Producing Success In Your Life With Darryll Stinson – Replay

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress, and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Markel and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change-proof. Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress, and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Markel and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become— Change-proof.

Darrell Stinson is an entrepreneur, pastor, a speaker, and a suicide survivor. Having played defensive end at Central Michigan University, Darrell attempted to take his own life in 2011 due to an athletic career-ending injury. Through a second chance, he came to believe that his life mattered and began the arduous journey of discovering what his identity and purpose was outside of sports. In today's replay episode, we discuss the power to turn every loss into a lesson, how gratitude is a strategy instead of a core belief of ours, and how to utilize the power of uncertainty. Enjoy. I am feeling very, very lucky, I guess, is the word I'm going to use today, for just to be here. I was meditating a little bit ago today. And just feeling tremendous gratitude for the fact that I was given this day. And that gratitude just sort of started to extend in all directions for me today. I started thinking about all the things that I'm grateful for in this moment and all the things I'm grateful for in being given a day to explore, to see unfold, to witness miracles potentially. And most likely, in my experience, there's so many miracles around us. Not always paying attention to them, but they're always there. And I even went back further. It's one of those days where sort of my own spiritual side started to poke me a little bit more in the nicest of ways. And I was feeling gratitude for being born and for being born into a loving family that was not perfect. Nobody's family is, of course. And some of our memories of those dysfunctional moments in our families can be pretty tough, pretty harsh even. But a family that I never doubted loved me and wanted me. And I know that that's something that a lot of people can struggle with. And we don't always feel wanted in places. I felt unwanted in places too, just not my own home, which I feel really grateful for. I am thrilled too that not only did I get to spend the time with all of you, figuratively speaking, of course, we're spending time with each other, but with a great guest, somebody that I'm meeting actually for the first time through a mutual friend. So it's actually really cool for me. It's exciting. to be making this gentleman's acquaintance. I'm going to read a little bit about his bio and then we're going to dig right in as we always do. Darrell Stinson is a thought leader on athletic transition. Find out what that actually is. I'm not sure I know at the moment. As a dynamic TEDx speaker, hip-hop artist, pastor, and certified John Maxwell coach, he shares his life experience of overcoming addiction, childhood rejection, mental illness, depression, and multiple suicide attempts to produce success in his life. Darryl played defensive end at Central Michigan University from 2008 to 2011, where he supported his team as they won an MAC championship and became 23rd nationally ranked team. Darryl founded Second Chance Athletes, a holistic athletic transition company in 2017 to help athletes who are passionate about creating their legacy, increase their visibility, impact, and revenue. When he is not working, Darrell enjoys rapping, reading, entertainment, music, sports, and spending time with his wife and 3 beautiful daughters. Well, Darrell, you and I have that in common, man. We have both got wonderful, beautiful wives and 3. I've got 3 daughters as well.

Man, so maybe you can teach me some pointers, man. Oh, I

don't know. I probably— what I could teach you about daughters might be able to write on a matchbook cover. I don't know. Like, love them, love them, and love them.

Yeah. That's the recipe.

That's the recipe. And sometimes leave them alone.

I'm gonna leave that one too.

It's a really wonderful bio. I don't normally even sort of read so much of a person's bio, but I really felt like every word there was important. What's not written, or one thing, let's say, that's not written in that bio that you would love for people to know about you?

I think it's something that's really even hard to put in words, and that is how deeply I care about helping others walk in their purpose and reach their full potential and be happy.

Gonna dive right into that statement. Why do you think it is that you care that much about?

Well, similar to the way that you started off this episode talking about gratitude, sometimes it's like gratitude is a strategy instead of a core belief of ours. The thing we do because we know it helps produce success and scientifically proven to be mathematically increase your likelihood to be successful. But to me, it's not a strategy. It's part of my DNA. It's part of my core. To drive that statement home, I always say this: I am living the life that I tried to end. And for that, I'm eternally grateful. And so knowing that I've been through seasons of my life where I experienced so much pain that I couldn't see past that pain into a brighter future, and now I'm living in that brighter future. I deeply desire to help other people see beyond their pain, their failures, their mistakes, the lessons that they're learning into a brighter future and live that out and experience it.

Yeah. It would probably be very helpful for everyone, all of us, if we just knew that the pain that we were experiencing in the moment was part of a season. Like right now, it's— I'm living on the East Coast with my wife. We're empty nesters. So our 3 little birdies have flown and we have a son as well. He has very different Completely different animal than our 3 daughters. We're experiencing this sort of a new freedom, different freedom than we've had in a lot of years. And being from California, we don't see the seasons. I mean, the physical seasons are more subtle. The changes are more subtle than they are on where I am in the Northeast. And so what do you make of that? I mean, the idea that you could just somehow know that this was part of a season, like I'm going into fall now, or I'm in fall. So my pain or my discomfort or my questioning, my feeling like I've fallen off the faith truck a little bit here— oh, it's okay because it's just the season and then it'll pass because you don't expect fall to last for more than a couple of months. Winter's not going to last for more than a couple of months. Summer is not going to last more than a couple of months. What do you make of that? Do you think there's a way for us to sort of have a greater awareness or maybe even just live more seasonally than we do? Yeah.

Yeah, I got a few thoughts on that. The first thing is actually something not to do, right? Don't guilt yourself into doing it. Don't do it because you have to, because then it won't be authentic and then you won't actually wrap your mind around the mindset shift and change that you need to experience. So I'd say do it authentically. Convince yourself. I actually read a quote this morning and I'm probably going to butcher it a little bit, but it said something like this. It said, Worrying about tomorrow never robs tomorrow of its sorrow. It only robs it of its joy. And it's some proverb or something. Somebody smarter than me said it a long time ago, but it's true. I think that in our minds, we think worrying about it is somehow going to fix it or make it better. Or like, if I just worry enough about tomorrow, tomorrow will somehow be better. But it doesn't work that way. The way that we recognize that it's seasonal and that we have a positive outlook on our future is actually about remembering our past.

