When Theodore Roosevelt was just 24 years old, he lost his mother and his wife on the same day just three days after the birth of his first child.
Theodore experienced the loss of his brother Elliot less than ten years later to alcoholism.
Despite the immensity of these losses, Roosevelt was not broken by them. Instead, he pushed forward on his work, became a noted author, a politician, and eventually, President of the United States.
This episode explores the good and bad lessons we can take from Theodore Roosevelt for how we deal with our own loss in this life.
Param Parastaran is an entrepreneur, author, and an Iranian immigrant. Pram immigrated to the United States with his family in the midst of the Iranian Revolution.
His family worked extraordinarily hard for their future, and Param eventually went to college and became an entrepreneur. He became extraordinarily successful, on the surface, but developed a massive drug addiction.
This all came to a head when his wife found him passed out naked on top of his home bar with white powder and broken glass surrounding him. He went on a journey to heal himself through psychoanalysis and self-exploration. His book, Perfect Pain, chronicles this journey.
In this episode, Param and I discuss his story, how he healed himself, and his advice for others facing the perils of addiction.
With the economic shutdown of Covid-19, we will probably be falling upon hard times.
Yet, as I've always said, hard time breed hard people. As a capable person, this is your opportunity to impact the world positively, if you choose to.
Free speech is dying in America and the Covid-19 crisis is only accelerating its death.
Long before this crisis, there were increasing cases where people were either getting shouted down or physically attacked for their viewpoints.
In addition to that, the major tech companies pulled videos and de-platformed commentators they deemed to be dangerous.
In this episode, I give you my own opinion as a member of the "new media" on why this is wrong regardless of what your political beliefs are.
Doug Ward is a US military veteran who served in every branch of the military. He followed up his military career with time as a contractor, and then opened up his own leadership consulting business, Anchor Strategies, LLC.
Doug saw the devastating effects that poor leadership could have on an organization, and he made it his mission to help companies to keep their work forces in the game.
In this conversation, Doug and I discuss his military career and his approach to leadership.
Bad things happen in life, and they don't just happen once. In fact, the situation we are facing with Covid-19 is likely not the only difficult situation you will face in this life.
In this episode, I discuss the most important factor in surviving and thriving difficult situations: being adaptable.
In this episode I discuss three steps you need to take to be adaptable:
In the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles is providing rewards to people who snitch on citizens and businesses who violate social distancing rules.
I will say this flat out: I am not advising people to stop social distancing. I am also not advising people to break the law.
Nevertheless, the idea that there are some applauding Mayor Garcetti for these actions scares me far more than the virus ever will.
Authoritarian government may not have killed as many people as disease throughout our history, but it has done so far more efficiently than disease ever will.
In this episode, I discuss parallels to Soviet Russia and what I believe needs to happen to keep us from falling further down the slope toward tyranny.
John Martin is the Director of Aftercare for the Fit-Ops Foundation.
Fit-Ops is a charitable organization that trains US Military Veterans to become trainers through a fully-funded three-week Bootcamp.
During their time at Fit-Ops, veterans learn the skills and techniques they need to know to become personal trainers, and Fit-Ops also instructs them business and job-searching skills.
Most importantly, however, Fit-Ops dedicates much of their training to help veterans to overcome their mental blocks and potential mental trauma.
The organization has a dedicated staff that's meant to look after veterans after they leave the camp. This is called "aftercare" and it continues as long as graduates remain in the Fit-Ops network.
I sat down with John to talk about the great work that Fit-Ops is doing and to get some details on their Aftercare program.
We had a great conversation about the tools they use to create and sustain transformation for these veterans.
To read EMF Guy's article, "8 Inconvenient Truths About Covid-19 Panic" click HERE.
You've probably heard about the surging numbers of Covid-19 cases. You've probably heard that deaths are rising. You've may have also heard that hospitals are near their breaking points.
What you haven't heard:
I'm not telling you to stop social distancing, or to violate the preventative measures that health practitioners have published. I'm a moron, not a medical professional.
Nevertheless, I do want you to think and to do your own research.
Scott Carney is an anthropologist and journalist who explores the limits of human physiology.
Scott's curiosity is driven by the following conundrum: as modern society has advanced, human beings have seemed to venture farther and farther away from their natural states. We have exchanged much of our natural past for comfort, and we've paid for it with a pandemic of obesity and chronic health problems.
Yet those evolutionary advantages that allowed us run down game and travel long distances in diverse climates are still accessible. Scott's work explores how the average human being can tap into this ability.
His New York Times Best-Selling book, What Doesn't Kill Us followed his adventures with Wim Hof, the Ice Man. Wim is known for being able to endure extreme cold. He holds records for being underwater in brutally cold temperatures, for running across the Arctic Circle in a pair of shorts, and for climbing Mount Everest in shorts.
Scott began that book trying to debunk him, but tried Wim's methods and found that they actually worked. This ignited a firestorm of curiosity, and in his new book, The Wedge, Scott explores how human beings can control their automatic reactions to fear and extreme environments.
Get your copy of The Wedge: Evolution, Consciousness, Stress, and the Key to Human Resilience at https://amzn.to/3bq16y6
Due to the economic shutdown many people are getting laid off from work. Because of that, I am going to be providing you with as many employment opportunities as possible.
Here is the link I mentioned in the episode:
Today marks the four-year anniversary from the date I decided to start a podcast. It hasn't been easy, and the only reason I'm still here is because of you.