161 - Courage to Leap & Lead with with Dan Capello - part 2

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.

Ladies and gentlemen, I thought I was only going to speak to Dan. First of all, this is CB with Courage to Leap and Lead. This is part 2 of an interview. I thought I was only going to talk to this gentleman for 30 minutes because he looked boring. I didn't know who he was. I am enjoying this conversation more than what I could tell you, and so we're going for part 2. Oh my God, welcome Dan Capello back! And Dan, tell us the name of your book.

My book is coming out soon. It is called Deliberate Evolution: The 6 Steps Every Leader Must Do to Be Successful.

You know what? Don't believe the title because this is the book that's not just for leaders. It's for all of us. It's all of us who want to identify and find our true north. It's for all of us who want to release the anxiety in our body that was caused due to trauma in our childhood. Childhood. This is a book for all ages. This is a book for all occupations. This is a book for everyone. I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of it. Dan and I are having this amazing conversation about what poisons us. What is it? Why? Why do we allow poison to come to us? And how do we move into a mode of self-awareness, self-care, and self-importance? Not in a way that takes away from others, but in a way that enhances our contributions to society and the world. Welcome back.

Great to be here.

Amazing.

Oh, I'm living the dream.

LTD. Yeah, you are. You certainly are. Hey, I want to, I want to talk a little bit about how when you figured out what was your trigger, your negative trigger in your life, trigger in your life, based upon your being sexually abused as a child. What did you say to your wife? What did you say to your children? Did you go and say, hey, I figured it all out, guys. I'm all better. Did you have a heart-to-heart conversation? How do you go and say to somebody or people that you love, this is the reason why my behavior was the way it was. This is what I'm going to do about it in the future. This is the role I want you to play. And I know I just threw a whole bunch of questions at you, but—

Oh, yeah.

Curious to know. And tell us how the people who loved you, how did they respond?

Well, you know, it's— that's an awesome question. And nobody's ever asked me that. And It's probably one of the hardest things I had to do because they lived with, you know, I, I was married, I'm almost 30 years I've been married. So for 25 years of my existence with my wife, um, she's had to tolerate me. And I, I use that word lightly, but the problem that a lot of us see in relationships is you know, we have 2 people that are total opposites. Well, me and my wife both have complex avoidant attachment. So we're— both of us can separate. And she reads books, and I research information and stuff like that. So it works out. A lot of the people that are traumatized are drawn to other people that are traumatized. You know, Her father was traumatized, and he was very aggressive, and he was an asshole like me. But and so she's you know they're drawn to their father.

Yes.

Hook or crook or whatever wrong or right or whatever it's that nature thing. And so that's what was expected for so long. And then when I started changing, my wife would you know. She—I would say something, and she goes, "But that's what you've—that's what you always do." And I'm like, "No, that's what I used to do. I'm not doing that now." And she goes, "Well, but I'm like, I'm not being like that. I'm not being confrontational with you. I'm not being aggressive. I didn't, you know, flip that person off. You know, I didn't go and bite that guy's face. So, but and so for a while there, it was like, "But you always," and I'm like. You're using that sense in a different tone because I'm not that person anymore. And the thing is—

What do you mean she was using a different tone?

Well, I mean, when she would say it, she was like— it's like I was doing that at the moment. She goes, well, you used to. And I'm like, used to, keywords. And you're addressing me like I did do that, but I'm not doing that. And now you're, you're, you're saying that I'm still doing it, but I'm not doing it. And she's like, oh, yeah, I didn't, you know, verbally accost you when you, when you were yelling at me. I didn't yell back.

Wow. What did she say with that realization?

Well, it's still, you know, she has a very traumatic response of childhood too. So she would shut down, and I used to shut down. So we'd both shut down together. I mean, it's it's sad but true, and and that was probably the only reason we're still married is because we would you know it would hit a certain point and and then the triggers would switch, and then we were just we had to go avoid it. We had to be avoided. So we would go be avoided somewhere. She would find a book, whatever. And then so what I started to do is when it started to escalate, I would just leave the situation instead of addressing it. I would just get up and leave. And I would just keep doing that. And my sister was like, you know, that's not, not healthy. I'm like, but if you have to remove yourself from the situation so that the situation can de-escalate, and then you can come back and then hopefully come back into a neutral position. Because once it's escalated and the, you, the triggers already happened where you had 2 people used to be triggered, now you only have one person that's triggered. You have to, you have to remove the triggering object, which was me, so that the escalation comes down and then you can come back to that situation. And that was, it, it took a while. I mean, it took, you know, 6, 8, a month, a year, whatever. To get to where my wife wasn't, you know, that living in the past with the past me. Because, you know, I say I changed, but the problem is we don't change. It's like I finally found the boy at six who had his soul stolen, you know, because I remember being a happy kid. I remember having fun. I remember being, you know, a joyous child. And then that was removed, and I became this bitter, angry, violent person. And then when I figured it all out and worked through my stuff, I was able to not go back to that, but remove all the stuff off of me. I was still that same kid, that same good person. I just removed The trauma, and I removed the hate, and I removed the anger, and I removed the violence to where all that's left was an empathetic person, which is where we need to be because then we can have. I can have emotions now. I can talk about you know my sexual trauma. Yes, it's hard sometimes, and I'm still working on that, but I can talk about it because I know. It's not about me. It's about the person listening to this. It's about the person that reads my book. It's the person in this— the audience I'm talking to.

