How To Give Up Who You've Become To Be Who You are

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This is the Beyond the Story podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now, Sebastian Rusk So today we're going to get vulnerable.

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Is that cool? Let's do it. All right. Healing's messy. It's not an easy process. It's not a fun process. but not you guys, you're here for a reason this morning. It shows where your priorities are at. I got a question I wanna ask you that I was asked some 12 years ago and it immediately stopped me in my tracks and put me in action. And that question is, who's missing out? Because you're not showing up. That could be your family, that could be your friends, that could be you. Are you missing out because you're not showing up? So I wanna set the tone down for the next few minutes to help us really get tuned in to receive whatever it is that we're here to receive. It just takes one thing for us to leave differently. Just one thing. Someone said, Sebastian, who's missing out? Cause you're not showing up. That one thing put me in action. So for just a couple minutes, we're just gonna close our eyes real quick. Now I know this is church. We're not gonna, I'm not gonna preach, but I just want us to close our eyes What are you here for? Nope. It's the first one. Sorry. It's all good. It's all good. We're getting there. Third time's a charm. Here we go. All right. Yeah, man. Whoa. You can't have fun with it. You're really like, you know, we're getting serious.

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I promise. You see, you put a comedian up here, getting everybody serious. It doesn't work out.

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So as we close our eyes in the next couple of minutes here, we're just going to ask ourselves a couple of questions. The So if we take just one thing from today, tomorrow, What's possible? Such a powerful question to ask ourselves. What's possible?

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What story do we have to stop living in to be able to step into the story that we were designed for? That's the real question here. Because the story runs the show. More importantly, what role? Who do we have to become to step into the person that we know we were designed to be? It's a personal conversation. It's a one-on-one. It's a one-player game.

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This life thing. And we're really going through some stuff and we're trying to figure out what's next. What do we really want?

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What am I here for? What are we doing? Are we just going through the Are we going to do something with So I want to challenge your heart and your mind this morning that over the next few minutes as I get the opportunity to share my story with you and hopefully leave you different than how you walked into this room. If you can just take one thing, I beg you to take one thing from today, tomorrow, and get out there and do something with it. It's our responsibility. Thanks for that. I hope we've been able to kind of reset the room real quick here so that everybody's in a receiving mode, because that's what we're here to do. I'm here to give, and I hope you're here to receive. It's okay to be a taker in this room this morning. I want you to take whatever you want to take from me and all the incredible speakers we've got for today and tomorrow and do something with it. But I want to challenge you with a question real quick. Are you willing to give up who you've become to be who you are? One more time, that sounds like a riddle sometimes. So I'm gonna give it to you one more time. Are you willing to give up who you've become to be who you are? Now, what's the story that you've been telling yourself so far? Because that's life. It's just a big story. Most of it's made up in our mind. It's not even true. And then we take it a step further Not only do we tell a story that's not true, but we start believing it. And then we take it a step further from there. And we started rolling other people into that story as if it was true. And we live our lives accordingly.

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Friends, I'm here to tell you today, we live in a world where I'll sell you my bullshit and you sell me yours. We'll call it a deal. I don't know about you, but we got one shot at this thing called life. One shot. And I'm not going to waste it. My biggest fear is going through life and God not showing up mightily on my behalf and allowing me to take massive action with what he gave me. It took me a long time to figure that out. And today I'm gonna unpack that story with you and help you understand where it started and how we ended up and how we're just getting started. That's the best part about it. It's always a good time to make a decision to choose you. It is. You see, my story started as far back as I could possibly remember, maybe five or six years old. I was hyper. I liked to talk. I never shut up. I couldn't sit still. And it was an ongoing failed effort at behavior modification. Sebastian, sit down. Sebastian, be quiet. Sebastian, move your desk to the front of the classroom. Sebastian, don't do that. If you talk too much and if you do this, there'll be consequences. I was on the back end of the generation where it was still okay to hit your kids. I think some kids should still be hit these days, but that's another talk. But if I talked and I got on a line and I got in trouble in school, all there was was a belt. There was no explanation. I had no voice. I was coming out of a generation that had no voice. You spoke, you were able to speak when spoken to. I never had a voice. They just wanted to tame me. My first brush of trauma was around the age of seven or eight years old. My parents split. My mom came home and she said, I'm out of here. Thank God she only went around the corner. She rented a condo literally around the corner. She didn't get too far. God bless her. And my sister and I stayed with my dad. And a few months later, after my dad had been able to accept the fact that my mom had left and he got divorced, he met somebody else six months later. And he married her almost immediately. And she stepped into the picture and she said, I'm your stepmother. You'll listen to me. You'll respect me. You'll obey me, yada, yada, yada. And I'm thinking, no, I won't. She couldn't have kids. She was a school teacher. God bless her. She tried to tempt him, but it was the wrong approach. My mom didn't hang, my sister didn't hang too long living with my dad in his new addition. And he invited her to go live with my mom shortly thereafter. And I'm like, Lucky, why are you leaving me here? And I got stuck in this situation where what are you going to do? I'm a nine-year-old kid.

