Despite The Odds: Recent Episodes
Mark Vander Ark
Despite the Odds highlights the stories of people who have not only been able to survive various forms of adversity, these people have been able to go on and thrive. We talk about the personal stories and strategies that my guests have learned that they would l like to pass along to anyone going through adversity in their life. These are stories of inspiration that are shared to give hope to others who are going through their own struggles.
Once expected to die young, John O’Leary now teaches others how to truly live. As an internationally acclaimed speaker, #1 national bestselling author of the book On Fire, and host of the Live Inspired Podcast, O’Leary empowers hundreds of thousands of people each year to live inspired. He shares his insights and inspiring message with emotional storytelling, unexpected humor, and authentic joy.
Show Notes
John “It’s not about how great I am, it’s about how great others are and what they teach us.”
Our calling is to use the adversity in front of us to become a far greater version of ourselves, not only for ourselves, but for those we are called to serve.
When we compare, compare yourself to who you were and to who you could become. And then when you listen to somebody else’s story, it’s not to compare, it's to empathize, learn from, and be better because of. You’ve got your own story, but what we have in all of our stories is hardship, and there is also evidence of overcoming and there is evidence of courage we didn’t even know we had.
We all have moments in our lives that are inflection points, points in time where everything is going fine and then….boom an explosion. What matters most isn’t what the inflection point is, it’s how you respond to those inflection points. Sometimes inflection points aren’t an explosion, sometimes they are like a whisper and you go...wow that is the moment that changed my life.” Inflection points are part of all of our lives, and sometimes we don’t even realize it in real time.
You are born, to a degree, with your emotional intelligence and grit and the good news is, for those of us who don’t think we have any…..we can discover more. But the other thing that he had was a strong faith, and when John’s mom said, take the hand of God, he didn’t feel like “Well….I hope he shows up.” John had faith that “if he got out of the boat and believed he could walk on water, indeed he can.” John never felt like he was by himself and that was so important to him. Also they had a goal, and the goal was homecoming. And they had no idea how long it would take at first. The real goal here is not how you overcome your pain? We all have it. We all have addictions, we all have struggle, we all have skeletons in the closet, we all have brokenness in relationships, we have adversity professionally and financially. Victor Frankl says, when you know your why, you can endure any how.
At the age of 30, Cara was diagnosed with a rare muscle wasting disease that leads to quadriplegia, a devastating chronic illness for which there is no approved treatment or cure. Rather than letting it quiet her, she set off even bolder, breaking down the barriers she now faces and to shatter discrimination for people with disabilities. Cara thank you for joining me today.
**If you do not have the perspective of how fortunate you are, if you are not living in a refugee camp, if you are not fleeing for your life, if you are not struggling everyday for the necessities of life, you have privilege, and when we express gratitude we also experience joy.
Kate Inglis’ story is a springboard that can help other bereaved parents-and anyone who has experienced wrenching loss-reflect on emotional survival in the first year; dealing with family, friends, and bystanders post-loss and isolation of bereavement. Kate’s unique voice creates a nuanced picture of the landscape of grief, encompassing the trauma, the waves of disbelief and emptiness, the moments of unexpected affinity and lightness, and the compassion that grows from our most intense chapters of the human experience.
Show Notes
KateInglis.com
https://twitter.com/kate__inglis https://www.facebook.com/kateinglisbooks https://www.instagram.com/kate_inglis/?hl=en https://www.kateinglis.com Before a trauma happens to you, you don’t know that up until that point your life has been fortunate.
When we do have a trauma or a pain, it makes it harder to tolerate other peoples stresses and sufferings, but something important that she figured out was to give herself permission to feel that way.
If there is a road to enlightenment, there is a lot of ugly mud that you have to muck through that you have to shake off your boots before you make any headway.
In the beginning we are just angry, but we need to figure out how to grapple with that heat because if we don’t it will just burn us up.
Even in the worst of your pain, when you are at your ugliest, at your messiest, when everyone else is running for the busses like it matters. When you are angriest that this thing happened to you….. You are ok. You are totally totally ordinary inside your extraordinary pain. As long as you are doing what you need to do to get some sleep, and you are drinking some water, and you aren’t trying to self medicate your way out of this with drugs or alcohol or food or sex or anything else that is just going to take you down to the bottom of a well, as long as you are trying to eat well and trying to get out to get some fresh air, there is nothing else you need to do about the way you feel. You don’t need to be graceful, you don’t need to be polite all the time, you don’t need to say you are fine because you are not fine. People just need to let time do her work.
