160 - Courage to Leap & Lead with with Dan Capello - part 1

You've got courage to leap, courage to lead. Be brave and be bold. Whoa, let it roar. Welcome to the Courage to Leap and Lead podcast, where each of our guests share the stories of courage that helped them become powerful leaders. Before we start today's show, please remember to visit courage-consulting.com. Where you can find all the episodes and other excellent resources, all at courage-consulting.com. Now, here's your host, Leadership Courage Coach CB Bowman.

Hello, everybody. Well, it's Tuesday. And you know, on Tuesday, we do our show, Courage To leap and lead. Today I have a guest, Don Capello. Don, did I pronounce your name right?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, great. And this is a little bit out of the ordinary because I really don't know anything about this guest, so we'll find out together. And I am having an allergy attack, so, you know.

Oh gosh.

I keep it real. Everybody. So, you know, it's living in Colorado. What can you say amongst all of the greenery, the snow, the mountains and everything? And, you know, I moved from New Jersey thinking I would escape the pollen. Well, I escaped right into it. So bear with me. I lose my voice. I put in eye drops. I sniffle. You know, we keep it real. So let's talk to today's guest, Dan. Dan has written a book.

Yes.

Dan, first of all, tell us why you wanted to be on the show today.

Well, I'm writing a book, actually. It's in edit. I haven't got it out yet. I'm working on it, but it's called Deliberate Evolution. And I actually started out as a 300-pound burnt-out chef in 2018. After 30, 25, 30 years of doing that, it was just constantly being burnt out. And my family, my kids, my wife, my health, and all that was taking a hit because of the constant burnout from the clubs. I worked at country clubs and there's just, we're so busy and, and it's like they're busy and then we're not. We have the holiday season and you can't wait for it to be over and then you can't enjoy the holiday because you're just burnt out. You're tired. Well, at 300 pounds on January 1st, 2019, I decided I was going to run a Spartan Race. I had to do something or I was going to die. I was going to lose my family. I was going to lose— get divorced. I was going to do whatever. I was going to die early, and I wasn't, I wasn't about to let that happen. So I decided I was going to run a Spartan Race, which is an obstacle course race.

Okay, so hold up, hold up. 300 pounds?

Yes, ma'am.

And you are in fighting weight now. I could see that.

Well, not quite, but, you know, I, out of the 300 pounds, I got down to about 227 and was able to run my 5K Spartan Race. And then I put a little bit back. I mean, that's been 4 years ago and I'm at 245 right now, but I actually started a new Facebook group. It's called Journey with Dan: A Path to a Spartan Transformation. And on June 1st of next year, I'm going to run a 21K Spartan Race, the Beast.

Wow. Well, okay, let's just— let's go all the way back. My husband is a chef and he's put on a few pounds since we got married. So, let's start at the beginning here. What got you into cooking? Did you go to the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park? What happened?

No, actually, when I was a kid, so I had my, my background is a lot of trauma. I grew up in trauma. I was sexually abused at 6. And a lot of my life started spiraling out of control when I was 6. I, out of the blue, I ended up with a speech impediment, and I blocked out the sexual trauma. And—

well, what— well, okay, we're going way too fast because our audience really wants details because we're about courage to leap and lead. We're about sharing our trauma because we have successfully risen above it. So if you don't mind sharing, what do you mean by sexually abused?

Okay, so let's— I hit the moment to— I had— I've been troubled. I've had coping mechanisms. I've drank too much, done too many drugs, anger issues, all this other stuff my whole life. And I didn't know why. And then after I ran that Spartan Race, that first one, like a month later, I'm like, you know, I'm good. I'm in shape. COVID hadn't hit yet. So I was—

What is a Spartan Race while we're at it?

A Spartan Race is like you— it's an obstacle course where you, you go over— this was like 22 obstacles. You like climb these 50-foot, uh, barriers, and then you go under the water, and you go under the— under the—

Like on TV?

Yeah, like on TV. That's where I saw it.

Oh, okay. All right.

So I did one, and at 300 pounds, I decided I was going to do one. And then after I did it, I said, okay, I'm good, I'm in shape, I feel good. And then my mental Something drew me because I still had mental issues, because I've always had mental issues. And I, you know, I don't call it mental illness. And I was labeling it as depression and all this other stuff. But what I came to find out later on, it's really a mental misunderstanding with ourselves. And so I was drawn to this book called The Body Keeps Score by Bessel van der Kolk. He's a trauma expert. And this book was written a while back, and it's used all over the world for trauma. And I was reading it, it talks about how the body keeps score. It remembers your, your traumas chemically inside your body. So whenever you're triggered, you have this response that is chemically exactly to the trauma you had back when that trauma happened. So that's why you have some people where their reactions are so violent, or so, you know, they're so easily triggered, and it's, it's uncontrollable, is because they are actually— the body is chemically reverting back to that moment when they had their, their first trauma.

