Follow Your Different
A Call For Unity | Yesterday In Santa Cruz
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Monday June 8th, 2020
Yesterday in Santa Cruz, I cried at the vigil for Sargent Damon Gutzwiller, of the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s department.
He was shot to death on Saturday.
Yesterday in Santa Cruz, I paddled out for George Floyd.
With over 500 people (A paddle out is how surfers mourn).
There have been paddle outs for George Floyd all over the world. Yesterday in the Ocean of Santa Cruz, people of many races screamed “Black Lives Matter”.
Together.
Yesterday the people of Santa Cruz showed that you can stand against evil racism, and stand for good cops.
At the same time.
Because both are the same thing.
Both are stand against violence.
Both are stand against evil.
Yesterday in Santa Cruz, I cried for these two men. And so did countless others. Of virtually every race.
Of all the tears that were cried yesterday in Santa Cruz, every single last one of them, was colorless.
Now, I’d like to share a deeply personal story with you.
A story I have never shared before.
Last year, one of my best friends was brutally murdered, in Santa Cruz.
It will always be unbelievable and unbearable.
A walk-through fire I wish on no one. If you are ever in this situation, you’ll discover how badly you need the cops.
In the moments after I learned what happened,
I was over-come by a Mavericks sized wave of horrible emotions and a profound sense of helplessness.
Which is not a feeling I am used to.
Sometimes, life gives you no choice. You have to grapple with a soul-crushing reality.
You have to accept an absoluteness you cannot change. As this washed over me, I realized something.
I desperately need the cops.
Because, police have the authority and ability to solve heinous crimes in a way that no one else does.
In our case, the agency in charge was the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department. After 231 days, over 3,000 hours of work, by countless professionals, across multiple peacekeeping agencies, in multiple states, the Sheriff’s Department caught them.
The four evil men took my brother’s life.
Now, you should know, he was a “brown guy” (his words).
The four men who killed him are white.
Over the past months, I’ve had a front-row seat to a massive, complex murder investigation.
He’s what I learned.
There are legendary cops.
A lot of them.
The dedicated public servants at the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department, lead by Sheriff Jim Hart, worked tireless to bring this evil to justice.
We saw the sleepless nights the investigators endured.
They fought as hard as I have ever seen anyone fight.
We are forever grateful for the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department.
If I were to name all of the amazing people who worked this case, you’d stop reading this post.
What I’d like you to know is, they cried with us.
They comforted us.
They exhibited extraordinary kindness.
Above all, we got to see peacekeepers with an unending commitment to justice.
I share this with you, because I have experienced the positive power of policing.
I have seen women and men, of every race,
get up every day, put on a bulletproof vest and a badge to risk their lives.
To serve and protect us.
So, the time has come for all of us to demand justice for George Floyd.
To demand equality for African Americans and all people of color.
And to demand real police reform.
It is critical that we remember, that it is possible to demand justice for George Floyd, to demand reform and equality, and support the good cops.
At the same time. There are some in our country who would divide us.
Let us remember there is no us and them.
There is no difference between Black, White, Brown or Blue.
Because evil comes in all colors.
And tears are colorless.
Bless you.
165 The Gladiator Way w/ American Gladiator Dan “Nitro” Clark
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Today, we have a super fun episode with American Gladiator superstar Dan Nitro Clark. He’s a former NFL player, best selling author, speaker, fitness freak, and heart attack survivor. For a big, manly, strong, muscley looking dude with a reputation like his, you might be surprised to hear he is incredibly open, candid, and vulnerable.
We dig into his life as an athlete and a celebrity. He talks about what it’s like to be among some of the earliest athletes in America to take steroids and what he learned from that. We talked about coming back from major setbacks and a whole lot more!
Steroids Use
Dan shares he started using steroids back when he was a freshman College. He wanted to secure a football scholarship badly and he resorted to the “in” thing at that time. Back then, it was unregulated and the only information available about it is that the body recuperates faster.
