who focuses on helping people achieve their vision They met when Mark was speaking at an event her mother told her to attend, and they connected instantly, building a deep friendship long before getting married This project, Ask!, is the first book they’re writing together Asking helps us wake up, illuminate and open the paths to possibility There are three channels to asking that Crystal shared - asking yourself, asking others and asking God Those who don’t ask all three are missing things in their lives, so they endeavored to uncover why this tool to ask gets shut down in our lives Children are all born as master askers, yet as we grow up, we’re taught to suppress that and hold back – the ability to ask gets crushed and slowed down There are seven road blocks to asking, which all of us has at least one of those Unworthiness Naiveté Doubt Fear Excuses Pattern Paralysis Disconnection When we’re stuck, it’s because we don’t have answers, so we may fear asking ourselves This can be a signal to ask why we don’t have answers rather than trying to ask for the answers themselves Three questions we can ask ourselves are, “Where am I? Where do I want to be? What actions do I need to take to get there?” The God part is about your destiny It can be hard to see what our destiny is, and this is what Mark and Crystal say we need to ask God Maybe the gifts we have go beyond the things we see around us, so we need help seeing what we are really here for Even if you don’t believe in God, ask what your part is in this amazing universe. Mark shared the story of a kid named Sparky who failed at everything in high school - sports, academics, etc. His one talent, as he saw it, was drawing, but he got rejected everywhere. He decided to put out his own comic strip, which went on to be the number one comic in the world, Peanuts. Sparky’s real name is Charles Schulz He asked himself, “Who am I? What is it that I can do better than anyone?” And just go manifest that. Crystal talked about the work we need to do to prepare to be a good asker, which takes belief and a sense of deserving. You need to believe that you can ask, and believe that you deserve the answer. This echoes my message around self-love. It’s about having a vision for what you want, but also painting the rest of the picture to understand what you need to build to make it a reality If you keep asking throughout your journey, your life will be revealed to you as you Crystal shared the research that shows that, when you ask a question, a different part of your brain lights up, so you’re bringing more of your mental power into your journey Mark shared the rejection story behind Chicken Soup for the Soul, where they received 144 rejections, but he kept pushing to make it a reality, asking a church congregation to sign up to buy the book before there even was a book, effectively crowdfunding the project Crystal shared her story of getting married young, then getting divorced with a 2-year-old and nothing to her name She was on welfare and food stamps, and decided she wasn’t do her best to change her situation, and made material changes as she asked herself what she could do, what she wanted, and what she needed to put in place to get there. She started doing temp work, got her real estate license and became the top seller and did modeling and commercial work, getting her benefits to protect herself and her child just 18 months after the moment she asked herself if she was doing enough Crystal shared a surprising stat that, based on their research, 80% of things you ask for get a Yes response. We often go into it thinking the opposite is true! They are hosting a free book club for people who get their book that you can sign up for at askthebookclub.com Links: Website: askthebookclub.com, markvictorhansen.com & crystalvisionlife.com Book: Ask! The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny Facebook: @crystaldwyerhansen & @markvictorhansen Instagram: @crystaldwyerhansen & @markvictorhansen Twitter: @crystaldwyerhansen & @markvictorhansen Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event  

As a hypnotherapist and empowerment coach Jen is on a mission to help people pleasing and over giving women own their worth, set fierce boundaries and live unapologetically! When her body said enough and full blown burn out caused her to pass out and get a concussion while in the hospital, Jen decided it was time to re-evaluate her life.  She walked away from everything, including her marriage and business to start her 30’s on a clean slate so she could rebuild a life that brought her joy. A life of her design. Key Points from the Episode with Jen Gutfriend: Jen is a hypnotherapist and coach focused on People Pleasers These are people who put others before themselves always, and are afraid that attending to their own needs means people won’t like them We get into this nice persona, and are afraid of being seen as mean, harsh or self-centered This started from childhood for Jen, being an overachiever and ‘good kid’ to be there for other people The beliefs we create by the age of about 5 create the pattern for our life, so Jen’s beliefs centered around her having to do these things for other people, to be the ‘good girl’, etc, creating her identity Every now and then, she would have a rebellious moment, but then feel such guilt that she’d overdo it on the People Pleaser side to make up for it This extended to her school and career choices, doing what she thought her parents would be most happy with even if it wasn’t what Jen was interested in That included staying in a relationship that wasn’t working well or making Jen happy When he proposed to her, she got scared, feeling backed into a corner, but still went ahead because of the expectations of others Her husband was selfish, immature and would publicly talk poorly about her to friends and others Jen found herself working 18 hour days trying to build her business, responding to other people whenever they asked for help, and her marriage was bring her down Ultimately, her health started to suffer as she suffered from burnout, dealing with dizziness, body pain and more, leading to her going to the hospital for X-rays for her hip where she ended up passing out and getting a concussion from hitting her head as she dropped to the floor That’s when she realized something was wrong and asked doctors for help, but no one really had any to offer, telling her passing out is normal and to just put her head between her legs until the feeling passes She turned to a naturopath, who raised burnout as an issue This was the first time it seemed like someone was actually listening to her rather than seeing normal test results and telling her she’s fine She had burnt out her adrenals as she lived on caffeine and sugar, resulting in hard crashes Going back to her marriage, they married in September, and by Christmas knew she had to leave (but stayed together through the holidays not to disrupt anyone’s Christmas, again being a people pleaser) She finally opened up to her family after keeping it to herself after New Years, and her family helped her move out in February It turned out her husband was still in love with his ex-girlfriend, and they ended up getting back together and got married Many People Pleasers end up with people who need them, like Jen’s husband - they’re self-absorbed, narcissistic, etc Jen realized she had been pleasing more people than just her husband, and saw all around her how she needed to change She closed off her business, essentially restarting her life from scratch – new friends, new work, new living environment, and a focus on herself Jen started reading self-help books, and became a voracious reader of them, going through a book each week As she did the work, she also started to let her guard down, and found herself in another relationship with someone she had to please This taught her that she has to stay aware of the situation and not fall into old patterns if you are to truly move forward As Jen started to make decisions about who she needed distance from in her life, she eventually got to her family, where the People Pleaser dynamics were strongest Adjusting your relationships with your family members can be hardest out of everyone because you can’t just sever ties and be unrelated like you can with a friend Today, Jen frames her actions and behaviors around how it relates to her happiness If something is going to bring her joy, she does it; if it’s going to bring her down, she stops Links: Website: liveyourremarkablelife.com Facebook: @liveyourremarkablelife Instagram: @live_your_remarkable_life Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event  

Michelle E. Dickinson is a passionate mental health advocate, a TED speaker, and a published author of a memoir entitled Breaking Into My Life. After years of playing the role of child caregiver, Michelle embarked on her own healing journey of self-discovery. Her memoir offers a rare glimpse into a young girl’s experience living with—and loving—her bipolar mother. Michelle spent years working to eradicate the mental health stigma within her own workplace by elevating compassion, causing more open conversations, and leading real change in how mental illness is understood in the corporate setting and with the first responder community. She also knows first-hand what it feels like to struggle with a mental illness after experiencing her own depression due to challenging life events of her own. Michelle recently concluded her 19-year pharmaceutical career and she has emerged with a strong desire to positively impact the mental health landscape. Key Points from the Episode with Michelle Dickinson: Michelle is a mental health advocate, trying to change the perspective on the issue and more care and knowledge around it Michelle has noticed a change in terms of the increasing openness and acceptance of mental illness and support for it in companies and communities. This was not the path she expected to be on, but it happened and was something she couldn’t avoid. Michelle grew up with a mother with bipolar, which she then spoke about in a TEDx, and wrote a book that was a memoire of her experiencing growing up with a parent with mental illness. We all have stigmas of what mental illness looks like, and Michelle is trying to help paint a different sense of what it really is. Her mother was physically, emotionally and verbally abusive because of her illness She talks about the pain of watching her mother crying inconsolably for hours and not having the ability to stop that pain It made Michelle feel paralyzed and powerless While this hurt, it also fueled a strong empathy an compassion within Michelle and connect with and see the pain in people It’s a powerless situation living with someone with mental illness, and a default for a lot of people can be to tell them to snap out of it, which is what Michelle’s father defaulted to often Michelle is adopted, so she did not worry about inheriting her mother’s mental illness, but life has taught her that no one is immune to it Michelle ended up going through a painful divorce that taught her that lesson first hand Michelle talked about the struggle in writing the book, and going back to her purpose helped her push ahead - she was trying to change the world around the issue of mental illness. As the book was being completed, Michelle’s marriage was coming apart. The two events coming together was the start of Michelle’s life moving to a new, open place. It was really three events as her big corporate job was coming to an end as she got downsized (as she was working on a mental health awareness group at the company, ironically) She made a decision to take that opportunity to make a shift in corporate culture around supporting employees as they struggle with mental illness She’s also focused on the first responder community given the mental burden they can easily face in their work, and the stigma around it as a weakness you have to hide Michelle is working with a local police department Sargent who struggled with PTSD herself to bring resilience and deescalation training to the first responder community. How can you help effectively if you can’t tell the difference between a criminal and someone in crisis? For companies thinking about creating a peer support community, having employees who have navigated a mental health crisis of their own can create a resource those currently struggle will resonate with and benefit from Michelle also developed a children’s program so these kids learn the tools they will benefit from throughout their lives They have the kids teach their peers, which resonates so much better than having an adult tell them about it Links: Website: michelleedickinson.com & breakingintomylife.com Book: Breaking Into My Life: Growing Up with a Bipolar Parent and My Battle to Reclaim Myself Facebook: @breakingintomylife Instagram: @michelledickinson71 Twitter: @mdickinson13 TEDx     Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Tamar Medford is the host of The Road to Health Podcast and has a full-time career in Outsides Sales. She was inspired to create the show because she understands how difficult it can be to stay healthy and turn your life around. Tamar struggled with alcoholism and obesity until she hit her bottom. In early 2012, she let her troubled past inspire her to make some much-needed changes. Tamar realized that she could no longer do this alone and decided to ask for help. She started to take action, and also took responsibility for the life she had created for herself. She reached out to a personal trainer, found a support group, implemented some new habits and started her journey to a better life. Tamar got sober in June of 2012 and also lost 75 lbs by early 2013.  The weight didn’t stay off as she started to struggle with complacency so she turned to quick fixes and yo-yo dieting. Her frustration motivated her to make some major changes in her life and instead of focusing on nutrition and exercise along she started to develop a better mindset. With her team of coaches, she’s learning how to navigate through the challenges she faces and reclaim control of her health while being on the road for business. She hopes that by sharing her journey she can inspire others to make new lifestyle changes for themselves. Key Points from the Episode with Tamar Medford: Tamar is the host of a podcast called “The Road to Health” She has a desire to help people define their goals, understand the Why’s behind them, and simplify them so they can be achieved. This was all born of her journey, which we went deep into in the interview. Tamar has a lot of experience pushing too hard, burning out, and then falling off in a number of ways. Tamar is an alcoholic who also struggled with obesity, having gotten to over 200 pounds after she got sober. Once she got to her goal weight through really intense physical fitness, she pulled back, thinking she was good to coast, and went backward. Six days a week turned to three, which then became none. When she saw results, she wanted more, and would chase and chase. This feeling served her in the good and drew her into the bad, too. Her first time hitting her weight goal was fleeting because she hadn’t yet worked on herself on the inside After she had gained back 40 pounds, she started looking for the quick fixes, and went on a series of yo-yo diets She got into a pattern of “What can I do to make myself better right now?” Going back, she always had volatile relationships with people who would allow or co-sign her behaviors. Her ex-husband was also an addict, and they quickly found that they couldn’t have fun unless you were drinking. Things got so bad that she sat on the bathroom floor with a bottle of pills, and debated ending everything. In early 2012, Tamar decided she had hit her bottom - overweight, feeling unloved and desiring change. She signed up for a gym membership, connected with a personal trainer, and started her on a path of meeting the right people to help her down the path to sobriety. She had found ways to drink less, and a friend talked to her about going to a meeting, but Tamar thought she was ok since she was drinking much less. What she didn’t realize yet is that it isn’t about how much you drink, it’s about how drinking makes you feel. June 17th 2012, after a bender, was the day she began her sobriety. As the journey went on, she just kept building a stronger and stronger community of support and positivity around her, including getting into podcasts in 2019. Listening to other people tell their stories of getting through really helped her with the perspective and path she needed to keep moving through her journey. We need to focus more on getting people to figure out what works for each of us rather than what other people say will work for us. She met Allison Melody at an event, who asked her if she had a podcast, and when she heard Tamar didn’t, she pushed her to create one to tell Tamar’s story and bring that perspective to listeners. Tamar ended up taking a job in sales, which is an industry known for being hard to maintain fitness and fight drinking. She started to develop routines to set her up for success. She plans how much sleep she’ll get, where she’ll eat, etc, and it’s allowed her to travel for business and stay healthy (I do the same, and it totally works!) Her focus of late has really been about mindset, so she’s made a game of the planning to see what tools she’s learned that she can use to help her during a trip. Tamar sees a lot of value in giving yourself grace. If you slip up, don’t carry that forward. Learn from it, but move on. Holding onto it will cost you far more than the slip up itself ever would. Are you doing something every day that makes you a little bit better and puts you closer to your goal. Links: Website: theroadtohealth.me Book: Hope Elevated (Get this free resource related to the book) Podcast Instagram: @theroadtohealthpc Facebook Group: The Road to Health Podcast Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