All right, say more there.

And

by the way, thank you for the quote, which I don't believe you butchered. And if you did butcher it, it might be better as it was when you said it. That's a killer quote. So you want to say that one more time, if you can come up with those same words again?

Let's see. Worrying about tomorrow never robs tomorrow of its sorrow. It only robs tomorrow of its joy.

All right, so now continue on your path, and then I want to circle back to conversation about worry.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right.

And so my path is that when we have— and aside from clinical depression, right? But when we have circumstantial depression, when we're just down because we don't know how tomorrow's going to work out or how today is going to work out, it's because we are looking forward when we should be looking behind. Typically, when a person looks in their past, they look at all the mistakes they made, they look at all the failures they had, they look at what they should have done right, they look at all of that. But I'm suggesting that we look at the past to see and remember how we felt the same way that we feel currently. I've never met a person going through a tough time who's never been through a tough time.

Right.

But we just forget that I felt overwhelmed, I felt like this season was gonna last forever, I felt like I was never gonna make it out, I felt like I was gonna die, or I felt like this embarrassment or this failure is gonna be the end of my career or my future or my family, and it wasn't. You live to fight another day. And if you could just remember that you've been through worse or you've been through it or you've been through struggle and you've made it out on the other side, it's actually remembering what you've been through that helps you develop the grit and perseverance needed today to keep moving forward.

So I was going to ask you for your definition of resilience, but I feel as though you just gave it to us. I'm going to ask you anyway. How would you define resilience then?

Resilience is a decision to keep going when nothing in you feels like keep going. And I use that word decision very intentionally because sometimes we think it's magic, it's willpower, you've got more mojo than I've got, that you just make a decision that, you know what, I'm gonna bounce back from this, I'm gonna get up from this, I'm not gonna let this failure define me. I'm actually going to take a lesson from this failure, from this rejection, from this pain, from this success, and I'm going to keep being resilient moving forward.

Yes. And the point of decision really is the head of the pin. I mean, it is the point of power.

Yeah. And see, here's the thing. That's why I said don't guilt it. You have to, you have to authentically decide enough is enough. I'm moving forward. I'm not going back. I'm not going to hang my head another day. I'm going to look for the positive in the worst of circumstances. You have to make that decision. And the moment you do that, you know what happens? It increases your awareness. More opportunities are available to you. You start to see things that you never— you're going to find whatever you're looking for. So why not look for the best?

Yeah. Couldn't agree more. The decision, I think maybe another few words on the power of a decision is worthwhile because I think what we often feel, and this is maybe— I want to circle back to what you said about Looking behind, looking in the past. What I love about that is it's counterintuitive. So often it is that we're being told, be present, stay in the present, of course, don't look behind, don't look in the past, because so often it is that we are looking in the past. We're looking at, at our mistakes, etc. And in the moment when you make a decision, when you decide, yes, I'm going to be resilient, yes, I'll rise above, or I'll bounce back, or I'll give myself a break, I'll forgive myself. Mm-hmm. What a pointed decision that is, the day that you, or in the moment that you decide, I'm going to forgive myself.

Powerful.

Let alone forgive others, but just to forgive yourself. It's in that moment of making a decision that the past disappears. Meaning just because you made mistakes yesterday or even a minute ago, let's say, because when we talk about decision-making, we're talking about stuff that's happening invisibly. This is soundless, soundless words are being formulated inside of our heads. And so our mind says, okay, I'm done. This is my point of decision right now. That's happening without a sound. And in that moment, you made that decision. It doesn't matter that 60 seconds ago, you had a thought that was all about like, man, I can't go another minute. I can't live another second. But then a second later, your mind has the capacity to simply decide, No, no, no, scratch that, erase that. That moment of decision obliterates the path that led to it.

Absolutely.

Say more about this idea that we can look to the past but reframe the past so that it actually does empower us to make better decisions in the present.

Well, there's no losses, there's only lessons, right? A loss is only a loss if you put a period where you should be putting a comma. Where you try to close the chapter where you should pull— I say this to people. I do a lot of work with addiction recovery because of my story and things like that. People come in with so much trauma and childhood pain and all this stuff. And I tell them this, you mean to tell me that you're going to go through sexual molestation as a child, being introduced to drugs at an age that you should have never been introduced to drugs, being without a father in the home, being abused, being abandoned, being broken, being betrayed, And not take something from that experience? No, you better take wisdom, lessons, power, strength, grit, tenacity, resilience from those pain experiences, because that is what makes the struggle worth the result. Nobody works out and goes through physical pain without expecting physical results. So why go through emotional pain and not expect emotional results? We flip it when it's emotional. We think that life happens to us when really When we process, reflect, evaluate, life happens for us.

Yes. I love that. I mean, that's the ultimate reframe. It really is. And you're right. I think the idea of there being a physical cost that produces a physical result, we get that. You do the workout in the gym, you're going to get jacked. At least that's your expectation, right? That something's going to be a physical transformation of your body because you've gone through that. But emotionally, we don't think about the toll. We've paid emotionally and that there's emotional fruits on that tree. If you're looking and you can see them, then you can benefit from them. But if you don't recognize them—

Like, what if, what if people who experience the most pain, the most rejection, are actually in a position to make the most impact? What if it's not the smartest person? What if it's not the studious person? What if it's not the A student? Not saying that they won't make an impact, but what if the emotional pain that people have been through is not evidence that they don't matter, that they don't fit in, that they don't belong, but it's actually evidence that they could be some of the greatest? And if you don't believe me, ask Thomas Edison, ask Steve Jobs, ask Michael Jordan.

Mm-hmm.

These are all people who experienced extreme rejection, even in moments of celebration. Attacks from media, attacks on character, being told they're crazy. But yeah, these are people who changed our society.