But okay, so you read this book 3 years ago? Yes. Did you start to change immediately? After the last chapter of the book?

No, it wasn't immediate. It had— I had to come to grips. First of all, I had to figure it out. What, what was happening? Why was it happening? And that's when I went and researched Freud, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and, and, you know, all the greats, Jung. I went and I just viciously read all this stuff. So that I could figure out what was happening to me, because I wasn't sure and nobody was explaining it. And I, at that point, I still wasn't allowing people to talk into my life, like physical people actually physically talking to me, because it was triggering. So I couldn't handle that, especially if they were talking about my feelings or my emotions, which I was not— I had them boxed up in this big box. It had this lock on there, just another lock and another lock.

So how long after you read the book and did your research did you come to the aha moment?

Well, I think it was gradual. It's after that happened, I was still trying to— I was still training to go to do another Spartan Race because I did one, and I was still training So as I was doing that, I was doing a lot of traveling for business as a and as a chef, and I was writing. I started writing, and my writing was horrible, but I was writing my feelings, which I've never done on paper. And as I was putting this out, it's a very you know some people say that why are you writing your book? Is it for you a cathartic exercise? And that was my cathartic exercise, and I have all these. I just kept writing and writing, and it was all this stuff. And, you know, I would, you know, like I'm sitting on the airplane, and I watch this very obese person come in, or they were walking through the airport, and it's kind of like, you know, the shark in the water where the people just go around them. And they were so like ignored, or, you know, it's like, why are you sitting next to me? And I felt that, that empathy, and I'd never felt that before, of that person having to live with what they're what they're trapped in. And everybody's like, you know, people look at that and, you know, they're like, well, they're just fat. And it's like, no, there's, there's, there's trauma there. There's coping mechanisms there. There is so much stuff that created that, that shell over that person. Those are the walls that they created to protect themselves from What, what happened to him?

So then let's say for about a year now— correct me if I'm wrong— you've found yourself, you found the culprits, you've changed your communication, you've talked to your wife. Your children. So a year into this, let's call it the new Dan, for lack of a better term. You may have a better term. What is going on with your wife? Has she accepted the new you? Has she also decided that she was going to do some research to find the— her her trauma to find the source? What's— bring us up to date.

Well, the hard part is, is like, so that was when I was writing and stuff, and I was talking and I felt better. I saw this chef talking on stage, and he was talking about like how he broke down at the Certified Master Chef exam, which is this— it's very intensive. Like, I think it's 8 days you cook straight, and you got people watching you, and it's very nerve-wracking. And And he talked about how he broke down, and I'm like, dude, I need— that's me. He's telling my story on stage. I need to do that. Well, I'm sitting there as me, and that's impossible. I, I could never do that. That, that's not a possibility for me from where I was sitting. I get it. But I'm doing that now. So I figured out how to make the possible out of the impossible, right? And as I'm starting to do this, COVID hits. Ah, and we have all these lockdowns, and I'm a chef, so I have to deal with all these people and all these, you know, I got sent home because I was exposed to somebody, and the kitchen fell apart because it was just, you know, it was a busy Friday night, and they sent down, they sent me and the front of the house manager home because we were, we had contact with someone who ended up with COVID So the whole thing fell apart, but it was my fault at the end of the day. Even though I wasn't there, I got the blame. And then so as I started doing this, I started learning about, you know, as we, as a chef and burnout. And so I was going back into burnout again because all the stress and all this and my workers, and then we had to do to-go food. And then we couldn't get product. And then there was all this other stuff. I, and it, it was crazy cuz I started, okay, I need to have boundaries between what I do and who I am because what I do was controlling who I am before. It's like my self-worth and personality was tied up in being a chef. That was who I was. But it's, and, and we all run into that prob— a lot of people, not everybody, but a lot of people run into That if it wasn't for me being a chef, I wouldn't be anybody. Yeah. So we have— and Les Brown talks about that. When I heard him tell me that, Les Brown, listening to him one day, he says you have to separate who you are from what you do. And that was a realization. He talked about boundaries. You have to set boundaries. So I started setting boundaries between myself and my work. And, and then, you know, as things started opening up, All of a sudden, there were no workers. Everything opened at one time here in Texas, and there were no workers. But the membership was in there, and they were demanding like we were right back to where we were. Well, we couldn't get product. Yeah. And we didn't have staff, and then we have all these people. So we're getting bombarded, and all they're seeing is the kitchen can't handle it. The the the the food the food and beverage department can't handle it. That's all they saw because they weren't being served. Because, you know, nothing wrong with country people, but a lot of those people are self-serving and very conceited.