What's the name of the book again?

The Body Keeps Score. The Body Keeps Score.

Uh-huh.

By Bessel, B-E-S-S-A-L. Mm-hmm. Van der, V-A-N-D-E, Kolf, K-O-L-F. Van der Kolf.

Yeah. Okay.

It's, it's a, it's a great book. Um, but anyway, so I'm going through it and it's talking about how your body keeps this inside and actually it's stored in the fascia. That's why people talk about trauma release when they get these, these, uh, some of these different, uh, manipulations. Like, um, there's all kinds of stuff, the somatic, uh, massages and stuff like that that release the trauma. And people are like, oh, that doesn't happen. But your body keeps that scored. It's, it's stored. Your body doesn't know if it's been 1 day or 50, 50 years. It, it remembers it exactly. And that's—

In the pecs or different Parts of your body?

No, in the fascia. The fascia completely coats everything in your body. It's all the, the, your ligaments. Every muscle is wrapped in fascia, everything. And that's why I was constantly in an aroused state, as in the sympathetic nervous system was, was on high alert, like I was being chased by a tiger for, you know, 40-something years, constantly in that aroused state. And that's what causes a lot of our chronic diseases. We don't handle the trauma that happened back. We don't, we don't address it. We don't, we don't learn. We don't release it. And that's what causes our cancers, our heart attacks, our obesity. That's what causes our autoimmune. My mother and my oldest sister both died from autoimmune, and I believe it's from tradition, not traditional family curses. They call it family curses, but it's really family trauma that's been passed down from generation to generation. So I was reading this book. And then all of a sudden, I flashed back to a moment. And I could see, I could smell, I could feel. So I flashed back and I could see the ground, the concrete, and then the white stones with the grass growing in it. And then the back door of this church was right behind my house, and it was a half door, and it was partly open. And somebody invited me in, said something, and I was like 6, and said something about changing my diaper or checking my diaper or whatever. And I, you know, I'm 6, I have no idea. And I can remember walking on the crunching carpet because it was that short carpet. It was a hot summer, so I could Feel the humidity. It was that dry, still, you know, when you smell it like in those old buildings.

And yes, yes, musty, musty, musty.

Yes.

Yeah.

Then I could see the paint, that beige paint with that texture from a roller, and then the acoustic ceiling. And then I felt my body tense up, and I was like, holy shit! I had found. My ground zero, the source of all my issues in life. I found it.

And was this a priest or—

I don't know who it was. It was somebody in the church. It was right behind my house. But, you know, but my body blocked it out and it's like all of a sudden I ended up with a speech impediment and my parents couldn't understand why. I was the only kid that had it.

So your parents didn't— how many children in your family?

We had 6 kids. I was the youngest boy.

And your parents never knew what happened?

No. Well, because I mean, we're kids. When something traumatic happens to us like that, we get shame and our brain blocks it out. And it blocked it out until I read that book. And then when I went back, I flashed back and I remember the parking lot with the white stones and the building with the with the brick, the brick on the back. And I remember that half door because we, we rode our bikes around there all the time. We were around there all the time.

And how many years later was this?

That was '66, so, and I was 50, so 40, whatever that is, 40, 44 years. So, and, you know, I almost killed myself, not on like suicide, but because You know, you talk about people with the death wish. It's like, because they do all this crazy stuff. I mean, I jumped off buildings, I drove too fast, I, I did drugs, I OD'd, I, I was drunk till I passed out. I was all this crazy. I got into fights, all this crazy stuff. And I didn't know why I was like this.

To try to erase what happened.

Well, I didn't know what happened. I didn't know my ground zero. And so when I found my ground zero, You know, I went into like deep dark depression for a couple months. And my, my thing is when I get stressed, I research it. If I can't figure it out, I DIY everything. People don't work on my house. They don't work on my cars unless it's a warranty. I fix everything. And so I was gonna fix myself.

Yes, yes.