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My dad got remarried. I got some lady telling me what to do and how to do it. And this is a very uncomfortable situation to be in. But what are you going to do at nine years old? So every summer I would go to Boy Scout camp and church camp. It was an escape for me. I would go away, and lots of us have been to camp as young people, and it was a great experience, great memories. And this year was no different, but we were on our way to camp, and I thought the route looks a little different here. And these were the days before GPSs and smartphones.

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look right. We pulled into this facility, and I see this sign, and it says, University Behavioral Center.

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And I was like, these clowns are lost. Maybe they need directions. They're talking about themselves. And we pull into the entranceway of this. And I'll never forget it. My dad gets out of the car, and he walks around to my side, and he kneels down. And he says, hey, bud, we're going to leave you here for a little while.

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And then I walk in there and it's a full-blown medical situation. They put you in a gown, they're poking, they're prodding. There's people going crazy.

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I gotta go to some group meeting. They're taking blood from me. They're like, what is wrong with him? It was a repeat of the ongoing cycle of what's wrong with him. There wasn't anything wrong. I just wanted to be seen. I wanted to be heard. And I wanted to be accepted for 100% of who I was, but that wasn't available.

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I spent 45 days in that hospital poking and prodding, trying to figure out What was wrong with me? And there were some individuals in there that really were up against himself. My parents split. I didn't like my stepmother. That was the only problem that I really had.

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And the worst part is that my dad never communicated that to my mom. So my sister was living in Europe at the time and called my mom and said, hey, did you know that dad dropped Sebastian off at this facility? And my mom goes, he did what? My dad said, you'll never go live with your mother ever. This is where you live, and that's the way it's going to be. I said, gee, thanks, Pop. I eventually moved to an outpatient where we would go home, and I would go to this facility during the day. And I was five hours into this outpatient thing, and I was right back in it with the stepmother, just right back in that cycle. I don't know what it was, but some people just have your number. And she had mine, and took extreme joy in making sure that every area of my life there was a fault found. And one day my dad just said, maybe you should go live with your mother. And I said, hallelujah, praise the Lord, and I left her a message on her answering machine with a tape. She wasn't there. She called me back an hour later. I go, Mom, did you get my message?

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She goes, I did. I'm on my way. She was in Miami. She probably made it from Miami to Orlando in two and a half hours, rolled in with a fresh pair of Jordans and a Nintendo game.

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And I got in her car and she looked at me and she said, Sebastian, today is the first day of the rest of your life. I said, you're damn right it is, Susie. Let's get the hell out of here. And I grew up in Miami. It wasn't easy. I was out of my cage. I was finally free again, or so I thought. I went from one extreme to the other. My mother just loved me and accepted me for who I am, still does to this day, my biggest fan. She gave me everything, not only giving me life, but gave me everything that I needed as a young child. She saw me. She heard me. She enabled me, made excuses for me, all the other things that can happen with parenting sometimes, but nobody's perfect. I ended up barely making it out of high school. And I thought I barely made it out of school when it was free. I'm not going to college. I'm going to find my own way. And I did, I had a kid at 20 years old. I don't recommend that game plan.

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Don't go to school, have a kid at 20. And I had a child with a woman that did not want a child. She said, I don't want to do this. In fact, I'm not doing this. I'm like, in fact, we are doing it because we were both there that night. So, or day or whatever. And so we did. She got pregnant. I took a job in Chicago. My life immediately started to change because it was in a downward spiral. I found out that little girl was coming. I said, this is no longer about me. She needs to eat. She needs diapers and she needs her daddy. So it's time to hang the cleats up, close the window, Peter Pan, and get this child raised. So we had a good run in Chicago for about a year. She took care of the baby. We moved to Southern California. The wheels just started to fall off. and to raise a child, and to go through conflict, and to grow with each other. It's just not available. So she bailed and said, you wanted her, you raise her. I said, not a problem. Go play. And she did. I'm proud to say my daughter's 22 years old. She graduates from college this April with a degree in psychology from Grand Canyon University. So we did it, baby. We did it. Check plus on having a kid.