When you are struck with a certain trauma, it’s like a dragon has taken up residence inside your body and it’s uncomfortable for you because sometimes you have this thing that is breathing fire that escapes through your face. If you don’t develop some affinity and care and language to communicate with that dragon, than that dragon is just going to be spitting fire for the rest of your life.
Steven Hayes was a young psychology professor when he started having debilitating anxiety and panic attacks. After hypothesizing that current treatments to combat mental health issues had some flaws, he developed his own approach, which eventually grew into Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a powerful, evidence-based form of not just therapy, but liberation. His work has since influenced decades of psychotherapy and is now practiced by tens of thousands of clinicians all around the world. His latest book is A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters.
Kwesi’s story is known nationally in Canada and is the subject of the best-selling book, Blamed and Broken. After overcoming a decade long struggle which included public scrutiny, a wrongful conviction and unjustified incarceration, he has turned the ability to rise above adversity into messages that transform his audiences for the better. Kwesi wrote a book about the lessons he has learned from overcoming the challenges in his life which I highly recommend and is available on Amazon called Rise: The 8 Keys to Overcoming Adversity and Living a Life You'll Love
David Crow spent his early years on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona and New Mexico. Through grit, resilience, and a thirst for learning, he escaped his abusive childhood, graduated from college, and built a successful lobbying firm in Washington, DC. Today, he is a mentor, speaker, and advocate for women and children. He donates a percentage of his royalties from The Pale-Faced Lie to Barrett House, a homeless shelter for women in Albuquerque.
Show Notes
One of the most important aspects to overcoming any adversity is making a concerted effort….taking some kind of action to work your way out of it.
When you have a damaged kid, the most important thing in trying to effect change in their life is to gain their trust.
Holding Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. Forgiveness is in incredibly effective antidote to moving on from someone hurting you.
When you are down on yourself, find an area in your life that you are really good at, find your strength….everyone has one (maybe somewhere where you are able to contribute, something that you provide great value to the world) and focus on that. If you play on that strength well enough, it will lead you out to better things.
You are not the sum of what happens to you, you are the sum of your choices.
Most people who fail, whether it’s in relationships or business, believe that they deserve it. Stop believing the bad things that people think about your or you think about yourself. There isn’t anything you can’t overcome...but it starts with belief.
Whatever you are going through right now, it will pass. You will find people who are willing to help you if you are willing to help yourself. Don’t feel sorry for yourself.
Jermain Miller is the author of the book "Wake Up & Live. Powerful Methods for Achieving Your Dreams, Overcoming Adversity and Finding Happiness." He has such an inspirational story.....after serving 2 months in prison and finding himself homeless at the age of 25, Jermain was able to completely turn his life around and produce over $200 million in revenue in the real estate business.
Show Notes
When asked if he had a chance to do it all over again, George Bernard Shaw said “I’d be the person I could have been, but never was.”
If you continue doing the same things you are doing, where will you be in 5 years from now?
“If you look at a man as he is, he becomes worse than he is but if you look at a man at what he could be, he becomes what he should be.”
The first step towards making a major change in your life is to decide what it is that you want. A lot of people will over analyze until we become paralyzed. It’s much easier to act your way into a new way of thinking then to think your way into a new way of acting.
Tough times don’t last but tough people do.
After surviving multiple near death experiences and impacting millions of lives through his books, Hal Elrod is on a mission to elevate the consciousness of humanity one person at a time. As the bestselling author of one of the highest rated books in the world “The Miracle Morning”- which has been translated into 37 languages and sold over 2.5 million copies, and is practiced by over 500,000 people around the world- he is doing just that.
Show Notes
When we are committed to something there is always a way.
When facing adversity, you get to choose your attitude. It’s very counter-intuitve but most of us think bad things happen, I feel bad…...good things happen…..I feel good. But the reality is, you can choose a positive mindset whether it be happy, or grateful, or to find peace, or to find meaning and purpose even in the midst of the most difficult time of your life.
Pain is inevitable….suffering is optional.
