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This week we welcome the team from the Southeast Gravel Series to the show.   Ben Renkema and Boyd Johnson discuss the journey to creating a 6-event race series in North and South Carolina.  The team share their passion for the Southeast region and the desire to create a competitive, yet inclusive series to serve the area.  Southeast Gravel Website  Southeast Gravel Instagram Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription (please excuse the typos): Southeast Gravel Craig Dalton: [00:00:00]Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the show, we've got Ben Renkema and Boyd Johnson. Founders of the southeast gravel series [00:00:15] As you know, I love talking to event organizers because I think they're the lifeblood of the community and the sport. It's great having people put effort in and in the southeast ben and boyd have been [00:00:26]Contributing to the community for a number of years, both as riders and racers and Boyd as the founder of Boyd cycling. [00:00:34]The team decided to create a six events series throughout 2021 with the falling Creek pinnacle Punisher, actually coming up this weekend, May 8th. So if you're in the region, make sure to grab a slot. [00:00:47]There are three additional races stretching out to October 2nd. So if you're in the region or fancy a trip to the region, there's still time to get some great racing in.  [00:00:56]Before we get into the show, I've got to thank long time program sponsor athletic greens. The most comprehensive daily nutritional beverage i've ever tried. [00:01:04]As gravel cyclists were often required to go super deep in our rides to reach those milestones we're shooting for. And if you're like me, you struggle a little bit with your nutrition and that's where athletic greens comes in and helps.  [00:01:18]Athletic greens contains 75 vitamins minerals and whole food sourced ingredients, including a multivitamin multi-mineral probiotic [00:01:26]Green superfood blend and more that all work together [00:01:30] to fill the nutritional gaps in your diet increase energy. Focus aid with digestion and support a healthy immune system. All without the needs to take multiple products or pills. That's the key for me. I love taking a drink every morning and just knowing that I've got my nutritional basis covered for my athletic greens use. I like to mix it with ice and on big ride days, I'll actually take it after the ride, as well as my daily drink in the morning.   I've been an athletic greens user for many years prior to this podcast. So I was super excited to have them come on board as a sponsor. And even more excited that they've been a long-term sponsor. If you're interested in checking out athletic greens, simply visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. [00:02:15] [00:02:15]And if you do so today they're throwing in a year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs. So remember, visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride.  [00:02:26]With all that said let's dive right in to my conversation with Ben and Boyd about the Southeast gravel series.  [00:02:32]Gentlemen.  Welcome to the show. [00:02:34] [00:02:34] [00:02:34] [00:02:34] Ben Renkema: [00:02:34] Thanks for having us. [00:02:35] Craig Dalton: [00:02:35] Yeah. Happy to be here again. Yeah. Excited to have you back Boyd and happy to meet you Ben for the listener, we had boy Johnson on the show. [00:02:43] I think it was episode 30 back in 2019. Talking about Boyd's experience as a writer. As well as the founder and owner of Boyd cycling, a great wheel manufacturer out there in South Carolina. So I encourage you to go [00:03:00] back and listen to that Boyd. You're in rarefied air of being a two time guest on the show. [00:03:04] I think there's only two or three others in that group. [00:03:06]Boyd Johnson: [00:03:06] That's good to be in that company. Yeah. [00:03:09] Craig Dalton: [00:03:09] Cool, Ben, welcome to the show for the first time. We always start by getting a little bit of your background as a writer. If you could just start by, just give us a quick synopsis of how you came to the sport and how ultimately you ended up riding off road on gravel bikes. [00:03:24] Ben Renkema: [00:03:24] Definitely. So I like to tell people that I've been riding gravel since, Oh, the early two thousands. I grew up in Holland, Michigan, and before I even knew bike racing was a thing. He used to take my crappy road bike and just bombed down gravel roads. Cause that's what we had a lot of. About a year later, I found out bike racing was a thing. [00:03:40]So I went with my best friend did my first bike race. And that was it started as a mountain bike race, or mostly gotten into road racing. About 2007, started racing at a professional level on the road, did that all the way until halfway through 2019. And then, yeah, partway between that, Boyd and I were teammates for awhile And yeah, we both had this common we'd love to explore, ride off road on road bikes. [00:04:04]And that's kinda how Southeast gravel came about. [00:04:07] Craig Dalton: [00:04:07] Nice. And if I'm not mistaken, you spent a little time with some stars and stripes on your back. [00:04:12] Ben Renkema: [00:04:12] I did. Yeah. I was lucky enough to have won three national championships as a cyclist. I'm the best one being 2017 elite national championships for the criterium which, trying to win that race for a long time. [00:04:25] So I was super stoked to win that. Nice. [00:04:27] Craig Dalton: [00:04:27] A good way to go out. And probably 2019 [00:04:30] was a good time to end a professional career on the road. Given what happened in 2020. [00:04:34] Ben Renkema: [00:04:34] Oh, it made it very easy to end my career that I had a heart condition halfway through 2019. It forced me into, retiring. [00:04:42]But I'll tell you what, 2020, when no one was racing, it wasn't as hard as it should have been. [00:04:48] Craig Dalton: [00:04:48] I bet. I bet it gave you a little bit more time to think about gravel. I imagine [00:04:52] Ben Renkema: [00:04:52] exactly. Yup. What's really important. So [00:04:56] Craig Dalton: [00:04:56] gentlemen, why don't you tell everybody where in the country you're located and then I'm excited to get into the Southeast gravel series? [00:05:04] I think it's a real unique set of events and I was excited to watch the last one unfold on Instagram. [00:05:13] Boyd Johnson: [00:05:13] Yeah, so Ben and I both live in Greenville, South Carolina. He was actually living in Florida and he was talking about moving up to Greenville. I think this was 2012. And he was working at a bike shop. [00:05:24] He had been building some wheels and so we actually hired him as one of our first wheel builders and got him to move to Greenville. And we've been here ever since. He started his own company outside of. Southeast gravel as well. And so he's no longer working for Boyd cycling, we remained friends and we run Southeast gravel together and we run that out of Greenville. [00:05:45] Craig Dalton: [00:05:45] How did the series come about? Is this the first year for it, or did you have events prior to 2021? [00:05:51] Boyd Johnson: [00:05:51] So this is technically the third year. It's funny. The first year just happened by accident. I'm a big map geek. I like to go out and find [00:06:00] new roads and I plotted a 80 mile course down by Clinton, South Carolina. [00:06:06] And after I got done with it, there was not a single Strava segment on the course. And I was like, Oh, we have to turn this into an event. And so I just put out a Facebook message a post and I said, Hey, Joe, just did this ride who would be interested in a cycling event up here. And 200 people commented and said that they would come out to it. [00:06:25] So we quickly made a bike Ridge. Paige started the event and we got 200 people to come to that first one. We really, it wasn't even Southeast gravel at the time. We didn't really even have a name for the event or anything like that. Ben came and raced it. And I think Ben, you got second or third place. [00:06:43] And after that we were talking about it and we knew that we had to make the series even bigger and better. [00:06:50] Ben Renkema: [00:06:50] Absolutely. Yep. Yeah. I think it was like that afternoon to the next day. Boyd's this is going to be a thing, like I need your help. Let's do this together. And I was a hundred percent on board. [00:07:00] Craig Dalton: [00:07:00] Amazing. I remember from our earlier conversation, Boyd, your love of adventure and just getting out there and discovering the lesser known gravel roads in your neck of the woods. [00:07:12] Boyd Johnson: [00:07:12] Yeah. And a lot of times, when I go out for an exploration ride, it's usually by myself because. Sometimes I find an amazing route like that. [00:07:19] And other times I ended up just hiking through the woods for awhile, carrying my bike with me. [00:07:24] Craig Dalton: [00:07:24] It's important to know your partners when you're going out for an adventure and what they're actually going to get into for sure. [00:07:31] [00:07:30] Ben Renkema: [00:07:31] Yeah, boy, Boyd has a little bit of reputation in Greenville. Eventually everyone started calling them Boyd rides where, he would try to get his friends to come with them, but everybody knew that. [00:07:41] Okay. We're probably going to be carrying our bikes through the woods. But it's funny. It's full circle. Now people pay us for that pleasure. [00:07:49] Craig Dalton: [00:07:49] Nice. Can you characterize the roads of South and North Carolina that you tend to. Tend towards for these gravel events. [00:07:58] Boyd Johnson: [00:07:58] So a lot of the, it's very different because we've got six different events. [00:08:02]Most of the gravel that we have it's cars can travel down the road. There's very rarely a situation where you're gonna find where vehicles can't get to. The brace we just had, we have a little bit of single track in there, but it's only about a mile or so Some of the roads are big, chunky gravel, and others are, you can ride a road bike on them. [00:08:21] No problem. [00:08:23] Craig Dalton: [00:08:23] Gotcha. So as far as equipment choices go, it sounds a fairly narrow tire would suit for most of the courses. [00:08:30] Ben Renkema: [00:08:30] I would say we, we've got our first two events while our first event is Clinton. We actually in 2019, our winner did it on a road bike with 32 mill tire. That being said he was a very skilled professional not something that everybody wants to do. [00:08:45] And then we have, I would say our roughest course is May 8th coming up falling Creek, pinnacle Punisher, that's something where you're gonna really want more of a 40 to 42 mil tire. Something even bigger if you want to be comfortable and have lot of competence, because [00:09:00] there are big boulders there's, big, gnarly gravel fast downhills with rough rocks. [00:09:04]And I think that's what makes Southeast gravel so cool is it's not just one event. It's very different. Yeah. [00:09:10] Craig Dalton: [00:09:10] So as you guys have laid it out, I believe it's a six event series. Is that correct? Yes. And starting in March, fairly early in the season and ending in October, obviously that's a, a full cycling season journey for the athletes as you laid out the courses. [00:09:28] Did you think about that? And did you think about adding elevation or complexity and technicality to the courses over the journey of the series? [00:09:37] Ben Renkema: [00:09:37] Yeah, we definitely put a good amount of thought into it. Originally the first event, which is the gravel battle of Semper forest was earlier, it was kind of February. [00:09:46]But I think 20, 20 Boyd, correct me if I'm wrong. I think it was like 30 degrees at the start. And so we decided to move it, a little later we put it into March. It what we did is we took our two S Southern most events that are, lower elevation. And we put those early in the year because it's usually about 10 to 15 degrees warmer that far South of Greenville, which is when you go North of Greenville kind of up into the mountains, it gets pretty cool. [00:10:10]So we stuck our events more towards the summer that are up in the mountains where it's cooler. So that was our thinking for that. And then also we wanted the. Doing air quotes here, the easier course, which would be the Clinton and the Greenwood chorus earlier in the year, just because, a lot of people don't have as much fitness yet. [00:10:27] So start with kind of the easier courses [00:10:30] [00:10:30] Craig Dalton: [00:10:30] and are the core, are you offering multiple distances for the athletes during each event? [00:10:36] Boyd Johnson: [00:10:36] Yeah each one has a a short and a long, and the thing with the Southeast gravel series is, It's not the ultra endurance gravel that, some events are popular with. [00:10:47] So our distances tend to be between 30 to 40 miles for the short course, and then between 60 to 70 for the long course. [00:10:55] Craig Dalton: [00:10:55] Great. Yeah. I actually liked that. That's my sweet spot. I found that kind of. Extension of this ultra endurance race kind of category doesn't necessarily fit with me personally. [00:11:07]I did my Leadville one hundreds, and I did that stuff when I was a little bit younger, but now it's nice. If it's a hundred K, I feel like I can go out there regardless of what my family duties have taken me away from my training. And I can still have a great day and it could feel APIC, but I'm not absolutely destroyed afterwards. [00:11:25] Ben Renkema: [00:11:25] Yeah, absolutely. It's something where, you can, you could do this event every weekend. And it's a lot of the racing that Boyd and I personally are used to, going into a criterium or, sub a hundred mile road race. It's not something you have to train months for. [00:11:39] Craig Dalton: [00:11:39] I also think it's neat. Sorry to interrupt, but I'd also think it's neat that you designed the earlier courses to be a little bit, maybe more beginner and intermediate friendly, just in terms of the profile and elevation so that someone can get into the sport early and get a taste of what riding and event might be like. [00:11:56] And then train up and learn the technicality for those more [00:12:00] mountainous stages or races later in the year. [00:12:04] Boyd Johnson: [00:12:04] Yeah, I think, we get the question all the time. It's I don't really race my bike. I want to come out and, can I just ride this? And so having some of the, easier to rain courses earlier in the season and less people get out and we encourage all levels of people to come out. [00:12:19]Whether you're averaging eight or 28 miles per hour, it's got a course for you. And we've had a ton of people where each event, we have so many people where it's their first ever gravel event and they come out, they have a good time and they're hooked and they want to do more of them. [00:12:34] And if they never want to race, it's great. We have rest stops. We've got food afterwards. It's a great community atmosphere. [00:12:41] Craig Dalton: [00:12:41] Yeah. How have you seen over the last few years, the gravel cycling community in the Carolinas start to grow up? [00:12:47]Ben Renkema: [00:12:47] It's definitely growing a lot. I actually went and did a. [00:12:51] A group ride yesterday up in Bravard, which is a little North of Greenville. And there was a lot of people telling me that, man, I've had people coming into the bike shop here in they're buying real gravel bikes because they're like, there's this, the series called Southeast gravel and we're doing all of them and we want to get better. [00:13:06]We're buying a more specific bike for it. And yeah, my wife and I Christie with our company. We're a coaching company and we have so many of our normal athletes that are runners that are triathletes road cyclists, and they're getting into gravel just because, Hey, everyone's doing it. [00:13:21] I want to try it. And they try it and they just absolutely love it. [00:13:25] Craig Dalton: [00:13:25] Yeah, it's certainly been a great couple of years. And I think one of the other things I love about the [00:13:30] series aspect of what you're doing is if you're local to Greenville and picking up a gravel bike, you can look at a series like this and just get in your mind. [00:13:38]These are areas where I can ride and train all year long, irrespective of race day. And I can get out there and know where other gravel athletes are putting down some miles. [00:13:50] Boyd Johnson: [00:13:50] Yeah. And on our website, one of the things we have is, for every event we have instructions for, if you want to come out and pre-read the course, here's where you park, here's the course file information like that. [00:14:01]Some of our some of our events, then you can't park there on race day. So we give alternate parking places. So you can go out and just ride the course. That [00:14:09] Craig Dalton: [00:14:09] makes sense. That's awesome. I love that about the gravel cycling community, that across the board, everybody's very giving about information and it's so great to see you facilitating that at the Southeast gravel website hub. [00:14:24] Can we talk a little bit more about some of the more mountainous races. I think you were talking about the fallen Creek, pinnacle Punisher and the race to Valhalla. What are those courses like in terms of technicality, how much elevation, how much climbing is happening during those events? [00:14:40]Boyd Johnson: [00:14:40] Both of those you're going to get over a thousand feet per 10 miles. [00:14:44]And I can't remember. I know that the Hala is 69 miles, 7,400 feet of climbing. That course actually has the least amount of gravel. It's got some very long gravel sections, but there's road in between them. But the cool thing with that is you're [00:15:00] in the very Northwest corner of South Carolina near the Georgia and sorry, North Carolina border. [00:15:06] And. That area, no traffic up there. You get some very cool roads. Great scenery. So that's by far our hardest course, but it's also the one where it's just enjoyable to go out and ride. [00:15:19] Ben Renkema: [00:15:19] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think the ball Hala course. We haven't had an event there yet. This will be the first one. Yeah, Boyd's right. [00:15:26] It's right at 70 miles. It's 7,000 feet of climbing and it is the least amount of gravel of any of our courses. But I guarantee you, I don't think anyone's going to complain about that. Cause the gravel is hard and the road sections that are on the course are beautiful. There's some really nice paved road climbs. [00:15:42]So it's not like when you are on the pavement, they're not like these kind of crummy transfer road stages where a lot of traffic they're beautiful. And so same thing with the wall holler course with our Clinton and Greenwood, boy, I, we whipped this course together just based off of maps and, looking at, Google, well maps. [00:16:00] And I went out there one day early in the morning and I just