Exactly. People that gain this ability to impact others in a way that you wouldn't say, hey, I want to have a big impact in the world. Like, you're 10 years old, you want to have a big impact? Absolutely. But the next period of your life is going to be enormously painful, like pain that you can't even anticipate or wrap your current mindset around. But when you're done, when that season is over, You'll be in a position where you're jacked emotionally. You are jacked and ready to share with people who you can relate to now. You can lead and you can help because you understand pain.

Yep.

Whereas, if you've gone through that same season and you're always the captain of the team and always had people love you, look up to you, everything always goes your way, what do you know and what growth emotionally have you gained through that experience to be able to meet people where they are?

Mm-hmm.

In their season of pain.

Mm-hmm. There's a difference, Adam, between knowing and believing. I think people know what we're talking about. I just don't think people believe. I don't think they're convinced. Because when you believe in something, there's no hesitation. When you believe that there's purpose beyond your pain, you will search through that pain until you find that treasure. But when you just know it and don't really believe it, It's just theory. It's not tested. I submit to people, find out. You got a lot of trash, go find the treasure beneath the trash. You got a lot of baggage, go find the blessing beneath the baggage. Let's see what else I can come from.

Well, I mean, clearly a pastor. I mean, there's no— I'm thinking to myself, good stuff right here. Somebody should be writing this down. But then I— wait a second, hold on a minute, Darryl. He's a rapper, he's a TEDx speaker, he's a pastor. Of course. I mean, hello.

Here's the thing. It's not just theory. It's experience. It's experience, man. And I talk about it in my TEDx talk, Overcoming Rejection. I say the very thing that made people reject me as a child is the very thing that makes me successful as an adult. Until I reflected and processed and reframed, I thought I was a liability instead of an asset.

When we say about belief and the power of what you believe, that's the reframe. are hearing this maybe for the first time, or maybe you've heard that word reframe and maybe have a different sense of what it might mean. To me, it means what you just said, that you can adopt a belief.

Yeah.

You can create a belief. Beliefs aren't just something like your genetics and you're stuck with them. You can change them and you can use them for the power that they hold. Let's go back to this idea of looking into the past. That was subtle. It was a really essential reframe, I think, that people can look to their past instead of trying to Ignore your past, which I think works to some degree. You just— if you can just manage to stay present. I just don't know how to stay present more than a few seconds here or there. And often we are looking in the rearview mirror or forward ahead. And so I do think there's tremendous value in just being in this moment.

Yeah.

And for me, when I'm in gratitude, I'm in this moment. But to look back, what's the value? What's the— what you said earlier about how you can use your past As a way to deal better with your present?

Here's what I would say. There's 2 things we're going to do with our past. We're going to learn and we're going to unlearn. And if I had to put emphasis on something that I think is more important, it'd probably be the unlearning. Okay. Here's what happens usually, and I'll cover it from a pain perspective because I know that's the place that people avoid the most. It's the places where we've been hurt. It's when people didn't invite us for drinks after work. It's when Somebody forgot to send you a happy birthday gift. It's when the father didn't show up. It's when you thought you were going to meet your sales goal and you didn't meet your sales goal. It's all those painful moments that we tend to avoid. That happened. I'm just going to ignore it and I'm going to move forward. Well, borrow it from athletes that that is the worst thing you could ever do. No athlete has a bad game and doesn't watch the film. No great athlete has a bad game and doesn't watch the film. But we as individuals have bad experiences and never watch the film. Yeah. But when you watch the film, that's when you learn and that's where you unlearn. And typically, here's what we think. Here's what we think. Normal people— I don't wanna say normal people like you're less worthy if you think this way. That's not my point. I just mean like there's an elevated thought pattern. So the lower way to think is that because this thing— let me say this in a way that people can get it because I really want people to grasp this, right? So when something happens to you, typically we want to avoid it and we want to think that by avoiding it, we don't have to deal with it, not realizing that it still comes into our future with us. And I always say it this way, that unprocessed pain becomes ill-processed pain. Okay? In other words, we don't process it and we think that because we don't process it, it's not doing anything to us. But typically what happens is we start to make wrong conclusions. Oh, I didn't make that sales goal because I'm not good enough and I don't need to be in sales. Oh, that person didn't say yes to marrying me because there's something wrong with me and I'm not worthy to be married to. And we make these irrational conclusions because we never really process the pain. That's why in my TEDx talk about when rejection happens, you can see it as protection or here's the big one, projection. Right? Projection is when someone projects their insecurities, their fears onto you. It's a reflection of how they feel inwardly about themselves. And so since they're critical of themselves, they're critical of you. So when I got teased when I was a kid for being a Black kid that quote unquote, doing air quotes, talks white, which really means proper, that I thought that something was wrong with me. I internalized it. In retrospect, as I drew from the past, what I learned is that, man, those kids were projecting their fears and insecurities onto me. They didn't know how to be anything other than what everyone thought was cool or popular. They didn't know how to be their unique selves. And since they didn't know how to be unique, they tried to make me conform. And it's different for each one of us, for everyone. So here's— I had to unlearn that there was nothing wrong with the way that I talked. That actually, because I developed this belief that who I was wasn't enough to be liked or loved by others. And so I had to unlearn that belief. And I think we're so focused on learning, on learning, on learning, on moving forward. We read podcasts. I mean, self-help books is the number one category in the bestsellers. And we want to learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. Here's what I'm suggesting. How about you go back and unlearn some lies that you believed?

Indeed. And then you said something earlier about how if you only knew It's sort of like an exercise that sometimes is done in a seminar where they have you, or I've done this when I've led seminars myself, where we had people write a letter to your former self. Pretend that you're an 80-year-old person who's gained all this tremendous wisdom and you're good. You're alive. You made it. You're in the sort of the place where you can look back and realize that everything led you to where you are. Like Dr. King. I believe said something along the lines of, so much of living is just like walking in a dark staircase.

Mm-hmm.

