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Friday Reflection: Losses Reshape us for Gains
Weekly Show Reflection:
It is always surprising when you get a group of unsuspecting guests together and their life stories, their deepest passions, seem so disconnected from one another, but in reality, they represent just how tethered humans are. How similar the human experience is.
Once in a while, when I have guests who have similar interests, maybe it’s health and fitness or emotional well-being, I’ll run those shows in the same week. But generally, I air the episodes in the order I do the interviews and I wait, just like all of you, for Friday’s episode to come to see where the common denominator is between guests. To discover the common threads that binds these stories together.
Looking back over this past week, I am welling with emotion over the discoveries I’ve made. It doesn’t help that this morning when flipping through Facebook I saw a post from a woman who runs a group titled “I Hate Heroin” who informed her group that both of her sons had passed away the night before, both from heroin overdoses. And, it doesn’t help that an old friend, the kind you don’t see often but with whom you never skip a beat, posted that she realized this morning upon waking that it had been exactly thirty days since she’d last spoken to her father before he passed away. Max was one of those special, loving men who was a seriously cool cat. He was always ready with an anecdote and some humor. He was warm and unconditional, giving and dependable. He will be a legend in their family, he was just that kind of guy. I found myself in a dark room with Olive nuzzled under my chin crying for these strong women. I was overcome with the weight of their loss.
So it is with this heart-heavy perspective that I sat down to analyze our guests this week. And, at first glance, other than living their passion, a man who lost his son to gang violence, a man who has the number one singing program on YouTube, a woman who loves travel, and a mastermind guru don’t seem to have much in common. But they do. And, what I found goes much deeper than summarizing their passion in only a few words, much deeper than the fact that they are the type of people who are brave enough to live their passion.
The thread between this week’s guests is loss. They have gained, but in order to do so, they have first had to experience loss. For Monday’s guest Azim Khamisa it came in the form of murder, for Tuesday’s guest Aaron Anastasi it was in losing one’s self, for Wednesday’s guest Kylie Travers, it was brought about by domestic violence, and for Thursday’s Aaron Walker, it was in taking the life of another.
On Monday, Azim Khamisa gave us a devastating account of how his engaged, college-student son, Tyriq, lost his life in a senselessness gang initiation. He explained to us how his passion for teaching people how to forgive began. Azim, once an international investment banker, and now an author and speaker, dragged himself through his darkest days, and for the past twenty years has not only been running a non-profit organization in his son’s name to prevent kids from killing kids, he has joined forces with the grandfather of his son’s murderer to do so. He has even gone as far as to forgive the young boy, now man, who took his son’s life. And with that, they have plans for him to join the organization and the speaking duo when – or if – he is released from prison. At fourteen-years-old, he was given a 25 years to life-sentence.
Azim says in this interview that his greatest challenge was helping people to see that “there were victims on both sides of the gun.” An idea that he says was given to him by a higher power when his body went into shock at the news of his son’s passing. Azim experienced tremendous loss but with it came a passion that has since revealed his life purpose. He speaks to hundreds of thousands of children about violence. He has authored four books. He has created CDs and an interactive program on forgiveness. He has lost but he has gained. And he has helped hundreds of thousands of people in the process.
Tuesday’s Aaron Anastasi had a battle of his own, and for him it was internal. This is a guy who has a graduate degree from Princeton. Someone who studied psychology and philosophy. Someone has been coached and then became a coach. Personal-development is part of his passion. And, yet, he struggled with limiting beliefs that held him back. Beliefs that almost prevented him from achieving amazing success on having the most successful singing lesson program on YouTube – he has 10 million views. But Aaron, like most of us, struggled with imposter syndrome: “I’m a fraud. I’m a fake. Why would anyone want to work with me?”
To make this worse, his first time out he failed miserably. He had to battle the negative voices twice as hard to rebrand, refilm, redo, regroup. But he did. And here is one of the things I think is most miraculous about Aaron’s situation – the loss he experienced with the first business, the battling back harder the second time, the push to learn more about himself, where these negative voices were stemming from, and how to kick them the hell out is exactly what inspired him to write his book The Voice of Your Dreams that released the day his episode aired this week: April 12th! Just another perfect example of how our losses lead to our gains. It is not easy to lose, to battle, to see that something positive will come out of what we’re going through. But, time and time again, I am speaking with people who are proving this.
Wednesday we spoke with Kylie Travers from Australia. Kylie is in social media marketing, she is a blogger, and she is a single-mom who has been very vocal about escaping domestic violence. Kylie’s passion is travel, and she can give you a detailed description of exactly how she saw her life panning out when she was a child, which included traveling around the world with a husband and children. She was raised Mormon, though, and her life took a different path: she was married young, had children young, and discovered that her husband was abusive, and that he refused to travel. Kylie battled through bouts of depression and illness, issues with self-image and self-worth. She lost much of herself during these periods, and when she had the freedom to do what she loved, she didn’t have the funds.
Here in lies the beauty. Kylie is a doer. Kylie is a survivor. Kylie is creative. She managed to get herself a job that includes travel. So, with a strong support system, Kylie has been able to recover her dream and her person. She lost her marriage and the perfect family image she had envisioned her whole life, but the hard times have led her to times she could not have envisioned for herself: becoming a public speaker, becoming a voice for women, becoming someone who has the luxury of enjoying travel while working.