wrote it, the 70 miles. And immediately I called Boyd. I said, this is perfect. I don't think we should change the course at all. This is incredibly ideal and I uploaded to Strava and there are two people. They have ever written the most of the gravel sections on the course and the one really hard climb that I think is the coolest part. [00:16:21] And of course two people have ever written it. Which I thought that was the coolest thing. Yeah. [00:16:25] Craig Dalton: [00:16:25] That's amazing. I talked to another a couple other sort of regional groups that are putting together [00:16:30] events and it's funny when they. Talk about how the locals are just amazed and flabbergasted that all of a sudden on a weekend, you're now getting a dozen riders out there, training in these rural communities that see very little car traffic, let alone cycling traffic. [00:16:48] Ben Renkema: [00:16:48] Yeah we get that a lot. It's pretty funny. Like, why are all these people suddenly coming to Greenwood, South Carolina? Like it doesn't make any sense. [00:16:56] Craig Dalton: [00:16:56] Did we talked about how this is this six race series? Are you tracking athletes performance in each race and doing a kind of overall season long competition? [00:17:07] Boyd Johnson: [00:17:07] Yeah. Each one of the six races, as soon as you enter one of them you're eligible for the omnium. We've got a points calculator and it actually tracks it as soon as you've finished, we know your omnium results and we can track that. And so we do a year long series for omnium points as well. [00:17:23] Craig Dalton: [00:17:23] Nice. And you're a couple events down already, and I imagine, a lot of the men and women athletes that have been attending, are you seeing throughout the series different skillsets that are favoring. One type of athlete versus another start to emerge? [00:17:40] Ben Renkema: [00:17:40] I think so definitely. I'm really excited for falling Creek coming up May 8th because now we start to get into the climbing. [00:17:47] I was actually just talking to two of my athletes and one of my teammates the one did really well at the first two events. But he's not going to do so great at the next one. Just because he's a bigger, more powerful rider. Yeah, so it's exciting to [00:18:00] see that, if you don't do great in the flatter ones, but you're a climber. [00:18:03] Okay. Now it's your chance to shine and vice versa. [00:18:06] Craig Dalton: [00:18:06] Yeah. Just out of curiosity with you mentioned that you've got your new coaching organization that you've been working on red rocket revolution.com is the URL for the coaching services, right? Yes. Yep. And so for that athlete, the bigger guy who's does well on the lower elevation and lower climbing routes. [00:18:27] What type of transition are you making for him as a coach to try to make him as competitive as possible when it starts going uphill more? [00:18:34]Ben Renkema: [00:18:34] It's a lot of mental. A lot of the people that we work with me being a racer, I was always a sprinter and I would go into these races. And think, okay, there's climbing, I'm not a climber. [00:18:45] And so guess what, the second back climb starts, you just give up and you don't even try. So of course, changing the training up a little bit but just mental, like it is so much mental people don't realize that, that, okay. There is a lot of descending on the score still, and there's still some plat riding. [00:19:00] You never know what's going to happen. You just get on that climb, you ride your pace that, you can hold. Maybe don't try to stay with the leader, stay within your limit and then race your strengths on the dissents and the flats. So really, I think just kinda, in between a year is just the mental [00:19:15] Craig Dalton: [00:19:15] game. [00:19:15] Yeah. There, I think there's a lot to that in gravel, in general. Just the idea that everybody around you is going to be suffering at some point. And this is obviously extendable to cycling in general, just knowing that everybody's going to be [00:19:30] hurting. And it's the athletes that can push through that. And keep motivated, keep moving forward, always moving forward. [00:19:36] Those are the people who are going to Excel in gravel racing. [00:19:39] Boyd Johnson: [00:19:39] Yeah. And I think a good example of what Ben was just talking about. If you watch the video for the Greenwood gravel [00:19:45] Craig Dalton: [00:19:45] grinder [00:19:45] Boyd Johnson: [00:19:45] after the first card sacks and you had a lead group of five riders and, you may have looked at that of Oh, the FA the strongest five or up the road. And, but the second and third group caught up with them after 20 miles and all of a sudden it's a whole new race. [00:20:01] Craig Dalton: [00:20:01] Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was interesting. [00:20:02] And I do want to get into your Instagram coverage cause I felt like to a degree I was there, which was awesome. I agree. I was watching it and I think Ben was commentating out there and there was the lead group up the road and it felt like a foregone conclusion. And then all of a sudden, boom, you had this big group bridge up and it was really fun to be part of the action. [00:20:23] Ben Renkema: [00:20:23] Yeah, it was cool. And I think even, when I was doing my on the motorcycle announcing, I was like this is our six rider group. Like this is it for the day. But I was actually quite surprised that we had three groups once we hit the first pavement section and it all came together. [00:20:38] So I think we had 30 people going into kind of the first hard little climb of the day. And I was super surprised by that. But really cool to watch that [00:20:47] Craig Dalton: [00:20:47] happen. Yeah, for the listener I was watching via the Southeast gravel, Instagram account, the same weekend as rock cobbler was going on out in California. [00:20:57] And it had some other coverage from the team at [00:21:00] pure gravel. It was just a lot of fun as a fan of the sport to be able to see those two events. Can we talk a little bit about your vision for how to cover these events? That it's incredibly complicated. You're out there in a Mo motorcycle, trying to get as much footage as you can. [00:21:15]What did you learn? And as a fan who saw it, great job getting out there. What did you learn in this event and what are you going to try to do in future events to keep fans around the country and around the region watching and participating from their armchairs? [00:21:30] Ben Renkema: [00:21:30] Yeah, totally. The coolest thing about having six events in one year is we can. [00:21:35] Quickly make changes and make things better. In that, see, we have all these categories of things, the food, the courses the coverage. So what I want to do better for the next time is I'm actually going to put some on them, someone on the motorcycle with me so I can get closer to the group safely and get that. [00:21:51]Inside of the group coverage, really seeing those paint faces get a really good shot of, okay, who are these riders? And the biggest thing that's been a struggle from for me doing this on my own is I want to get coverage of the women's race. Especially our first event. We had 40 pro women out there. [00:22:07]But unfortunately as the lead Modo, I have to stay with that lead group for several reasons. If our core signs get taken down by some time locals I have signs that I put back up just to make sure no one gets off course. And then at the few busy intersections we have, I do stop the traffic. [00:22:25] For the front public groups. So what we're going to do is we're actually going to put people on course at our rest stops that [00:22:30] are gonna be logged into the Instagram. So they'll do live updates of, okay. Here's the lead group of the women. Here's the second group, here's the third group. And so on. [00:22:38]So yeah, we just want to beef that up, not just show the very front of the [00:22:42] Craig Dalton: [00:22:42] race. That'd be great. So Instagram fans May 8th is the next one. Then July 10th, following that I'll have a link to the Instagram account and the website in the show notes. I think it's super cool and exciting that you're out there doing that. [00:22:58] Ben Renkema: [00:22:58] Yeah, it's a, it's definitely a fun way to watch the race unfold. When we did the first event, Clinton, it was an absolutely massive group going into the first section of gravel. Looked like Stratta Bianche with all the dust. And part of me was like, I am so glad I'm not in that group. [00:23:13] But also I was like, man, I wish I asked that [00:23:16] Craig Dalton: [00:23:16] group. I can only imagine. I sort of sense that as you were giving your commentary that you'd be itching to get out there. If you weren't one of the people running the event. [00:23:27] Ben Renkema: [00:23:27] Absolutely. [00:23:28] Craig Dalton: [00:23:28] Yeah. One of the challenges I think, which is a bit of a bummer, I was going through the Southeast gravel, Instagram account and, the way Instagram stories work, they don't save and retain themselves. [00:23:39] So it was unfortunate that I couldn't go back and rewatch any of the footage prior to this conversation. [00:23:46] Ben Renkema: [00:23:46] So actually if you go to our Instagram account I've made highlight reels. Great. So yeah, if you actually look down the highlights I've saved, so you've got Clinton and you've got Greenwood's, you can go back and actually rewatch all of it. [00:23:58] And what I did [00:24:00] is I actually also downloaded those using just the race coverage clips and maybe a video that's on YouTube. Oh, [00:24:08] Craig Dalton: [00:24:08] perfect. Yes. [00:24:09] Ben Renkema: [00:24:09] You can actually go back to Southeast gravel and Instagram. You can actually rewatch it, which is cool, but a lot of people that's. Yeah. It's easy to miss. [00:24:17] Craig Dalton: [00:24:17] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I might have to pick your brain offline to figure out how to do that myself. [00:24:23] Ben Renkema: [00:24:23] It's actually I'm not a super techie person. It's like intricate complicated, but once you've learned how to do it, it's pretty easy. Yeah. [00:24:29] Craig Dalton: [00:24:29] That's good to know. I did it early on in the pandemic. [00:24:32] I started doing a little bit of Instagram live recording of this podcast and it was fun. But at the end of the day it was just hard to say for me to figure out how to save that content. So I ended up moving away from it, but maybe I'll revisit it a little bit in this coming year. As I get out there to some more events. [00:24:49] Definitely. Is there anything else you guys want to share about, you got four more events coming throughout this season. Anything you want to share to athletes who may be planning on registering for those events or otherwise? [00:25:02]Boyd Johnson: [00:25:02] I think the main man passages, the people who are coming out, they're having a blast. [00:25:06]You have people that worried if they're going to be fit enough to do it. We've had long people or people who do the long course. And halfway through, they realized that maybe they should transfer to the short course and we can adjust the result on the fly. Really, we just want people coming out and joining the roads, having a good time. [00:25:24]We've got a really good community atmosphere with, free lunch afterwards. We've got a really good beer [00:25:30] sponsor and it's just a great time, a great day on the bike. [00:25:35] Ben Renkema: [00:25:35] Yeah, I absolutely agree with that and to piggyback off that is, I like to tell people. This is if you're a pro bike racer. [00:25:43] Yeah. You're going to have a lot of fun. There's awesome competition. But the Mo most of the people out here are not bike racers. And that's what I love about gravel is, being a criteria, my road racer it's if you're a beginner, you go out there we've all seen it. You get dropped two laps in, you get pulled off the course okay, I drove three hours for a five minute race. [00:26:03] And it's probably embarrassing. That's not what grapple is. We have people who take, who average eight miles an hour for the day. And our pros usually average about 23 miles for the day. So you do not have to be a bike racer to come to these events. Most of the people doing them are not it's fun. [00:26:19] We've got rest stops and yeah, you finish up, you can drink some ONTAP Thomas Creek beer usually at barbecue or burrito. So it's awesome. [00:26:27] Craig Dalton: [00:26:27] Nice. And where are you seeing riders come in from, to get to these events? That how big of a draw regionally? [00:26:35] Boyd Johnson: [00:26:35] Obviously mainly, we get a lot from the Carolinas from Georgia. [00:26:38]We've been starting to get people from Florida coming up. Some of our first people that registered for the whole series are from Florida. Recently we've had a really big draw from the Washington DC area. And we've got some writers up there that are, trying to get more of their friends to come down to the series. [00:26:54] So we really appreciate that. I don't think because we have the six events I don't think any [00:27:00] one of them is particularly going to be a bucket list where, like you have people flying from all over the world to do an Unbound. We've got a little bit more manageable where, you're coming it's okay. [00:27:10]One day or a weekend event y'all have to plant, a week and a half of travel around it. [00:27:15] Craig Dalton: [00:27:15] Yeah, that makes sense. So not any one of the events is deemed the queen of the series per se. [00:27:26] Ben Renkema: [00:27:26] Yeah, [00:27:27] Boyd Johnson: [00:27:27] Clinton won the battle of Sumpter forest. The first one that we had, because we've had that now for three years, that's been our largest attendance. It's the first, one of the year, people are itching to get out and ride their bike in a competitive environment. I think the Valhalla one has the potential to be that really hard challenge that people are looking for. [00:27:46]So each one is unique and its own [00:27:48] Craig Dalton: [00:27:48] aspect. Yeah. Nice. And then, regionally, are you seeing more and more events crop up in 2021 that hadn't existed before we started to see a growing trend in that region for more events? [00:28:03] Boyd Johnson: [00:28:03] Yeah. I There's obviously more gravel racing that happens. Ben and I have already gone and done a few races this year. But we've had some pretty good staples in the area for a while. Southern cross up in Northern Georgia, we've got monster cross and Pisgah. We just went down and did the swamp [00:28:18] Ben Renkema: [00:28:18] pretty good. [00:28:20] Boyd Johnson: [00:28:20] So there's a good series, a good amount of events that happen around [00:28:24] Craig Dalton: [00:28:24] here. Yeah, it certainly seems as a region Southeast has had gravel athletes [00:28:30] for many years now that have been standouts and a lot of participants out of that region. [00:28:37] Ben Renkema: [00:28:37] And we get a good [00:28:38] Boyd Johnson: [00:28:38] draw. We get a good draw because we've got such a good mountain bike scene here. [00:28:42] And the road scene been really good too. And gravel is where the mountain bikers and the road riders are starting to play with each other. [00:28:49] Ben Renkema: [00:28:49] Yup. [00:28:50] Craig Dalton: [00:28:50] Okay. Yeah. It's super interesting. Are you, do you get a sense that more getting drawn from one sport or the other. [00:28:57] Ben Renkema: [00:28:57] No, I, what I've noticed is it's an absolutely mix. [00:28:59]So Clinton, our first event this year, where we just had an absolutely massive profield for men and women, it's evenly split. W there's a lot of pro mountain bikers that live up in Bravard kind of Asheville area. And they were, they all came out. And then we had. A handful of pro road racer. [00:29:15]So I think it's a really even split. And then also cross racers. We had a handful of legit cross racers who live up in Asheville. So I think it's a really like pretty much 50, 50 split of mountain bikers and roadies. Yeah, [00:29:28] Craig Dalton: [00:29:28] I guess that makes sense. As the bikes have become more capable. [00:29:30] I remember starting out as a mountain bike racer, begrudgingly getting a road bike because I knew I needed to train on the road in order to be competitive as a mountain biker. But I suppose today you're probably not going out and buying a pure road bike. If you're a mountain bike, you're getting one of these gravel bikes and then falling in love with all the great things about. [00:29:49] Drop bar riding on road and mixed terrain, and then discovering, Hey, this can really push me even as a technical mountain biker riding these drop bars on these [00:30:00] trails can really push me and challenge me in a way that's super exciting. [00:30:05] Ben Renkema: [00:30:05] Definitely. [00:30:06] Craig Dalton: [00:30:06] Yeah. Gentlemen, thank you so much for the overview of Southeast gravel. [00:30:10] As I said, I'll put all the appropriate links in the show notes for this, and I hope you guys have a successful series. Awesome. You're [00:30:18] Ben Renkema: [00:30:18] going gonna, you're gonna, you're going to come out and race with us, right? [00:30:21] Craig Dalton: [00:30:21] I hope to, and I've been itching to get to some East coast events for a long time. I thought last year was going to be a year of great gravel travel for me, but obviously that imploded. [00:30:31] So I'm slowly getting around to the idea of getting on a plane and getting out there. So I would definitely love to hit some of your events, [00:30:40]Ben Renkema: [00:30:40] but we'd love to have you. [00:30:42]Craig Dalton: [00:30:42] Big, thanks for that invitation, Ben and Boyd. And thank you for joining us this week on the gravel ride podcast. Great to learn more about the Southeast gravel series. I love that it's a year long series of events. I think that's so great for a region in nor Cal. We have the grasshopper series, which I know is the cornerstone for many bay area athletes. And I imagine Southeast gravel does the same duty. They're in the southeast region [00:31:07]I'll have all the appropriate links to their accounts and websites in our show notes. [00:31:12]And if you're looking for regional information as a gravel cyclist, I encourage you to join the ridership. The ridership is an online forum where a gravel cyclists are connecting on a regional basis, as well as discussing the macro trends in the industry. It's also the number one way to get in touch [00:31:30] with me or provide feedback about the show. Simply visit www.theridership.com for your free membership [00:31:38]And if you're interested in supporting the show further, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. [00:31:46]I genuinely appreciate all the contributions that have been made today to cover the overhead of the show. And it gives me a little fire in my belly to keep churning out the episodes. Until next time. Here's defining some dirt under your wheels        