“I think the fallacy in the misinformation is, anybody who takes steroids is going to get huge. No, you’re not going to get huge. You still got to wait. You got to move waves. It still takes in a tremendous amount of work and effort and diet. Man, you got to go be willing to die, every workout.” – Dan Nitro Clark
The Downside of Steroids
As a strong promoter of steroids use, Dan still warns of the responsibilities one must take before, while and after using steroids. Steroids make the blood clot more so there are indications with regard to medical operations and procedures. It also increases estrogen levels in the body which explains why some men grow “manboobs.”
“It puts you out on a fair playing field. So in that sense, I don’t know if there’s a lot of harm. I think the harm comes when you start to do monstrous levels. With anything excess, and there’s equally when you have low testosterone, there are increased cardiac incidences. All these other side effects, as well and both sides too much too little. The idea is to be in the optimum range.” – Dan Nitro Clark
Wearing The Meatsuit
In a rare moment, Dan shares his personal experiences growing up. Looking back, he shares what he experienced with his divorced parents, the untimely death of his older brother at 12 years old, and how he coped with life as a broken young man.
“I didn’t have anybody to console me. His death my mom was Japanese, she barely spoke the language. So, you know, I learned to take care of myself emotionally. I learned that big boys don’t cry. I learned you don’t talk about your feelings. I learned you sucked it up. I think that was the thing. Nobody can hurt me. Nobody is going to touch me. I think that was the whole idea Why? You know, I wanted to be bigger, stronger, faster. I wanted to have this meat suit on.” – Dan Nitro Clark
To hear more about Dan, the American Gladiator, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Dan is a former pro football player, American Gladiator, #1 Bestselling Author, TV Host, Entrepreneur, and Speaker.
He has been featured on Good Morning America, The Early Show, Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight, ESPN, EXTRA, People, Time Magazine, Esquire, Men’s Health, Sport’s Illustrated, and the Huffington Post to name a few.
If you’re looking for an extraordinary speaker on the topic of resilience and motivation, you just found him.
Dan is a thought-leader and storyteller with the rare capability to not only inspire your audience to change but also teach them how.
Links:
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
164 How to Build Billion-Dollar Startups | Osman Rashid founder Chegg & Convo.com
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Today, the second in a two-part series on entrepreneurship with none other than Osman Rishad, the founder of $8B, publicly-traded Chegg and now Convo.com. This is an inspiring conversation with a legendary entrepreneur about building billion-dollar startups.
This is an inspiring, timely conversation between Christopher Lochhead and Osman, as the former believes entrepreneurs are going to play an outsized role in carrying us forward in recovering from the situation we all find ourselves in, and most importantly, in designing a future that really works.
Fear of Being Irrelevant
Osman narrates to Christopher how some people are still asking why he is continuing to “fight” or spearhead more companies and projects. He shares that he has given this question a thought and realized a lot of things why he keeps on pushing forward.
“I felt that I wasn’t adding any value. Frankly, that’s when I realized maybe my number one fear in life is the fear of being irrelevant, that you have nothing to do. I actually love what I’m doing. I mean, I love building things. So it is not ‘work’ for me.” – Osman Rashid
He further shared that nothing will stop him from doing what he loves, because everything else fell into its righteous place, such as marriage and building a family.
Do Something of Value
Christopher points out how hustle porn stars sold us a false narrative that entrepreneurship should equate to airplanes and Lamborghinis. Both agreed that although there is nothing wrong with financial independence, there are other important goals that should be celebrated.
“I get happy when people around me get financial independence, economic freedom, as you said. But the goal is to build a great company. If you are doing something of value, then the financial outcome happens automatically. But if that’s your actual focus, I would say the failure rate is going to be even higher than that.” – Osman Rashid
Hallmark of Legendary Entrepreneurs
Believe it or not, both Christopher and Osman believes you have to be a special kind of stupid to become a legendary entrepreneur. Being stupid means small and ordinary issues do not weigh you down.