So I did Jung. I went through his shadow theories. And one of the most amazing— with the shadow was great, but the attachment The attachment theory was so great because it talks about avoidant and I'm actually a complex avoidant attachment. That means I didn't. They was basically so a secure attachment is when you start crying as a baby and your parents come right, your primary caregiver comes right away and takes care of you. And then there's anxious avoidant. I mean, anxious attachment, and that's the one where. They'll come, but they're going to come in a little while. So you're anxious for them to come. And then there's avoidant attachment, and that's when they don't come. So you self-soothe. You, you, you learn how to take, you know, pull it in. You learn how to DIY your own feelings. And that's where I'm at. But then another one is complex avoidant attachment. That's where I'm at. That's when you don't know when or if your caregiver is coming back, and then you don't know what state, mental state they're going to be in. Were they going to be angry? Are they going to be happy? Are they going to be sad? Are they— so a lot of alcoholics, bipolar, you know, parents like this, and they don't realize what they do to the children. And then you can also, when you see one of the kids on the playground, you see them as they get a little bit older, you see the kids that are clingy to mom. They won't let go of mom. That's anxious attachment. You can see it right there. They're anxious. They're afraid that, that if they leave, she's gonna go away, and then they're gonna have to fight to get her back. And then there's avoidant. Those, those kids, when mom comes in, that kid just takes off. They're like, hey, we found your kid. It was— he's half a mile away. Or he's wandering around and he doesn't even pay attention to his parents. That's avoidant because you You avoid them because they're not taking care of you. So you take care of yourself. You learn to self-soothe. You you you you you learn to control. You're on your own, basically, and you decide. You're like, okay, they're not taking care of me. I'm taking care of you. But this happens when you're a small baby. You learn this, and then complex. That's when you get all the crazy mental, like like I was. And you know, they label it as mental illness, and really it's a mental misunderstanding.

Of—

you don't, you know, it's like they have different— when you talk to yourself, if it's bad, because all this can happen with the— there's trauma, sexual and physical trauma. There's loss, like you lost a really important person in your life when you were young. There is rejection, you know, you're, you're the, the, you're the daughter that He, when he wanted a son, or you were never good enough. You know, there's so many, it's like 70% of the population is rejection because they were never good enough for their parents. So they overachieve. They're the ones that are the leaders. And that's who I, my book is, is, is directed toward, is very successful people. But when you get to a certain level, like I got to, I was very successful as a chef. I worked in really nice, the nicest clubs in towns. All, all over the South. And, but I destroyed myself. I was destroying myself. And that's the same thing happens to people with this same, even the rejection or the trauma is the same thing that got you to where you were like you had to prove yourself is the same thing. It starts to destroy your marriage, destroy your health, destroy your life and everybody around you. So you have to, you know, that's where I want to come in is, and, and people don't want to hear it because it's so painful. You know, it's like people—

it—

you have to find out what people want so you can give them what they need. They don't want to, to, to be self-aware. They don't want to learn about their trauma. They don't want to have to go back to that loss and address it. They don't. It's painful. And that's why most people will roll their eyes at me when I start talking about— they're like, oh, you're just trying to be, you know, whatever, you know, you're Just telling a story to get attention. It's like, okay, you're not ready to hear this. You're rolling your eyes. You're you're you're la la la because it's so close to your pain and your trigger that you don't you you can't your your brain won't let you go back to feel it because it was so painful. So I mean we we've got on a wild tangent, but I mean but this is the basis of. How our society falls apart?

Why does our society fall apart?

Why?

Why aren't you saying this is how individuals fall apart? Why are you saying this is how society falls apart? Well, because society doesn't understand all of this.

Well, because if we were all healed. We wouldn't buy all the crap we buy. If we were healed, we wouldn't be addicted to sugar. We wouldn't be processed foods, so they would lose money. And if we weren't addicted to processed foods, we wouldn't have the medical bills. We wouldn't be paying the insurance. We wouldn't be paying the alcohol, the cigarette, all those— everything is Everything I listed is a coping mechanism because of trauma. Shopping, Amazon, all of that binge watching Netflix distractions, our phones. All of this is for us to not look at the pain that is society has created. I mean, we're living in the matrix right now, and we don't realize it. There's so many people walking around don't realize they're wounded. And they can't— they won't address it. They avoid it. You know, they can't be alone with themselves because they don't like themselves.

So I'm tracking. I'm rarely speechless, and I'm speechless. I'm not sure I am buying it's society's fault. I think that's a stretch. I will agree that it is industry, because industry produces products— and I come out of marketing— that they know are destructive to humans.

Profitable.

I'm not sure I'm gonna go as far as society as I am specific industries. I totally agree with you, having gone through a medical Situation recently where I had to become gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, and only three oils, and all of a sudden my body started to heal. It took a long time in finding the right functional doctor, finding a functional doctor who said this is what's going on. I agree in terms of society for this reason: we don't make it possible for people to heal unless you have the finances to pay for it. Because if you look at the functional doctor system, no insurance is accepted, so therefore becomes a huge financial burden for people. who want to figure out what's wrong, who Western doctors, Eastern doctors are just shoving the medicine to them because the insurance company says, we can't pay you to research, we can't pay you to heal people.

It's not profitable.

It's not profitable. So from that perspective, I think there are different segments of our society That feed us wrong information, feed us products that we shouldn't be having, and don't respect the consumer as a human being.

Yeah, well, by leaking into society, what I'm saying is, is that If you have, give me a definition of society.

Let's start.