1 If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. 2 Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. 3 For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. I) There are Some things that must be Retained (Colossians 3:1-2a) • Hang on to an awareness of our Foundation (Colossians 3:1a) • Hang on to our Focus (Colossians 3:1b-2a) A. A deeper knowledge of Jesus, (Colossians 3:10) B. A clean, holy life, (Colossians 3:5-9) C. Godly virtues, (Colossians 3:12-17) D. Holiness in our domestic life, (Colossians 3:18-21) E. Holiness in our social life, (Colossians 3:22-4:1) F. An effective prayer life – (Colossians 4:2) G. A fruitful witness – (Colossians 4:3-6) III) There are Some things must be Remembered (Colossians 3:3-4) • There has been a death that changes everything (Colossians 3:3a) • There are False Doctrines • There are Foolish Demands II) There are Some things that must be Released (Colossians 3:2b) • There has been a deposit made into our lives (Colossians 3:3b) • There is a dream worth holding onto (Colossians 3:4) Watch us on our YouTube channel, our website or our Facebook page https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi7C66QudDzbTDtA-DaSQBw/ https://midwaybaptistnc.org https://facebook.com/midwaybaptistnc

Intermittent Silence/Stillness | Observer & Participant | Faith & Harmony |  Feeling of Oneness | Let go; let God | Flow with Nature | Be with Nature | Be Nature | Taoism Experience | What have I learned? | What have I learned about me? | What is my lesson in this experience? How do I learn and grow from this experience? Expand my awareness/consciousness, elevate my frequency, attract greater experiences. Use your desire to benefit your journey | Wish for availability throughout the day for Intermittent Stillness | Crave Absolute Faith | Desire to flow as, in, and with Harmony Forgive | Release all baggage | Let go and let God | Grow and Flow with Nature | Growth stems from Faith | Surrender and flow with Harmony | ISness  NOWness  ONEness There is nothing outside of myself | I am not separate from God | God is not separate from me | God and me is I | There is no separation | Separation is an illusion | Cycle of Nature: Growth, Death, Rebirth Faith + Harmony = Love | Think, Believe, Feel, Trust, Know, Confidence/Faith, Demonstrating, Being | Do everything in Love ~ 1 Cor. 16:14

