Shake the Dirt with Michael Arterberry

Hello and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negative mindsets so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches you want in life. Join us here live every Tuesday at noon Eastern and dialogue with us at 818-572-2910. You can also chat with us at blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitch or share your stories on our website at sheddingthebitch.com. Whatever the bitch is that's holding you back from living your life to the fullest, it's not worth giving up the riches in life that you deserve. So call in now and let Bernadette Boas know what's holding you back.

818-572-2910. Good day, good day, good day everyone and welcome to another episode of Shedding the Bitch Radio. And I am so excited about our conversation today. Because we're going to talk about shaking the dirt with Michael Arterbury. But before we get there, I just want to make a couple of announcements, remind you of a couple of things, and then we're going to dive right into this great conversation. And also pay attention for the rich question that I'll pose to you, which is all about the subject that we're talking about, so you ground yourself in this topic so then you can relate and get some answers and listen for the tips and advice that might be relevant to you specifically. Alright? So first off, I would just want to remind everyone of our recent episodes that we've had, just the last few. We talked to Davina Ware, and we talked to her about getting out of your own way, getting unstuck, and finding your passion, but more so finding not only your passion but your purpose and your pursuit. In wanting to take the risks that are needed in order to achieve your true legacy in life. And then we talked to Steve Gavittorta, and he has this great book— perfect timing for it, I must say— and it's called In Defense of Adversity: Turning Your Toughest Challenges into Your Greatest Success. And that was an awesome conversation, so be sure to take a look for that download of the audio broadcast as well as the video interview, and I'll mention all of where to go for all of that. Then our Ask Me Anything episode, which is the first Tuesday of every month. You give me your questions, stories, and challenges regarding your career, business, and life, and I provide you tips, advice, and sometimes tough love. And this last month, at the beginning of the month, We talked about what to do if you have this idea that you might be getting fired. And also it turned out to be what you should not do. You definitely want to listen to that because the answer isn't as simple as just, "What do I do if I'm getting fired?" Then we talked about how to negotiate your salary or a new compensation package. Maybe you're being— offered a new job and/or in this case you're being kind of acquired by the company that bought your company, and so you're looking for equal to or a better type of package. We talked about franchising. I was asked about the pros and cons based on my own expertise, but more so my experience with owning a franchise in the past. And then lastly, we did, with everything that's been going on this whole month, over the last several months actually, Someone came to me who was in a really dark place, and yet at the same time contributing to the social media— I'll just call uproar— she was being attacked, and she was just trying to figure out how to, you know, get unattacked, and in order to save her sanity, in order to save her, basically, her soul. So that was a powerful conversation as well. Next week is our Ask Me Anything episode. It'll be the first Tuesday of the month, so it will be your ask me anything. Go to Shedding the Bitch on Facebook or Twitter and post your questions, stories, or challenges. I'm going to answer them right away, but then I'm going to bring them right here and you have an opportunity to come onto the program and ask, you know, get involved in your own question and we can dig even deeper into that. Okay, so lastly, check out all the episodes of the Shedding the Bitch radio podcast. You can do that on blogtalkradio.com. You can do that on sheddingthebitch.com/radiopodcast. And then of course, like this one, we video record a lot of them, and you can find that on our Shedding the Bitch YouTube channel. Go to Bernadette Boas Shed the Bee TV, and you'll find all of our episodes there. Alright? Now lastly, I want to thank two very important contributors to the Shedding the Bits community who make all of this, all of what we do possible. So that's Deborah Parker of Parker House Virtual Services. She provides full-service virtual assistance and social media support to small to corporate-sized companies, and she's my social media person. As well as Debbie Snelling of NG Tax Solutions. They provide full-service financial and tax services to small and corporate-sized companies around the country. And check her out at NG Tech. Alright, I think that's all of our announcements. So with the smiley face of Michael sitting in front of us, let's get into it, shall we? Alright, so we are going to be talking about Shake the Dirt, using what you have gone through as a catalyst for success rather than an obstacle for failure. So listen for this. Listen to hear how to overcome obstacles that have been holding you back from becoming the best possible version of you. Also listen for the fact that we are all products of our thought lives. I love that, thought lives. And then everyone has a story, and it's how you use it that will determine your success. Oh my gosh, rich, rich, rich, and I want everybody saying, kind of very close to your microphone to hear everything that Michael has to share. So your rich question, and again, for Michael and those listening for the first time, your rich question is something I ground you in based on the topic of discussion today. So then that way you're paying attention a little bit closer because there could be, and most likely will be, tips, advice, and maybe some tough love that is relevant to you. All right? So very simply, Your rich question is, what is the one thing that you're struggling with right now to overcome? What is that one thing you're struggling with right now to overcome? Now if you want to tweet with us or post with us, then use hashtag #overcome, use hashtag #beencouraged, and we're gonna be hearing a lot about that, and hashtag #shedthebitch, alright? Now lastly, we need to learn about Michael. He's sitting there so patiently.