“At that time, I had no idea, I thought I was just being dumb about the whole thing. That’s the beauty of it because I never thought about being a legendary entrepreneur. I’m not even sure I’m one right now. There are some amazing people out there. It was all about ‘look, I’ve got this problem to solve for tomorrow. If I don’t solve this, I’m in deep doo-doo. So I’m going to solve this thing. The way I think of entrepreneurship, you have to be a little bit crazy in the head to go for it.” – Osman Rashid
Osman further advises to find a specific problem that bothers you and try to solve it and within those process, you become an entrepreneur.
To hear more about building a billion-dollar startup and for more information about Osman, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Osman Rashid is an executive and entrepreneur in the field of education technology.
Currently he is the founder and CEO of Galxyz, an intergalactic science adventure that he founded in late 2013.
Previously, he was co-founder and CEO of online textbook rental leader and student hub Chegg, remaining involved until early 2010 after dramatically growing the company from its inception in 2005.
He was also co-founder and CEO of Kno, Inc., (acquired by Intel in November 2013) a digital education platform company. Kno, Inc. has received funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Intel Capital, Goldman Sachs, FLOODGATE and GSV Capital, while Chegg was funded by KPCB, IVP, Gabriel Ventures and others.
Currently he is involved with ChildLife Foundation as a member of the Board of Trustees.
Osman Rashid was born in London and did his early schooling in Ghana and finished middle and high school from Islamabad, Pakistan.
He later moved to the United States where he received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from University of Minnesota in 1993.
Links:
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
163 How to build a breakthrough | Mike Maples, Jr. Floodgate Capital
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Today, the 1st in a two-part series on entrepreneurship, we have entrepreneur, Co-Founder of FloodGate and host of “Starting Greatness” Mike Maples, Jr. He recently wrote “How to build a breakthrough: the secret of back-casting” and we’re going to go deep on it today!
Watch out for our next episode, we’re having founder/CEOs Osman Rashid. He started $8B, publicly-traded Chegg and now Convo.com.
Status of Silicon Valley
Christopher and Mike starts their discussion about the state of Silicon Valley. Both agreed that most of Silicon Valley companies are the first adopters of sheltering in place and work from home arrangements. It has definitely benefitted some companies who have adjusted early on.
However, they also Mike also describes this coronavirus pandemic as a “hand of God” who “punished” some companies and catapulted some to success.
“I’ve never really seen a situation where you have a tale of two types of businesses. Most recessions, they affect some worse than others, but they affect everybody badly to some degree. Whereas what we’re seeing in this one is: it’s almost like a lot of things that were already starting to gather, got accelerated forward — telemedicine, remote distributed work, distance learning, remote work infrastructure. So you could make the case that this has had a dramatic impact in both directions ironically.” – Mike Maples Jr.
Moving Forward By Looking Backward
Mike recently created an interesting piece about moving forward by looking backward. He mentions that the future doesn’t happen to us. It happens because of us. He further explains why he wrote the piece and how it can help entrepreneurs plan their future.
“Great founders design the future. Design is the right word. It’s not just about drawings or how things look or even how they function or perform. It’s about people with a determined idea of what a better future should be. Not only building that better future, but convincing people in the present to change the trajectory, that they’re on.” – Mike Maples Jr.
Create A Movement To Move A Market
For Mike, entrepreneurs don’t discover markets. They create movements that become markets. They move people to their point of view and they move people from the present to a better future.
“I thought it might be useful to try to help entrepreneurs get some lessons that I’d received from some of the super performers that I’ve worked with on how do you build a breakthrough. I’ve spent a lot of time over the years trying to deconstruct what they do and how it’s different from what normal startups look like. That is why I wrote this post on backcasting.” – Mike Maples Jr.
To know more about how backcasting can help you design the future that you want and for more information about Mike, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Mike Maples, Jr is a Partner at Floodgate. He has been on the Forbes Midas List since 2010 and was also named one of “8 Rising Stars” by FORTUNE Magazine.
Before becoming a full-time investor, Mike was involved as a founder and operating executive at back-to-back startup IPOs, including Tivoli Systems (IPO TIVS, acquired by IBM) and Motive (IPO MOTV, acquired by Alcatel-Lucent.)