Every painful emotion that you have ever felt in your life that you might be feeling right now is self created and it’s optional. What creates our painful emotions are never the things that we think are causing the emotion, it’s our resistance to that thing or circumstance. It’s to the degree that we resist our reality that determines the degree of emotional pain that we feel. Wishing that it were different will never change it, you can never go back in time and change the thing.
Every challenge/adversity is an opportunity for us to learn, for us to grow, and for us to become better than we’ve ever been before. The greater the adversity, the greater opportunity for growth.
If you maintain unwavering faith that you can achieve something in your life or you can overcome something, and you put forth extraordinary effort for as long as it takes, you eventually make it happen.
In 2015, I remember watching Drew Lynch's story and following his journey on America's Got Talent and sharing his audition video with many of my friends with tears in my eyes at times because I was so moved by his story and his desire and dedication to turn a negative into a positive. Despite not winning AGT that season, he was able to take the opportunity given to him on a national stage to propel him into a career in comedy having been able to amass millions of followers on his various digital media platforms. Drew's story is in inspiration to me and to the many people that enjoy the comedy and insight he brings to the world.
In my interview with Maureen, we talk extensively about how she was able to get out of a physically abusive relationship with an alcoholic and drug addict. This is a great episode to listen to for anyone who thinks they might be in a toxic relationship but aren't sure if they are truly in an abusive relationship or if they are just having problems like any normal couple.
Show Notes
For people raising children, it’s important to tell your children I love you for who you are, not what you do.
We tuck painful memories into a filing cabinet, and these memories aren’t supposed to be drawn on every moment of every day. You can access the memory if you want to, but you have to search for the file. If you are thinking about that memory over and over and over, that’s how we have a hard time moving forward after the traumatic things we have been through.
What are some of the things that will help people identify if they are in a toxic or abusive relationship vs one that just has the normal problems that every relationship has?The most simplistic answer is….how do you feel when you are around this person? Do you feel oppressed? Do you feel bad about yourself? Do you feel like you have no freedom? Do you feel controlled? Do you feel like all of your actions are completely geared towards making that person happy? It doesn’t have to be physical abuse. Are they treating you the way that you need to be treated. If your daughter or son was in the same relationship, would you be ok with it?
We seek the suffering we know.
We need to have a balance in our life of couple time, alone time, (work time), and family time and if those things are not in balance, something is going to be missing in your ability to love who you are.
A good book she read about this topic is “Destructive men and the women who love them.”
TRA. Trigger. Reaction. Alternative. Learn to recognize your triggers and the emotional reactions they bring. Find positive alternatives to these triggers.
For more information or help from Maureen, go to her website: www.lifecoachmaureen.com
Maureen’s book. “My dog is more enlightened than I am.”
To anyone facing adversity right now….the most important thing to do right now is focus on what is happening today. Depression is looking at the past, anxiety is looking at the future…..look around you and find what brings you joy today.
Erik Salzenstein was sentenced to 4 years in prison for armed robbery in a drug deal gone wrong. He talks about how he was able to make a complete 180 while in prison and went on to use his story to help people make the desired change in their lives through coaching and motivational speaking.
No matter what the circumstances that you are going through, it doesn’t define you. You don’t have to stay in it and you don’t have to hold on to it.
If you want to change any situation that you find to be unacceptable in your life, you have to have a gameplan. If you continue to do the things that you are currently doing, you will get the same results. What are the small steps you can be taking right now to start seeing improvement? Because that is what you need to be focussing on right now. Small steps lead to big change.
Attitude of gratitude is an important perspective to have in life. When you have a perspective of gratitude, you are automatically going to be operating at a higher level than most people.
We all have wake up calls, whether it’s the loss of a loved one, sickness, imprisonment, losing a job or a marriage, these are wake up calls that are there to serve us if we choose to look at them that way. At the end of the day we have an option. One option is to look at these as an excuse to bury ourselves in emotion. The other option is to recognize that this is really tough…..and I’m going to lean in the best way I can.
Important lessons for parents raising children: Don’t take it personal! Be aware of your own emotional responses to what your children are saying and expressing. Kids can be very volatile, so set aside some of your own emotions and reactivity. Take a breath and try to hear the emotional output behind what they are saying and try to meet that emotional need.
