Redefining Modern American Living

After several years of neglect and paying for hosting fees, I’ve decided to recommit and revive this website and my passions.

What’s changed you may ask?

My inner self was calling to me. But I wasn’t ready in 2019. I wasn’t fully present and honest with my inner self. I had not commited to myself to truly heal my past wounds, and give my younger self and current self, peace and love. Forgiveness for abandoning my inner voice and calling.

Alright let’s take a second. By now you’re probably very much wondering what woo woo shit I’ve been getting into. Let me get into the back story of what roused me into this whole journey and not the profound awakening I seem to be having, as without the view of the journey, you cannot experience the end result.

And maybe it is a little woo, a little fringe, because that’s how society definitely views alternative ways of medicine outside the mainstream, traditional, Doctor Patient way of our corporate run country. But I say to you this, who in this country is actually happy with the way their health, mentally, physically, and soulfully, is handled and sold off to a middle man (“insurance” companies) to be dispersed to the doctors? It’s high time our health care system is due for an overhaul, and I don’t even care if it’s universal health care or not, but the people’s health is not being valued properly. The system is not working. People need to take control of their own healthcare, and admit to themselves, that no one person is coming to save them, that person can only be yourself.

Awakenings Are Never A Single Moment

We bought our second home this past year. Our second home that needed a complete interior overhaul when we moved in. We did not hesistate one bit on getting started, as my wife tore right into ripping out the nasty, ripe, never changed since ’88, teal and burgundy carpets. Of course, this was the first night when we got our keys from our wonderful friends Chris and Sarah Rood at Compass Morgtage (Yes, that’s a plug). We worked ourselves to the bone over the next couple of months. Painted just about every wall, most ceilings. I tore into the master bathroom ripping it down to the studs and we began planning, prepping, hypothesizing, designing,. I’m still working on said bathroom months later. At least to start the new year, we at least had a functioning shower once again after operating out of the deep hunter green bathtub for months upon months, upon months. We’ve got a ton done in 3/4 of a year. Patience just comes easier the longer you’ve been on this Earth.

I started doing vinyasa (hot yoga for the unaware). I’ve never been a very spiritual, body-mind, or even religious person for that manner. I’d never even really let my mind entertain the idea. I started vinyasa to help my lower back issue that has plagued me as my 20’s turned into my 30’s. I’d spent the past year and a half with a fantastic PT doctor, getting back to square one and releasing my pinched nerve. I was getting close to back to normal but still having too much weakness and it was not getting much of a break with the new house. One session and I was definitely hooked. The heat is intense, but time sure goes by fast when you’re focusing so intently on the motions of your body. But I definitely did not understand the meditative, spiritual side of things. It was a good work out, and made my back feel better, but it was the connection to my body that had begun to resonate through me. It was a place my mind did not know where to go, let alone how to operate in that space.

“The trauma, the rupture, the pain of being alive, always will become an opportunity for learning, if you’re able to do it, if you’re able to see it that way. Certainly pain based mentality is quite difficult, to work that trick, it’s quite difficult to say to yourself ‘How can I learn from this experience?’

Russell Brand on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose Podcast

So with this new home, came a new commute for me, and I began listening to podcasts on my new commute to my route. Going from practically zero commute living in the middle of my route that I run, it gave me a bit more time to sit down and focus and actually listen. Tim Ferriss really called to me. He has a fantastic way of curiously interviewing someone, seemingly finding just the right question to further expand on their answer, often in just the right way to break it down in simple understandable terms for any person, especially a stupid uneducated tool guy like myself. His podcast is long running, and chock full of guests you’ve definitely heard of, to doctors you may not have, to scientists and hedge fund CEO’s, you name it. But things shine through, and Tim definitely has had a profound spiritual awakening in his audlt years it seems to me, and that seemed to speak to me. I think maybe the episode that really yanked my consicous mind back to front and center was his episode with Dr. Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins. Roland has recently been diagnosed with terminal stage 4 cancer, and this episode is centered on this, but you would never guess it from just listening. Roland talks about his own experiences of dealing with this end of life anxiety that many don’t ever talk about as they’re living through it. His willingness to be vulnerable in such an available, public space was almost a comforting blanket-bringing you into this conversation of such a spiritual, emotional magnitude. I highly encourage anyone and everyone to take the time to listen to this wonderful deep conversation, I’m fully aware of it’s lengthy nature but can almost promise there is plenty to be taken from it for everyone.

Awakening

The 10 year anniversary of beginning my Matco Tools franchise is coming up this year on October 1st. I took my normal two weeks off at the end of the year but with the awareness of this milestone in my life, these two weeks gave me a bit more time for reflection than my normal break would have. Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you, and it seems we have heard that our entire lives from every person older than us. But until you live through it, you really can’t appreciate the meaning of that simple sentence. I find myself discussing this a lot with my customers during my week. Whether they’ve been with me the entire 10 years, or came along right after I started (which all seems to run together for me now), whether they’re 10 years older or 3 years younger, 3 kids or 0 kids like me, it all keeps going faster and faster the older we get. Just taking the time to let this weigh on me and taking a moment to pause and reflect in it gave me some amazing perspective. I need to be more connected to myself, and everything around me, to really enjoy and get the most out of the life I’ve got.

