embracing discomfort

I was born in a small town called Foix, and grew up in a house on top of a mountain. 

It was a beautiful and secluded place, where my brother and I (my older brother, closest to me in age) roamed free on our hundred and twenty acres of land, a massive playground where our imaginations and creativity flourished. All the creativity in me that I’ve used to birth the many long-term dreams of my adulthood – it all stems from those early adventures and imaginings, running across the forested hills. 

The youngest of five, I was definitely the Quiet Child. Most of my younger years were spent in quiet observation of the people around me. My mother traveled extensively for work, and I often accompanied her; this led, I think I’ve mentioned before, to many experiences and interactions with kids who had special needs, and instilled in me a deep love and appreciation for them. My Father was a generous man, full of energy and always willing to serve his fellow men. He was the kind of man who owned a truck just so he could help people move house, and to get their cars out of the ditch in winter time. Much like the rest of us, however, he had his own inner demons knocking frequently at his door. He’d come from a very abusive home, and it led to him dealing very poorly with stress later in life. My siblings and I often endured physical and emotional abuse of a similar (though luckily much watered down) nature to what my father had endured as a child.

Standing up to my father for the first time at the age of fourteen was one of the biggest directional shifts of my life. It didn’t come, of course, until after I’d had all my carefully built comfort zones completely obliterated, a joke fate so often likes to play. This takes a bit of explaining:

So, my best friend had become increasingly absent of late, both after school and on weekends. I discovered the reason was that he had joined a program called Summerstock. All I knew about this program was that it was a kind of musical theatre, and it apparently took up a lot of its participants’ free time. After spending many lonely weekends on my own in a stressful environment (read: home), I decided to check it out. If my best friend was having so much fun with it, how bad could it be?

Summerstock quickly introduced me to the strangest group of misfits I have ever met. Everyone was talented, yes, but also highly individualistic, and obnoxiously unique. After a cautious period of entry, I found that this pervasive, in-your-face method of honouring peculiarity actually made it easier to be myself - there was no judgment here. I grew to know and love those people in a way that was completely new; it was a sense of family and belonging I had not experienced before. They challenged me in new ways, and broke me free of my isolating comfort zones. Summerstock became my new home, so much so that when I was fifteen I left my parents’ house and became what you might call a professional couch surfer - staying with my new friends and their families to (permanently) avoid having cohabitate with mine. Just ask my wife how many ladies introduced themselves as my mother at our wedding: I spent this period in my teens collecting parents. I did stop by my house every so often to see my own mother, but would quickly find reasons (often unhappy ones) to be off again, the same day or shortly after. 

It was on one of these occasions that my father came into my room and announced he was leaving. I didn’t quite understand, at the time, that he meant he was leaving for good … maybe I didn’t care (or told myself I didn’t). 

After that day, I didn’t see or talk to him for seven years. 

All seven of those years I threw myself into Summerstock completely. I went from the weird quiet kid who looked up at all the energetic, charismatic seniors with stars in his eyes, to (and this was quite shocking to me) actually being one of those larger-than-life people others looked up to. I had become someone else entirely. A BIG person. 

It was around this time I found out my father had terminal brain cancer. I quickly learned he had already gone through chemotherapy, and had less than a year to live. After years of silence, I wasn’t sure I knew what my father meant to me anymore – but as I felt my heart shatter into little pieces upon receiving the news, I guess I had a pretty good idea. It took me months to muster up the courage to see him; I knew that I needed to make my peace while I still had the chance. 

To my amazement, our first meeting quickly evolved into tears and hugging. It was father’s day; I met his new wife, who seemed lovely, and a good match for him. We spoke for some time: mostly he wanted to know what my life had been like since he’d stopped being a part of it. He was thrilled to find out I was part of a musical theatre program (he’d always had a passion for musical theatre). I invited him to a dress rehearsal for our performance of Grease, where I played the role of Kenickie, and what followed was one of the most cherished and tender memories that I have. He saw me perform “Greased Lightning” (In the Broadway version of Grease, Kenickie sings this song, not Danny). Here I was a grown man, surrounded by people who loved and looked up to me, singing and dancing my heart out. My Father sat at the peak of the stage with tears in his eyes, and as I hit the final note of the performance, he painfully climbed out of his chair and pulled me into the strongest embrace his weakened body could manage. We stayed there for a while, both crying in what must have been a seriously awkward and confusing moment for a lot of the other cast members. I remember hearing things like “Who is that guy??” Although I had close relationships with almost everyone in the cast, my past (especially with regard to my father) was not something well known. 

