#Clockedin with Jordan Edwards
Are you feeling stuck in life, wanting to grow, improve your income, or build a stronger community? Join performance coach Jordan Edwards as he interviews world-class achievers—including the Founder of Reebok and the Co-Founder of Priceline—who share their success stories and actionable strategies. Each episode provides practical tips on how to boost your personal and professional growth, helping you implement changes that can make a real difference in your life.
This podcast is designed for anyone looking to make progress—whether you're aiming to improve your mindset, relationships, health, or income. Jordan distills the wisdom of top performers into easy-to-follow steps you can take immediately. Whether you're stuck in your career or personal life, you’ll find new ways to get unstuck and start moving forward with confidence.
How to get unstuck? It’s a question many face, and in each episode, you’ll hear stories of how successful individuals broke through barriers, found purpose, and created systems to overcome obstacles. From building resilience to developing a success mindset, you'll gain insights into how high achievers continue to evolve and grow.
Looking to improve your income? This podcast also dives into financial strategies, offering advice from entrepreneurs and business leaders who have built wealth, created multiple revenue streams, and mastered the art of financial growth. Learn how to increase your income, find opportunities for advancement, and create value in both your personal and professional life.
Jordan also emphasizes the importance of building community. You'll learn how to expand your network, foster meaningful connections, and create supportive environments that contribute to personal and professional success. From philanthropists to community leaders, guests share their experiences in building impactful, values-driven communities.
At the core of the podcast are the 5 Pillars of Edwards Consulting—Mental Health, Physical Health, Community Service/Philanthropy, Relationships, and Spirituality. Each episode integrates these elements, ensuring a holistic approach to self-improvement. Whether it's enhancing your mental and physical well-being, giving back to your community, or strengthening your relationships, you'll receive actionable advice that’s grounded in real-world success.
This podcast is for everyone—whether you're an entrepreneur, a professional looking to advance, or simply someone seeking personal growth. You’ll gain actionable steps from every conversation, whether it’s about increasing your productivity, improving your health, or finding more purpose in your life.
Jordan’s interviews are designed to be perspective-shifting, giving you the tools and inspiration to transform your life. From overcoming obstacles to building stronger habits, these episodes are packed with practical insights you can use today. Whether you're looking to grow in your career, improve your income, or enhance your personal life, you’ll find value in every conversation.
Join Jordan Edwards and a lineup of incredible guests for thought-provoking conversations that will inspire you to take action, improve your performance, and unlock your full potential. No matter where you are on your journey, this podcast will help you get unstuck, grow, and build a life filled with purpose and success.
#Clockedin with Jordan Edwards
#214 - Shawn Livingston: From Addiction to Redemption – A Journey of Transformation and Resilience
After battling addiction and emerging stronger, Shawn Livingston shares his incredible story of transformation and resilience. Join us as Shawn, a combat veteran and mental health advocate, recounts how running became his pathway to recovery and self-discipline. His journey from skepticism to starring in his own documentary, "100 Miles to Redemption," serves as a beacon of hope for many struggling with similar challenges. Through Shawn's candid discussion, discover how he found a renewed sense of identity and purpose beyond conventional therapy and support groups, highlighting the profound impact of fitness on mental well-being.
Shawn's journey is a testament to the power of confronting adversity head-on. He shares insights into building strength from past challenges and the value of stepping out of comfort zones. We explore the empowering role of early mornings in personal growth, where the quiet solitude of pre-dawn hours offers a mental edge and uninterrupted time for self-reflection. Through anecdotes of pushing physical limits in marathon running, Sean illustrates how the discipline of early rising contributes to greater productivity and a liberated mindset.
Discover how assembling a strong support system is crucial for lasting transformation. Jordan opens up about the origins of Edwards Consulting and the importance of mentors in providing unbiased guidance. The episode delves into the necessity of continuous learning and the courage to embrace vulnerability. From setting clear life goals to sharing his passion through his podcast "I Am Redemption," Shawn's journey is a reminder of the incredible changes possible when we take bold steps towards transformation and extend a helping hand to others.
To Learn More about Shawn Livingston Please go to: https://edwards.consulting/blog
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Email: Jordan@Edwards.Consulting
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Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanedwards5/
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Complimentary Edwards Consulting Session: https://calendly.com/jordan-555/intro-call
Hey, what's going on, guys? I got a special guest here today. We have Sean Livingston. He's a combat veteran, decorated ultra marathon runner, and he's a person who overcame drug addiction and he's a mental health advocate. In his documentary 100 Miles to Redemption, he inspires millions of families and provides hope through his own personal accounts with addiction recovery and healing through the power of fitness Now before. Own personal accounts with addiction recovery and healing through the power of fitness Now. Before we get started with Sean, I want to let you guys know me and my new wife, madison watched Sean's documentary. It's on Amazon Prime and we were blown away. They talk about the story and it's just such an incredible, incredible viewpoint of Sean's life. And, sean, how was it for you to even think about that experience? Because it's it's so bizarre to have a documentary on Amazon.