Some of Mike’s investments include Twitter, Twitch.tv, ngmoco, Weebly, Chegg, Bazaarvoice, Spiceworks, Okta, and Demandforce.
Mike is known for coining the term “Thunder Lizards,” which is a metaphor derived from Godzilla that describes the tiny number of truly exceptional companies that are wildly disruptive capitalist mutations. Mike likes to think of himself as a hunter of the “atomic eggs” that beget these companies.
Interests: Calligraphy, cinematography, and sporting clays.
Links:
How to build a breakthrough, Medium
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
162 Tangentially Speaking w/ Dr. Christopher Ryan Bestselling Author & Podcaster
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Today, we continue our run of legendary authors and podcasters with Dr. Christopher Ryan, author of New York Times bestsellers, Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What it Means for Modern Relationships and Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress. He has a chart-topping dialog podcast is called, Tangentially Speaking,
We have a fun, some times provocative discussion about everything from Muhammad Ali, what’s wrong with modernity, how the world is fundamentally changing, why living in a van is awesome, to what it’s like making a living as roving, smart person.
The Legendary Muhammad Ali
Christopher Ryan and Christopher Lochhead went into an insightful exchange of stories about Muhammad Ali. Chris shares during this lockdown, he discovered a YouTube channel that featured several classic fights and he enjoyed binge-watching on these.
Chris mentions Pete McCormick, the guy behind a documentary called “Facing Ali” and he interviewed guys who fought Ali. The interesting backstory was, during these tune-up fights, Ali would handpick his opponent.
“He would tell his agent, he heard one guy, his wife had been killed in an accident, so he will get a quarter-million dollars. He’s beating people up in a charitable, generous way.” – Christopher Ryan
Podcasting Has Been Instrumental
Lochhead describes Ryan as “an insanely smart Ph.D. dude who seems to make a living being a smart guy, writing smart shit, podcasting smart shit, generally being the smart guy in the world.” He says podcasting has been instrumental in getting his message across.
“It used to be, if you want to sit down and share your opinions to a hundred young smart people who are interested in hearing an old guy like me, you had a gig in the university. Universities are designed to filter out people like me or Joe Rogan or you, people who are liable to say something outlandish, to challenge this status quo.” – Christopher Ryan
He further shares that he is generally pessimistic about the modern world, but one of the wonderful things that happened recently is that podcasting exploded.
“It is almost like a printing press, it just exploded, the opportunity to have direct contact between someone in the audience and the audience chooses whether or not it’s worth listening to. It is not the administrators of the university or publishing house, you know the gatekeepers.” – Christopher Ryan
What It Is Like Living In A Van
Christopher says he owned an apartment for a while until last fall when he spent 5 months in the van. He ditched his apartment, rented a storage space, and continued living life on the road since then. He traveled across the United States during the summer and flew to tropical countries during the wintertime.
“When this stuff got weird, end of January, I flew back. I didn’t want to get stranded in Asia. I rented a house in a tiny little town in Colorado. I’ve been here, it is fantastic, there’s no problem with social distancing. I like solitude. I like a good solid chunk of quiet and distance.” – Christopher Ryan
To hear more about Christopher and what’s wrong with modernity and how the world is fundamentally changing, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Christopher and his work have been featured just about everywhere, including Netflix, HBO, MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, NPR, The New York Times, The Times of London, Playboy, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, and The Atlantic.
Chris has been a featured speaker at TED, SXSW, The Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Sydney Opera House, the Einstein Forum in Pottsdam, Germany, and is a frequent guest on The Joe Rogan Experience and many other podcasts.
He’s also provided expert testimony in a Canadian constitutional hearing and appeared in dozens of documentary films and television shows.
Even before co-authoring the New York Times best-seller, Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What it Means for Modern Relationships (translated into 18 languages), with Cacilda Jethá, MD,
Chris was on a wild ride.