  I recap the great guests and discussions that came in Season 4 of Do a Day as I pause for a couple of weeks between seasons. There’s some great stuff coming in Season 5, so be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform so you don’t miss the start of the next season! Key Points from the Episode: Wally Carmichael joined us to talk about true abundance Ryan Stratis of American Ninja Warrior joined us as he struggled with the question of what he does going forward, and ended up announcing retiring from ANW after the episode aired Steve Austin joined to talk about trauma leading to shame that festered and lead to a suicide attempt Carlee Myers talked about ways to remove the stress we face in life that ends up defining our existence Michael Levitt, a good friend and beautiful human being, shared how to remove and recover from burnout in our lives Drew Taddia joined to share his personal story of perseverance and hard work to achieve what you really care about James Roberts, a Paralympian, who shares what he learned in not letting a disability block him from doing things he loved and staying fit and healthy Susan Clarke, whose partner CrisMarie Campbell came on last season, shared her journey with trauma and cancer and what she built in her life from that struggle Serena Sabala talked about her experience growing up with a father with mental illness, and how we all need more awareness of mental illness and the tools to protect ourselves from it in our own lives through staying balanced and healthy across the spectrum Carol Hanson talked about the power of self-image, which came from her battle with Anorexia Singer-Songwriter Jackson Gillies, who American Idol fans will recognize, shared his journey with Type 1 Diabetes and HS, learning to listen to his body and what it needs to keep these conditions under control Kacie Main, who Gave Up Men for Lent (which is the name of her book), talks about finding out who she really is on the back of a relationship ending, that redefined how she lives her life Justin Stenstrom joined to talk about how he struggled intensely with anxiety and depression, and the journey he went on to find tools to manage both of them, which he details in his latest book Emi Kirschner talked about her path through divorce and business to understand the power of knowing yourself and being comfortable with that if you want to succeed in business Sam and Paddy Cullinane, the Not So Perfect Couple, talked about their marriage story, which includes divorcing at one point, working on themselves, and coming together in a beautiful way that they share to help other couples love better Mariah Heller, who suffers from Elhers-Danlos syndrome, lives with chronic pain every day and developed approaches to physical fitness that respect that pain rather than worsening it Nathan Todd, who was born with Cerebral Palsy, talks about the power of the labels we choose to put on ourselves and how they can hold us back or allow us to move forward Episode 100 was my chance to bring together two of my favorite people, Cornell Thomas and Michael O’Brien, to talk about resilience and connection in a seriously beautiful episode Sunday Burquest, who was on Survivor Millennials vs. Gen-X, talks about her non-stop struggle to survive despite loss and hardship throughout her life, and her battle with cancer before going on the show. Sunday is battling cancer again right now, so we are all thinking of her and pulling for her. Carolyn Colleen shared a very powerful story of abuse and extreme hardship, including leaving an abuse marriage with a toddler to live in a shelter and build a new life that lead to not only great success and achievement, but powerful tools to get through extreme hardships and struggles we all face Emily Gough, who was surprised to find that her boyfriend had still been seeing his ex, who he moved across the street from Emily and his house. She ended up traveling on her own and learning so much about herself in the process Paul Stretton-Stevens, who has been medically retired three times in life, talks about how we can view these closing doors as the end, or see what else we can do to move forward Andrew Hood battled with extreme anxiety as his finances fell apart but he had to put on a happy face and seem fine to the outside world. When his wife and father brought him out of the shame of hidden pain, his open sharing of what he experienced changed his life and others Lakshmi Dev Bowen, who grew up with abuse and a struggle with sex, drugs and alcohol, then found a re-centering through yoga, which completely changed her life. Links: Website: https://www.bryanfalchuk.com Books: bryanfalchuk.com/books Masterclass:bryanfalchuk.com/overcomeandachieve Facebook @bryanfalchuk Instagram: @bryanfalchuk Twitter: @bryanfalchuk   Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Lakshmi Dev Bowen is a soul fulfillment mentor for the Everything to Everyone Woman who seeks acceptance outside of herself, leaving her feeling disconnected and deeply desiring inner peace. She has been studying and practicing yoga and spiritual healing for over twenty years and is dedicated to uplifting the planet by positively impacting others through teaching, coaching, and speaking. Her passion came from healing her own childhood trauma and body hatred issues initiating her to become a Yoga Instructor, now with over 10,000 hours of teaching experience, then becoming a healer, life coach, speaker, and author. Lakshmi Dev believes in a world where women who’ve been through hell and back create their own heaven on earth for a fulfilled & elevated life of inner peace. She’s an international empowerment & transformational retreat host bringing women together for memorable and fulfilling experiences of self-nourishment, is a married mom of three living in gorgeous Tucson, Arizona & also loves to spend time immersed in the magic of Costa Rica. Key Points from the Episode with Lakshmi Dev Bowen: Lakshmi is focused on the ripple of inspiring others, and how they can then inspires others themselves She teaches and practices yoga, and is centered on people being disconnected by their divinity of purpose and inner peace She does coaching, speaking, writing and retreats to help especially women heal from their past and find inner peace Women in this society are often made to feel like they have to be there for others and be perfect, and thus feel a disconnect or a sense of failure if they have their own struggles She tries to help women see that they don’t have to be somewhere or some way at any point in their life to dissolve their inner conflict and get to self acceptance When there’s something within that needs acceptance, you tend to feel a sense of disconnection from some aspect of your life, or more broadly with it overall Trauma shows up in all of us differently, based on how we internal and give meaning to circumstances For Lakshmi, she internalized that trauma to be self-hatred As a young child, her family moved on the back of a divorce that severed many things in her life that she felt good about Her parents had a messy divorce with her dad struggling with drinking, bad babysitters who were not good roll models, her mother working a lot to support the family, and having a lot of hand-me-down and thrift store clothes All of this fueled a sense of embarrassment While in the care of different family friends while her mother was working, Lakshmi was sexually abused by four different people over a number of years This made her believe deeply and truly that something was wrong with her Lakshmi’s shame from all of this is really based on the shame of the person who caused the shame - she carried it for them. Growing up, she always had a sense that there was something wrong with her and that she would be abandoned. There was constant chaos from age five to ten until her mother got remarried and had a new child with her new husband, which fueled a further sense within Lakshmi that she didn’t matter. By the age of 14, she started doing drugs and drinking, and had already tried to commit suicide once. The healing work Lakshmi has done helped her realize that our trauma is not who we are She became so obsessed with her body, the size of it, how she looked, etc, leading to a struggle with Bulimia from age 16 to 32 As she has gone through her healing journey, the old stories don’t go away, we just learn to see them for what they are The struggles went on in her younger years, including being arrested, being addicted to Crystal Meth and more. We talked about the societal pressure to “just get over it,” which is really about the other person not wanting to be uncomfortable than about you working through and moving past your trauma Lakshmi discovered yoga, which is where her self-awareness started to grow up If you are not centered in your body, you will not be in a place to move to your truth, and yoga is a beautiful way to bring yourself back into yourself We talked about positivity vs. negativity, and the two mindsets, positive and negative. Lakshmi does not believe in just having a positive mindset, and follows the Kundalini Yoga idea that we need both in balance so we know what to be mindful of from the negative, and use the positive to see the power and beauty in ourselves to face these things and thrive Finding the love in ourselves first is what allows us to have love for others Shame and how it passes from person to person is something Lakshmi talks about a lot, and has a very interesting take on. If you hurt someone because you are hurt, you put your shame on them, who then feels there’s something bad about them either that brought your action upon them or as a result of what you did. And they will likely pass that to someone else after being in a shameful place themselves. Lakshmi had to learn to be open and have hope that there’s more out there, especially when she was living in a very hopeless situation Links: Website: https://divinelakshmidev.clickfunnels.com/shed-should  Facebook @divinelakshmidev Instagram: @divinelakshmidev   Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Around 15 years ago, Andrew Hood was transferred to another city for work. It coincided with having financial problems due to a bad real estate investment that he had made at the time. He was isolated from family and friends with a failing single income, a bad investment and a two year old son. He had always been a sufferer of anxiety, but at that point, he was deep in depression also. Andrew didn’t want to let anyone know that things had gotten so bad because that would be like admitting he was failing at life. Things go so bad that his wife ended up calling his father because she was scared that he might hurt, or perhaps even kill himself. Around that same time, he had people coming up to him at work and asking him to be their mentor because they saw him as someone who really had his act together. To put it simply, Andrew was living a lie at work and at home. His wife calling his father was probably the best thing that could have happened to him because of the love and support his parents have always shown him. Andrew still remember his father saying “You don’t understand son, hearing the words ‘dad I need help’ is one of the nicest things that I could ever hear as a father." Soon, Andrew had a plan with his father and accountant to get out of the investment trouble once and for all and was starting to see a therapist about his mental health struggle. Over the next 15 years, Andrew has been working on his career (Now a Director Of Sales for a multinational IT Company), and started a blog which was awarded no.39 in the Best and Most Inspiring Blogs Worldwide, Written two self-published books, and, late last year, signed a publishing contract to release his first novel to the world. He also now loves reading philosophy and learning about people. His life is busy but great. He helps people now, with his management style and in his writing. The book he just published, The Man Who Corrupted Heaven, is about a rich man who dies and progresses through something called the 4 stages of death. It deals with self-reflecting and issues such as child sexual abuse. It is already getting fantastic reviews. Key Points from the Episode with Andrew Hood: In his day job, Andrew is a sales director for an IT company His side hustle, or “passion lane” as he calls it is in his writing Fifteen years ago, he was a junior sales rep at a company. The economy in Australia, where he lives, was booming. On top of the day job, he had lots of little passion projects on the side, and felt like he was thriving. He was married, and had a two year old, and things were good. He was tapped for relocation into a promotion. For six months, everything went well. After that, the work he was moved to do dried up overnight. At the same time, an earlier decision he and his wife made to invest in real estate went South as the global financial crisis took hold. The stress he started living under was tremendous, and the idea that the world thought he was failing only added to it. Andrew described it as a black hole that was following him, and if he didn’t keep moving forward, it would swallow him. Someone at work asked him to be her mentor because he had everything together. Little did she know, he had just been alone in a conference room crying. What was coming out was that Andrew suffers from anxiety, and he was deep in the throes of it. The mentoring brought front and center the idea that he was living a lie because people thought he was ok, but he was struggling inside and hiding it from the world. His wife knew enough of what was going on to know he needed help, and called his father to step in and ask him what was going on. His father said something he would never forget, “One of the best things a father can hear is, ‘Dad, I need help.’” His father helped him work with an accountant to get a plan around the financial problems he faced. Andrew also started to see a therapist, who he shared the idea of living this secret life. He said he always thought secrets were character-building and make you stronger. The therapist shared how the therapy community views secrets, which opened Andrew’s eyes to the need to be open and honest about what we struggle with. She said, “You are only as sick as your secrets.” After the money situation got better, the depression and anxiety remained, as if he was stuck in a hole and couldn’t bring the standard up. This was really interesting - even when the problems go away, the internal work is still needed. As he came through it, he started to write. He told his wife as he began, “I don’t always know what I’m writing until I write it down.” This helped him work through it. He started with a blog, sharing his thoughts. He put out an article on his blog on RUOK Day in Australia about his struggles with mental health and anxiety and the work he did. He was scared to release it as it would expose him and his secrets, but he published it, and the attention started. All his friends and family who knew about the financial issues but not the emotional or mental suddenly knew. What it did was flip a light switch on the issue for others, and people started to share how they also suffered with he same issues but didn’t feel comfortable talking about it. This was the final part of the secret, so when it got out, he started to finally be free of his secrets. As Andrew says, it’s a much better life when you’re not trying to outrun something. He started to get fit, where his health had been suffering for years. He’s started writing books, with is first one taking two years to write. After writing his blog, The Tipping Point, he started to realize he could piece together his thoughts to give a picture of a complete person. His first book is called The Man Who Corrupted Heaven. It was all about a rich man who doesn’t want to give up everything he spent his life building up when he gets to heaven, where you can’t bring anything with you. It follows the main character as he goes through what Andrew called The Four Stages of Death, and the growth he goes through. The sequel, The Man Who Settled the Score, is being written now, and the third book in the series, The Woman Who Stole the World, comes out later. What Andrew realized through everything this that trying to keep it all together by yourself is exhausting and doesn’t help. If you’re worried about someone judging you, then it’s probably not the kind of person you want in your life anyway. Find someone to just talk to so you can start the process. Find something you’re passionate about, and go toward that. Links: Books: Find all of Andrew's books on Amazon.com Facebook @andrewhoodauthor Twitter: @andrewhoodtwtp Instagram: @andrew_hoodtwtp Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Paul is a Future Mindset Coach, Teacher, Futurist, Author, and Speaker who brings perspective, wisdom, foresight, and insight to the difference-makers in the world. His express wish in serving others is that the more people experience joy, fulfilment, and peace of mind in their lives by living their dreams, the better they will impact their families, professional life, communities, and the world. In this interview Paul shares his inspiring story of resilience, motivation, and the importance living true to your values. He talks frankly about how he overcame the obstacles in his life and how he arrived at where he is in life today. Apart from having been medically retired twice, Paul is: A husband, a parent, and a grandparent A proud military veteran A former Physical Education Instructor A former Educational Leader Currently registered blind Still serving others, only in a different way these days When Paul isn’t coaching or writing you’ll find him walking on the beach, eating out, enjoying Jazz, or going to the theatre with his wife. Key Points from the Episode with Paul Stretton-Stephens: Paul Stratton-Stephens is a future-focused person, serving as a future mindset coach and futurist, as well as an author and speaker A “Futurist” is someone who considers the question of what the future looks like for us as human beings – what skills will we need, what will life look like, etc? As we live longer and you have a 60-year career, you may have multiple career stories versus today where we tend to have one or maybe two. Paul’s story started with his childhood, where he had been to twelve different schools This was a function of his father being in the British military, and after his parents divorced, he changed schools again. This taught him the need for communication skills as you’re always the new kid and need to start over. It also means you need to learn flexibility as you’re constantly finding yourself ahead of behind the students you’ve just joined, and you need to flex to catch up. It was strange and tough, but the skills served him well Kids in the area he ended up in, Nottingham, were destined to work in a cigarette factory or in the nearby mines. He watched his father go into a factory job after his military service ended, and it didn’t serve him well, so Paul knew he needed to do something different. He chose to join the Marines, and along the way, he met military police, and found their work incredibly interesting, and he ended up joining the Royal Military Police He was posted all over the world – Germany, Canada, Norway He became a PE instructor in his unit, and as he was leaving the military, he found a civilian job teaching PE in a school. As a coach, he learned that you’re not just there for the technical skills, but helping motivate the individuals who have lots of other things on their minds taking them away from the sport He did that for 10 years, loved the work, and was incredibly fit and healthy. One day, he got home, sat down, and tried to get up, and couldn’t. His lower left leg wouldn’t work. He ended up having back surgery that night, at 32 years old, due to a disc in his lower spine blowing out. His recovery took 6 months before he could return to work given the physical nature of his job. One day 3 years later, he was walking in the hallways of the school and hit a wet spot, and hit his back, blowing the disc out again. Because of the scar tissue in his spine from the first surgery, he had to go to a neurosurgeon for the operation. When he woke up, he had no feeling in his left leg, forcing him to retire from his job. A disability advisor talked to him about accepting things, while Paul had already enrolled in getting his business degree to reeducate himself and move himself forward. Why sit there in misery and rest on your laurels. That’s not Paul’s approach - he wants to keep growing and build opportunities. The purpose he set for himself helped him out of his adversity. In the absence of purpose and the absence of action means we just wallow. We can’t afford to do that as we only have one life. Paul was told by his doctor that he had to accept being in crutches for the rest of his life, and he just did not accept that. Instead, he started to think about what was open to him rather than what he can’t do. As he started explofing what was open to him, he found marketing. He lacked the math skills needed, so he took classes in math to build his skills. He broke out of his comfort zone and asked for him, and built up in the areas he needed to so he could move ahead. He took a weakness he had, put in extra work on it, and got a 100% on his final exam, and remembers that feeling of making a weakness into a strength. Celebrating these wins, no matter their size, adds up to really build us up. He had found a solution for his back pain, which was debilitating. He got an electrical device inserted into his back that he could deliver an electric charge to the injury site that short-circuits the transmission of the pain. The process of getting approval to have it implanted took 6 months, which was very hard since he knew a solution was out there, had severe pain every day, and yet couldn’t do anything about it. He started to walk, bit by bit going farther on each walk, targeting lamp posts out ahead. He started by getting to one, then went on to the second, etc. Building our ability bit by bit, marking the lamp posts out ahead of us, we start to add up to the success we seek. He ended up having an opportunity to substitute teach a business class in high school, stumbling on a very interesting new career that he pursued when a full-time role opened up. Through that experience, he kept getting more opportunity, and ended up becoming the head of a school. During this time, an optometrist found a cataract developing, with various specialists all thinking it was something different while the condition kept progressing. The concern was that it would spread and wouldn’t be able to be stopped. He also had an opportunity to move to Spain and be the head of school there, which he took despite the risk to his vision. There was no time scale for his vision, so he and his family decided not to stop their life for the unknown. His family loved the experience, learned Spanish, traveled all over Continental Europe, and took everything in. In 2015, he woke up one morning and realized his other eye was impacted, too, and had trouble seeing out of either eye, and was forced to stop working by his doctor in Spain. In another “why me” moment, Paul asked instead, “What can I do now?” As he was not content to be medically retired again and for good. He had been writing a bit, and did it with a microphone instead of typing. He wasn’t sure if what he was creating was any good, and found a service to help him with edits and guidance (asking for help, again). He kept writing more, with short stories, then three books tied to his military experience as crime and military stories. He enjoyed the writing, but missed the human interaction that he so enjoyed throughout his career. Some friends wanted help from him as a coach, and so he ended up going into that career as a way to continue the human interaction aspect of his career while still writing (though now doing non-fiction). As a child, he had been bullied when he was new at a school. In that moment, he decided this would never happen again, and enrolled in a Martial Arts class. That was when the switch was turned on inside of him that has stayed switched on through his life. For Paul, he feels that if something knocks you down, you just get up, and you carry on. There is no other choice. He knows some people don’t have this attitude, but he’s found that they have it within them, but it isn’t switched on yet. You may need help switching it on, which may be someone outside your friends and family. It’s the difference between the “Why Me” and “Move Forward” moments. The more we Move Forward, the easier it becomes to do that next time. Links: Website: http://coachpaul.expert Books: Find all of Paul’s books on Amazon.com Facebook: @coachpaulss Twitter: @coachpaulss LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-stretton-stephens Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Emily Gough is a podcasting and business coach, speaker and host of the Room to Grow Podcast, a space for open, honest and real discussions about tough lessons learned in life and entrepreneurship when thrown into the unexpected with the podcast regularly featured in the top 200 worldwide in its’ category. After 11 years working in the corporate world, Emily quit her job to pursue her dream career helping entrepreneurs launch their podcasts and leverage their personal stories to maximize their impact in the world. Her signature approach is all about building powerful, genuine connections and relationships with integrity at the forefront.  Emily currently lives in Bali, is often mistaken as an extrovert, and always searching for more ways to be outdoors. Key Points from the Episode with Emily Gough: Emily, who currently lives in Bali but is from Canada, is an online podcasting coach helping entrepreneurs launch successful shows. Emily had been getting messages on social media from a woman with photos of her boyfriend and this woman - his ex-girlfriend. On Christmas Eve, 2018, there was a knock on the door, and was the woman, sharing those details and more, flipping Emily’s life on its head. He had been having an affair with his ex for all nine years of Emily’s relationship with him. Emily has reflected on her relationship with him, and wondered if there were signs. Looking back, there were, but she chose to trust him rather than not. This isn’t something she regrets as she would rather be a person who trusts than someone who doesn’t at all, even if it comes with pain sometimes. You grow through the experience, and, while you may have trouble trusting at times, she will still do whatever she can to choose trust. You can’t hold someone else hostage for the actions of another. Overall, their relationship had been really good, with others considering them to be a great couple, and they had been friends for years before they dated, making it harder to believe. In the wake of the realization, Emily was wrought with a great deal of self-doubt, and whether she can believe in her ability to see the truth or make the right decisions. We talked about the trade off between knowing the truth and burying your head in the sand. For some things that would just hurt to know and won’t happen again, some might decide to stay in the dark, while Emily generally wants to know regardless. She started to learn even more details that were harder to believe still, which is part of what lead her to physically get out of the situation. In the week that followed, they actually got engaged (that same night) and broke it off, and more. We talked about how staying engaged and getting married may be the right choice for some people. There is no single right choice. There used to be shame in leaving, while now there’s shame in staying. You need to make your decision for you in your context. One more thing she learned was that this ex actually lived at a house less than 200 meters away from theirs. Not only that, the house was being renovated, and he was the one doing the renovations. He had one of his family members buy the house, and made sure no one said anything to Emily, while also hiding his car if he was parked there. During the final six months of the relationship, Emily had been developing crippling anxiety, which ended virtually instantly when she ended the relationship. She also had been having issues with her menstrual cycle for the prior three years, and shared with her mother that she was afraid they wouldn’t be able to have a baby. As soon as they broke up, everything went back to normal, like her body was trying to protect her from having kids with him. It’s like her body was trying to send her a message, and as soon as the relationship ended, things fell into place. She had gone back to school but wasn’t aligned with what she was studying. In the wake of the relationship ending, she decided she was not going to force it any longer and would instead focus on something that did resonate with her. She has really found positivity in what she went through where she would not have gone after things she genuinely loves doing without that wakeup call. It’s not that she wishes this situation on anyone, but is thankful for what it allowed her to do for herself that she would have struggled to do otherwise. Her decision to share her story is about extending a hand to those who have faced this, and are scared to talk about it. We don’t want to talk about it and risk having people wonder what we did to bring this on or to deserve it. If Emily can come through it and thrive, you can, too. The feedback she’s gotten is that it has helped by making people facing infidelity not feel alone, which is empowering and supportive in a way they so needed. Finding her purpose and doing work connected to it has been so powerful. Purpose doesn’t just appear, it’s what we find and make of it. Traveling alone has done so much because it showed Emily how much she can rely on herself, and how capable she is. Another valuable thing has been asking for and accepting help. She spent a lot of time and energy hiding the truth from people. Friends didn’t know what happened, and then saw one day that she had moved to Bali, and didn’t know why. When she told them, she realized how she could have been open sooner and gotten support and love. Accepting that you don’t know what your journey is going to look like has been a big (and hard) thing for Emily. She’s always had a timeline and a plan, and this has been quite a shift for her. This allows the space for new opportunities to arise that you would not have seen otherwise. Links: Website: EmilyGoughCoaching.com Podcast: Room to Grow Podcast Instagram: @EmilyGoughCoach Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

