Don’t Let Politics Take Our Humanity

I know we don’t like talking politics, but I don’t think we have a choice anymore. We have to start looking at the ways we can all at least open the communication back up. I honestly don’t really like writing about this, but I believe it’s important, and I am dedicated to doing what I can for my country and my fellow citizens, and part of that is opening a dialogue, at least within my circles. I am not out to get anybody or bash one party or another. I solely want to figure out how to make more decisions that leave no one feeling forgotten, abused, or betrayed. I am not afraid of our future, and I don’t think you should be either. This world pretty much always goes in cycles, and everything eventually will right itself, so just learn to ride it out and do what makes you proud at the end of the day.

If you are spending all of your energy aiming to destroy someone or some ideal, when will you actually find the time to build something that could replace the unfair system or improve the world for you, your family, and your community? You are always deciding how to use this precious life, and there are sacrifices that must be made. You can’t focus on the negative and build up and spread the positive, and vice versa. It takes a balance, and that is what I am aiming to do with my writing and my life: highlight the injustices and propose a way to transcend them with a practical, purposeful, and effective approach.

Love Before Agreement

I believe we support and love others because that is what we are called to do by God. Not because we share all of the same beliefs and traditions as everyone around us. You are free to help and support anyone or anything that you want, and as long as you aren’t forcing your beliefs or traditions without respect upon others, then keep on keeping on, my friends. But remember that the moment you begin to hate others because of their beliefs or traditions, you are not sharing the love of God, and you are suppressing the freedoms that I believe we should strive to attain for all citizens in the U.S. and the entire world.

So, today, fight for your rights and lift up those who are in great need, but also be cognizant and wary of becoming the hate and supporting a polarized nation that will never move us closer to achieving our goals. I know it is hard to not focus on all the negative things that are happening around us, but it is critical to cultivate a level of internal peace that you can return to when things around you aren’t as you would like them to be. This allows you to become the calm in the storm, and that is what I believe a healthy and coherent disciple is asked to do. Share the love and peace within you instead of being overwhelmed and contributing to the hate and despair that abounds.

Only Solutions Can Fix Problems

I love you, and I would love to discuss real solutions to our very real problems. There are many things that we are all still facing as a nation, and it is going to take proactive people willing to have open conversations that come from a place of love and respect. We must refuse to become blinded by the hate and animosity that has been boiling for hundreds of years at this point. You cannot create a relationship of growth and understanding from a place of judgment and division.

Remember that only solutions can fix problems.

Focusing solely on discussing the problems or creating more problems will only delay growth and understanding once more, and we need this level of understanding and cooperation more than ever right now. It is not hard to see what’s wrong, but it often seems impossible to see what’s right, and yet life goes on. Many of us face one small inconvenience and lose our composure immediately, flying off on a tangent or creating a negative and hostile environment instead of just taking a moment to understand and moving on.

A Few Thoughts on Public Service

Here are my top wishes for political office or public service.

1. Performance markers: You must be present, participate, and vote. A stat board that’s easy to find and identify like sports stats.

2. Term limits of some sort.

3. No retirement solely for being in Congress.

4. You must serve the nation in some form or fashion in order to run for office. Military, Peace Corps, State Parks, volunteering in some way to serve our country.

5. No outside campaign funding over $25k, an even playing field cap on the amount you can spend, a free media platform for campaigning, and no campaigning until 3 months before election date and no active campaigning while in office. You weren’t voted into office just to campaign!

6. Drug tests just like the military and federal service employees.

7. Same healthcare as other government employees.

8. Family/friends conflict of interest must be enforced, and we need to have easy-to-review cliff notes of all bills that are 90% red tape to keep most from reading.

9. Start a media company that solely discusses what politicians are voting on and not voting on, why it’s important to us, and how we can respond to it or change it. C-SPAN is a monitoring service. ☹️

10. No one-sided or over-biased political posts on social media like they require of military and other specific federal employees. 🤷‍♂️

11. Balance the budget.

12. Every single bill or law that is proposed must be explained word for word with all of the pros and cons by each member who is sponsoring it.

13. Accountability for not following through on the promises made during the campaign.

Some of these may somewhat be in play already, but they are either not enforced or not easy to use or identify for the public.

These are only a few of my thoughts. Do you have anything to add?

Why Politics Makes Us Defensive

Just thinking about this subject makes a lot of us uncomfortable because we think we are opposing someone immediately if we express ourselves, but I don’t believe it has to be that way. At this point, I am really confused on what is actually happening in U.S. and global politics, so I am not sure who or what I could even support or offend other than trying to figure out what’s best for all of us as a people. I don’t really care about your position or your title. I care about your heart and how you treat me and others. I think we are all slightly confused and defensive because that is the environment that is being propagated and the story that is being told, but is it really the truth of our present-day reality?

We seem to be sitting around drowning in the constant propaganda, yelling at each other while our politicians find more ways to confuse us and take advantage of us for personal gain. Leadership comes with responsibility to those you lead, and that seems to have been forgotten in many different influential positions in our society. This isn’t an isolated problem. Many of the people who have been deemed or deemed themselves leaders are only taking as much as they can and giving as little as possible, and that is the opposite of what I believe a healthy and valuable leader to be. We need to create stronger bonds that lift us all up and make decisions that support those who are trying to help us all.

Does Anyone Really Understand the System Anymore?

Does anyone really understand how the government operates anymore? As far as I can tell, it operates based off of buyouts and popularity. It seems as if our present wellbeing nor the long-term impacts on humanity and the earth are of concern in the current system. I believe we can learn to work together again and all be content and fully satisfied with our lives if we are willing to come together.

I know they say we have a government structure of checks and balances, but that system has to remain intact and fairly operated for it to be true. We can’t have a system based on one-sided narrow perspectives if we are going to serve the most diverse and complex union ever formed. We have been told it’s either red or blue, and there are no other options, but I see one human race and one planet and one option to learn to love and heal with the help of one another. If you believe you are superior to another human for any reason, then we will never see eye to eye, and that saddens me.

The Work Has to Begin With Us

Most of the problems are either fully or partially manufactured or created by us with how we have decided to live our lives, or at least how we have conceded to living our lives. Our own hearts, minds, and souls have to be where the work begins if we want to make a change. There are too many people saying one thing and doing another. If you talk about peace and fairness and immediately identify who is not fair and peaceful and express how much you believe they deserve to be punished and alienated, then you are still feeding the opposite of progress. Even if they are guilty, we must let the “system” decide that and take the appropriate actions.

I know the system needs to be refined and reinstated in many ways, and that again starts with us. Let’s sit down together, have some conversations, and decide what we are willing to support. Then we can peacefully, intelligently, and cohesively band together to support these causes. This is my hope for our entire planet. Are you going out of your way to support your community and those aiming to make an impact in positive and progressive ways? If you are serious about being part of the solution, then it’s important to use your time and energy to create positive energy and support your allies.

We Need Dynamic and Complex Solutions

Labeling and categorizing yourself and posturing to oppose someone else limits your ability to see other options and work in harmony with what may arise. If you are curious and open to negotiation, there is potential for a much more mutually beneficial outcome for all parties involved. If we decide to stay on this seesaw, there will always be a shift back and forth between extremes, and this is a very hard way to create stability, structure, and cohesiveness that supports a healthy human race and healthy planet.

The effort it takes to remain consistently positive in the world we have created is much harder than it should be. We have been given life, and somehow, we can’t find enough gratitude to be thankful for it. Take a moment to contemplate how many times a day your heart beats without any effort from you. I used to constantly judge myself, those around me, and only focus on the negatives, but life is such a gift, and I now know that my happiness is always there in my heart waiting to be accepted and celebrated. I am extremely happy to share this beautiful planet with you and all of the amazing gifts God has offered us even when things are difficult, scary, and painful.