And, and, and at that point, it was shocking because all of a sudden America didn't have supplies, didn't have food. Yeah, I walked into Costco and Costco was empty. No food on the shelves. You know what it did for me? It triggered me back to when I was in Cuba and I walked into the shelves and I was stunned. The drugstore, where all the aspirin— the drugstores were empty and there was no pandemic. That's their way of living. And so we're so used to terra firma that not to have anything, we can't We can't process it.

Right? Yeah. So I mean, that, and that was a big thing. And that's where it started shifting me. It's like, you know, the more demand they put on us, it's like, okay, well, I, you know, I'm not gonna stay late anymore. I'm not going to come early anymore, because I need to take care of my family. In these times, I need to take care of my family. But they couldn't see that. Because of what, you know, as a When you start getting higher paid as an executive chef at country clubs, you're, you're basically taking what you promised your family and your wife and your kids, your promises, you took them from them and you sold them to your company.

Oh, but that's true with every company.

Well, I know. Yeah. But the thing is, is that we've never set up boundaries.

Absolutely.

And then once you start setting boundaries and the people that hired you or the people who run the club, they don't respect those. And then when you say, no, this is my boundaries now, it's like, well, we didn't hire you with boundaries.

It happened to so many people as a result of COVID They started to say, what the hell? My life is my work. I don't want that anymore. I want a life. And we're still not used to it because the, the flip side of it means that we don't have inventory, right? We don't, we don't have a lot. We created our own hellhole.

Right. Our food and beverage, the, the whole food and beverage thing, because it shut down and everybody lost their jobs and we didn't work for so long, is a lot of people have left the industry. They're not coming back. They found something better to do. That they weren't abused, that they could have boundaries.

Because— or that leaders realized they could not treat people the way they have, and they started changing. And people went to that company where leaders realized it wasn't the way— it's not going to be the way it was.

There is work-life balance in the world. You just have to find it.

So again, I want to ask you, going back to your wife, your family? Have they accepted the new you? Are they, are they still in stage shock? Are they holding the chair to see the old you pop back in?

You know, through my wife always, because I'm a DIY guy, you know, that was my, my whatever, I took care of everything. But she would tell me her problems that I would, I would, okay, this is what you need to do. Well, she didn't want me to fix her problems. And that's that's I didn't know this as a as a man. I didn't know. I thought, well, you're asking my opinion. You asked me how to fix something. That's the problem. I'm giving you the answer. It's like you don't understand. I was not asking for an answer. I was asking for an ear. Oh yeah, no, I I freely admit it. And so I I you know, and I was joking yesterday about that.

We women sometimes do that. But I was joking about that.

I was like, you know, I learned that's not what you want. So slowly, I mean, it's been a whole process, and it's still in a process. And my wife is going to have to work through her own problems. And that's, that's not my— I can't— the only thing I can do is be an example. All I can do is be supportive. It's like, I can't You know, somebody was like, they were talking about their wife and, and how, because I, I'm with a whole bunch of experts and we've all worked on ourselves. And a lot of problems that experts have is they work on themselves, but nobody works on themselves around them.

Yeah. Yeah.

So there's that void. But then, you know, he was talking about his wife and, you know, possible divorce and all this. And I'm like, okay, she didn't do anything wrong. You married her as she was with your problems, and you start to work on yourself. It's, it's like, it's, you know, let's go to the dog, and it's like it bites everybody. And so you take it to the kennel, you, you dispose of that dog, you get rid of— you divorce that dog. But you didn't, you didn't work with it. You, you took, you know, you don't have that. Ownership. It's like our vows, for better or worse. It's like just because you stop bleeding and they're bleeding all over the carpet doesn't mean there's something wrong. It means that you either— you need to learn how to clean up the mess until they can stop bleeding. And—

Wow, it's not so beautiful.