[podcast src="https://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/14243987/height/90/theme/custom/autoplay/no/autonext/no/thumbnail/yes/preload/no/no_addthis/no/direction/forward/render-playlist/no/custom-color/f89c1c/" height="90" width="100%" placement="top" theme="custom"] Carolyn Colleen is a fierce mother of three children, author, international speaker, entrepreneur, and business strategist focused on helping others achieve their goals. Carolyn is the founder of the FIERCE Academy, an online program that helps women create life strategies that enables them to have the life they dream of—without sacrificing their families, careers, or lifestyles. She is also the author of F.I.E.R.C.E.: Transform Your Life in the Face of Adversity, 5 Minutes at a Time! With a soon to be Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership and Behavior (May 2020), an MBA, and a BA in Business, Carolyn understands the importance of traditional education. She also knows that intertwining personal experiences allows people to maximize the information from her teachings, presentations, and workshop offerings. As a dynamic and innovative workplace leader, Carolyn has worked as a Program Manager and Business Development Consultant at Gundersen Health System, Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, Account Management Executive for Gensler, and a Client Service Executive at UBS Financial Services. She knows how to transition people and processes to achieve the next-level of success while also aligning with organizational objectives. From standing in a food line at the Salvation Army to Ph.D., Carolyn is avid about sharing her own life story and encouraging others to make changes that move them from fear to focusing on the pursuit of their passions. Key Points from the Episode with Carolyn Colleen: Carolyn is a mother of three, author, speaker, business strategist, coach and more. In her day job, she builds strategies for healthcare providers to help serve patients at the worst moments of their lives. Her journey started in childhood with what happened to her being channeled into what happens for her. Her mother had mental illness, which shaped her childhood greatly. Additionally, she was sexually molested by a neighbor for years. While her mother meant well, her untreated mental illness had a profound impact on Carolyn’s life. Part of that included being reminded that she was adopted and had to earn her keep in the household. Additionally, Carolyn’s mother was a hoarder, so the house was overwhelmingly full of towers of ‘stuff’ everywhere, and the smells that come along with that and the filth that builds up. Her mother also opened their home to people in need, homeless and others down on their luck. Some of those people sought to abuse that generosity by abusing Carolyn and her younger sister. To protect her sister, Carolyn would offer herself in her sister’s place. Being eight years old, Carolyn loved her younger sister dearly, and took on a great responsibility for her sister to protect and care for her in the absence of their mother’s ability to do that. Her father traveled for work, so he was not around most of the time, leaving Carolyn and her sister alone with their mom with Carolyn to protect her. When Carolyn went to school, she worried about her sister being alone at home with their mother given the issues their mom had. There were days that were great, and days that were horrible – it was unstable and uncertain. As a teenager, Carolyn had her first love, her first boyfriend, who she placed a lot of hope in to take her out of everything. When they broke up, she woke up at 16 in the ER after trying to take her life. She came home after a 72 hour suicide hold to a sister who was angry with her, and said, “Don’t you ever leave me.” She realized how much she was meant to be there for her sister, and promised her she would never leave her again. At 19, she found herself married, pregnant and with a man who sought to destroy her self-worth. Her sister was just 10, and did not really understand the situation, being excited to have a sort-of little sister coming (since Carolyn had basically raised her sister) but also jealous and confused about the new person who would be taking Carolyn’s attention. Carolyn’s husband sought to control her at all times, whether it was her weight, what she wore or anything else. Carolyn thought this was love. She believes we, as humans, choose partners who reflect our sense of ourselves. When her daughter was born, she realized this was not ok, and had to seek better for the two of them. She says she borrowed the love she had for her daughter until her own self-love caught up enough for her to do it for herself, too. She had created a mental jail out of low self-worth and negative self-talk that her spouse was reinforcing. She could have left physically, but was constrained emotionally and mentally. When her husband saw the risk of her leaving, he told her he would take both of their lives so they could be together. In between calls from him to check on her whereabouts and actions, she grabbed her daughter and a couple of bags, and went to the Salvation Army to escape. She couldn’t believe this was her life, and felt paralyzed. She had to think of a way to move forward and keep smiling so she didn’t scare her daughter, and find a strategy so this would not be her life. Someone said, “You can get through this, one day at a time.” Carolyn was floored. She didn’t think she could get through a day. It was too much. So she started to look at things in five minute chunks, which was all she could face at that time, but became an empowering way to move forward. She took all the tough, negative emotions, and use them as fuel to move forward. She had to find a place to sleep that night, food to eat for her and her daughter, and that was it. And she did it. While in low income housing, a stabbing happened outside her home, and she decided that this was not acceptable and one year from then, she would be out. She had no idea how or where she’d go, but that she must go. She moved out one year from the date she got the keys to the place. She had used that emotion to kick on her fight-or-flight mechanism to take actions in a positive direction for the next five minutes, which would build to ten, twenty, etc. We can do something we don’t want to do for five minutes even if we just want to hide or do nothing. The more she practiced this, the more she achieved, the more opportunities arose, and the more she evolved. She soon found herself able to get through a whole day, and then she can create bigger goals and reverse-engineer them down to five minute actions. The next period of her life was working full-time, being in school full-time, helping raise her sister and raising her daughter with no support. She completed her undergraduate degree, then her masters and PhD. You can look back and see what things you’ve faced that you can see as adverse advantages. She has an ability to flex, have empathy and build large, complex, sustainable strategy because of her ability to see a path through unpredictable, difficult situations. Carolyn has had amazing support throughout her life, and taught her that your family is who you make it. She’s found that letting go of ego is needed to accept help from the community. No matter what happened five minutes ago, the next five minutes is yours to decide where to go with it. Links: Website: carolyncolleen.com where you can get the F.I.E.R.C.E. Action Guide Book: F.I.E.R.C.E.: Transform Your Life in the Face of Adversity, 5 Minutes at a Time! Instagram: @carolyncolleen Facebook: @FIERCEandFulfilledCommunity Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Sunday is Grit Girl. Sunday Burquest is a wife, mother of four, inspirational speaker, breast cancer survivor and reality tv personality. Diagnosed with breast cancer in April of 2012, she endured multiple surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation, and a bout with depression. A culmination of difficult life circumstances, led Sunday to the realization she was much stronger than she imagined; she discovered her grit.  Taking her new-found strength to the next level, she followed a life-long dream to audition for the Emmy award-winning television series Survivor where she was cast on the show’s 33rd season Millennials vs Gen-X (2016). After surviving the grueling competition, she knew she had taken grit to another level.  Using her 25 years’ experience in a high-level leadership position that included both speaking and mentorship, she took her skills to a new platform as a Keynote Speaker. In her presentation, “Your survival can be summarized in one word: grit”, Sunday draws on personal experiences while she presents a path for the audience to discover their own grit. Her dynamic and engaging talks have listeners on the edge of their seats both laughing and crying, but most importantly inspired with hope.  Sunday is the author of, “Grit Girl Power to Survive, Inspired by Grace”, walking the reader through her journey to finding grit while providing a path for them to do the same.                 Key Points from the Episode with Sunday Burquest: Everyone is born with and has grit and strength on the inside We are all survivors in our own right It’s not a competition – everything effects everyone differently We are all survivors to Sunday, and she knows that because we are here, breathing. That means we’ve survived. Often, we don’t even realize what we’ve gone through until after it’s over This grit came from Sunday’s mom Growing up, her father was an alcoholic When she was 11, her mother gave her father an ultimatum to stop drinking or leave, and he chose his family Her mother had been a person of faith, and her father became one after he gave up drinking This was Sunday’s first real memory of seeing the strength her mother had When she was 30, her father died of Cancer when he was 49 and Sunday had three young children A few years later, her father-in-law also died of Cancer In the midst of this, her brother and sister-in-law lost a baby full-term, and another of her brothers faced a heroin addiction at 17 years old. Sunday felt an obligation to help her mother with her siblings through this, especially given that two of them were still in their teens. In 2010, Sunday’s husband Jeff suddenly went into the hospital and had emergency heart surgery for a hole in his heart with a clot in it. The doctor very coldly gave Sunday the choice of operating with her husband dying on the table or not operating and having him die from his heart issues. She chose the surgery, which lasted 10 hours. A couple of weeks after the surgery, he was bleeding internally and nearly died again, getting to the hospital in the nick of time. The doctors said he should have died this time, too, which to Sunday was a clear sign of a miracle, and she demanded the doctors put that on Jeff’s chart. She had this clarity that her husband would pull through, and that got her through what was a very difficult time. We talked about how her kids processed and dealt with the situation, which was different for each kid, but was a lot (combined with what Sunday went through with her own health, which we were about to get into) Her kids have seen both of their parents survive, which strengthened their sense of faith and connection with their family. They’re very much aware that they’re blessed to have their parents in their lives in a way that perhaps other people wouldn’t be. A little less than a year after her husband’s health crisis, Sunday noticed a lump and went in to get it checked. She got a call after a biopsy from a nurse that she had invasive ductal carcinoma. Sunday didn’t know how to react, but she was reserved while just dealing with the idea of how she could possibly tell her kids about this after just getting through potentially losing their dad and the two other people they knew with cancer having died (their grandfathers). She talked to them about how hard she was going to fight, all the money that goes into breast cancer research, etc. But it was still tough for them. Her surgeon was as cold as Jeff’s heart surgeon was, but they built a plan for surgery, chemo and then radiation. She balanced being honest with it being hard and showing strength when talking to her kids about it. They saw her cry and struggle, and they saw her get up every day and do what she needed to do. After her first round of chemo, Sunday was overcome with a panic attack – something she’s never had before and wasn’t expecting. Her doctor knew what it was, and helped her to understand it and recognize that it happens in these situations, and she’s ok for feeling it. The process was a gift to her, as it taught her empathy she’d never have before. She kept wondering when she would get back to normal, but she realized her normal is different now, like what we are facing right now. Sunday is the kind of person who tries to find positives in every situation, and this was one of them in her cancer experience. Another is that her family was guilty of busyness at the expense of family, and that has changed. In total, she had 7 surgeries, 8 rounds of chemo and 28 days of radiation, which, all together, took over a year. I asked how she and her family could have gone all of this, and then go off to play Survivor. She and her oldest son applied to play together (in the Blood vs. Water seasons), but didn’t ultimately make it. They were fans of the show as a family, and they are all clearly survivors, so it was a perfect fit. Despite not making it with her son, she tried again, and made it for the Millennials vs. Gen-X season. She very much filled The Mom role on the show, as a caring and supportive person. It was very interesting to play that role for your adversaries given her desire to win. For Sunday, being faith-based was a big part of how she was able to be strong and driven to win and yet also be supportive and caring. That sat well with her because her values meant she would not want to be purely a competitor without being a human, too. We talked about the ethics of lying, and she talked about why it was ok to lie. She wasn’t going to go too far with it, getting dirty or mean, but she would say she was voting for one person and go and vote for another. She said if she was playing a game with her kids, she would still beat them if that’s how the game was going. It’s a game, and she was there to win, so lying is a tool of that process without needing to go a step beyond that to offending and demeaning people. We got into the generational differences in style around working together, underestimating your opponents and thought processes. Millennials are used to working in groups whereas Gen-Xers aren’t. When you put Millennials in a top-down, order-taking situation, they don’t know how to work like that. Links: Website: iamgritgirl.com Facebook: Sunday Burquest & The Grit Girl Tribe (women-only) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sundaysurvivor/ Twitter: @sundaysurvivor Instagram: @sundaysurvivor Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

This is a huge milestone for Do a Day – the 100th episode! Rather than doing a retrospective or solo episode, I wanted to bring in people from past episodes who have continued to be part of my life and continued to have an impact on how I think about things on a daily basis.   With that intention, I am SO honored to get to bring my friends Cornell Thomas and Michael O'Brien back on the show. We use the term "friends" loosely often, but these are two men I would genuinely consider friends for the personal connection we've made, and the impact we've had on each others' lives. I strongly suggest you go back to each of their episodes to hear their brilliance, and learn more about their stories. Cornell was on Episode 41 and Michael was on Episode 62.   Key Points from the Episode with Cornell Thomas & Michael O'Brien: Cornell Thomas joined again after appearing on Episode 41, which you have to listen to. He speaks on mindset, including overcoming adversity and callous the mind to become stronger from the problems we endure growing up. Cornell is also the founder of the Positivity Summit, which is a global series of events to bring together people to talk about how to build and live a positive mindset. Michael O’Brien joins us after being on Episode 62, which was a moving and inspiring conversation. Michael prevents bad moments from turning into a bad day (or longer). As Michael says, where we are now as a planet is a bad moment, to be sure. This is a point where there will be pain and suffering, but also a moment we can come out of stronger if we are willing to learn from it, and decide the way show up in these moments and on the back of them. Both Michael and Cornell have lived through very extreme moments that felt like their lives were over (for Michael, that took a literal meaning on top of the figurative one). This gives them perspective on what we face today, where lives are at risk for many, but how we live our lives is impacted for everyone. Michael said we are allowed to have two thoughts in our head, positive and negative. Cornell went deeper on this. You can have the moment thinking, “this is it, everything is ruined.” And you can have the thought of, “I can come out of this, regardless of the struggle.” The key is recognize the choice here rather than curling up and feeling like you can’t do anything. Choice can be tough to exercise, but it is a power we have. Neither Cornell nor Michael had any advanced warning in their stories, which not only shocks and surprises you, but creates a great deal of uncertainty. That uncertainty is a big part of what we are all struggling with now. Uncertainty creates a lot of difficulty, including potential questions of our identity – who are we if we don’t have our job or our role in our family? Michael reminds us we can’t find our true or new identity without taking steps, even small ones. There are positive messages around us right now. The fact that the virus is able to spread means that we all must be so connected and intertwined, which is a fact we can use positively when we’re able to come back together. Cornell reminded us that need to focus on acceptance. We can’t change anything without acceptance. We have been through so much as a people already, so we will get through this. This becomes an opportunity for us to get to things we haven’t done because of how busy we all are. One change can be the tone we have been seeing of late, with the negativity in the political scene globally. Michael brings up how the way we shape this situation defines what will come from it. The way we write this narrative defines the outcome. The idea of getting back to the way things were is something that none of the three of us hopes happens. We need to build something better rather than just going back to what we were. We talked about the butterfly effect of every moment and choice in our lives, even the seemingly tough ones. Cornell would not have his family or the impact he has today if he hadn’t gotten injured and had gone to Europe to play professional basketball. Michael has no regrets about what he has experienced, including his accident. He’s gotten to a place where he loves every scar on his body because of what he’s built as a result of them. Michael used the idea of Japanese Kintsuge pottery, which is made from joining up broken pieces using gold or other precious metals, and the new creation is far more beautiful than the original thing that had to be broken for the new version to exist. This is moment for creativity, where Cornell reminds us that thinking outside the box from a place of empathy for what people are going through can lead to new ideas that move us forward. If you have been through something before, you can either use it to build your shield or let those things crack it. But Cornell raises that we have been through all of these things before, or we wouldn’t be here, so we should recognize that we can do it. Michael asks a great reminder question for us all – share a time when you’ve faced something really hard and got through it. How did you do that? What lessons can we take from that today? There is a risk that the socio-economic divide we’ve already had will deepen if we don’t take specific action to address it. Cornell talked about the moments to find purpose, which ties to his life-long pain of not understanding why he didn’t have a dad (who died when he was just a toddler), and it did not become clear to him until he became a dad himself. We have to have faith and understand that as long as we have breath in our bodies, we can change our situation. Michael shared three ideas that can help especially in a moment like this with the challenges we face right now: When you feel the stress percolating, focus on your breath to slow everything down. Everything in our life is neutral until we label them, as Michael learned during his recovery from his accident. Nothing has meaning until we give it meaning, and we tend to be quick to do that with labels like good or bad. Through gratitude, we can see what we still have and can still do rather than just seeing what we have lost. We all have a daily responsibility to see good in the world, and these can be the building blocks for something much bigger. We can all do even little things to make people’s lives better, like letting someone merge in front of us, getting groceries for our neighbor, or whatever else we can do to help someone. Links: Michael O'Brien Website Books: My Last Bad Day Shift: How to Prevent Bad Moments from Turning into Bad Days Shift: Creating Better Tomorrows: Winning at Work and in Life Facebook LinkedIn Instagram Cornell Thomas Website Books: The Power of Positivity: Controlling Where the Ball Bounces The Power of Me: Army of One Extraordinary: The Distance Between Good and Great Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Instagram Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Take your growth into your own hands with the Do a Day Masterclass Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

One of Nathan’s favorite sayings as a kid was “Crash & Burn.” Why? Because he was born 8 weeks premature with Cerebral Palsy. This meant Nathan didn’t learn to walk until the age of 4, he had a 504 plan at school, he learned to drive using hand controls, graduated college, and learned from an early age that your gonna fall down, the thing that makes the difference is your ability to get up and walk through your fire. For 9 years he coached people with disabilities and everyday he would hear I can’t because [insert label here]. He saw that people would be limited by a label placed on them, usually by society, and it became their reality. What Nathan realized was this isn’t a disability issue it’s a human issue. For the past year he’s been developing the message of No Label Defines Me. What 34 years of life have taught him is, often it feels like us as humans are navigating a world that wasn’t designed for us. In order to live a No Label Defines Me life you must learn to adapt & act. Nathan is the author of Empower Yourself: Awaken the B.E.A.S.T. Within. Through eradicating labels, Nathan’s mission is to Eradicate Loneliness and help people get reconnected with their true self Key Points from the Episode with Nathan Todd: Nathan and I jumped right into the discussion with the idea he talks about of No Labels Nathan feels that all of us is at war with the labels we put on ourselves every day No Labels is about looking our labels in the face, going to war with them and finding how to move forward Nathan has Cerebral Palsy (CP), which he could look at negatively, but instead finds it to be a driving force in his life. The broader label is the word “disability,” and Nathan notes how people without disabilities often try to use another word like, “Differently-abled” to be sensitive but also note what we can’t do For Nathan, his disability represents strength and possibility, and he feels he would not be where he is without his disability. One way this has impacted him as a White male is that he is a minority despite not being in one of the typical categories people think of when thinking about being a minority. He has been overlooked, judged, diminished and more in ways that inform his perspective on what people who are not White men might feel through the impact of race and gender discrimination on them. He talked about the terms “Angry Disabled Person Syndrome,” which, to him, means it’s very easy to get angry, and blame the disability or feel like, “Why me?” For Nathan, he instead asks if it really is the disability, or might he be coming off in an angry way and his behavior might be why people are having an issue with him. This helps him take responsibility rather than place blame. He doesn’t say this in judgment of anyone because that is exactly how he was living for a long time. It is easy to blame his disability for many things. He could just give in, not try, not push himself and live up to the expectation of society of a disabled person. That does not help you find what you are actually capable of. Nathan was born 8 weeks premature with a 50/50 chance of survival. That experience and having to fight for his life is a mystery to him – it happened to him, but he obviously has no memory of it. From his first breath, he was fighting for his life, and that no doubt informed much of personality and thought-process. CP, which is brain injury, for Nathan was caused by a brain lead that is almost like having a stroke. His form is called Spastic Diplegia, which complete impacts his motor skills – walking, writing, etc. He did not learn to walk until he was 4, which required surgery when he was 3 to even be able to try to walk. He calls out not just what this meant to him, but what his parents were going through in this process and the hard decisions they were faced with repeatedly, like choosing to have their 3 year old undergo that surgery. Nathan’s mother did a lot of advocating for children with disabilities, including getting the State of South Carolina approve the surgery he had for other kids. Nathan’s mother was a role model that inspired his path to be a coach and speaker. Nathan has a younger brother, so he notes that his brother’s experience matters, too, as it does for other siblings of people with disabilities. Nathan and his brother learned to walk at the same time, for example, and there were things his brother wanted to do with him that Nathan couldn’t do. And there is likely a difference in the attention each sibling gets from their parents. The shared experience these siblings have informs who they are today. Nathan talked about his dad, who was a football coach. He always wanted to be Joe Montana, which wasn’t in the cards for him, which really impacted his sense of himself. His dream was something he couldn’t do, and he saw approval from his father as being tied to, so it was really hard for him – even today. Nathan’s parents got divorced when he was 16, which brought up the statistics that the overwhelming majority of marriages with a disabled child end in divorce. Nathan has always felt responsibility for his parents’ tough times together and their divorce. Not having his dad there when he was becoming a man was very hard for him. That process gave Nathan some of the specific moments in his life that shape who he is today that he goes back to for processing and self-work. We all have things we went that shape so much of who we are or are even running our life today, but we don’t go back to them or work through them. We call this “Being Tough,” but it isn’t that, it’s hurting us and costing us. Nathan’s work on those past relationship pains and experiences have informed how he approaches any relationship, so he’s realized that we have to go back and work through what happened. This is where our labels come from. The biggest label we face is “I’m not good enough.” This can lead to loneliness – we are trying to live up to someone else’s standard (or ours that we ascribe to someone else), and yet we can’t, so we feel removed. Loneliness is a signal for thirst and hunger – we are becoming disconnected from people around us, and yet we are standing in the way of that. We tend to think we’re the only one going through what we face, and that makes us feel even more alone. And when someone asks us how we are, we say, “I’m fine.” A turning point for Nathan came 3 years ago as he went through a 12-step program for the pain he was dealing with in his life (rather than for addiction, for example). Through that process, he realized how his past experiences and labels from when he was 16 were keeping him stuck – even 16 years later. This lead to so much anger inside of him, so the need to work on it was so strong and so much for his benefit. He used the book The 30 Day Sobriety Solution, and found the visualization tools in it to be so helpful. He had been equating relationships with pain, which stood in the way of building good, lasting relationships. The moment that started his shift came at Louis Howes’ Summit of Greatness. He found himself questioning why he was there when everyone else was so successful, and he was stuck. He had a conversation with someone on Louis’ team who talked to him about what he was offering rather than what he wasn’t; his perspective is one the others can’t offer, and there’s value there. He ended up joining a training after the summit, and found himself at the end of each module feeling like he wasn’t done and that he had to keep working on himself further. Through the process, he realized how much power he has and the level of impact he can have for others. Nathan realized how perspectives can be shifted by how we interact – even just asking people what they create in this world rather than “what do you do?” We have so much more power to create than just getting a job. We have a power to create drastic shifts in the world by showing up, treating people the way we want to be treated rather than that place of “Why me?” There’s something to be said for trying. Instead of saying “What can’t you do,” why not try. You may not make it, but you will learn something, have the experience of doing it, and grow. Nathan saw a friend fall, and he said to his mother, “Oh, that’s ok. They haven’t learned how to fall yet.” He had to learn how to fall and get up, which is literally valuable itself, but also philosophically or figuratively, as it informs the need to be able to try, fail and recover. He asks what we can eradicate to elevate – what distractions are in your life keeping you from getting from point A to B. Everything standing in the way of the straight line of where you want to do is a distraction you need to find a way to remove, and many are of our own doing. It’s about making it as simple as possible. Nathan goes by the nickname, “The Muscle Motivator.” He doesn’t look like other people in the gym, but he’s in there doing it, so he can be a motivator for others. Funny enough, this is a label, which we started the conversation about being at war with. His point is, we all have labels. If you don’t like the label you have, peel it off and get another one. It isn’t that there are no labels, it’s that we have the choice to choose which ones define us. It is our choice what labels we use, but also how we let them define us. For Nathan, despite someone else thinking “disability” is a negative term, he does not need to let it be that for him. Links: Website Book: Empower Yourself: Awaken the B.E.A.S.T. Within Instagram: @thelonelinesscoach YouTube Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Mariah Heller is a professional trainer, gym co-founder, author, speaker, certified massage therapist, and creator of the corporate wellness company “Pain-Free Fitness”. After spending eight years in the fitness industry and serving many clients with chronic pain, Mariah realized that the industry was failing in a vital way: there were no solutions for the busy professional who simply didn't have the time or resources to spend on lengthy classes or expensive personal trainers. Mariah created Pain-Free Fitness' 10-minute system to provide a simple, effective, and customizable path toward a stronger and more pain-free body. As a featured author on T-Nation and Breaking Muscle and a speaker at UC Davis' entrepreneurship academy, Mariah's audiences have spanned further than she ever imagined. Mariah's mission is to give everyone the tools to live a more pain-free and healthy life with simple daily 10-minute routines." She shares her story of why "pain free" is so important to her personally, and she leaves us with advice and guidance to make fitness about being better, not punishing ourselves or living with the aftermath of it rather than the benefits. Key Points from the Episode with Mariah Heller: Mariah runs a company called Pain Free Fitness, which tries to bring a reasonable mindset to an extreme industry. Her focus is for people who want to be healthy in a sustainable way without being extreme. Mariah had been a martial artist and then a singer and dancer, so movement and fitness were always part of her story. On the back of experiences that were really unacceptable and unhealthy, and the expectations put on her as a young woman, she left the show business industry. As a backlash to that experience, she ended up putting on weight due to the emotional stress and its fallout. She had developed an eating disorder, and was working past that and using CrossFit to get her body to a good place. In the process, she started to have extreme hip pain, and, because she was young, doctors just told her to rest and she’d be fine. After taking months off and the pain still being there, she ended up having to have her hip reconstructed, which included a 9-month recovery period. The surgery and recovery forced her to stop her go-go-go style, and that allowed her body to recover, even out hormone levels, etc. One day, a physical therapist friend noticed that she was hyper-mobile, which explains why she was such a good dancer and Olympic lifter. It also can explain the pain she was experiencing. She started to look into it more, and found that she has something called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. It is where the body has more elastin than normal, allowing you to move more than others might without having pain. While that can sound good, it means that you put yourself into positions where you are doing damage, but don’t have the pain signal to stop doing it, so you can injure your body more easily than if pain was telling you to stop. We talked about the way fitness transformation intertwines with our self-identity, which becomes hard to let go of if you have to stop due to injury or for other reasons. It’s almost like you are mourning the loss of that part of your identity. As Mariah sees it, we do not need this big mental strain around fitness or damage your body to make progress, but rather know your Why and see if what you’re doing aligns with that. People often go into working with Mariah to get to a former version of what they were. But that’s not really what we need. We need to find the right place for our bodies in our current situation and with our current goals. Her work with Pain Free Fitness felt like a calling, and that she was on borrowed time physically and had to make the most of it. This was informed by her own pain journey, and also growing up with a sister who has been paralyzed since her late-teens. It gave Mariah a sense of purpose and drive to make the most of what she has. Being in pain is part of Mariah’s normal, and doesn’t freak her out. She is in a state of radical acceptance of where she is with pain. When it had first started, she certainly was not in that place, mentally, and went through a period of feeling a loss but also determination to get through it. Whether we “get back to where we were” or are ok – whether that’s about fitness, pain or what we are all going through right now with COVID-19 – Mariah knows no one will look back on any of that and wish they worried more, so she tries to make the most of what we do have. Mariah talked about a trauma background, and how it can result in our brain creating chaos when there’s empty space. She has learned not to create chaos around her pain, and is working on doing the same thing with other themes in her life. Pain, for her, is not situational but constant. She finds herself pushing off other sources of anxiety as situational in that they will pass. No matter what place you’re in with pain or your physical health, try to do something every day. Try to achieve something so you can feel a win every day. And share it – acknowledging it for yourself is huge, and sharing it with another person is 10 times more powerful. That depends on having the right people around you, of course, whether that’s about negativity, judgment or questioning you. Slowing down is not popular in the fitness community, so be aware of that. You also need to be aware of the line between complacency and appropriate levels of pacing. There’s a common misconception in the fitness world that anyone who is fit is just naturally self-motivated. That’s not Mariah. She has to manufacture motivation to get into that space. She calls on discipline quite often, tapping into her martial arts background. You can’t wait to feel better before you do something. Mariah knows this because she faces daily pain, so waiting until she doesn’t hurt may mean waiting her whole life. The key is to find a way to do something despite what you face. The starting point Mariah always recommends is to find a practitioner who is willing to get to the root of things for you and design a path forward. Don’t be afraid to try more than one. And many of the practitioners now offer virtual options, including Mariah with Pain Free Fitness and a PT she often partners with (named Christine Coth) If a practitioner is talking more than listening or projecting their goals onto you, those are signs that they are not likely to be the best fit for your needs. Second, is recognizing that healing is not a straight line. It goes all over the place, spins around, etc. If you don’t realize that, you can find yourself discouraged. Mariah left us with a bit of inspiration - even if your pain does not go away, you are going to be fine. Links: Website: 10minutefit.com Facebook: @mariahpainfreefitness Instagram: @coachmariahpainfreefitness Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