Speaker 2:Dude, it's uh, it's one of the most, it's one of the most bizarre, uh surreal things that's ever happened to me. I can remember, I can remember getting the phone call, um, and it was this director named Andrew Shabay and he started telling me this whole grand plan that he wanted to film this documentary. And I almost hung up on him. I thought it was one of my boys messing with me. You know, people like me don't get phone calls like that. But for it to have happened and, you know, be received in the way it has, and to get the amount of messages that I have over the years from it, from people that it's touched it, let me know why I did it for sure.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it. So, sean, let's get started. Where does the journey begin? Through being a veteran and then having this adversity through addiction? How was that for you?
Speaker 2:Um, so I come from Youngstown, ohio, it's northeast tip of Ohio. It was real big back in the day when the steel industry was thriving in the United States and once that went under, our whole area went under. There wasn't really much opportunity there once the steel mills were gone and so right after 9-11 happened, I joined the Air Force and so I shipped off to the Air Force and I was gone for years and I can remember before I left I didn't really see hard drugs until I had, like, gotten out of high school. You know I'd see coke and stuff like that, but nothing like crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, then I leave for a couple of years with the Air Force and when I come back, the entire area is just absolutely leveled from Oxycontin. Oh wow, entire area is just absolutely leveled from, uh, oxycontin, oh wow. So I was a, you know. Truth be told, I was a partier anyways. Um, never met, never met a drink or a drug I didn't like. And so when I came home I had to partake and people told me, like it's, it's gonna get a hold of you, it's gonna get a hold of you. And it did um within a quick amount of time. And so a couple attempts at trying to get clean. And I got clean enough that I knew I needed to make a decision and kind of get my life back on track. And so I joined the Army after my time with the Air Force and shipped to Texas. That's what got me living here in Texas.
Speaker 2:And then, as soon as I got in the Army, as soon as I got stationed at Fort Hood, we immediately started training getting ready to deploy to Iraq. And after being there a couple months and doing a bunch of training, at one point I had kind of injured my back. We were doing a we're doing drills, called three to five second rushes and basically you're simulating like you're in wartime, you're in full gear, you got your weapon with you and I I went down real fast and I came back up, and when I came back up I just felt this tweak in my back, didn't think anything of it, and the next morning I woke up, um, I couldn't even get up out of bed, I couldn't roll over, I couldn't sit up. I had herniated two discs in my, uh, in my lower back. It was pinching my sciatic nerve.
Speaker 2:Um, it was extreme pain, could barely walk and unfortunately, at that time I don't think the education was what it is now as far as opiates goes. And so their their remedy at the time was to hand me these really, really big bottles of opiates and hit me up with steroid injections and kind of send me on my way. And so that was the kind of re-ignition of the addiction allergy with me and it was just dumping fuel on the fire. And so, uh, you know, by the grace of god, I made it through deployment, without my own life being taken or, you know, somebody else's life being taken from, from my, my actions or my habits, due to being addicted to drugs. And then, uh, it would eventually see me getting kicked out of the military. And then, once I was out of the military, I was off and running with, uh, with the drug life oh my god, I can't even believe that, because to me it's so.
Speaker 1:The story is so beneficial to so many because you've recreated your own journey. Because, like you see Sean today, he's very gets up at 2 in the morning very straight at like doing the right things and it's like how did this happen? So you come back and where do you go on that like what? Like how do you even break out of the drug addiction? Like, because it's in the documentary. It talks about how you were just trying to get money from your mom and trying to do all of these different things.
Speaker 2:That was very challenging for everyone yeah, uh, getting money from mom didn't last long. That was that was. That was at the very beginning. She wised up pretty quick and so, man, it was just years of me bouncing around state to state just trying to figure out if I could change my location. That would change the problem. You know, eventually I would end up getting myself into a lot of trouble with the law. I caught two felonies for heroin possession. I had to go away for two years and then I got out and then immediately caught two more felonies for heroin possession.
Speaker 2:So I'll tell you that there was a time in my life where I ran around in the streets like I was a real bad tough guy. You know, I thought I was a bad dude, I had lived all over military service, everything. And I'll tell you, I stood in, stood in front of a judge and, uh, that judge looked me dead in the eyes and told me he was going to charge me as a habitual criminal and he didn't see any reason to sentence me to anything under the under 20 years. Um, that moment was when all the tough guy stuff went right out the window for me. Um, you know, I had already been there, I didn't want to go back, and so that was the kind of the desperation moment where I became willing to do anything I could to try to change my life.