Patiently.

All right, let's talk about Michael. Michael Arterbury is a master encourager and dynamic motivational speaker. As a teenager, Michael was fortunate to receive guidance from positive adult role models who helped him overcome adversities and set high expectations for his future. Grateful for the role these mentors played in his own development, Michael decided to dedicate his professional life to helping people navigate the difficulties of life and launch their future into motion. For more than 25 years, he has been helping teens and adults to use what they have gone through as a catalyst for success rather than an obstacle for failure. Now I pulled off of his website because I was so like energized when I was reading all about him and getting to know him. So I pulled off something that I thought was really relevant for today. In his own words, "My life is dedicated to moving people from an uneasy time in their lives to a place of peace. I don't change their circumstances, but I help change their perspective. I help them understand that it's not about the destination, but the battles won along the way. I encourage them to hold on and understand that bad doesn't look bad when there is good in it." That I love. People will follow you if you inspire them. I work hard to inspire, lead, encourage, and celebrate the people that come into my life. Always be encouraged. Now, I have to mention, Michael is the author of Be Encouraged: 250 Days of Motivation and Encouragement, a daily motivational book. Additional information about his struggles as a child and a debilitating spinal cord injury as an adult can be found in his wife's book, and her name is Rachel Arterbury, God Was Holding My Hand. Now, as we bring him in, go to michaelarterbury.com and you can learn all about him. But how are you, Michael? How you doing?

I'm good, I'm good. You're a busy lady. Yeah, yeah, you are busy, busy, busy.

Well, this is about you.

Wow.

This is about you. So how are you?

I'm good, I'm good, I'm good. I'm enjoying a nice sunny day here in Connecticut and I'm looking forward to speaking to you and your audience.

Awesome, awesome. So give us some background on your story and kind of where you have been and how you got what you're doing today.

Alright, so what's great is you use my tag Shake the Dirt, so I'm going to tell you something that's relevant. So I want to tell you and your audience a story.

Okay.