Thursday’s guest Aaron Walker – I mean, wow. Aaron is an extremely successful veteran entrepreneur who came on to teach us a Thursday lesson on the importance of mastermind groups, which he did, but something unexpected occurred for me during our conversation together. You see, in general, masterminds is a gathering of the minds. It’s a place where like-minded people come to better themselves, to solve problems for each other, to network, provide resources and find accountability. There is even much more to it than that. If you want to improve yourself in regards to the balance you are putting forward in life, this is a must listen to episode.
Here is the thing about Aaron: he is a dynamic. He is dynamic on all levels. His mastermind groups focus on being dynamic on all levels in order to live a balanced and fulfilled life. And he leads by example. There are so many things I can say here about Aaron, his episode, and the importance of his mastermind, specifically, but one thing that has really been resonating with me since our chat is his transparency. Being transparent helps build trust, he says. And, in that spirit, he shared a story with us about loss. About the loss of a life Aaron was responsible for. It was a pedestrian, 77-year-old Enrique, who Aaron accidently hit with his car.
This experience caused Aaron to go back into retirement, to move from his home – it took him five years to recover from. So while I thought we were going to speak only on masterminds, we also spoke on transparency, which lead to loss. Because, just like Aaron shared with us, there really is no compartmentalizing these different factions of our lives because they make up the collective whole. Aaron is currently impacting the lives of many men, encouraging them to be as dynamic as he: to be good men, good husbands and fathers, good entrepreneurs and people. Had Aaron not experienced this loss in his life, I wonder if he would have shifted his perspective on his own legacy, and in return, on the legacies of the men in his mastermind groups.
My guests have been leading me to a deeper discovery. And, one of my findings is the idea that there is a cost to living your passion. And that sometimes our passion is deeply rooted within us, and it doesn’t always emerge until our purpose here is revealed.
Some people believe that your passion is established when you’re a child. Some people don’t even believe in passion at all.
Here’s what I believe: I believe that your life process is the path you take to your life purpose. Your strengths and desires are derived from your passions. These two work in tandem. So your life process and your passions work in tandem. You consistently skip down this life process path picking up new skills and techniques, building upon your experiences, gaining life perspectives, gathering a network of people, learning lessons. And everything and everyone means something to you and your journey. All of them play a part in the revelation of your purpose. There is no rush to this, though. There are no wrong turns. And, patience is the key.
Look at how the life processes of this week’s guests prepared them for the purposes they are currently living. Azim says that he had always been spiritually connected in his life but never brought these ideals into the work place. He was in an international role where addressing people and organizing his business was familiar to him. He experienced the tragic death of his son, and he now runs a foundation and speaks publicly and uses the lessons he has learned in spirituality in his work place. Aaron studied psychology and philosophy, he has done acting and created films. He learned skills that enabled him to produce YouTube videos and to perform. He went to a coach, and he studied personal development in order to write a book from the perspective of a life coach on the very thing with which he had struggled: limiting beliefs.
Now, Kylie always loved writing and traveling, but part of her process was living through domestic violence, and poor self-image and self-confidence. Once she emerged from all of that, though, she was incredibly appreciative of her freedom. And she found a job that allows her travel. One where she can combine travel and writing. One where she can inspire other women. Finally, there is Aaron Walker. This guy has gone from 0-sixty his whole life: building businesses and selling them. I believe what he said on the show was that he had 35 years of business and 35 years of marriage to pull from to be a mentor. He had a traumatic event occur in his life that changed his direction. That steered his course from corporate to camaraderie from man-in-charge to mentor. One that he is emotionally fulfilled by in ways he hadn’t accomplished in business before. Sure does seem like that came at the right time in Aaron’s life.
To you, my fellow motivators, I believe there will be a turning point in your life where your purpose is revealed. And when it is, you will have the skills, the experiences, and the wisdom to pull from to be ready to take on this purpose. Your purpose will not reveal itself to you until you have these things. No matter what age this happens for you.
And, one person’s purpose is not more important than another’s, and the length of time we spend living that purpose is of no consequence. Many people live out their purpose without even knowing they are – and some are revealed in death.
My hope today was to raise your awareness. To help you see how loss is created to shape you. People, as a collective whole are this intricate puzzle. The roles of some appear bigger or more important than others, but they’re really not. And we are equally as important. I mean, what is the pitcher on a baseball team without a catcher? And if a batter’s swing carries a ball out into the outfield what if there is no outfielder to catch it? What if there are no umpires or refs? Coaches or stadiums? Concessions or mascots? Star Spangled Banner? Missing one of these pieces would alter the experience, would diminish it.
Maybe you are struggling with loss today. Maybe you are struggling with seeing your own significance. Maybe you don’t see a future for yourself. This week’s guests are here to tell you to hang in there. They’re here to say that, at some point, you will use these experiences. And, I’m here to tell you that you got this, that you will be a better, more intentional person because of it. And that you are not alone, because challenges and loss are a part of the process for all of us.
Call to Action:
The Motivational Go-Do!
Know that we are all the same.
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