After receiving a BA in English and American literature in 1984 he spent the next two decades traveling around the world, pausing in unexpected places to work at decidedly odd jobs (e.g., gutting salmon in Alaska, teaching English to prostitutes in Bangkok and self-defense to land-reform activists in Mexico, managing commercial real-estate in New York’s Diamond District, helping Spanish physicians translate and publish their research).
In his mid-30s, Chris decided to pursue doctoral studies in Psychology at Saybrook Graduate School, in San Francisco, CA, using his dissertation to critique mainstream views of human sexual evolution — providing the core arguments later advanced in Sex at Dawn.
Chris’s latest book, Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress (Simon & Schuster/Avid Reader Press, 2019), questions whether civilization has actually been a net benefit to our species. He hosts a weekly podcast, Tangentially Speaking, often recorded from the road, while traveling in his van, Scarlett Jovansson.
The podcast features conversations with famous comics, bank robbers, drug smugglers, porn stars, authors, and rattlesnake experts.
Links:
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
161 What IBM’s Experience In The Great Depression Teaches Today’s CEOs | Kevin Maney
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Today, we continue our run of legendary authors with Kevin Maney. He’s the world’s leading authority on IBM’s history. He shares some amazing insights into what IBM did during the 1930’s that ultimately positioned them for greatness. We also have a fascinating talk about what changes C19 might bring to the world and what that could mean for our businesses and careers.
Writing About Thomas Watson
Kevin is a multi-time best selling author of Unscaled and Play Bigger. He’s also a co-founder of Category Design Advisors, where he helps companies design and dominate their market categories. Today, Kevin shares how fortunate he was to be able to write a biography of Thomas Watson, the man behind IBM.
“I have been watching what’s happening and there’s all this economic damage and talk of a long term recession or depression everybody has to get through. Seeing companies laying off people, right and left and the jobless rate going through the roof and all these pain that is being caused made me think back to IBM in the 1930s during the Great Depression.” – Kevin Mahey
IBM and The Great Depression
Kevin narrates the amazing story of how IBM took the lead during a crisis. It was just a few years after the great depression. Instead of ceasing operations just like any other major corporations, he allocated funds to manufacturing and research and development.
“Imagine the tension, there’s no revenue coming in, spending all this money keeping these people, building machines and he is running out of time. Then this amazing event happened.” – Kevin Mahey
Then-President Roosevelt devised programs to assist companies wherein the government will be needing a lot of reports on salaries. IBM, being the only capable company to fulfill this demand then stepped into the picture. This made IBM as it is now and Thomas Watson, one of the greatest CEOs of all time.
Crisis As An Opportunity Rise
Kevin shares that similar to the Great Depression crisis, this current crisis could also be an opportunity to build something up, get ahead, and come out of even stronger.
“These kinds of moments in time can be seen as a tragedy but it can also be seen as an opportunity. If you can invest in the business, be wise and be careful, come out of the other end in a better position than you went in, and everybody else around you is devastated, I mean you’re in a great place.” – Kevin Mahey
To hear more about the inspiring story of Thomas Watson, IBM as told by Kevin Mahey, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Links:
Book: Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts Are Creating the Economy of the Future
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
160 Radical Business Transformation | Clint Carnell, CEO Hydrafacial
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Today, we have Clint Carnall, CEO of HydraFacial to share an extraordinary story of resilience, creativity, and action in a very short period of time. Clint’s company was one of the many companies that were amassing tens of millions of dollars in revenue, pre-pandemic. Now at zero revenues, they opted to go radically generous and thoughtfully aggressive.
This is a legendary and inspiring example of how an entrepreneurial team scaled to meet any challenge, even the greatest challenge frankly that any of us have faced in our lifetime.
The HydraFacial Ecosystem
HydraFacial, as Christopher described it “is a company that is a part medical procedure, part beauty spa-like experience.” Clint, on the other hand, describes their company as a company built on “partnership.” They are not a “or” company, rather an “and” company, considering hotels, spas, medical physicians as partners rather than competitors.