And it's about a farmer and it is one of his favorite farm animals because once he finishes working with the donkey on the farm, he brings the donkey back to the house and he allows the donkey to play with his kids. So imagine they're working on a farm, they come back to the house The kids come running out, they come out, they wash him, they ride him, and they play with him. And then he releases him back out in the farm. And this is like a normal ritual. So one night he brings him— brings the donkey back, the kids come out, they play, he releases them into the farm. But the following morning when he came out, he whistled for the donkey and the donkey didn't show up. So when the donkey didn't show up, he starts walking around the farm and he's So the farmer walks over and he wants to get him out. So he goes and gets 6 of his friends. He brings them to the well and they're like, how are we going to get him out? So one of the guys said, listen, let's get some rope and let's pull him out. So all 6 of the guys get rope and they start to lasso the donkey. They throw it, they miss, they throw it, they miss. They finally throw it by his hind legs. He steps into the rope, they shimmy it up his body, and they start to pull. They pull, the donkey moves. They pull the donkey moose, but then halfway up the well, they realize he's too heavy. So they lower him back to the bottom of the well, and now that farmer now has to make a grim decision. Now see, he can't feed him food at the bottom of the well for his family because that wouldn't make any sense. He really doesn't feel like he can starve him because he's more like a pet. One of his hot-headed friends were like, hey, just shoot him. He's like, no, I can't do that, that's too violent. So one of his more reasonable friends said, listen, you don't want your kids to fall into the well, so you're gonna have to sacrifice your donkey. We're gonna fill the hole with dirt so your kids don't fall in. So the farmer felt like he could deal with that. So they all get shovels and they start shoveling dirt, and every time that dirt hit the donkey, he would scream. And every time he would scream, it would cause the farmer some distress. So you got dirt, scream, dirt, scream. Dirt screamed, and all of a sudden the scream stopped. When the scream stopped, they gave the donkey a moment of silence, but then they went back to work. Lo and behold, you see the donkey's right ear. They're like, whoa! So they start shoveling faster. More dirt, more dirt. Next thing you know, you see half his body, so they start shoveling faster. More dirt, more dirt. The donkey finally walks out of the well. That he fell into. So check this out, every time the dirt came across the wall, it would fall on the donkey's back, he would shake the dirt, and he would step on it. And every scoop of dirt that was meant to kill him, he used it to save his life. So check this out, listen, I'm gonna share some of my dirt so your audience will know who I am. I grew up in a home with a raging alcoholic father. And I say raging because he raged from the time I was born until the time that he died. I was 16.

Sorry.

And yeah, yeah, um, well, believe it or not, we'll get further into it. I wasn't too sorry. But, um, imagine growing up and never having— I never had a day where I didn't feel like what was going to happen at night. So I could get lost in fun But all of a sudden, something would tap me on my shoulder and say, hey, buddy, don't you get too happy. Because teenager, I never had that sense of peace. On top of that, I lived in poverty. Now, both my parents worked full-time. My dad was a bus driver. My mom was a housekeeper. But his money went to the streets. And my mom raised 4 kids with a housekeeping salary. So, you know, that was not very easy. But admirable. Yeah, it was. She was a hardworking woman. But I'll finish with this. Dysfunction was in my family. Dysfunction was in my neighborhood because the kids were growing up in homes like my own. And what makes me passionate about helping others is the fact that I was able to navigate all of that And if you look at my profile, my profile would tell you that I should not be doing the things that I do today, Brenda.

But at the same time, our history doesn't make us, right, or define us.

Yes.

Which is absolutely beautiful. And that donkey story is unbelievable. Unbelievable. And what a great analogy and just a great preface for kind of never giving up. And now, shake the dirt is gonna mean a whole different thing to me. That's awesome. All right, so how, so from your experiences, and then obviously from the people that you've helped and worked with and mentored over the years, how have you seen what they've gone through influencing the actions they're taking, the decisions that they're making, their behavior, their attitude toward the world. How do you see their backstory impacting their outcome, their success?

Well, when you think about what I talked about with my story, I remember in the house that I grew up in, in the winter, we rarely had heat. And I'm telling you this because I'm underneath the covers, I'm cold, I'm crying, and I said to myself that if I ever had my own children, they would never have to live the life that I lived. And you want to know something? That became the fire under my butt. Anytime I couldn't make it, I would think of my unborn children and it would generate the push to move me forward to be successful. You know, I think what people do is, you know, I feel as if, and this is what I teach, is that as we walk through life, we step on landmines. And when you step on the landmine, it doesn't blow you up. It just, that it injures you, right? But you don't know, you don't know you're injured. And so your decisions are based on the landmine And so when you get further into your adulthood, you've now structured a life on something that happened to you when you were growing up.

Love that.

And so, you know, your life becomes a reflection of the damage rather than the reflection of the direction that you want to go into.

Right, right. Now, at the same time, when you have that landmine, right, when it happens to you at that very point in time, What can people do to kind of ensure that that landmine's not going to become a burden for the rest of their life? That right then and there during that landmine, is there things that they could be doing to ensure that they take lessons from it, they walk away better as a result of it as opposed to, you know, holding on, you know, really tight to it?

Well, you know, what I think everyone should do on a regular basis is self-reflect. So what I do is I almost subconsciously take inventory of where I am on a regular basis.