[podcast src="https://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/13357547/height/90/theme/custom/autoplay/no/autonext/no/thumbnail/yes/preload/no/no_addthis/no/direction/forward/render-playlist/no/custom-color/f89c1c/" height="90" width="100%" placement="top" theme="custom"] Investor, serial entrepreneur, coach and international speaker, Emi Kirschner, masterfully combines her intuitive abilities with her analytical sense to help driven entrepreneurs become the Visionary CEO of their business resulting in doubling revenue. Emi is an expert in: Implementing strategic, long term plans Increasing productivity and performance while reducing stress Increasing sales by maximizing process and lead capture Building and developing value centered, mission driven teams She is also the host of the Tribe of Leaders podcast, where she interviews successful entrepreneurs who share how they have developed their leadership skills through the success and challenges of growing their business As a Young Entrepreneur Academy instructor Emi teaches 7th-12th graders how to write a business plan and pitch to investors. When not traveling, Emi can be found wearing flip flops and drinking coffee at many of the local shops where she lives in Philadelphia. Key Points from the Episode with Emi Kirschner: Emi is a business coach working with creative entrepreneurs looking to make a difference in other people’s lives. She’s found many people who are more visionary and artistic or creative, yet may lack the structure skills to create the systems needed for those ideas to turn into successful businesses. She’s one of those people. In helping people, she found that many don’t look at themselves as leaders, so she’s trying to spread the idea that everyone is a leader whether we see ourselves that way or not. She seeks to bring that message out with her Tribe of Leaders podcast. Emi’s backstory includes stints in many different industries that taught her so much about business and the skills needed to succeed in it. As a child, she grew up with a lot of moves for various reasons, whether job opportunities for her father, trying to get access to better schools or something else. That included going from high school in urban Washington DC to rural New Hampshire. Throughout that process, Emi and her sister were never really given a voice or choice in it, which informed how she’s chosen to parent her sons. When she did voice her desire to stay through and finish a year of high school that was nearly done, although she spoke up, there was no consideration for what she said. Today, she’s able to look at this situation with forgiveness and understanding that her parents did the best they could with what they knew, and Emi can do differently today with her kids. Her kids always have the ability to speak their mind and explore what would work for them. This has also set them up for how they interact with adults more broadly, which is serving them well in their lives. She remembers holding her oldest son when he was just a newborn, and knowing he (and then his younger brother) were going to be the most important things in her life. She’s had to transition that mentality as her kids are becoming adults. She also went through a divorce as she realized she and her husband didn’t work well together anymore. She found herself sick regularly, and hasn’t since leaving her marriage. As she’s up-leveled and changed, it raised the expectations for her kids to see what ‘doing better’ looks like. She stopped tolerating things that weren’t serving her, and her kids and clients saw that. She’s found that, when we stop worrying about blockers is when things tend to fall into place. We are all experiencing this feeling of not being enough, not having enough value. Her biggest wake up call came from her divorce, when she had been sick all the time with sinus infections and wishing to just feel good. The inquiry into how to feel good led to more of a sense of needing to play. The joy from a bit of silliness can create great growth and freedom to move forward. It also opens you up to self-love, and seeing your abilities and strengths. Whereas she used to see herself as making the best decisions for her kids, it changed to being a guide for her kids to make their own decisions. She actually asks her kids to rate her on a scale of 1-10, and tell her what could be better. She believes, as I do, that how we show up in one area of our lives impacts how we show up in others. We aren’t segregated pockets of who we are. Emi loves list making, and prefers it to doing the 5 or 10 year plans, which end up being too vague, which makes it hard to make the right decisions of how to move forward. Emi has created a sense of flow for her life through facing all the things she’s had to as a single mom of two very different kids. Emi would ask her catering clients when she ran that business about the experience they wanted to have rather than just what they wanted to serve. When her son Brian was a baby, he had a lot of digestive issues that doctors couldn’t help with, which set Emi on a journey to understand how food ties to our health, and build a passion for healthy cooking and eating. She does believe in enjoying things you’re trying to enjoy without beating ourselves up. We shouldn’t create stress around something that we’re trying to be happy about. We will get lots of things wrong in life. It’s not for us to beat ourselves up, but rather to learn and more on. Grow and be capable once you know. No matter how much we have our stuff together, there’s always room to grow and learn if we live in a non-judgmental, open way. Her approach with her kids is to allow, be heard and acknowledge them. Links: Website: emikirschner.com and thetribeofleaders.com Podcast: Tribe of Leaders (hear me on episode 44) Facebook: @EmiKirschnerCoaching & Tribe of Leaders Group Instagram: @emi.kirschner & @tribeofleaders LinkedIn: @emikirschner Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Patrick, or "Paddy", Cullinane is a serial entrepreneur who has started and sold multiple businesses and developed several software applications in the logistics and supply chain industries. Sam Cullinane began her career climbing corporate ladders to achieve the rank of Chief of Staff of a multi-billion dollar, multi-national company, before leaving that life behind to pursue a career in music, working with Paddy on his endeavors, and joining him to help couples work on their relationship through their podcast, books, speaking a more. Sam and Paddy have been married for over twenty years and they would tell you they are one of the happiest couples they know. But they weren’t always this happy. In fact, after ten years of marriage, they were ready to sign the divorce papers. During the first ten years of their marriage, they struggled through like most people do: trying to navigate life together without any real tools, realizing they were in many ways opposites, fighting often, having sex less and less, distrust and jealousy rearing their ugly heads, and what they believed was falling out of love. They were under tremendous pressure, as many families are these days, raising their two children and each of them pursuing their rigorous careers. In their tenth year of marriage, they decided to call it quits and filed for divorce. After a year apart, against all odds, they decided to get back together. This time they came with new insights including recognition of the things each of them brought to the relationship – good and bad. Both made the necessary changes to successfully start their next chapter. For the last ten years they’ve grown their love, their bond, and created an amazing life together. They became students of love and they never looked back. Their book, released July 2017, Bigger Love – is their story along with tips, tools, and tricks for taking your relationship to a higher, deeper, more satisfying level. Their second book, Marriage: From Miserable to Magnificent, was released in early 2020. Key Points from the Episode with Sam & Paddy Cullinane: Sam and Paddy Cullinane have been married for 23 years, but it’s more a tale of two decades because their marriage had two distinct periods. The first 10 years were separate from the second ten (plus) by a year apart where divorce papers had been signed on the back of growing very far apart. Each of them had this sense that you’re married and are happily ever after with the feeling of butterflies and Eros love, as Hollywood tells us. After year three, that feeling had shifted through the day to day of marriage and raising kids. They had moved closer to Sam’s family, her job had changed to being on the road five days a week while Paddy’s career had ups and downs. Through the grind, they felt that initial ‘fire’ was gone. Sam hit on the idea of how you reignite the fire, but a better question is whether you actually want to go back to that, or if something else would be better. Paddy felt that he was very far down on Sam’s priority list, below things like work, the kids, taking a nap, friends, etc. And Sam felt like she was making the money and doing everything and wasn’t sure why she needed Paddy, who seemed to give her nothing but asking for sex. Sam asked Paddy to move out, and also got the opportunity to move to Spain for work, so she left with the kids. Paddy took the time alone to face things on the encouragement of his cousin, who suggested he look inside himself at his part in the problems. That would serve him if things worked out with Sam or not since he takes himself into both situations. Paddy realized he could be happy with or without Sam. He had started to make more money and shared that and his sense of being the source of his own happiness with Sam, which changed how she saw him. Sam felt like he grew up, and that drew her to him. For Sam, she thought the escape from Paddy and to Spain would make everything better, but she found herself to still not be happy. She was working too much, wasn’t finding relationships that interested her, and realized Paddy wasn’t why she was not happy. Sam’s style was to compartmentalize what she faced in life, which was starting to take its toll as the various issues were filling up inside of her. Paddy’s style is very different, with his unhappiness being front and center. He changed by talking about it while before he would sulk and hope Sam would ask what was wrong. They had gone through the divorce process amicably, and signed the papers. Their lawyer never got around to filing them, though. Roughly a year after splitting up, Paddy was visiting the kids in Spain, and they reconnected. No matter who else they dated or thought about, there’s one thing they have that they wouldn’t with anyone else, and that’s an equal investment in their kids, their health and their futures. That shared unconditional love for their kids can be used to see the good in each other, but only if you look for it. They have taken the second part of their marriage as a chance to learn and grow together, which culminated in their first book, Bigger Love (https://amzn.to/2UoBT1n). They recently published a new version of their work, Marriage: from Miserable to Magnificent (https://amzn.to/39utvSe), which adds scientific facts into the discussion and honesty they shared in the first book. Paddy had previously invested a lot of his happiness in whether Sam was paying attention to him, and in the second half, he had found his own sources of enjoyment that had nothing to do with Sam. And Sam had made decisions about what mattered to her most, and would be ways to make her happy, too. Those ideas formed the basis of non-negotiables for them to come back together in their marriage. Sam’s job had been all encompassing, which isn’t sustainable. She talked about the idea of things like that being in sprints, but not taking over all the time. Paddy added the need to think about why you’re doing that sprint and making that purpose stay front and center (e.g. your kids). We got into the sources of frustration, and used a story about socks. If Paddy left his socks around, Sam would either be annoyed that he left them there, or, if she picked them up, got annoyed that she had to do it. Now, she doesn’t like that they’re there, but she lets go of it. It does not have to matter unless you make it. If he does not pick them up, let it go. If she picks them up for him because having them there bothered her enough, then let it go and don’t be resentful. They’re just socks. And of course some things are bigger than that, but many things ultimately are not. One of their pieces of advice that’s tied to this is “Own It, Don’t Own It.” That really stood out to me. It’s about carrying feelings like this around and taking it personally. If Sam came home from a business trip, and Paddy was excited to see her and had all this anticipation about it but she was exhausted and didn’t reciprocate, he would take it so personally and feel crushed. He was owning her feelings and taking them as being about him, and then it sat heavily with him, taking his happiness. If someone comes home from work and is short with us, we tend to get defensive. We’re owning their feelings. Instead, take a step back and recognize that they may have had a tough day and it seems to impacting how they’re interacting, and then ask them to share what they went through. Note that you’re feeling treated in a way you don’t think you deserve, and might there be something else there that needs to be talked about. If there is something you’ve done that sparked that treatment, then you can know about it, apologize and learn. And if there isn’t, your partner gets a chance to check themselves, apologize, and open up about what’s tough for them. Links: Website: BiggerLove.com Podcast: The Not So Perfect Couple (listen to me on Episode 36) and Doggy Style Sam's TEDx Talk: "Sex: The New Wonder Drug": TEDxNormal and TEDxParkCityWomen Facebook: @BiggerLoveBook Instagram: @notso_perfectcouple Twitter:@biggerlovebook YouTube Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event  