And when you get to the top, you can look back and see how all the stairs were ordered just so perfectly to lead you to where you are. But along the way, you couldn't see. There was a lot of uncertainty. There's a lot of fear. So, if you could go back and speak to your younger self, whether that was your 12-year-old self or your 26-year-old self or whenever it was, your 45-year-old self,

Mm-hmm.

That's worrying, worrying. As so many people right now, we're in a season of great worry. I think we worry anyway, I mean, like always, but where we are at present, I think there's a tremendous amount of additional worrying. I mean, all the statistics that I've read about the increase in the incidence of anxiety, of depression, the suicidal thoughts that are happening more frequently for people. In June, statistically, 1 in 4 18 to 24-year-olds had considered suicide. Can you imagine that? 1 in 4 of that demographic had considered suicide in the month of June. She'd go, that's the environment. That's the context that we're living in right now. If you could go back and speak to that younger version of yourself and say, hey, listen, you're going to be okay. I mean, I'm not saying it isn't a rocky road. I'm not saying, or let's say that you're not going to have a wild ride, a great adventure. an amazing journey, but know one thing, you don't have to worry nearly as much as you are because what I can tell you as this version of you later on, it was just a season.

Yeah.

And that's what you said earlier, Darrell, which I thought, that's a beautiful way to look at the past and to be able to see that if you were able to get through that, you were able to get through that thing from the past, there's a pretty good chance that what you are obsessing about, worried about right now, upset about right now, There's a good chance you're going to be able to get through this as well. Is that what you meant? I don't want to sort of create it out of my words because you did a great job of articulating it before.

Yeah, yeah, it's true. The simplest way to say it is you're going to win if you don't quit, and you have to believe that. You asked the question about what would I go back and tell my younger self, and I think it's an interesting question because it's a question that I thought deeply about. And here's usually what people answer and they come up with all this stuff that we only can cognitively understand as adults, right? And it's like all this deep stuff that I'm like, man, my brain wasn't even developed enough to— I was trying to figure out how to put on my pants the right way. Like I couldn't tie my shoes except for bunny ears. But my daughter, when she was 5, she's 6 now, and so last year I was thinking she was going to kindergarten and I was thinking like, man, what I just, Because that's where things changed for me. That's where I really started to feel peer pressure, to get made fun of, to not feel included. Up until then, life was just peachy. But when I got in public school system, things started to go down. And so I'm like, man, what can I say to her to help her get it? And I said, you know what? No matter what happens, I just want her to have hope. And so I wrote this song with my daughter. It's called We All Need Hope. So when you ask what I say, I'll just tell you what I said.

Oh,

sweet. So my daughter goes, we all need hope. This is for the kids who don't know that all they gotta do is hold on. You know, we all need hope. This is for the kids who don't know that all they gotta do is hold on. And then I say, hold on to your faith. Don't let nobody take it. And if they talk about your clothes, don't even let it faze you. And if they talk about your looks, don't even pay attention. You ain't gotta listen. They entitled to their own opinion. Here's what I discovered. It's the people who talk bad about everybody else. They do it to feel better about themselves. Haters. So just be you and don't you worry about a thing. Them storms gonna come, but dance in the rain. Keep your head up, 'cause life will try to push you down. Every smile is just a frown turned upside down. So count your blessings. You got the power to turn every loss into a lesson. So quit stressing, 'cause bad days don't mean that you got a bad life, and sad days don't mean that you got a sad life. Bad days don't mean that you got a bad life, 'cause you still got hope. You know, we all need hope. It's out there for free for listening pleasure on YouTube and all that stuff, because I feel like we do all need hope. And I wrote that in a way that elementary school kids can understand it, and adults can still resonate with it, because at the end of the day, that's what we're fighting for, is hope. We really don't know if we are free to hope, because we don't want our hope to be deferred. We don't want our hope to be disappointed. We don't want to have big dreams and fail. We don't want to believe in a brighter future and then there not be one. And so what do we do? We worry, we worry, we stress out, or we quit. And that's why the suicides happen and the depression happens. But if we could just know and just hold on and know that we're not alone, the world would change.

I never do this, but I got to do this. So on YouTube, because obviously we've got people that are listening to this now, some folks are watching on YouTube, actually watching us. Awesome. Do our thing right here. So what's the name of the song that they can search for on YouTube?

It's called We All Need Hope.

We All Need

Hope. Yep. Darryl Simpson. Yep, that's right.

Yeah.

Beautiful.

Enable us. You got a YouTube channel as well?

I do have a YouTube channel.

Yeah. Yeah.

I need to post more consistently. But honestly, on this topic, I just did a live with Chris Gronkowski. We launched a mental health challenge on Suicide Prevention Month. And so that's on there. You can hear us talk about mental health and the importance of physical fitness and how that impacts your mental health and things like that.

So

yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's out there, man.

I have a buddy who's pretty tight with logic, and we're working on doing something, on collaborating on something, because my TED Talk was all about how I used to wake up in the morning to feel that pain start the day.

Mm-hmm.

And that was a contributing factor in my just living with a lot of anxiety at a particular season in my life. And then I made some changes and started to see things differently, started to wake up, put my feet on the floor, and say, I love my life. Start with a different Belief, as you said earlier.

Yeah.

And how important it is that again, we look at what we are, what we believe. And as you said, learning new beliefs is one thing, or learning new things is one thing, but to examine what you've already learned or what you've already been programmed to think, to believe, and unlearn some of those things. That's a concept in the book Pivot I wrote some years ago. It's all about this concept of unbelieving, how important unlearning is. I so vibe with that, man. And obviously Logic is known for a number of things, but he has a— one of his hip-hop songs is Suicide Prevention Hotline. And I think that the traffic to that hotline, you know, has gone up by like something like 8,000% since that song came out. Because yeah, people just— they just need to know, to be able to know it's okay. It's normal. There's nothing unusual. About what you might be feeling. And not only is it that you're not alone, you're not unusual, it's normal, all that kind of stuff, but you're gonna be okay.