Nice.

You know, there's another tag that you may have seen on my website I call, be the driver of your car rather than the passenger of your car. And what I mean by that is the fact that if you can step on a landmine and if you self-reflect regularly, you can say to yourself, you know what, I don't feel balanced. What just happened to make me feel this way? And I use the analogy of driving a car. So when that happens, whatever the landmine was took your keys. So you have to go back into your mind, figure out what the event was, and once you recognize what the event was, you take your keys back. So self-reflection is a great way to stay online and stay focused to move towards your goal.

Now, and when you self-reflect, whether personally or the advice that you give to the people that work with you, are you having them— is it that they're meditating? Are they journaling? Are there things that, apart from just sitting back and self-reflecting, are there other things that help them to process that?

Well, I think the start is living a conscious life. See, I think a lot of us live what I call sloppy lives. So when you're sloppy, you just get out of your bed, you slap on your clothing, and you just walk. And so what prevents you from falling into these ruts is living conscious. Like soaking in the world from a place where things don't just pass you, you know what I'm saying? And you have to kind of catch up on time, right? You know, um, some people, you know, get so lost in nowhere. It's 12 o'clock and if you ask them what happened from the time they got up to 12 o'clock, they can't even tell you.

Yeah, yeah, it's true, you know.

So, so the meditation can come, or the self-reflection piece comes. But to help minimize the damage, you walk through this earth conscious so that you're able to see things before they happen, rather than being, um, proactive rather than reactive.

Right, right, right. Now, does that have a lot to do with also needing to control your thoughts and needing to kind of manage what's going in and coming out.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, and how do people do that?

Well, you know, what I teach is that when I say products of our thought lives, what you have to do is we don't understand that we have the control to hold on to a thought or to get rid of it. So see, you're living conscious, so we start there. When you're living conscious, you're now aware of the information that's coming. So when something gets thrown at you, rather than allowing it to just come, you have to say, it's coming, it's here, and then make the decision, do I keep it or did it— do I get rid of it? Because what happens when a negative thought or an event comes and you allow it to plant itself, it germinates like a seed.

Yeah.

And then it grows, right? So if you're conscious and it it's thrown at you, you'll say to yourself, you know what, nope, nope, I don't want that thought. You get rid of it sooner than later, and then you don't have to deal with the ramifications of that thought when it comes.

Because it's all about, like, we're all so in our head.

Yes.

We need to get out of our heads, right?

Right.

You know, we need to work on every day getting, keeping, and staying out of our own heads. So what is your message to help people kind of shake it off, you know, and shake that dirt? You know, what is your key message to them?

Spending time with yourself and finding the lamans. You know, what I do, my, you know, when I work with teenagers, for instance, I get them at the age when they're in high school, so I tell them my story. I explain to them what I've been able to overcome, but then my goal for them is to retrace the steps, find the landmines, and then once you find the landmines, it makes sense to what's going on in the present day. So now you're there, so you're like, wow, you know what, I forgot all about that uncle that used to call me fat and ugly when I was 4.

Right.

And now I'm walking around at 15 and I have a complex about my weight, not really knowing where the foundation of it is. So when you go back and you find out where the foundation of it is, you can strategically try to overcome it rather than continually going through your life saying, I have an issue with my weight and not knowing where it comes from. So I like people to walk back through their story and find the different places where things may have gone wrong and just start to strategize with the new information that they're able to uncover.

Well, and I love the fact that you're doing this with young people because I can only tell you that it wasn't until I was 48 when I actually went through my shedding process, as I call it, and I started kind of really paying attention to what were those triggers, what were those events in my life that caused caused me to go down a path of nastiness, right? And, you know, when I was 48, you know, and I— so I love the fact, you know, even when I first, you know, learned of you and, and started getting to know you and, and seeing that you did work with youth, I was like, oh my gosh, would I have loved to have had somebody like him, you know, in high school, in college, heck, when I was 30.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so on that, are your— I mean, I hate calling them kids— the young people.

Yeah, that's good.