Justin Stenstrom is a nationally-acclaimed life coach, author, entrepreneur, and speaker. He is the Editor-in-Chief of EliteManMagazine.com, the founder of Elite Life Nutrition, and the host of the Elite Man Podcast, where he interviews some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, authors, and high-achieving individuals, including guests like Robert Greene, Grant Cardone, Dr. John Gray, Bas Rutten, Wim Hof, Kevin Harrington, and many others. Once anxious, insecure, depressed, and unhappy, Justin’s overcome many of life’s greatest obstacles and loves nothing more than helping others do the same. His first book, Elite Mind, shares Justin's honest battle with anxiety and depression, and the methodical, broad search he did to uncover the tools to free himself from the grips of both of them and live a life he describes as "elite". What is his story, and what it means to live this way make up the heart of our conversation. Key Points from the Episode with Justin Stentstrom: Justin runs the extremely successful Elite Man Magazine and Podcast and a supplement business. He’s also just released his book, Elite Mind, which is about anyone facing struggles they want to overcome, but also who want to stand out, be part of the game and make things happen through self-belief. Despite the success he’s found and how sure of himself he is today, people may be surprised to learn that he faced crippling depression and anxiety earlier in his life. It was actually because of his struggles that lead to his work on mindset, confidence and dealing with mental illness. He had extreme anxiety, panic attacks, faced suicidal thoughts, became a shut in and more. As he pulled himself out of that place, he started to push the envelope in terms of not just being free of the anxiety and depression, but actually achieving greater and greater things for himself. He described his childhood as very happy, and he felt like a big fish in a small pond until going to a much larger high school and feeling lost. Junior year, he skipped class with a classmate to smoke pot. This was his trigger moment. Justin tried to look cool, and smoked a lot of it, not knowing that it was laced with PCP (most likely, though he never verified it). He started to hallucinate, seeing three of everything, and felt like he was losing his mind. That experience was the catalyst for him to go down his anxiety, panic attacks, depression and, after it kept building for weeks, thoughts of suicide. He described the situation as the building up of kindling over time, and then that experience with the laced pot was the match that sparked the fire he fell into. A few days after the episode, he came clean to his parents, who took him to a doctor who dismissed most of what Justin told him he was feeling, and prescribed an anti-anxiety medication. Justin was told to follow up with a psychiatrist, who prescribed many more medications, but didn’t really listen. While Justin isn’t against medication in specific cases for specific people, he now knows of so many other modalities at our disposal that we can try, too. Being a teenager, he did what the doctor told him, and took the pills. His father looked at all the meds, and sat Justin down to talk about trying to do the work instead of just taking pills and not trying to work on things. That advice from his father was what Justin needed to look at working on himself and figuring things out himself. I asked about the fight in Justin, and he was reminded of how he had been boxing for exercise before this, which instilled a mentality to push through. Justin sees anxiety as a sense of something bad happening in the future, and you lingering in that moment rather than the present one. Anxiety can only exist when you stay in that moment in the future rather than surrounding to living in this moment right now. For him, allowing himself to be in the present moment rather than fighting the anxiety was the key. He lets it pass through him rather than railing against it, which only gives it more power. Thinking that there’s something wrong with him, he’s doomed or any other strongly judgmental view of yourself takes your power away, so please recognize that this is normal and ok. Going and talking to someone about it is one of the best ways Justin thinks we can deal with it. Have a therapist to help you unpack the areas you are taking anxiety from, you can see them and address them. He had a friend who would not talk to someone and felt he was too cool or manly for that, and ended up taking his own life. Putting people (or yourself) down for seeing help and calling them a loser is totally wrong. Getting help is winning. We talked about the need to find a therapist you click with. Justin had met with four or five before finding the one he really connected with (though some of the others were good, too, but just not as connected as this one). He also stressed that the word ‘therapist’ doesn’t have to mean psychiatrist or psychologist. It can be a social worker, counselor, life coach, religious leader, etc. We talked about the chapters in Justin’s book that talk about different modalities that can help, and did help him – exercise, therapy, diet and more. After he figured out the anxiety and depression, he wanted to do things that fueled and excited him. The last section of the book is all about having the unbelievable confidence to be able to do things that might have scared you or breaking through the barriers that have stood in your way. You become a new person, an evolved person. He talked about a variety of things he did that he didn’t want to or even insisted he would never do, like taking dance classes and riding roller coasters, which he’s now ended up loving after being totally afraid of them. Links: Website: EliteManMagazine.com Book: Elite Mind Facebook: @JustinStenstrom Instagram: @justinstenstrom Twitter: @JustinStenstrom Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Kacie Main released her debut book – I Gave Up Men for Lent, the story of a jaded, hopelessly romantic, health-conscious party girl’s search for meaning – earlier this year. She is the host of The Better You Podcast, which is dedicated to better understanding our relationship with ourselves. Born and raised in Florida, she enjoyed a successful career in the corporate world before leaving it all behind to pursue her dream of becoming a writer. Kacie is a contributor for POPSUGAR and you can find her writing on Thought Catalog, Medium, and her own blog at kaciemain.com. She holds bachelor’s degrees in psychology and communications, and a master’s degree in business administration. She is blunt, honest, curious, and loves analyzing, writing about, and talking about the journey of life. Key Points from the Episode with Kacie Main: Kacie is an author and freelance writer, including her first book, I Gave Up Men for Lent, coaches people on book writing and publishing, and hosts a podcast called The Better You Podcast. 2017 was a life-changing year for Kacie. Before that, life was good. She had a good childhood and life in general. She was 32 and single, and didn’t have a strong, clear reason to be unhappy. There’s a theme that, if we don’t have anything wrong on paper, we don’t get to be justifiably unhappy. Kacie wasn’t depressed or anything, but describes it as being “Bleh.” Just nothing. She had been in some bad relationships in her 20s that she chose to stay in despite not being good situations (finding out she was the other woman, etc) In 2017, she became aware of this pattern where she was totally consumed with finding a relationship and having someone have interest in her. What she wasn’t focused on was whether she had any interest in them. She ended up going out with a guy friend who had a girlfriend (Kacie was friends with, too), they drank too much, and hooked up. She woke up from that with a clear view of where she was at in the wake of this happening. It was the start of Lent, so she decided to give up men for Lent (along with other things, like hard liquor, social media and sweets). One difference maker for Kacie in this creating a shift was around changing something big in her life. Aside from mindset, making the change a big one is part of why she was able to shift because it took so much clarity and effort, and couldn’t just be done casually. Kacie sees all of us in process – the process of life, of change, of learning. You can only ever be where you are, and the first step of making change is to sit in that moment of awareness, which may mean sitting there for a while. We are never going to do anything until we’re ready, and the nuances that turn us into being ready are super subtle, so we may need to give real time to our awareness of our current situation to get there. For her, it was a combination of factors - being in her 30s and single, plus all the pressure of others asking her about whether she’s seeing anyone, getting married, etc. She wasn’t passionate or connected to her career. Every part of her life was not fully connected. We tend to want to focus on one thing or one issue because one thing is easier than looking at all we’re unhappy about. Her Lent decision gave her the focus to address on major issue as part of working on shifting to living her life for her. She had been weighing what others wanted of her above what she wanted for herself. Getting caught up in people pleasing lead to living a life that wasn’t connected with who Kacie was. One thing she added to her days during Lent was to journal every day about what she was thinking and feeling. Journaling forces our mind to slow down and complete its thoughts rather than continuing on the fast, idea-switching we do all day. She happened to catch a motivational video her trainer at the gym was watching, and decided to finish it at home later that night. Another video came on that was all about what your purpose is. That hit Kacie hard - she had never thought about it or dug into what her purpose is. The next morning, she got up early to watch the sun rise on the beach, go for a walk and think about what her purpose is. That opened the doors up to really think about her life and what the meaning was. She swapped out motivational videos in place of the news in the morning while getting ready for work. She did walks alone on the beach, kept writing in her journal, and unknowingly started spending much more time with herself and her thoughts to work through things. She sort of fell into personal development. As a result, she just started to feel better when she did these things than the types of things she had been doing in her Blah life. She wasn’t intentional about any of it, but allowed herself to fall into or surrender to these things that felt good and helpful. Since nothing else seemed to work, she stopped trying to grow and just allowed things to happen. She stopped avoiding the things she had laughed at before. Kacie believes not approaching it intentionally or forcefully allowed more peace in it. With lots of intention, if she missed any of those actions, it may be hard to be ok with that, so you end up beating yourself up or feeling like you’re slipping. This helps avoid judging yourself when you “fail”, if such a thing even exists when you’re working on who you are. Just being aware of things can be progress in and of itself. Have a bottom-up approach to growth - allow whatever happened to have happened, digging into it trying to understand it and create that awareness of it. The 40 days wasn’t the solution, but instead was the awareness stage. After this came making change from a place of awareness and understanding. After Lent, Kacie took a break from drinking completely since alcohol had been tied to her past definition of herself as a party girl. The real change was the strong focus on the need to be married, have kids, be a wife, etc, because that’s what she’s supposed to do. That need was the root of why she looked at every man as the potential “One”, and push into being about him rather than seeing who she was and what she personally wanted. “Choosing Me” vs. “Worrying About Expectations.” She also worked on how she managed people vocalizing their expectations. Rather than railing against them, she was thankful for their concern and opinion, and still valued the course she was on. This included leaving her corporate job, where she had a lot of success and fit the mold of earning a good salary in a good job and having her stuff together. To leave that to be a freelancer, coach, author, etc definitely lead to raised eyebrows and questions about what she was doing. We live our lives so busy and doing that we don’t really have the quiet space to be quiet and be introspective. We spend lots of time analyzing other people, but don’t really turn that around on ourselves. And we are paying a price for that. The hardest thing for Kacie was to get over caring about what other people thought, and how that drove her actions. For example, she was a ‘party girl’ because she wanted people to like her and be popular. There are moments where she may miss being the cool, popular party girl, but she also realizes she wasn’t happy. It’s ok to miss her, but being that person doesn’t work for Kacie anymore. Or leaving her job, where she was in it because she wanted people to see her as a strong, independent woman. We tend to think “Either/Or.” Kacie sees life as “Both/And.” You can love who you are now and miss who you used to be at the same time. You don’t have to long for who you were and feel guilty for it. Or be glad you’re changed, and beat yourself up for how long it took or why you were ever like that. Links: Website: KacieMain.com Book: I Gave Up Men for Lent Facebook: @TheBetterYouPodcast & @kaciemain.write Instagram: @TheBetterYouPodcast & @KacieMain_Writes Twitter: @kaciemain_write Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Jackson Gillies is a musician who has been living with Type 1 diabetes since he was three years old. He has long been an advocate for T1D, as well as for Hidradenitis Suppurativa (HS) — a skin condition he was diagnosed with as a teen. Jackson’s drive to bring his music and HS awareness to a wider audience led him to audition for the 17th season of “American Idol.” He recently talked to BT1 about his experience and the exposure he hopes to bring to the communities surrounding both conditions.   Key Points from the Episode with Jackson Gillies: Jackson is a musician and student at a music school in London. His backstory is one of facing chronic auto-immune illness since a very young age, starting with Diabetes, and progressing to more over his life. He also delivered a TEDx Talk at age 17 about his journey with HS (Hidradenitis Suppurativa). Growing up, he did a lot of musical theater, and ended up taking up guitar while being stuck in bed during his early journey with HS. He learned from the internet, decided to enter a contest, which he won, and ended up a contestant on American Idol. Early on, he was on a path to try to get famous and get his name in lights, whereas post-American Idol, he realized he should pull back and really work on his message and focus before he should be trying to get his name in lights. Music and his lyrics are so personal to him, where what he writes about are all about him and his emotions, which he thinks helps his music resonate with others because of the personal connection that comes from what he’s giving of himself in the message. Going back to childhood, early on, Jackson was prone to ear infections and would get sick a lot. At age 3, his mother noticed some strange changes in Jackson’s health. Doctors blew it off, but his mother knew something was wrong, and forced them to test his urine. Sure enough, she was right, and they realized he had Type I Diabetes. When Jackson got his first shot, he just smiled and said, “Thank you.” Type I Diabetes is when the pancreas is attacked by the body itself, and does not make insulin as a result. This is different from Type II Diabetes, which is brought on as a response to lifestyle where the body becomes desensitized to insulin, so it stops working as it should. From age 3 to 4, Jackson got insulin shots, at which point he got a pump implanted. When he was just starting puberty in his early teens, he had a growth at the edge of his hairline on his forehead that no one knew what it was. He had a plastic surgeon remove it eventually, and his family moved to Florida shortly after. Within a few months, he ended up with several other of these growth, abscesses, growing on his legs. They got so bad that he couldn’t walk, but he tried to hide from people as he was embarrassed by it. After finally saying something to his mother, they struggled to get a diagnose, finally getting one from a Naturopathic Doctor. HS is a condition where the body struggles to process toxins internally, and tries to expel them through the skin in abscesses. To be HS, there needs to be more than one abscesses, and people can get abscesses for various reasons, so it takes 7 years on average for people to get a diagnosis. The Naturopath recommended cutting out many different foods that were basically all the typical things a teenager would eat - wheat/gluten, potatoes, etc. Not only was he dealing with the pain of the condition, but also dealing with the restrictions of the diet. He would eat well at home, but not at school, so the progress of the condition continued. Jackson’s future step-father, Jeff, was trying to help by working on different recipes that he could eat and would enjoy, but they still had limitations in Florida around access to things Jackson could eat, and the humidity made the condition worse and harder to live with. With some family in California, they decided to move out there to get easier access to healthier food options and a better climate for Jackson. Music had always been an outlet for Jackson, whether listening to it, performing it in theater or starting to play it himself. Jackson’s condition got better as the climate and his diet improved. To show how diet definitely impacts the condition, he slipped up and had a breakfast burrito at school, full of wheat and potatoes, and almost immediately got a new abcess. A little girl asked him what happened to his neck, and he thought of a brilliant, simple way to describe what’s going on inside someone with HS. If you have an allergy, something comes into your body that disagrees with it, and you sneeze as a way to try to get it out. It’s like that’s going on with some things he’s eating, and his body tries to get it out like a sneeze, but through his skin, and it gets stuck, creating the things on his neck she was asking about. Jackson shared a confluence of auto-immune issues in a parent and their kids having things like Diabetes or HS. His mother has autoimmune issues with her thyroid, and he has also had autoimmune and immune-response issues throughout his life. As a result, medical treatment can be tricky as the system is designed for some average person and assumes everyone is and responds the same, but that’s not the case, and creates complications. A dermatologist who is an HS expert back East saw Jackson’s TEDx Talk, and connected with him to try to help. She realized some of what he was taking (prescribed by other doctors), had things in them that aggravated his condition, like yeast. Once his treatment plan was cleaned up similar to what he had done with his diet, things got better. It also lead him to want to pull back from heavily depending on doctors for guidance, and focused on his food and what his body seemed to need. Starting then, around 2 years ago, things have been improving. Many of his abscesses have cleared up, leaving only scars behind. He’s been able to re-introduce some foods, and knows the cues from his body to understand if he’s overdoing it in any area, and how to adjust back. You have to listen to your gut, figuratively and literally. It’s connected to your brain, and it knows. I asked about Jackson’s work to raise awareness of HS, which went back to his early experience with Diabetes. He had been in campaigns from JDRF, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, including doing photoshoots with Mary Tyler Moore. Once he had his diagnosis of HS, he found that there was nothing like that for building awareness. That’s what sparked his desire to spread the word, including doing the TEDx Talk, and how he’s been sharing his story publicly since his diagnosis. He’s hoping to save people time and suffering. With an average diagnosis time of 7 years, he knows how difficult that can be to live through, especially without having answers. There have been some really dark, long, defining moments that have impacted Jackson’s journey so much. But there are also small moments, like getting home late at night, realizing there’s no food in the house and he can’t just get takeout because of what it will do to him, so it can take hours before he has food put together he can eat. But in either the big or small tough moments, he will bloom either way. I asked if he was thankful for his experience with HS. Surprisingly to some, he is. It has lead him down a path to be able to express himself musically, have the maturity he has, or have clarity on what matters to him. In that way, yes, he is thankful and wouldn’t change things. Jackson quoted a song by the Avett Brothers, who are the reason he plays music himself. “Tell the truth to yourself.” To Jackson, this means, be honest with yourself and be aware. Don’t settle on anything too quickly just because it feels easy or good. The world is chaos, how could we make sense of anything. Our minds are too small to make sense of any of what’s going on here on Earth, so just focus on what’s in front of you right now. Links: Website: JacksonSings.com TEDx Talk: "Bringing HS (Hidradenitis Suppurativa) Out Of The Dark" TEDxSantaBarbara Jackson's Music on Spotify See Jackson's audition on American Idol Facebook: @JacksonGillies Instagram: @Jackson.Gillies Twitter: @Jackson_Gillies YouTube Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

As an Image Consultant, Carol has helped hundreds of female entrepreneurs feel and look fabulous every time they get dressed. She empowers women to feel confident about their bodies. Helping them to acknowledge there is no ‘one size fits all’ or ideal body  shape.  Her personal journey of overcoming an eating disorder means she truly understand any woman who says ‘I hate my body’. Now fully recovered, Carol is able to help women recognize they don’t have to look a certain way to be beautiful.     Carol works to inspire women who have a wardrobe full of clothes but nothing to wear. She helps them discover their sense of style and claim their identity, to feel confident every time they get dressed.   She is also committed to creating awareness and leading by example when it comes to reducing the impact fashion has on the planet. As she shares in the interview, Carol believes we must change our attitudes towards consumption, shop consciously,  ask questions of those who produce our clothes and dispose of our clothes responsibly.   Key Points from the Episode with Carol Hanson: Carol is a style and wardrobe consultant, helping people express their identity with confidence. She is also very conscious and focused on the environmental impact of fashion, and noted how the fashion industry is the second largest polluter in the world, so she tries to raise awareness of sustainable behavior around fashion. After a career in Accounting, Carol got back to her fashion passion by buying a small boutique, which unfortunately did not thrive as a business. In the process, she found her calling around how to help women find and express their identity through what they wear. We talked about how people struggle with what to wear despite having plenty of clothes because they aren’t connected with their identity. This is even more pronounced in industries where people wear uniforms, where the identity is even more tied to what you wear, and when you aren’t in that uniform, how detached you can be from your identity. All of this identity work was really rooted in Carol’s own past around her identity. When she was 17, her battle with anorexia really surfaced. It effected every aspect of her life - the mental, the physical, her relationships. It lasted 23 years, which is roughly twice the average of how long people struggle with it before coming out of it. Part of the reason is because of what ‘help’ meant back in the 1980s and 1990s when she was facing it, which was focused on eating more and being a purely physical thing rather than a mental thing. Today, we realize it’s more about control – feeling out of control in so many aspects of your life, and using the ability to control what you eat as a way to find some control where you otherwise struggle to. Part of why comes from what Carol experienced in her teens. Her father never reached his full potential himself, and pushed Carol quite hard to achieve hers as a way to make up for his experience. It created a pressure for Carol to always be striving for more. Her mother struggled with mental health issues throughout her life, and when Carol was about to turn 14, her mother tried to end her life, saying it was a birthday gift to Carol since not having to deal with her mother would be kinder than staying around. She had no counseling for any of this, and instead came to realize it later in life. Carol got married very young, with her husband being through the bulk of her struggle. Carol became obsessed with exercise, using it to help purge from any of the eating she did do. Her body finally had had enough, and her hamstrings basically gave up on her, and she couldn’t walk. That was the start of the turning point for her to begin the long journey to change. She realized she needed more nutrition, and did start to exercise, but was hell bent on finding a way to keep exercising despite her body telling her to stop. Doctor after doctor couldn’t give her the magic “you should workout a lot” answer she sought. In 1991, as Carol and her husband were thinking about starting a family, she was given news that she could not have children, and had actually gone through menopause in her 20s. Carol’s response was to go harder into her career, and she didn’t stop to think about her husband’s experience on the back of that news. While her husband was there for her throughout, it also created great friction in their relationship. As a result, they ended up separating in 1999, trying to work through their issues, with great ups and downs. They ended up finding a path back together, and are celebrating their 40th year together this year. What she says of their relationship is that the part since their separation is so much better and stronger than before it. Carol’s progress back from anorexia was very gradual, with her slowly realizing she could eat more and wouldn’t just become obese instantly. In 2008, she got a personal trainer to help her learn to build her body beyond just overdoing it on cardio. This has helped her to rebalance her whole view on exercise and her body, and see how to build a nice, toned body. That’s helped her connect with her body, be proud of it, and feel its power. In her work today, she starts by having her clients look at their body and think about the positive – what do they love about their body. No matter how negative you are on your body, there must be something you do like. Start there. Then she works to accentuate what is liked, and minimize attention to what you don’t. In that way, you can start to feel more confident as who you are by seeing what you like most about yourself. We talked about whether Carol would ever get to her goal career of working in fashion if she didn’t have her struggle. She’s not sure she ever would. Carol values her journey despite the difficulty. Links: Website: carolhanson.com Facebook: @consciouswardrobestylist Instagram: @_carol_hanson/ Twitter: @CarolAnneHanson LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/carolahanson Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Serena is a Certified Plant Based Nutrition Consultant, Yoga Teacher and Fitness Trainer who has studied the subject of nutrition for over ten years and has a unique, wholistic approach to health and wellness. When she was only 8 years old her father, a very successful and busy entrepreneur, got really sick: unfortunately he didn’t have the tools to take care of his own wellbeing and therefore crumbled under the pressure of owning a multi million euros business. This led to him loosing everything he had worked so hard for, with huge consequences to him and the whole family. As a result of her childhood experiences, Serena has developed an interest in wellbeing practices which started at a very young age. Today, together with her husband Eugene, she runs Whole Shift Wellness: a coaching company specialised in bespoke programs for time pressed professionals. Their combined experience spans over 20+ years and has allowed them to work with more than 500 professionals across 5 countries. Together, they passionately apply their proven methodology to transform the health and wellbeing of leaders from around the world who want to be strong, fit, healthy and satisfied, and who aspire to continue having a positive impact within their organizations and the communities around them. Serena is also very passionate about bringing wellness to the workplace, since many people spend most of their waking hours at work: she believes that “employees who are cared for, care more” and that companies who put the wellbeing of their employees at the forefront of what they do, are more successful than average. Key Points from the Episode with Serena Sabala: Serena runs a wellness coaching company in London with her husband called Whole Shift Wellness. She builds custom wellness programs for individuals based on their specific needs around finding balance across the pillars of their life. They try to find ways to get out of the body’s way as opposed to overpowering it. She’s found that removing obstacles (bad habits, self-sabotaging thoughts) tends to yield better results than adding things in. Serena sees us like the seed of a beautiful tree. We hold the full potential in us already to become something wonderful. We just have to nourish that. The mental aspect is usually the hardest and most important. If you don’t shift your mindset, working on your fitness or nutrition tends not to be enough. She talked about the difference between Change and Transformation. They focus on transformation, and change comes as a byproduct. We started to talk about the documentary Serena produced, which is what brought her to the show. The story focuses on her family’s story, based around the mental illness (Bipolar Disorder) of her father. He was an extremely successful entrepreneur, building a business in a space that didn’t even exist before, and then losing it all as years of ignoring his wellness lead to a downfall that took the business and family down with him. This was the Why within Serena that she connected with through her own mindfulness and wellness journey, and also what drove the passion she has in working with busy professionals who are struggling with the pressure they’re under. This was the single most traumatic thing in Serena’s life, and started for her when she was 8, when her father received his diagnosis of Bipolar. She wants to prevent falls like this from hitting others. Today, her father is more stable, but still unwell, so Serena and her family are still facing things today. Despite the diagnosis, things still weren’t being handled properly, and in the 1990s in Sicily, it was still extremely hard to navigate (it’s better today, but still not easy by any means). The illness is a form of depression that is where you have swings from extremes of intense depression switching to extreme mania. Her father would sleep for months on end in the depressive state, and then be out of control and destructive in the manic periods. People dealing with Bipolar often seek help and medication during the depressive states, but often come off their medication during the manic times as it is like a state of euphoria that you don’t want to end by silencing it with drugs. It’s almost like being addicted to this drug, but you don’t even have to take anything to get there. Instead, you have to take a drug to counter act the high. Serena added something I never considered – when you experience these super-high highs, normal periods seem down to you. It’s like eating very salty food, then eating something without salt, and thinking it’s horribly bland and flavorless. Our sense of where normal is shifts. The difficulty spotting and treating Bipolar is why Serena is so passionate about prevention. I said how I see prevention the context of things like burnout, but how does it apply in mental illness? Prevention is a valid course with mental illness because, while it may be in your family history (as it was for her father and is for her), that does not mean you will have the triggers that make it express itself. For her father, his experiences and neglect of his wellness needs, brought the illness out. For Serena, she’s made choices to protect her mind before it got there. When she was 20, she made a very difficult decision to leave her home and family before it broke it. You need to make the decision that allows you take the best possible care of yourself first, or you will be or become unable to care for anyone or anything else. As Serena says, you have to be selfish in order to be selfless. Leaving was incredibly hard as she had very little money, and it meant leaving her sister and mother behind with her father’s illness. Serena was her mother’s best friend and her rock, while she was the strong older sister protecting her younger sister through her father’s illness and its impact on her family. Moving to London, she didn’t speak English and had only enough money for one month of living expenses there. She found a job paying minimum wage, lived meagerly and built something from scratch. Despite that struggle, she felt free for the first time she could remember, which helped her realize how strong of an impact her father’s mental illness had on her life. Her father’s illness was a reason for her family to come apart rather than together. Instead of bringing them together in shared struggle, it drove conflict. With this background, she had an intention to create a healing and cathartic tool for her family to come back together in the context of her father’s illness. While they had spent a lot of time trying to solve the problems caused by the situation, they had never sat down to just talk about how the situation impacted them personally and emotionally. She brought her family together in her grandmother’s home, with Serena not only surprised how many agreed to do it, but how, once they started talking, they almost couldn’t stop. Clearly, they needed to talk. The process also helped Serena learn how much more to each individual’s experience there is than she could ever appreciate. It brought them together so much more than they ever could have been without it. I asked about what her father thought of the project. Her hope was that it would help him step out of his own mind and see how it was effecting others. With mental illness, you get so caught up in your own mind and wrapped up in what is happening in it that you can miss how you’re impacting those around you. While her father had some tough moments with parts of it, he overall was supportive of it and took a lot from the project. Today, over a year later, the family’s dynamics are different and have stayed different. This didn’t just create a temporary blip of better connection, but rather has lead to a meaningful shift. I asked what made it successful in shifting things. Firstly, it was a genuine lack of ulterior motives. Let sharing be sharing. Second, don’t make anybody wrong. Just let people be heard out rather than judged. Lastly, be authentic, starting with yourself. Give authenticity and you’ll receive it in return. Be humble, honest and authentic. We talked about how to have meaningful balance and wellness in life, and Serena talked about the idea of a tripod with three legs. You have to find balance across all three simultaneously rather than just prioritizing what you naturally have a strength in. She teaches about this in her book, Make the Shift, which shares details around the three pillars you must balance: Focus - anything to do with your mind Food - you can’t outrun a bad diet Fitness - the body is designed to move (this isn’t about going to gym) Links: Website: www.wholeshiftwellness.com (take the scorecard Serena mentioned) Documentary: Tale Padre Book: Make the Shift Facebook: @wholeshiftwellness Instagram: @wholeshiftwellness YouTube Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