“Absolutely, no matter how good the painter they are, everybody needs a clean canvas. They think about HydraFacial like giving these physician med spas a clean canvas.” – Clint Carnell
Clint continues to describe how their company operates in an ecosystem of physicians and nurses and consumers spas, hotels, etc and how this business model helped them to drastically grow the business.
From Top-Tier to Zero Revenues
A few weeks ago, Clint’s company HydraFacial were on a growth tier, serving different regions worldwide. They were on their A-game until Covid-19 struck their business. Clint shares how he witnessed their markets in China, Japan, Taiwan, and the rest of the world shut down.
However, Clint shares why this is an exciting time to be creative and to brush it off and take off.
“I say it is a creative time. You know, it feels like an ambush. You are walking along and things are fine and then something hits you out of nowhere that you couldn’t expect. We are a little stunned. We have to brush ourselves off, were up and back, and ready to go.” – Clint Carnell
Finding Opportunities Amidst Crisis
Clint believes that good companies and executives, as well as creative entrepreneurs, have the capacity to make today as ‘creative times.’ CEOs all over the world have to make hard decisions, especially when you go from that kind of growth to almost zero revenue overnight.
“The things that made us good executing the way up were the same things that are serving us during these challenging times and so strategy, but more importantly, solid execution.” – Clint Carnell
To hear more about how a category queen company created three new lines of business in a matter of weeks after their core category collapsed to no fault of their own and for more information about Clint, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Clint was born in Anchorage Alaska but receives no royalties from the pipeline, thus he works for a living as our Chief Executive Officer.
He grew up in Washington State and chased a soccer ball well enough to attend Duke University on a scholarship where he received grades good enough to land jobs with the likes of Johnson & Johnson, Chiron, Gambro Healthcare and Bausch & Lomb.
He’s always been an entrepreneur starting in his early days when he would skip the school bus, buy jolly ranchers for a nickel and sell them for a quarter.
At thirty, he founded Charleston Renal Care, which was acquired by DaVita.
This gave him the ability to take a chance and join a VC backed company named Thermage, which went public, made acquisitions, and is now called Solta Medical.
In his very spare time, Clint and his wife are busy raising two kids in Park City, Utah. The family has lots of animals affectionately called “the farm”. His biggest fear is breaking all his bones trying to race his kids down the ski slope!
Links:
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
159 Life Design w/ Rhonda Smith
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Today, a magical, mystical bestselling author and podcaster, Rhonda Smith, is with us today. She’s got a new book out called The Whole Method and a soul-affirming podcast called Cosmic Smith.
She’s incredibly open about what she calls “radical fullness.” We talk about why it’s ok, that not everyone is going to like you and why we want to experience everything in life and so much more.
Radical Fullness
Rhonda has overcome becoming a self-described “meth head” to transform her life. has been amazed at what little clean living can do for the body. She described how in the past two and a half years, she was battling a mind-blowing, brutal depression with suicidal tendencies. She copes with the whole situation by what she described as “understanding the darkness of her soul.”
“I finally remember how to be me, and allowed it. Radical acceptance, radical fullness.” – Rhonda Smith
She further shares the void inside every person, which is the center of our force. The dark is the feminine, the light is the masculine.
“Within the dark, and that void, that discomfort, that deep blackness of our soul, in that quiet space, when we learn how to sit there, that is when creation happens, just like the womb. It was learning how to be in that void of myself and not have to do or change anything and just be able to sit with it.” – Rhonda Smith
Dealing With Suffering
Christopher asks Rhonda to elaborate on the suffering or that void inside each person. He further shares that we have no choice once suffering “comes for us. We can resist it but we have to go through the fire in one way or another.
“The way I can best describe is like the thing people run from, the thing that keeps us in distraction, the things that keep us constantly seeking.” – Rhonda Smith
Teaching People Compassion
One of the biggest things Rhonda shares in this conversation is that one can’t teach someone to become empathetic or to have compassion. It is something that has to be learned through experience. Christopher and Rhonda exchange their point of view on why humanity has deemed homelessness and hunger as “okay.”