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She, of course she, she, All those things were unfortunate in my childhood. My dad, my understanding, and I created a lot of anger and resentment. I was mad at this man. I hated my stepmother and I continued to blame them.

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I carried this shit with me for 35 years. I just carried the same baggage and the same story and it became heavier and heavier and heavier until I just couldn't take it anymore. And in 2016, it was a breaking point in my life. I kept telling myself, Sebastian, we've done well so far. We've been able to pull ourselves from a very, very dark place, but there's more here because you're still angry. You're still resentful and you're still carrying that weight. So early 2016, I decided I wanted a girlfriend. So I hopped on a dating app, and I sure as hell found a girlfriend, all right? March 1, 2016, I met her for a beer, and she said, I'm in this personal development course right now that's really changed my life. And I go, oh, tell me about the world of personal development. I mean, Tony Robbins, two times, walked on fire, the landmark for him. Honey, I am personal development, no one Because when we're getting called to a higher purpose, our first defense is resistance, right? Whoa, this ain't familiar. I don't know about this. Her job was to get me through those doors. And I'm so grateful for beating her and getting through the door. She broke up with me in the middle of that. I don't know if you've ever been to a personal development course, but it's messy. And to throw a breakup into the middle of all that, it got real messy. But we got stretched to a place that I didn't think was possible. But on the other side of that, I came out of that loving myself. I came out of that healing my past. I came out of that fully accountable for my life, realizing that every single thing that happens in my life is my fault. I made the phone call immediately. My dad was on the top of my list. I picked up the phone. I said, dad, I got my power back. And I just want you to know that I love you and that you did the best you possibly could. I discovered that through that course because as I shared this story, I was still upset and it was clear that I was upset and I was holding a lot. And the instructor said to me, Sebastian, the day that you were born, your dad held you in his hands and he never said one day, I'm going to leave this boy. No, he said, I'm going to love this boy with everything I have and I'm going I was able to forgive my dad through that process, my stepmother, and I was able to let it go. I also shared with him, for 35 years, I've been carrying this.

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For 35 years, I've been blaming you. For 35 years, I've been pointing the finger at you. And I choose to step into a different space, a space of forgiveness, a space of love. Forgiveness isn't about the other person. Forgiveness is about us and being able to set ourselves free. And if we want to take it a step further and get even more forgiveness is waiving the right to ever bring it up again. You don't know what they did to me. I completely understand and I probably don't. moved to Southern California shortly after the stint in Chicago, wheels fell off the bus with the baby mama. And I just decided to raise my daughter. But I moved there for a sales job and they would guarantee I was going to make my first hundred grand. I thought this guy was off his rocker. I finished the year at 103,000, went to the Caribbean on salesman of the year. And I came back and I quit. And people were like, what? in Southern California. I said, listen, dog, let me break it down for you real quick. All right. I sold a million dollars this year. I took home about a hundred grand. Those numbers will never work for me. I'm out of here. And I became an entrepreneur. I also discovered that the freedom of becoming an entrepreneur would help me raise my daughter, too. I asked my boss one day if I could go pick my daughter up from daycare because she wasn't feeling so well. And he looked me dead in the eye and he said, we all got kids. Figure it out. I'm going to figure it out because I'm not going to be here anymore. You better give me a notice.

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Notice I won't be here in the morning. And I never looked back. I got a little taste of freedom. And I got a little taste of success. I was doing great living in Newport Beach, California, making a ton of money with an ego the size of this room.

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You couldn't tell me nothing. Make Kanye look humble. But the good Lord has a way of humbling you. I came back from my bed. There was no anything. There was nobody to sell anything to. Newport Beach is a very expensive place to be when you go broke. So I came back home in March of 2008 for my best friend's wedding. And I said, it's just time to come home. Cars And I had a friend that I grew up with and said, what do you need to get back here? I said, well, some cash and a place to He said, here's a check for five grand and the keys to my condo. Get back here.

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We'll figure it out. And I went back in 2008, 2010, I was a complete degenerate. I did nothing all day. I drank bum beer and watched Maury Povich. It was fun some days. But And in 2008, 2010, I had an awakening moment. I woke up one day and I said, I need to go see Tony Robbins. I'm gonna go awaken the giant within. So I called my friend Whitney, who was working for Tony at the time, and she filled me in on the details for the upcoming UPW in Long Beach, California. I had no money, no car, no anything, but I had the details of the event. I'm gonna get there. She calls me back an hour later. She goes, Sebastian, I totally forgot that I wanted to introduce you to my best friend who lives on Miami Beach. changed.

