ONLY VIDEO You Need To ACHIEVE ANYTHING You Want In Life! | Evan Carmichael

Steven Scoggins is a best selling author and an award winning, multi million dollar entrepreneur. He went from sleeping in his friend's car and overcoming multiple setbacks and failures to building successful businesses and becoming a highly paid motivational speaker.

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Learn from the wise women and men. And men. All my.

Hey, it's Evan Carmichael. And I make these videos because you are probably the most ambitious person that you know, but you also know that you're capable of more. And you get that push by surrounding yourself with the best. So today let's learn from one of the best, Steven Scoggins. And my take on his top 10 rules for success. Enjoy. Okay, let's kick it off with rule number one. Follow the plan.

People that are successful in life, no matter what it is, okay, do life a specific way. They create strategies, they create routines. And they're not so worried about what the market does or what people do or what people say, right?

Yeah.

They're all about following a plan.

There's a quote that I like that basically says, winners focus on winning, losers focus on winners.

That's. I can't say any better myself. Yeah, that's. That's totally.

There's even a corresponding image of. I think it's like a Michael Phelps race. I could be wrong, but I think. Yeah, I remember that image of basically a guy who's in.

He's like swimming and the other dudes.

Looking at him and he's behind.

Yeah, he's too busy. He's too busy focusing.

You got to focus on, you know, what's, what works for you.

And successful people live their life a specific way. They live their life by a strategy. That's why we're so passionate about life mastery. Yeah. If you want to master every single area of your life, all you got to do is follow the plan.

You just have to learn the right strategy. Strategies for life.

That's it.

That's it. And anyone who's struggling just doesn't have the right strategy.

Well, either they don't have the right strategy or they don't necessarily have the right mentor guide to help them along the way, to kind of keep them accountable, to kind of keep them moving. So, you know, you've come to me several times, hey, man, I really don't want to do the push ups today. That's our terminology, Right. For those of you guys haven't been around, that just means do the hard work first. Right? Right. And I'm like, no, man, you got to do it. And you're like, I don't want to. Right? We just had this conversation before we went on air. Connor's telling me I need to change something. And I'm like, I don't want to. He's like, dude, the people. I'm like, oh crap, you're right.

Right.

Same kind of concept, right? Successful people do the hard work first, right? So they're constantly living their life in a specific way.

Rule number two, build your self awareness.