The young people that you work with, are they— because I know adults have a difficult time— are they open to, you know, kind of doing this work and confronting all of that? Because it can drum up a lot of stuff, a lot of junk.

Right, so I have a program and understand when we talk about this for your audience, I may mention youth or youth work but my material is not for youth, it's universal for the world.

Exactly, I'm glad you said that.

Yep, yep, so I just want to put that up front. So what I do is I go into a school, first thing I do is I ask for a cross-section of students. So I get 30 students in a room, The room is made up of everything that's in the building. Now, looking at what's going on in the world today, part of my strategy is not only to get them to get healthy as individuals, but I want them to learn to deal with people that are not the same as they are.

You—

But, but, yeah, yeah. But back to what I'm talking about is I run them through a series of experiential exercises that are built to make you think of those things that may be intimidating if I were to ask you, and then they have to ponder and start to use that information as they go through the process. So I'll give an example so I don't just leave you on the cliff. I do, uh, two quick exercises that I do. I won't do them but explain them to you. One of the first exercises that I have them do is called affirmation in twos. So I have them sit across from a partner and they talk for 1 minute about all the positive qualities they have. Then the other person talks about all the positive qualities that they have. Then I have them stand up and introduce their partner. And then once they finish doing that, I pull them— everything's done in a circle— I pull them out to the circle and the first question I ask, how it felt first to list the positive or negative, Then the second thing I ask is, would it be easier or harder to list the negative over the positive? And they all say easier, and that's where we start. And so I start there to explain to them, like you just said in the beginning of our conversation, is that we're products of our thought lives. So I'm building a foundation, but an activity that I do that really gets breakthrough, I call it concentric circles. And so I have the inside circle facing out outside circle facing in. I give them 5 questions and they're going to talk to 5 different people in the rotation. The first question is a person I respect and why I respect them, qualities that I look for in a friend, if I had the power to change something in the world, what would it be and why, a time someone that I most trusted hurt me, and a time that I lost someone I really cared about. So they talk to 5 different people about the 5 questions. Then I pull them out and we debrief first how it felt speaking to their partners. Immediately the essence in the room changes because they've been transparent with these people that they don't normally talk to. But when you talk about what starts them on the process, think about that information that they just talked about. Yeah, absolutely. It sounds, it sounds pretty basic. But you have to go back into your life and grab some real jewels to be able to process and talk to your partner. So what I make them do is I make them mentally go back and turn over the rocks. And as we get the information, each exercise gives them the opportunity to walk out what they found under each rock that they turn over.

Now when you, um, So that was the youth, and like you noted that you work with, you know, obviously youth, but you also work with adults. How open and how transparent and how easy do the adults come to the table and offer up all of that?

You know what breaks the seal is in each group, I start with Um, showing them a house. First I tell the donkey story. So I start with the donkey story like you got. Then I show them a picture of the house that I grew up in that looks totally condemned, boarded windows. I mean, it looks like it's condemned, but I lived in it. Then I show them the house that I live in now. I explained to them how it felt to live in that house, and 99.9% of the time because I unveil myself first, it sets the room up. That transparency automatically, because I'm authentic, right, it creates an energy so that they don't make the decision to hide. They make the decision to follow me because I did it first, right?

That's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. That's beautiful. So, um, When people are kind of stressed out, when they're going through trauma, when they're dealing with something that's going to go unnamed because I've been trying not to kind of continue to live in it that we've been all going through for a few months.

Yeah.

You know, how can people remain positive and hopeful and alive and encouraged and powerful, all the words and the affirmations and the beliefs that you set forth. How do they— how does one do that?

Because you have to, again, um, see, it takes a lot of energy to live a healthy life. See, that's why I put the label calling it sloppy. See, people live sloppy lives because for you to live a life of quality, you have to put in some work. And so I say that to you because when you say, what do you do? What I do is any situation that I'm in, I look at it and I, like I said, where I can't change your situation but I can change your perspective. You have to look at what you're going through and find the silver lining. You have to find it. And I mean, that's an effort. So if I'm going through something and it's really, really— it could be traumatic— rather than allowing that event to be labeled in my life as trauma that I went through, I look at it and I force it into a place where I find the good, no matter what it is, of what kind of good it could be in my life. And if you do that, you know, I use a term that the teacher can never stop being a student, right? So you got to always look at a situation like, you know what, what is this teaching me? What am I supposed to take from this? Rather than, oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm going through this again. You know what I'm saying? So that's the technique I like to push.