Yeah.

Like, if you could just be your older self for a minute.

Yeah.

Just transport, like Star Trek your ass to the future and look back and go, yo, I'm gonna be fine. Like, to use your words, look at me stressing, right? I'm stressing, but I don't need to be. I mean, it's okay to be concerned. You should be serious, I think, about things that are going on in your life, especially things that aren't going the way you want them to.

But

there's a difference between being conscious and being alert and being attentive and being awake and aware and being stressed out, right? Yeah. I mean, maybe you could say a little bit about the distinction between Because that's a fine line between worry—

It is.

What we're talking about, you know, and something more empowering.

Yeah, because I mean, I get it. There's going to be the person out there that's like, well, I might get evicted tomorrow. And so that's a true concern and a true worry. So like, I'm just supposed to not worry about it and just tell myself I'm going to be okay when I got to pick up my stuff and move out and move my whole family and find a place to live or go live with grandma or something like that? Like, that's not what we're saying. There is a difference Here's how I would say what you were just saying. There's a difference between living with wisdom and living in fear. That's, to me, the fear is the difference, right? Because when you're worrying and you're worrying in fear, to me, that's bad territory. But when you're thinking and you're concerning and you're strategizing, that's wisdom. You calculate the street before you cross the street.

Exactly, you don't walk out in front of a bus and go, hey, I'm not worried.

You don't sit there and go, I'm gonna get hit, I'm gonna get hit, I'm gonna get hit, I'm gonna get hit. I'm gonna get hit, I'm gonna get hit, I'm gonna get hit, because you'll never take a step.

No, you'll never step out in the street at all.

So I don't believe that any of us are commissioned to live in fear.

Nothing that's worthwhile in my experience in life comes without the price of it being difficult at times, that it will cause you to be sort of looking for greater understanding. If you're a faith-based person, like if spirit is something that's on your heart, if you're— I don't mind saying God, but it doesn't have to be God. But if you just know there's something more That you're wanting to experience and that you're seeking even. You know, you're gonna have these moments where you're just totally lost and confused. And I think that that fear is one of those things because even in the Bible where fear of God is talked about and where it's represented in various shapes and forms, it can be fear in the sense that we think of fear, something I'm supposed to be afraid of, or it can be something that you have reverence for.

There we go.

Like a fear of walking out into traffic. It's not about not walking out. It's not a fear like touching a hot pot. It's not a fear of touching a hot pot. It's reverence for the heat.

Yeah.

That you don't touch it with your bare hands. You pick it up with a thing. You don't step out in the street when the trucks are moving past. You wait till there's a space.

That's right.

It's reverence. It's respect. And fear— so fear, both— even that word, it's got a bad rap. It's got a bad rap because it's— everything gets kind of thrown out with that word.

Yeah.

Whereas there's a certain respect and reverence that is important that we have for things that you could call fear if you want.

I love it. I think you're the pastor now, man. Oh man, it's true. But you're right. You're exactly right, man. And that's the right perspective to have. It's having respect for the fire. It's having respect for the power of a thing, but it's not living in fear because the thing has power. And that's why one of my favorite quotes, I always get, I get asked this a lot of time on podcasts. They say, well, what's your favorite quote, right? And I always say, it's this one, man. It's our greatest fear is not that we're inadequate, but it's that we're powerful beyond measure. Exactly. And I think deep in our hearts— Marianne Williams. That's right. And that's so true because I think that we gravitate towards those things that seem to be more powerful than us, our bills, our circumstances, whatever. Obstacle we need to overcome, but deep down inside, we know we're greater than that thing that's in front of us.

Yes.

But we're just afraid to do it.

It's, uh, yeah, I don't know what it is about that that scares— that is so scary. The idea that you could play— that you are powerful beyond measure. What is it about that, that there's a spark of divinity in us that scares us at the same time?

Comparison. We spend too much time comparing ourselves to other people who aren't called to do the same things we're called to or equipped to do the same thing we're equipped to. And so we're a Ferrari Comparing ourselves to a Maserati and we think something's wrong with us. Like, it's just— it has nothing to do— we're just different. And— or we're a bird and we're comparing ourselves to an alligator and we think that something's wrong with us. It's all comparison. And that's why the suicide rates and the depression rates are going up. Social media just gives us more opportunities to compare. Like, I heard somebody say that I was depressed— no, I was happy until I went on Facebook. You start seeing everybody's highlights reel, you're like, no, man.

I didn't realize how miserable I should be. I just didn't recognize.

That's what it is, man. So I think people know that they're like gifted or something, but they just don't think that they're— discount their gifts because they compare theirs to others.

Yeah.

And there's so much. So even if everyone in the world was singers, which we're all not, right? I wish I could sing. I can't.

I sing nonetheless.

Do you really?

I love to sing.

I mean, I love to sing too.

And I'll sing publicly too, as crazy as that

is. Yeah. I

don't know, did you— so there's a movie out that called As I See It.

I haven't seen it.

Or The Way I See It, not As I See It, The Way I See It.

And

it's this guy Pete Souza who's got a crazy Instagram account where he's constantly posting pictures from his 8 years as the chief photographer for the White House during Obama's administration. So he's with President Obama 24/7, kind of, and has unlimited access. And he's got all these photos he posts on his Instagram account. Did a movie about it. It's out right now. But there's a place in that movie where he's just talking about how it is that these pictures are conveying something nonverbally, got to pay attention to. He didn't even believe that he could tell the story. He was the guy behind the scenes. He's not the singer. He's the guy who's photographing the singer.

Yeah.

And yet now he stepped out. So it's that Marianne quote for him because after his gig there ended and he's not happy with what he's seen in the world at the moment. He said, look, I'm going to become political. I wasn't, I was behind the scenes. I'm behind the lens, not in front of it. And now he's a guy who stepped out into the lights, into his spotlight, and is doing some pretty remarkable things.