Shownotes can be found at tashcorbin.com/223  We have another Q&A episode of the podcast today, and I've got a brilliant question from Mel about facing up to the mindset blocks and gremlins that might rear their head when you are creating and promoting a webinar. This will be strongly focused on your webinar mindset and is going to be a really helpful one. Before we jump into Mel's brilliant question today, a quick reminder that if you'd like me to answer your question on the Heart-Centred Business Podcast, and give you a lovely little shout out as well, you can submit your question HERE. Today's question comes from the amazing Mel Gorry who you can find on Instagram at @melissa.gorry. Melissa asked a great question about running a webinar, and I love this because I love Mel so much. If you don't follow her, please make sure you go and check her out. She is a business and marketing specialist who specifically works with women who have chronic conditions or other reasons why they have limited energy and therefore need to build their marketing and business strategies in a way that works with that limited energy. Mel is absolutely brilliant at what she does, and I absolutely adore her so I'm super happy to be answering her question today. Mel's question is: "When launching and releasing my first webinar, sooo many mindset gremlins reared their head. I was so unprepared and didn't know how to combat it! Why does this happen? What are the best strategies to combat and build resilience to those mindset blocks? And Tash, what came up for you in your first webinar?" Great questions and I'm really excited to talk about this one today! When it comes to creating and launching a webinar, it's such a great strategy for your business. It's a great way to get in front of a lot of people at once, to talk about your services, and to help people move from where they are to where they want to be. It also does great things for growing your list, building your audience, and creating momentum on social media. There are so many reasons to love webinars, and if you haven't watched my podcast episode previously that is about why I love webinars so much, then go check that out because I am a big webinars fan. Think about the fact that when you start a business, it is one of the most powerful personal development journeys you can go on. When you think about why it's such a strong personal development journey, it's because it brings up all your stuff. YOU are the boss now, YOU have to do the work, YOU need to be self-motivated. If there's a self-sabotage or procrastination bone in your body, you're going to find it when you start a business. You need to ask for money, you need to be seen and visible, talk yourself up, and talk about your services. Knowing that starting and growing a business is the ultimate personal development journey and brings up all that mindset stuff for us to be able to pay attention to it and clear it, then when we think about a webinar, it's the one part of running a business and marketing strategy, where every single one of those things come into play. This happens because: You're saying that you want to teach someone something, meaning that you are positioning yourself as an expert, which brings up all the imposter syndrome things. You need to get out there, promote it, do all the marketing, set yourself up and put your slides together. It allows you to leave things to the last minute so if that's one of your particular mindset blocks, that will come up. You can also be self-sabotaging or procrastinating. All of the pressure and stuff about having made a commitment and needing to get it done can come up as well. You're going to be more visible. You are standing in front of a bunch of people (virtually), and first of all, saying that they should come to your webinar. Then when they're at the webinar you're saying that you've got something to say. You're at maximum visibility when you're launching and delivering a webinar. At the end of it, you're usually asking for the sale for something... so you're asking about money, and it brings up all your money blocks. It's no surprise that a webinar is something that can bring up a lot of those mindset blocks for us. But at the same time, that's what we want. We want to be paying attention to those things so that we can clear them and move through them. This allows us to expand, receive more, work more effectively in our business, get more done and whatever else it is that we need to do. Whilst it may be annoying that it brings up all of your mindset blocks, you really need to celebrate that it brings them up because that's exactly what we want to do. We want to take action. Notice what those thoughts are, notice what those gremlins are, and then use the tools and strategies that we have in our toolkit to uncover, clear and release them. It's actually a really beautiful opportunity to grow your mindset and undertake a leap in that personal development journey that comes with starting and growing a business. The second part of your question that I'm going to answer is what came up for me when I ran my first webinar. I ran my first webinar in 2013 when I was a couple of months into my business journey. The webinar was called 12 Steps to Creative Success and it was a webinar on how to grow a creative business, whether you are an artist or a crafter or any kind of maker. That was my niche when I first started my business (well, my second niche). I only had 13 people sign up for that webinar, despite the fact that I thought I had spewed up content about it onto the internet for two weeks solid. I felt like everyone in my entire world must have known I was running this webinar and must have been sick of hearing me talk about it. When I finished the webinar, due to the fact that I had only had 13 people sign up, I did a little review of my marketing and how I'd shared it. Here's what I had done: I'd emailed my eight-person mailing list once Posted about it on my own Facebook page zero times Posted about it in two Facebook groups that I was in once in each group I had shared the information about my webinar three times, and I thought I had told everyone about it and I was all over the internet. It was really interesting that I thought I had done all the right things but in essence, I had been very quiet about this webinar and expected people to sign up for it the first time they ever saw it. The only way that I was talking about it was just by copying and pasting the promo copy that I was going to be using. I sent the same promo to my list, as well as putting it in those two Facebook groups. Really it's a miracle that those 13 people signed up, to be honest with you. Only one of those 13 people showed up live because I didn't send out any reminder emails. It was only when they first signed up for the webinar that I shared the link of how they could join and watch it. There were no reminders sent to anyone, so only one person showed up. I talked to that one person like she was 100 people and it was hilarious. It brought up a lot of the "Who am I" stuff because I hadn't had a successful artistic or creative business at that point in time. I had a lot of imposter syndrome stuff coming up, feeling like I knew how to do the business part but I wasn't someone who'd already done this before. I felt like I was still growing my business but I knew what worked on social media and what sorts of things I could encourage people to do. At this point, I had already been working with two clients in creative businesses, but I still felt lots of stuff coming up of, 'Who am I to say I can help people with this? Who am I? There's no way that I am the right person to be teaching people this', and I got really freaked out before I ran that webinar. BUT my desire to share the 12 step process I had developed and been working on with my VIP clients, outweighed my fear. I'm really grateful that it did because it meant that even though I was really worried about it, had the imposter syndrome and I only had 13 people sign up, I knew that even if just one person heard this 12 step process and it made their business growth journey easier, then my job was done and I would have been of service. That was a really interesting thing to reflect back on so I did a lot of journaling and self-reflection on: That webinar The promo process The delivery process How I could improve it The follow-up process It was such an amazing growth time for me in my business. I really do encourage you to tune into that desire to serve and that desire to tell people what to do and help them. Tap into your desire to really show up and make a difference in even just one person's life because that will help with a lot of the webinar mindset wobbles that can come up when you are creating and launching a webinar. All of that being said, here are my top four tips on what to do about the mindset stuff when you are creating and launching a webinar. 1. Tap into the service mindset Whenever you are freaking out about something that you are going to do, you are focusing on yourself instead of focusing on your audience. Whenever you notice that, shift it. Think to yourself: Okay, clearly I'm talking about myself and worrying about myself right now. But what about the people who are waiting for this information? What about the people who are sitting there thinking that no one understands them and that no one is going to be able to help them? I want you to think about them. Specifically for you, Mel, think about all those beautiful women who think they can't be successful in business because they're not well. The women who think that they can't be successful and do all the things that they need to do because of a physical limitation with their energy. That makes me really teary thinking about it and about all those women we are depriving of the amazing Mel Gorry because you're a bit worried about your mindset wobbles. You've got your imposter syndrome happening or whatever is happening for you. When you focus on them instead, it really does make a huge difference in how you feel and the energy that you bring to that webinar. I talk about this a lot, but when I first started my business, I had a post-it note on my desk that said, "Do it for her". Those four words really drove a lot of what I did in the first six months of my business because it wasn't about me. It's very easy to make it all about yourself when starting a business, but at the end of the day, it's about who you're here to serve. "Do it for her" was what it took to get me into that service mindset whenever I was feeling wobbly. 2. Take the pressure down This is a practise. When I first ran my webinar, it was just the one person. Your audience will never be as small as it is today. The number of people who sign up for your webinars will never be as low as it is today. Take the pressure down. You don't need to be perfect. Just see this as practise. Even if you completely mess it up and the 25 people who signed up to webinar think that you don't know what you're talking about, that's only 25 people out of billions who are out there in the world that you can serve. Nine times out of ten when you do mess it up, people don't think that you're terrible and that they'll never work with you again, it actually makes people realise that you're human, and it can be more engaging than if you get it perfect. Take the pressure off yourself to get it perfect. Embrace that feeling of it being a practise, and allow yourself to experiment and learn to get better at it. 3. Trust that it gets easier I remember in my first YouTube videos, I was so breathy and weird on camera. Whenever we get a big influx of Take Off students, I reshare one of my very early YouTube videos with them because I know how much it makes them feel better about what they're doing. I was terrible. I was sitting on my balcony and the wind kept blowing my hair up, you can hardly hear me, there's a truck that goes behind me, and I thought I was doing this amazing, super casual type thing on my video, and it was terrible. So just know that it gets easier, and you get better at speaking to your audience. With practise you'll get better at facilitating that webinar, moving people through the process, dealing with the chatbox, the screen, the slides and all of the things that are going on at once. You will forget to record your webinar at some point along the way as well (it's usually a bit of a rite of passage), but it will get easier. I think that's such a beautiful thing to remember. It takes practise. It'll get easier. The way that it gets easier is by doing it more consistently. That's how you'll get better at it. 4. Use your mindset tools See this as an opportunity to uncover what those gremlins are, and then use the mindset tools in your toolkit to work through them. If there's something showing up when you're in webinar mode, even if it's not showing up in other spaces in your business, it will be impacting your decision making in your business. It will be impacting your mindset in your business. Bringing it to the surface is actually a good thing. It will allow you to use those tools in your toolkit to work through that mindset block or whatever it is that's coming up for you. Some mindset tools could be: Tapping Visualisation Working with a practitioner Journaling Kinesiology If you found a mindset practise that really helps you - especially one where you're paying attention to those blocks, what's coming up and having strategies to clear them - that's going to be really helpful. You can use this webinar as an opportunity to go even deeper with your mindset practise. A big thank you to the amazing Mel for her brilliant question about webinars, especially in relation to mindset blocks and the gremlins that come up. Check out my latest freebie to help you earn FAST MONEY! If you've had a lightbulb moment, have any follow up questions from this podcast episode, or if you've got a tip on how to address the mindset stuff that comes up when you are running webinars please share it. I want you to come over to the Heart-Centred Soul Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, use #podcastaha, let us know that you've been listening to episode number 223, and share your comments, lightbulb moments, questions and your tips on how to overcome those mindset wobbles that can come up when we are running webinars. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast. If you want to ask a question and have me answer it here on the podcast, simply submit your question with all your details HERE. Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.

One month of solitude to go…until what? The idea I could finish this experience is becoming somewhat absurd to me. Touch wood my camp has not yet been ransacked by baboons. Everyday I bathe in this gratitude and I would like you all to put this all on your gratitude at the top. After washing a pot in the river I came face to face with a teenage elephant. Communication has been well established. An amazing cast of characters lives out here.] Harmony is when, by being yourself, you form part of the greater whole. A Shaman once told me that what we are trying to do as we live is balance our harmony with the intelligence of life. We stop trying to live well and we are lived. Our path and purpose comes through us by being who we most naturally are. And to look at any of the animals it just takes you there. I am in this tree to find my harmony. Inner work has two movements, the first is a clearing out and becoming aware of all the things that are not really you. Patterns that come from trauma, social conditioning, how you needed to be to be liked, to belong, your ideas about what made you valuable. Ideas from your culture. What you discover is a lot of who you thought you are is just conditioned response. So if I aint that then what…who am I? There are no signposts here. You have to let your essence express itself, become a tracker, find your medicine way. But this is a deep challenge. Carl Jung has this idea that the unconscious will play out in your life until it’s made conscious. That’s why certain patterns repeat over and over in people lives until they gain awareness around what’s driving it. It seems to me that you choose to do inner work or life will choose for you. If life chooses for you it will be much harder. My work today is on the tracks of a leopard which cut across a sandy patch of ground. I’m alone at sunset. Into the Wild Journal Entry: Happiness only real when shared. I don’t know if I believe it but I understand the sentiment now. On his path the leopard suddenly calls. I’m asking myself what is my work? What can I learn from Londolozi and the leopards. Certainly my work is to let myself be seen, completely, maybe not by everyone but by someone. That is a true challenge. Connect with Boyd Varty: Website | https://boydvarty.com/ Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/BoydVarty Find out more about Londolozi Website | https://www.londolozi.com/en/ Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/

ENGLISH. BEDTIME STORIES FOR ADULTS 2. Fun/serious story with a tiny important twist. Do not let the beginning frighten you. I wrote the outline to this story in Guatemala -- because I am a photographer. I took pictures of beautiful churches in small towns in Guatemala. And of the people. I try to tread lightly on the souls of humans. But do I? There was a Teresa begging in front of a yellow church. This is a true story? (Or not?)Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/AudreyStories)