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We were sitting on Ocean Drive at Friday's, because I had six bucks to my name. I had originally scheduled it for Smith and Walensky's, and a buddy was like, how much money do you have? And I'm like, 70 bucks.

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He goes, if she has more than two glasses of wine and she's hungry, you're going to be doing dishes. You got to go to Friday's. So we diverted the meeting to Friday's. And we're sitting there on a Friday afternoon, and she looks at me, and she says, hey, Sebastian, what's next? And I said, I don't know. And she And these are my offended days. So I'm like, who is this to tell me what I'm doing?

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I caught myself midway. She's somebody who works with one of the best communicators to ever walk this planet ever as part of this core team and crushes her job at that. Zip it up, buddy. Open ears, closed mouth. And I said, so what do you mean? That's And she said, who's missing out? Because you're not showing up. Holy A lot of people. I think I can figure out whatever's next for me to make an impact on a lot of people. That Monday I had what would become my first company's logo, Social Buzz TV, and I started running around town. and a bow tie. And I started evangelizing that I was starting the biggest, baddest social media company on the planet. I was going to educate you. We're going to help you out with your social media. I'll come speak at your event. I'll speak anywhere. You name it. Your backyard on a soapbox, a rotary meeting, a chamber. There was two people there and a microphone. Heck, we didn't even need a microphone. A year later, I would meet a guy by the name of Gary Vaynerchuk, 2011. Nobody knew who Gary was. A lot of people know who Gary is now. And this guy would forever alter the path that I was on. He became a friend and a mentor, and he really turned me on to what's possible with building a personal brand in addition to a business brand. He said, Sebastian, your personal brand in perpetuity is your reputation. They're going to buy from your company, but they buy from you in reality. They're buying the company's service, but they're buying from you. I never forgot that. So as I continued, my journey of figuring this all out. I eventually got a scooter, and then I got a car, and then we started to unpack all this. And I'm like, cool, we've built something from nothing. We've turned the ship around. We've started to heal. But there's something off still. You're still kind of a dick. You're still angry. And we need to figure this out. And that's when I met the girl in 2016. And I went through a program called Gratitude Training, which unfortunately is no longer where when I got out of that, I said, OK, cool. I hate the work I'm doing with what I've built with Social Buzz, but I don't want to leave the space. I've written a book. I've been able to establish myself as a speaker. I've been able to do something here. How can I stay in this space and not leave? And I ran into a friend at a co-working space shortly thereafter, and she said, hey, can you help me start a podcast? And I thought, I sure can. consistent with it, but I knew the logistics with it. And she said, I'll never forget, she poked me in the chest. She was kind of cute, so I didn't mind her poking me in the chest. And she goes, you should create a course to help people start a podcast. I said, well, the thing about courses is that people buy them, and then they don't do anything with them, and then I feel bad about it for some reason. So I don't want to go the course route, but I do have an idea for a done with you, done for you solution. I went back upstairs to my little rented desk solution to help marketers, entrepreneurs, and business owners go from idea to iTunes in 90 days or less with our proven podcast launch solution.

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I had no idea what I was doing. And I had everyone that was close to me telling me, nobody wants a podcast. What is a podcast? You're wasting your time. You spend all this time building social buzz. What are you doing? Nobody wants it.

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And I just knew absolute certainty that this was the next move for me. Just like I knew that I needed to shift to become a better person. I knew that this was going to become my life's work. I knew that I would put on this planet to help people step into a different version of themselves because they made a conscious decision to start a podcast. The podcast is the catalyst. You get to become because you stepped into a podcast because you got to understand our inner critic is no joke. It's on autopilot.

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on autopilot, which is kind of terrifying. So we've got to control what not only goes out, but what's coming in to that story. And I just knew this was the next move. So for the next few years, I started to phase out the work I was doing with Social Buzz, closed Social Buzz in 2018, late 2018. And I said, I set a non-negotiable for myself. you know, still struggling for the most part. So I'm going to struggle. I'm going to do it in the lane that I know I can, that I feel certain in.

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Somebody told me a long time ago, Sebastian, money is a direct result of doing what you love. And I thought, I don't even know what that means, but it sounds awesome. Now I know what it means. Here we are some seven years later. I'm not only doing my life's work, but I get the opportunity to see people step into a different version of themselves. I'm able to utilize and leverage what I've been able to learn in a very short time.