Later, back in the hospital, my father and I talked about life and the passions we shared. He told me his one wish for me was to one day create a place that made people happy, a place like Summerstock had been for me. I fully intend to fulfill his dying wish. Summerstock is still a huge part of me, even today. The things I learned and the growth I went through I could never put a price on. 

I was not alone in this feeling of refuge - far from it. A few years into the program, I finally realized that a lot of people were drawn to it as a means of becoming someone else, aspiring to live a different life through characters on stage. It was a safe place for young people to grow up and become who they were meant to be, away from troubling influences and damaging judgments. It saved more than one teen from drugs, addiction and suicide.

I am eternally grateful to my dad for helping me shape that dream, and for adding such gravity to an already goal-fuelling memory. Both before and since, other major life shifts have shaped me and the things I hope to achieve; my dad passed away in 2010, but I share these dreams now with my wife.  We are currently working on a dream board together to put up in our home. As an artist, my wife is sketching out different aspects of our goals, long and short term, and as they are met, we colour them in to complete the big picture.

I write this blog as a way to liberate the big picture I’ve got swirling around in my brain. To paint a full picture of WHY I do what I do. We all have a story, and I believe it’s of the greatest importance to figure it out. Life is about discovering who we are, and continually progressing. We shouldn’t shy away from hard decisions and unsettling experiences. Discomfort will always equal growth, in some form or another; the more uncomfortable you are, the more growth you achieve. Everybody wants their life to change and yet no one wants to do anything different! Picture your life as though you are in the middle of a circle. This circle is called your “comfort zone”. Everything you want is outside this circle; the only way to get those things is to make your circle bigger. There are no shortcuts, no cheats to get ahead in life. You can only choose to develop yourself.

I have found and chosen a vehicle to achieve my dreams, and in so doing, I know I’m going to help thousands of people achieve theirs. If you don’t have dreams… it’s not because they never existed, it’s because you gave up on them. Dig them back up and decide: is the discomfort ahead worth living your dreams for the rest of your life?

I hope the answer is yes.

the NEW economy

Parts of this may sound suspiciously similar to ranting, but I just want you to know that…uh…yup, that’s about it. Without further ado.

Three and a half years ago, I was introduced to an idea. This idea was already something I had previously understood to a degree, and thus I was loath to dive into debt for a post-secondary education. What I didn’t know was there was a better way out there, a shift in the global economy that could be learned and taken advantage of. A lot of what I’m about to say I learned from a man named Eric Worre.

So, the world as we know it has changed. For people who don’t - or refuse - to see it, I’m afraid the worst is yet to come. But there are people who do see it, and here’s what they’ve noticed: Over the last hundred years, an interesting phenomenon occurred. The rise of the corporation became the standard of society. The safe and respected place for people to exist in the workplace was as an employee.

Step one: Go to school to learn how to be an employee.

Step two: Find a company that will employ you.

Step three: Work for that company for 40 years.

Step four: Retire.

In recent decades, the promise of being rewarded by the company you work for because of your loyalty and hard work has been exposed as a myth. People started realizing the loyalty they were giving to their company was not being given in return. So a different process evolved.

Step one: Go to school to learn to be an employee.

Step two: Find a company that will employ you.

Step three: Switch companies for various political and economic reasons every three to five years over the course of your career.

Step four: Find that you can’t retire comfortably after 40 years, so you keep working.

And now, we are going through one of the biggest shifts of our lives. The world is moving towards a performance economy. More and more companies and industries are now no longer paying people for their time, but instead are basing wages on performance. Servers in the food industry are already living in this world. They get paid very low hourly wages (as required by law) and make their living through tips. For office workers, here is an example.

A person has a $60,000 salary.

Step one: The company will lower that salary to something like $50,000 because with today’s marketplace there are other people to take the job for a lower amount.

Step two: They will reduce the “base” salary to something like $20,000.

Step three: They will tell that person they can get an additional $30,000 over the year if they hit certain performance benchmarks on a monthly basis.

Companies love this new way of doing things. They save tons of money when you don’t hit your numbers, and guess what? If you do, they will gradually (and often abruptly) raise the requirements. Unless you are extremely specialized, this will happen to you; if it hasn’t already, I would count on it. The evolution is already well underway.

Something else is happening at the same time, feeding the first problem: Companies need fewer and fewer people to run efficiently. The exponential rise of technology has changed everything. Even McDonalds is now getting large touch screens instead of tellers for you to order your food. Soon even the cooks will be replaced by machines to do their jobs. Every other corporation will need to make the same advances to stay viable or they will disappear. Notice how call centers are now robotic? Remember going to a store and seeing massive amounts of sale people? Now we order online. Remember Blockbuster video? Now we have Netflix, and a wave of new outlets for media streaming. It’s an exciting world to live in, but a tough one in which to stay employed.