What if I want to protect the life of an unborn child and also believe in the freedom of choice in appropriate circumstances? Why can’t I believe in safe borders, but also support fair and accessible ways to become citizens of this country? My ancestors were immigrants, and most likely so were yours, and they wouldn’t have had the chance to gain citizenship with the current structure. That is not fair, and I am not okay with that.

Why can’t we tell the First Nations people and the African slaves sorry while still mourning for the lives of those lost fighting in the wars fought over these atrocities? I am a dynamic and complex human being, and so are you. We each have many different ways of seeing the world, different desires, and different practices that are part of our lives, and they are all occurring each day in peace and harmony. We need to embrace all of these different ways of life and create a system that can support them.

Who Gets Heard?

Your bank account, your race, your position, or your beliefs shouldn’t be the deciding factors governing how you get treated and the privileges you receive. Help should be progressive, and equitable treatment shouldn’t be based off of your party, skin color, social status, or position at work. All of us should be considered in all decisions and votes. Influence shouldn’t be exclusive to those who can afford to fly to your office, donate to your campaign, take you to lunch, and bend your ear. That’s not the way this country was designed, but it is very obvious that this is now the way things are operating at the top in many cases.

I don’t want to say that everyone in office or working in politics has bad intentions or they are evil, but I do want to say that the current operating system isn’t fair, healthy, or progressive, and it is time to make some major changes from the inside out, starting with each of our own attitudes. I wouldn’t ask you to do anything I wouldn’t do. I am doing my best not to let my biases, insecurities, or assumptions control how I perceive someone or how I treat them, and I ask that you learn and work to do the same. You are responsible for your own energy and actions and how they impact the world. That doesn’t mean I let them overstep boundaries or treat me or someone unfairly.

We Can Correct Our Course

This country is meant to be a Republic, and we are meant to have more control over our own lives unless we need support, and then government should have the capacity and the resources to offer a hand up as needed. Our system has gotten too big for its own good. If you look at how most of these politicians have operated as of late, they are bypassing all of these processes in part because they are so redundant and pointless that it is impossible to do anything. I worked for the government for 20 years, and I can tell you that it is the least efficient environment I have ever experienced. This can’t continue.

We have made a lot of wrong turns, but we can always correct our course. I don’t really know what the biggest underlying problem is, but I do have some questions and some ideas that may help, and I know you do too. For one, if your laws or your policies take advantage of anyone, then they need to be wiped out. If there is an imbalance of the resources that we have all contributed to, then we need to rethink that. If there is waste and neglect, then that needs to be corrected. I write my politicians all of the time, and I get an automated response with their agenda outlined, not an opportunity for a real conversation, and that is because they aren’t trying to support me. They are supporting a specific agenda, and that is it.

Who or what is really deciding the outcomes anymore? The politicians, lobbyists, the corporations, the people, the system itself, or maybe no one really knows. I am not sure it really matters. What matters is that we admit that the division, waste, and inefficient use of time and resources is a huge part of the problem. When you can’t keep up with the promises or lies you have made anymore, then it’s really hard to make any collective decisions that will provide a precise outcome that we can learn from and improve upon.

God, Love, and the Human Race

God didn’t create races; he created the human race, and the region of earth these humans were born in decided their race. We humans took our free will and decided we wanted to be Gods, and that’s where things went wrong. It’s still happening around us every day, and it’s not always easy to tell how to manage the balance. I would imagine it’s a lot of work trying to handle all of the things God has to manage, and I am pretty sure we don’t have the capacity to do it. This hasn’t stopped many from trying in vain, and many will continue to try.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing to want to emulate God. It’s not the trying that’s the problem. It’s the fact these people left the actual God out of the process. God wants to be in communion with you and guide you, but you can’t keep trying to ignore his commandments. It never turns out good for anyone involved. This seems pretty natural to me. If you cut the source of all love out, what are you left with? Maybe I don’t really understand that answer, and I don’t want to. Despite all of the challenges and ignorance I chose to indulge. I never fully denounced God or forsook that I was here because of God’s love and blessings, and neither should you.

I worship God, not the almighty dollar, not a sports team, not a politician, not a country, not a musician, not a religion, not an ideal. This is my truth, my way, my life.

How Do We Support Each Other and Progress?

Start conversations, ask questions, and learn to trust your neighbors. Things aren’t going to change on their own, and I believe you can find some worthwhile and heart-opening answers if you continue to look for them. Growing and seeking to understand more doesn’t mean you aren’t worthy, smart, or valuable already. It means that you value the gift of life God has offered you enough to seek this life on the deepest level possible. Don’t fool yourself into thinking running away from life is living. You need to take care of yourself and your neighbors to the best of your abilities. Don’t wait for some major external disaster to start helping support those around you who need it.

The internal world of most people is in dire need of support and love, and that is where your heart has the most coherent understanding of how to be of service. Learn to connect to the love in your own heart, and you will then have the capacity to share it with those around you, my friends. This is the most impactful thing you can do for yourself, your family, your friends, and for God. Do unto others as you would have done unto you, my friends.

I Offer You Love Always In All Ways,

Jake

P.S. If you are interested in joining my Sept 5th and 6th in Clear Lake for a 2 Day Leadership Workshop go to the the link below and fill out your info.

We are only taking 15 people to ensure each attendee gets the time and attention they need to learn and grow and the first 5 who register get a free bonus gift 🎉🎉🎉

2 Day Leadership Workshop Link ➡https://forms.gle/wWM1QKyxF6hfUJ4e9

The more you travel, the more opportunities you have to learn from and be grateful for God’s gift of earth, those we share it with, and all of the exhilarating experiences we have waiting for us.

As Tania, our little guy, and I are traveling through Texas and New Mexico exploring this beautiful earth, it is hard not to be moved by the diversity that surrounds us while simultaneously recognizing the fragility and depth of imbalance that is occuring in our world.

After touching down in El Paso, we started off our journey in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, where we hiked the Devil’s Hall trail. It’s a 4-mile round-trip adventure with some decent bouldering, adequate shade, and pretty much no other hikers to be seen. It was the perfect start for us. A decent challenge in a quiet and fairly shady area of the Mountains. The trail is a boulder field in a dried up river bad. As if enjoying this challenging and rewarding hike in a beautiful landscape wasn’t enough. Witnessing my beast of a wife transit this challenging terrain 18 weeks pregnant never gets old.

After checking into our very cool container home Airbnb in Carlsbad, New Mexico, ordering pizza, and taking a nap, we woke up at 11 p.m. and drove back out to Guadalupe Mountains National Park for a bucket list item if there was one. We laid under the stars and watched the Persied Meteor Shower from 12–1 a.m. in the darkest place in the park, completely by ourselves. I had never seen so much depth in the sky; it was overwhelming and familiar at the same time. It felt like we were witnessing something that God had planned specifically for us, his children here on earth, to enjoy.

We stayed out for about an hour and I counted at least 30 shooting stars with the Milky way shining clearly with the naked eye. Something I hadn’t ever remember seeing with my own two eyes. This was only the first 18 hours of our trip and we had experienced life changing adventures.

(Taken with a cell phone)

Carlsbad Caverns

After sleeping in a little and cooking breakfast in our Airbnb, we headed out to Carlsbad Caverns for another experience that was otherworldly. Trying to describe Carlsbad or even show you pictures isn’t fair to the uniqueness and depth of this environment. Eighty stories below the earth and surrounded by vast open spaces of stalactites and stalagmites, small pools of rippling water completely out of place, and landscapes that resembled what you would see at the bottom of the ocean. I imagined how the first peoples who inhabited this land thousands of years ago felt as they discovered this completely alien world that doesn’t look like anything else you could ever imagine.