No, that— and that's beautiful because there is— I'm of the ilk that, you know, everything happens for a reason.

Yes.

And there's a lesson in everything. Easy, hard, traumatic, or joyful. And yes, but at the same time, it took me a long time to get there. I applaud you. Wow. Yeah, it did. It took me a long time. I was like a robot for like 25 years of just like a negative Nelly and always looking at things on the pessimistic side and devil's advocate. And so stripping, shedding that away, you know, changed everything. But so that's why I admire so much the work that you do and the approach that you take to it. Because yes, I just love all these Thought Lives and Be Encouraged and Shake the Dirt. You know, they're not gonna be easy to forget, which is a beautiful, beautiful thing. So what can people do today to kind of change their life tomorrow, but actually what can they do today to change their life right now and then leading into tomorrow?

Well, you know what I did, I'll say on a personal level, is when you said don't mention it, so I'm gonna have to just jump in it and drop it in real quick. COVID. When it came, what I, yeah, yeah. Maybe that wasn't what you were thinking. That's the word I would have dropped in, you know. But anyway, you know, what I've been able to do is, you know, I feel as if— I read a book by Bruce Wilkerson who said that we're all born with a dream. Like, so when you were a little girl, there was something that you wanted to be, and some of us continue on the line and we become it, or a lot of us get bullied and we get pushed away from that path because people convince us that it doesn't make enough money, you're not really gonna be happy. And so what I advise is during this time is self-reflection. Some people are gonna lose their jobs because of the situation in itself. So what would be more, I mean, transformative and awesome that you can come out of a pandemic doing the job you dreamt of? Find what your purpose is. Find that thing that burns and makes you wanna get up in the morning and find a job. Listen, let me tell you something. I laugh anytime I leave a place and I had to speak because they don't know I would've did it for free.

They have no clue.

When they hand me the check, I'm like, I'm gonna take this, I gotta go pay my bills. But you guys have no idea that if you would have pushed me and spoke to me the right way, I would have walked through that door and gave you that same message for no money at all.

Now that's passion and that's purpose. Yeah. Oh my God, that's gorgeous. So for people who are stuck, so for people who are listening to this, watching this right now, and they're stuck and yet they're starting to squirm because you're getting them all excited, what would you tell them? What can they do?

Get a piece of paper and start writing. Start putting those thoughts down. You know, they say journaling is a place of freedom. So, you know, putting it— a goal is not a goal until you put something down so it's concrete.

Right.

So rather than dealing with this in our heads, like you said, we have all this stuff going on in our heads, put it down on paper. Because now it becomes a document. Yeah, see, it's easier to walk away from a thought, but to walk away from a document is a lot harder. So you got to put this down on paper so you see it.

Yep, absolutely. I love it, love it. Um, that— I mean, I probably daily, my community gets a message about journaling because I do.— and I have since '08. But not because I do, but because of the value that I've experienced myself, and then, you know, I've, you know, have witnessed other people experience as well. I love that, I love that, I love that. All right, so I want to have you discuss with us, you have a Shake the Dirt Experience, and everyone, you can go to shakethedirtexperience.com. But could you share with us a little bit about what that's all about?

Right, right. So believe it or not, since the time you got my email, I've been working with the woman to launch it. I've revamped it. Oh, I'll tell you the way I—

yeah, yeah, no, I did. That's okay.