Nature vs Nurture in Mental Health:
Our best understanding is that nature gives us a series of switches of possible traits to be turned on or off by the way our environment turns out. To some extent, it has a lot to do with what is baked into your genes and there are environmental switches that turn it off or on. You are not your circumstances, you are a spirit within a certain casing with tendencies.
Major Aha moment:
Morgan recognized that she was holding on to specifically wanting to kill herself as a way of signaling to others, especially her parents….as a way to show…….”Hey…..I’m in pain here.” Getting them to understand that something is wrong here, and getting them to take that seriously and understanding her pain was valid was so important. And she finally realized that the pain that she was holding on to prove and to validate her feelings to someone else…..was no longer in service of her highest and best good, and she is holding onto these wounds to prove something to someone who isn’t me and not choosing something that is in her best interest.
Take a risk….get comfortable making yourself uncomfortable. When you open yourself up and you aren’t filling your life with things that make you miserable, you might be surprised with what you find.
Morganbeard.coach
Shilpa talks about overcoming sexual abuse at a very young age at the hands of her uncle that was swept under the rug by her family to save the family embarrassment from a very culturally repressive Indian American culture. She talks about the lessons that she learned after overcoming a suicide attempt and her path to finally finding peace and happiness.
Molested by her uncle at 8 years old almost committed suicide.
Important principals of raising kids:
Importance of teaching how to express emotions. Communication is the key to everything. If kids aren’t finding out from you, they are finding out from somewhere.
You will never find happiness by trying to be being something that somebody else wants you to be if it’s not what you want to be as well.
You can build confidence by doing and by surrounding yourself with people that lift you up. Even if you fail at something, they aren’t truly failures if you are able to frame your failures as lessons.
There is zero correlation between confidence and what you see when you look in the mirror. Confidence has to be built from the inside out.
Whatever struggle you are facing, don’t try to do it alone. Reach out to family, reach out to friends, find a therapist, or find a community of people who have faced or are currently facing the same struggle you are going through.
Book Recommendation
Love Without Condition by Paul Freeny
If you can heal the relationship with yourself you can heal your relationship with others and really change your life.
In times of adversity, it can be hard to see past it, but if you can reframe the adversity as a lesson, life will get better but it totally up to you to choose how you perceive it.
Dave Stevens has a remarkable story of being born with no legs, being given up for adoption at birth and overcoming poverty to going on to achieve things that most of us "leggies" will never have the opportunity to do like pinch hitting for Darryl Strawberry and trying out for the Dallas Cowboys.
In this episode, I get some amazing insight on the importance of having a support network for any struggles you are facing from Corrie who overcame a divorce which left her homeless and walking on a partner who had committed suicide in her own home.
Red flag to realize you are in a toxic/abusive relationship. If you feel like you are constantly walking on eggshells.
If you are are in a toxic relationship…..get support. Reach out to friends, family, or a domestic abuse hotline. Outside perspectives help you gain clarity on what you need to get out of it.
Building a network of people who support you when you are in hard seasons in your life in particular is very important.
When people bail on you when you need them, it has nothing to do with you. That has everything to do with something in them internally, but you still deserve to have somebody there to support you. It’s up to you to lovingly detach from people whose friendships are no longer able to serve you in that capacity that you needed in this new chapter in your life. It is your responsibility to find people that will be there for you. The alternative is to keep those people in your life and having resentment against them for not being able to deliver what you need at this point in your life.
Losing someone to suicide is unlike anything else. You are having to deal with the anger at someone you love that killed themself. It’s a paradox of love and anger and a whole bunch of different emotions mixed up at once. It’s hard for people that haven’t gone through it to understand and its incredibly important and therapeutic to find a support group that is specific to people who have gone through the same thing. (This applies to any challenge you are going through. Find a support group of people who have gone through what you are going through to connect with and support you)
In times of tragedy, when you release the people who aren’t there to support you, it frees up so much space and time to allow people who are there to support you to come into your life.
It’s nobody else’s responsibility to build your confidence other than your own. To build confidence…..get comfortable making yourself uncomfortable.
Final Send Off:
Try not to resist the changes coming your way. Instead, let life live through you and do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side that you are use to is the better than the one that is to come.