Let me say why I love that, because there's something beautiful in what you just said that I want people to get. It's one of the things that is in our purpose discovery process that we walk people through. And then it's this question that what frustrates you, right? Because oftentimes what frustrates you is evidence that you're called to be a part of the solution to that problem. And so here he is watching the problem, watching the problem, feeling like, can I do something? Can I do something? Should I do something? Should I do something? And then the answer is like, if you notice it and it burdens you and you're passionate about it, go for it because it's calling out to you because there's something in you that can be part of the solution to that problem. So to the people in the room that are frustrated by stuff, by— it doesn't have to be politics. I think everyone's always a degree of frustrated with politics. Exactly. But you know what I'm talking about? The thing that you just can't shut up about because it irritates you so much, right? Like me, I can't stand bad marketing copy. Like it just gets on my nerves, especially when I hear it, 'cause I think of all the money that's being wasted that could be spent doing good for the world if somebody would just understand how to actually tell the story via words. And so it's because I'm a marketing expert, right? And so if there's something in my makeup that's natural to me, That makes me frustrated with that problem because I'm supposed to be a solution to that problem. So I want people to get that. And that's a powerful story that he's watching this and now he feels this compelling pull to be a part of a solution. So I love that.

Yeah, exactly. This conversation to me could go on forever because you and I just— we could go from one riff to the next.

Yeah.

Is there something on your heart that you want to share that's going on for you right now? I started the podcast with what was on my heart at the moment. And interestingly enough, I think it dovetails with a lot of your history. So I felt like that was coming up. Is there something coming up for you right now that you want to share?

Yes, let me share this. You touched on this and I wanted to say it. So thanks for giving me an opportunity to come back to it. And let me say it in my words. Okay. Because when I study successful people and I study my own success, here's what I've noticed, that success is less about the tasks that we need to do And it's more about the decisions that we need to make, which is why I launched my podcast called When I Said Yes, because to me, the moment I said yes to my faith and my future in a psychiatric unit was the moment that everything changed for me. It's kind of like that keystone habit that James Clear talks about in The Power of Habit, right? It's that habit that unlocks the rest of other habits, right? It's that decision that unlocks the rest of other decisions. So When people start thinking about moving their lives forward, start thinking about becoming better in all areas of their life, don't overthink the process, just make the decision.

Hmm.

And I think if we can simplify success to finding your next yes, we'll be a lot further faster, right? Because we won't sit there in analysis paralysis anymore. And there's a lot of people that are binge listening to podcasts and they're in analysis paralysis. I love podcasts, I listen to a ton of them, But I do so with the goal of making decisions. Now that I've been exposed to this information, what am I going to do with it? What decision am I going to make? And it's typically— if you want to know what your next yes decision is, it's typically the thing that you've been putting off for years. It's like the book you're supposed to write. It's the song you're supposed to release. And it's usually attached to the part of you where you're the most vulnerable.

Mm-hmm.

I was talking to a business coach. He's phenomenal at coaching business. Like, I'm learning a lot from him in coaching business, and he's just phenomenal, right? I mean, I can't tell you, 7, 8 figures. I don't know. He makes a lot of money, but he does a great job in helping his clients make more money and produce results and have a happier life, right? And I'm talking to this dude and I start asking him about his story. I'm like, I hear that he has this past story where he's been molested as a child and he's a dude, right? And I'm like, man, such a problem. And I hear him talk about I see him be more passionate about that story than he is when he shares his business results, which are great.

Yeah.

And I heard that and I said, hey man, I think you should speak more. That's his yes decision.

Yeah.

You see what I'm saying?

Sure.

Because he's in his comfort zone and he's making an impact. But to me, my greatest fear Is not failure. My greatest fear is being successful at the wrong thing.

So right now, I think this dovetails nicely into a conversation or part of our conversation about uncertainty. Because I think a lot of people stick to the status quo, the devil they know. And they do that because uncertainty is unbearable.

Yeah.

That the pain of not knowing

Scary as crap.

Back to that, right? So how do you— and I'm putting this, throwing this right in your lap, and it's a pretty hot potato— how do you leverage power of what is uncertain? Is there power in uncertainty that is leverageable?

I try to take every negative and make it a positive. Okay, it's like, it's in my nature. Like, it's really hard for me to look at negatives and not But let's—

it's not even positive or negative, the thing. Like, when something's uncertain, we don't even know. Like right now, in the midst of this pandemic, it could be— I mean, we've got enough distance, right? There's enough yardage behind us that we can look back and go, there are people who've made their fortunes. I know that my son-in-law has— his internet marketing business has blown up. And Zoom, like the platform we're on right now, has blown up. So there are businesses that this was a catalyst for great prosperity and wealth and everything. And there are businesses that have been sidelined, others that have been gone, driven to bankruptcy, top companies, gyms, restaurants, chains of things, stores that have been around forever, hundreds of years, gone.

Uh-huh.

So, all at the same time. So, we know that the uncertainty about the future, like, is the pandemic ending? Is it going to come back? What's the future going to look like? Will it ever go back to what we knew before? And all of those kinds of things, and you go, all right, so that's the uncertainty ahead. It poses the opportunity for both people to be very, very happy about it and for others to be not in the same place. So what I'm asking you is, what's the power in uncertainty? Is there power in the uncertainty itself?

Uncertainty makes life interesting and it makes a great story. Everybody loves the Rocky story. Nobody wants to be Rocky in the story. And so I get it. I remember the pandemic hit and I'm a speaker, so I lost 80% of my income. And I was like, oh,

in a minute,

instantly, literally in a heartbeat, in about a week or two. But after people seen that it wasn't coming back and it started with postpone and then it went to cancellation and I'm like, oh, what am I going to do? Like, that's a big hit, especially considering that my pastoral salary is only a certain amount. And so that's—

It was the same for us. We had every single gig within a month was either postponed or canceled. And that was a good-sized chunk of our future income.