    It’s four in the morning and someone is angrily pounding on your front door, trying to get in. What do you do? That’s what Army veteran Greggory Farr had to decide. Don West and Shawn Vincent discuss Farr’s decision and the legal consequences.   Transcript: Don West: You know that surprisingly, there are plenty of those out there. Once they're on your radar and you start looking around, you see these tragic consequences coming out of people that make what may turn out to be a fatal mistake pounding on somebody's door, typically in the middle of the night, often under the influence of alcohol or sometimes, I suppose, combined with some other intoxicants of some sort. And then we had as a point that the tragic case in the Detroit, Michigan area, that Ted Wafer case, a young disoriented woman who had been in a fairly minor car accident, but clearly under the influence of alcohol and maybe some other things.   Shawn Vincent: Marijuana.   Don West: Yeah, and was pounding on the door, I suppose looking for help. I don't know if she was mistaken as to where she was or if she just was trying to raise anybody that could come help her, but she certainly gave all of the outward appearances to Mr. Wafer as an intruder, someone trying to break in the house.   Shawn Vincent: Well, and it's terrifying. So you have one person who's intoxicated and disoriented and confused and someone else who's just been awoken from a deep sleep in their home in the middle of the night. And it's confusing for everybody. Don West: Yeah. You've got people a world apart trying to meet somewhere in the middle to exercise good judgment and make some decisions that keep everybody safe and often that just doesn't get there.   Shawn Vincent: You got me thinking about my tone. When I talk about these things and write about these things -- and I think sometimes I can be harsh on the defender while we have our conversations. And I think it's in the same spirit that I'm harsh with my kids sometimes. It comes from love. Because I've seen so many of these cases were very good people, well-intentioned people are put, not because it's their fault -- these people came to their home drunk in the middle of the night and imposed on the security of their home, their family -- and they make a couple of mistakes, and you and I have tried to defend these people, and have successfully sometimes in court, but they make a couple of mistakes and it makes your job and our job so much harder, where if they had spent a little more time thinking about it in advance, what they're going to do in certain circumstances, they could have avoided it altogether or had been just so clearly justified that they never have to call us in the first place.   Don West: I suppose that we're talking now how you can prepare for what may be a highly unlikely event, but at the same time if it ever happens to you and you've taken a few minutes to think it through in advance or to get some special training on how to deal with these scenarios, whether it's the parking lot scenario and somebody's walking up to you and you have to figure out whether it's an attacker or whether it's a homeless person looking for a handout or whether it's a crazy person, a potential rapist, who knows, but you've got those moments when you have to protect yourself, but at the same time hope that you can make some good decisions and that innocent lives aren't lost.   Shawn Vincent: That's fair.   Don West: And most importantly of course, is that you don't wind up committing a crime during that process, so that even though you firmly believe that you are doing what is absolutely necessary and lawful, reasonable people can sometimes disagree and if depending on where you are, what the jurisdiction is, who the police officer is that's investigating. Perhaps we should talk about prosecutorial discretion at some point. Maybe this is a good case that we'll get to talk about that. And you just wind up on the other side of this traumatic event in what we've called before the second fight, the next fight. The next fight. And that's when you're dealing with the criminal justice system.   Shawn Vincent: I hate to see good people get prosecuted and sometimes go to jail for making what are entirely understandable mistakes, but mistakes that could have been avoided.   Don West: And by that, I think the keyword is avoidance, because any time it doesn't happen, you've avoided it and your risk zero.   Shawn Vincent: Yeah, the legal risk.   Don West: That's what Andrew Branca talks about. No matter how legally or actions are.   Shawn Vincent: How justified you might be.   Don West: Yeah, the risk is not zero that something won't happen.   Shawn Vincent: Or that you've misperceived one critical thing. And so let's go to Hawaii. There's this place called, I'm not going to say it right. EWA beach in Hawaii, I'm going to call it Ewa beach and there's a guy named Gregory Farr. He's 35-year-old army veteran. He lives there with his girlfriend and a daughter in this townhouse community, rows of townhouses. They all look-   Don West: Kind of cookie cutter?   Shawn Vincent: Remarkably similar to one another. So it's an April 15th a couple of years ago, tax day, and a sailor in the Navy, John Hasselbrink, Chief Petty Officer, 41 years old, was out drinking. He was reasonably responsible. He Ubered.   Don West: If that's the case where, well one can assume he's probably a career military if he's still in.   Shawn Vincent: At 41, yeah.   Don West: Sure. And was living that life. And did I read it correctly that he was going to ship out the next day somewhere and that's why he was, kind of lighting it up that night?   Shawn Vincent: I'm pretty sure. And so he lives in this town row, a couple of doors down. He usually keeps his door unlocked because you've got friends who come and go will crash on his sofa, and he's fine with that. So the Uber drops him off. The Uber's not pinpoint accuracy as it turns out, so he's a couple of doors down and he doesn't go to his front door, which he assumes is unlocked. He goes to the front door of Gregory Farr, who's asleep upstairs. Now Gregory, three days ago prior to this event, had hurt himself. He's in a cast, broke his ankle I think.   Don West: So he's got some limited mobility.   Shawn Vincent: He's hobbled. Right. And so now it's four in the morning, the terrible hour, four in the morning where all this stuff happens, and there's frantic pounding on the front door. This guy thinks he's at his house, he's trying to get in.   Don West: So he probably goes to the door, turns the knob. What happens is not what he expects. He gets resistance, the door is locked.   Shawn Vincent: Right. I think he assumes one of his buddies came in and crashed on the couch, they locked him out.   Don West: So he pounds on the door, wakes him up and they let him in and he goes to bed and.   Shawn Vincent: And they'd laugh about it and work off their hang overs the next late morning I imagine, but that's not what happens. Our guy Farr, he gets a rifle. The reports didn't say what kind of rifle he has, but it's a long gun and he goes downstairs and he's sort of covering the stairway that leads to the front door. There's a window there. You can see that there's a figure out there. It's someone he doesn't recognize. He calls out, wants to know who he is.   Don West: So at this point he's making noise from the inside trying to get this guy's attention, asking him questions, but no sense of recognition or no response on the outside other than the continued. . .   Shawn Vincent: The continuation of it. He's said that he had his girlfriend call 9-1-1. I assume she did. I haven't found any reports that prove that she did that. I haven't heard the 9-1-1 phone call in any of the news reports that I read on this, and that's what we have to go by. But let's assume that that happened ,or at least that he intended for her to call. So this goes on. So then we read at one point that he tells investigators, he thought his daughter was asleep up in bed, but I guess she's on the mattress downstairs. So she's sort of in between him now at the top of the stairs with his hobbled ankle in a cast and a rifle and this guy who's plowing away on his front door. And he fires.   Don West: So as I understand his thinking, from what the reports seem to indicate, is that once he realizes that his daughter is essentially between him and the door, but in close proximity to the door, he's now concerned for her individual safety, not just the general safety of the family, but now he realizes that she is at high risk from this fella if he bursts in.   Shawn Vincent: Right when he comes in, he's going to get to her first, and I'm the father and I'm injured I can't get to her quickly. That's a terrifying place to be.   Don West: So that basically was the deciding factor from what you can tell-   Shawn Vincent: So this guy's not responding. He's had it. And so it seems like he fired one shot this rifle through the door.   Don West: And as far as we know, the door is still locked. There's been no progress made getting in by this intoxicated sailor.   Shawn Vincent: That's right.   Don West: But nonetheless, inside the homeowners are now armed, yet to some degree disabled, not as able to be physical, not as able to make some decisions in terms of his relative capacity physically with the guy outside and whether anybody would allow someone in just to fight them under these circumstances is certainly overwhelmed by the idea of a minor child at risk.   Shawn Vincent: Right. We talk about immanence all the time, and I think he seemed content to call out and wait -- until he had a suspicion that his daughter might be at risk, and that wasn't a chance he was willing to take, so he fires and kills the guy.   Don West: Why are so many of these cases that we talk about one shot fatalities. I've been a criminal defense lawyer for a long, long time and I've handled lots of aggravated battery cases, attempted murder cases where there's been one, two, three, five shots and nobody dies. And yet these innocent homeowner cases almost always one shot and the person on the other side dies. They're typically pretty decent people in their own right. They just made a tragic mistake of going to the wrong door and compounded of course by their level of intoxication.   Shawn Vincent: Michael Drejka just happened to hit him in the heart. Could have hit him an inch over.   Don West: The handicap parking place shooting.   Shawn Vincent: Yeah, George Zimmerman. One shot.   Don West: Yep.   Shawn Vincent: This guy's an Army veteran. He understood how to handle a rifle and been trained to shoot. Gerald Strebendt had one shot; he was a veteran Marine sniper.   Don West: Well, and that's, I imagine if you're going to assume that training played some part in it, even if it's through a door, that the notion is you shoot for the large part of the body, the center mass, and that's where a lot of vital organs are.   Shawn Vincent: And if you hit it, then you hit it.   Don West: And if you don't, you may very well not kill somebody, but if you do or you hit a place that's going to bleed out, then it just takes a few seconds.   Shawn Vincent: So for whatever reason, often it is one shot as the case in this case. So he's eventually arrested on manslaughter charges. I'll add that the gun he had, I don't know all the details behind this, but he didn't have it legally, so he was arrested on weapons charges as well. And you and I have talked about this before in cases where those are mutually exclusive things. You can legally justifiably defend yourself with an illegal weapon and potentially be justified in the homicide but still face weapons charges for having an illegal weapon.   Don West: That's right. That's happened surprisingly often actually where the claim of self-defense may very well be supported by the evidence and no charges are filed, but at the same time a convicted felon in possession would be a charge that some people would have to deal with or some other illegal weapon possession of some sort.   Shawn Vincent: And we've seen people run for the scene because they knew they weren't allowed to have the gun and made their defense case much harder. And then some of the weird stuff happens, and we'll talk about, you called it lawyer nerd stuff earlier. We went and talked about some lawyer nerd stuff, but it's relevant because each one of these cases gets prosecuted or not differently, and it affects the defender's lives in myriad ways, but in this case, they arrest him, the charge him with a manslaughter, then they screw up speedy trial. They took too long, I guess, the prosecutor, to go through certain steps, and a judge dismisses it. But you made a distinction here. He dismissed it without prejudice, which meant that months later they pulled together this case and they came back and they charged him with manslaughter again.   Don West: The initial criminal charge was dismissed on a speedy trial violation, because apparently the judge specifically allowed that the dismissal was without prejudice. In legal parlance, that typically means that a legal, a judicial action is taken typically a dismissal of some sort, but the key word is without prejudice. Without prejudice means that it's not fatal to the case and oftentimes that lawyers have, especially in a civil context, you can fix it. You can amend the pleading and file it again. So a dismissal without prejudice usually gives leave to take another run at it. Whereas frankly, that's a pretty novel concept to me in criminal law. I'm not really familiar how many states would allow a dismissal, especially on speedy trial grounds without prejudice, but clearly that's what happened here.   Had the judge dismissed it with prejudice, that typically means that's the end of it. Nobody can go back at another bite at the apple. A speedy trial is a notion that's a criminal procedure issue that originally is sort of designed at least, constitutionally, to keep people from languishing in jail waiting for their day in court.   Shawn Vincent: You, the State, the oppressive government, you can't just arrest me on charges and then keep me in jail pending trial for 10 years, keeping me in prison without a trial.   Don West: Without a determination of guilt. Sure. There's a provision in the United States Constitution for speedy trial in the day to day work of a criminal defense lawyer that would be known as constitutional speedy trial and that looks at a lot of factors including prejudice to the defendant for the delay and bringing the person to trial. Maybe they've lost witnesses or other evidence that they could have preserved had they then brought to trial more quickly.   Don West: That can even sometimes exist in a far different context than what we're talking about here. But here we're talking about a state procedural rule, just like there's an overall constitutional speedy trial concept, that essentially focuses on due process and the fairness of the way that you were treated and the prejudice that you've encountered as a result of not being moved along in the system. And under state court, there might be very specific rules and it could be as hard and fast as a specific number of days. And if you're not brought to trial with any specific number of days, then the court has the authority to dismiss it. I remember in the old days, old days meaning 20, 30 years ago, that Florida had a very specific speedy trial rule for both misdemeanors and felonies, but for felonies it was 180 days. And if you were arrested and you were not brought to trial within 180 days, the court had the obligation to dismiss the case on application.   So you often would look at the calendar and figure out how many days actually where the 180th day fell and if you weren't brought to trial and jury selection started on that day, then you could file a motion with the court to dismiss it and it didn't matter if it was a bad check or a first degree murder. The judge had no discretion in that. And sometimes it gets kind of silly because the prosecutor would sometimes just count wrong and misunderstand when the 180th day was. That's changed now, it's still pretty rigid though because it's 175 days and then there's a window that the defendant must request the trial and then they've got a couple of weeks to bring the person to trial, but then it would be dismissed.   Don West: Unlike other states, for example, well North Carolina is one where there really isn't any state speedy trial, so people can wait weeks or months to go to trial and not have any specific provision that guides that. Other States, when I talked to lawyers around the country, always seem to tell me a different story how their speedy trials worked and that's not to be confused -- I won't go on too much longer -- not to be confused with the statute of limitations. So the statute of limitations is basically how long the prosecuting authority can wait between the incident and the prosecution. That's typically measured in years. In most jurisdictions, a felony would be maybe four or five years, statute of limitations. And in some cases, cases that you and I have worked on, there is no statute of limitations on in most places for murder for example.   Shawn Vincent: Which means there could be some defender who was involved in the self-defense incident and the police decide not the charge for some reason, but he's never explicitly exonerated, so he lives his life month after month, potentially year after year, with this specter that a prosecution could happen at some point.   Don West: Yeah, a lot of those cases just kind of hang out there because there is no statute of limitations, the prosecutor doesn't have to finally decide and frankly there's pretty good reason in some cases, not the ones we're talking about, but we know all those cold cases, right? Technology changes. There are people that committed murder 30 years ago that are now being successfully prosecuted because of DNA and these genetic databases and things that. . .   Shawn Vincent: The Golden Gate Killer.   Don West: Yeah, there you go. They're able to identify people there was simply not enough reliable evidence on before.   Shawn Vincent: I bring that up, because one of the, you talked about the next fight, right? One of the points of our discretion and our podcast is to help the members understand just what comes or what can come after a self defense shooting. And what we'd like to think is that the cops show up, they look around and say, "Oh yeah, he was trying to break into your house. Congratulations on being a great citizen. You're fine." And life goes on. But that's hardly ever the case. They're going to come, they're going to treat it as a homicide. Sometimes they clear these pretty quickly, other times they don't. And then the defender's left in this limbo for days, weeks, months, years sometimes. Usually an arrest comes within days or weeks, but not always. And then there's, depending on where you live, different speedy trial clock, your lawyer will probably opt to voluntarily to spend that to take the time they want to get the experts they need to. . .   Don West: Yeah. In most circumstances, if there's a rigid speedy trial rule, it can be waived or told because of something that the defense wants to do to get expert review of evidence or that sort of more investigation.   Shawn Vincent: That's why you have a year or two before you get the trial.   Don West: Yeah. You know your point is . . . I've personally been involved in a case that's now a year and a half old and there's been no prosecution to note, no clear evidence that there ever will be, but there's been no absolute dismissal with prejudice. You know we talked about with prejudice if the case is dismissed with prejudice. . .   Shawn Vincent: There's no deep sigh of relief for this guy.   Don West: No, and then there's another case I'm personally involved in that is almost four years now since the incident and once again, well there's no interest apparently in prosecuting, and the longer the time passes I think the more comfort one can take that there won't be, but there's no guarantee that it won't be picked up at some point in time.   Don West: Now this is not the kind of case where DNA and advances and forensics are likely to change the shift. It's a self-defense case and I think the facts are pretty well known and we can be confident because no charges were filed, that it was thoroughly assessed and an intelligent and informed decision was made. But no guarantee that, who knows? You know that's how, frankly, you hear cases all the time where after five years or 10 years, a suspect in a case, in the traditional typical kind of murder case where they can't prove who did it, they know it was a murder. It's clear that it was a criminal murder, but they don't know for sure who did it or the suspect. There's just not enough evidence. There'll be a statement made, there'll be new forensic evidence or something that will connect the dots and all of a sudden there.   Shawn Vincent: There's a case. So this guy Farr, he had sort of a, the case was dismissed at one point. There are several months, then it was reasserted. The reporting kind of goes cold on this. At one point there's going to be a trial in December. I don't think that trial happens. I couldn't find any reports on it, so it was continued or the likely case of it or dismissed. But that guy spent a long time and wondering what was going to happen to him. And a lot of that has to do with some of the choices he made during this. Well, I guess there's, there's one critical choice here. If we're going to talk about the lessons learned from the case and that is he chose to fire against the intruder before the intruder had gained access to his house. This is, we were talking about the enemy at the gates.   We talked just earlier today about a guy who went out to meet an intruder in his yard. We've talked about the Ted Wafer case where he opened the door to the intruder on the porch. We talked about a similar case where a guy had two people breaking into his house. He knew who they were. He knew they were there to get them and he fired through the door and killed both of them. He was found justified probably because he knew once he got into the house, he knew what their intent was.   Don West: And he was outnumbered and apparently the police were pretty satisfied that was good. That was true.   Shawn Vincent: But our general advice was you probably should never shoot through a closed, locked door. We talked about a case in Cincinnati where this mother of five, her abusive ex boyfriend came, was raging on the front yard and trying to get in, and he finally pulled out the air conditioner, the window unit, and it was only then when he tried to get into the window unit that she fired and ended up wounding him and just disabling him. She was clearly justified, but it was that moment when that threshold was to be crossed. The breach had been made and Farr shoots before that moment.   Don West: So we touched upon this in our conversation, this notion of prosecutorial discretion, the discretion that a prosecutor has in any criminal case, but I think especially in these kinds of cases. If they don't have clear marching orders from above that they always do something when these these things are present and the prosecutor's going to, after looking at the case package, you want to talk to law enforcement, they may reach out independently to talk to witnesses. They have the authority to do that. Of course, they have the benefit of the forensic reports. A lot of them the police don't have, at least not at first and they can sort of piece this together. They will scrutinize and scrutinize and dissect and turn inside and out any statement that the accused made, the shooter made, to see if it matches up with other witness statements, but I think maybe most importantly if it matches up with the physical evidence. They'll take a look at gunshot residue, trajectory. In this case they might very well look at the door jamb. Was there damage to the door jamb? What kind of door was it? Is it steel or is it thin wood that could be easily smashed down?   Shawn Vincent: Right, in Ted Wafer they brought in the screen door that was between him and Renisha McBride to try to decide what damage was caused by her that night.   Don West: Sure, and they can do this in the comfort of their office with the quiet and a time to reflect. Nothing like the decisions that were made of course at the scene.   Shawn Vincent: Yeah, the life or death imminent decisions.   Don West: They'll take a look at his statement when he said, "My daughter was there in between me and the door." And see if that really holds water. How old was she? Could he have said to her, get out of the way. Come here, go upstairs. Could he have done anything to have increased her safety before he used it as a justification for shooting through the door? He said, as I recall, that he could see the face of the sailor through the window in the door and that he was yelling at him and showed him the gun and one would think just logically, the prosecutor certainly will think this through, it's not a home invasion robbery. It's not somebody bursting into your house to hold you at gunpoint to steal things from you typically, if they bang on the door and yell and want you to come open the door. They may be crazy. They may be drunk, but it's not likely that they're part of a home invasion team.   Shawn Vincent: If it's a home invasion robber, they'll knock and say, "Hey everybody, we're here to rob you. We're going to barge in 10 seconds."   Don West: "Please open your door."   Shawn Vincent: "Get ready for us. Get your shotgun ready." And yeah.   Don West: There apparently wasn't any clear attempt to kick the door in. I'm sure that would have been mentioned if there'd been evidence to show that. So even though Mr. Farr had seconds to make these decisions, they're going to be looked at over the course of days and weeks and months, in this case a number of months. Speedy trial and then refiled. And there may be some critical evidentiary aspects. There may be some part of his story that doesn't fit some of the other known facts and they're really wrestling with how to go forward. The prosecutor has to feel bad for this guy, probably doesn't want to prosecute him. Hawaii, I don't think, necessarily, is the best state to be in when you're dealing with the. . .   Shawn Vincent: As a defender. Yeah.   Don West: You've got all that stuff.   Shawn Vincent: And the fact that he didn't legally own the weapon he used -- it doesn't help.   Don West: Does not help.   Shawn Vincent: We talked about how they're mutually exclusive charges, but it doesn't make his judgment in the self-defense case look better.   Don West: And the fact of who you kill really shouldn't factor in either. Every life is worth the same, I guess would be the statement. But as a practical circumstance, he killed a 41 year old Navy veteran . . .   Shawn Vincent: Active service.   Don West: Who was about to ship off, who was serving his country, who was just blowing off a little steam before he headed out to protect us.   Shawn Vincent: Freedom and democracy.   Don West: Yeah. And that's very compelling and makes it even more tragic.   Shawn Vincent: And the victims have an influence on the prosecutors, don't they?   Don West: Sure.   Shawn Vincent: I mean the prosecutors make their decisions, but if it's the Navy saying, "We want you to get this guy." I'm not saying that they said that in this case, we don't know. But if it's a compelling -- the victim has somebody, an uncle in law enforcement and he has some sway -- they're sensitive. They're advocates for the victims.   Don West: They are, and the family of the victim, frankly, as you know, it sounds kind of crude almost, but how much noise the family of the deceased makes can impact how the decisions are made and the prosecution. Are there legions of people in protests or are the family members that are really focusing the attention on this case and maybe the media attention as well?   Shawn Vincent: You saw that in Ted Wafer too that the family was out there protesting every day until they finally filed charges.   Don West: And I know there are some cases, you and I have been involved in them, where the prosecutor's feeling so much heat, even when they think they probably don't want to file criminal charges, they either do anyway, which is sort of succumbing to the political stuff or in a lot of jurisdictions, even when they don't have to, they'll punt and put the case before the grand jury. I've seen that several times where the prosecutor has the authority to file the charges, but they decide it's kind of a hot potato.   Shawn Vincent: Like Ferguson.   Don West: Sure.   Shawn Vincent: Ferguson, Missouri where the kid shot the cop.   Don West: Other way around.   Shawn Vincent: Yeah, the cop shot the kid, right. I think the prosecutor wanted to null pross that, but he sent it to the grand jury.   Don West: And the grand jury cleared, and it's still controversial. So there are those cases where the prosecutors under lots of pressure from any number of angles and that's assuming true motives. You still never know when there's a political pressure somewhere because the boss wants to get reelected or you want to run for office as a prosecutor and in a close call you may make the personal choice. Who knows. I'm not . . .   Shawn Vincent: Suggesting that any of that's happening here, but it's funny it’s been dismissed and then reappointed.   Don West: Yeah. But this is another one of those examples of just a tragic outcome and we spend so much time and we wring our hands. Could something have happened that would have changed the course of this, either for the homeowner, frankly, for the deceased. It was what it was. He was just drunk and out of his mind a little bit and confused. And the homeowner . . .   Shawn Vincent: Well, we've talked before about this window of justification, that the window opens and it closes and it's only in this very specific frame work of time where use of force is justified. And we've seen cases where they fire a little bit too soon. This is one of those cases. It very well could have been 30 seconds from then the door splinters, the glass breaks, and all of a sudden now the windows open, literally opens, and then we've seen cases where like in the pharmacist's case where the perpetrator leaves and there's a final shot after the fact. Once the threat was neutralized.   Don West: That's like the person in Oklahoma city where there are shots fired after the robber is incapacitated.   Shawn Vincent: That's right.   Don West: And that's clearly viewed by the prosecutor, a guy who was viewed as sort of the hero initially by the media for stopping these armed robbers, winds up getting prosecuted and convicted of murder for shooting the robber after the robber was already down.   Shawn Vincent: Yeah. And so I think you have a case here, a guy who was almost justified and he's facing prosecution because he fired too soon. And the lesson I take from it is if I ever find myself in that circumstance, I want to be thinking about that window. If someone's calling 9-1-1, I'm thinking tactically. Where am I? There's where my daughter is. Has the window opened yet? Is that threat imminent and what would it take for that threat to be imminent? And hopefully I'll have the peace of mind, state of mind and the judgment to wait for them. But that's like I said at the beginning -- we talked about tone -- is why I get so passionate about these cases, because I can see myself there and how seconds can make the difference.   Don West: Obviously easier said than done. You would think, well the daughter goes upstairs, he retreats further up the steps maybe with still a view of the door and the gun ready and if he comes through the door and still seems to be aggressive, maybe that's a better time. It certainly would be much more justifiable when a prosecutor is sitting in the easy chair trying to decide whether to prosecute this guy or not.   Shawn Vincent: Yeah, tough case.   Don West: This is one of those as so many of them we talk about that we know they're awful, they're absolutely awful, but are they lawful? And this is one that may very well be awful but lawful, but the fact that he's being prosecuted suggests that there are at least some of the authorities believed that he had other decisions he could have made, and that the decision he made to fire the gun, to take life as a consequence of it were simply not supportable under the law of self-defense.