We now have access to so much info about the world that it seems like we have been desensitized to the actual experience of being there, touching the boulders, hearing the hummingbirds, and smelling the sage bush, but there is no comparison to reality. Our entire central nervous system changes when we are lucky enough to experience the beauty of this world. Carlsbad Caverns is like nothing you will ever find anywhere else on this planet. As we travel I am focused on and lucky enough to be completely present and immersed in this amazing wonder that surrounds us. Have you been to Carlsbad Caverns? How would you describe it?

Instead of engaging with the world around us and learning how to embrace all of its gifts, often we outsource our lives and just let the computer program and pixels dictate how we measure the importance of this precious existence and all of the wonders that await our arrival. I encourage you to go and explore this amazing planet, my friends. This life is much more abundant when you add to the list of memories and experiences to pull from. Life is meant to be lived, and the experiences you collect add to the fulfillment and enjoyment available to you.

So, back to the grandeur and uniqueness of Carlsbad Caverns. It is miles of rock formations, more caverns inside of caverns, diverse ecosystems, and life forms that seem like they shouldn’t be able to exist in this environment. The rock formations reminded me of a hybrid between diving in a freshwater spring or cenote and a hiking in the Grand Canyon in a cool dark location.

The obstacle to relating to this comparison is whether you have experienced either of them. Trying to find ways to describe the caverns, I realized that all of my previous experiences gave me to foundation to use and this is another reason traveling is important to building a full life inside and out. I couldn’t use this description if I hadn’t had the experiences to relate to. Engaging in new places, meeting new people, learning about new cultures and how they live has added to my life on many different levels.

I believe in having more life experience to pull from when applying meaning and context to your present-day life. We are constantly inundated with everyone else’s opinions and ideas. Travel is a fun, informative, and enjoyable way to improve your understanding of the world from personal experience rather than just reading about or learning about it from somewhere else.

We spent a little over 3 hours in the caverns and could have done a few more. We drove back into town and had dinner at Guadalupe Mountain Brewery before going back to the caverns to watch the bat flights at dusk. While it wasn’t the massive cloud of bats that has been known to emerge from the caverns, it was still a steady and consistent stream of bats to ooh and awe at. We thoroughly enjoyed it.

One observation I have made throughout our entire trip is that many individuals, whether knowingly or not, force themselves and their disruptive behaviors onto everyone and everything around them. Respect and reverence for the environment and those who are sharing the experience with them is often nonexistent. I believe it is important for us to be conscious of those around us and try to be a supportive part of the places we’re exploring. Do your best to help maintain as much harmony and balance as possible as we bring our energy and our baggage along with us as we enter into a new environment.

Roswell

On our route from Carlsbad to Albuquerque, we stopped off in Roswell and spent a couple of hours learning more about the UFOs and extraterrestrial incidents and evidence that has been collected both in and around Roswell and throughout the world. I like to believe that there is other life out there that one day maybe we will have the joys of interacting with and learning from, so this was enjoyable for me. Who am I to say whether it’s 100% true and proven or not? I’m open to all possibilities.

Roswell had a nice coffee shop, Interstellar Coffee, and a little restaurant called Martin’s Capital Cafe, and they were both just what the Martians called for. We highly recommend both of them. A few things stood out, but the coffee shop had a series of photos documenting a devastating flood that occurred in Roswell in 2024. What caught my eye was the number of rescuers and heroes who were working to save all they could.

The restaurant Martin’s was our first taste of the famous Hatch Chile enchiladas, which were delicious and unique. The staff was very friendly, and the owner greeted us as we were leaving with a word of gratitude. We would recommend both of these establishments if you are spending time in Roswell.

Albuquerque and the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center

Our next stop was Albuquerque and the National Petroglyphs Monument and the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. The Petroglyph hike was very accessible and easy for most. We went in the middle of the day and still were able to see a substantial number of ancient carvings and symbols left by our ancestors. Well worth the time spent. I would encourage a wide-brim hat or sunbrella, though, because there isn’t any shade.

Our plan was to get to the Cultural Center by 2 p.m. for the ceremonial dance being performed by the Zuni Pueblo Dance Team, and we made it just in time. It was an honor to see the performance.

This museum has been in operation for 50 years this month, and the 19 distinct pueblos that collaborated to establish and curate this museum were celebrating this important and influential collection of artifacts, relics, and informative displays that share the deep reverence that the First Nations People have for our Mother Earth and all who we share her with. This is an awesome museum with a lot of very important and eye-opening information. Go and spend time there the next time you are in Albuquerque.

The significance of the influence and impact that our Native brothers and sisters have had on us and our birthplace is something to be respected, celebrated, considered, and shared. The unfair treatment and dismissal that is still prevalent today needs to be brought to the surface and corrected. These cultures and sovereign nations have been here for thousands of years at this point, and they have much to teach us. We had dinner at the onsite restaurant at the Cultural Center that served some traditional dishes. The food was delicious, and it was another great way to support the pueblos and their communities.

The exhibits demonstrated that Native American cultures believe that being in relationship with each other and the natural world and creating consistent balance between all. Those who depend on resources receive what they need without damaging the ecosystem or each other. Now doesn’t that seem like a much more reasonable way to ensure the finite resources and potentially damaging processes we are using can be appropriately managed? When is enough going to be enough for us?

Why Travel Matters

Learning and understanding other cultures has been a valuable and rewarding part of our lives, and we always try to take some time to understand and support the locals. Whether it’s a one-horse town or a large metropolis, there is always something to learn and to engage with that leads to more connection and enriches your time spent in other parts of the world. We are all here together, and the more we can relate to and support each other, the better the world is for us all.

Think about the last time you traveled somewhere. Once you got back to your day-to-day life and someone mentioned the place you recently traveled, did you feel a sense of connection and familiarity to share with them? By default, it makes you want to support and share the beauty you experienced there. Another benefit that should encourage you to see the world and explore the amazing people and opportunities that await.

The amount that we have already experienced on this trip has inspired me even more to stay in the arena and find ways to share the many gifts of Mother Earth in hopes of inspiring more people to explore and experience all that the world has to offer. You receive unmeasurable benefits from exploring the world, but what really surprises me is how much more I learn about myself as I experience new places and new people.

Love Always, In All Ways

Jake

What is making you so uncomfortable and worried all of the time? Are you focused on the work that is in front of you? Or are you preoccupied with the challenges of the future and regrets of the past?

When you are working to grow, this uneasiness is often the shifting and emerging of the necessary energy nudging you to get to work. You have made enough progress that there is something growing within and around you that requires your attention. It’s time to explore and understand on a deeper level the task at hand and proceed. This is what I have come to understand as the messy middle. The messy middle is where most of your work is done and time is spent, so learn to handle it with curiosity and optimism instead of judgment and pessimism.

If you think about it as a sports metaphor, you practice and strategize 90% of the time, you play the game 9% of the time, and you celebrate or sulk 1% of the time. Life has a similar rhythm when you are consistently seeking more from it. We are consistently planning, preparing, and getting ready for the final project or product. Once you have completed the task, maybe you celebrate or admire your work for a short time, but then almost immediately you look for what’s next and get back to work. This seems to be our natural way of progressing through life.

Do Your Best and Trust the Rest

Too often, you look up at the huge mountain and decide that is way more than I could ever accomplish, and you begin to highlight all of your obstacles and weaknesses, leaving you helpless and paralyzed. Instead, just take the first step and the second and third. Eventually, you slow down to catch your breath, only to realize you are much closer to your goal than you would have been sitting at the bottom overanalyzing.