As I've been traveling around the country, this one question comes up all the time. And that is, what's the number one thing that tends to hold people back in their lives? And it kind of builds off of that with, how do I remove it? Now, I'll be honest. Questions like this one can usually feel a little bit loaded, but this one actually is quite simple. The number one thing that I found that holds people back is their ability to control their thoughts, their emotions, their attitude, and their actions. That thing is called personal self awareness. And no matter how self aware you think you might be at this moment in time, there's always a greater level of maturity and awareness that you can achieve. High levels of self awareness take time to build and develop. The only way to get there is by starting the actual journey. I learned this the hard way several years ago when I overheard a former team member say, that's just Steven. You'll get used to him. As you can imagine, it both hurt me to hear that, and it made me question why they would even have to say that to begin with. I didn't want to be the type of person that someone had to get used to. I wanted to be the kind of person that everybody enjoyed hanging out with, spending time with, getting to know, trusting, following, if you will, even in business. Now I realized that I have to be driven to be an entrepreneur and live a life like that every day. I. But I also learned that how you conduct yourself around others is a direct reflection of your personal self awareness. I had no idea that I even had that type of problem. And let's be honest, you may not either. But we all have the opportunity to grow and develop into a person who can both be selfless and a go getter. I want you to always remember this sentence. You can't change what you don't understand. Let me say that again. You can't change what you don't understand. And it's very possible that the person who's staring back at you in the mirror every morning is the largest roadblock in your current advancement. But just like for Me, it doesn't have to stay that way. There are simply a few areas you need to get clarity on in order to be the best you can possibly be. And here's why. Your intentions may be pure, but you won't get the advancement you need until after your intentions match your actions. There's an old saying that we always judge ourselves by our intentions, but everybody else around us judges us by our actions. So in order to become more self aware, there are a few key steps I think that you can use to help move you forward and finally make some progress. STEP 1 Discover more about yourself. Your tendencies, your drivers, your motivations, your core values, what you stand for, what you stand against, your type of communication style you use. What types of strengths do you have, what type of struggles do you have, or what types of blind spots do you have? And once you get clear on that, you can actually move to step two, which is to be in a constant state of self reflection. Always be willing to look at yourself objectively. Keep a journal. Write down your goals, your plans and your priorities. Perform a daily technique of self reflection. Practice prayer and meditation or other mindfulness types of habits. Take a personality assessment. We even have one here for free. Or other psychosemetic tests. Ask trusted friends to describe your top strengths and some of your blind spots. A lot of times many of our self awareness issues are hidden behind our greatest insecurities. And as a result, we do our best to hide it from the world and overcompensate our insecurities while we're kind of wearing a mask. For example, when I was growing up, parts of my life did not provide a lot of affirmation and security. And as you can imagine on the inside I was a very insecure person. And in an effort to compensate for that, I would accidentally come across as arrogant, boastful and prideful, which was the furthest from what I wanted to be. These are qualities that I totally didn't want to be part of my life. All of our greatest insecurities and fears show themselves as areas we are trying to hide from the world. I finally learned the best way to deal with those areas was to simply acknowledge them, even publicly from time to time, oftentimes giving the credit from people who deserved it. It's totally okay to admit to yourself when you've made a mistake and to call yourself out on it and to tell others you're a work in progress. There's no harm, no foul. What you don't want to do is continue to overstep your boundaries by accident. In fact, most of the time, people will respect you more because you do call yourself out when you mess up and you simply say, I'm sorry for doing that. Are you noticing a theme here? You need to acknowledge the things that you're insecure about before you can fix them. And overcompensating with a false mask that you put on to cover up those insecurities is never going to be the answer. In fact, it's going to hold you back 5, 10, or even 15 years. Okay, let's go ahead and move on to step number three. Step three is to focus on the weakest area and then get to work. Go ahead and take the personality assessment to get clear on your strengths, your struggles and your blind spot. Acknowledge what needs to be improved and make it top of mind instead of just a regular thought. The next thing I love the most as part of step three is to get out and put some things into practice, including serving the community. When you serve the community, it tends to build more confidence while you're developing authentic humility in the form of service and connection. If you truly want to win at life, nothing more brings more positive results than constant and vigilant focus on personal development. As your personal development continues to take shape and your self awareness heightens, you'll see better relationships form and more opportunities come your way. Why? Because people will want to do more with you and for you.

Rule Number three Use Principle Based Living.

When you use principle based living specifically, here are some benefits that you can kind of count on to help you really kind of get unstuck and help you become unstoppable and move forward. Here we go. 1. Principles make choices before you even have to. What I mean by that is once you make a principal choice, meaning if I'm going to focus on living a life of integrity and honesty, then every single time that I have an opportunity to be dishonest or showcase a low level of integrity, I don't even have to think about it. The decision's already made. Because I'm living a life based on a principle of honesty. Okay. Offers predictable action steps. Okay, if you want predictable action steps, then principles are the way to go. Primarily because habits, unfortunately, especially bad habits or bad forces of habits, unfortunately, never give the opportunity to know where you're heading because it's all reaction. So you're always going and getting the reaction piece rather than actually knowing, hey, look, this is the principle, these are the choices, this is the action step, and this is the result I'm looking for. Okay? That's why principle based living can be so important. Let's look at another one. Reduces the effect of Murphy's Law. How many of you have ever taken the time to get smacked upside the face with Murphy's Law? Meaning all of a sudden the tire goes flat, the car breaks down, the baby's sick, you're working extra hours, you're doing all these different things all at one time, and all of it makes you feel more overwhelmed, more anxious and less fulfilled. When you live by principles, right? Specifically, honesty, integrity, commitment, diligence, work ethic. All of those different things, just like generosity for example, are principles that feed you. And when you do those things on a consistent, diligent basis, then what happens is, is you're able to get predictable results. Therefore, when Murphy comes to smack you in the face, you've already ripped the rug out from under him, he falls on his face. How good would it feel to finally get get back at Murphy after all he's done to you, right? Think about that. If you live your life by principles, then you don't have to worry about Murphy because you've already taken Murphy's wind out of his sails and you never have to think about it again. Alright, One more makes personal growth easy. I find that people. It's not that people don't want to grow or it's not that they don't want to move forward. What I find is that life is constantly going and nipping at their heels. In other words, all the things and all the seeds that they have sown to lead them to a negative lifestyle, right? They're currently reaping the harvest. In order to overcome that, then what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to use principles to begin to dig out, which will in turn make personal growth easier. In other words, the more time you spend on using this information and applying it to your life, the less difficult it will be to actually grow personally on a regular basis. Now, no matter which of the eight pillars of life you decide to dig.