Speaker 2:But at that time it was just a foregone conclusion I was going away, there wasn't anything I could do about it. And so I had spoke with the lawyer and he told me he could give me enough time where I could at least try to go to treatment and get cleaned up before I go, maybe at least get on speaking terms with my family, and so I did. Before I go, maybe at least get on speaking terms with my family, and so I did. Now, through my whole journey, I've been in treatment over 12 times. This last time at this treatment center that I went to. It was state funded, a very, very modest place. It's not like they were doing any earth shattering new studies or anything on addiction, but it was just pretty straightforward. But it was just the time of my life where I was just rock bottom, bottom of the barrel. I got no other options. And now I'm getting trying to get clean for me, as opposed to trying to get out of trouble or do it for family or anything like that.
Speaker 1:I think I don't mean to cut you off, but I think that's so important right there, doing it for you. It's not like these podcasts. Like it's. That's it for you. It's not like these podcasts. Like it's. That's it for everything. There's a time and a place where the message lands correctly with people and they're ready to make that change. So, whether that's this moment right now, or whether it's a moment five years down the line, it's so important to be receptive and open to these messages when they come. So important to be receptive and open to these messages when they come, because we're not always going to be in the best thought process. We always have a thousand things going on and it's so important for us to be there and be like I can make this change. So what was really different about this time?
Speaker 2:So what I'll tell you is you know, I'm an addict. I'm still an addict and as an addict I love throwing all my eggs in one basket. And so I'm getting out of the military. They diagnosed me with PTSD, depression, anxiety disorder, panic disorder, agoraphobia just a laundry list of ailments. And you know, their answer at that time was to hand me 15 bottles of pills and send me on my way. And so that's me really trying to address my mental health.
Speaker 2:I went to the group, went to therapy, I did all that, but at the end of the day, none of that stuff kept me sober. It didn't make me happy, a lot of it, in all honesty. The medication wise, felt like a bandaid. I'm not telling people not to take medication, I'm just saying for me it wasn't the answer. And so then, you know, in the recovery world, you start hearing about 12 steps.
Speaker 2:And you know your, you know spiritual health, and so I'd already tried to adjust my mental health. And so now I'm like all right, this is the key, I'm just going to adjust my spiritual health. And so I, you know, 90 meetings in 90 days, sponsor sponsees. I was doing it all and I kept having to do it over and over, because eventually I would always realize that I would trap myself in in like a recovery bubble where everything I talked about, everything I did, every event I went to, everything I spoke, was just recovery, recovery, recovery. And what nobody ever talked to me about or what I never knew to put any focus on was like getting back to living a life, um, find something that actually inspires me and makes me want to get up out of bed every morning.
Speaker 2:That makes me excited to be sober, makes me excited to be alive.
Speaker 1:Um, nobody talks about that, and so yeah, I think there's a component there where it's the planning versus the action and there's a lot of time where we need to plan and make the decision and where we want to go and reflect on that. But there's sometimes where you just got to get into action, to get moving and like those recovery meetings are very beneficial for people. But, like you're saying, there's a point where you can't just keep talking about the same thing. You got to go take action because they'll talk you right into an issue. Like it's funny, I went to I had this thing today where they had like a physical therapy person, where it was like an online one, and they're like oh, do you have any pain? Like I signed up because I was like I'm gonna get this free tablet, I'm gonna be able to maybe learn something. This person on the other side kept going hey, where's your back pain? Do you have back pain? Is there? Like I'm like, lady, you're not gonna get me to admit to ed. Like I don't have pain.
Speaker 1:You can do whatever you want, but I don't have pain. And then they're like oh, do you want to meet three to five times a week? I'm like, absolutely not. Like I just want to learn this skill. But you, if you go to a person who's looking for something like, if you go to a doctor who's a pharmacist, they'll give you drugs. If you're going to a surgeon, they'll give you drugs. If you're going to a surgeon, they'll give you a surgery. Like. You just got to realize who you're getting this advice and these opinions from, and make sure that your circle is big enough where you can see different perspectives on it.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And so the I just, I try to adjust my mental health, I try to adjust my spiritual health, and the only thing I hadn't done yet was try to adjust my physical health, because I didn't think they were connected. Yeah, so I can remember being in treatment. Um, at this time I was about eight months sober. I remember looking in the mirror and I absolutely hated who I saw. Um, I had a, I had a huge gut. I felt like crap. I looked like crap. Um, it didn't matter how sober I was, I hated myself. And so I find out about this little running group that met in downtown Austin at 5 am and I was like cool man, I want to try that. And so let me preface this. Like you saw the movie, I was never a runner growing up when.
Speaker 2:I remember the first time I heard people did something called cross country and I was like you, what? Like you, just go on, that's a thing. Yeah, I didn't know that If I was running without a basketball or a football in my hand I was in trouble for something. But never could I have imagined what running could have done for me or my life or my recovery or anything. But man, I started running and you know, pretty quickly. I remember my first run. I could barely finish two miles. I was still smoking a pack of Newports a day, lungs on fire, hated my life. I was still smoking a pack of Newports a day, lungs on fire, hated my life. But I got done and I just felt this sense of accomplishment that it had been so long since I had felt that and so I just wanted to feel that again. So I kept going back.