Sometimes you just have to do your best and trust the rest. Your effort nor your outcomes are meant to be perfect or magical all of the time. Let your efforts be enough and accept whatever progress is made. Stop looking for and trying to prepare for every single obstacle. Those obstacles are ever-evolving problems to be solved as you gain more knowledge and insight that often comes from experience, not before.

Much of the time I have spent here on this planet has been stuck in the middle. Not knowing what is going to happen or exactly what to do, but I didn’t let it stop me, and neither should you. Make decisions, work hard, and adjust along the way. This creates many more opportunities for great outcomes to occur in your life.

Learn to Balance Your Responsibilities

When I think back to my worst performances, they occurred because I was trying to outsource my responsibilities, and I wasn’t really paying attention to myself and the person I knew I could be and wanted to be. I was being lazy, fearful, and distracted. I was often hyper-focused on one area of my life while neglecting others, and I won’t do that any longer. I believe a balanced and manageable pace is the way to go.

We should learn how to develop and manage a balanced, fulfilling, give-and-take relationship with ourselves, our family, our peers, and our community. Learn to ask for help when we need it and to give help when help is needed. This is a reciprocating and healthy way to interact and build solid relationships. If I am the one holding it all together, eventually it will break, and if you are the one always holding it together, eventually you will break.

We all have strengths that make us unique, and it is critical to learn what these are and use them in the most fulfilling and effective ways. Some people really like technical, precise work; others like abstract and dynamic work. If you work to identify what you enjoy doing and find a way to make it your profession, you will greatly improve your quality of life and satisfaction. It will take you much less energy to push through the hardest parts.

Patience Creates Clarity

Real patience leads to real insights because you have a lot more time to gather and collect information and act with more clarity and with more decisiveness. This isn’t always the easiest path, and it may not always lead you the mainstream way, but then again, it might. I am not someone who says everything has to buck the system. There is definitely a lot of confusing and contradictory information in our world, and maybe we can help create some clarity.

The messy middle is the part of growth that is the most uncomfortable and unfamiliar. You are in a place that you don’t yet know, and it’s hard to know what to let go of and what to embrace. You have to leave parts of the past behind that mean a lot to you and also embrace the parts of your future that maybe aren’t familiar yet. This is a gift, though, because it means something is progressing for you. It may lead to more work, more gifts, or more clarity. The gift is the chance to grow.

No matter what the next steps are, they are cultivated, and they are first embraced in the messy middle. You have to have confidence that you can engage in this growth and continue working to gain more understanding and more capacity. Your mind is your work, and no one can take it from you, so stop worrying about what everyone else is doing and get to work. They are just as confused and hesitant as you are.

Do the Work God Gives You

The sooner you learn how to manage and support your mental, physical, and spiritual self in all of these different levels of growth, the more you can grow. It’s really about learning to love yourself and accept the opportunities and love God has for you. I believe the work God gives us brings us to the love we deserve. That is a beautiful way to think of our life’s work. We take this short, precious life and work hard, sacrifice, and build something special that says we know we are here for something bigger and our life is valuable.

As I write, I picture people that I love deeply and care for whom I know will be able to learn from these words, and that makes my heart grow already. I am taking the challenges I have gone through, and I am turning them into lessons learned and holding class so that others may also learn something and grow.

The longer you stay in the arena and gain valuable knowledge and skills, the more important it is that you share these gifts with others. It’s time for many of you to begin engaging more in teaching others the practices and tools. I am proud of the leaders I have supported in their journey, and I know God gave me these gifts to share with those who are prepared to lead their own lives in a way that makes them whole, confident, and capable.

It’s Okay If You Aren’t Ready. I’d Be Surprised If You Are!

No one is ever ready at the beginning of a new phase, and when you start to see changes, it gets uncomfortable, and that can seem negative, but you can learn to embrace it and work into it as well. Shift your mindset to gratitude for the opportunity to grow and seek out the best lessons hidden in the work.

I am not really ready for most of what I am doing still, and that’s okay because it means I am still moving forward and discovering more about myself and humanity as a whole. I just see the confusion and the discomfort that comes with the messy middle as my chance to grow and my chance to do something unique that I have never done before. I am truly an explorer of the human experience at this point in my life. I will keep seeking the deepest and most influential opportunities to keep growing in a way I can balance and coherently manage.

Don’t take on something that could abruptly and tragically impact you or your family in a negative way, but do not be afraid to sacrifice, act, and think differently. You have the responsibility to uphold your half of every relationship you have taken on. Do your best to be there for those you love, but also stay true to yourself, your needs, and seek opportunities. You can always make adjustments and change your mind, my friends. Perspective can change everything, and you have the choice to re-examine yours anytime.

The Work Cannot Be Skipped

Trying to skip past all of the pain, time, or hardship only takes you further away from the work you must do to learn how to heal and grow and engage with this life in the most fulfilling and effective ways. This isn’t about trying to have external validation or importance. It’s about staying ready for what God has in store for you and being fully present for it, especially when you are lost in the middle, confused, and anxious.

This life is so precious, and we aren’t meant to neglect it or run from it. It is the gift of life that allows all things, and we need to be grateful for all of its parts, even the hard ones. Each step is an opportunity to praise God and the Universe and show your gratitude for such a beautiful gift. It is easy to wake up dreading your challenges and go through the motions of your day, but that isn’t a very fulfilling or rewarding way to live.

Stop looking for the easy way out because it really is a distraction and a pointless endeavor. It can never lead back to your heart and allow you to embrace all parts of you in the most genuine, rewarding, and divine ways. God is my life, my love, my everything. Without God, there is no me, and there is no you.

I couldn’t imagine not being here with you now, my brothers and sisters. I am not quite sure what the future holds, but I do know I am here to lift you up as much as I can, and I am confident God has helped me, and he will help you too. I don’t need to know. I just need to keep sharing his gifts with all of the world.

I Offer You Love Always in All Ways,

Jake Trione

P.S. If you are interested in joining my Sept 5th and 6th in Clear Lake for a 2 Day Leadership Workshop go to the the link below and fill out your info.

We are only taking 15 people to ensure each attendee gets the time and attention they need to learn and grow and the first 5 who register get a free bonus gift 🎉🎉🎉

2 Day Leadership Workshop Link ➡https://forms.gle/wWM1QKyxF6hfUJ4e9

I come from a long line of entrepreneurs and builders who dedicated their lives to commerce and community. My dad had many different businesses and side hustles throughout my life, and I learned a little something from all of them. From Ben Trione’s Meat Market and Grocery Store to the arcade I helped run and our weekend flea market trips, you name it, and it seems like we tried to sell it. I am a better human being for it.

Dad is always looking at how he can make a buck and chases the thrill of the sale, and I learned a lot from him. I am nowhere near the salesman he is, but I definitely learned a lot from just being present for many of the different opportunities he introduced me to. My dad wasn’t the OG, though. Many of our family members, including his dad, my grandfather, who owned a cleaners, and my great-grandmother, who had the original grocery store started in 1917, chose business as their profession.

The support and sacrifices I saw my family make in order to support their community and their employees are imprinted in my values and in my approach to business every single day. I know that many people say don’t mix business and pleasure, but I don’t subscribe to that ideal. I truly love my team, and I treat every person I meet as family. I don’t believe there is any other way.

If someone is willing to sacrifice their most precious resource, their time, to support something I asked them to be part of, then I am going to do everything in my power to recognize their efforts and help them build strong, stable, and rewarding lives. That is what we do at TriFitness, and that is what we will do with TriFitness Gym Franchising.