Into, rule number four. Write down your habits.

Clarify and identify the habits that seem to be causing you the most trouble first, and then work backwards to the ones that aren't quite as important right now. For example, you might be biting your nails, but you also might be overspending and always running out of money. Or maybe you're making a lot more money than you used to, but now you don't have time for quality relationships. Well, clearly overspending or spreading yourself too thin should be addressed before you worry about biting your nails. It's vital that you write down your habits you want to replace in your own words. The reason is there's tremendous power in being personally accountable. Make sure you also write down the why it is important you want to change that habit and the three benefits you'll obtain from changing this habit in your area, and it'll help you start to win.

Rule number five, change the way you think.

When you're talking about successful people versus people who struggle to find success.

Right.

In whatever variety of capacity that is, you're really looking at character traits, Right. So the character trait that Steve Myrick told me a long time ago, step one was always change the way you think. Right. So he'd always say that a rich man saves, invest, and looks for an roi. Like, he's always preparing for a brighter future. He's always in preparation mode. Right. Where he.

Delayed gratification.

Delayed gratification.

I'm not saying that they necessarily have to be patient, Right. That may not be what their natural gifting is, but they lean more on the principle than they do of their impatience. Does that make sense?

Yeah. So you're saying that even if they're not naturally a patient person, they're executing patience, essentially.

Exactly. So they're following a plan, they're following a process. Right. They know that they're always trying to be in preparation mode to prepare for, you know, what the worst case scenario would be, for example. All right, so during the time of this particular podcast, we're still dealing with the coronavirus, right. C19 is still loud and proud, hurting a lot of people. A lot of states have been shut down entirely. Right. We're very fortunate that several of the companies that I own are in the construction industry. So we've been very fortunate. We're allowed to keep operating. But the principle that Steve taught me a long time ago, long before I became acquainted with Dave Ramsey and his team, was to stay out of debt, be debt free. Right. So a lot of the companies that are struggling right now for cash and trying to make sure. Trying to make ends meet and even closing their doors, Unfortunately, a lot of those companies were already founded on debt, meaning they'd already been founded on, you know, borrowing money to start their venture. Okay. Well, when there's no revenue coming in or little revenue coming in, it's very hard to pay your bills. Oh, yeah, right. So what I do differently is I've always followed the process of trying to be as close to debt free at all possible. Right. I'm not saying I've never borrowed money before, ever in my business career or my personal life. But what I'm saying is that the principle is, is to always be as close to debt free, if not debt free at all times.

And so because you think, think in a different way from those people and you're operating by that principle, that healthy debt free principle, you are now in a position to actually attack the marketplace and win, whereas they're crumbling.

Yeah. So my competitors right now are starting to struggle. Yeah. Where CH is, is got. Is. Is got quite a bit of capital, which means we can, we can probably go for several months paying for payroll and paying for expenses and lights and our. A beautiful studio that we have, the live event center that we have. Right. That principle of always knowing that life is, comes from a set of seasons. There's always a summer, there's always a fall, there's always a spring, and there's always a winter. Right now, for a lot of people, right now, there's a lot of winter, right. There's a lot of. You can't harvest what you can't plant, right? So there's a lot of winter going on. And that's where changing the way in which you think, you have to learn to think in such a way that you appreciate the blessings and you appreciate the harvest when it's there, but you're also planning for the season when it's not.