The quest to find a solution to a terminal cancer diagnosis at the age of 24 is how Susan Clarke’s entrepreneurial path took root to grow.  At the point of no possible positive outcomes, Susan stepped off the beaten path and took on the task of finding health through having difficult conversations, facing buried secrets and scars from the past, and finally choosing connection over validation. Since her cancer journey, Susan has focused her life on living fully in each moment and creating fulfilling relationships.  With her partner, CrisMarie Campbell, she started thrive!.  They are the authors of The Beauty of Conflict: Harnessing Your Team’s Competitive Advantage and The Beauty of Conflict for Couples. They also have a podcast with the same name: The Beauty of Conflict for dealing with conflict at work and at home. Her passion comes in working with leaders, teams, couples and individuals to help them value differences, bring more of themselves to everything they do, and engage in the power of people working collectively together. Key Points from the Episode with Susan Clarke: Susan and her partner CrisMarie Campbell help leaders and teams deal with conflict as a means for creativity, communication and achievement. They also do similar work with couples in a non-business setting. We started the interview mid-conversation, talking about my interview with CrisMarie, who was on the show in November 2018 in Episode 77. Susan is a Cancer survivor who was given a six month prognosis that she has outlived multiple times over now. The moment she got that news was a pivotal shift for her to see herself not as a follower anymore, but as a leader. She picked up a book by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross called On Death & Dying, and reached out to her about how to figure out how learn how to die. What Susan found is that she’s no different from anyone else when it comes to date – we all are going to die, but Susan was just given a date so she’s focused on it. This was when Susan realized no one has the answers for her, and she has to lead herself. She had to look more fully at her life, which wasn’t just about the Cancer. It’s not about blaming the Cancer, but looking at what it’s here to teach her. What Susan realized is that she actually had nothing to lose, so even if her life became a living hell, which it sort of was anyway, what difference does it make? She actually had four difference Cancers over seven years. You can get in this place where it’s almost easier to die than to live. This wasn’t the first thing Susan had faced, with other things from her past that started to unfold and surface. Susan’s doctors were asking her questions she wasn’t able to answer, and in the quest to find those answers, she unearthed trauma from abuse in her past. As a young adult, Susan was a teacher, and had gotten into running pretty intensely, with two 10-mile runs a day, and she started losing weight. When she went to see a doctor about it, they said she had a classic eating disorder, which they fixated on, and sent her to a psychologist, who started asking her deeper questions. She started asking her family some of these questions, which got them upset. What came out is that Susan was abused by a charismatic member of her town’s society, and the response to this coming out was not good, with people threatening Susan, ostracizing her, and worse. In this period, they still didn’t find the Cancer, but couldn’t stop the weight loss and other health issues, so she was sent to the Mayo Clinic, who found Stage IV Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. As her treatment went forward along with the self-work, Susan relationship with her family was severed. She also moved to the West Coast, and then started to have other Cancers, including Ovarian (resulting in having to have her ovaries removed), a brain-stem tumor and an optic nerve tumor, both of which required radiation. While you’re never technically in remission with Lymphoma, Susan did get a clean bill of health in 1989, and has remained Cancer-free since then. On the abuse case, authorities back home were trying to put a case together as they had found other victims willing to speak. In the end, that fell apart as the other victims and witnesses backed out or were too deep in the throes of mental issues from the abuse to stand up in trial, so the abuser remained free. What Susan was able to do, though, was learn empathy for her family, who went through something very hard themselves, even though it wasn’t the same as what Susan went through. She let go of comparing hardships or expecting, and just saw their pain in and of itself, and that allowed room to reconnect. She can believe in herself, and still hear the stories of others and have empathy without losing herself. This is what relationships are really and ultimately about. If we cannot work so hard on not making “them” wrong, we can get ourself back. We get to chose being right or relational. You don’t get to be both. After teaching, Susan went to The Haven in Western Canada, where she worked on her health and recovery. There, they did a lot of group work, realizing that people often got better in the waiting rooms than in the 1-on-1 appointments. Most people have their belief systems rattled at some point. Susan had her belief system shaken to the core, which can be a good place to be in if you want to grow. Essentially, she didn’t get to have her beliefs, and could instead build them. We talked about the way health situations like this where our bodies themselves are growing the thing that’s threatening our life can create trust issues with ourselves. What Susan has done around this is recognizing that her body is giving her information. That info can be scary, but it’s still information. It’s up to her to decide what to do with that info, and recognize it’s a conversation, and this is how your body does it. We got into talking about horses, which are the fastest animals to go back to a feral or wild state after being domesticated. Their ability to connect with our true nature is part of why they’re used in therapy and have been shown to have such strong impact on helping people deal with difficulties. Something Susan has learned about blaming someone else is that it’s often a sign that you’re uncomfortable about something in you. People think about choices as one we should make and one we shouldn’t. Susan doesn’t see it this way. It’s really about curiosity. Can I be curious about what I’m facing rather than making it about one thing or the other. With Cancer, it wasn’t about living or dying, it was about being curious about it and learning from it. Links: Website: thriveinc.com Books: The Beauty of Conflict: Harvesting Your Team’s Advantage and The Beauty of Conflict for Couples Podcast: The Beauty of Conflict Instagram: @thriveinc Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thriveincmt/ YouTube Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event  

James Roberts was born with a congenital disability called femoral dysplasia and a floating hip of the left leg as well as scoliosis of the spine. He grew up on a NATO base in S.H.A.P.E. (Casteau), Belgium but now resides in Prestatyn, North Wales. He is an online training and nutrition coach by trade, but was an elite Paralympic athlete for just over a decade. James has been lucky enough over those years to have represented Great Britain at countless World Championships and two Paralympics Games (Beijing 2008 and London 2012) to just name a few achievements as a professional athlete. He started out my sporting career in swimming and was part of British Swimming's Potential Squad from 2003-05. During that time, James held the SB8 200m breaststroke and 50m breaststroke national records. After being dropped from the GB swimming program, James moved on to rowing in 2006. The transition happened fairly quickly as he made his first senior international competition that summer at the 2006 World Championships in Dorney Lake, Great Britain and made the final, finishing 6th. He was a 2007 World Championships Semi-Finalist, 2008 Paralympic Finalist (5th) and 2009 World Championships Finalist (5th). James made yet another transition in his sporting career, this time to sitting volleyball. From 2010 until 2012, he amassed 56 caps for Great Britain. My first international was a surprise selection to compete at the 2010 World Championships in Edmund, Oklahoma in the US. He was lucky enough to have competed for Great Britain at the only European Championships in his career as well as a Continental and Intercontinental Cup. His volleyball career calumniated at the London 2012 Paralympics were the GB sitting volleyball squad lost in the quarter-final to the eventual silver medallist, Iran. James came on the show to talk about his journey, and the lessons it taught him about how we can adapt and succeed regardless of what's thrown at us. Key Points from the Episode with James Roberts: James is an amputee who helps fellow amputees control their health and wellness, with a particular focus on weight loss given the unique situation amputees face that others may not. He’s spent a lot of time looking at different diets and how they interplay with lifestyle, and has instead focused his approach on creating consistent, sustainable lifestyles through re-education and coaching. Restrictive diets only work while you’re restricting, but when you take something away, you lose something, and when you come back into your life post-restriction, you find out just what you’ve lost (and it isn’t weight). As we got into James’ background, we talked about limiting beliefs. He talked about people he works with who talk about knowing their limitations, which he is not sure we all know that about ourselves. The perspective and openness we have is where the limits truly are. If we believe our limit is X, then that’s what it is. James has learned first hand that we don’t always get that right. James is not technically an amputee, but rather has something called Femoral Dysplasia, which means he is missing his femur, has a small fibula and tibia (the lower-leg bones), which is attached to his hip. James was raised in a family with very old school beliefs around what’s expected of each individual – you need to fend for yourself and achieve by your own hand. As a result, James always looked at problems he’s faced as something he needs to find a solution for. As a young boy, he would stand on the side of the playground, and you could see his mind working on how he could adapt how he plays so he can join the other kids despite his disability. It was very rare for James to have a thought of, “I can’t do that.” He felt it as a teen sometimes, but sees that as a typical teen mental state rather than being tied to some specific limitation he felt. The place where that was strongest was in the moments he found himself trying to please other people, or live up to their expectations. In sports, he felt free to perform, while outside of sports, he sometimes found himself in social situation where he found himself caring about what someone else might think. Sports for James has been a wide-ranging list of activities for James, including those he’s played at the Paralympic level for the Great Brittain team. In the past 12-18 months, James actually started to face some mental health struggles that he opened up about. It’s a theme you’re starting to see coming out more and more with celebrities, entertainers and professional athletes. For James, he thinks part of this comes from the need to wear a mask and control who you are to the audience, which can be difficult as we think about who we are and how we relate to ourself. The mental health struggles were easy to play off early on as just being what happens – the stress you have at work, getting older, etc. And dealing with it is something many of us play off, as well. “I’ll deal with it when I get through X.” “I’ll face it when I retire.” That doesn’t ultimately work for us. He realized he should have faced it and dealt with it sooner, which seemed at odds with his role of having a strong, brave face all the time, which only made it harder to live with. It finally got to a place where he recognized that he had a problem, he needn’t feel like there’s a stigma about it for him personally, and it can be ‘normal’ to need to get help. Going toward the light rather than the darkness should never be seen as weak. For James being in the Paralympics, that was such a big goal and focus that coming out of it left him somewhat empty, so he understands where he got to mentally in the wake of that. Motivational speakers often share messages about how you have to endure the grind, but for the majority of people, this is setting you up to fail if you are getting into it for someone’s else’s expectations. In sports, James remembers why most kids get into it – because they love the sport. If it transitions into being something you don’t enjoy, then you should hang your cleats up, so to speak. That lesson applies to really anything we do in life, not just sports. Why did you get into it? Is that still the reason why you do it now? The place we’re in today with the desire for instant gratification is costing us. If we can get back into a place of being willing to do the work and wait for the reward, we’ll be better for it. Life is chaotic and will test us. It’s up to us to be ever-present, adapt and change. If we don’t adapt, it won’t get easier – the game will beat us. Looking for a quick fix is like using a cheat code in gaming. You may “win”, but you’re not beating it, you’re cheating it. Links: Website: fitamputee.co.uk Podcasts: The Mindset Athlete Facebook:  @jamesroberts11 His podcast's page  The Mindset Athlete Tribe Fitness, Nutrition and Mindset for Amputee Instagram: @jamesoroberts11 Twitter: @jamesoroberts11 YouTube Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Drew Taddia traveled the world as a professional athlete coming from Canada, through the US, and overseas into Australia and Germany following his dreams and passion of baseball. He quickly became the ‘go to’ guy regarding fitness and nutrition as he continually experimented on his own body to find out what  foods would help recover quicker or build muscle more efficiently, how to exercise that would help him jump higher, run faster and help him stand out on the field. He soon found out stress played a vital role in what he was putting both in and on his body, and how by reducing stress through a plant based diet and avoiding toxins both on and off the field, he could improve as an athlete and stand out from the competition. Drew wrote a best selling book called Detoxify Yourself, which is a 30 day plant based meal plan teaching readers how to avoid toxins, which foods will help heal and recover, and how to prepare the meals with recipes and grocery lists. Because of the toxins on the market regarding conventional protein supplement he designed his own plant based protein powder made with quinoa and hemp hearts. Drew has also been on air for 5 years as a radio host (96.5 CKFM) where he interviews world renowned experts in health, fitness, nutrition, lifestyle and more. Key Points from the Episode with Drew Taddia: Drew runs some businesses from home, including a podcast and protein supplement company. That allows him to live life by his rules, taking time to be on the beach or doing some sport, choosing who he works with when, etc. That freedom has always been a life dream. His success has always been about putting in the work, having the work ethic to be there. He’s seen people not have that ethic or commitment, and they haven’t succeeded, despite having the raw talent. Having been a professional baseball player, he’s gotten to see the outcome of the combination of raw talent and hard work first-hand. Growing up, Drew was always very athletic, and had a dream to play college sports growing up. He played football, baseball and basketball in high school, but was better at baseball, so he focused there. He sent out hundreds of letters to schools with baseball programs to try to get an opportunity, and all of them were rejection letters. He didn’t give up, though, feeling determined to play. He found a school in Northern California that let him walk on and try out, and he made the team. Growing up, he was no different, for example shooting basketball in the freezing cold of Canada. He was raised by his mother, with his dad not really around. While no one told him his dreams were undoable, no one was explicitly pushing him either. While he made the team as a walk on, he was a ‘red shirt’, meaning he was only good enough for the practice team. Coming back for sophomore year, he expected to make the actual team, but found himself cut. That left him lost as to what to do next for his life and how to keep playing given how hard he worked to be there. He immediately got on the phone, and called every school within driving distance, not worrying about what position they might have an opening for. He found a school looking for a Centerfielder. Despite being a second baseman, he said he could play centerfield, and immediately changed schools. Not knowing the intricacies of baseball, I didn’t realize how different the positions are, and how much work it would take to develop the skills and muscle memory to be a successful Centerfielder. With his hard work ethic, Drew made the team, made the All-Conference team despite it being a tougher conference than the first one he was in, and actually went on to beat the team he had been cut from. Making All-Conference means all of the other coaches in the league voted him as the best in his position, even though he had never played the position before. Being cut actually made Drew’s career, despite how it felt at the time. Being told, “No, you’re not good enough to play on this team,” pushed him harder to play for someone else. Coming out of his college career, he did not get signed into a professional league, so he joined various leagues and kept practicing for hours every day – throwing and hitting balls, doing sprint drills and more. He did it all day every day until someone would take him. Drew also developed the skills to live minimally in this process. In professional sports and as an entrepreneur, you never know when your next paycheck is coming. So when he could make money, he worked as much as he could and saved every penny. And when he spent, he spent as little as he could, living a spartan life focused on training. He finally landed professional opportunities across the US and the world, having to drop everything for an opportunity on the spot, wherever one came up. Anything could change in an instance that could change your life in either direction. Someone could be injured on a Major League team that gets bumped down to the minors and takes your position. Or someone could get moved up that opens a door for you. Drew found himself between contracts at one point, which meant he unpacked the suitcase he was living out of and found that it was actually not so bad. The normalcy and stability of it was kind of nice. He got into training people at a local gym, and started applying to a local radio station to do a show. The show finally said yes when his next baseball contract was to start, and he also released a book at the same time called Detoxify Yourself. He said he’d do the show and book signings for another season, and then go back, but instead he launched a protein supplement when the next season came around, putting baseball off again. The pattern repeated itself with more and more stability in his life pushing the instability of baseball off further. It’s interesting in pro sports where you’re all one the team together, but people are also looking for you to fail so they can step in and get their shot. It’s a real contrast to what I talked about with Ryan Stratis in the American Ninja Warrior space. Today, Drew and his wife work in their holistic health business, helping people live a healthy lifestyle in different ways. Links: Website: trueformlife.com Book: Detoxify Yourself Podcasts: Transformations Through Running Exploring Mind & Body Facebook: @trueformlife Instagram: @drewtaddia Pinterest: @trueformlife Twitter: @trueformlife Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Michael Levitt has over a 25 years experience career in leadership, healthcare, finance and information technology, with a. focus on reducing and preventing burnout and stress in his current work. He has led community engagement, fund raising, and government engagement, which led to thousands of patients getting access to primary healthcare, reducing emergency room visits. Michael served on the Board of Directors for the Mississauga-Halton CCAC. Michael has the LEAN Health Care Yellow Belt designation through Ontario Hospital Association. Michael is also a graduate of Rotman Healthcare Advanced System Leadership program. Michael studied accounting and management at Walsh College. In 2010, he became a certified crisis intervention trainer, from Canadian Training Institute. That is to say, he's super smart, and very successful, with a great deal of experience in the Health space. What that doesn't say is the unbelievable journey and struggle he had along that way, including a series of worst-case scenarios many people would not come back from individually, let alone all together. And few would come back in such a strong way. But that's just it  – Michael learned a tremendous amount that he's been able to bring together to save others from the same fate of a life so greatly impacted by burnout. I'm lucky enough to have gotten to know Michael as a friend over the years, and am honored to get to share his story with all of you in this episode. Key Points from the Episode with Michael Levitt: Michael works with teams and organizations on burnout recovery. He’d like to make it about burnout prevention, but usually it’s too late by the time he’s called in, so it’s about recovering and then putting in place tools to protect against recurrence. Michael’s personal story started before May of 2009 when the crux of his story happened. Before then, he was in a startup in the healthcare space, which was a new sector for him, meaning a lot of intense hours learning about the space and building the organization. He spent a couple of years living a very high-stress, low-health lifestyle, working too much, being too stressed, and eating really poorly (a lot of fast food) – a recipe for burnout. In May 2009, at only 40 years old, Michael suffered a heart attack in what’s known as the Widow Maker artery. That kicked off 369 days he refers to as his year of worst-case scenarios. After recovering from his heart attack for 17 weeks, he went back to a job he didn’t have. He handed the board his doctor’s note saying he could work again with no restrictions, and they handed him a note back that his services were no longer needed. This was in the Windsor-Ontario area, in the heart of the North American Auto Industry, which was in free-fall at the time. So not only did he lose his job, but the entire job market in the area had dried up. He expanded his search to places like Chicago, but still found nothing. He ended up finding a job in Toronto, meaning his family would need to relocate. He spent a few months commuting back and forth while his wife and kids wound things down in Windsor. On top of losing his job, he also was a cardiac patient without health insurance, so they had huge medical bills on top of the general living expenses, so they fell behind on bills. After six weeks, his 10-year-old daughter called crying that the bank had repossessed their family’s car. They were also getting their home ready to sell so they could move to Toronto fully. Once the family was in Toronto, Michael went back to Windsor to get any remaining items they had left behind, only to find a huge padlock on the house and note that the home was in foreclosure. Despite losing their house before they could sell it, Michael felt peaceful in that moment for the first time in a year (or more). He describes it as knowing that it’s done now. The chapter was closed. They had their new life in Toronto, and the last pieces of their old lives were gone. There was no other shoe to drop. Michael realized he had choices: Realize he survived everything and continue going on living, Play the victim and blame everyone else who had ‘done this to him’, or Look in the mirror to see who the common denominator in all of these situations (him) and see what needs to change. After his heart attack, his doctor told him he would be more in tune to his body and life then he ever was. In this moment is where he found that connection fully, and has held onto it going forward. He looked at all aspects of his life. Starting with all of his heart meds, he asked what he needed to do to make it so he didn’t need them. Everyone wants that One Thing solution, but it was a lot of things. He had to look to remove and prevent burnout through changes in diet, stress management, movement, etc. He also had to look at what was holding him back, and realized he’s a People Pleaser. There’s nothing wrong with pleasing people or wanting to help them, but you can’t do that to the extent where it’s harming you. Michael had learned that from his parents, and took it to such an extreme that he was impacting himself so dramatically that it all crashed down. Establishing boundaries on what to say yes to was the hardest and most impactful thing he did for himself. I asked Michael what I’ve been so curious about - did he need the wake up moment, or could he have gotten there without it, and he felt he really needed a swift kick to change, regardless of how hard it was to deal with. Sometimes, we are doing well, but aren’t actually happy or feeling fulfilled. Why? We should aim for fulfillment, and be honest when and where we don’t feel it. Then lean into it and ask what would fulfill us. Then go after it. Michael gives people an exercise to do that most groan about. Take a sheet of paper, draw a line down the middle, and write a list of things they really enjoy doing on one side – having their morning coffee, going to the beach, having lunch with a friend, etc. Then on the other side of the paper, write down the last time you did that thing. This is where people groan. What we realize is how rarely we are doing the things we really like. Then we look at why – and we often find excuses, or say we’re too busy. Many of these things aren’t so big that we can’t do them easily or flexibly (e.g. taking a big vacation takes lots of planning versus watching a show you like on TV, which is easy). So what are you doing in your day mindlessly that’s eating your time so you find it hard to do what you would rather be doing? What changes can you make to be more present and mindful in these decisions. Then schedule two of those things you like and don’t allow that time to get overwritten by anything else. It will feel uncomfortable for many of us, but once we do this, we start to see possibilities for fulfillment instead of reasons why we can’t be fulfilled. Michael also shared the need to look at our calendar and ensure we have some slack time, and make some tough calls about which meetings we don’t really need to attend. It may mean some uncomfortable moments when we tell someone we can’t make their meeting, yet doing so can be beneficial all around. The benefit for the people you may say “No” to is that you are more present in the meetings you’re in, which could include others with them. If you attend and are drained or distracted, that’s not serving them either. We talked about a strategy Michael heard of where you look at all the things you do, and see if there are two things you can stop doing. For Michael, he left two boards he was on. Links: Website: breakfastleadership.com Books: 369 Days: How to Survive a Year of Worst-Case Scenarios Pre-emptive Strike Leadership Burnout: How You Entered a Path to Burnout, and How to Choose a Different Way Avoid Chaos! A Step-By-Step Guide for Executive Directors of Not-for-Profit Organizations Facebook: @bfastleadership Instagram: @bfastleadership Twitter: @bfastleadership LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bfastleadership Youtube Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event  