My Aunt and Bonus Mom Sara is an amazing saleswoman who has built multiple million-dollar businesses with her dedication, sacrifice, and hard work. I am one lucky man to have her example to follow. My two sisters, Melody and Tiffany, are both beasts in their own right. I have watched them adapt and persevere in situations and circumstances that I couldn’t even imagine. They both have been amazing saleswomen throughout their lives and now both operate amazing businesses that create raving fans and friends, not just clients. Come to think of it, I may be the worst salesperson in my entire family, and that is saying something because I haven’t done too shabby myself.

Trione Store

In 1917, my great-grandmother’s father started a small store in downtown Daphne, Alabama, and put who would become my great-grandmother, Alveria, in charge of the store. My grandfather and his siblings lived in the back of the store and worked there growing up. Over the years, that store became the post office, switchboard station, and Greyhound bus station. It was centrally located and became part of the nucleus of Daphne and the surrounding areas.

When my great-grandmother moved on, Trione Store was passed down to my Uncle Red Trione. By the time I came around, the store had been closed and my dad had opened his own small meat market, deli, and grocery store: Ben Trione’s Meat Market.

Dad’s store became a place to work, play, learn, and grow for me and my siblings. I learned to make biscuits at around 7 or 8 years old. I was taught how to make homemade sausage, debone chickens, and wrap lunches, which usually consisted of a rotisserie chicken leg and a dinner roll.

The main attraction became the pulled pork BBQ sandwiches that were 99 cents for most of my childhood. People would come in at lunch and grab two or three sandwiches and be good to go. We had quite an extensive menu over the years, and some of my favorites were biscuits with thick-cut hoop cheddar cheese and whatever meat was available: link sausage, patty sausage, ham, or chicken breast. Let’s just say that I was quite a large kid between the ages of 9 and 12.

Margins in the grocery business were extremely hard to maintain and manage, so eventually we were overrun by the big-box grocery stores, their coupons, and food mascots. The ’90s were a brutal time to be in the dying small grocery store business, and it took its toll on all small grocery stores and meat markets.

Hard work has been a staple in my life as far back as I can remember, and now I am working to figure out how to not only work hard, but also work smart. Learning to run a business is a rite of passage, it seems, in my family, and I am proud to carry on the Trione legacy.

My Early Entrepreneurial Days

My dad set up my first produce stand out in front of his store in Belforest when I was 10 and had me begin to learn the trade of sales. I had to go and interact with the farmers, make deals, and go to the farmers market early in the morning to try to get the freshest produce and the best deals.

I was 10 years old, so I wasn’t always as interested as he would have liked, but I still learned a lot. I had to learn how to negotiate, how to display my product, how to decide pricing, and how to haggle. Most days I was extremely engaging, waving, greeting, and asking every passerby if they were interested in my product.

By the age of 12, I had moved my produce stand down in front of the old Trione Store location. One story my dad and I tell often is the day he came by the produce stand and I had hired my cousin and our friend to run it while I went and played golf. I am not sure how much I was paying them, but I do remember buying them a brown bag special from Sonic for lunch as part of their pay.

My dad’s store would eventually close after a few different attempts at keeping it open and also opening an arcade, selling Christmas trees, and selling fireworks. None of these things panned out quite like my dad or we would have liked, but I can tell you that I was a very popular kid in sixth grade because I had keys to the arcade games and a seemingly endless supply of Papa John’s pizza.

One game we played over and over again was Revolution X, and the main thing I remember is that Aerosmith was involved somehow. When you have keys to the game, it’s pretty easy to practice and get better, and that we definitely did.

I can look back and recognize the drastic change that the store shutting down had on my life, and I understand the significant role it played and still plays in my life today. This wasn’t the end, though, as we still kept peddling many different things, including satsumas, peaches, watermelons, tomatoes, and eventually many odds and ends, tools, and other stuff that Dad picked up along the way at the flea market.

I always know I can figure out a way to make some money if I really need to, and that is in large part because of the skills and tools I picked up working with and watching my family work. I may not have always been working as hard as I should have been, but I can say I was working more than most anyone else around me. I used to go home in the afternoon when I was in third, fourth, and fifth grade and go into the pecan orchard next to my house with a trash bag and pick up pecans until dusk.

The TriFitness Family

TriFitness is my version of the family business.

Choose a mission worth fighting for, and you will never need to go find more motivation to push past the many challenges that come with creating, managing, and growing a successful business.

I survived boot camp and 20 years in the military. I can tell you that keeping a business healthy and sustainable has taken more out of me than anything else. This business has had a significant emotional impact on me, and it has required a level of presence, responsibility, and execution from me that nothing on this earth ever has before. Things are still uncertain, but our mission is big enough for us all, and that is where working hard and working smart meet.

I chose something that requires a team of dedicated and passionate warriors to succeed, and I chose to directly serve people, not just the things that they need or desire. This makes each and every interaction more engaging and potentially rewarding. Yes, the potential for those interactions to be just as challenging and draining exists as well, but we are working very hard to make as many parts of our jobs as possible simple, effective, and achievable, so the hardest puzzles, the people, can remain the focus of our work.

This is my job as the leader: try to make things as manageable as possible for my coaches while directing a majority of their attention toward the clients. This means I do all that I can to take care of them and give them energy and support to learn, grow, and enjoy their time with the clients and with each other.

This all starts with the culture you build, and we have built a culture around mutual respect, support, and accountability. We only focus on the things we can control, and we take time to share our love and respect for each other on a regular basis. We take on hard challenges as a team, and we are completely transparent with our business and our approach to each and every day.

My coaches and my clients will never have to wonder what my mindset is or where I am aiming to lead us. I believe that is the least I can do for them trusting me with their precious health, time, and resources. I am in the relationship business, and I am fully aware and engaged with being available, capable, and open with the challenges I am facing and how I intend on overcoming them.

I offered a seminar about six years ago at the Clear Lake Area Chamber of Commerce on work-life harmony, and that is what I have always tried to create for myself, my business partners, and my employees. It is extremely difficult to fully embrace your life when you are turning your values off and on depending on which role you are in, so I figured I would build something where we could all be supportive, engaged, and rewarded for our hard work.

I believe that is exactly what I have built with the support and guidance of many others. My partners, John and Matt, have allowed me to step into the roles that I needed to at the time, and for that I am forever grateful.

We are on a mission to help all of our clients learn how to build confidence and capabilities internally and externally through our approach, and it all starts with love. There are a lot of structural pieces we have put into place to keep the consistency and quality of our product, but it all starts with operating from a genuine and open heart.

I don’t know exactly where the next 40 years will lead me, but I am already proud of the legacy and the offering we have built at TriFitness and the friendships that have blossomed because of it. I have watched lifelong friendships and mutually beneficial relationships grow organically within our four walls, and that makes me extremely proud.

It truly is a dream come true to help facilitate the love, growth, and connection that has come from the effort and energy every single person who walks through our doors has experienced.

Thank you to everyone who ever gave us a chance.

I offer you Love Always in All Ways, my friends,

Jake

P.S. If you are interested in joining my Sept 5th and 6th in Clear Lake for a 2 Day Leadership Workshop go to the the link below and fill out your info.

We are only taking 15 people to ensure each attendee gets the time and attention they need to learn and grow and the first 5 who register get a free bonus gift 🎉🎉🎉

2 Day Leadership Workshop Link ➡https://forms.gle/wWM1QKyxF6hfUJ4e9

I don’t care what you look like, and I don’t care what you weigh. I care what goals and desires are going to make you whole, healthy, and capable.

As a fitness professional, I have battled my own inner critic for years, telling me I am not big enough, lean enough, or fit enough. In some ways, it has been a blessing because it pushed me to work hard and become very fit, capable, and healthy. But eventually, I had to accept that I wasn’t going to look like anyone else or achieve their exact same results.