Rule number six, have a good work ethic.

The time that I moved in with my dad, I began working pretty much every weekend at age like 10.

11.

It was like. Yeah, I was carrying, I was carrying lumber at 11 years old, for sure. Hey, dude. So I've been working for as long as I can remember.

How big were you at that time?

I mean. What do you mean how big? I was 11 years old. Not too much bigger than I am now.

Just like how you carry it. Because when I was 11, dude, I was like 4ft tall.

Like.

Yeah. I mean, I was a very slow grower. I mean, I was small, but I mean, it was. You asked me about work ethic, right? So the one attribute, my dad's made a lot of mistakes in his earlier life, just like all of us have, right. And that's where grace comes from, is to finally look at someone like you'd look at yourself, right? But one of the greatest things he ever gave me was work ethic. Right. My dad had an insane work ethic. Almost, Almost to the extreme, right. So I've had to learn in my adult years, I have to scale that Back a little bit. I'm trying to be more conscientious that my family also wants to spend time with me.

Rule number seven, Model success.

If you learn to think like a successful person, then you'll start taking actions like a successful person. And then you'll start getting successful person or people like results. Absolutely. Now, success comes in a lot of different forms and a lot of different fashions. Success is not always tied to business or roi. Right. I want to be an amazing dad.

Yeah.

Right. So what I need to do is I need to get around other amazing dads.

Correct.

And model that behavior.

Rule number eight, Overcome your fears.

It wasn't that long ago that I was incredibly timid and totally wrapped up in my own metaphorical turtle shell, so to speak. And as many of us have faced in life, we can all get there. Sometimes. There are really two ends of the spectrum when you think about this. Those of us who rush into battle like a Spartan warrior, and those of us who kind of go and put our head in the sand and hide for as long as possible and hoping that something will go away along that time. The truth is, I have lived scared and I have lived bold. And here's what I've discovered. When we run from our fears and conflicts, we give them power over us. We also give them power to continue in front of us. They get power of our thoughts, power of our actions. And it's also been my experience that a fearful heart will always react out of an emotional place. On the other hand, you can also have a bold heart with the mentality of I'll find a way which helps you create a strategy. Those who would rather run and hide because of the unknown almost always do so because they make the problem much larger than it actually is. The repetition of their thoughts actually creates an increasing fear to take a step or an action. It's precisely how media sources can scare the crap out of people just to increase their ratings over time. And the next thing you know, the stores out of toilet paper and life comes to a complete halt. If you truly want to be able to move from being a timid person to conquering anything that's actually standing in your way, here's how I do it. And I invite you to follow the same four step process that I do myself. Alright, you ready? Here are the steps. Step one. Name it. Acknowledge that you're afraid, apprehensive and reluctant to move forward because you don't know what the outcome is or if it will turn out in your favor. The reality is, for much of your life. You will never know the outcome anyway, and the more you focus on the problem, the longer the problem is going to persist. Step 2 Create options. Many times, fear and trepidation come from a lack of knowledge and options. When you take the time to write down at least three options for any potential conflict or problem, you begin to take back personal control over your emotions because you now have information and options to choose a path forward.