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And we're just getting started here on this healing journey, but I'm able to help them step into that. You got to realize people's number one fear, public speaking in front of a microphone on the stage. It doesn't know what number two is. Riddle me that one. But I ask the same question. I don't want to sound like crap, look like crap. I don't know if I could ever do that. I would never get up and speak in front of a crowd. How do you do that? You tell jokes in front of strangers? I just do it. That's it.

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Whatever happens is what happens. What does it mean? Whatever you want it to mean. But I know that if I don't show up and over deliver, I got the power, people continue to tell me that. I was in that course in 2016, we had to define who we were in a few words. It was like three or four words. And they looked at me and they said, Sebastian, who are you? And I said, I'm a powerful, lovable, authentic leader.

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I don't know where those words came from, but it makes a lot of sense now, because I stepped right into that role as soon as I was done. It was We drew it on the wall and whatnot. It was a messy time, but life's messy. I had to make a decision. We get to a crossroads eventually. We're going to keep doing what we're doing, and life's just going to pass us by, or we're going to get in the game, and we're going to see what shows up. But if we keep running that same story and that same narrative over and over again, I should be doing this, I could be doing this, I would have done this, you know those people. How about I am doing this? It's not about me. The only thing that's about me is I got to show up. I got to make sure that I'm delivering to the best of my ability. But had I not gone back and had a conversation with dad, and cleared up everything from the past, I wouldn't be standing with you guys today speaking from a healed space. Brene Brown says, share the scars, not the wounds. And today I'm able to share the scars with you because I've been able to step into a place of healing and hopefully pass that on to other people that I get the opportunity. In the last 15 months my life has been radically changed, radically changed because I made a decision to join a mastermind group of which a few fellow members are in here apex. forward thinkers that are open. You know any closed-minded people? Yeah, stay away from them. Yeah, stay away from them. Because that's all, I mean, I think what Zig Ziglar said, I think that closed minds should come accompanied with closed mouths. Isn't that the truth? Staying open is a powerful space to be in. Extremely powerful space to be in. But you gotta believe it, because if you don't believe it, nobody else will. So I had a voice at five years old, but then as things continued to stack, and the years stacked, and the resentment stacked, and the hate, and the frustration, and all that started to stack, I lost it. I don't have a voice. Maybe it is my job to shut up. Maybe it is my job just to sit down. Or maybe it's my job to step up to the plate, knock it out of the park, and say, I do a lot of traveling on the back of an Uber, an airplane, the front desk clerk at a hotel. It doesn't matter. I want to have a conversation. I want to know what's in their head, where they're going, why they're doing what they're doing. And the conversations that happen out of that are just beautiful. And I know the caliber of individuals that But we gotta be willing to give up who we've become to step in to exactly who we are. I don't have a timer or a clock up here or anything. I don't know where we're going with time here, but I wanna, am I, we're good? We're good? Okay, good, excellent.

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So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. That's the actual story of what happened. we make up and the actual story that happened. But that story did happen and I decided to do something with it. And the direct result of that was being able to become what I was designed to be, which is a communicator that gets to share a platform with incredible human beings sharing their story. And then I get the opportunity to help people go, hey, maybe my next move is starting a podcast. Maybe my next move is getting out of my comfort zone. I'm telling you right now, podcasting will change your life and your business if you let it. But you gotta be open. You gotta be open. It's challenging to get up here and not talk about podcasting and why you should start a podcast, iTunes and Spotify and all that other stuff. That stuff doesn't matter until we get this stuff dialed in. Because once you become whole again, once you step into who it is you were designed to be, The blame game will keep us in a place that we don't want to be for a very long time. You don't know what they did to me.

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But you know, you didn't grow up in my household. You didn't have my dad. You didn't have my mom. I was raised by my grandparents. I get it.

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Listen, we all have a story here. And the blame game has to stop eventually. Tony Robbins has been one of my mentors for a long, long time. And hospital center or whatever you want to call it. Cause he didn't know what to do. He didn't know what was next. He was doing the best he possibly could do. And I can't fault the man for You know what that experience did? That experience made me an incredible father. That experience allowed me to tune in with my kid a little bit more and give her a voice. My kid's an absolute polar opposite of me. She's an extreme introvert, which makes me crazy. But she is who she is. And I'm able to connect with her and let her know that we have conversations. We have tough conversations. It allowed me to step in. we have all had to experience, whether it's scarcity or just a lineage of toxicity, challenges. Do you realize that we have the power to step in with our own family and our own lives in present day right now and break that cycle and change things for generations to come far after we're out of here? That's some pretty incredible stuff, if you ask me, in a pretty tall order. This is your life, people. We get one shot at this. I'll never forget, we were in the middle of that course I took in 2016, and we had to put pillows on a chair, and we had to beat the ever-living daylights out of these pillows. And I was like, this is different. I get it. This is like an organized rage room with pillows.