We have to learn to work hard and be proud of the results we earn, even if we aren’t 100 percent satisfied with our bodies or the ideal view of ourselves. Maximizing your own potential is the goal, and it can be accomplished. I have run a marathon in 4:05, benched 275, squatted 405, and deadlifted 415, but I have never had a six-pack, even at my leanest.

Not all results are equal, and not all ideals are achievable.

Maintaining this perspective is not easy, and I still judge myself, but I can’t deny my capabilities. I am a beast in many areas, and I have worked my ass off to be mentally, physically, and spiritually whole. You can achieve similar results if you approach it from the right mindset.

I am now beginning to see that there is much more to this growth thing than I realized. I can cultivate these skills from a healthy and loving approach, not just a self-deprecating and punishing mindset.

For a long time, I believed that because I wasn’t enough or didn’t make the best decisions, I deserved to be punished. So I decided I would do this punishment in a “healthy” way, but it really wasn’t healthy after all. I wasn’t loving myself. I was silencing my pain and ignoring what it was trying to show me.

I think the driver for some of this approach is that we have a difficult time developing discipline, routines, and confidence without challenges, so we create these challenges internally to push ourselves. It’s hard to overcome the momentum of comfort and doubt if there isn’t some strong emotion and energy available, so we use our most familiar strong emotions like pain, anger, and despair to push ourselves.

But what if we used the pull and expansiveness of love, curiosity, and capacity to keep moving forward? Wouldn’t that open us up to more possibilities?

This is what happened to me when I started working with my clients. I wanted to show them love, find out what they could achieve, and learn how I could continue growing my ability to help them. So I dedicated myself to teaching other people how to use their skills and grow themselves from a place of love and respect instead of disdain and judgment.

I often talk about my clients as my angels, and if you read my work, you will see how much they changed my life for the better.

Fitness is truly a benefit to all when it is applied smartly and consistently, so why not learn how to help more people experience it and get excited about it?

A Gym With No Mirrors?

One of the things we did on the surface by chance, but I believe by God’s guidance, was keep mirrors off our gym’s training floor. It started as a financial thought and quickly developed into an intelligent and effective approach.

Every single one of us can be distracted by a mirror just as much as we can be guided by one. Proprioceptively, I wanted my clients to learn muscle engagement and spatial awareness, not just stare at themselves in a mirror.

Athletes don’t use mirrors to play their sport, and neither should you.

We are all athletes in the game of life.

I want you to practice and own the process so that you know you are strong, flexible, and capable. I don’t want you to just count to ten, sweat, and lose weight.

We Need to Expand Our Perspective on Fitness

It’s time we change how we look at fitness and how we coach fitness. The general public is getting more reliant on technology, and our quality of life is going to continue to deteriorate if we don’t get more active. Most people don’t want to be bodybuilders, cardio bunnies, or professional athletes, so let’s just meet them where they are and help them stay strong and capable.

There are many factors impacting our health. Most experienced coaches know that weight loss is mainly impacted by calories. The current hormonal health of women, especially in the U.S., is a problem. You improve hormones by learning how to have a balanced, nourished, and well-rested body. Not a stressed, undernourished, and skinny one.

It’s really a shift in understanding and perspective most people need.

Osteoporosis is a significant problem, and more muscle helps with this. More body weight, even body fat, may actually support healthier bones. Many of my clients’ bodies are undernourished, overstressed, and underutilized, causing a lot of the issues that need to be addressed.

Stop trying to give weight loss and weight management all the damn glory.

Your body needs movement for healthy endocrine, lymphatic, cellular, digestive, and pretty much every process that your quality of life relies on.

Go find a decent coach. Only do what you are comfortable with, and ask a lot of questions. If you can do this and stick to a solid routine for three to four months, your life will change. If you find a great coach or program and start training two to four times a week, your life will change for the vast majority of people in a month.

When you start investing in your movement, you will start to make healthier and more balanced decisions in all areas of your life. There are very few things that will motivate you like overcoming a weakness or realizing you aren’t destined to be old and decrepit.

You have a choice to make.

Exercise Is a Health Savings Account

Exercise doesn’t always stop you from having conditions or accidents, but it does make it much easier to recover when you do. It can also help you feel confident enough to make a tough medical decision when you’re 80. I have been blessed to see this happen time and time again.

The results from exercise go far beyond physical strength, health, and capacity. Exercise can also make you feel proud, confident, and capable. This matters as much as the program or the weights you lift. What you believe about yourself is what matters most in my experience.

Start by understanding the obstacles that are stopping you from moving more, and really measure their worth compared to a more vibrant, fulfilling, and enjoyable way of life. That is what one to five hours a week can literally do for you.

It is hard to believe more people aren’t taking advantage of these gifts. What more do we need to study or figure out? We already know that exercise is completely life-altering for the better with even a minimal dose. You really are missing the point of this life in many ways if you aren’t exploring this world and what your body can lead you to.

What If You Choose Not to Exercise?

What is the alternative?

In some ways, it can become a living nightmare. You can become stuck in a body that limits the life you deserve because you couldn’t find the motivation to explore your capabilities for less than five percent of your day. You put yourself in that prison in some ways, and it is your job to figure out how to get out of it.

Start with compassion and curiosity. Maybe you begin by walking around the living room for five consecutive minutes. Then maybe you go outside and pick weeds for ten minutes. Then maybe you do ten sit-to-stands at the kitchen table or counter. Your body deserves to move, and you deserve to feel strong and capable again.

In most cases, people who decide to mainly neglect their bodies will live a significant amount of time sick and depressed. That is honestly one of the things that makes me the saddest: seeing people who I know would have a much higher quality of life if they would just do a little bit each day.

A darker side of this is the spouse, child, or friend who has to try to take care of this person who, in many cases, got themselves into this mess in the first place. That is hard to say, but I believe we have to be honest about it.

I am not saying we shouldn’t do everything we can to help them and guide them back to a healthy life. We absolutely should. But they need to be the driver and responsible party in that relationship. It is not fair to spend your life refusing to grow and learn how to be healthy and then suddenly expect everyone around you to blindly self-sacrifice to make sure your quality of life is maintained.

It is a harsh stance, but I do believe in free will and the responsibility to make changes when you see that they are harming you and that change is necessary.

We have all seen the scene play out where the individual says, “That’s just how I am, and I can’t change.”

Well, that is a complete lie in my experience.

You can definitely change, and you should be changing for the better every single day of your life. You should be getting closer to the whole and healed version of yourself that is fully available and dedicated to being a supportive and engaged member of our society.

This is not to say that we don’t help the sick and injured members of our society. I believe in that 100 percent. I also believe in accountability and responsibility to the level that the individual has the capacity to comprehend.

Again, it’s not a two-way street.

It’s more like the Katy Freeway, if you know, you know.

We have to stop seeing things as only one of two paths. Maybe you were told at 40 that your waist was becoming a concern, and you refused to join the gym and start looking at your diet. Instead, you tried to yo-yo diet and start walking. It lasted four months, and you blamed the diet instead of your effort.

Maybe at 69 you were told you needed to begin strength training to improve your bone density, and you started drinking milk and bought some five-pound dumbbells. That may not be enough to challenge your bones the way they need, so your next bone density scan was worse, and you blamed the exercise.

Dedicate enough time to understand for yourself what you need, and go get that. Not what someone else told you was important.

Stop spending $600 a month on a brand-new car or takeout and start caring for your own body. You have all this money in the bank to prepare for a challenging life that may be mostly avoidable with exercise and may never occur in the way you imagine.