Also, it's always wise to feel free to have a mentor or guide, maybe help look at your options to make sure that those options are in line with maybe something that they would do to make sure there's not a blind spot, if you will. Life is not linear no matter what you're doing or what you were taught in school. Life is fluid. And like Bruce Lee once said, empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. Now, because you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put the tea in the teapot and it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. And as Bruce Lee would say, again, be water, my friends. What he's saying is be flexible. Don't be so rigid that you miss the opportunities and the options to move you forward. Multiple options create flexibility and reliability until a permanent solution will show itself. Step 3. Be open to pivoting. Remember, it's okay to pivot. If option one doesn't work, then go to option two. And if option two doesn't work, go to option three. And if option three doesn't work, simply create more options. Options breed opportunities and they reduce fear. And when you're ready, go to step four. Be resilient. And above all, never, ever, ever give up. This one principle has saved my life and my business and my relationships over and over and over again. Perseverance is one of the most powerful character traits you will ever own. The more resilient you are today, the more your perseverance will grow for tomorrow. Perseverance is a lot like doing the push ups. As we like to say, the more you practice, the stronger you become and things that you were scared of yesterday, you're not going to be scared of anymore. Ask yourself, are you still scared of the dark? Of course not. Once you conquer a giant, you will never have to conquer that same giant ever again. And as the giants increase in size, you'll be able to put on the full armor and the strength to conquer those giants and pull from the fact that you've slayed giants in your past. Be a giant slayer. Utilize the options as weapons and courage as faith. The only thing that separates those who conquer is from those who fail is the willingness to get back up. I like Rocky Balboa and I like what he says. Always get back up. Always, always get back up. If you get knocked down, get back up. Because if you do that, there's no way you can be stopped in your heart. When you hear run away, I want you to hear, charge forward, but with options. The reason I'm not sleeping in a car or worse anymore is because I use these principles of perseverance over and over and over again. Things weren't always easy, but they were always worth it. Because when you refuse to give up, you become unstoppable. And in time, you're going to look back at your journey just like I did and see the giants that you thought were meant to take you out, laying at your fleet.

Rule number nine, work towards delayed gratification.

Delayed gratification, if it's not obtained, okay. If you don't do delayed gratification, you are doing nothing but hurting yourself. Because if you don't work towards delayed gratification, you can never, ever build a foundation for a future. Right? My dad's approach to money was I earned it, I worked hard, and he did right in both instances. So he deserved to spend it. Okay? One of the very first things that I've shared before that Steve Meyrick taught me is the difference between a rich man and a poor man is the way they think a poor man spends all he has. You see the commonality. A rich man invests for a brighter future, Period.

And rule number 10, the last one before a very special bonus clip is understand the growth process.

For gain perspective, you need to make sure you can understand. Where am I at today? Where am I at today? Right? So again, for those of you who don't know dyslexic, so keep that in mind, right? Where am I at today? Where am I today? Where are you at in your financial career? Where are you at in your professional. Where you're at in your relationship? If you were to rate that on a scale of 1 to 10, what number would you give yourself? Until you can determine where you're at, it's going to be very difficult to plot a course to where you want to go. So let's be honest with yourself. Take a couple seconds and think about the one area in your life right now that gives you the most frustration right now. Is it your financial life? Is it your career? Maybe take the time, Jot down the number and let's go and move into the next section.

Okay.

The next thing I need you to do is determine how. Whoops. That's a little squiggly. How you got there, right? How did you actually get to where you're at today?

What skills, what people, what situations, what environments, what things played a part in getting where you are at today? Because if you're not happy with where you're at today, sometimes the best thing you can do is retrace your steps so you can figure out which step led you off course. Okay. All right. Another thing. What's missing?

I know it seems like a super easy, super simple question, but when you actually determine what's missing, you're giving your brain a chance to fill in the blank, right? So what's missing? Is it a specific skill set, a specific guide, a specific mentor, a specific strategy? What's missing that's holding you back? You need to kind of keep an eye on that. All right. What things do you find confusing?

What types of things that kind of make things a little toppy topsy turvy for you? You need to really dig down deep and actually say, hey, what's confusing in this particular situation? What's causing me the most confusion? Confusion that's holding me back, right? All about gaining perspective. When you gain perspective, all you're trying to do is you're trying to take elements of your life and actually take the time to look at it from as many different angles as possible, right? Because with the most angles and the most viewpoints as possible, you're going to have the best chance of making sure that you can actually get something done. For example, I'm going to go ahead and draw this at the bottom so we don't mess this up. But if I was to draw this.

What would you say that is? I've heard an egg, I've heard a solar system, I've heard a target. I've heard all kinds of things, right? But gaining perspective is this one simple shift. Consider this.