Carlee Myers is an expert at helping professionals who feel overworked, overwhelmed or on the verge of burnout relieve stress so they can find more joy at work, home and beyond. As the founder of The Stress Less Company, Carlee has helped hundreds of professionals across the country take action to reduce stress through coaching. She believes there is no-one-size-fits-all when it comes to stress management. Her work has most recently been featured through media outlets such as Good Day Philadelphia, FOX 29, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly Mag and Whoolly Magazine. Key Points from the Episode with Carlee Myers: Carlee founded a company called The Stress Less Company, which helps people find ways to reduce stress in their lives and find more joy across the spectrum of their life - family, friends, career, etc. 85% of people have experienced high levels of stress in the past month according to Gallop, which means stress and burnout are at epidemic levels right now. We wear it with pride - busy is the new status symbol, as Carlee says. She started her story that lead to her work today. Carlee’s parents got divorced when she was a kid. When she was 11 or 12, her mother was dating a new guy who her father looked into (he was a corrections officer), and found that he had a violent background. Her mother broke up with him as a result of what she learned, and he proceeded to break into Carlee’s home, shoot her mother’s new boyfriend, and shoot her mother in the head while Carlee and her sisters were in the house. Her mother survived after being in a coma, while her new boyfriend died. Carlee and her sister had a plan for emergencies like this that their father helped them develop so they could get help. Her ex-boyfriend tried to kill himself later when he learned that he didn’t succeed in killing her mother, but failed, and ended up with life in prison. As a result of all of this, Carlee struggled with PTSD throughout her teen years, including constant night terrors. For a variety of reasons, Carlee and her sister did not get therapy for what happened or for her parents’ divorce. The approach instead was about picking yourself up by the bootstraps, getting straight A’s in school, and not showing that anything is wrong so as not to impact anyone else in the family. Carlee developed a trauma response of seeing what she needs to do to get through it and move forward. As an example, in the last year, Carlee’s dog died. Her response was to jump into all the actions to deal with that logistically (finding a cremation place, etc), while her boyfriend’s response was to grieve and then call family and ask for support. What she’s learned is that it’s ok to have the “Pick Yourself Up by The Bootstraps” approach, but not in perpetuity. It’s important to stop, process and feel, and it’s ok to breakdown if you need to or get help. During the decade of just going on with what needed to be done, whenever Carlee would reach out for help, she got typical mainstream approaches like exercise, yoga, therapy, etc., and none of them worked for her. She was wasting years trying to force tactics and tools that wouldn’t work for her. What she found was that creativity was the unlock for her, and she calls it Creative Stress Reduction. It’s about stepping out of a state fight or flight into a state of play. When you step into a state of play, you can process your emotions and move forward. For Carlee, creativity started with a sketch book and pencil, and evolved into painting, which then evolved into gardening, and so on. It morphs and changes as you morph and change. Allowing for that allows for the expression to continue to as it needs to. We talked about why yoga didn’t work for Carlee, and one reason is the breathing used in it. Part of her night terrors includes drowning, so holding your breath inherently is triggering for Carlee, keeping her body from relaxing and releasing when practicing yoga. We talked about how do you know if you can trust your gut and your intuition, especially in the wake of trauma? Trauma puts a magnifying glass on your gut feeling, and makes it harder to ignore. She suggests an exercise of going in front of a mirror and saying something real to yourself while looking yourself in your eyes. Where do you feel that in your body? That’s where trauma sits, which is different than where you feel a gut feeling or intuition. Then say something positive and supportive, and see where you feel that. Knowing how emotions show up in your body is powerful and valuable. Carlee talked about “Stressmares” (Stress + Nightmare). I asked what this is. We had to talk about the difference between Night Terrors and Nightmares first. A nightmare is about something scary like drowning, while a night terror is an amplified type of scary, like someone chasing you to murder you. A “stressmare” is a type of nightmare where it’s about stress that overwhelms you, but it’s as extreme as a nightmare. She gave an example stressmare about a job she had where things go terrible wrong and create a lot of stress that you feel in the dream. A tip Carlee shared to remember your dreams so you can deal with them is to stay in the same position when you wake, which helps your brain recall them better than if you move, get up, etc. As Carlee discovered creativity as a solution for stress, she was at first angered and annoyed that no one was talking about this as another modality. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to stress management because everyone and every cause of stress is different. Rather than staying angry at people for not talking about it, Carlee took matters into her own hands to be the one talking about it. Carlee has noticed a shift lately around the ability to talk about stress and mental health in a way that was more taboo before. We may not be able to stop our stress triggers, but we can stop our emotional response to it. There’s also eustress, or stress that our body perceives as good, with an opening, responsive behavior in our body (e.g. opening blood flow pathways), so not all stress must be bad. We can choose how we interpret and respond to it, and allow it to be good. One hack she shared was power posing, which changes our physiology in the face of adversity, stress or threat, and helps us respond. Carlee came back to the important message that it isn’t about choosing not to stress by pushing past it or ignoring the pain. Have compassion for how you’re feeling, and choose to do what’s best for you. “Best” being helpful and positive, even if it feels harder in the moment since it can be easy to give into the negativity and let it consume us. Links: Website: stresslessco.com Facebook: @thestresslessco Instagram: @thestresslessco Twitter: @thestresslessco LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stresslesswithcarlee Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Steve Austin is a life coach and spiritual companion​ who believes ​everyone's story matters. He's passionate about an integrated approach to wholeness, including: mental, emotional, and spiritual wellness. As he says, he thinks anyone who wants a second chance should be met with messy grace. In short, Steve helps overwhelmed people ​find God at the intersection of faith and mental health. Why does he do this? As you'll find out in the episode, Steve, a former pastor, found himself overcome by the impact of repressed memories of a childhood trauma he never dealt with while simultaneously being overwhelmed by the pain others were bringing to him as a pastor and counselor. In a moment, alone in a hotel room, Steve decided he had had enough in life. What he went through from there is what brought him to his "here", which we talk about in a very powerful episode of the show. Key Points from the Episode with Steve Austin: Steve is a family man first and foremost, being a husband and father. His work today puts him at the intersection of Faith and Mental Health as a life coach, author, speaker, podcasters (called Catching Your Breath). It’s about connecting with people who feel overwhelmed and get past that. For Steve, he was a pastor who nearly died by suicide seven years ago, and got to know God much more closely through the journey to discover his true self after that. Steve grew up in the Southern Pentecostal Christian world, which was very charismatic and very much about being like “us”. If you struggle, it must be about spiritual weakness, so just pray harder. That meant for Steve, things he was struggling with weren’t things he could get professional help for. This meant he felt invisible and left alone in his pain. Those “things” include being sexually abused as a child, and his parents decided not to go to the authorities but rather to threaten the perpetrator. They figured Steve would not remember what happened because he was so young, and their threat would protect him from it happening again. And they were right for a long time - he didn’t remember until he had a flashback in high school during a field trip when he just broke down. Despite the flash back, the reason why he had it still wasn’t talked about and continued to be suppressed for the next dozen years until his suicide attempt at 29. He had other flashbacks along the way, including one when he was working at a 911 center in a support capacity where he had a panic attack. That lead him to get on medication for his panic disorder, which helped a bit, but not enough as he still wasn’t addressing the issue. At 29, he was alone in a hotel room, which was not a good situation for someone in depression. Being alone and withdrawn will make it worse, and it did. Steve believed the lie that he was a burden on his family, and that things would be better if he didn’t exist anymore. He woke up in an ICU after taking an overdose of pills. In the wake of that, therapy finally began, and he started to work on becoming a whole person. Steve learned how to tell the truth after that, and that vulnerability is not a sign of weakness. Worse than the depression or PTSD was the shame. Steve dealt with so many feelings of not being enough – not man enough, Christian enough, strong enough, etc. We get caught up in all of our labels, and pass judgment, but the truth is, we’re all human beings. We all suffer. We all have trouble. No one is immune to it, and no one needs to feel “less than” for going through it. We talked about the religious question of what happens to someone’s soul if they commit suicide. What Steve thinks is that we’re asking the wrong question. The person already is living in Hell, so it’s not about that. The question is what we do if we’re in the midst of these thoughts, and what we do for those in the midst of those thoughts. How can we be more open about it and therefore supportive. In the wake of his experience, Steve has stopped his full time work as a pastor, and instead works to help educate and foster people’s ability to connect to what they’ve been through and free themselves of shame. He puts out good questions about what we share and don’t, who are the friends who should be in our inner circle (and will call us out or raise concern about where we’re at), and being open to going to therapy. Vicarious trauma that hits many of us in helping professions (teachers, pastors, police officers, firemen, therapists, medical professionals, etc), we absorb the hurt of others, and should really be doing therapy work ourselves. Getting over the sense of having to be perfect and recognizing that we all need. And that’s ok. Links: Website: catchingyourbreath.com Books: See all of Steve's books at Amazon.com, including From Pastor to a Psych Ward Facebook: iamsteveaustin Instagram:@iamsteveaustin Twitter: @iamsteveaustin YouTube Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Ryan Stratis is one of only four Ninjas to compete on every single season of the tv show “American Ninja Warrior™”. He first found Ninja when it was still airing as the original Ninja Warrior (Sasuke) from Japan and immediately fell in love with the sport. He was determined to be a part of it and when Ninja Warrior came to the USA, he had his chance. Since 2009, Ryan has made it to the finals in Las Vegas finals 7 times in a row and has competed internationally in Japan and Malaysia. Ryan served 12 years in the military and afterwards decided to transition into the civilian life and pursue stunt work in Atlanta, GA. While there he helped build the ninja community by working with local gyms to provide top notch experiences and spread the love of Ninja Warrior. Ryan is currently based out of Aurora, Colorado Ryan is available for events, conducts public speaking engagements and clinics. Ryan tours the country for these events solo or along side the Wolfpack Ninjas as part of their pro team. I was lucky enough to spend some time with him at a recent event he was at, and see first hand how much dedication he puts into what he does. He also spent a lot of time with all the kids at the event, talking to them about being on the show, what the competition is like, staying dedicated to your dreams and more. He gave so much of himself to everyone (including me, as you'll see below) – it was awesome to see in person. I  am really excited to bring his story to you. [caption id="attachment_12249" align="alignleft" width="458"] Heres my proud moment when I got to flex with this ANW Legend[/caption] Key Points from the Episode with Ryan Stratis: Ryan, who grew up in Georgia, currently lives in Colorado, training for American Ninja Warrior full time He’s become well-known to fans of American Ninja Warrior as one of the few participants who has been in every season of the show since it began. He served in the Army National Guard for a six year period before getting into Ninja as one of the original participants in American Ninja Warrior He’s currently focusing on his own Ninja career and recovering from a shoulder injury, and has pulled back from training other ninjas, which he was well known for on top of his performance on the show Ryan has had staying power, being one of only four participants who have been on every season since the show started. There are several mental components at play in Ryan’s Ninja career Being mentally prepared and centered became a core theme to the interview For Ryan, he’s dealt with both having really strong performances and then facing the expectations of staying on top and almost not taking it seriously enough because he had done really well This happened after Season 3 of the show, when he did really well, and then almost didn’t take it seriously enough in Season 4. He said he felt the spark or fire not being as strong going into Season 4 because of the hubris or perhaps over-confidence from his performance the year before. This past season, he also did extremely well, making it all the way to Stage 3 of the finals. That sets up expectations for next season to live up to. On top of living up to last season, he’s also now dealing with his shoulder injury and will be having surgery before the season begins, so he has that weighing on him, too. After Season 4 went unexpectedly poorly, he came back in Season 5 with a different mental focus. Since Season 5, he’s changed how he thinks about things, coming back to himself and removing external distractions. That greater focus has served him well, after a strong Season 5, and qualifying for the Finals in Las Vegas every year since then, even when he had his last shoulder surgery heading into Season 8. We talked about what happens when you have a tough time on a particular obstacle. If you make it past, how that struggle sticks with you can set the stage for how you perform on subsequent obstacles. And it can effect you watching others struggle, as was the case in Baltimore last year where no one finished the city finals. If you let those struggles take too much of your focus, that can get in your head and impact how you perform. I asked about this interesting dynamic in Ninja where, despite the fact that everyone is competing with each other, there’s this very clear support and camaraderie that you can feel watching the show. In any other sport, opposing teams are just that – opposing. But in Ninja, you see competitors wearing each other’s shirts, cheering each other on. Ryan talked about leading a team of Ninjas in the Ninja vs. Ninja and Team Ninja Warrior shows, giving a special shout out to Mike Bernardo, his Ninja Brother. Ryan is starting to think about how life going forward post-Ninja. It’s an interesting situation given how much of his life is dedicated to ANW, he talks about being back at square one in terms of figuring out his career path, only doing so in his late 30s instead of earlier in life. With the show and his Ninja career being such an all-consuming lifestyle, it leaves you wondering what you’d do otherwise. We talked about staying power and commitment. If you set a major goal for yourself, you have to keep at it even if you don’t get there. For Ryan, this plays out in staying with Ninja for so long regardless of if he wins it. Ryan shared a role model in Sasuke (the original show ANW is based on) who has done it all 36 seasons despite not winning. He keeps at it, and that’s so inspiring for Ryan. I asked if he’s always been this way – driven, committed and athletic. Growing up, Ryan was wiry and not athletic. He got into wrestling in high school because he would be matched with kids his size rather than bigger than him, as most kids were. After that, he got into the junior ROTC program, which set him down the military path and brought in the commitment and dedication that comes with it. Ryan is clear that there’s no blueprint or set path. We all have our own way, and need to stay true to that and persevere. He got into a book that really helped him with mental prep, Thinking Body Dancing Mind, which is all about the mental tools to succeed in life’s various challenges. It goes into life in general, athletics and business situations, and the broad applicability of it really struck Ryan, and stuck with him starting with Season 3 of ANW, after he read it. Links: Facebook: ANWStat Instagram:@ryan_strat Twitch: The_Statis_Status Twitter: @straticus Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Wally Carmichael was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, and grew up in a trailer park.  His childhood and teen years were extremely formative, and we talk about that in the show. About a year after graduating HS, he joined the US Army as a Combat Medic, and spent 25 years on active duty. In that time, he traveled to 23 countries on five continents. During that time, he met and married his wife, with whom he shares three boys. Wally has always been an entrepreneur at heart, having started many business ventures and learning from many people, in person or through their books, courses, videos and podcasts. He's lived a wonderful life with many ups and downs, always choosing to learn from the adversities and count his blessings. He's at the point now in life where his biggest desire is to share his knowledge with other men and continue leveling up his life. Like we say in the Army "Constantly improve your foxhole". As he says, the 23 year old Wally certainly thought he had it all figured out because he knew everything. Of course he knows now he may never have it all figured out. But he's enjoying the journey. Now, go out and Live Your Life of Abundance and make sure you Pay It Forward. Key Points from the Episode with Wally Carmichael: Wally is an early-riser to be sure he’s there for his kids in the morning to start his day centered and focused on them. Following that, he does physical activity, has breakfast, and then digs into his work with his podcast, coaching and researching ideas to help impact business owners try to grow their business in times when they feel they just aren’t where they thought they’d be. “Aren’t where they thought they’d be” is a idea Wally knows about first hand. Wally grew up without much, living in a trailer with parents scraping to make ends meet. His dad who was kind and friendly, seemingly not wanting to hurt a fly. That also meant he was more interested in being Wally’s and his brother’s friend than father. He also was interested in hooking up with girls Wally or his brother would bring back to the house even though he was married. Wally’s mother left his father in the wake of the infidelity. Wally found himself out of money in college, unable to continue his education when his uncle suggested joining the military. Wally was deployed as a medic in Central America (Honduras and Panama) during the political and military unrest in the 80s. He ultimately spent over 25 years in the military, rising through the ranks and focusing on strategy work in hospitals across the world. That training really honed his strategy and business skills, also teaching him how much of it is mental vs. mechanics. He had the mechanics already, but learned the power of changing mindsets and plotting paths. At the end of his military career, he was in Hawaii working in the military hospitals through retirement, and then coming back to the same hospitals after retirement, getting to hone and deploy his strategy skills further. Wally made a point about his work. He chooses to do it. His pension from the military means he can get by without working, so his work is 100% by choice, which allows him to connect with it more personally. Specially, he sees how high the suicide rate is amongst small business owners, and especially when they’re also veterans. That problem gives him purpose in his consulting and coaching work as it’s not just about making more money, but saving lives while also making those lives better once they’re saved. The compassion from his medic skills translates through directly in this respect. After retiring, Wally had the idea to start Men of Abundance when he realized he was making enough money, living in Hawaii, had a great, loving family, and really didn’t want for anything. It struck him when his wife asked, “Wally, what are you striving for?” It helped him to start letting go of that chase of more, and recognizing the abundance in front of him. When we see people with “a lot”, we don’t know if they’re renting it, going into debt, or are even truly happy. What we find instead is that having your health, family and your needs met is far more satisfying than having too much and not being able to sustain. People say you can have everything you want, but the reality is you can’t. You can buy lots of things, but the trade off is that paying for them has a cost beyond the dollars. Buying stuff means not being able to afford the rich experiences that last beyond things, like family trips. This is not abundance. Being in debt or having to work more to pay for that stuff keeps you from enjoying it and those around you. This is not abundance. Wally isn’t against seeking more, but seek more while being grateful for what you have today. Abundance includes paying it forward and giving to others. We got into Wally’s childhood, being on food stamps and needing handouts. He talked about how he came to a point where he didn’t take handouts anymore. That was a moment he realized he needed to take responsibility for his needs and how to meet them. It’s not to say we don’t all need help sometimes, but to build the ability to sustain yourself is a mindset Wally developed. He had a reminder of his childhood when he was living out of his truck in Hawaii for 43 days while his family moved and he was between living situations. It was a strong reminder of the struggle and how to value what you have – getting out of his comfort zone, so to speak. What he realized is that the moments when he is most uncomfortable, he figures out how to do what he’s stuck with. He was trying to replace his day job income with his coaching business, and couldn’t, so he got uncomfortable as a forcing mechanism. As soon as he did, he was offered to telework from his day job for six months, giving him the space to build his coaching practice while not having to be in an office every day, keeping him away from getting to build it. Wally actually interviewed me for his show from the truck he was living in, totally unbeknownst to me! Links: Website: menofabundance.com Podcast: Men of Abundance (hear me on episodes 161 and 290) Facebook: Wally and Men of Abundance Youtube Twitter: @menofabundance Instagram:@Wally_Carmichael Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