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And I'll never forget the instructor going, get it all out. Get it out today. This is the shit that will kill you. I'm like, I don't want to die. But it's true. What we hold on to, what we continue to hold tight, we don't know what they did to me. It's the stuff that kills us. It's the stuff that causes disease. And eventually, we'll win the game. But we've got an opportunity to step up to the plate and say, you know what? Things are going to be different because I said they're going to be different. You think when Steve Jobs invented the iPhone and he was telling people about it 25 years ago, he goes, listen, you're gonna hold this computer in your hand. You're gonna be able to call anybody anywhere in the world. You're gonna be able to send these things called text messages and images and go anywhere you want on this thing called the World Wide Web in the palm of your hand. People were like, look at this guy. Don't do drugs, y'all. No, no, no, he didn't care.

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You know why? He said the iPhone is going to be invented because I said it's going to be. And it's a decision that we make.

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And it's a one-player game. We don't have to call somebody and be like, I think I'm going to change my life now. What do you think? Because they're just going to poo-poo all over that idea. Because they're not in that space. It's between you and God, or you and whoever you want to believe, to choose to believe in. That's you. But it's a one-player game. I want to take the last couple of minutes to wind things down a little bit. And I want to ask. Just close our eyes real quick. Maybe take a deep breath and just check in real quick.

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Maybe ask that question again. Why am I here? Something resonated, something landed somewhere along the line. If it did, it will today. Stay tuned. You're in for a wild ride over the next couple of days. Are we willing to give up who we become to be who we are? That's the best question we could possibly ask ourselves. And then after that, it's like, what's possible? It happened. So what?

00:36:50.110 --> 00:37:49.684
It's like my mom told me when I was nine years old and she picked me up from that place. Today's the first day of the rest of your life. I firmly believe that. It is for all of us. Every single day we've got the opportunity to step into a different version of who we choose to be. It starts with us though. It's a one player game. We can rewrite the story too, that's the best part about it. Starts right now. We're the author of it all. We say, you know what, from this point forward, this is the way things are gonna be, because I said it's gonna be that way. I'm not carrying this anymore. It's way too heavy. I don't need to. I was designed for greatness. I have a gift. There's a calling on every single one of our lives.

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There is not a doubt in my mind about that. The only question is, will you answer the calling on your life? That's the only question. And if we want to take it a step further, there are people assigned to that calling as well. It is your responsibility to respond to that calling and do something about it. Our dreams are attached to other people's dreams.

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How negligent we are to not respond to that call. I've done it. It's terrifying. I do it on a daily basis. Some days I don't want to. But that's life for us. It's all a choice. Such a powerful space to be in. What's it look like for us to love ourselves a little bit more? To lean in just a little more to us and say, hey man, what's going on? Hey girl, what's going on? What's off? What can we improve in? What are we avoiding? What phone calls do we have to make? What messes do we need to clean up?

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Because remember, it's all your fault. Don't forget. And at that same token, it's our opportunity to be able to say, you know what? I know it was my fault. I'm going to clean it up. I'll make it different. But it starts with us loving ourselves enough to be able to step into that space. I want to thank each and every one of you for your attention this morning, for this platform, for this opportunity for me to heal. As we continue to heal once we've healed too, to be able to step into a space and be able to share this story. If you told me seven years ago, I'd be standing on a stage in Tampa, Florida, sharing my story, my story of redemption and change and impact and healing and restoration.

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I would tell you, you were completely out of your tree. Boy, was I wrong. Amazing.

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But I appreciate each and every one of you. I haven't met a lot of you. I know a lot of you. but I haven't met and had a chance to hang out with you guys, but I just want to let you know, yes, you can. Okay? I know that it seems a little elementary, but somewhere along the line, someone told us that we couldn't do something and we believed them. So I want to set the record straight today and let you know, yes, you can. And it starts right now, not tomorrow, not next week, not next month, not after the job, not after I leave my job, not after I leave my husband, not after I leave that shitty relationship. Now, it starts right now. And here's the most beautiful part I'm gonna leave you with. that when we make a conscious decision to heal, those around us start to heal. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story podcast. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. We sure do appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, launchlab.com studios.