All I did was look at it from a different perspective. Here I'm looking at it from a top view. Here I'm looking at it from the side view. You see how it was pulling pivotal, gaining perspective can actually be. And why these questions are so vital and so important. Make sure you take the time to really spend time in the G part of the grow process. Gaining perspective. Sit down with a notepad and a pen and gain perspective. Don't ask, why me? Ask, what can I learn? What do I need to Develop what do I need to shape? Ask those types of questions and your brain will give you awesome, fantastic answers. All right, next part of the growth process, recognize roadblocks. What relationships are currently holding you back? Right. So when I was in high school, I used to hang out with, let's call it the not so good crowd. I spent a lot of time, unfortunately, chasing things that made no sense, doing things I probably shouldn't have been doing. And, well, I learned things I shouldn't have learned, let's put it that way. Right. A lot of times our relationship circle will actually hold us back more than anything else. There's an old saying that if you show me your five friends, I'll show your future. Right. So my roadblock when I was growing up, unfortunately needed to center around relationships. I needed to make sure that my top three to five people were adding value to my life. They were reliable, they were trustworthy, and they were there to help me make a difference in my own life. Right. Another area that might be a roadblock for you is your overall skill set.

Right.

What skills do you have that need to be sharpened? Okay. These are elements of things that when you break it down and you take the time to bucket it, right. You can actually begin to understand what it is you need to do next. That's right. Next, the next step. You start taking the first step because you're scared about not being able to take the second step. That's what the process comes into play. All right. Another potential roadblock, right. Might be your financial skill set. Okay. How? Financials. I guess we'll put that there. Right? How are you actually currently investing your money? Alright, what I mean by that is, are you spending a ton of time going to the movies or going out partying or going out to the club or going out and buying drinks for people at work? Well, if you're doing that, where could you put the money to actually invest in yourself? Where could you take that investment and invest in getting the new relationships or getting clear on that, Getting a different skill set, actually learning how to use that money to make it work for you instead of you working for it? Okay. All of these are examples of recognized roadblocks. Take the time to really, after you gain perspective, to really ask yourself what's holding you back. Okay. All right, Moving on. Organize a plan. Okay. This is where I see so many people get so much wrong. Right? They do a good job of gaining perspective. They even do a decent job of taking the time to decipher what it is they need and what's holding them back. Right. We want to recognize, remove these, recognize, remove these roadblocks. But then the next step is just as important and you got to take action. But how are you going to take action if you don't know where you're supposed to take the action? Okay, so here's what I want you to do. When you're considering organizing a plan, I want you to start with the end in mind and work backwards to the starting point. Okay? Take the time to decide, hey, look, I want to increase my income. I want a specific spouse, right. Take the time to clearly define what that looks like. I also try to teach people to use all five senses. Okay? The clearer you can paint this picture in your mind, the easier it's going to be for you to baby step your way back. Right? So when you go to organizing a plan, step one, start with the outcome, right? The end in mind, okay. Work backwards, creating micro steps. Okay. Make sure you have a timeline of how long it's going to take you to do each of these micro steps because it'll help you hold yourself accountable to measurable results. Okay. Make sure you've got an accountability partner in here, okay?

Right. What I say, relationships. Make sure you got a mentor and a guide to help you get there. All of these things are elements that have to go into your plan, right. In order to help you go through the next phase. The next phase, the best part is simple. Simply work the plan.

Do the work. Right. You've already spent all this, invested all this time over here to make sure you've got things cooking, to make sure you've got perspective. You've identified the roadblocks. You've now began to work on removing them. With the plan that you put in place right now, you gotta take the action. You really have to sit down and do the work. You know, in a couple other videos we use the term do the push ups. You got to do the pushups, build a bigger chest, do the push ups. You've got to work your plan. Which means on Monday morning you wake up and you go into your routine habit system. Right? Right. You're going to do, I get, for example, I get up at 5am, I hit the gym. After I do my little prayer and meditation time. In the morning, I hit the gym. I put something in my brain that feeds my mind, my body, my soul. I then come into my workplace, I get with my executive teams at the different companies I own to kind of make sure that they've got what they need. And then I go about My plan, right. Part of our plan today was making sure we came in here and created a video that will hopefully help you break free in your own life. All right, so again, grow, process. You can apply it to anything. Life, business, career, it doesn't matter. You can apply it to anything.