Oh yeah, I got it, man. So like, but my point is, that's why I say you got to view every negative as a positive, because uncertainty is neutral, just like money is neutral. It's not bad or evil, or evil or good. It's what you do with it. So it's what you do with your uncertainty that makes it good or bad. But what people tend to do is make it a bad thing. Things are uncertain, so now I'm going to worry. Things are uncertain, so now I'm going to drink. Things are uncertain. So now I'm going to take domestic violence. I just read some statistic. It went up like 22% since pandemic. Right. Like, we're doing the wrong thing with uncertainty. When uncertain times— here's how I reframe it. I get excited. I'm telling you, I'm like, this is fun. And let me give you this mindset. People gonna think I'm crazy, but I'm like, no, no, listen, listen. Every game-winning shot you ever saw in basketball came in moments of uncertainty. The most exciting play in sports is on the birthbed of uncertainty.

Now, this is great. And this is motivational. It's inspirational, even better. But now let's get tangible. I'm just pressing you here a little bit because, because that's the stuff— I'm not diluting the importance of people being able to say, you know what, I can embrace this uncertainty because I can be excited about it. Is there something more that we can say about it? Again, if you could talk to your younger self, The younger version of you

and

say, hey, listen, remember that time when you were so uncertain? Remember that uncertainty created all that fear inside of you, all that worry and anxiety inside of you? Well, take a look back at the history. Just flip back the pages and see. Yeah, you were okay. The world was okay. Everything evolved to where it needed to go and needed to be so that we could get to where we are today.

Yeah.

And we're still okay, right? Pinch, right? Oh yeah, I'm still alive. I'm still breathing. I'm still smiling, right? Must be okay.

Must be all right.

Must be all right. I know tomorrow the world's gonna fall apart. I got that. I got it. Tomorrow's gonna be a dark, dark day, right? But I'm okay today, right? We always think tomorrow's gonna be the day, or next week, before the election, after the election, who's gonna be on the Supreme Court, who's not gonna be on. I mean, always gonna be looking ahead and saying dark times ahead. Except not so much. I'm a little older than you. Not maybe so much, maybe. I don't know. We'll see. I shaved. See, my beard's gone today.

You look good, man.

The one thing I know for sure, looking back at my life, having seen the Great Recession, having seen 9/11, having children, babies around the time when the world was coming apart at the seams, and a number of other things that go back further— I was born in the '60s. mid-'60s, so I don't remember what the civil rights movement was like then. I don't remember the assassination of Dr. King, of the 2 Kennedys. I don't remember those things, even though I was alive during some of them. I remember Nixon being evicted from office.

Mm-hmm.

Or I should say resigning and doing us the service of not making us evicted from office, right? I remember hyper— what it was like in the late '70s when things were really difficult. My parents couldn't buy a house. Inflation was so high and interest rates were like 18%, you can't buy a house. Those were tough times. Reagan comes in, people were so opposed to him, and on and on and on. And then the wall comes down and Mandela is freed, and— but the 5,000 banks go bust late '80s, and the real estate market crashes, and we go through a recession in the early '90s. And every one of those times— and AIDS happened. AIDS was a real scary, scary issue in the '80s.

Mm-hmm.

Look at every single one of those things, and it was such a time of great uncertainty. And yet, we're here, and we evolved, and things changed, and there were fortunes made, and people's lives were rich, and we didn't stop laughing. Comedians didn't stop having things to poke fun at. Music thrived, more genres of music. We haven't run out of melodies, run out of lyrics. That's just the truth of it, man. That's not, hey, it'll be okay because we can have faith it'll be okay. That's in the record books. That's like being an athlete and you want to know how you did last year, just go check out your stats. Just go check out your— whatever it was that measured your performance, it's right there in the book. I guess I went off on a sermon there a little bit.

Told you he was a preacher.

What do you do to keep yourself resilient? As we wrap this up, I'm just— I know people love to hear about your rituals.

This will be worth the extra minute or 2 for me to explain this. And if people are listening at this point, they're going to get a huge gift because I know what you're asking me. And I know people are probably saying the same thing because I used to say the same thing. Like, I get it, but give me the practical. And let me tell you the shift that I'm trying to help people make. To me, the abstract is the practical. It's not the other way around. It's actually the harder thing that makes The hard thing easier. All right, let me give you an example because I really want people to get this. If they can get this, I promise you, I mean, this is worth it.

I love what a wordsmith you are, by the way.

I mean, it's not a wordsmith. This is just real.

No, no, but you love language, man. You respect language. I do.

I love language.

You use language as a tool, and I think that's— I'm just reflecting that back to you. I think that's just delightful, really.

Thank you. Just clip this part on social media and then throw that around the world and tell everybody how It's

happening.

Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. You want to be the best basketball player of all time? You have to put in the hours. You got to put in the hours, dribble the basketball. There's no shortcut around that. You want to live a better life, a more fulfilled life? You want to make it through uncertainty? You want to build more resilience? You have to develop your subconscious. There's no shortcut. I can give you a mathematical equation on how to turn $1 into $2, That is not going to work in every situation. You referenced the sports example and you said, this is in the history books. You said that the album is recorded. And I almost cut you off and said, yeah, but before the album was ever recorded, before it was ever in the sports history book, it was a thought. It was abstract. And so when I tell people that the belief is the first thing and they go, okay, I get it, but tell me the pragmatic thing. I'm saying that is the pragmatic thing. That is the hard thing that makes the hard thing easier. So if you want to be one of the 1%, the top percent, if you just want to make it through and stop stressing out so much, stop looking for the tangible, write it on paper thing, and start developing this. Because the most important thing about a person isn't what they did, it's how they think.

Yes, no accident. I'm reading this morning in a book by Emmett Fox. I have a book called Around the Year with Emmett Fox, which I discovered him at Fox. I want to give credit where credit is due because I don't always— I'm not a fan of some of the gurus of some of the thought leadership.

Mm-hmm.