Technology and efficiency are eliminating jobs every single day, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. In fact, it’s only going to accelerate.

At the age of 27, I have already had over two dozen jobs and have seen all of these things happen, over and over - which is why I always believed one day something would emerge and take advantage of this NEW economy. That something is what I was shown three and a half years ago.

Network Marketing. I can already feel a lot of you cringing as you read it. Sorry, but the best way I know to not only survive, but to thrive in the new economy is Network Marketing. There are important products and services in the world today that need to be promoted by the people who need them. Consumers still need to be educated.

Companies have choices, they can dive into the ever-fragmented world of advertising to get the word out, they can hire a large and expansive sales force to sell their products or services, or they can utilize Network Marketing to spread their story to the world.

More and more companies choose to use Network Marketing because it fits the new economy. They can provide all the corporate support and pay distributors on a purely performance basis to promote their products or services. It’s extremely efficient because in the new economy, word-of-mouth advertising continues to work better than any other form of promotion. The company simply takes the money they would have spent on advertising and promotion (typically about 70% of profits) and instead pays that money to their distributors to get the word out.

What that means for you as an entrepreneur is that you can receive all of the benefits of traditional business ownership without the typical risks. AND there will be no cap on your income, because Network Marketing companies WANT you to make as much as possible. If you’re going to be paid on performance anyway, why live with the cap, right?

Network Marketing is also a business of building people up, helping one another and embracing the service of others. This is completely upside down in terms of traditional business – you know, the kind that revolves around pushing others out of your way, climbing on over top of each other, and fighting to reach the peak using superior politics rather than skill.

There is a catch though, and it’s a nasty one. Here it is:

You must accept a temporary loss of social esteem from ignorant people.

That means that for a while, people still living in and trying to function in the old system will think less of you. There is a reason why, and it’s not just because they are stuck in the old system. Most people have either joined a Network Marketing company or know someone who has. This is what goes through the mind of virtually every person who decides to get involved “Hmmm, I can think of five or six people who might do this too! My sister would be great! My friend loves this kind of thing. I know this other person who could be amazing! Okay, I’ll join.”

In other words, they aren’t joining a profession. They’re just hoping to get lucky, sign up a few people and sit back and wait for the money to roll in. The lure of being paid for someone else’s work is powerful, but often sorely misinterpreted. They haven’t started a real business. They just purchased a glorified lottery ticket. The reality is, very few people have the skills when they first begin to make it big - although some certainly do - and because of that lack of skill, most of them end up with nothing (just like that poor little lottery ticket). It becomes just another lost opportunity.

So they rip up the ticket. Who wants to take responsibility for failing to even try starting a business? Much easier to blame Network Marketing, and don’t forget to tell the world, “Look, I’ve been there. I’ve done it. I talked to every person I know, and Network Marketing just doesn’t work. Save your money.”

THAT’S what you’re dealing with when you choose this profession. And I’m the first to admit, it is hard to handle. If this sounds too hard to handle, it isn’t right for you. But if you can embrace it, then the world is yours. Seriously.

Some people like to say, “Perception is reality.” I really hate that saying. Great leaders worldwide have been ignoring it for centuries. What if Nelson Mandela had said perception is reality? What if Martin Luther King Jr. had said perception is reality? Real leaders say, ‘Reality is reality, truth is truth, and I will do everything possible to open your eyes.’

The truth is, Network Marketing isn’t perfect, because neither are people. It’s just better, and that’s reality.

return to origin

This is not like my last post, but I guess that’s good. I’ll get right into it.

From a young age, I was privileged with the company and influence of children with special needs. My mother is a Neuropsychologist, and over the years she has developed a treatment for brain disorders. The science is sound, and based around brain plasticity. Brain plasticity basically means that the brain has the ability to heal itself from bad communicators (which is the source of most, if not all, mental disorders, like autism, alzheimer’s, depression etc.). However, unlike physical injuries like cuts or broken bones, the brain will not do this on its own. What you can do for these bad communicators is to stimulate parts of the brain that will, over time, mend the problem. This stimulation happens with simple exercises and games done a few times a day, paired with other enjoyable stimuli. Obviously, I’ve simplified things a bit; the science is more complex, and I could never explain it as well as my mother does  (if you’d like to know more, go right to the source @ www.Mendability.com). But as I have grown up around this treatment, and seen countless miracles spring from its application, the idea that the human body can and should be able to fix any problem, given the right environment, has become second nature to me.