Speaker 1:I love that. Yeah, no, I had a very similar experience. My first marathon was in Lake Tahoe, and when you do it, it was back in 2019. And then 2021, I did the New York City Marathon with my brother and when you do these hard things and these challenging things, you start to realize that there's so much more for me out there. I can take on so much more. The body is ready for more, and there's a lot of us that just abuse the body. You can abuse it by running miles or you can abuse it by eating food, like. They're both abused, but one's going to help you live a little bit longer. And then it's also going to help that mental of like. When you look at someone and you're like, yo, I ran 20 miles today, what'd you do? And it's 5 am, you're like what, what do you mean? You ran 20 miles. 20 miles, that makes no sense, right? Um, yeah, no, it definitely gives you that edge. So I I love that yeah and dude it.
Speaker 2:Just I kept running, man and and it it ended up becoming some of the best mental health medication that I had ever found in my life. Um, a lot of the stuff that I was dealing with started subsiding. It didn't go away, but it got much more manageable. And then I just fell in with the right people and one friend in particular. Her name's Penny.
Speaker 2:Um, she, she changed my life and saved my life in many ways because she introduced me into trail running and ultra running and she saw something in me I didn't see in myself, and so she was the person actually trained me up for my first race. She trained me up for 10k and I can remember that night getting done with this 10k and I was feeling myself. I was like, look at me, drug addict, just did 10k. And uh, she, I remember she looked at me dead face and she was like, yeah, that was all right, you could do more. And I was like what do you mean? Like I'm looking for a pat on the back, I just did something here. And she's like you could do more.
Speaker 2:And so the next race I went out and I did a 30k and then she did it to me again. And then the next race, I went out and did a 50K and she did it to me again and then I did a 100K and it was right around that 100K mark. I did that my first year of sobriety and that's kind of where I took a look around and was like, wait a minute, like I think I've been introducing myself as Sean the alcoholic, sean the drug addict for so long that I began to think that that was my identity. Um, being out in the middle of summer in bandera, texas, on some rough terrain and running 100k your first year of sobriety, lets you know that you're capable of a lot more than you've been giving yourself credit for, and so that just lit that fire, man, and I just I never look back, and running has done some pretty incredible things in my world absolutely.
Speaker 1:And then it becomes now it's not sean the drug addict or sean the alcoholic, it's sean the runner, yeah, or ultra runner. You know what I mean. And you start to realize these identity shifts and I'm just sharing this for the audience that you might have the identity of a I'm a father or I'm a speaker, I'm a this or I'm a that. But you can change your identity at any moment, at any time, because there's so many of us that think we're stuck. We're never stuck. We have tons of options, we just choose not to use them all. So it's important to have that reframe and be open to those new opportunities of what you might become.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hands down. Couldn't agree more.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so for you. You, I mean 100K is unbelievable, like that's. I saw this and the thing that made me really like light up at the documentary was I'm like people train their entire lives and don't do races of 100 miles, especially through the trails and all this adversity. You abused your body for so long and you're still able to do this. So what does that make you think about the world and like what you think about it?
Speaker 2:that in regards to what's possible so much, so much, man it it helps me a lot with my message when I go speak and when I talk with uh, you know other addicts that I work with. They're alcoholics and trying to get them to understand that they're capable of the same thing. Um, I didn't grow up a runner, but so many of us are so beat down from you know all the bad things we did in our past and you know we let these things haunt us and and all that. And running man, in this very special way, just showed me that that's not the case. Um, it translated in a completely different way um it it something simple that we've been doing since small children. Somehow later in life, absolutely transformed my story, my experience, my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that Because it shows us that our past is not equal our future Right. It shows us that we can create whatever life we want. And usually we're running away from pain instead of going towards pleasure. But sometimes that pleasure can be a little painful, but it's good to go after that because you can change your life at any moment. It's just really being open to that opportunity. And you mentioned earlier when we were pre-talking about waking up early. So, like, was that 5 am run for the first time? Was that intimidating? Were you like, why would I wake up at 5 am? Like these guys got to be crazy, oh yeah of course.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't know people operated that early. You know, it had been a long time since I got out of the military. I didn't realize civilians were out there running around like this. But man, once you get in that world, I don't know. I love the feeling of knowing what I'm able to get accomplished before the sun comes up or, honestly, before most people are even out of bed. I'm able to accomplish quite a bit. They probably accomplish a lot more after I go to bed nice and early, but I don't know, man, I just enjoy that. It's when I'm most focused in the morning and it's when I'm most motivated, for sure.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. So what caused you to start waking up early and kind of getting into that routine and like what is that? Today? Because I was blown away when I heard this. I was like I don't think people know.