It's probably 12 years ago, something like that, that I'm flying to Singapore for a speaking engagement. I'm reinventing my career path at this moment. I'm transitioning out of law, out of being a lawyer into Being a public speaker and someone that's teaching about certain, mostly business principles at that time. And I'm reading Awaken the Giant Within. I believe that's what it was. It was Tony Robbins, Anthony Robbins' book, Awaken the Giant Within.

It

was a big fat tome of a book. A lot of research went into that book. I think he did a phenomenal job with that book. And there's a little footnote, tiny little footnote, which credit to me, I'll give myself a little credit here. I followed up on this tiny little footnote. About this thing called the 7-Day Mental Diet by Emmett Fox. Now, what you just said about your thoughts and about that this is the horse and it's not putting the cart before the horse, this is the horse. Yes. Are your thoughts.

Yes.

Every single moment, every waking and non-waking moment of your life, that is the horse. I read that little pamphlet, 17 pages, this tiny little pamphlet called the 7-Day Mental Diet. I'll put the challenge out there to anybody listening or watching this. Get that pamphlet. Emmet Fox, The 7-Day Mental Diet. You will not find anything tougher in your entire life than to go on that mental diet. And I say no more about it because when you read it, you'll understand why. And then I became a lover of Emmet Fox. He's a metaphysician. He was a Renaissance human being at a point in history when We were in a great deal of pain. There's a lot of pain in the world, 2 world wars he lived through, and as a spiritual guide and all that kind of thing. And so in reading a passage from his daily readings this morning, he was talking about the Temple of Solomon. So there's biblical references, it's a spiritual text, but it's not religious and it's not proselytizing. It's always about things to do, tangible, meaningful things and important things in our lives. And this morning, That was the passage, it was all about the Temple of Solomon, it was about right thinking. You know, righteousness in the Bible is often thought of as sort of judgment, like, you're the holy one, or, you're the righteous one, and anybody who's not righteous is somebody that is in danger, and all that kind of thing. Well, that's not my interpretation, that wasn't Emmet's interpretation of that word. Righteousness means right thinking. So what we ought to be afraid of, and maybe the only thing we ever need to sort of have reverence and genuine fear is wrong thinking. Like, I think FDR said, the only thing to fear is fear itself. It's wrong thinking that's the issue for all of us in any politics we're dealing with today, in anything to do with our health, in anything to do with our relationships or our money, finance, business. Always wrong thinking that is the first domino.

Mm-hmm.

And it's what you just said. That's the thing we got to focus on. That's vigilance. Daily practice vigilance. Attentiveness to that one thing. If you just do that, pay attention to your thoughts, be vigilant about your thoughts, seek and be grateful for them for cultivating right thinking. We know what right thinking is. You don't look at a person and judge them in any way, shape, or form. We know what it means to judge your brother or your sister, right? That's wrong thinking. We think wrongly all the time. We do judge people. We judge ourselves. We are quick to anger and to do other things. I don't want to get too far afield with this. I'll just say I couldn't agree with you more that as a ritual goes for resilience, to be able to be resilient, to learn how to leverage and create power out of uncertainty, the first thing that we've always got to look to is our own thinking.

Mm-hmm.

What can we do there? Darrell, I have so, so enjoyed talking to you today, meeting you. It's been great.

Me too. I enjoyed talking to you and meeting you. And I appreciate you normalizing a mental health conversation. Have you ever been in a church and everybody's sitting down? You don't want to be the one person to stand up. That's kind of like what the mental health conversation is like in the world today. You talk about depressing thoughts, you're like the oddball in the room, but you using your platform to normalize that conversation, I really appreciate it for the work that I do. And man, I hope everyone listens to this and makes a decision that'll change your life.

Yeah, so we'll have full show notes, Darryl, where people can find out more about you, the work you're doing, the TEDx that you've done, the YouTube channel you've got with just such beautiful things. I just already know that you're one of those people that others can look to help them and gain clarity. I mean, yeah, every day— I mean, it can be bright sunny day and it can still be difficult, you know.

Oh yeah.

We all have that. So I know my TED Talk was all about those 4 words, those Waking words. I love my life. Do you have any waking words?

I like those. I like, I love my life. I say that all the time. I do. Even bad. Like I said, uncertainty. I was like, everyone at the office was stressing out and I was like, let's go. This is like, we're behind, we're losing money, we gotta lay people off. Let's do it. Not like, you know, not being sensitive to the lives, but just like this uncertainty in this challenge makes life interesting. So I love my life.

No matter what.

Those are my words.

That thing you said earlier, it's a comma, not a period.

That's right.

No matter what.

That's right.

Yeah.

Wow. But I love it, man. If I resonated with anyone in any type of way, just reach out to me, darrylstinson.com, and let's just connect. We'll figure it out, whatever. I do so much now that I'm just like, I don't know, if it resonates, you're supposed to reach out, just reach out and we'll figure it out. We'll go from there.

No doubt. No doubt. And I'll say this too, as we finish up this episode, we've been doing something with corporations for a number of years now, hundreds of companies, thousands and thousands of employees that we help them to establish a baseline for their own personal resilience, mentally, emotionally, as you spoke about earlier, physically, and even spiritually.

Hmm.

And so for folks that want to And this is something new to us that we're going to put it out there to the general public as opposed to the companies that we've been doing this for. So, you go to your.resilienceculture.com, your.resilienceculture.com. You can spend 3 minutes to fill out an assessment. It's the same assessment sharing with companies, organizations for a number of years, and you'll be able to get your free results, find out exactly Not only what the baseline is, the score in other words, but what it is that you do to make small changes. Like Darrell was saying, some things you might want to learn and some things you might want to consider unlearning as well. All that will be in the free guide that we'll send you, the resource book, and of course, the analysis of the results of your assessment as well.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights To build resilience and become change-proof. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcast. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com/becomechangeproof. Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change-proof. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcast. Thank you. Podcast. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com/becomechangeproof.