So why is it, as the decades tick by, we as North Americans seem to be getting sicker instead of healthier? We definitely have more information readily available to us. Everyone seems to be an expert on something, yet somehow things just keep mysteriously getting worse. Without dipping into conspiracy theories or making outlandish claims, I have to say I believe a lot of the information that is pushed onto us is influenced by the big money earners. How do we sift through it all, and figure out what is true and what isn’t? What is helpful and what is harmful? For me, because of my early exposure to my mother’s work, I’ve found that anything made to help the body return to its original state of proper function, of being strong enough to fend for itself, is worth looking into. First, though, we have to know what that original state even looks like - or better yet, figure out the chemistry of a healthy body, much like my mother looks at the chemistry of a healthy brain.

Having done my research as I looked for answers, I found a general consensus that chronic diseases come from the same root cause: too much acidity in the body. The two opposites that have been affecting my life, directly and indirectly, were these: Sickness/Health, Acidity/Alkalinity. We know that when babies are born, they are mostly alkaline. When we die, we are mostly acidic. Studies show that cancer cannot grow in an alkaline environment; this is not new information. In fact, the alkaline diet has been around for some time now (though if you have ever tried to eat an alkaline diet, you’ll know just how much fun that is). There is so much focus on diet in our culture, everyone yelling over top one another, “This is good for you! This is bad! And this, well this is REALLY bad!”
But not all human bodies are the same. I do agree that we should be mindful of what we eat, and try to be educated about the things we put into our bodies - but I’ve come to realize this is not the whole picture. There are more pieces to the puzzle.

Biggest puzzle piece I found: looking at the composition of the body, the biggest component is water. The average human being is made of about 72% water. Doesn’t it make sense that the water we put into our bodies might just have an impact on the health of our insides? Maybe there’s a pattern there that is linked to the drastic rise of chronic disease.
So I decided to do my own research.
That was when I found something called Kangen Water. It originated in Japan, where it’s a regular household name. The word “Kangen” means “Return to origin” which piqued my interest. Enagic (The company that brought Kangen Water to Japan, and then all over the world) claimed their water could take plain old house tap water, and restructure it into alkaline, mineral rich water with powerful anti-oxidant properties. It was also supposed to shrink the water clusters, allowing your cells to absorb its purest form and push out toxins at a rapid rate. After a lot of scary research (and a list of what is generally found in tap water – seriously, research that only if you’re very brave), I was convinced to give it a test run. My family and I committed to trying it out.
Results: I lost 14 pounds (weight I had been trying - and failing - to lose for about three years) in the first sixty days, and I started seeing actual results at the gym for the first time ever; my energy went up – way up; better digestion; and the back pain I had struggled with for years disappeared. And that was just me. I was pretty healthy already – minor complaints, really, in the grand scheme of things. My family also had incredible benefits from simply drinking water in its purest form.

I just wanted to share that with someone. Anyone. It makes sense to me in the same way my mother’s life work makes sense to me – personal health struggles don’t always need to be a life sentence. Sometimes the answer is a lot simpler than we think. Now, I’m spending as much time as I can sharing what I’ve found with those who need it (no research is for nothing, right?). I didn’t even fully understand the potential of water like this when I started circulating it to friends and family, but the stories I’ve since accumulated from them have literally brought tears to my eyes.
So, this is my new life! When I’m not with my family, I’m out here in the trenches, one of those voices reaching over top of everyone else to say “No, this is good! REALLY good!” Only I’m not going to yell it. I don’t really think I need to. Everyone drinks water, no one drinks healthy water – and you know what, it is bad. Everyone needs this in their homes, they just do.

And they will, when I’m finished!

chasing self-worth

So, a bit about me: my background is not spectacular, new, or in any way ground-breaking. I grew up in an abusive home that severely hindered my ability to believe in myself. In response, God put opportunities in my path so I’d be able to learn on my own, and discover I had something big to give this world.

It took me awhile to realize my life-pattern, once I grew into my own. That moment was at fourteen years old, when I found myself caught in the same moment for the hundredth time: my father, angry, advancing toward me. Only this time, I wasn’t trapped in the web - I stood up to face him, leaving my fear behind me on that couch. I didn’t yell, couldn’t have if I wanted to, all I did was stand. Just like that, I wasn’t caught anymore. That moment never happened to me again.

After that day I was left with an empty feeling, a hole I needed to fill with something unknown. I graduated from High School, and eager to leave that place behind, I just scraped by with passing grades. It wasn’t because I struggled in school, more that my grades matched my motivation. Out of high school I went straight into the workforce, and that is when my search for self-worth began.