Society is what we live in. It's it's the people, our tribe. Society is the tribe we're in. That's it. That's society. And the thing is, is like if you go back to Henry Ford, he was making a car. When the first one to make a car, but he was going to make it so everybody could have it.

Industrialization.

People didn't want a car; they wanted a faster horse. People didn't want electricity; they wanted candles that lasted longer. They didn't know what so the people that came up with these bright ideals were ostracized because it's like why are you changing what we're comfortable with? That's happened for millennia. If you got outside the tribe and you thought back in say a thousand years ago, even two hundred years ago. And you went against what the tribe said, whether you were right or wrong, you were pushed out of that tribe, and that meant death because you didn't have the protection of the tribe. Now let's go to society here. We are the ones that elect our officials, and the lobbyists for these companies— and this is built up over since the Industrial Revolution— We allow the lobbyist, which is the sugar industries, and which which had fake they had they actually financed fake results and research by Harvard to say that the sugar wasn't responsible for cardiovascular industry cardiovascular disease. And you're smiling because I think you probably know what I'm talking about. And same thing happened with Crisco in the 1800s. They took a product that was industrial lube before petrochemicals, and they were turning— and people didn't want it. They, they were trying to make it into a fertilizer. They didn't want it. They want to make an animal feed. They didn't want it. People knew what it was, but Crisco did a slander that was the biggest marketing ploy, the best ever, the most successful ever. But it was built on lies, and it was built on slander to where It's like lard. If you don't feed your family this vegetable oil, then you're not a good mother.

Well, I mean, we, we have to agree that marketing is not built on truth. It's built on what people want to hear.

It, it, it's built on how can I, how can I, how can I cater to these people's thoughts and get them to buy our product?

And it's built on what people want to hear because I came out of marketing. Yeah. Ready-to-eat cereals. Mothers kept saying, we don't want this sugar. We want good, healthy food for our children, for ourselves. We produced a cereal that didn't have sugar. That was great. It was very healthy for you. What happened? Zero sales.

Oh yeah, society decided what you were gonna make.

So it was the individual tribes, which you can elect to go to a different tribe. The individual tribes, the people in that tribe who said, yeah, we want it, but we want it to taste good. Well, what makes it taste good? Sugar. But we don't want sugar. Yeah, but then you don't want it to taste good. Well, maybe there's another alternative to sugar. Well, now we find out, you know, 50 years later, there are alternatives to sugar that are healthy. But why did it take 50 years? Then you go back to, well, the manufacturers didn't want to spend the money. To do the research, to bring in new equipment, to say to parents, and you get a nice little circle going.

Right. And you being in marketing, one of the biggest lies we were ever sold was breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And who created that?

I'm getting my pension. I'm not commenting.

Oh, see, I— well, I'm just saying. But if we take that as a tribe, society, if if we're not, especially like right now, if we're not wanting distractions, then the iPhone would not be where it is. Netflix would have never made what it did. You know, the sugar industry, if we didn't have our coping mechanisms, wouldn't be where it is. The alcohol wouldn't be where it is. The the porn industry. All these are coping mechanisms that have been built on these, on our trauma. Society has been built on our trauma. And that's what I'm saying when I'm saying society is, is where it's at. And because everything is, it's like, okay, we made money here off of that trauma, off of this coping mechanism. And we can make it now, we can make it off this and we can make it And they start creating the same.

See, see, I, I still debate the word society. And I love— audience, I love this conversation because it's taking me back to my days in the coffee shops in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Hey, we just disagree and we agree and we walk out wiser. Not agreeing, but wiser. I still feel the global Identification of society is what bothers me in your dissertation, because as I'm looking out and I'm seeing individuals, and I think more since COVID than ever before, stepping out and saying, I'm not gonna take this anymore. Well, they're part of society if you make it global, or you could say it's a group, it's a group or a tribe that's saying enough of it.

Right.

Right.

Okay.

Or you could say individuals. The individual that's walking around picking up the plastic in the beaches, the, the individuals throwing, you know, the starfish story, that's throwing the starfish back into the ocean to live. They're individuals that make up a tribe. Do they make up society? No. Are they part of society?

Yes. Okay, well, you know what, remove that word and there's a problem.

Yes.

And there's a trauma problem.

We both agree. Yeah.

And that's what I go— that's what I talk about when I do— when I go speaking. It's— I do workshops on that. And, and I don't address trauma, I address ways that we can get past a lot of our problems without addressing the trauma, because most people really won't ever address their trauma, trauma, because it's so, it's so personal to them.

Massive. It's so personal.

Right.

So tell us some of the ways that you can get past trauma, because our audience wants to know. I want to know.

Right. Well, I mean, a lot of it is, is you really have to Dial it down and you got to find your ground zero. Like, I found my ground zero. As soon as I found that, it was such a relief.