In this episode, I close out Season 3 with a recap of episode 56 through 81 of the show, covering all the amazing people who made up this season and summarizing their episodes. Key Points from the Episode with Bryan Falchuk: Episode 056. Transporting From Darkness to Your Future Vision with Sarah Centrella Episode 057. Accept Where You Are to Move Forward with Natalie Jani Episode 058. Accepting The Gift of No Regret with Kirsty Salisbury Episode 059. Surrendering to The Facts To Realize Opportunity with Madeleine Black Episode 060. The Power of Worthiness from Within with Dr. James Kelley Episode 061. Redirecting Your Life by Realizing You Matter with Fernando Flores Episode 062. Shifting Your Choices to Shift Your Life with Michael O'Brien Episode 063. The Therapeutic Power of Running with William Pullen Episode 064. To Be Safe, Loved & Worthy with Terah Harrison Episode 065. Find Your Voice Through Mindfulness with Bruce Langford Episode 066. The Power of Being Prepared with Jay Gabrani Episode 067. The Human Connection of Storytelling with The Ridiculously Human Guys (Gareth Martin & Craig Haywood) Episode 068. Life is About Creating Yourself with Lonnee Rey Episode 069. Honor Your Emotions to Choose the Path Forward with Karen Millsap Episode 070. True Success Comes From Our Spirit with Nichole Sylvester Episode 071. Bonus Episode: Reflecting on Doing 3,032 Days with Bryan Falchuk Episode 072. Do the Time to Change Lives with Coss Marte Episode 073. Life as an Inquisitive, Crooked Journey with Mark Nepo Episode 074. Seeing the Gift of Adversity with Marcus Aurelius Anderson Episode 075. Find the Answers Within to What You Need with Michelle Bronson Episode 076. Life's Challenges Can Illuminate Our Path with Sharon Falchuk (my wife!) Episode 077. Loving Yourself Enough to Come Back After a Fall with CrisMarie Campbell Episode 078. The Paradox in Connecting to The World's Needs with Erik Bergman Episode 079. Sparking the Inner Fight to Make Change with Marcus Smith Episode 080. Internal Validation for What We Need with Maggie Berghoff Episode 081. Smash Your Anxiety by Embracing Change with Jesse Harless Links: Do a Day Hats The Do a Day & 50 75 100 Solution Empowerment PowerPack Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Jesse Harless, M.A., is a trainer, advocate, author and founder of Entrepreneurs in Recovery®. Jesse is the founder of RecoveryFacilitation.com and Entrepreneurs in Recovery® workshops and training, a platform and training that empowers people in addiction recovery to reach their full potential. He works with individuals, communities, companies, non-profit organizations, addiction treatment centers and programs throughout the Northeast U.S. where he trains and facilitates his Entrepreneurs in Recovery® workshops. His work in the recovery space is the product of his experience in it himself. Jesse experienced trauma growing up which lead him down a path of addiction and destructive decisions that nearly landed him in prison. Today, he lives an extremely different life, and helps other embrace change to be able to do the same. Key Points from the Episode with Jesse Harless: Jesse has a training company called Entrepreneurs in Recovery to train leader facilitators help people in treatment centers, structured living or other forms of recovery to bring rapid change through conversational choreography. What is “conversational choreography”? It’s a way to bring people through content via an experience, as that helps drive the learning much deeper and help it stick. Because recovery is Jesse’s personal focus, that’s been the space he’s built it for, but it works in corporate or non-profit team settings, as well. It’s about self-care strategies to employ as a community to make the whole group stronger. Jesse said how he believes everyone is recovering from something. Help people see what they’re doing great today, and that can be a basis to start to build more resilience, self-care and personal strength to tap into to move forward. We talked about the loss of human interaction while increasing our ways of connecting virtually. When we don’t want to connect with someone, or are worried it might be uncomfortable, we just look down at our phone. Jesse saw the similarity with looking down earlier in life being about self-esteem issues. When you look straight ahead, you’re focusing on the future, while looking down is about focusing on the past. Looking at Jesse’s past, it’s one of trauma and addiction. Seeing his early years as traumatic is a new way to look at it. His father left when he was four, which was traumatic. His father was in a car accident and pronounced dead, spent over three weeks in a coma, and then woke up with brain damage. They spoke only a handful of times over the years that followed, with his father struggling with his physical recovery and drug addiction added to his existing alcoholism. And it was the beginning of a sad, difficult set of years where Jesse was consumed by hurt and social anxiety. He stopped going to the cafeteria at school because he would have a panic attack around everyone. He never asked for help, and withdrew into himself further. Once he got to college, the addiction set in as he suddenly had access to alcohol and drugs, which made him feel better. He was caught for plagiarism, failed out of school, was arrested all in his first semester of school. He had all the ready made excuses – college was too tough, he took too many credits, etc. A month after leaving school, Jesse’s father passed away. That was the first time Jesse tried cocaine. Jesse described himself with the term he doesn’t like of being a ‘functioning addict’. He’s learned how many people fall into this category, as 75% of people who are addicted are employed full-time. That means many people working around you may be struggling silently. At 22, he was arrested with a federal felony, facing seven years in federal prison. His choices followed him, and had caught up. He talked about that whole time as unconscious addiction. He would see people happy and smiling, and not being able to comprehend how they could even do that. He was able to avoid prison through the way he gave himself into changing. He met his first mentor, Pastor Bob, and a recovery specialist. He started to use all kinds of techniques and tools to reshape his life – journaling, keeping a calendar to structure his days, etc. He learned about his intuition, which today is the thing he cares about most. He kept doing the next right thing every day, which built and built, keeping him from prison, getting him his job back, and putting him on a clean path. While all the original pain that drove him to addiction came back, he was clear and equipped to face it. He went back to school and got his undergrad degree and bought his first home after six years being sober. He went on to get his masters at 11 years sober, and got a job with a Fortune 15 company as a felon. These are all things he was told were impossible, but he did them. The key was the sum of all the daily habits he was employing. To Jesse, you don’t have to have the level of wake up call he did to wake up. Spend 20 minutes in silence with yourself, and let things come to the surface. Start building a group of people around you to recognize when you’re not serving yourself and support you. Start with one person, and build a team of three to five Jesse calls your recovery team. He shared a book called The Five Regrets of Dying He shared the number one regret, “I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” We shifted and talked about Jesse’s cold shower idea. A friend told him he had to take a cold shower despite it being super cold out. After that first shower, he went to a meeting two hours later, and he noticed her had none of his social anxiety. He thought the shower might be part of it, so he decided to try it for 30 days. What he noticed was that his anxiety was down, his confidence is up, and he kept doing more and more. It fueled the idea for his book, Smash Your Anxiety with Cold Showers. Jesse went back to all of the habits and tools, and advised we even start with one small thing. Start with journaling, or doing the last 10 seconds of your shower cold. These little shifts can start to add up and catalyze the change we seek. When you’re doing the cold time in the shower, here’s an approach: Before going cold, envision what you want for your life, Say an affirmation of “I’m abundant, I’m safe, I’m secure.” Then turn the water cold for 20 seconds, and don’t let it hit your face, but just hit your body. That’s it. Over time, you can add more time, and work your way up to a minute or two minutes. Links: Website: recoveryfacilitation.com and jesseharless.com Book: Smash Your Comfort Zone with Cold Showers: How to Boost Your Energy, Defeat Your Anxiety, and Overcome Unwanted Habits Instagram:@EntrepreneursInRecovery and @JesseHarless222 Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Maggie Berghoff is a functional medicine nurse practitioner turned health entrepreneur.  She works with celebrity clientele, execs, and CEOs to up-level their physical and mental health and achieve peak performance. Maggie has been featured in many outlets such as Entrepreneur, Well + Good, Under Armour, CBS, NBC, Glamour, iheartradio, and national television. Maggie also mentors health and wellness clinicians and coaches in building an online business of their own. Her focus on health and wellness was part of her life for a long time, but took a much more central and personal role during a major health crisis during college and into early adulthood, culminating in a mini-stroke, amongst many other health issues that no one seemed able to solve (or even take seriously). That ignited the drive in Maggie to be her own cure, which lead her down the path she's on today. Key Points from the Episode with Maggie Berghoff: Maggie Berghoff grew up the daughter of a pharmacist, so she was very much in the Western Medicine mindset When Maggie was seven, her mother got colon Cancer (when she was just 35), went to a holistic treatment center, and came home both cured and changed in terms of her approach to wellness. That was incredibly interesting to Maggie, and lead to a strong focus on diet and how food can heal us while also being very athletic and into sports. As a result, in high school and college, she was pushing her body very hard along with the popular fitness diet of low fat, low carb. While she looked healthy, in her senior year of college when she was at 22, her body gave up and she blew up, bloated and inflamed. She tried to power through it, and event went after a Masters degree, and ended up having a mini stroke. Through everything, doctors struggled to give answers, and often just excused away what was going on. They would blame the intensity of her lifestyle, birth control she was on, hormone shifts as she got older and other things rather than seeing extreme swings in health. Over the course of a few months, she had gained 50 pounds. And no seemed to think this was a problem. On top of that, despite sleeping 10+ hours a night, she was exhausted throughout the day. A follow-up with her primary care doctor showed some abnormality in her thyroid numbers, so the doctors finally acknowledged something might be wrong. But despite that, it wasn’t blatant enough to truly see a problem, so it was still so hard to find what was wrong enough for the Western Medicine approach to spot it. And Maggie was young and fit, so despite gaining 50 pounds, she was still in the range of what most healthy people weighed, so it wasn’t a cause for concern despite the sudden and extreme shift. Some days, she would see her weight change by 12 pounds overnight, with doctors just blaming it on eating too much salty stuff at dinner. Her swelling was so extreme that she experienced pitting edema, where you can press in on a part of your body, pull your finger away, and the intent remains, like pressing your finger into mashed potatoes or clay. It is not normal, especially for someone in their early 20s who eats healthily. Her doctors gave her medicine to treat the various symptoms. While the pills helped with the symptoms, they covered up what was happening inside, leading to more and more damage, including kidney failure. Maggie is an extremely optimistic person, so she went from specialist to specialist feeling like this would be the one who figured it our and helped. With each visit, her hopes were dashed, leaving her frustrated and no closure to getting better. She got diagnosed with a rare kidney disease and zero immune function that will require immunotherapy for life. When the doctor blew her off on the back of that diagnosis (“Check in after six months,”), she had had it. She got in her car, and broke down crying. She called her mother, who gave her sage advice. Her mother said, “Maggie, no one cares as much about you as you do yourself.” She was right. And Maggie took that as catalyst to help herself, enrolling in Functional Medicine Health Coach certification on top of her grad degree and work as a nurse practitioner. She went on to solve her own health crisis through what she learned and have to children despite being told she was infertile. Maggie went back to when she was 22 or 23, and described her stroke, including trying to call her mother to tell her what was happening, and not being able to speak. On the back of her stroke diagnosis, the hospital didn’t do anything or diagnose anything. They tested her, saw that it happened, didn’t see anything currently presenting, and just discharged her. She didn’t blame the people, but more the way things work where the system does not allow you spend the time to figure out what might be going on with a patient. She shared her own experience as a nurse practitioner where she would be penalized for spending too much time with a patient. We got into the idea of finding the root cause, but Maggie feels that there isn’t really a single root cause ever. It’s a multitude of interrelated things. Ultimately, she found that she has Hashimoto’s disease (like Michelle Bronson, who shared about Hashimoto’s in Episode 75), adrenal fatigue, a parasite, H. Pylori, difficulty absorbing nutrients and more. The interplay of everything resulted in the symptoms she was living. She decided to boldly clear the deck, removing all the pills, and focusing on nourishing her body so it could focus on getting better, as it naturally wants to do. We got into the subject of trusting your gut instinct – knowing inside what we need and believing in ourselves enough to follow what feels right and avoid what feels wrong. She doesn’t just apply to our wellness, but our business, relationships, etc. We often look for external verification of our ideas, but actually, we need the internal verification and confidence that we know with every cell of our being to go forward. I asked Maggie if she’d give up her journey with all the struggles. She said unequivocally no. There are so many lessons she learned that she benefits from and can help others benefit from because of it. She wouldn’t give that up. Her perfectionism was so strong that it put her at risk at times, so she’s thankful for finding more balance around that. That perfectionism lead to judgment and shame at times, for example around having to make the decision to stop breastfeeding sooner than she had planned to. She stepped back, looked at the balance of the costs and benefits of stopping or continuing and made a balanced decision for her life. She leaves us with the simple by powerful remind that “we’ve got this!" Links: Website: http://www.maggieberghoff.com Join Maggie's Elite Business Mastermind for Clinicians and Coaches Instagram: @Maggie_berghofff Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event

Entrepreneur, motivational speaker, extreme athlete and coach Marcus Smith is the founder of InnerFight. While building a career in the corporate world, Marcus realized his real passion was “making people better at life” and in 2008, he founded InnerFight to do just that. Today along with running InnerFight and Smith St Paleo, Marcus teaches many of the Innerfight classes, coaches a number of endurance athletes, mentors both youths and adults and continues his extreme challenges which took him to 30 marathons in 30 days in 2018. We get into his backstory, and why he has this approach to going after huge goals that most people would look at, shudder, and walk away from. There's this undying approach in him to follow the advice he got as a kid whenever there was something he wasn't interested in to, "just try it." He's used that to spark not just his own achievement, but help inspire a path to achieving in others. Key Points from the Episode with Marcus Smith: Marcus is a former pro-rugby player, ultra-endurance athlete, gym owner and coach based in Dubai. We got right into talking about this event he did to promote fitness for kids called the “30-30” where he ran 30 marathons in 30 days in partnership with the government of Dubai for their efforts to fight juvenile obesity and drive physical activity as a regular part of life for children. Marcus sees his abilities and platform as a unique opportunity to help others make lasting change in their lives He describes the human body as a crazy jigsaw puzzle with so many moving parts – this motivates his interest in figuring out what we can achieve. When we recorded, he said he felt Eliud Kipchoge would break the 2-hour marathon barrier…not long after we recorded, it happened. In human nature, we have rewired ourselves to think everything is very difficult and barriers seem insurmountable. It leads us to give up so easily. Marcus loves how we can actually find a path to getting through almost everything given the information at our fingertips. Actually, he sees the simple advice we got as kids being the key - just try it. Rather than just seeing roadblocks, what if we just tried it? If we fail, we’re no worse off. If we don’t like, we don’t have to do it again. But we can at least try. Marcus’s school career was rocky, simply because he wasn’t challenged or interested, so he was disruptive. When he went to university, he was able to study something he actually cared about, and focused on sport management. One thing he did do well in high school was sports, and particularly running. As a result, the school allowed him to go for early morning runs, which he did alone in the forest around the school, which set the tone for his days. As he got older, he grew into his body, and became good at rugby, which he played professionally starting in university. As he got to the end of his rugby career at 30, a friend asked him if he’d run the Dubai marathon with him, which was in less than four weeks (vs. typical training plans of 16 weeks). He immediately said, “Yes,” which means he was totally committed in the moment regardless of any hurdles. It’s just part of who he is. He set a goal of running sub-4-hours, and he ran in 4:01. You can see his face in the finish line picture, where it looks like everything was ripped out of him. He was totally emotionless. He decided he’d never run a marathon again. A friend soon sent him a write up of the Marathon du Sable, a 250km ultramarathon, and Marcus was completely taken, and knew that was what he should do. He became addicted to ultra running, and hasn’t looked back since. Running really speaks to Marcus because it’s something almost anyone can do without any special training. Even if you can only He’s run a short distance, you still can. He’s now run across all sorts of amazing places and settings in the world, like the jungle in Sri Lanka, the desert, the bush, cities and more. Humans are meant to be in nature. Being in the midst of that gives us such energy and inspiration, and many of us have forgotten what that’s like. Marcus shared a Nike ad that talked about how, if we’ve forgotten about this unknown and risk, it’s no wonder we’re so overcome by negativity. Wonder, exploration and taking in the world around us reconnects us in an epic, powerful way. We talked about consumption and minimalism. He’s not a minimalist, but he does recognize that we may be buying things because we are trying to fill some hole. What this is about is our comfort with different levels of suffering. Endurance sports has helped him get more comfortable with some levels of suffering. We talked about our past experiences and backgrounds, and Marcus agrees that much of what we think and do is tied to this. He also feels many of us are not willing to free ourselves of these past experiences. Ultra-endurance helped him see how we must release ourselves from that past, or we won’t get through what we face right now. Life is played in the right now, so we need to free ourselves from the past and not being weighed down by tomorrow. (Yes, he’s hitting on the idea of Do a Day) We got into the worst case scenario of running as a bit of advice for the path forward. You can just revert to walking a bit. Even Marcus hits this in some extreme events. We tell ourselves that we can’t do something and we build up these stories. Much of what we face, we actually don’t face worst case scenarios that are as terrible as we assume they will be. Links: Website: innerfight.com Podcast: InnerFight (hear me on episode 472) Instagram: @mjd_smith Facebook YouTube Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Bryan's best-selling first book, Do a Day, which is the inspiration for this show and can help you overcome your greatest challenges and achieve in life. Read Bryan's best-selling second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships, to tap into the power we all have to improve our relationships – even the tough ones we feel have no hope of getting better. Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event  

Erik Bergman is a co-founder of Catena Media, a company that went from 0 to 300+ employees in five years. Under this journey Erik made more money than he will ever need in his life, but at the expense of burning himself out, as well as both his business partner and his fiancee that also worked in the company. Now he has started the company Great.com. This time the focus isn't extreme growth but rather well-being, transparency, trust and flexibility for the team and where 100% of the profits will be donated to help the environment. Key Points from the Episode with Erik Bergman: Erik started his story in the midst of the biggest deal of his life. After days of negotiation, he finally has an agreement to sell a picture of Wayne Gretzky when he was 8 years old. This was the biggest deal for him because he started an activity that allowed him to be accepted when he had been an outsider by selling hockey player pictures on the school yard. First, these hockey player pictures were the currency of friendship, and later it was business and finances, and he found he had a passion for building businesses. In those early days, he wasn’t cool enough to be included. If people hung out with him, it was a sign of not being cool – unless you were doing it to buy hockey player pictures. He found an excuse for people to be friends with him. That meant he focused all of his energy on whatever thing he could transact with people on, whether hockey player pictures or whatever the latest fad was. This sparked him to start companies. Sometimes he failed, and sometimes he succeeded. His first business started with his best friend when he was 19 or 20 to build websites for small businesses. When that didn’t really pan out financially, they started to build websites for themselves, and started building sites for online Bingo games. At the same time, he had been playing poker professionally online, so he was building a story around online gaming or gambling. The business grew slowly, but clearly had legs, so they put all of their energy into it, including Erik moving to Malta and putting all of their energy into it. After a very close call with bankruptcy, things turned around and started to go extremely well. They took the company public in 2016, and Erik made more money in one day than he’d ever need in his life. I asked how and why they were so successful, and it wasn’t as simple as his earlier comment that everything they touched turned to gold. Instead, it was a mix of luck and timing with online gambling blowing up, and skill honed through many attempts and failures along the way. Erik shared one of those failures where a big event he had created ended up a total failure. In the wake of that, he asked himself what the worst part of it was, and he realized it was the shame. Walking into school the next Monday morning, he expected everyone to be staring at him, laughing, ridiculing, etc. Instead, no one cared. It showed him that, actually, no is worrying about your failure but you. That gave him a sense of freedom to go out, try, and be willing to fail proudly because no one will care if you do or hold it against you in the way you fear they will. The fear is very reasonable, and it took him a lot of experience with failure to realize that it isn’t real beyond what’s in our head. We are all really only stars in our own movie, and everyone else is an extra. And in their movie, the roles are the reverse. And no star cares about the extras. Going back to his adult life, he is totally focused on the currency of friendship, and he had been using business and financial success as a proxy for it. In the day his company went public, he had $15 million dollars, and figured he’d have eternal happiness. After about a week, he realized how empty he was. He started to realize how the most important relationships around him were not ok. His girlfriend, who worked with him, and he were growing apart, and broke up. His best friend and co-founder and he parted ways and didn’t speak. He traveled a bit, trying to find happiness, but just kept feeling empty. A friend introduced him to a charity project in Africa to build a school, and he donated to it and got involved, and started to feel something. He went to the school he helped fund the construction of, and heard about how in a gray, prison-like building, the kids were beaten. In the new building, which was painted with bright colors, there was no beating allowed. It struck him profoundly, and showed him he needed to focus on making changes on meaningful things. He got involved in more projects, like fighting malaria, and also struggled with how to build a business to support these needs and causes. He realized giving money is fine, but it’s not sustainable or enough. What he’s really good at is building business, so he decided to found Great.com as a purely capitalistic business to give away all of its profits for charitable causes that can change the world. I challenged him on the basis of the business being gambling which is so contrary to the good he wants to do with the money from it. It’s a difficult paradox. If he could go back in time and be extremely good at another type of business, he would. But he can’t do that. What he’s great at is building gambling businesses. So if he wants to give the most money to these causes, then he must do what he’s best at from an earnings standpoint. He knows he will destroy some lives in the process, but he believes the net good is so much greater that it’s worth it. And many of those lives that are worse off would still be without him. While that may be an excuse or cop out, he is aware of the issue rather than being ignorant to it. He’s just so focused on trying to maximize the benefit to the world regardless. She shifted gears and talked about why Erik and his girlfriend broke up. He noted that they are actually back together and engaged today, which is a testament to the growth journey he’s been on. They broke up because of neediness on his part, and how much it wore on her on top of the stress of the business. His treatment of her stemmed from his need to be so successful in business, insecurities he had as a result, and a sex addiction he struggled with left her feeling pushed too much of the time. He met an older man at a public speaking course who became something of a mentor who introduced Erik to some new thinking that started to change his perspective and approach. He felt like he was meeting himself 20 years in the future. A book that really struck him is Come as You Are by Emily Nagosky (see her TEDx Talk). She talks about the idea of the gas and the brake, and how society has a lot of things that feel like stomping on the brake to us. If you push on the gas pedal without thinking about what’s on the brake, you create more pressure on the brake. It got Erik thinking about how to create a safe space where there isn’t as much pressure on the brake so he and his girlfriend could put more things on the gas. The other book that really helped is Non-Violent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. It’s a communication method that changed everything for Erik. It’s an approach based on honesty, how to communicate honestly, and from a place of what our needs are in a way that helps people see and understand them. We got into what he’s working on with his business, Great.com, which is currently solely supporting climate change and an organization called The Rainforest Coalition. Erik shared that we can offset our carbon footprint for one year for roughly $15 through The Rainforest Coalition, which is not only a small amount, but incredibly efficient and simple. Links: Website: great.com Podcast: Becoming Great Instagram: @erik.bergman Subscribe to The Do a Day Podcast    Keep Growing with Do a Day Get Do a Day in print, Kindle, iBooks, Audiobook and more - even get a personally-signed copy from Bryan Falchuk Get Bryan's second book, The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better Relationships Get started on your journey to Better with the Big Goal Exercise Work with Bryan as your coach, or hire him to speak at your next event