Speaker 2:So it'll be a funny reason. I want to go back real quick to something you said earlier about being able to, like, change your story at any time. My story amongst addicts isn't any. You know, if I was in a room full of addicts right now and I tell my story, it's not really going to raise any eyebrows, um, to people that aren't in the addiction world than it does.
Speaker 2:And so once my story kind of started getting out there a little bit amongst the running community, um, the Austin marathon approached me and asked me to do an interview, and in that interview they ended up asking me the most important question I think I've ever been asked, and they'd asked me if I could go back and talk to my younger self. What would I tell them to change? So maybe none of this stuff had happened. And I sat there and immediately my brain starts going crazy. You know there's so many things I could tell my younger self, but the more I thought about it, I came to the conclusion like I'm very sorry for especially my family or anybody that I heard along the way, but now where I'm at in life, like I completely understand that I had to go through every single thing that I've been through to be who I am today and I wouldn't change that for anybody. So I wouldn't change a thing about my story or my past, because I know it's made me who I am.
Speaker 1:No, I absolutely love that, because people want to sit here and we've become a society where it's comfort is preferred. What's the fastest line? How do we deal? Remove as much adversity as possible, and half the time it's like, dude, go into the fire, like let's get some adversity, like yeah, I'm sorry, like we're not taking the car, we're gonna run two miles to the bakery and we're gonna run back and you're like why would you run four miles to the bakery? And we're gonna run back and you're like why would you run four miles? Can't you drive? Yeah, but like get the body moving. So I completely hear what you're saying where adversity is, and like for me it was more forced adversity. You went through adversity, through so many different things. But it's important to build that muscle because it is a muscle where we can overcome a lot of these challenges.
Speaker 2:Right, get. Getting back to your other question, it ties in with that too. Why do I wake up so early? So it's kind of twofold. The. The deeper answer I would say is is when I started running, um, I ended up becoming pretty good at it pretty quick. So I won a marathon, I started placing consistently in these ultra marathons and, I'll be honest, I used to get a big kick out of running against some of these people because they're elite runners, elite ultra runners, and they've been doing this their entire life and I was shooting dope for most of mine. And here I've been doing a year, year and a half, and I'm looking around and it's like man, I'm beating these people and so I always. I enjoyed that and the reason I think is because I think as a.
Speaker 2:I think as an addict man I'm, I've become very comfortable being uncomfortable. I'm willing I think addicts are willing to take it to a level that a lot of regular people aren't, and so I think it definitely played in my favor. And so just having that edge of knowing that I wake up earlier than anybody else, I'm not running miles before anybody else, it was a mental edge for me. But then the funny part of this is I discovered early I was running in downtown Austin one morning and it was about 4.30 in the morning and all of a sudden I have to use the bathroom. But Starbucks is about the earliest thing to open up, but it doesn't open till five, and I got 30 minutes and so I'm either going to have to dip down an alley or something, and so I'm like panicking.
Speaker 2:And so luckily I had made it just as Starbucks open and everything was good. But I vowed that day I'm never leaving my house in the morning before a run without having used the bathroom before. So that just always became my routine of if I'm meeting people to run at five, I have to get up enough time that I'm going to have my coffee, do whatever I got to do, and then I'm out. And so it's just continued to be that, and I just really grew to love the early morning like that. I don't know I'm firing on all cylinders as soon as I wake up.
Speaker 1:I completely agree. I think the morning is one of the most undervalued things. So earlier this year I actually me and my wife now we lived in a weird it is so weird, it's so weird, I'm trying to get used to it, but it's weird not moved. But we went to Europe for seven weeks and when we went there the funny thing was she was still working US hours and so was I kind of, so it's six or seven hours ahead. So we would have these mornings from like eight to two and just explore, have the day, do whatever. You're not getting messages, you're not getting anything. And then we'd go to bed at six, which was like midnight their time, and you just kind of like move on, go to the next day. And I was like this is so awesome, like how cool is it to have more of the day and enjoy that experience? So I completely get where you're coming from, because if you're up at two and you're doing all of this stuff, no one's going to contact you till like six, right, and like you just have so much time to do your own thing. And the funny thing is that people don't realize is that if you get up in the morning, people are like oh, traffic's always awful, blah, blah, blah blah. And it's not true, Like if you go 15 minutes before your usual time it's probably exponentially better. I'm not saying there's no traffic, but if you just do everything a little bit earlier.
Speaker 1:We've got a routine now where we literally will work out 5.30 or 5.45 to 6.45, and then we'll go and the food store opens at 7 am. We'll just go to the food store right afterwards. You're like food store. Why are you going to the food? Because if you go on Sunday at 4pm it's going to be slammed, but if you go at 7am you're done in 10 minutes and all the new items are there and you're like I can't beat this, like this can't be bad, no-transcript. And that usually entails early morning or a little bit later in the evening, because you start to realize how much time is wasted and we sit there and like go, I'm so busy. It's never us being busy, it's us not being intentional about the actions. So for you you also mentioned something about having some mentors.