Well, I've got egg on my face, don't I? There's a...there's another Final Fantasy...but this one has to be the last, for sure! It's got like a bazillion characters, an angry clown, a ghost train, an opera, and...well...the ending seems pretty definitive. I can't see this coming back to bite me again... Special Thanks to Eric for joining us again on this one!Music in chronological order:Victory Fanfare (Holder & Ephixa Remix)Terra's Theme and Final Fantasy Ending Theme by Nobuo Uematsu If you like our show, find us online to help spread the word! Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube. Support us on Patreon to help the show grow at www.patreon.com/wtfolklore. You can find

Did you start your new year off with a "theme word or phrase"? Everywhere I turn people have selected words related to vision for 2020 since 20/20 eyesight means you have perfect vision. But no-one seems more excited about the idea of 20/20 Vision than Rhonda, a dear friend of mine. She was excited because she heard the clear whisper of God that he wanted to give her clear vision spiritually in 2020. And she is really, really believing God. Here words have inspired me again. There's just nothing like hearing God speak to your heart especially when it is concerning something that has been growing in your spirit for a while. Rhonda's Dream Let me tell you how God used Rhonda's dream to influence me. She was so tired living in "sauna Florida" (No, sauna is not a place it the hot weather.) and she dreamed of living in the mountains where it was cooler. When she found her perfect patio lounger, she put it on her Facebook page. It was like a super, high-end hammock, made of a beautiful tan fabric instead of the roping that leaves marks on the back-side of your legs and arms. It was complete with an arched canopy to keep you cool as you relaxed and soothed your nerves swaying back and forth. The words she had typed below the picture echoed like sounds bouncing off a canyon wall in my head for days. They hounded me, like a persistent child repeats himself incessantly. She said... “I want this… in the mountains so I can lay there and be cool and look beyond what I can see…” The last phrase jumped off the page at me. “…and look beyond what I can see.”   I recognized my Father’s voice in those words. “Pat, look beyond what you can see.   See beyond what you can see.” I'm telling you those were heavy words... more like heavenly words. Compelling Convicting Words. See beyond what you can see! What? Do you ever hear the whisper of God and then have no idea what He means. So I pondered the words and asked God to give me understanding. I can't see beyond what I can see or can I? There are plenty of examples in Scripture. That was what God was calling the children of Israel to do…see beyond the giants. But they didn’t. That was what God was calling Joshua to do when he faced the thick walls of Jericho. And he did. The Israelites saw the giants... what they could see with their natural eyes; but Joshua saw beyond what he could see. He saw Almighty God; who stood behind His promise. And what they each saw determined where they lived and how they lived. Defeated or Victorious. What they saw determined whether they were victorious or defeated. The choice is obvious; if we want to live victorious! We have to see beyond what we can see with our natural eyes. It will take more than standing on a mountain...with binoculars or even a telescope to do that. Stumbled? The same day I stumbled onto Rhonda's post…stumbled? What a silly thought! When we walk with Jesus He guides our path. The same day I found Rhonda’s post, I listened to a teaching that solved the question that rattled even louder than God's Words...HOW? My take away from that podcast was– Seeing from God’s perspective requires a Biblically renewed mind. And that's how you can see beyond what you can see... you see through God's eyes to see what He sees. If I want to see what God sees I’ve got to crawl up in His arms, look out as He points His powerful finger in the direction of what He wants me to see. It means listening to Him...sometimes...for me it is most of the time...it means hearing His whisper. That's what revelation does... it opens your eyes and that's one of the roles of the Holy Spirit. It illuminates Scripture so you know Jesus better and what God has for you as a believer. It requires faith to see beyond what you can see. Faith that's rooted in God's promises. It requires mixing the discipline of studying God’s Word with faith. It means choosing to believe, when reason is screaming in your ears. We must look through the lens of His Word and faith in that Word to see what God sees. Focus It means we have to focus on the unseen instead of the seen. 2 Cor 4:18 New International Version So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. It is especially important when things are difficult. Let's zoom in for a closer look at that verse, but this time let's read it from the Berean Study Bible starting with verse 17. …17For our light and momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal glory that is far beyond comparison. 18So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. With so many problems going on around us, let's refocus on Jesus. Let's renew our minds with promises and Scriptures instead of gossip and news reports. Let's believe God's Word. Declare His promises and keep on doing until HIs will comes in our homes and in our lives. Let's pray. Dear God, help us to look beyond what I can see to behold you …to behold your face… to see what you see, so we can be what you called us to be. So we can do what you called us to do. Did you see what was beyond the tree? Are you seeing what is beyond what you can see?

How yummy is a horror novel? One that hits the flavors of the genre and leaves you feeling oh-so-satisfied?  Are you picking up the food references here? Not so subtle, am I? There’s a reason for that, because our guest today not only wrote a tasty scary book, but he is also a renowned celebrity chef and a man of many, many talents and creative devices.   David Ruggerio wrote the book: A Wistful Tale of Gods, Men and Monsters. He is also an amazing chef, having begun his career at the legendary New York eatery, La Caravelle. He honed his culinary skills in France at several of the country's leading restaurantsand went on to host his own cooking show on PBS, was a famed chef in New York and has cooked for five US Presidents.  David has written two acclaimed cookbooks which were published by Artisan books, “Little Italy with David Ruggerio,” and “David Ruggerio'sItalian Kitchen.”  But today, we’re talking about A Wistful Tale, because as the leaves turn colors and the crispness of autumn fills the air, nothing is better than curling up with a scary book—am I right? 

When was the last time you checked in with yourself? Like REALLY checked in with yourself. Join Heather Simpson as she walks you through her steps towards mindfulness, intention and focus to realign yourself, your life, and your career on the path you want it to be on. Heather takes us through the re focus on our baseline, to get us to other important things in our life. Her topic at the upcoming She Leads Me Connections meeting and the Women's Leadership Event happening in Seattle is "How to Stand Out Authentically in an Auto-Filled World". "This topic has gotten a lot of buzz since I released it. I promised you spicy topics in business and leadership, didn’t I? There is so much noise that is happening out there. How do you stand apart, in your authentic brilliance and STAND OUT as the world class leader that you are. You all see it. You all notice that everything seems to have the same message and content from one thing to the next. " Heather shares, "It’s time to turn it off, be intentional and show up in the world differently." "So why live events? If you’ve ever been to the right live event, you know the power and experience that takes place for you when you go. The surge and rush that you feel, surrounded by others on the same journey as you, helps you feel connected and empowered. Plus, you add the educational content, incredible speakers, and like minded people around you? Magic happens, especially when you gather women." Get more information about the March event, speaking topics and takeaways at www.SheLeadsMe.com/register

Ev'ryone can see we're together, As we walk on by. (Hey) and we flock just like birds of a feather, I won't tell no lie! FIRST VERSE: We don't care what anybody says: GAY LOVE IS THE BEST LOVE. That's why we are excited to highlight this week's #GayRelationshipGoals: singer and pianist @jaizonplaga, and his CrossFitting husband, @br44163. "I can honestly say we still have our individuality which makes Ben and Jaizon stronger." These words (and many more) come directly from Jaizon, who gushed (via dm with Marko) about the love he and his husband have for one another. It was because of this declaration (and some adorable couples pics) that Marko and Tony chose to highlight them this week. We know you will feel the same way we do! Check them out on Instagram, and don't forget to tell them the Critelli's sent you. CHORUS: "We are family, I got all my sisters with me." ... or do I? There is an alarming amount of LGBTQ souls that risk losing their family the moment they come out. The sadness and loneliness that is felt because of this reality is unlike anything ever imagined, and yet (still, in 2018) more and more people are living their truths, and risking it all. This week, the guys talk about the family factor, as it relates to an individual's queerness. Does your family love and support you for who you are? Or, are you making the brave journey without your family's help? SECOND VERSE: A surprise so major, we can't even talk about it right here ;) BRIDGE: Just a small town (gay) boy, trying to figure out how to let his small town (gay) friend down easily. When you're one of two gay people in your town, and your best friend has the hots for you ... how do you tell him that you "just want to be friends" and salvage the friendship? And later, 1, 2, 3, drink ... 1, 2, 3, slap? Your drunk boyfriend hit you (for the very first time) and you're a bit rattled. Do you end the relationship? Or, do you give him the benefit of the (drunk) doubt? These questions and some Critelli advice, on this edition of Listener Shituations. - - - - - Relationship problems? EMAIL US: relationshitquestions@gmail.com We will answer your questions on the show. - - - - - RATE US: Go to your favorite podcast directory and give Relationsh!t a 5-Star rating, and fantastic review! It sounds like a big ask, but it helps us out tremendously. If you have 5-minutes, help us out! - - - - - FOLLOW US: Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook @podrelationshit - - - - - SPECIAL THANKS: @markitinc (Instagram) for our logo! @mdotcot (Instagram, Twitter) for our editing! and (last but not least) ... @TinMan_TC (Twitter) ... and, Antonio Carter for our musicSupport the show (http://www.patreon.com/podrelationshit)

It's official! At WWE SummerSlam 2018 it will be Brock Lesnar vs Roman Reigns for the Universal Title. Who saw that coming, right? I There's also the small matter of the injury I suffered at Defiant last week, so let's talk about that and everything in the last of wrestling! Please do support the podcast at http://www.patreon.com/simonmiller316 and give us 5* on iTunes.

Hello and welcome to the Friday 15th June edition of EV News Daily. It’s Martyn Lee here with the news you need to know about electric cars and the move towards sustainable transport.   TESLA MODEL 3 SHOWS OFF ITS SPEED IN EXHILARATING SALT FLATS RUN Tesla Model 3 on Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. One of the most awesome experiences had in my Trinity! #Tesla @Tesla @elonmusk #Model3 @Model3Owners Michael Striker (@Michael7Striker) "Model 3’s batteries were not even fully charged when he conducted his high-speed run, and the vehicle was entirely stock with 18″ Aero Wheels" according to Teslarati: "According to Striker, however, he opted to pull back on the throttle when he reached 90 mph. The Model 3 Performance, according to Elon Musk, would be 15% faster than the BMW M3 on the track, with a 0-60 mph time of 3.5 seconds and a top speed of 155 mph. Tesla expects to start manufacturing the Model 3 Performance starting this July."   ALL-ELECTRIC, 680-HORSEPOWER VOLKSWAGEN I.D. R TEST AT PIKES PEAK In the wee hours of the morning, The Drive was present for Volkswagen's onsite test of its electric Pikes Peak prototype race car. Romain Dumas is a three-time pikes peak winner and will be driving. The Drive reports: "Despite starting phase two of the day's testing on the upper half of the mountain without a full charge, Dumas maintained momentum through his first run on the upper half of the course, grappling with regenerative braking systems all the way."   13,000 PEOPLE EXPECTED TO ATTEND RENEWABLE ENERGY FAIR IN CUSTER About 13,000 people are expected to attend the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair in Custer this weekend. MREA executive director Nick Hylla: ""This is probably one of the most exciting things that's happened during my tenure here … the incredible growth in electric transportation and options that are out there. We'll have probably every variety of electric vehicle here on display, probably more than 100 vehicles."   UPS PLACES ORDER FOR 950 WORKHORSE ELECTRIC DELIVERY TRUCKS com reports: "Shipping giant UPS said it will buy 950 electric delivery trucks from Workhorse Group in what looks to be a key order for the electric vehicle startup." "This tops an earlier UPS order for 50 of the trucks that was part of a test program. Workhorse describes the vehicles as Class 5 N-Gen electric vans. UPS and Workhorse collaborated on the design of the zero-emissions vehicle." says Trucks. "With 60-kilowatt-hour battery packs the N-Gen vans can travel up to 100 miles before they need to be recharged. The cost will be about $6 to travel 100 miles, which is significantly lower than the expense of fuel to run gas or diesel-powered trucks. The all-electric delivery vehicles will cost about the same as conventional trucks but will have a lower operational cost over their expected life because they will be less expensive to maintain, Hughes said. UPS would save about $170,000 a van compared with a similar diesel delivery truck if it kept the Workhorse vehicles for 20 years, their expected lifespan"   POWER UTILITIES TO EARN $11 BILLION IN REVENUE WITH EV DEMAND Occasionally newspapers or those talking down EVs will put a story out there saying we'll face meltdown the moment someone plugs in their car and tries to make a coffee. Not only are most grid operators saying it's not an issue, a new report says they have a vested interest in making it work, as power shifts from oil forecourts to the power companies. The report also recommended that in order to meet the rising demand of charging stations, governments have to quickly facilitate standardisation of charging infrastructure and incentivise R&D for advanced charging technologies.   MINI BOSS: GOING ELECTRIC IS A REAL CHALLENGE The boss of Mini says it's one of the hardest brands to switch to EV power because of it's small size. Peter Schwarzenbauer said: “Electrifying Mini is quite a challenge, chiefly because of the small footprint of the cars. “But if you look at the role of electrification in the urban environment and the desire to be local emissions-free, there is no other brand with the credentials of Mini. It should be a natural fit, and that is the direction we’re moving towards for the future. The success of the plug-in hybrid Countryman shows what can be achieved, and the full electric Mini that is coming will show another step.” Autocar report: "The BMW Group is known to be working on solid-state batteries in partnership with Toyota, with a sale date mooted to be around 2025. Both smaller and more powerful than today’s batteries, they could potentially pave the way for a range of fully electric Minis."   COULD PANASONIC TRIPLE PRODUCTION OF EV BATTERIES Whilst some car makers who are catching up are having to get their batteries from wherever they can, Tesla get all their packs from Panasonic and that's not changing for a while yet. Tesla's target is to produce 5,000 Model 3s a week by the end of June. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk recently told analysts on the company's first-quarter results call: "We think we can get the cobalt to almost nothing." Tesla batteries use the NCA or lithium, nickel, cobalt and aluminium formula, while other car manufacturers have chosen to go with lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese (NCM) compounds" according to Channel News Asia: "Worries about cobalt shortages have prompted many to seek to alter the composition of the cathode part of the NCM battery to eight parts nickel, one part cobalt and one part manganese"   ELECTRIFY AMERICA INVESTS $44 MILLION TO MAKE SACRAMENTO A 'GREEN CITY' As part of the settlement for #dieselgate, VW had to set up Electrify America, to build out a charging infrastructure and increase the adoption of EVs. And now we've just heard details of how investment in Sacramento, California, will bring a series of initiatives to the City. $44million will be spent on a 'Green City' plan. The first part of the plan is two new car sharing schemes and of course the vehicles will all be Zero Emission. By March 2019 you will be able to use Gig, an EV sharing scheme where you don't have to return the car to where you hired it from, but rather any designated parking space inside a 13-square mile area where they operate. You will be billed according to time or use or the distance travelled. CNET explains: "The other car sharing service is called Envoy, and it's a round-trip car-sharing service (more like ZipCar) where users book, then pick up and return the car to the same spot. Envoy will feature a fleet of 142 vehicles spread in pairs across 71 locations, and each vehicle will have a dedicated Level 2 EV charger." Electrify America will also be investing in 12 new electric buses to run from the University Of California. But what about EV charging for you and I? "There are plans to build out the region's electric vehicle charging infrastructure by adding 10 quick chargers capable of charging at 50-, 150- and 350-kilowatt. These charging stations will be open to the public, and part of the funding used to build them will also go to the charging infrastructure for both of the upcoming car-share programs and the electric bus service" according to CNET.   COMMUNITY     You can listen to every previous episode of this podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, YouTube, TuneIn, Stitcher, and the blog https://www.evnewsdaily.com/ – remember to subscribe, which means you don’t have to think about downloading the show each day, plus you get it first and free and automatically. It would mean a lot if you could take 2mins to leave a quick review on whichever platform you download the podcast. And if you have an Amazon Echo, download our Alexa Skill, search for EV News Daily and add it as a flash briefing. Come and say hi on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter just search EV News Daily, have a wonderful day, and I'll catch you tomorrow.   CONNECT WITH ME! evne.ws/itunes evne.ws/tunein evne.ws/googleplay evne.ws/stitcher evne.ws/youtube evne.ws/soundcloud evne.ws/blog