I definitely remember being an above averagely interested reader as a kid into my young adult life. But I also remember being overwhelmed with balancing reading for school which was NOT pleasurable in my book (yes that’s an unintentional bad Dad joke, thanks Dad) to just reading for my own wants, curiousities and expolorations, for enjoyment. Well into my adult life, the enjoyment side of reading was all but gone, vanished, having disappeared into and under piles and piles of things to do, work to complete, people to see, schedules to keep, bills to pay. I bought a Kindle this year after my couple weeks off of work gave space for my reflection. I’m still getting used to it about a month in, and I’m still trying to find my balance of finding the space and time for reading. But man, does it feel good to be engaging my mind again, and definitely on a deeper level than just for the sake of reading. But just the feeling of reading. The feeling you get of your brain awakening as it analyzes the intake. I’ve only found it a couple times through my adult life. Reading Perfume in my 20’s mostly over another Christmas break, this one in Whistler with my family. It’s funny that this is the memory that comes to mind as I’m writing this, as I just had a couple old harddrives recovered to get access to all my old photography work, and in scrolling through the endless amounts of photos, I happened upoon some photos from that very trip. This was the last book I can really remembering finishing, maybe 2011. 12 years….

My awakening started to form a full awareness as I started leaning into my first book on my Kindle, what would be my next book that I finished after that last memory, How To Do The Work By Dr. Nicole LePera. This book centers on how so many of our emotional, snap reactions are likely traced back to our trauma as younger children and what emotional intelligence, skills or any other learnings we were shown, if any in many of our cases. She talks about our disconnect with our Self Conscious, and the way we weave through our lives so stuck in loop, in your subconscious patterns, or even conscious patterns. What really struck a chord while reading this was the connection of your subconscious thought patterns and the ways that your body and mind have always dealt with any threats it perceives. It’s like I’d been yanked right out of my skull to look at my thought processes from an outside perspective, a non judgemental perspective. I’d NEVER thought about the way my inner thought process talked, thought, and guided my moves. Maybe this was me growing up not being raised with much religion or spirituality, maybe it was just the fact that I’d been told by doctors since I was 5 or 6 years old that I was depressed. I just never had a real awareness of my subconscious and the story it’s been fed, and in turn fed to me. I felt alive with this newfound awareness of my control of my own thought, I felt empowered more than I have in my whole life to tackle the things I’ve long buried under stories and excuses from my subconscious to help keep me in it’s comfortable path of habit. I’ve learned to become a positive thinking person through my business, and reading this book is helping connect the dots so much more clearly. The things we tell ourselves and the way we look at the world affect us. Negativity is such a dark and cloudy path to walk, and being off of the negative energy after being on it most of my lifetime, it’s hard to see myself ever walking in it again, and it’s hard to watch others walk it. But it’s an emotional addiction. It’s a comfortable place for your mind if it’s been telling you all these years you are depressed, you are not worthy, you are not good enough, you are not loved. It’s so hard to understand, until you’ve come out the other side.

“Dedication and discipline beats brilliance and gifftedness every day of the week. And A-Players don’t get lucky. They make lucky.”

Robin Sharma, The 5AM Club

Staying Awake

Reflecting and writing this story really just helps me break this down into the steps that I went through to push me onto my healing path.

You too can “do the work” and get on the path. It’s there waiting for all of us. And while it may not look just like my path, it shouldn’t, because my path is my path, that only I can guide myself down. It is commital to yourself, to heal, to become the person you know deep down you can be, hiding back there behind all of those stories your subconscious has told you all these years. Over, and over, and over and over. Those paths are wide open. They’ve been paved over. They’re the freakin’ Autobahn by now. Tell your mind to be a little freeer and take the side roads you haven’t driven in a long, long, long time.

I’m beginning to find that I think my purpose here on this Earth has something to do with connecting with lots of people, and in what way exactly is yet to be discovered. I do know now, in my true core, that I’m a VERY outgoing person that connects well with many. So if this turns out to be just me spilling my guts to anyone and everyone, being vulnerable then so be it. I’ve never had a problem speaking mind, maybe much to my detriment in the past. No longer.

Gratitude

This 10 year anniversary of my business is really just making me so damn grateful for so much. My customers most of all of course, as there’s no way I’d last these 10 years without them, but the relationships I’ve formed are so much more valuable than any money they’ve spent with me. I told myself after my reflection at the end of the year, the word of the year this year is GRATITUDE. I’m grateful for all of that, but I’m most grateful for finally committing to myself to tackle my imperfections emotional reactions and general negative patterns.

I hope this helps SOMEONE. We all need reminders to just be a little bit kinder to ourselves, before we can ever hope to share that same kindness with someone else. Just remember, no one is coming to heal you, fix you, grow you. Only you have that power inside.