But, but your ground zero, do you feel— not to start something, but this is a critical question— do you feel like it's complete because you don't have the per— the culprit?

Yes. I mean, and you, you have to go into this and you Whatever. But you have to, like, everything that you've done in your life up to the point you're at now, you have to forgive yourself from all the horrible things you've done. And you have to forgive the person.

Exactly.

For me, for all, like, for my, you know, the way I treated my family, the way I treated myself, the way I treated my employees as an angry chef, the way I treated people.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, I was a very aggressive person, and, but it was taking a toll on me because I was constantly on cortisol, that stress, constantly in a stress, a fight or flight for, for years and years. And, and in effect, I mean, my kids would come hug me and after a few seconds I'm like, okay, I'm good, I'm good, because it would start bothering me and I didn't know why. And my relationship, my personal, uh, intimate relationship with my wife Suffered because the walls that I built to protect myself kept everybody out.

Mm-hmm.

And that's the problem is we have these walls we build to protect ourselves, but they keep our relationships out. That's why we have so much divorce because there's not— you can't— I can't relate to my wife on a level that I have— I need to. because I'm not okay with myself. And then when I found that ground zero, I was able to go, oh, wow, look at these walls I've built. And why did I build these walls? I know why I built them now.

Mhm.

And so after you figure out what your ground zero is, you know, are you— am I, am I healed completely? No. Will I ever? Hopefully one day I can get like a somatic release, or there's different people who— therapies And I have never been to therapy or anything because I, I would never let anyone speak into my life. Anyone. And when I started listening to Audible, because one of the byproducts of the trauma was I was very dyslexic. It was very hard, very hard to read.

Yeah.

So it wasn't until Audible happened that I was able to start listening to books. And actually, that The Body Keeps Score was on that. And so I was able to start letting people speak into my life without that person in front of me upsetting me.

Gotcha, I gotcha.

So that was, that was one of the major steps that I, I, I, in my life that's changed. Because now I've, you know, in 4 or 5 years, I probably have 90 books down. And, and I don't stop. Every, I'm always constantly listening to it.

So, but once you find your ground zero and you can deal and you forgive But let's, let's go back, um, because I asked you a question and I think I, I just got so into your conversation that I didn't complete it, which was, if it's hard for you to deal with the trauma, to get to ground zero, zero, what are some of the tricks that you could use to get there?

Well, first you have to figure out what your And they call it like in the movies, the origin story, the story behind you, you know, and you can, there's ways to figure it out. There's a great book called The Purpose Factor. And it talks about finding your purpose. It's by Brian and Gabrielle Beauchamp. And they talk about the origin story. And we're all overcomers of something, a trauma overcomer, a loss overcomer, a failure overcomer. A rejection overcomer, and while that was the story of most of us, is when you can actually look at what happened to you and change it from it happened to me and that's my life to it was one event. You know, when that when your dad told you you were not you weren't good enough, or your mom told you weren't good enough, that one event, if you can isolate that as. an event and not your title, not who you are. Because most of us, it's who we are. And we don't, we don't really notice that. But if we can separate it and find out what it is, then we can address it as a moment in time, not a curse or a life sentence. And then once you start doing that, you know, and that's what the whole book is, it's the 6 stops on the way to being, or every successful leader needs to know. And it's how do you get past that? Because we're so causing all that causes the distractions. A lot of us, if you ask most people, they can't tell you what their values are. They can't tell you what their priorities are. And they say, I have goals, I have all these goals. Well, you can't multitask goals. You have to have one goal. They call it a North Star. You gotta have your North Star. And the only way to figure that out is you have to figure out your values. And a lot of people don't go through it. And I have a simple exercise that I have people do. It's you make 3 columns and then you write all your values and they go, okay, well, you know, money, whatever. I was like, no. So there's health, wealth, religion, or whatever you want to call that. relationships and finances, or, you know, there's multiple categories. I'm not sure, you know, I've done it so many times, it's hard to do it all. But I said, there's gotta be 5, 6, 7, 10 things in each category. And the whole point is to get a brain dump from them. And then when you do that brain dump and you get it outside of your head, because you can't work on something inside your head because your rationality doesn't work. Like that. But when you can get it on paper or on a screen—

I want to interrupt you a second. Yeah, it took me a long time to understand what the word values meant. It wasn't in my language, it wasn't in my dictionary growing up. So I want to stop and tell the audience, values means What is important to you from inside? Not necessarily something that's tangible, like money. What's for you is critical.

Oh, yeah.

Your well-being. That's what values means. Would you share my description?