Yo, okay. Let's see where we're going to fix this thing up. Okay, could work. It's deathly quiet in here. Deathly quiet. Okay, here we are. Hello people of the world, peoples of the internet, come hang with me. Come chill with me. This is my car home, today I'm living homeless in my car. I'm super like gafrazzled okay I just did a little Germany thing. I'm super frazzled. I'm going to cleanse it out of my body, and you are going to help me, oh yes indeed you are, but let's share this over. Let's share it over, let's share it over. Hey, Emory, hey Ruby, who else is with me? Wow, 19 people are already here. That's badass. I don't know who you all are though because it's not showing all your names. I'm just chilling here in the car park, I'm gonna go to yoga soon enough. Hey Dawn, hey Cary, my nails are pink to match that little... No, they're not pink at all, I'm not colour blind. They are green, and they're matching this little bit of my tattoo that you can see in there that is green. I'm not looking at you 'cause I'm trying to figure out how to share this. And then my toenails are the exact pink that's in that tattoo. I just find it a supremely organised situation. I didn't even do it on purpose, I'm just on brand as fuck all the time. I've got the restless energy in my body and I need to cleanse it from me, do you know what I mean? I've been in my car for like three and a half hours now. I'm in my car home, I live in my car now. My brother just said to me ... I was just on the phone with my brother, who works in my company with me, and I said "I've been in my car for like three hours." And he was like "You're homeless, you're a homeless person living in your car." And I'm like well it is a Mercedes, so it's not the worst sort of car for a homeless car person, if that's what I am. Alright, alright, alright. I did my sharing thing. Here I am. I'm ready to go. Put that laptop away for now. Now, do you think... Okay, I'm going to try and set up this tripod so it's a little bit straighter. Let's see if I can figure this out for you. Okay, oh okay sorry I didn't mean to do that. The tripod is on a weird angle. Okay, I think we're done, no? We're still on an angle for sure. Okay, I want to get this tripod on so it's not on an angle, put it up a bit. Alright, so I've been in my car for three hours because I was at the shopping mall earlier today where I often hang out, like a mall rat. I just loved the movie Mall Rat so much that I decided to become a mall rat with a multimillion dollar business.It's the best, I can't lie to be honest with you. Now I hang out at the mall a lot because one of the gyms that I train at is there. I have to have a gym membership at every possible gym on the coast so that I can go wherever I feel like going on the day. Then you know there's a cool coffee shop and there's lots of them... Let's turn this car on, it's too hot. So I hang out in the coffee shop writing my blog and stuff and then I jumped on the phone and then I just stayed on the phone. So, I couldn't drive my car back into the underground car park at my building where I live at because I was on the phone the whole time. Then next thing like three hours have passed and then I was like well, I might as well stay in the car and then just might as well drive up the yoga studio and yoga class is going to be on in 45 minutes now, so now I'm just hanging out here and I get to talk to you and I'm super excited. I'm particularly excited... well I'm particularly excited for two reasons. Hey, hey Daniel, hey Leona, hey Adam, hey Gina, hi Natalie, Hi Tracey. Who else is here say hi? Two reason I'm excited, one of them is selfish and one of them is all about you. The selfish reason is I know I need to livestream before my head explodes because I've been sitting in the car for too long and I'm kind of I've been... My ass has been right here for like three straight hours, but I have been talking the whole time and having insane elevated conversations. So, it's all been positive and powerful, but I'm like that's a lot of fucking sitting. So one reason that I wanted to livestream is to get my energy out, to cleanse it from me. So that when I go into yoga I am zen as fuck and ready to be present in all ways, shapes, and forms. By the way, yesterday I went to the theme park, one of them, because we've got lots here. I went to Movie Water on the gold coast. I did that thing where you go upside down. You know, you sit in a thing that's roughly like a pirate-y sailboat, and then it swings way up and down and then way up and down. And then it goes way upside down, and then you hang upside down. So while I was hanging upside down, I did indeed require myself to open my eyes, not the first time upside down, I admit. I kept my eyes closed. And I held on to the things like that. The second time when I went upside down, I was like now I will open my eyes. And I opened my eyes, and I just thought to myself, "I am zen as fuck right now". I was just like, I am meditating, I am calm, I could see my best friend Callie down there on the ground looking ... I was annoyed at her that she wasn't looking up at me in my zen, calm state whilst hanging up in the air. I was like, "See me? You should see me up here all zen and shit". But she didn't look up. Meanwhile, I just hung there upside down and I was so fucking proud of myself. My heart rate didn't raise at all even as it kept swinging itself around in circles. Mind you, when I went on the Scooby Doo ride, I was kind of terrified 'cause it was in the dark and I didn't know what was happening. Okay, so then the second reason I wanted to livestream, reason number two, numeral [inaudible 00:06:03], whatever it is, [inaudible 00:06:06]. Reason number two is for you, it's not all about me. I mean it is the Katrina Ruth Show, so technically it's all about me, but it's actually not all about me. When it is all about me ... In fact, I'll give you a free tip. All the tips are free. You don't have to pay for any of them right now. You can pay if you want. You can send donations via PayPal info@playlife.com.au. Send donations. So far, I've never received a single PayPal donation in 12 years of online marketing, and I feel that that's actually a little sad if you think about it. Someone should send me a dollar. Send me a dollar and a cookie, chewy chocolate chip cookie, preferably from ... What's that place called, where you get the food? Oh my god, it's on the tip of my tongue. They always have one conveniently near soul cycle. You know, you go and get your vegetables and your meat and stuff there every day. Ashley, what is it? We went there all the time. They had the best chocolate chip chewy cookies. I'm trying to get back on track. Okay, second reason. Nailed it. Second reason. Tender Greens, exactly. Tender Greens for the win. Ashley wins a prize. The prize is working with me. You already have that prize. Byron Bay cookies, maybe, but in Byron Bay, they have the ... I don't like those Byron Bay cookies, no sir-ee. I'm sorry. They have the best gluten free brownies if you actually drive to Byron Bay, which is a novel idea. But most people are eating things with the label Byron Bay on it, like they know I'm going there. So you've got to go there. You've got to get ... You go down on the street, I don't know what street it is. Sorry, I can't really direct you there, but I know in my head how to get there. And they have the best gluten free brownies in the world. And they have chocolate ... White chocolate raspberry and gluten free brownies. They are to die for. So I'll either take some of them plus a one dollar PayPal donation, or some chocolate chip chewy cookies from Tender Greens with a one dollar PayPal donation. Don't worry if you want to send more than a dollar, it's okay. Now if you want to make more than a dollar, and maybe you want to make millions of dollars on your terms always doing what you love only, then maybe you don't want to send me any donations at all and maybe you want to jump into the inner circle. Just an idea, but we'll talk about that another time. Anyway, I'm getting there finally. I wanted to share something with you that I have found myself saying to at least 1300 people today, or maybe it's two or three but it feels like a lot. And that is about the freedom, the freedom, the fucking freedom that comes from knowing you're already there. Christine was definitely gonna mail me cookies. I think I look amazing with my hair on this angle by the way. It looks like a fake ponytail piece and it's not even. Alright, I'm pretty happy with my hair right now. I'm pretty happy with my confidence also, by the way. Yeah, I'll take the Bordeaux too. Send the Bordeaux and the cookies. I should just get to enjoy my hair right now 'cause it's gonna get sweat-filled like a motherfucker in an hour and a half once I go in there. So the freedom. Freedom thing. I have said to at least three people today, if not 1333, "Do you realise that you're already free? Do you realise ...", Okay Leona, what do you need details of, the cookies? It's just [inaudible 00:09:41]. It's definitely on the corner of Second and something in Santa Monica, but there's one everywhere, or possibly you mean the inner circle, or is it the hair? Either way, message me. Big kind gestures. Oh my god, [inaudible 00:09:53], wait til you see the little skit that Matt and I made. Matt filmed for me the other day. He's editing them today. It's gonna be fabulous. So the freedom thing. Okay, so let me ask you a question. It's coming. It'll come when it desires to come, because I thought I was gonna get to it about eight and a half minutes ago but I didn't get there yet. Here's the question. I'm kind of annoyed that I've got no more water right now. Do you think if I just stuck the water bottle out of the ground there it would fill with rain water? You're free already. Lisa says she's free. Let's say, let's imagine that you believe in your own fucking message. Imagine such a thing. Do you think it's even possible that everybody here believes in their message? Probably not. Do you believe in your message? Do you believe in the truth and the power of what is inside your soul? Say "I" or say "Yes", say, "Love heart shower". Press your cat emoji sticker now, anyone that you like. Let's see them. Let's wait and see. I'm gonna wait for that. Yes, Rachel wins first. Send her a cookie. I have no interesting things in here. I really want some lip gloss. I think somebody ... I think that what happened is when I got my car washed that the car wash people took my Chanel gold lip gloss, that is my car lip gloss that sits down here. It's gone. Either that or somebody borrowed my car and stole my Chanel gold lip gloss. I've only loaned my car to men, so ... But maybe they did. Carrie says yes. Alright, let's say you believe in your message, and two of you said yes. I don't know what's going on with the other 56 of you. And I didn't see a single love a hot shower or an emoji either, so I'm a little concerned for the self belief of the livestream people, or maybe it's just that you're too busy eating cookies and the emoji button is not working. Still only two of you, really? Is that what's going on here? What's happening? Where's the love heart shower if you believe in your message? You could just decide to believe right now. So let's say you believe in your message. The next question is do you believe that you will automatically get there? Do you have faith that you will automatically create the vision that is inside of you, yes or no? Here they come. Thank you. Thank you for the love hearts. It's brightening up the blackness of this whole visual situation. Love heart and emojis and press play buttons everywhere, okay good. Absolutely. Let's say that you believe in your message and let's say that you also, additionally to that, you actually believe that it's fucking done. Now today, on three different conversations that I can even remember which specific three people it was, and it might've been more than that though, people were telling me about their vision and their message and what they want to bring to life, right? And I was just sitting there, and it was so powerful. It even felt just extra more powerful. I can't react. Just react. You don't need to be an emotional stone. Just react out loud. Just dance and play in the wind, but maybe I won't be able to see it and that's what you mean. [inaudible 00:12:57] love hearts. I just had you know two new clients on their first one on one calls with me and also one call where I was on with a friend. And in all three of those cases, and I think there was another client as well, where they were sharing their message and their vision, and I was just like holy shit. Do you feel how done it is what you're saying? Because I could feel their certainty and their truth and their fire as they were sharing their message and their vision with me. And you know sometimes people are a little less sure, and they want or desire or get to have that help and support kind of digging deeper and that's always cool as well. But in this particular case, every conversation that I had today, I was just like holy shit. You are so fucking sure of what you're saying to me. You know that this is what you're here to do in the world. And I've got to say that is somewhat rare, I guess, for a new client conversation. Often times, it's a bit more uncertainty there at the start. But like I said, either way's fine. Everyone's got different areas where they're more sure and different areas where they maybe need more support. But like I said, I said, "Do you realise how done this is? What you just said felt so energetically, it's just already done. You know that this is real right? You know this is happening"? And I think one or two people responded where ... Two people responded and were like, "Yes!", and one person was like, "Yes"? Kind of like "Yes?", but yes, right? From there I said, but do you understand what that means? 'Cause when you're already energetically done, like when you say this is what I'm gonna do and this is who I'm here to serve and this is the business and the life I'm gonna create, and you know and believe that it's done, do you understand what that means, Michelle Crawford? Response. And everybody else, but Michelle's is the most recent comment about that. What it means is that there is literally nothing you need to worry about, at all. Nothing. It means that you are already free because if it's energetically done, if it's already done internally, if you feel that and you know it, then it's only a matter of time, which is a very flexible and bendable thing anyhow, it is only a matter of time until the physical world catches up. And is the physical world even real, or is the world inside you real? Actually far and beyond this whole situation here, am I even here, are you here, is this car here, is the yoga studio there? That's definitely gonna feel fucking real when I'm in the hot room, so maybe that's real. But the rest ... But that's an internal reaction anyway, is it even real? Like actually, the real world is the one inside. So if it feels done and you mean it, then you already got the result. Hello, right? Hello. You already got the result. So if you already got the result, and if you feel it, then what would you need to worry about? Now maybe even you want more results, you want more tangible results. You're like, but I want to see the money in my bank account, and whatever else, right? Cool. But still, if it's energetically done and you're like it's so done and you actually mean that, then it means you have nothing to worry about. What does that mean? Leah Steele response. I'll keep talking anyway, but I like to hear your response. I think this is my new thing, that I just call people out and that they should talk suddenly on command on my livestreams. And it's just kind of annoying to me that you're not immediately like promoted to speaker as soon as I state your name. That is the new update that I want on Facebook live. I want it to be that when I shout somebody's name out that a live camera instantly goes onto them wherever they are, whatever they're doing. They're in the fucking bath, they're cooking dinner, too bad. They're just suddenly there on the livestream. That would be amazing. Do you think it would drop my numbers down on my lives if you knew that you were suddenly gonna be a guest appearance with no warning? Okay, what it means, what it means, what it means. What it means is you are already completely free to be in each moment and just live each moment from a place of pure connection and presence. I don't feel like the "ah" is the entire answer. The cat buttons are distracting. Just keep on smashing them. Hit em, hit em, hit em. Alright? People are arriving. Do you know I'm so impressed with myself that I got to the yoga studio an hour early, 'cause this place is getting popular as fuck and you can never get a car park. You have to hike from okay, like 30 minutes away, but it just feels annoying to me to not park right out the front. So now I'm like, this is my new system. I'm gonna turn up an hour early bitches. I'm getting the pole position every day. And then I'm just gonna livestream before the class, and then I'll walk into the class like levitating through the ceiling. Hey, how are you Joanna, if you're already in there, who's teaching the class. If you're ... Okay, back on point. You're free. Okay, so let's say there was nothing you needed to worry about. Let's say you completely trusted and knew that it was done and knew that everything inside of you is gonna come to life, amen. Yes, thank you, goodnight. What that would mean in a practical sense, if there is indeed a practical world at all, which seems to be up for discussion, is it would mean ... I feel that you're evading and avoiding the question with your lawyerly tactics, I'm onto you. It would mean that you can just be like here I am, right here, right now, in this moment being me, just hanging out in the flow zone. Earlier when I was on the phone chatting away for an extended period of time ... And then ... And he's in America. And then he was like, "What time is it for you anyway?" And I was like, "Two pm", and he's like, "Oh shit, this is the middle of your day. Did you want to be talking at this time of day?" Or like "It's the middle of your working day", or something like that. And I was like "Yeah, but" ... well, I already did a bunch of stuff earlier anyhow, but more relevantly, that's got nothing to do with anything. Working day is a very interesting topic, and I feel like my whole life is my working day, or none of it, either way. But the big point that I kind of came to from that that I want to bring in here is I'm always exactly where I need to be and there is literally nothing else I need to do ever. This moment in time, where I'm meant to be is right here with you dancing around in the car. That moment in time, that was exactly where I was meant to be, on the phone. There was nothing else. There's no list. I deleted the fucking list. I did talk about last week. I'm gonna run a course. It's gonna be called "#deletethelist.com". In the course, I will get you to send me a list, and then I'll burn it, or I'll maybe teach you how to do a ceremony, like a cleansing and closing of the list ceremony and a clearing and then a releasing and detoxification of the list, and then we'll have martinis. That'll be the course. It's gonna be 99$. Who wants to join? You can send PayPal donations if you want to join, or just send 99$ and then I'll tell you how to delete your list. It'll be worth a fuck load more than 99$ by the way. It should be 999. It's a bargain, a bargain. Of course, you could do roughly just what I already said and just send me the Bordeaux, it's up to you. Whatever works for you. So you know, there's nothing I ever need to do. It's actually become real. I've said this for a while. It's one of my most powerful, fabulously, life transformative ... It sounds wordy, but it's still true, the best manifestation philosophies of all time is that there is never anything you need to do ... Lisa is signing up for the cause, she's signing up for #deletethelist.com, she's in. Who else is in? We can sell this course right now. I could just launch it right now. I'm really enjoying my side angle. I think I'm gonna do all livestreams on the side. I think it's just the god glow that's coming through from the lights. Okay, enough. I'll stop. I know I'm being slightly annoying, maybe not. Just own it. Maybe you're not annoying at all. So yes, here's the concept. There's never anything you need to do, but there's always action to take. I read this in a book once, and I was like ... My mind was instantly expanded to the heavens, to the heavens. Right? I was like what does that mean? What does it mean there's never anything you need to do but there's always action to take? Well, what it means is when you trust and you know that it's done ... This is kind of a boring prop, isn't it? What else have we got back here? You know when they clean your car and then they just leave the little consoles and compartments not properly cleaned? Right. I've got a better prop. Alright, okay. This is what I'm rolling with. Okay. You know, I always say I'm Batman and I carry the Batman shaker all the time, and I feel like people don't believe that I'm really Batman, but somebody's got to be Batman you understand. I feel like this is way better than the water bottle. I'm going down because the yoga people are gonna see me. My friends from yoga are all ... They're not even my close friends, they're just people I know at yoga and they're gonna be like, this chick seems like a normal chick normally when she's in the yoga class. Now the truth is gonna be uncovered. Right. There's nothing else very interesting back here. There's a badge, police badge. I don't think that's helpful. It's hard to see. See? Now you believe it, of course. Where was I? There's no ... Oh my god, somebody's pulling up next to me. Actually, my windows are quite tinted. It should be okay. There's never anything that you need to do, but there's always action to take. It means when you fully trust and you know that it's done, you get to live your fucking life. I feel like Kiera understands this philosophy definitely. Thank you, Kiera. Definitely Batman, no question. I appreciate it. I actually must say though that I met Batman yesterday at Movie World. He didn't seem to give me any particular code word or acknowledgement, but maybe he was triggered. You can live your life. What if you could just live your life now and be completely free? Imagine to yourself that you were completely done. Oh my god, bat dad is my new hashtag. Imagine to yourself that you were completely done and completely free and that there was nothing else you had to do, nothing you needed to worry about at all, nothing you needed to do. Like you're done. You're actually done. I said to my friend on the phone earlier, I was like, "I'm actually done. I'm already ... Like I'm right here, right now with you. This is where I'm meant to be in this moment in time. I'm already done for today, but I'm actually done for my life", I said. "And therefore, from that place, I'm free to do whatever the fuck I want and be as creative as possible." And guess what else? I trust in myself that I will show up for my life and continue to create amazing things. A lot of people would be very scared to be done. I love Bat dad. He's funny as anything. A lot of people would be very scared to be done because then they would be terrified that all they're gonna do if they didn't have a list of shit they're gonna do, all they're gonna do is sit around on the couch eating fucking cookies from [inaudible 00:24:05]. Not me. I'm not scared of the cookies at all. I'm also not scared of overeating them. I must admit I eat them on a pretty consistent basis when I'm in America. I was like oh my god, somebody's trying to scratch their way through the roof of the car, but it's just my bat ear scratching the roof of the car up there. But I am a consistent person. I'm disciplined as fuck and I'm consistent in all areas. And when I'm in America, I'm consistently eating [inaudible 00:24:31] chocolate chip chewy cookies because they're fucking amazing. And it's also a fabulous way that I test out my own theories and philosophies on life, one of which is that I'm always in amazing shape no matter what I eat. So I deliberately eat cookies, cookies, cookies, whenever I desire them, which is often enough, consistently enough. And then I remain lean, and then I'm like here you go bitches. Told you, if anybody asks, and they do sometimes. Otherwise, I just keep it to myself and eat them in bed. And when Callie shares the bed with me, she's like "Why is there crumbs in the bed"? And that's the entire story. Imagine if you were free, right? Really imagine this. Feel into this. Feel the energy of being free. Imagine you're free to be a moon child and a bat girl and whatever you wanted. There was nothing you needed to do. I didn't do this livestream 'cause I'm like now I want to sell some shit. I was selling something anyway, right? That's whatever. It just happens. It would be so weird to not be selling. But I do what I desire to do ... Lilly Badcock, are we gonna be doing a podcast interview tonight my time? I don't know if you replied yet. Can I do it as bat girl? You know, I just do what I desire to do, what feels fun and flow-based. Cat man, that is even better. Cat man? Can I be cat girl? Okay, now I'm bat girl, cat girl, I don't know. What do you mean which part of America you're in? What if I'm online Rachel? They definitely exist, but maybe 10 degrees is more of a California thing. Imagine you were free. Would that be scary though or would it be exciting? Would you be willing to do that? It's not actually that you get to be free. The question is are you willing to allow yourself to be free? Because you can grant that to yourself right now in this very moment in time. That is the point that I'm trying to make, right? I really need a fucking pointing device. I'm gonna have to go back to the empty water bottle, either that or some sunglasses. It feels like I should have some sort of better props in this car, but it is what it is at this stage. I did the best that I could with what was available to me. I feel that I did okay. Okay, alright. I don't know what's happening in your part of California, but just figure it out. They're the best cookies in the world. So would you be okay with it, right? 'Cause you can give yourself this permission right now. Most of you won't is the sad truth. You're gonna go, "Oh very well for you to say cat girl, bat girl, whoever you are, but I" ... This, this and this. Well guess what? I'm just gonna tell you straight up from the getup. That is your story. I had the same story for many moons, many moons. It was not a fun story to live in, but I continued to hold onto it relentlessly even though it didn't serve me. I was addicted to the story of struggle. And then one day, I was just sick of the whole damn thing and I just decided to trust in myself. I decided to trust that I would do the right if I didn't have rules for myself. I decided to grant myself freedom. And it's a continual thing that I get to decide and step into. 'Cause I decided that shit years ago, but still the rules creep up upon you, and the list creeps up around you, and you put walls upon yourself. I didn't mean other people's rules. I could give two fucks about other people's rules, right? But my own rules for myself, I would be so strictly bound ... For example, in years gone by, even something like my journaling, which obviously I swear by and love and adore, but earlier years, it would've been like I have to or else, or even [inaudible 00:27:55] yoga, which I'm about to go into. In earlier years, Kiera knows about this for sure, was I have to or else, or else I'll gain weight or freak out or have an anxiety attack or be a bad person somehow. Now, I go when I desire to and that is it, period, the end. I never go out of scarcity to yoga, to the gym, to my journal, to anywhere. I follow flow and desire. So that's one example of how I got rid of rules, right? But continually they creep up and continually you just bat them on away like a bat girl, cat girl, whoever you are. And you notice it and you catch it. For me, it's such a big shift to step into this realisation. And I just dropped into it again over this past week or so in a deeper way, and I've had this conversation with several people today like I said, of holy shit. If you actually believe in what you say you believe, and you believe and know that it's done, then it means that you're already free. It means that you're completely free, that you are free to live your life, that you've got your whole life right now, that you've got everything. And if I'm free, then all I've got to do is exactly what I desire to do. Okay Patrick, you missed the best part of the conversation, and there was a very important reason why I had to put the bat girl mask on. So you're gonna have to watch the replay, alright? Now, we're into the serious bit though. The fun is over. The fun is over, but the mask is on now and nobody needs to see what's going on with this mask. It'll be too crazy for anyone. Okay, preaching. Exactly, Lilly, that is right. If you're already free right here and right now in this moment, then all that you've got to worry about is, well, nothing at all. There's no fucking worry. It's literally just what do you desire to do in this moment in time? You scrolled and no mask, came back and mask is on. That's what happens. You just manifested bat girl. Ashley, where are you? Are you still in Hawaii? What is your house in Santa Monica gonna be like? Because we're all coming and we're gonna have a massive party there. It's gonna be a costume party, and then we're gonna do that fucking hip hop music video that I said we were gonna do. That is what's happening. Yes, yes it is. Maybe Patrick will even come to that, and you can be in the video. In Hawaii. I need to go to Hawaii. I'm trying to get back on topic. Imagine you were free, and imagine that you could do exactly what you wanted to do all the time. Do you think you'd do a good job? That is the question, right? That is the only question that I have for you today, apart from every other question that I asked you before. But that's the only real question that's important and serious. Do you think that you would do a good job? Do you think that you would do a good fucking job of living your life or alternatively, do you imagine to yourself ... My ears are getting crunchy up there. Do you imagine to yourself that you need to have rules and structure, that you can't be trusted, that you're not gonna be successful in your life if you don't have rules? If you don't have structure, if you don't have all these boundaries, and like I've got to live my life in a certain way like it's a freaking military organisation instead of getting to flow. Because I fully know and believe and understand that when I come from flow, everything works. Everything works, alright? Everything. Ashley says my house is gonna be amazing 'cause I've decided. Everyone is invited, but you've got to [inaudible 00:31:03]. Ace can be in the video. I feel like he would be super badass gangster as a bat dog in the video. Okay, he can just be himself. He doesn't even have to dress up. He can just be regular old Ace. So wait, what was I up to? I mean I feel like the whole point of the whole damn point is that everybody wants to get to freedom. Everyone wants to get to where they can live their lives, where they can wake up every day, do whatever the fuck they want, connect with whoever they desire, you know just have an amazing cool time. I used to write in my journal over and over and over again. I would write all I want to do is I want to inspire and motivate and educate and empower people to live their lives purposefully and to press play, and I want to hang out with badass cool people online. That is literally what I would write over and over again. I want to inspire, educate, motivate and empower and I want to hang out with cool, badass people online. And offline as well, but I was thinking in terms of my business. And then I would think, but how do I do that? What are all the things that I've got to do? What are all the building blocks and the stepping stones so that I can get to that place? And it just seemed so endless. And for as long as I said that there was this list of shit that had to be done or these blocks that I had to climb, then there was, right? 'Cause I continued to create them in front of me. And it literally took me years to figure this shit out to where I now know and understand it was all just like a hallucination or ... Nothing wrong with that, but it was all just a made up idea in my head. I was just creating this stairway in front of me in my head. It wasn't even a stairway to heaven. It was a stairway to nowhere. It was just one of those revolving fucking stairways that when you think you got to the top it just keeps going. And finally I was like, if I just got off the freaking stairway, and there was nothing in front of me and nothing I had to do, I could actually be here now. And because what I desire to do is to inspire, motivate, educate and empower people and hang out with badass, cool people online, then that is what I'm gonna do. And funnily enough, not funny at all, that's what makes me the fucking money, gives me the flow ... He's called Ace, not ice. A-C-E. Makes me the money, gives me the flow, gets me the body results, calls in my cool as fuck soulmate clients and friends and people in my life right? All of that actually just comes from me being who I am. Who would you be if you were free? That is the question you must ask yourself today. Who would you be if you were already free? If you can answer that, you just got your whole life. You just got the answer to everything, everything. You already know everything. I said this today earlier as well. It's so true. I already know everything. You already know everything. We all already know everything. You know everything. If you realised that you already knew everything, then what the fuck would you be doing? You'd be being you. And guess what? As much as maybe you're scared that you're gonna be somebody who wastes their life and lives a lazy life or you know, a destructive life or non fit feeling life, you know what? It's not who you are. You at your laziest or you at your most non pushing, whatever that is, you're gonna show up because it's who you are. You know, I said to one of my clients today, I was like, "What are you doing when you're most in flow and you're just being fully you and you're having the best time ever in your life"? "Tell me what that activity is for you". And she was like, "Oh, learning and growing". I'm like, of course, right? None of us here got to worry that we're gonna accidentally sit on the couch for the rest of our lives and get fat if we don't have a list and a bunch of rules and a stairway to freaking nowhere that we think we've got to climb endlessly in order to get results. What are you actually scared of here? Who are you? You know who you are is your core. I'm batman, you can't be batman. I'm just letting you know, okay? So who are you? That's my question. Who are you at your core? If you had no rules, if you had no boundaries, then who would you be? You know who I would be? Whoever the fuck I want to be each day, whatever comes out, whichever angle of the Katrina fucking Ruth show is turning up, that's who I'd be. What would I talk about? Who the hell knows. Whatever pops out of my tiny little head. Okay, it's not that tiny really at all. My normal sized head. Whatever pops out. What would I sell? Whatever I fucking feel like. #deletethelist.com Alright? And actually, roughly that is what I do. I be whoever I am each day, I say whatever I want to say each day, I sell whatever's coming out of me. It's my entire structure, and from that chaos an empire has indeed been created exactly as I blogged about today. Make sure you read my blog if you didn't read it already. And then in between, I do the other things I feel like doing, like I talk to cool people, I go to yoga class, whatever it is that I do. It's all just flow, it's all just trust. I'm not worrying how many fucking workouts I've got to do each week to get a result, I'm not worrying how many freaking livestreams I've got to do or what sales presses I've got to have in place to sign up new clients. I just deleted all the worries. I just deleted them. Sometimes they're like little teeny, invisible ninjas and they keep trying to come back, and then you've got to delete them again. That's fine. I've got no problem. I'll keep on swinging. I think that's all. I think I might be done. What's happening here? There's a whole dog stream going on here. So to bring it back around, well I already said many times I'm Batman. I've been carrying the shaker around for ages. I feel like people didn't believe it. I feel like you guys just thought I was trying to be Batman like a want-trepreneur Batman. A ... I can't think of a good way to word it, want to be Batman? I don't know. I could think of a better way if I had more time. What else was I gonna say? Yeah, so then I had to show you that I really am Batman. Okay, okay. Do you know what I'm on the lookout for? Badass as fuck ... I was gonna say bat girls, but I feel like I could possibly bear to let this conversation go. I am on the lookout for women and men who are exactly like me, the 1% within the 1% revolutionary, badass as fuck, creatives, hustlers, leaders ... Okay I'm nearly ... I don't know what's happening here. I'm nearly presenting this livestream on some kind of sideways oblique angle. I think I'm still trying to hide in case yoga people see me. 1% within the 1%, revolutionary creatives, hustlers, leaders, entertainers. You got to be an entertainer, otherwise I don't even know what you think you're doing hanging out here because when you're in the inner circle, which is what I'm trying to talk about ... Like the hip hop thing I mentioned earlier, this is like initiation shit that's just required. Okay, I can't tell you all the details 'cause that's the whole point of it being a secret initiation is that it's a secret, but you get the idea. Shenanigans are not optional, they're required. And you may or may not ... Yes, no I won't even say what I was gonna say 'cause it ... Well, it's okay to scare people ... Because it's more fun to be secretive. I'm here to call in the most amazing creatives and entrepreneurs and leaders in the world. I've created the most badass and hottest mastermind on the freaking internet for insanely crazy as fuck entrepreneurs and creatives. We have the most incredible time ever. We have our next retreat coming up in July in LA. It's inner circle only. But meanwhile, we're hanging out every single day in the inner circle group with our weekly mastermind hot seat calls and you and me on one one. That's what the inner circle is about. What I'm doing at the moment is opening up and inviting applications and message inquiries for the inner circle. If you feel like you would want to work with me at the absolute highest level and indeed step into your true inner bat girl, or whatever it is that's inside of you, or whatever it is that comes through each day, message me about that. Because what goes on in that group, I've actually been pretty secretive about and not in a bat girl secretive way, just in a weirdly reverse ego kind of way where I don't really talk about client results much. You may have noticed that over the last week or so I've started to post client results pretty consistently. That is a new thing that you're gonna start to see more and more. Every day I'm receiving messages from clients with massive life changes, not just in business and in money, but in all areas of life. And I've been somewhat rudely and selfishly keeping that stuff to myself and to the group of clients who are in the inner circle. And I'm gonna now start launching it all over the internet, proudly waving that flag. And I'm gonna invite the right people to come and join us. If you think that might be you, well I didn't really give you much detail about it, but I can give you more detail, message me on my personal page and I'll send you an overview of who we are and what we do. And then we'll figure out what next. I think that might be all. I think it might be time to go into class. The doors are open. People without masks on are in there. Hello, world. Okay, that's it. Over and out. Over and out from the cat-mobile. I've had a fun time. Thank you for helping me come back down to Earth and then levitate the fuck up again. Go set yourself into absolute press play fucking alignment, purpose, and whatever else it is that you desire. You can give that to you now. You can give that to yourself now. Life is now. Press fucking play. Bye.