So yeah, yeah, it's real good, real good. Yeah, the original way I wanted to launch it was I was gonna have 20 participants at a time on a Zoom call. They would meet with me once a week and And I would run them through the series of exercises that I do with my groups and facilitate it as almost if we were meeting on a weekly basis. But meeting with someone, they expressed and explained that I'm limited, you know, I want to get my message to many. So the way the course is done now is that there's a lesson, you complete the lesson, and then at the end of the lesson, there's a video of me that walks you through the process of what you could have gotten out of it. And so my program and my course is directly connected to the Shake the Dirt story of the donkey. And so we start with that foundation of who are you, what do you think about yourself, Let's get you on a plane level of positive thinking. And then when I get you there, I start with exercises, start walking you through your paths of life. So I talk about things you've gone through. I talk about anger. I talk about forgiveness. I talk about emotions. And these exercises are to get you— remember you asked, how do I get them to think about these things? Is if you ask the right question and make people process the answer, it can get them to a place of clarity.

Right.

And that's what my course is built to do, is from start to finish, by the last lesson, I want you to have a clearer picture of your life, but now strategically set up your life moving forward to be more consistent with who you are rather than who you thought you were.

Love it, love it, love it, love it. So everyone, ShakeTheDirtExperience.com, go and check it out. I, I checked it out, and then, um, you can then, uh, like kind of put your email in and your information in, reach out, it'll go right to Michael, and then someone on his team or himself directly will reach out to you with more details about that experience. If you want to change your life, people, if you want to finally, you know, become the person that you know you're meant to be, I would definitely go to shakethedirtexperience.com. I also want to mention his books again, and they're both on Amazon. His book is Be Encouraged 250 Days of Motivation and Encouragement. And then his wife's book, and her name is Rachel Arterbury, uh, is God Was Holding My Hand. And I can only imagine what that is about. Well, it actually is about him, right? And, and, and your trauma with a spinal cord injury, is that right?

Yeah. Yes, it's part of it, and my life story. So you get more, uh, you get more of the backdrop of what I explained my dirt was.

Nice, nice. My God Was Holding My Hand, God Was Holding My Hand. Check out both of those on Amazon. All right, so before we close out, what one big golden Be Encouraged Thought Live type of piece of advice would you have for our listeners?

All right, so they get a treat. It's on the second page of my book, so I'm gonna give them a little tickle Maybe they'll go buy the whole book. And I wrote this: short-term thinkers plant gardens, long-term thinkers plant trees, eternity-minded thinkers plant themselves in the souls of others. And what I mean by that is, is you and your mission in life— and it's my mission in life— is when I finish interacting and speaking and being around a person, I want them once I leave to look back and be like, wow, you know, he brought something just special into my world for whatever brief time it was. And I'm conscious of it and I think others should be just as conscious. So, you know, eternity mind that leaves themselves and the souls of other people.

Wow.

Well, I'll tell you what, I wasn't kidding when I said I will certainly remember you and all your— and all, not even just your nuggets, but all the, the energy and the passion and just all the lessons that you experienced and the stories that you told. So I thank you so so much for being part of Shedding the Bitch. It's been—

well, thank you, thank you, thank you for having me.

Oh, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. Okay, everybody, one last time, michaelarterbury.com to learn all about him. Go and check out his— and seek information around his shakethedirtexperience.com. Be sure to do that. That could be life-changing. Your world could be changing very soon. And then at the same time, check out both of his books, Be Encouraged: 250 Days of Motivation and Encouragement, and Rachel Arterbury's book God Was Holding My Hand, which is actually Michael's story. So, and then just a reminder to everybody, um, which I lost my reminder, but reminder— oh, reminder to everybody that next week is our Ask Bernadette episode. So I'm answering your questions, stories, or challenges when it comes to your career, business, or life, you can go out to our Shedding the Bitch Facebook page and leave a comment there, or you can just DM me, which a lot of you do. Just DM me whatever it is that you need an answer to, as well as LinkedIn. Just connect with me and then send me a private message, and I'll be sure to respond to you quickly, but at the same time bring it right back here on on the first Tuesday of every month, our Ask Me Anything episode. All right, so for everyone here and for Michael, um, uh, in this Shedding the Bitch community, please have a rich, beautiful, joyful, prosperous week, and I'll see you next Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Take care, everybody. Bye.

Thank you for listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. Join Bernadette every Tuesday at noon noon Eastern as she helps you shift your bitches to riches. And the dialogue is always going on at sheddingthebitch.com. See you next week.