To know more about Rhonda and her views on designing your life, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Rhonda Smith was born and raised in picturesque Northern California.
She spends most of her time between the San Francisco Bay area and the Sierra Nevada mountains with her majestic little wiener dog, Saylor Love.
Rhonda shares her message on stage, as well as through podcasting, coaching, and her work with sacred plant medicine. She uses all of these modalities to support people in remembering the truth about who they are.
Rhonda believes that only when we embrace the darkest parts of ourselves, do we learn the lessons that lead to remembering and living our deepest truth.
The greatest work of our lives is being willing to stand naked with all of our masks removed. The current state of our planet (living earth) and humanity is a catalyst to understand the way we’ve been living isn’t working!
This was the spark that ignited Rhonda’s mission.
Her newest company, “The Expanded Hueman” is set up to answer the question “What comes next after personal development?” It’s an invitation for us all to stop the madness of endlessly seeking outside ourselves. Her book, The Whole Method, is about remembering how to journey back into ourselves and once there, discover everything we need.
It’s when you realize that who you are on the inside doesn’t quite match up to the persona you’ve created on the outside – You’ve done well, people look up to you, but deep inside there’s a niggle that something’s not right…
Something is missing. You suspect there’s more for you to learn.
Links:
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
158 Turn Barriers Into Windows w/ Marine Akshay Nanavati
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Welcome to another amazing episode with Combat Veteran and US Marine Akshay Nanavati. He joined us at Episode 142, which was one of the top-rated episodes. Due to insistent public demand, he’s back. Akshay is a speaker, entrepreneur, ultra runner, non-profit founder, and best selling author.
Today, we specifically talk about dealing with life and moving forward in the face of fear and adversity. He of all people is powerfully equipped to empower those who are having a hard time dealing with C19. Listen carefully to Akshay’s ideas on how to change barriers with questions and more!
Solitude During C19
Akshay starts the conversation sharing about coins and medals with the iconic Marines raising a flag in the battle of Iwo Jima. He narrated how honored he is to be a part of the Marines who represents courage and valor in battles.
He further shares that he has been living in solitude prior to the Covid19 pandemic. He does some amazing activities to meditate and to practice stillness.
“I’m used to it and I don’t mind the solitude. I’ve trained in solitude in the sense like, I spent 7 days in pitch darkness, isolation, and silence, to confront my fear of stillness to master the experience of solitude but at the same time, as we briefly touch on I do have moments that I feel that sense of loss.” – Akshay Nanavati
Living in Paradox
Living in paradox, Akshay describes himself as someone who is social but likewise, enjoys his solitude. He shares how he cried himself to sleep while reading a book ISIS abducting a woman to become their sex slave.
“I read these intense books to remind me of the pain and suffering in the world and to stay focused on my mission. My solitude allows me to go into space that I would not be able to go to if somebody else was here.” – Akshay Nanavati
He further shares another activity that he does, which Christopher describes as an activity he wouldn’t do in a million years.
“When the world is intense, to me, that’s a time to dig deeper into it. I actually put a horrible death metal music. It’s not actually music, its noise, and I put on a strobe light. I meditate and practice stillness with it. It was very intense, but its a great practice to master stillness in the face of chaos.” – Akshay Nanavati
Overcoming Solitude in C19
A lot of people have actually improved communications with others during this crisis. A number of people utilized Zoom and social media to communicate with friends, family, and loved ones. Akshay shares that connection is important as humans are naturally tribal creatures.
“I think the problem is, what we’re doing right now, is the same as what we’re doing before, which is basically running away from pain, running away to having to confront ourselves and now we’re being forced into that world.” – Akshay Nanavati
To hear more about dealing with life and moving forward in the face of fear and adversity and to learn more about Akshay, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Akshay Nanavati (born October 15, 1984) is a United States Marine veteran, speaker, entrepreneur, ultra runner and author.
He served in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom and was later diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. His book Fearvana was endorsed by the Dalai Lama and Jack Canfield.
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