This is my Spoiler review of Star Wars The Last Jedi. I liked the movie, BUT, I There are a few MAJOR problems that almost ruin it. I talk about how these problems could've been easily corrected to make the movie the best star wars movie it could be. My version is what I think the movie should've been. Hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think in the comments below. Thanks For a way, more detailed analysis go to https://www.patreon.com/mikebranc Support the show on Patreon for as little as $1 a month and get access to weekly bonus continent and rewards. https://www.patreon.com/mikebranc   Website: https://www.mikebranc.com  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Mikebranc Facebook Page: https://www.Facebook.com/Mikedelicpodcast Twitter: @mikebranc  https://www.twitter.com/mikebranc Instagram: mikebranc https://www.instagram.com/mikebranc also: https://www.mikeadelic_podcast  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/mikebrancatelli Snapchat: mikebranc Email: https://www.mikebranc.com/contact   This show is available everywhere podcasts are found, including Spotify! Follow and listen to the show on Spotify. Click here: https://www.open.spotify.com/show/mikeadelicpodcast   Thanks    

Previously a pastor. I met Ted at a Rob Bell lecture/seminar. Ted is painting houses now.  Grew up in a legalist Christian background. Was a pastor for about 17 years, expresses it was both the best and worst of times.  He didn't know how to navigate depression that he'd experienced his whole life.  Lisa describes pea soup. Ted needed an escape from his life, became secretive about his sex addiction and finally confessed his actions. "A boulder on my chest that was going to kill me dead." His wife saw two choices before her, and decided to stay with him, the road that led to life, not to darkness and resentment. He was on skype with his counselor and said he wanted to leave his family. She responded, "are you a man who leaves?" - This question saved his life. "why am I?" There are moments in life where we don't know what's going to happen. Even in our darkness, there's little bits of light that shine through- Lisa "Life is a canvas that you just get to keep painting on" - Ted  Sometimes we need a huge moment to wake us up, to break us open, to peel back the layers. "God I'm not done with you yet." The issue wasn't staying or going from the marriage.  "Christianity has writer's block, they aren't good at embracing mystery." - Ted "I don't believe it's a man, it's all a big giant force that's in the room with me." - Lisa "I am a recovering know it all" - Ted "Embracing the mystery, God has become more big and beautiful" - Ted It's tough to put together the fragments of a 2,000 year old book. "Electricity, love, marriage, keeping the faith is mystery." - Ted "We are all in the mystery, we are all in the same boat" - Ted When God came in, and experience. "Sometimes I don't know if i should tell these stories, because I don't know what they will do to people" - Ted Escape became a very powerful thing, "Wow this is real dumb, I gotta give this up."  We think it's love, but it's not love.  "Hold on, I'm just a guy, there's no way I could make that feeling happen." Being overcome with feeling while driving. Was shown a vision of Aces, in a poker hand. "Something else was going on here. This was not coming from me, but from out there." Began rubbing his belly. "Hey do you have a stomach ache?" "No, I feel like I have a baby in my belly" And then we all began to pray.  They thought I was going to be ill, they began yelling prayers at me, and then I was sick. At the end, I felt as though all of the evil had left me.  Physical manifestation of feelings or lessons.  "It's not I, but it's sin living in me" Paul, saying, I'm not a sinner, but it's in me. Sin: Being off the path It will manifest within us if we are not being our best selves. It leads to disease. If we are hiding, or lying to ourselves. "when you use a certain language over people it d Sometimes the truth is so scary. We are so scared we're going to die from that truth. "it becomes easier and easier to stick our head in the sand, but you can't breathe anymore" - Lisa Lisa "Prayer is just a pep talk to ourselves" and wrote it off. Then I dated a christian. He was super kind to the world, showed me how to be in service. I was drawn into this by the sex. I knew all of my friends would think I was weird.  I've learned that when I do prayer, or meditation, or mantra, it helps my brain stay straight.  "Having faith that the world is better than I imagine it to be." "My life is not about me." The line I read in a book that I never read the rest of - Ted "Prayer and worship for me is being grateful and thankful for a force outside myself" - Ted What worship is like, am I in the moment, or is the moment in me. "He's standing there and knows - The world is way bigger than me "I hate to admit that I didn't realize it wasn't about me" - Lisa It doesn't matter why you're helping others.  "When we are helping another, we are loving god" Back to his friends house, He went to bed and he was full of love. The room was full of love, "Soft lightening striking my heart". Almost felt like it was too much love, he thought he might die.  We all want that religious experience! Instead of chasing the experience, I would way "whatever you want you got" Try to figure out the wind. "I've got friend who have experiences like this every day, and I want to punch them in the face!" - Ted Not getting needs met, through sex adrenaline. 18 month shelf life.  Ted has been married 15 years, halfway through marriage realized he was over doing it, and learned to re-frame it, and see it differently. Intimacy without sex.  "Far too many relationships fall short of the sweet place humans can experience" - Ted "Father, Son, Holy Spirit, My Wife" She decides she's going to love the leper." now there is the message of god. His grace swooping me up in my most leperous moment. My wife, playing out the story of Christ in my living room" - Ted "What is love: I'm going to stick with you through the changes." "Marriages are going to have storms"  "I authentically want him to thrive,"- Lisa  "You are on that grace-giving side of the equation" - Ted His wife says she was filled with something that she couldn't explain. A Biblical story, the election. [Tweet theme="tweet-box-normal-blue"]"America has stomach ache" - Lisa[/Tweet] Have we been consuming too much junk food? Record gluten intolderance levels? The emotions are so high and we aren't doing anything about it. We want someone else to do it. "I just sit here and want." - Lisa [Tweet theme="tweet-box-normal-blue"]"I think we are all looking at ourselves today, we want to be a part of the movement" - Ted[/Tweet] It's not the traditional sense of giving back, we all have a gift maybe. "My wife is a wonderful women. She levitates in this realm of wisdom" - Ted   The experience of being alive. Not doing something, not being aware of doing something. That is the gift of life.  "I thought I knew what humility was: playing a smaller role" - Lisa [Tweet theme="basic-white"]"When someone gives you language for what you're going through." - Ted[/Tweet] When you find language for your own life, and others look in and learn something. "I had a counselor named Mary that made me do visual art." - Lisa Ted was teaching seminars on marriage and porn, but didn't see it.  He didn't know how to love himself, wanted to be a savior, had the ego. "We learn to be needy sometimes" - Ted "I am living with pain, and i'm okay with that. But just saying that its' starting to get better, I'm starting to understand it more." - Ted Buddha The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism (from School of Champions) Suffering exists Suffering arises from attachment to desires Suffering ceases when attachment to desire ceases Freedom from suffering is possible by practicing the Eightfold Path   "I know that god is for us, and loves us" - Ted  "I wish I could lean on my faith more" - Lisa "It's because I'm hungry, that I believe, it's my appetite that tells me there's a meal" - Ted "I'm pulled, there's something pulling me in this human gravity" - Ted Theme in Christian blogging: How do you leave the God of your childhood? [Tweet theme="tweet-box-normal-blue"]"Scary for a little kind to think that praying the wrong way will get them killed" - Lisa[/Tweet] Christians picking up Jewish traditions for the rhythm.  Ted teaches Lisa to pray to god in the closet.  "I never let myself be still" - Lisa "for me to be quiet and think, what is it that I want, what do I feel. As a girl, I felt I wasn't important" - Lisa [Tweet theme="tweet-box-normal-blue"]"It sounds like you're at the ocean and you're afraid to swim, but I think you're at the ocean" - Ted[/Tweet] "You don't need permission, just swim." - Ted Surrender is so hard for people who grew up with little control.  "if you're in atheist, you choosing not to believe in god" - Lisa Why would you do that if something doesn't exist?        How to leave a love note on iTunes for my Podcast. From your computer: 1. Open the iTunes software on your desktop. (Not the web version.) 2. In the search bar (upper right-hand corner), type in “Honestly Lisa”. 3. Click on our album cover that pops up towards the bottom of the screen. 4. This will take you to the homepage for our show, but make sure you don’t accidentally select one of our individual episodes instead. 5. Right under the show description, you’ll see three tabs. “Ratings & Reviews” is the second one listed, and this is the one you want to click on. 6. On that page, there should be a button called “Write A Review” and if you click there, it will hopefully let you create a post with your thoughts! From your iPhone: 1. Open the “podcast” app that comes pre-installed on all current apple smartphone devices. 2. In the lower right-hand corner, you’ll click on the magnifying glass “search” button and type in “marriage is funny”. 3. Click on our album cover that pops up towards the bottom of the screen. This will take you to the homepage for our show, but make sure you don’t accidentally select one of our individual episodes instead. 4. Select the “reviews” tab toward the top of the screen, and you’ll see a purple “Write a Review” button on the next page. 5. It might ask you to log in to your iTunes account, but otherwise, this will open a form where you can enter your thoughts!        

Today, we’re going to talk about lies. Why do we lie - ever? And while it’s easy to perhaps scapegoat people who aren’t telling the whole truth - as with anything in relationship - it takes TWO to tango - so how does the person who’s being lied TO help create the dynamic? Most importantly - how do you bring your relationship back into balance, so that you can experience the power created by telling the truth and being in integrity. Today’s guests are Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson. They are two of the world’s leading experts on couples therapy and the topic of honesty in relationship, and their groundbreaking book - Tell me No Lies - explores exactly these questions about how to undo the damage caused by all lies - big and small - in relationship. In today’s conversation, Ellyn Bader, Peter Pearson and I discuss the following: What constitutes a lie? Lying is not an exact science, rather it occurs on a continuum, with several distinct types: Equivocations: Giving ambiguous, indirect, or contradictory information Exaggerations: Overstatements and truth stretching Understatements: Minimizing or downplaying aspects of the truth Concealments: Deliberately omitting information that is important and relevant Deliberate lies: Making up information, or giving the opposite of the truth (no versus yes) Felony lies: These are the big high stakes ones Why do we lie? The good the bad and the ugly. Lying always has a purpose, and is often resulting from a need to protect something.  What is crucial to consider is the motivation behind the lie, and what in fact the individual is trying to protect. Is it their ego? Their sense of security? Fear of shame? In some cases, as often happens in the beginning of a relationship, lies may be told in order to HELP solidify the bond and create closeness (“Yum, the dinner you made was delicious!”). In other cases lies are told in order to avoid conflict or tension, or to avoid hurt feelings. We also lie to advance ourselves, enhance our image, protect ourselves, or gain power. While there are minor seemingly loving lies that are told in order to protect the bond, it is almost always more successful to protect the relationship through truth telling, as risky and scary as it may seem. Lying between me, myself, and I: There is an enormous amount of self deception in most relationships, and let’s be honest, in our lives in general. Everyone, whether currently coupled or not, can take time to ask: Am I really telling myself the truth about my own experience? How well do I know myself? How much am I able to communicate what I know about myself? These questions are incredibly potent to hold as a relationship begins to unfold. In the honeymoon phase, or what Bader refers to as the ‘temporary psychosis phase’ due to the plethora of neurochemicals involved with falling in love that make us “bonded and stupid”, it is very normal to lie. Mostly to oneself. Amidst the adrenaline and excitement of new love, many people do not pay attention to their own wishes, desires, or needs. Some may forget to ask themselves “Who am I really? What really matters to me?”. This is natural because when people first come together there is a strong desire to try and be the same. They may knowingly and unknowingly minimize differences and emphasize ways they are alike in order to prove compatibility to each other, and find alignment. This can actually be a cute, sweet, profound, and important process, however where it goes from here is the make or break… Lack of differentiation creates havoc in the long run: While it may be normal to search for commonality in the beginning of a relationship, a couple must begin to welcome and celebrate difference early on in order to avoid getting stuck on “the dark side of the honeymoon”, that petri dish for resentment, fear, instability, and ultimately distrust. Failure to differentiate usually results from one or both partners being conflict avoidant, meaning that they hold the basic fear that conflict will lead to rupture or collapse of the relationship.  Because they are seeking security above all else, they are willing to overcompensate or over adapt for long periods of time in order to keep the illusion of permanence in the relationship. This begins by the conflict avoidant partner not expressing their desires, needs or wishes, and frequently includes lies by omission. This partner gives more and more of themselves, ignoring important parts of themselves, until they either collapse, become depressed, develop secret anger, etc. This leads to the next stage, the “Freedom Unhinged” state, in which the relationship begins to disintegrate. More extreme lying occurs, including the GREAT BIG felony lies (gambling, infidelity, etc). The stakes are high, and as one partner becomes more and more adamant that such and such is NOT happening, the other partner may even begin to question their own sanity. Often at this point trust has been so violated that couples usually separate as it is rare to be able to piece everything back together. NOTE TO THOSE EXPERIENCING FELONY LIES: It is advisable to get a therapist involved. If you guys want to try to work through it on your own make sure to slow down. Often the partner who has lied is in a hurry to heal and looks to find solutions quickly. Let your partner express their feelings, all of them, and allow them to ask LOTS of questions. Regaining trust isn’t simply a decisional process. It takes a long time and it takes a lot of small things done daily. Do what you say you are going to do. It is common to experience disillusionment as new love matures! Some things just don’t show up in early stages. Realizing truths can come after commitments have been made, and need not incite panic. Oscar Wilde says “the truth is rarely pure and never simple”, and this is incredibly true in relationships. Inviting truth and how to AVOID becoming conflict avoidant: In order for couples to evolve well and enter into a growthful process from the honeymoon phase, it is key to start substantial truth telling early on. Each partner speaks up about things that are important and matter to them, even at the risk of moving into areas of disagreement. Although the early years of differentiation are not always easy, there are many moments of growthful tension. It takes courage not only from the one who tells their truth, but from the partner who is willing and able to truly listen and hear their partner share! Lie Invitees: Knowing that lying is often one of those ‘two to tango’ deals, how does the person who’s being lied TO help create the dynamic? Somebody becomes a lie invitee when they do not fully collaborate on the commitment to truth telling. For example, when your partner shares honestly and with integrity with you and you attack them or shame them, they will inevitably think twice about being honest in the future, thus leading to increased deception. So how are you receiving your partner’s honesty? Are you being reactive instead of responsive? Are you being a martyr? Acting above? Playing victim? If so you may actually be encouraging your partner’s lie telling. The BIGGEST self deception that occurs in relationships is the belief that we are victims and not contributors in the distress. Truth telling is a collaborative process, so always stay AWARE of your participation in what goes on in your relationship. Ask yourself “what would be required of me to bring more honesty to our partnership?”, “What can I do that would make my partner glad to be with me?”, “How can I be in order to increase ease and fluency in our communication?”. Come clean when you need to, and work towards being willing to SEE and BE SEEN, HEAR and BE HEARD by and with and for each other. According to Bader and Pearson, THE ABSOLUTE FOUNDATION OF MAKING A RELATIONSHIP WORK IS NOT LOVE IT IS TRUST. Explore this, meditate on it, discuss it, play with it, reject it, embrace it, and notice. Notice how you react and respond. Come clean with grace and generosity. When you become aware of a place in which you have not been totally honest with your partner, do not rush into confession. There is an art to everything, confessions included. If you are going to express a difficult truth, give your partner a loving heads up. Telling lies/not telling the truth can feel so shaming and heavy that there is a tendency to want to unload quickly and release the guilt as soon as you feel ready to share. This is not advised! It is as if you hit your partner with two arrows instead of one, stinging them once with your news, and second with the selfishness of your delivery. So SLOW DOWN (less in time, but more in tone). Say something like “Hey, I want to share something with you that isn’t easy for me to say”, and then verbally honor that your motivation in telling them the truth is to continue to build the trusting foundation you are both committed to creating in your relationship. This acts as a paradigm shifter- from ‘me and you’ to ‘us’, and helps facilitate your partner’s ability to hear the truth. BE CURIOUS NOT FURIOUS- There is also an art to receiving truth telling. If your partner has shared something with you from a generous and couple centered place, it is good to remember to respond first with “I really appreciate your honesty”. Work together towards a place in which you can respond by staying curious, and saying “tell me more”. When and if you recognize ways in which you are either being a lie invitee, or having difficulty receiving your partner’s honesty, share this. Say something like “Honey, I am noticing that I have been doing such and such and that it might be making it hard for you to be honest with me”. By the mere fact of owning one’s contribution to the patterns, doors will open and fresh air will come into the relationship. You can also experiment together. Say “Look, I know that I have been reactive in the past, and I am really going to try to listen and hear you without demanding anything in this moment”. Then take turns! Give this platform a try and see if it eases or shifts any stuckness in your communication patterns. Truth is a process and the key is to build a culture of truth telling in your partnership- Nobody is totally honest all of the time, but if you can start talking more openly about how to give and receive honesty before the nitty grittys come crawling out of the closets, the monsters from under the bed, those once upon a time white lies get revealed, it will make all the difference in the world. The more hiding you are doing the less vibrancy and energy is available for the relationship and for your life. So, create a container and a commitment together to being clear and direct, and don’t forget these two rhymes: IT TAKES TEAM WORK TO MAKE YOUR DREAM WORK BE CURIOUS NOT FURIOUS Resources Check out Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson’s work at: www.couplesinstitute.com Read their book- Tell Me No Lies www.neilsattin.com/lies Visit to download the show guide, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the show guide to this episode with Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson Our Relationship Alive Community on Facebook Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out!  

The question about staying on the Path came up in my mind quite a few times. I have been trying to find out what motivated me. Why did I start training all of a sudden? Why did I choose Martial Arts over any sports? Why have I been staying with my training for 30 years, and I still did not lose my interest? Why did I choose shakuhachi flute, one of the most difficult instruments in the World, and I have been studying it and practicing daily for over 10 years? I was talking about all the things I have been doing in my life in one of my previous episodes. People ask me, what helped me to stay consistent? I used to say, I did it because I liked it. But what made me like it? I had to study some things about motivation, about consistency, so I could at least explain it to other people. And perhaps, help somebody to make a decision. Yep, helping somebody is one of the points I will mention later today.   First of all, we need to remember, that we are dealing with a mindset. I've seen so many people trying to simplify their lives by dividing things into black and white. In reality, look at the Nature. How much black and white can you really see around?    I can say the same about our thought process. We can define two extremes. I am talking about "I want to do" vs. "I have to do". I am not getting in a long philosophical discussions about needs, desires and suffering. No doubt, Zen monk will define totally different levels for those two extremes, comparing to myself. But like my Zen teacher said, "who is - I?" There are plenty of wonderful recored lessons made by Zen teachers, you can find somebody competent in this area. And I am just sharing my Path.    DOWNLOAD