Oh yeah, no, exactly. I mean, you're— and that's the whole point of all, all these 6 stops is, is you have to figure out who you are as a person. You have to isolate it because we don't know, as most people don't, have never sat down and thought about it. And when you do that and you put all of them on there, and there's going to be superficial ones like you just said, there's, you know, money and all this, but, you know, Is it money or that, or one of them can values be, I always want to have a roof over my family's head. I always want food on the table for my family. Those are values, or I want to be wealthy. That's, that's, you can write that down. That's fine. But the whole point is to get all this on paper so you can see it and you can actually start to see, like you said, the superficial ones, you see them for what they are because we don't see them in our head. When you put them on your paper, you can see some of them are very frivolous or very selfish. Whereas, you know, when you have them all out there, the next step in the next column is you start taking these and you start lining the, the least important ones and you start scratching them off until you get 10. Move those 10 into the next column. So you've whittled down quite a bit and you've gone through a lot of your feelings and your likes and your dislikes. You've gone through a lot of that in your head, which people don't do. And you're really, you're learning who you are, which most of us don't take the time to do. And just like you were saying, I mean, most people don't understand what values are. And so now we've got the 10. So now Very simple. From 1 to 10, rate them most important, least important. Take the top 3 and move them to the next category. So what you've done is— and I tell these people, I said, this, this doesn't take 5 minutes. This may take days, it may take a week, may take more. You, you— the more, the more you put yourself on that paper, the better your life has a chance to be.

And I want to say to the audience, values don't change. They're your core. They may evolve, but they don't change.

Yeah.

That's important to know.

Yeah. But like your values, but now you have 3 values.

Yeah.

And they're numbered. Yes, they're numbered. So that now you have your priorities. And everything in your life should revolve around those 3 things. You should be able to ask yourself, will this make me— does this correlate with number 1 or number 2 or number 3? And if it doesn't, don't do it. And if it does, do more of it. And then once you have those 3 values prioritized, then you can make your goal.

One goal.

Yes, we have many goals to get there because every goal is made up of multiple steps. So that's when you say goals. But if you take someone who said, I have, I have massive amount of goals, it should mean that you have massive amount of opportunity and steps to get to the one thing in your life that's the most important. And that's where, you know, it's a very— it's more than not. People that don't have a goal, that don't have their priorities and their values. They don't know them. They can't— you can't walk up to them on the street and ask them, and they're like, uh, my car, my wife. You know, it's like, no, no, those are super— those are, those are monetary, or those are physical. The values and your priorities is you. Like you just said, it's, it's you.

And I also want to share with people, don't be afraid to speak your true north. Don't hide, because it doesn't work for you and it doesn't work for the people around you. You're in a relationship, share your values. Because don't assume the other person knows what they are, and then you're disappointed that they're not respected. You have to share. You have to discuss them. And surprisingly, people think, oh, I have different values regarding my personal life versus my work life. I don't think so. I think your core values, when you're truly happy, they mesh together. Now, you may execute them differently. That's a different story. Executing them differently can be you do one thing for your personal life. You're not necessarily going to do it in your business life, right? Right.

Right.

Yeah.

So, I mean, that is like one of the most— but that's a, that's an inside job that you— this first step is an inside job. You have to, but you have to get it outside of you so you can do the inside because you have more rationality when you're looking at it on paper than in your head, because in your head you can, you manipulate things. That's what our brain does.

Oh, big time. And don't be afraid to ask for help. Come on.

Exactly. But, but that's where our shame comes from. I mean, Brené Brown talks about that. It's amazing what she talks about, the, the how we— our shame and our fears and all this is what controls us because we're afraid to say it out because we're afraid we'll be criticized. Like you said, our values, people may not agree with our North Star, but it's our North Star. And we have to have the courage To stand up and say, this is what I believe in, and this is what I'm going to do.

Can I give myself a self-plug then?

Yeah, pal.

Since you mentioned, my book is launching January 16th at 10 o'clock.

Very nice.

I think you're right. I wrote this book because people kept saying to me, oh, Brené Brown, Brené Brown, Brené Brown. And I looked, and I looked up the word courage to see what books had been written about courage, and 90% of them related to religion. I said, okay, and Brené Brown was the breakthrough. I felt that It's one thing to say people should be courageous. It's another thing to define how to be courageous. My book talks about how to be courageous. And it's not what we think it is. We think of it as this massive thing that we have to do. Well, if you think of it as that big, running into a building to save a life, finding your true north, finding your ground zero, you may not get there. It's just too overwhelming. But if you look at each thing that we do As a micro courage. That micro courage leads to the big courage. For you, reading a book led to astonishing results. But first, you had to be open to read a book. 2, you had to figure out how to get over your dyslexia, which, by the way, I'm in the same club. And 3, you had to find the book and cognitively accept the book. Each of those steps are microcourage, and look where it led you.