Books Recommendations:
Power of Now
Option B
Corrielo.com
Libby Christenson overcame a chaotic childhood and years of alcohol abuse to go on to become a life coach to help teach others how to live their best lives.
When you grow up in a chaotic household with any kind of abuse, it stunts your ability to develop important coping mechanisms that are necessary to have as a healthy adult. The first step to repair the damage done is to recognize and believe that you are deserving of healing and you are deserving of learning better tools for living.
If you need help, don’t try to do it alone. Talk to a therapist or find a community of people who have faced similar struggles as you. The community piece is so important because you need to see other people that have overcome similar adversities. When we see other people succeeding at overcoming what you are struggling with, it helps us believe it is possible for ourselves.
If you are struggling with alcohol or drug abuse and you are seeing signs that you need help, listen to your intuition. You don’t need to wait until it gets as bad as it can get to reach out for help in the form of a 12 step program or a professional, or a family member….or a friend.
Leaning into other people and getting out of yourself and learning how to help others is the healing medicine.
After quitting drinking she was able to see dreams for herself that she was never able to see before. After quitting drinking, she can’t imagine trading the serenity and the peace and the self love that she has today for a night of being drunk.
Whatever struggles you are facing, it could always be worse and it helps to gain perspective from someone like Mike Schlappi who was accidentally shot in the chest at the age of 15 which put him in a wheelchair. Despite the odds, Mike went on to live a very happy and fulfilling life, raising a beautiful family, winning a gold medal, and becoming a motivational speaker to share his story.
When we face adversity, it’s going to make you weaker or it’s going to make you stronger and you can find purpose in your adversity if that is what you choose.
Sometimes when you have pain, if you can attach a meaning or a purpose to that pain it makes all the difference.
It’s important to love yourself from the inside out and not the outside in.
When you feel pain, you change and when you change, you grow, and when you grow you see the beauty that is inside of us. We don’t get our esteem and self-worth from what we are, we get it from who we are.
Importance of positive attitude therapy. So often we seek for change in our situation, when all we really need to do is change our attitude or our perspective.
It’s ok to have a bad day. But don’t let a bad day, turn into a bad week, a bad month and then bad years.
One of the biggest antidotes to any negative thought is gratitude. The other is get to work. When we are busy, we don’t have time to sit around and get depressed.
If you resist change you will fail. If you accept change you will survive. If you create change you will succeed.
Find your north star. Find your anchor. It might be your family. If you don’t have that, it might be in a book…..it might be in a podcast. It might be in a friend. (Mark’s input: it could be in a tribe, at a church, in any type of community or volunteer group.) But we need some place in our lives that we can feel safe.
We can’t always control what happens to us in life. But we always have by far the most important choice, how will we respond. How will we react? If We respond and react properly, we empower ourselves to succeed or fail on or terms
Mike Arce got himself into debt with collector's calling in his mid 20's. No matter where you are in life, it is never to late to make a massive change. He went on to start a 7 figure digital advertising agency in the fitness space with only $500 in the bank in the middle of the great recession.
"The Ripple Effect of Great People"
Everything in life is a gift. You either treat it as a gift or you treat it as an obstacle depending on how you look at it.
Take responsibility for your own life and your own actions.
Everything is a sign. You will find what you are looking for.
Reality is merely your intention and your attention multiplied.
You don’t have to do extraordinary things to change the world. You can change the world by doing ordinary things in an extraordinary way.
When you really know what you want, the world is your library.
My interview with Alvin Law is packed full of wisdom from one of the most confident people I've spoken to despite the fact that he was born with no arms and given up for adoption at birth. Not only did he overcome being born with no arms, we talk in depth about the lessons he has learned in life overcoming various adversities in his life.
When people spend all of their time blaming someone or something for what happened to them, they give up the positive energy it takes to heal.
No matter your circumstance…..Find your tribe!!!!!
You will never be attractive to others if you aren’t attractive to yourself.
If you are in an abusive relationship….YOU DON’T NEED TO STAY!!!
Most human being's problems are based in their own lack of confidence in themselves.
It takes courage….not weakness, to ask for help.
It is what it is. I didn’t ask to be born this way. It is what it is. It’s all about accepting your circumstance with class….dignity….and respect.
In this epidsode, I give a quick introduction of how Despite The Odds came about, what it is, and what I hope it accomplishes for people going through any type of challenge in life.