 By age twenty-five, I had had over twenty different jobs. I would stay at a job long enough to prove I could be the best, then promptly lose interest and look for something else. Again, it took me way too long to realize that I was just looking for some sense of self-worth. It didn’t happen for me in the workforce, nor in the pile of demoralizing, damaging relationships I put myself through around the same time. However, I did oddly enough manage to learn confidence from those experiences. I needed that to help me make some of the most important decisions of my life. The first decision: that my faith was the most important thing to me, and I needed to transform my focus into a more eternal perspective. The second: to marry Emma. Done.

After getting married, I quickly realized the things that made me the most happy were the times I shared with her and our growing family. Slowly, a new hunger grew within me. A feeling that I really just might be meant for something, that I had something really big to offer this world. I started to dream again, to see what my life could be if I let myself become the person my Heavenly Father wants me to be. The person He already knows I am, if I could only be humble enough to let him show me how to do it.

The moment I started to make decisions based on my dreams, a lot of really interesting things started to happen. People were brought into my life who would show me a new way of caring for and providing for my family. It was something meaningful to me, something I believed could really change thousands of people’s lives, with service and self-improvement. So I got started. And a miracle happened: I really enjoyed the work. Impossible! How could this be! It provided unique opportunities to build close relationships with people; I started making connections and seeing the fruits of the work… however, there’s a but (and spoiler: the but is almost always me). I was very much an amateur, and as such I made a lot of mistakes. Things gradually got more difficult, and I slowly distanced myself from it, sinking back into my old routine of collecting more jobs. However, it seems Father wasn’t finished. Three years and four lay-offs later, it was clear He wouldn’t allow me to waste any more time. He already showed me what I needed to do… and after I searched him out for answers, he even told me what I needed to do. So it is time to go back to work. I have lives to bless, including but definitely not limited to my own family’s.

This time, I’ll do it his way though. That way, I cannot fail.

Choice

Not all stories begin well... Mine does though, so that's lucky.

I often describe my childhood with much pride and gratitude, but that wasn't always the case. My current view of the past I attribute to a lucky mixture of rapid emotional and spiritual maturing. The journey to get to this point of growth, the place where you can look back and see the moment your life changed, for better or worse, is something everybody can and should do. The person you’ll find you’ve become will almost always surprise you. The future is always a grey area, and I believe only faith can really control where we are headed. Otherwise, frankly, it’s more of a crap-shoot for most of us. I understand I have so much more to learn, and so much more growth to undergo, but that's kind of exciting. I have dreams. Since I drive this vessel of a body, I can be in charge of its direction… to some extent, at least. There is always the unknown. And isn’t that great? The unknown is probably the biggest reason people even try at all; what's the point of struggling, of fighting to achieve our dreams when we already know the outcome of that war?

Dreaming was never something I did a lot of growing up. Aside from the typical "I wish I could fly!" stuff, of course. Maybe it was a side effect of growing up in a somewhat abusive home. When you are told often as a child that you will amount to nothing, you start believing it. And so I simply survived. I think survival was the theme of my life's direction for a long time. From early self-awareness to a point in my early twenties, I simply existed. I worked only as hard as absolutely necessary to get by, never more. I squeezed in as much fun as I could (a universal must for young advancing humans), but never excelled or left any lasting mark. 

A spiritual awakening changed everything for me. Some of the building blocks of that awakening included making peace with my dying father, getting my heart broken once (or more), and problems with addiction.

I’m not sure what it is about pain and suffering that forces us to make that choice: To break free and leap beyond yourself, and become someone you didn’t know you could be. Or, alternatively, to sink to a new depth of lifelessness, a self-destruction previously thought impossible. Tough as it is, “choice” is the only word for it. I have seen it many times in my life already. Two separate people may go through many or all of the same trials in their separate lives; one becomes a vibrant, optimistic, happy person, while the other is a miserable wretch. In the wise words of my beautiful wife, “Happiness is a choice, not a right.” I think that that is absolutely true. So much of what and who we are comes down to daily choice. Everything else is noise, just distractions we can use to blame our state of mind (exempting, of course, the sick and afflicted.)

So that’s what I did. I made a choice. To stop believing the lies I was first told as a child, and then the same lies I continued telling myself. A simple one it might seem, but not for me. It opened doors for me I never knew existed!

That choice, that beginning is what led me to all of the amazing things in my life today.

The first step is choice. You always have agency, and you always will.

So choose.