I am not talking about fitness alone. You need to stay engaged in your community, learn new things, and go on adventures often. But the number one thing that will give you the energy and ability to enjoy these adventures is being healthy.

So do the things that make you healthy.

No one is going to come and save you.

You have to practice using your body smartly and consistently.

Age Isn’t a Disability or a Diagnosis

Sarcopenia, osteopenia, dynapenia — oh my.

These are all commonly defined as age-related, and I am here to offer you a word of caution. They may be more closely related to inactivity than age. If you jump at 90, you don’t experience dynapenia in the same way. If you lift at 65, you may be less likely to experience osteopenia in the same way.

This is not to say that you can fully stop all of these things from happening at some level, because from what we know, you can’t completely stop the body from aging. The difference is that they may never become the limiting factor in your life as long as you keep up a baseline ability to do the things your body was meant to do.

Practice jumping. Practice carrying the heaviest weights you can hold safely. Go to the gym and do a circuit three times a week.

We have a tendency as a society to see aging as a disease, but I see it as a blessing. What about the 405,000-plus Americans we lost in World War II? Do you think they may have a different opinion? Or the 58,220 we lost in Vietnam? Would they most likely trade places with you if they had the chance?

Keep your blessings in perspective, my friends.

We are all leaving this earth, but only a select few will take their last breath knowing they did what they could to get the most out of the time they were given. What category are you going to be in?

Knowledge Is Power

It commonly takes us 40, 50, 60, or 70 years to have a perspective deep enough on life to understand what brings us the most joy in the most efficient way, so we tend to get hung up on the familiar. But that is a mistake.

Novelty and variety are critical to a healthy mind and body, so we need to keep looking for ways to engage in life that force us out of our comfort zone. This is a blessing of aging because you can experience many amazing things the more time you are blessed with. This has been such a fulfilling part of my life.

Having spent my first 20 years in one environment with a lot of different places to live and many different jobs I worked, then going into the USCG for 20 years, and now owning TriFitness Gym, I have been lucky to do many things, meet many people, and explore the entire human experience.

That is what I am writing about here.

Learning to be a Functional Aging Specialist and studying the ways our minds, bodies, feelings, emotions, thoughts, and environments impact us has greatly deepened my joy in this life. I pray everyone can experience this for themselves.

If I get another 40 years and live to 82, I can tell you one thing for sure. I will have explored this existence and how to maximize and share it in a very thorough and well-tested way. My process and my desire to know how to give to us all on a stable and manageable level will help me age better.

For that reason, I have faith that I will live a full, rewarding, and purposeful life.

Believe in Yourself and Challenge Yourself

I know that you have it in you, and I know that exercise can make a massive impact on your life. You are going to have to put in the work and learn to grow and expand your mindset and habits, but the answers are absolutely available if you are willing to work for them.

You can sit around and stare at the latest gadgets, trends, and tricks to lose weight, or you can go for a walk. You can let genetically gifted people sell you the latest extraordinary program, or you can go to the gym and get sweaty.

Your life.

Your decisions.

Stop looking for shortcuts.

They always lead you right back where you started.

Six months of dedication to your health can change 100 percent of your life. You will hit plateaus. You will get sick. You will get bored. A million excuses will stand in your way, but these are the price of admission to your best self.

You must adapt and overcome them. I am not saying ignore your obstacles. I am saying learn what it takes to overcome them.

You aren’t at the mercy of your circumstances. You create those circumstances one thought, feeling, and action at a time. Make them your allies, and you will be able to achieve more than you ever would have imagined.

I offer you Love Always in All Ways, my friends,

Jake

This isn’t a test drive.

You are here for a purpose, and it is such a gift to be here with you now on this beautiful gift we call earth. Times are tumultuous, and many of us are in pain today on a deep, visceral level. There are lives lost that are part of us, and we are called to join together in any way that we are able.

Join a community book club, reach out to a shelter, support someone’s efforts, or seek out the people and places where your effort and energy could make a difference. Don’t run from the people and places where your effort and energy could make a difference. It’s important that you seek out ways to expand, hone, and share your beautiful energy with your fellow brothers and sisters here, as well as with the gifts of nature that God has offered for our stewardship and enjoyment.

If nature can maintain harmony and build the beauty we see today, then what is stopping us from doing the same? You don’t see constant battling and destruction in most of our immediate realities. It is a story that we are telling, and it must be rewritten by each one of us as we walk mindfully and purposefully through our lives.

Love has no equal, and neither do you.

Your gifts and your opportunities in this life are unique to you. It is your job to go into your heart and ask God to show you where the light is needed and understand where the pain was intended to guide you. None of this is happenstance, and you are the most improbable thing to exist in the entire universe, so learn to embrace your gift of life fully, proudly, and openly.

Survival Was Necessary, But It Wasn’t Meant for Long-Term Use

The goal is to go from reading or writing a survival guide to living a rewarding, thriving life. Yes, you have had to learn, grow, apply, and live out survival practices over and over again, but you are being invited to grow past old versions of yourself. You are meant to do this as many times as it takes to learn to thrive.

This isn’t a checkbox task based on age, accomplishments, or your level of success in this life. It is how you become the most vibrant and whole version of yourself. This is a journey to the death of the parts of you that no longer serve you or are hindering your growth. Whatever your beliefs, all that matters is that you learn to embrace the deepest, most coherent, and available version of yourself, no matter what that requires of you.

God didn’t give you breath to play it safe and avoid all hardship and discovery. He said walk in faith and have no fear.

Especially when times get hard.

Helping others find this level of faith and understanding of life is what I am dedicated to doing for you. If you are reading this, then you are dedicating some of your precious life energy into trying to improve and learn, and I am proud of you for that. Now, what is the gift you were given that needs to be put to good use to love and support yourself and those around you?

I want to let it be known that not only have you survived, but you can now learn how to heal, grow, love, lead, and live more fully because of the guidance and insight you received along your journey with God and this beautiful creation. You are never walking alone, but that isn’t easy to understand with the ego and emotional veils in our way. It’s our job to uncover our hidden talents and treasures and share them with the world.

Being a version of yourself who you love fully and are proud of takes purposeful growth mentally, physically, and spiritually, and I believe it is accessible and meant to be shared with all. The level of love, patience, belief, and care I have worked to cultivate for myself, my wife, my son, and all on earth has expanded greatly because of this work. It’s time for us all to learn how to be whole again and love from a fully intact and healed heart.

We Forgot About the Person Carrying It All

This wasn’t always my truth, though, which is why I know it can be achieved. I didn’t love myself properly for 40 years, and it was a long road to get back to the reality of what I now know to be true. God always guides our steps, and if we ask for and accept that guidance and follow the path diligently, things will work out.

Learning to love doesn’t have to come from a religious, philosophical, or institutional standpoint. It will ultimately be experienced from your own intuition and the true nature of your healed and in-tune heart and head. You won’t always know that you are on the right path or be able to see the good that is happening, even when you’re trying so hard to do good for others and the world. That is where your faith comes into play.

You may have been shown a different way of getting what you want or a different path to your destination, but it all eventually will come back to you and what way is aligned with your own values, priorities, and God-given mission. I was shown lots of traits like self-sacrifice, hard work, openness, care for others, and how to be a good, honest human, but I wasn’t necessarily shown how to do all of these things without neglecting myself.

I don’t think the people around me knew how to love themselves in the way God intended, so I never learned what that looked like until I went inside to seek it out for myself.

I think a lot of us live that way.

We serve, work, protect, provide, perform, and keep moving, but somewhere along the way, we forget how to love the person carrying all of it. We’re never shown how to heal, support, and embrace all the parts of us. We spend too much time trying to fix our broken parts and gain enough of something that makes us worthy, but we have always been enough and have always had enough.