Now I've got a special bonus tip from Steven on how to accept your story that I think you're going to enjoy. But before that, it's time for the question of the day. I want to know what is your favorite fear that you need to overcome? Let me know what it is. Put it down in the comments below. And if you made it this far in a video you're still here watching, give me a hashtag believe down in the comments below. I want to celebrate you. We don't just watch videos here, we do something about it. So give me that believe in the comments below too.

We lived out in Colorado and then about the age of three, my parents, unfortunately, I guess whatever challenges they've had started to kind of rear themselves. So my dad for many, many years, he's been sober for a long, long time, but he struggled with alcohol for the vast majority of my upbringing. Okay. So from the time I was 1 to 13 now some of that was due to too much Marine Corps in him, meaning when you're he, he was at Parris Island. Parris island as a gunning sergeant for a long time. There was really not a whole lot to do in Parris island other than hang out with the guys and some other things. And we, he, he came from a long line unfortunately of alcoholics. From our background on the Skagen side, we had several that struggled with alcohol and control us. It was kind of like a generational kind of thing. And you know, so he was dealing with that. My mom, who I didn't know at the time, had been substantially in a variety of abuse, abusive situations growing up both as a young lady and then later as an adult with, you know, former ex husbands and all kinds of stuff and.

Had seemed to struggle with some identity issues, some self worth issues and some. Anyway, all of that seemed to collide when I was three years old when they decided to get divorced. And occasionally when people divorce, it's a situation where.

People are amicable about it. Well, they weren't right at the time. My mom would tell me a whole lot about my dad's alcoholism and how he was kind of a no good dad.

So your parents basically talked crap about each other to each other.

Exactly. Which, and if you think about it, you know, when when your parents are talking crap about the other parent in front of you, you don't know what to think, I would imagine, Right. You think, like, somebody's lying, but you're not really sure who. Cause no one could be that horrible. Right. Because if they were that horrible, they would. Unfortunately, they would probably be in prison or incarcerated or something.

Yeah.

You see what I'm saying?

Well, I mean, that's. I think. I feel like most of the time where there's a he sheds, he said, she said, especially if there's a level of emotion involved with family, there's gonna be some kind of stretching the truth.

The reality is, is the truth's always in the middle. Right. So even in business nowadays, or you've seen me do this, if. If there's a conflict to be solved, I try to get everybody in the same room at the same time. So no one has the tendency to manipulate.

Yeah, that's really smart. Cause, like, how is someone gonna completely spend something that the person right next to them says?

Very difficult. So. But, you know, so that happened when I was about three. My brother was born in Denver, Colorado. Ryan, who I love dearly. You know, we went through a season where we moved back to Raleigh. Like, some of this is kind of foggy, but we moved back to Raleigh. And the very next memory that I have of my parents, I actually talk about in the Journey Principles book, specifically where my father, I guess, had been trying to get his weekends with his kids. My understanding is he hadn't paid his child support in some time, and my mother declined to let him come do that.

Come.

Come take us. You know, come take us to do his weekends or whatever. I mean, as a growing up, I can remember him telling me he loved me, like tucking me and Ryan in on weekends, but smelling alcohol on his breath. I mean, I have some pretty, like, profound memories of both of my parents. Some are very, very positive. Some are like, you know, hindsight being 2020 were not so positive. And one of the things that we teach here is to accept your story where you're at. And it took some time for me to accept. For me to accept their story based on where they were at.

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Their pain. Most people choose to be defined by in a negative way that they're not capable. That's never can. It's never going to work out. And very few decide that I'm going to be defined by it in a positive way and use this to help serve humanity for sure. And that's why I'm just trying to unlock as many people as possible while I'm still here.