Speaker 1:How have mentors played a part in your life in overcoming that?
Speaker 2:Huge. The only other thing that I would put more focus on, besides having a mentor, is just the people that you choose to allow to be around you your team of people, your friends, the people that you choose to allow to be around you, your team of people, your friends. My stepfather used to tell me all the time show me your friends and I'll show you who you are. And I let it go in one ear and out the other and I look back.
Speaker 2:I'm 41 years old and I look back at my 41 years of life and whatever the people I was hanging around, I was doing whatever they were doing, and so now my life is filled with surrounding people around that are way better than me or way smarter than me, because they make me elevate my game. What were you going to say?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's where Edwards Consulting, the whole concept, came from, because it was 2019 and I was doing one-on-one coaching and then I started to realize this group concept in 2020. And I realized that if you can have a group of like-minded people looking to win, you're like wait, what do you mean win? You're looking for people who are motivated. Then you can have a better surrounding and better conversations. And I'm like okay, I can do this at least once or twice a week where now I'm having good fueling conversations that are much better than just shooting it with someone, where you're like oh, sean, like how's the weather today? It's like who cares about the weather? Like I make my own weather, like yeah, um.
Speaker 2:But then as far as the mentors go like I use an analogy a lot of time with the people I work with and I tell them identify your super bowl.
Speaker 2:You have to what the most important thing in your world is, um, and then talk about the team of people you assemble around you and the importance of that.
Speaker 2:And we all know what it's like to be in a locker room or a group or a class where you have that one bad apple that ruins the whole bunch. And then the next thing is you better have a good coach if you want to go on a Super Bowl. And so it's just about having those people that have been where you've been, they've been through it, you trust where they are, you trust their word and everything like that. And so, just having those people around me because, you know, just because I'm seven years sober, life isn't always perfect. It still comes at me and I still make stupid decisions, I still say stupid things, and so being able to have those people that are a little bit deeper in the game than I am, that I can bounce some stuff off of that, uh, they care about me enough to let me know when I'm, when I'm messing up yeah, I think the value there of having someone give you an unbiased opinion that's not in the deal, that doesn't care, and they're just like.
Speaker 1:I'm just here for your best interest and I think that's a good idea, or I think that's a bad idea, right?
Speaker 2:you want to make sure that everyone's yeah and, and I think you know there everybody wants to be an expert nowadays and stuff like that, and so I think if somebody doesn't have a mentor, if you don't have a coach, you might want to take a look at your ego, because you know in my field, if you want to get into the gym or you want to talk about recovery or running or any of that stuff, you know, I know I know my shit and I excuse my language. I don't know if you swear on here. I know my stuff and uh, but I'll be the first one to admit I still learn every day, and so I need somebody that knows more than me so I can learn from them. Um, the day I think I got it all figured out is a is a dangerous day for me 100.
Speaker 1:And the other big thing to realize is that you, when you're looking for a coach or looking for someone to help you or looking for anything, we are all different skill sets in many different things, right? So, like, let's say, my running ability, I'm at like a four or five. We got Sean over here who's probably at like a nine. Can Sean help me with running? Yes, maybe the podcast you know what I mean it can be. You can have any iteration of anything where everyone you're around has different skill sets than you, right so? And they might have done the reps more than somebody else. So, regardless of what it is, you can learn from everybody. Oh my god, how can the ceo learn from the janitor? Everybody can learn everyone.
Speaker 1:So it's that real understanding of, like, whatever conversation you go into, hey, am I going to provide value here or am I going to receive value? How do I think about value and what can I do to help people? Because the more value you give, the more receptive other people will be to be like oh wait, no, I really like that guy. That guy's really cool and it's that opening and realizing that, because there's so many people who are like pay me right now for my advice and it's like I don't know. But then there are times where that's a good, that's a good idea too, like if someone's really good at something, like and they're too busy, like, go offer them a high hourly rate and they will probably say yes right, yeah, couldn't agree no I think it's really important that it doesn't have to be this formalized coach.
Speaker 1:Sometimes the formalized coach is good, definitely better than no coach, but I think there are ways to have friends and different people to spit ball on, and it's important to think about that, absolutely, absolutely. So. For you, how do you think about when you look at people Cause I know you're working in the gym, I know you're working through adversity, I know you're working with addiction how do people really make that instant change? Cause I feel like there's so many people sitting there they might not be addicted, they might not be struggling like that, but like they they're definitely. Their life is not at where they want it to be. So, like what is the action step to make that full change? Like what? What are the question maybe they could ask themselves, or what could they do to make that change?