Oh yeah, you have to be— you, you have to be open, and we're— and you have to be ready. Like, the word courage, it's— it comes from the French, a French word, and it means of the heart. It doesn't mean I'm strong or anything. It— no, it's of the heart.

It's—

you do it out of your heart.

Absolutely.

And people miss that.

We so do. And especially with the 5 pandemics we're experiencing, we're still experiencing each one of them. And it's almost like every year a new one gets added on to it. Well, if we're constantly in this flight mode, in this fear mode, we don't recognize our own strengths, our own power. I talked to— I interviewed a gentleman who has suicide ideation. The fact that he was able to stop himself and say, I have more to contribute, Wow, that's massive microcourage. And I said to him, thank God you did, because we wouldn't have had this amazing conversation. So, so much of what we do, we don't recognize as courage. Look, if you're an addict, getting out of bed in the morning and saying, that's it. Well, I mean, that's massive microcourage. Taking control over your addictions, massive courage, because you really don't know what's going to happen on the flip side. Disagreement with Seth Godin. I said, I said, getting out of bed with a migraine is microcourage. And he said, no, that's just managing your illness. I said, no. I don't know what's gonna happen to me as I'm walking down the street and my head is like in such pain and I'm not looking to the traffic coming and I'm feeling nauseous from the mic. That's microcourage. No, Seth, you're wrong. He's got a brilliant mind, right?

And you said it earlier, and I, I love that you talked about being in the coffee shops in the Lower East Side. You, you talked about that and That's— I see a lot of the time is so— we're so polarized these days. And, and what you were talking about, like the pandemics, is the pandemic is bad. And we have all this, but the problem is the fear that is stirred up about it. Because if we practice safe things, and, and, you know, we're aware of it, But we don't let it control us, then we, we can do that. And you were talking about the coffee shops and the disagreements, and then you could walk out. But see, back in the day, we could have a disagreement with them and have a civil conversation. Yeah, I had, I had this with a lady.

They didn't have cancel culture back then.

Right. Cancel culture is created because I don't want to hear you.

Yeah.

But everybody, we all in our tribes, we all have opinions. And that's what makes it great. We all have different skills. That's great. If everybody was a chef, then who's fixing my car? You know, who's marketing it? You know, all these things. It's like we have— we need each other. What was that? The— there was an African proverb says, if you want to go far— no, if you want to go fast, go alone.

Yes.

If you want to go far, go with, with the group. And that is so true in life, you know. And we— everybody, we want to go alone, and it's like, no, you're leaving everybody behind. That's your— if you go alone, you're going to be alone. And is life worth having if you're alone? Or is life better with people that you can laugh with, enjoy, you can share emotions? You know, people talk about, I don't want to feel this, and I don't feel this. It's like every single emotion is a gift. You know, you will never know the happiest day of your life until you have had the saddest day of your life.

Oh, so true. That's such a great saying. Such a great—

And, you know, death is something we have to do. And it's an emotion that we need to experience and, and take something from it. You know, fear We have to use it, but not let it use us. And that's where a lot of the problems— and that's where self-awareness comes in— is we are— so many of us are not self-aware because we don't know our values. We're not aware that we have problems. We're not— we can block things out, you know, we can like ignore things for so long until it becomes such a big problem that it causes massive pain. We're so good at that as humans. And, you know, yeah, same line.

We want a quick fix. You know, my husband was telling me the other day, it was, I guess it was some kind of sports event. And there were some protesters for better environment, clean earth, that sort of thing. Which I get that, I get that. But one man glued his feet to the cement to make the point about clean environment. Now, I stopped and I thought about it. I said, first of all, is glue part of a clean environment? You're now going to leave skin On the cement. Is that a good environment? Is that good, clean?

Mm-hmm.

Are you destroying your body and therefore you have to use medication and acetone to release your feet? Is that a clean environment? You're using products that are not for the clean earth to release your feet. I mean, I, It blew my mind because, well, I don't believe in the cancel culture. I do believe in discussing dialogue, discourse. The things that we're seeing happening, I need somebody to explain it to me. Not that I'm going to agree, but I need some dialogue.

You know, it's one of the most important things we can do in our life is make a better decision. If you want to change your life, make better decisions. But the thing is, is the more information we have is the more information that we have the ability to go through to make a better decision. If you're, if you're in a vacuum, you don't have enough information to make a good decision. 95% of our decisions are made without us thinking about them.

Yeah.

So that 5%, how are we going to make the most of that? And then as we make those 5%, they run down into the 95% because they come automatic. And that they're— those decisions are the ones when we start practicing our values and our goal and our priorities, we start concentrating on making that, that 5%. That 5% works down into the 95%, and then we can start working on something else. And then that pushes down. And then after a while, Maybe 40 or 50% of our decisions that are automatic, we have designed them for us to be successful instead of not design them and allow them to distract and keep it down.