It's not my job to Show her a mirror. That's how you trigger people. It's my job to be supportive, to, to work around whatever, because she hasn't changed. I've changed. My perception has changed, but I still have to respect the person because that's my wife. That's my soulmate. It's not, it's not disposable. And that's the problem. We live in a disposable society, and we're not. And you know, for better or worse, that's it.

You're gonna make me tear up. That that's just so beautifully said. Well, but see, this is not.

This is this is the six-year-old child that got hidden. I'm still. I have feelings. But I created the walls and the armor to protect myself, to hide myself from my feelings, and to hide— not allow anyone to reach in and experience those, including my family.

How many children do you have?

I have 2.

And what say they about—

Well, you know, I— my, my daughter was going through gender dysmorphia, and Got it. That's— yeah, that's when she, you know, she didn't— she didn't want to be a girl. She wants— she was— I'm not a girl, I'm a boy. Okay, so I have to go through all this, and I'm trying to help her work through all that.

And what was she— what was she physically born as?

Oh, she's a girl.

She's a girl. Okay.

But she had— anyway, that's— we won't even get into that part of—

Well, that's another interview.

Oh, yeah. I mean, that way I can get— I can give a whole hour on that one because I learned about what's going on. And then my daughter, she's like doing something and looking down. I was like, okay, stop. I said, I have been hiding my whole life, and I've, I've my— I've got a hunch over kind of. It's like because I've always looked down because I didn't want to see people's eye because of my shame. I was always looking down. I was like, you got to look up. It's like Now it's like I look people in the eye because I my shame is not there. Shame is shame is is is when we try to hide something that we're that happened to us and it wasn't our fault. We try to hide it because we're we think somebody's going to judge us, and we have that shame of being a victim. But once you go. I'm a victim. This happened to me. I'm going to get better. I'm going to learn how to how to live my life fully without this curse, this baggage, this label people put on me. I'm going to live. And so now you don't have any shame, or you know you're not you're all that. It it's not there. So you can express who you are as a being. You've moved to a higher level of. Being. And everybody talks, oh, it's so esoteric. It's like, no, it's not. There's levels of being.

Because we're running out of time. So this, you had this conversation with your daughter, and how is she processing her life now? She's, she's better.

She's back. She understands what's going on. You know, she's like, wow, that was like, she was listening to the wrong people. She was getting the wrong information. And you know, I told her. I said I was I was sexually abused as as a child, and that created all my problems.

What did she say when you told her?

Well, they were a little you know, they were a little not upset. They were just like wow. And I was like, but when in that same sentence, I said that's why I had my issues. That's why I drank so much. That's why I was violent. That's why I was always angry. That's why y'all were scared of me. Was because of this, and so when I put that to the kids were like, wow. And so now I mean like I I've posted on this before, and I was like you know we give an inheritance of kids. We we do whatever we hook a crook and and we we take that promise and that life that we should have been with them. We take it away so we can make money so we can leave them something to inherit my inheritance. And I told my kids it's like I'm gonna teach you what. I've learned. I'm gonna spend all your money. You can have my house. You can have my gun. You can have my truck. You can have all that stuff.

Cheeks just puffed up.

But but I'm gonna tell you about your problems, your trauma. I'm gonna tell you about it so that you can uh you can live your life without the shame, without being held. I can I'm going to show you how to tear down the walls right now so that you won't have to deal with coping mechanisms. You won't have the relationship problems I had. You won't have the interpersonal problems I've had because I'm going to explain how this works. And if I can do that, I could stop the generational curse. I can stop the, the generational trauma. And if I can stop it here, That means it does— it doesn't continue. And, and if we— enough of us get together and stop our generational trauma, which is basically a misunderstanding of how we operate, if we could— if I can do that, I can change the world. I believe I can change the world by helping people. That's my plan.

So how long ago did you have this conversation? And did you have the conversation with both of your daughters No, I have a daughter and a son.

My son was already out of the house.

Okay.

He was already like working and all that. But I've talked to him too about it. And they're both very understanding. And they're like, wow. And they see the change in me. And they love the change because they can hug me now. And I don't, I don't push them away. They can, they can talk to me about things. You know, I'm accepting. I don't yell at them. I'm very understanding. I understand their the distractions and the, you know, the, the, their friends and peer pressure, and I can explain it to them in a way that they understand it, that it doesn't— it, it keeps them from building walls.

Have you seen in your son any of any challenging effects from the way that you were on him?

Um, you know, with him out of the house, no, I didn't. I wasn't there to witness it. But, you know, he was having issues too because of, of the passed-down trauma.

That's what I mean.