Speaker 2:so it's perfect. You said this because it goes right back to what I say about identifying your super bowl, right? And so my last time in treatment I'm sitting there, the mindset I'm going away to do 20 years. And you saw in the documentary in my story at one point I had kept a folder of all the work I had done the whole time I was in treatment. The whole time I was at the VA, every AA meeting I went to, every note I took. I just just kept this folder.
Speaker 2:I'm not an organized person. I have no idea why I kept this folder. Um, I have to believe it's something greater than me looking out for me. But, uh, so I keep this folder, take it to the lawyer and he opens it up and he's just like wow, like I never expected this out of you, like you've given me something really here to work with, and so whatever you're doing, I need you to keep doing it. And so I was on fire after that. Like that was that first glimmer of hope that I needed. My fault, I apologize, I forgot your question.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're good. I was saying four people who are doing uh, looking to make change, yeah.
Speaker 2:Identifying your Superbowl. So at that moment in my life, when I got that glimmer of hope, the most important thing in my world was two things Is this going to help me stay out of prison? Is this going to help me stay sober? Those were the two most important things in my world. And so a lot of the people I talk with I'll bring up the Super Bowl thing and identify your Super Bowl, and there's a lot of people, let's say they're in a treatment center or they're trying to lose weight or something like that, and they'll give me the answer they think they're supposed to and they'll be like well, I want to get sober. Well, is that really your Super Bowl, or are you just here because you want to get out of trouble with your wife or get out of trouble with your job, like what is truly your Super Bowl? And so anybody that's listening to this. If you wake up, you know, wake up tomorrow. And if you know truly in your heart, my Superbowl is that I want to lose weight or I want to improve my mental health or something like that. Right, every single decision I came across period, I asked myself those two questions Is this going to help me stay sober, and is this going to help me stay out of prison? And so that went for everything that went for the people that I kept around me, that went for the food that I put in my body. There were so many mornings when the alarm would go off and it was raining outside or it was too hot, too cold, whatever. Everything in my body is telling me to hit the snooze button. And so I would sit there and I'd have to ask myself is me hitting the snooze button right now? Is that going to help me stay out of prison? Is that? I've been hitting the snooze button my entire life and it never kept me from getting locked up and it never kept me from staying sober. So now I knew I needed to get up and go run those miles, and so I'd asked myself this for everything. And so then I started hanging around better people. Then I started paying more attention in groups, like I literally asked myself this for everything, and I asked myself so much it just became a working part of my mind. And so again for that person listening to this, and they've identified their Superbowl and they want to lose weight, you can wake up tomorrow morning and you can realize that you're taking the first step towards changing your life, or you can wake up tomorrow morning and realize that you're just sitting in the same shit that you've been in, and so if you identify that Superbowl and it's truly the most important thing to you in the world that's all the motivation you're going to need to start making those next steps. And then it's just being willing to get outside of your comfort zone and, you know, feel like you look silly or whatever the thing is that's keeping you from doing. It is what you need to be doing.
Speaker 2:You know, if we're talking about the gym, I work with people every day and I'll tell you, what kept me out of the gym for years was the fact that I didn't want to go in there and feel like I looked stupid. I didn't want people to realize I didn't know what I was doing, and so a couple of different things had to happen for me. You know I had. I got my heart broke. All these different things, and that's what gave me that last nudge. I needed to get into the gym until I figured it out. Heartbreak and shame could be a major motivator, and heartbreak and shame could be a major motivator, and so I went in there and I checked out every book I could in the library. I watched every YouTube video of a person that I could find that I trusted, and I taught myself and I learned. But that was the most important thing in the world was doing some of these things, and so people have it in them. You just have to want it bad enough.
Speaker 1:I. I think that's incredible how it becomes what is the most important thing, what is the Super Bowl? And no matter what is going on, we are going to constantly adjust that question for, like, is this activity helping me towards the Super Bowl, yes, no? If it's a no, then maybe we adjust, we figure out different ways to make it work, because you can't do the thinking for somebody else, you have to do the thinking for yourself and you have to figure out how to make these things work. So I think that is amazing because it makes it so simple.
Speaker 1:Like you sit down, what is the goal? Where are we going? And it's not so much I'm bad at where I'm at, I don't feel good. No, we're taking progress and it's going to be little steps and we're going to get there, but we're not going to, we're not going to pout about it, we're not going to hold ourselves back. So, for you, what do you think? Cause I mean, the biggest thing for you is that you, you, you're authentic with who you are and you share your vulnerability. And why do you think vulnerability is so important? Because there's so many of us who are like I'm stoic, I make no errors, and you hear these things and then sometimes you see vulnerability and you're like you want people, like people actually really connect with that yeah, I uh sorry about that.