Yeah, I agree with that.

And that's that whole self-awareness. That's the second part of my, my thing is we have to be— there's a level of self-awareness. We have to be aware that we stink Because we didn't put deodorant on or didn't work, right? Or we walk into the room and nobody wants to be around us. I mean, that is—that's pretty, pretty blunt. But but that's the same thing with a bad attitude. We don't realize, like if you walk into a room and you're a happy person and there's nine unhappy people, the room will not change. But if there's nine happy people in there and you come in as a grumpy curmudgeon. You're going to draw the whole room down.

Yeah, but, but we have to realize, for some people, that's the purpose.

Well, I know, but they're, they're not self-aware on, you know, they're so caught up in their pain that they, they're not aware that if they would actually like, okay, breathe, breathe, go in there and open mind and start talking to these happy people, it'll start bringing you up to their level.

Well, you know, as my, my functional doctor says to me, when I told her, God, I feel different, she said, oh, you mean better? And I said, oh yeah, that's the word I was searching for. She started laughing. She said, we live in so much physical pain that we get used to it as a way of life. And when we start feeling better, We don't know what to do with ourselves.

Right. It's your, it's your perception. It's your mindset. Once you start, like, you know, and I go back to like the autoimmune with my mom. It's like when she had a good day, it was a great day because she had so many bad days. Yeah. You know, it was perception. She was happy, you know, for life, because her perception of life had been shortened.

Yes.

Of the things that she could do, of what she could eat, everything. It's like, you can't eat this, you can't do this, you can't do this, but you can enjoy this. And then when you have that one thing, you're like, oh my God, this is amazing. And it's all perception. And our perception is under our control. And that whole mindset thing is, is where you have to do. And, and then Once you have your perception, then you have to have the ability to be agile so that if something happens, you have to be able to process it and keep your mindset and your perception positive. Yes, the co— we had a flat tire. It's like instead of it's the end of the world, it's like, oh, I have a flat tire. Okay, now we gotta get it fixed. And you solve your problems quicker than if you sit there and just moan and groan about the flat tire and wait for someone to help you. If your mindset is like, okay, I can do this, this, and this, and I'll be on my way instead of, oh, woe is me, my little pity party. You know, it's all perception and the ability to move from—

I had a couple of those pity parties this week. Move to the left.

Yeah, just keep them out of my way because I don't have time for that. If we start concentrating on those priorities and those values, And everything else is is secondary. We're going to make so much more advancements to our North Star, and our our everyone around us will be better, and they're going to feel our energy, and they're going to feel we're going to be drawn to us because we're positive. Like I tell everybody, you know, I used to be like, you know, they would ask me how my day was, and I was like, you know, piss off, whatever. You know, don't talk to me. You know, can't you see I'm working? Now—

I have to stop. When I moved from New Jersey to Colorado, everybody in Colorado says, so how's your day going? And I'm like, what the— do you care how my day is going? Exactly. Your weekend? You have plans for the weekend? What is—

what business is it of yours? Right?

Why are people asking me this question?

See, I'm, I'm in my purpose now. I, I, I'm helping people where I was 5 years ago and 10 years ago. I'm helping those people that are willing to, like you said, the courage to address why their life isn't where it should be. Yeah, that's courage. And you know, that whole thing is we have to get together And and that's the fifth step is you actually have to be with other people because we we sit there and judge ourselves. But the problem is is that we think other people are talking about us, and they really don't care about this because they're in their problems. They have the same problems, and we're we're like oh no everybody's gonna think it's like nobody's thinking about you really. Once you get their car, they don't care. They're, you know, but, you know, it's— we're, we're together. It's the culture together. And if we could all just realize that, you know, if we're all positive, working toward the same direction, more people that are negative are going to come in. They're going to go, why are they happy? What do they have?

Give me some of that.

What do they drink? Exactly. What do they drink? What are they on? And it's like, you know, when people ask me now, you know, if you were to— the people that talk to me, like, because I was angry. I was angry, Chef. And I'm 6'3. And, and I'm, you know, I took martial arts and that. I have a confidence level that's like, when I'm addressed with aggression, I'm not— I don't go, oh my God. I'm— the eyes light up, the chest comes out, and it's like, it's on. It's on. Time to go. But you know, it's all it. But but see now when people walk up to me, I can see the hurt in them, and so I have empathy for them. Whereas empathy was not a word that I would ever use or ever use or or or even think about. But my empathy level now is I can actually look at them, and I go they go how's your day going? I'm like it's amazing.

They're like wait tell me. Timeout. I have to take a break here.

Okay.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is the end of only part 1 of an amazing interview. I know you can't wait to hear part 2, so stay tuned. Next week we'll air part 2. Until then, have a wonderful and safe week. Until we see again. Bye now.