We pass it down. And so now that I'm starting to explain it to him, he's starting to understand it. And he's starting to, okay, well, if that's the case, then I can do this and I can do that. And And so he is, he's coming up with a game plan, and I'm helping him, a game plan how to move on with his life wholeheartedly, in full, you know, without, without shame and without, you know, people, you know, thinking that people are talking about him and all that. It's like, now he can live his life the way we were meant to live it. And that is—

What shame did he have? That he was experiencing?

No, it's that fear of, like, if you're rejected, you know, or we go back to the attachment theory, it's those things that cause— and it's not really something they've done. It's just how they are and how they feel. They feel they think people are going to judge them. And, and that's what keeps— that's what that peer pressure. And so now, by explaining this and all this, it's like peer pressure is a bunch of garbage. Because it's like you need to do your own thing without worry about what anybody else thinks about you, except yourself. Because if you like yourself and you can accept who you are, you— so many of the problems I had in life you won't ever have.

Gotcha. Hey, I, I— oh my God, and this This interview. It caught me off guard, that's for darn sure.

Yeah, I mean, you know, t-shirt, you're like, who's this boy guy? It's just like, I'm just gonna be a redneck.

Who is this guy? Wow, wow, wow, wow. That's all I can say. This has been one of the most eye-awakening interviews I've ever done. And I, I don't even know how to Thank you for sharing, because I am so sure that you have helped so many people with these 2 interviews that I know several people that I'm gonna say, watch this interview and get this book.

Yeah. So I appreciate you having me and allowing me to be here to tell, to help spread my purpose and to help people. That's it.

We met on LinkedIn.

Yes, we did.

Did you approach me or did I approach you?

I approached you. I've been going on LinkedIn and stalking people and trying to get— and, you know, because I want to— this is, you know, I was like, I got to get on a podcast. I got to start telling and start telling about my book so I can get it out there. And because people don't know who I am and they don't know what the story and they don't know, you know, what I have to offer and I think this is my 10th or 11th podcast now, and but every time I do it, my story gets clearer and I'm going to help more people. And that's, that's all I want is to get the story out there because there's somebody not being served if I don't do my book. There's somebody not being served if I don't get on these podcasts because someone's going to hear a podcast and they're going to go— because I listened to Ed Mylett this morning and it was talking about trauma. And, and trapped in the body. And I was like, wow, you know, but it was random. And it's gonna— this is gonna touch somebody's life that nobody else would have ever been able to touch.

It's going to touch more than a somebody's life. It's going to touch a lot of lives. And I will commit to you that I will write this in my LinkedIn newsletter. Which has over 3,000 subscribers. Awesome. So this is good stuff. Do you have like a JPEG of the COVID of your book so people know what to look for? And when is it coming out?

It's coming out. So I finally got it, uh, the first draft done, and I'm like halfway through the first editing. So a few more. I said it would be out summer, and I'm like, damn, summer's got, you know, we got 11 days left. So it's going to come out Indian summer.

I love it.

And, you know, right is better than right now. Yes. Because if I write a crappy book, nobody's going to read it. If I write a book that's engaging, as we— our conversation was, I can change the world.

Well, you're free to use this conversation in your book, because I think you have an amazing story. And I will send you hopefully Uh, what did I press the button for this? I know that I have this in, um, on Zoom, so you'll see it.

Okay, and I'll send you all the information. I'll send the PDF of the book and, and whatever else you need. I can— whatever you need me to do. And, you know, if someone's looking for me, they can find me on LinkedIn. That's where I post almost daily. Um, I've started a Facebook group because now I'm starting to do that Spartan run, that second, the Beast in Montana.

In June.

And so I've started a group with that, and I think I have like 50 or 60 people already in that Facebook group. So if they want to get me on LinkedIn and message me, I get them in that group. And it's basically a transformation of your life to get you like to lose weight or start doing this or whatever, to grasp your life back into your own hands.

And give everybody the name of your Facebook group.

It's Journey with Dan. Journey with Dan. Path to a Spartan Transformation. Okay, journey with— and you can also text Dan to 33777, and I will send them a, a life transformation primer, and then I will get them into my, my newsfeed. Or they can go to www.dancapello.com And my, you know, when my book's published, you'll find it there. There's my speaking, uh, engagements there, all my stuff there. You can get ahold of me or just Dan, you can email me dan@dancapello.com.

Well, we will have all that information in the newsletter and I'm super excited. Dan, thank you so much for being with us today.

I've had a blast.

I really appreciate you.

I appreciate you and what you do because you're making a difference. In people's lives.

Thank you. Bye, everybody.

Bye.