Whether you're in the health and wellness space or coaching or any of those kind of things where you are trying to find high caliber, high successful, highly competent, big influencer silver ducks, I can promise you that whether it's a real estate deal or a coaching client or anything else that you're trying to find, that there's going to be way less silver ducks in that tank that you're fishing for than there are yellow ones. There's a lot of these, right? There's a lot of the yellow ones. There's a couple of the silver. And what I know is, there's so much talk and I get this and I I've been a part of this talk where you look at like the pond that you're fishing in, you know, whether it's social media or just the world and you start to question: "are there even any silver ducks left swimming around? Like are they even there? Are they still out there? Are they still in existence? Are they still swimming? Are they still there?" And the the answer is yes, they're still there. It very well could be that they're harder to find. It very well may be that there are some yellow ducks and purple ducks and blue ducks and red ducks that are buried on top of those silver ones. And the only way that you will ever know if you can get one of these silver ducks is if you pick up a lot of blue ones and yellow ones and purple ones in the process.

Today is opening day in baseball. As you probably know, I'm a huge Cubs fan. Today I wanted to share a story of something I experienced as a kid and a lesson to take from it about how much ability we all have to completely change someone else's day. If you enjoyed this podcast episode, share it with a friend.

One of my best friends in the whole planet, Drew Epperson talks about the fact that healthy things grow and growing things change. And it’s, I think, flawed to assume that just because someone changes the way that they think, that someone changes what they believe in or what they no longer believe in, is all of a sudden some assumption that something terrible and catastrophic must have happened. That there must be a lot of built up pain and hurt and anger and all of these things. And sometimes that is the case and sometimes it’s not. And I think I’ve been on both ends of that spectrum.

If you let yourself, you can get incredibly overwhelmed with all of the things that are happening in our life surrounding us that are not in our control. Like, I could be the best driver, the best certified driver on the planet with a Tesla that drives itself and is a rated for safety. And a semi-truck could still blow a red light and plow into me. Like there's a lot of things that I can do that are in my control. And even in those situations, there are a lot of things outside of my control that I have nothing to do with in terms of like what, what the stock market did yesterday or who we're gonna be at war with next, or who the next president's gonna be, right? There are so many things and it would be very, very easy to get lost in our head space of negativity focusing so much on all the craziness that is going on in the world that just makes it seem like the things that we do every day don't matter. But they do. There are very, very few things in life that we are in control of.

The reason why people feel stuck is because of overthinking. Picture yourself in the middle of a forest and there's no sun out. You can't tell which way east is, which way west is. There's no north star. You don't have a clue where you are. You don't know anything. This is woods you've never been in before. You are deep in the heart of it. You are in the heart of the woods and you don't know where you're going and you find yourself stuck. And the problem that I think a lot of people have is we sit there and we overanalyze and make ourselves incredibly freaked out about the fact that we are stuck. And the more we think about it, the more stuck we feel and the more overwhelmed we feel. And pretty soon we are setting up camp right there in that place and trying to analyze what the best solution is. When honestly, sometimes you just gotta make a decision and go for it fully, knowing that it may lead to a roadblock, it may lead to a detour. That is what life is. Life is a series of detours like growth and never happens in your life. Growth never happens in your business and your relationships up until the right. It just doesn't. There are dips and there are turns and there are detours and there are mistakes and there are things that you navigate. And there's just a lot of that we gotta deal with in our life in order to reach the ultimate goal that we have.  Thanks for listening to Chasing Better!

The reason why people feel stuck is because of overthinking. Picture yourself in the middle of a forest and there's no sun out. You can't tell which way east is, which way west is. There's no north star. You don't have a clue where you are. You don't know anything. This is woods you've never been in before. You are deep in the heart of it. You are in the heart of the woods and you don't know where you're going and you find yourself stuck. And the problem that I think a lot of people have is we sit there and we overanalyze and make ourselves incredibly freaked out about the fact that we are stuck. And the more we think about it, the more stuck we feel and the more overwhelmed we feel. And pretty soon we are setting up camp right there in that place and trying to analyze what the best solution is. When honestly, sometimes you just gotta make a decision and go for it fully, knowing that it may lead to a roadblock, it may lead to a detour. That is what life is. Life is a series of detours like growth and never happens in your life. Growth never happens in your business and your relationships up until the right. It just doesn't. There are dips and there are turns and there are detours and there are mistakes and there are things that you navigate. And there's just a lot of that we gotta deal with in our life in order to reach the ultimate goal that we have.

I think there's a lot of people today that are very on edge and, it's challenging. It's a challenging time to be alive. And if there's one thing that I truly have dedicated a lot of this next half of my life to, it's being happy and helping other people to be the same. And I fully understand and know that happiness changes with time. What you want changes with time, who you are can change with time. And that's certainly been the case with me. And I truly believe that the vast majority of people in the world today, if they really had to sit down and ask themselves, are you happy? There would not be like an emphatic yes. If somebody asks you, are you happy? And the answer isn't hell yes, then you're probably not happy, at least in the sense of what life is supposed to be, because it truly is such a unique gift, right? The ability to be alive doesn't mean that we don't have tension. That doesn't mean that we don't have challenge and difficulty. If there's one thing that I know, and this might be the most anti motivational thing you're ever gonna hear today, but it's that none of us hearing this, and I mean none of us make it out of this alive. None of us. And you could feel incredibly defeated by that or incredibly encouraged to say, this is the one chance I have and I'm gonna do what I want to do and be who I want to be in order to live the most out of this life.

This is the first podcast of the New Year, 2023! Most podcasts this time of year are going to all about resolutions and of course that is an important topic but I want to talk about something slightly different, and that is actually how a little extra weight can help you as you go into 2023. In a new year, when a calendar starts there's a push to be better. And as a health and wellness and personal life coach I endorse that and I'm all about bettering yourself. However, there can be alot of pressure to push yourself too hard at times like these, and that's why alot of people don't stick to those new years resolutions because they aren't really focused on something for the long game. We talk about weight as something you should lose.  But here's something you should gain as we head into the new year. Not all weight and tension is bad. It can actually be a good thing this time of year. It serves a purpose. There are seasons where we need to carry some more weight, tension and stress. It would probably feel great if it was all gone, and there are seasons like that. I just want to encourage you, if you feel some extra tension right now. It is moving you forward and you are absolutely capable of tackling it! 

In this episode I wanted to talk about regret. There's alot of people today that have alot of regret and I've noticed this in my own life as well. Regret tends to be centered solely on decisions we have made, things we have done, relationships we've been in, mistakes we have made, areas that we have fallen short, words that we have said that we shouldn't have, things we have done that we wish we could take back. And now we live with the weight of the consequence of whatever decision it was that we made and we live in deep regret of that. Part of the human experience is making mistakes and doing stupid things. We get so paralyzed by it because we don't want to fail. But what if you're getting ready to walk into the most amazing season of your life? I hope this gives you something to think about whenever you hear this. And please do share this episode with a friend if it resonates with you at all!  Thanks for listening to Chasing Better!

Being someone that has lived through an immense amount of trauma, therapy has been immensely helpful. I truly believe that every human being should probably be in counseling. Life is Immensely complicated. Holding onto everything is immensely harmful. We all need someone we can be 100 Percent raw with. I salute everyone involved in helping with the mental health crisis in our world. Counseling and therapy is for everyone though, not just those that have mental health challenges.