Speaker 2:Good, I didn't. Um, I can remember the first thing when they did the documentary, the first thing they did was film the trailer. And so, you know, documentaries they don't make. You know they're not blockbusters, they don't make a ton of money or anything like that. Usually it's just a passionate director that wants to invest his own money in a story that he identifies with, and so that's what this was. And so they filmed the trailer and then they brought it back and they invited like 150 to 200 people to a venue in Austin and they were going to unveil the trailer.
Speaker 2:And so at this time, a lot of people in the running world knew who I was. They knew me as this ultra runner on these crazy trail races, and my story was out there a little bit, but not a lot. And so I can remember the lights going off and they put this trailer up and within three minutes, every person in that room heard that I was a four-time felon, kicked out of the military, heroin addict, that was homeless, that family didn't talk to him, that went to prison. And then, all of a sudden, the lights come back on and the only feeling I can wait to describe it. It was like mom pushed me out the front door to school on my first day, naked it. It was like mom pushed me out the front door to school on my first day, naked. It just felt like everybody could see me and at first I can remember looking out at all these people and I'm like, oh my God, what are they going to think of me? They're going to think less of me. They're going to think I'm a mess up. They're going to think all these different things. And I spoke for a little bit and when I was done, that entire room stood up and basically converged on me and every single person in that room started telling me how their brother, sister, uncle, mother's cousin had alcohol, drugs, mental health, sexual trauma, abuse, violence, everything. And a light bulb went off for me and I was like, wait a minute, like I did not know a world existed where I could take all of this pain and all this stuff that I could been through and never use it to help people. But all I did was stand up here and they just heard all my stuff that I thought they were going to judge me for and now, all of a sudden, they're able to come up off all their stuff.
Speaker 2:And one thing about addicts or alcoholics we're used to sitting in rooms and talking, being open about our problems, but most people aren't, and so sometimes it takes somebody like me to come up off my stuff and talk about my things, for somebody to be willing to come up off of theirs, and then I watched the effect that it has on them. I watched them cry. I get these messages of people that my stories touched or help them open up and stuff like that, and so that right there, um, that was enough for me to understand, and so that's always my goal whenever I go speak or work with people is to get them to understand. Like you have a, you have a life experience that I don't. I have a life experience that you don't.
Speaker 2:We've all been through different things, but I don't care what anybody says. We're all recovering from something. We've all been through some stuff, right, and so you know if, if you look at it, you've seen the movie eight mile. Yeah, of course I call it the eight mile effect. And so what does eminem do at the end? He gets up there for the last battle and he spits everything that you're gonna say at him, and then the dude just stands there and has nothing to say, and so that's what happened.
Speaker 2:For me, it it was like everybody knows my stuff, now they can't use it against me and in this weird way, people almost look up to me for all these things, these bad things that had happened. You know what I mean Just because I'm willing to talk about them, and so it gives it a whole new value. When you're able to take this experience you have and use it to help people, you suddenly become pretty proud as opposed to pretty ashamed, because the things that I was most ashamed of in this world are now the things that I'm most proud of to stand in front of hundreds of people and talk about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And it comes down to the fact that it humanizes us. We want to look around and watch Sean run his race and you want to sit there and go. He's a superhuman, it makes no sense. But you're like no, we're all human and we all have errors and we all face adversity and we all go through these different things. A lot of us want to hide it, a lot of us don't want to be authentic and face it, but when we are, it opens up so much more because it's even more powerful, because you've already have the finish line of, like what success looks like to you now.
Speaker 1:So, working backwards, it's like I went through all of that and accomplished this. Why can't you accomplish this Like? And it's that realization that we can change whatever moment. We we're not who we are. We can change at any moment and anything's possible. And, sean, I really appreciate you taking the time because this is huge for everyone that listens. And then also, you guys have to have to watch a hundred miles to redemption. It's on Amazon prime. It's so easy to watch. It's literally just type in a hundred miles to redemption and it really, really does make a profound difference. Like I said, me and Madison watched it and we were both tearing up, because it was one of these moments where the directors crushed it, your family crushed it, you crushed it Like it is so profound and it's so powerful and I think everyone should really watch it. So, sean, where can people learn more about you or where can they interact with you, or what's the best way to go about that?
Speaker 2:so on social media, for sure, um, I do a podcast as well. It's called I am redemption. Um, that's where I do most of my uh communications and stuff like that. So it's just I am redemption on any uh any social media platform or youtube. Um, but yeah, just hit, hit am redemption on any uh any social media platform or YouTube. Um, but yeah, just hit, hit me up on social media. And I have people that reach out to me every day. Um, if you know somebody that's struggling, I work with some of the best facilities in this country. You know, try to get them plugged in with help. But this is what I do and, in all honesty, this is what keeps me good is being able to use my experience to help others. So if you or you know somebody that's struggling like that, please don't hesitate to reach out to me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Amazing. I really appreciate the time.
Speaker 2:Thank you, brother, it was an honor.