We never slow down and pay attention enough to recognize this, and we are constantly being shown an ideal that has never existed and never will exist. You are the ideal human for your life, and that is all that matters. Show up for what is your life and be fully present there with all the good and the bad. This is when you can really start to work on all parts of you and accept that there are also beautiful, worthy, and valuable parts of you that deserve attention.

For the first time in my life, I can confidently say I just want to be me. I will always be excited about growth, potential, and more of whatever is to come, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be happy and fulfilled as I am right now. I am a good dude who wants to do good for us all, and I believe that you are no different. I know you are a beautiful human being who deserves healing, support, and acceptance from the inside out, and if I can help you find it, I will.

Pass on the Lesson, Not the Trauma

We don’t want to pass on the trauma.

We want to pass on what we learned from it.

That sentence means more to me now than it ever could have before. Tania and I have our first child on the way, and I am working hard to heal the traumas of my life. Like most of you, I came out of childhood with what has turned out to be quite a large burden and quickly followed that up with an adult life that feels like 10 lifetimes. Most of this was of my own doing or choosing, and that is one of the things that makes it so hard to heal.

We are looking for someone to blame or someone to fix us, but that someone is us. Your parents had no idea, most likely, what they were doing to you or how much trauma you were absorbing. They were in survival mode too, and that leaves no emotional bandwidth for the type of nurturing needed to really raise a balanced and whole child.

That means no one is going to be able to explain to you exactly how to do this work. You must really take time to dig deep and figure out what parts of you need attention, compassion, and patience, and give it to them.

I have carried experiences from my service that stayed with me long after the mission ended, and I have done everything I could possibly do to try and save everyone around me for as long as I can remember. A 7-year-old shouldn’t and couldn’t ever take on the level of emotional responsibility I attempted to.

It’s something that I most likely wouldn’t change even if I could, but I am now working to take back my emotional bandwidth, so I can use it for myself and my present-day life. I know what being in constant survival and caregiving mode can do to a heart, mind, body, and nervous system. I now know that constantly fighting for survival does not have to be the final destination, and only God can save people.

You ultimately decide how the story is played out in many ways, and that is why I am sharing my story. I am going to do all I can to ensure mine plays out in the most complete and fulfilling way possible for us all. I believe a rising tide lifts all ships. If you heal, I heal, and when I heal, you heal.

There is no one coming to save you.

You are your own superhero, and God is the source of all your power.

Your children do not need to carry your fears; they can receive your courage. Your son doesn’t need to carry your pain, but he can receive your compassion. Your daughter doesn’t need to carry your survival mode, but she can receive your presence.

As you heal and learn to understand and feel this love, you will have the ability to offer your child support and love in more expansive and complete ways. If you remain open and consistently pay attention to how you are showing up in the world, you can create a healthy and balanced internal world and safe and comfortable environment for you and your family to learn to thrive.

It’s See You Later, Not Goodbye

Growing, changing, expanding, or whatever you want to call becoming a whole and healed version of yourself, will elicit feelings of betrayal, intimidation, abandonment, and a wide array of other emotions and feelings from you and those in your inner circle, especially if you don’t communicate openly and honestly.

You may need solitude, adventure, therapy, coaching, a retreat, or just space to think when you do this level of healing and growth work, so it’s crucial to ask for the love and support of those around you in this endeavor. You can say something like this: “I am in need of my time, space, and energy right now to heal and to work on being a better version of myself.”

You are the most important job you could ever have, and it’s time to go to work. If you are waking up judging, doubting, neglecting, and denying yourself, then you need to spend time learning how to give yourself the love and support you need and deserve.

It’s just like a workout.

You spend an hour exploring your emotions and mindset, and you will be able to strengthen your connection to the balanced and healed version of yourself rather than mindlessly feeding the disconnected version of you.

Most people have a natural aversion to change, and that is for good reason in some ways, but it’s also been taken to an extreme in many aspects. The world in front of you isn’t as scary, divided, and unpredictable as your central nervous system and correlating stories are telling you it is.

How many days have you been on this planet? How many of those days have been horrific, or have you completely failed or fallen apart without a very good or appropriate reason?

Yes, for some people, life is much harder and less fair than it is for others, and I don’t want to discount that. But focusing on and reliving those challenging and horrific moments again and again isn’t fair to you. You deserve to feel and bask in the love and the blessings that God has waiting for you.

Your future self and those who love you will be grateful for all of the work you are doing today, so don’t wait any longer.

The Present Is Where the Work Gets Done

I write about my journey, served in the Coast Guard, built TriFitness, and constantly offer what I have learned because I care about people deeply. My biggest obstacle was learning to balance and give myself space and time for the parts of me that needed me most. We have to put effort into our own recovery and healing each and every day, just like we work for everything and everyone else.

Now, I try and focus on what I am being drawn to or listen to what my body needs in that exact moment, not what I think or what my ego thinks I should be doing. It is difficult, but once you realize that the present is the only place where progress is made, you begin to stay present and more engaged with your work.

This is a totally different process than the one I used to get to this point in my life, but I understand that I reached my max potential in that exact headspace and emotional state, so it’s time to expand and learn a new way. I don’t necessarily want to stop engaging with people just for the fun of it or anticipating what’s needed next, but spending more time with my wife and preparing for my son feels like the right thing to do right now.

I am learning how to remain present and keep this more balanced and open version of myself ready to act on what opportunity presents itself. I believe these steps are necessary, and they are part of our healing and growing. My path isn’t your path, and I don’t know exactly what you need to do, but I do believe you must make room for what’s next, and that requires you to let go of what no longer serves you.

It takes faith to remain fully engaged in the present moment without trying to predict or prepare for some future obstacle or filter through some past experience. We are so used to being connected and full of answers that uncertainty and exploration are foreign to us.

You are going to want to learn to be connected to what’s happening right now in front of you and not trying to put your own spin on it. A man standing in front of you is just that, but we all have unique stories that we filter everything through called our lives. Let the man show you who he is and write his own story instead of trying to make him a character in your story.

Try interacting with the world from a place of curiosity, love, and connectedness. Doing this allows you to take the most precise and appropriate action, not the most familiar, convenient, or comfortable one.

I offer you Love Always in All Ways, my friends!

Jake

P.S. If this conversation spoke to something you are carrying, I would love to hear from you. I write these pieces from my heart, but it helps me to know how they are landing with yours. Leave a comment, send me a message, or share this with someone who may be tired of fighting for their life and ready to start living it more fully. Your feedback, your stories, and your willingness to pass this along help me keep learning how to serve through these words.

Like anything else in your life that you want to improve, emotional intelligence is a skill. In a world that has become so mechanical and analytical, I believe many of us have forgotten that our emotional health also requires time, attention, practice, and understanding.

You must spend time with your emotions and your current ways of thinking about, understanding, feeling, and processing your emotional body.

I am not a doctor, and this is not a how-to guide. It is just the way I have come to understand myself and my emotions, and I believe it may be beneficial to some of you.

If you find the information and experiences I share useful, I ask that you please share it with one person you love today. We need to get back to speaking the language of healthy love and support from the inside out, and it’s impossible to speak a language you can’t understand.

Five people together on an adventure will have completely different experiences and ways of telling the stories of their time together, but the critical thing is that you have enough emotional bandwidth and intelligence to be fully present and engaged with the experience. This is where emotional intelligence and emotional health are critical.

Your past and the person you were in the past no longer exist, no matter how badly you want them to or how stuck in that mindset you may be. It is a story you are creating and constantly reliving. It is not what is actually happening to you in the present moment.

Embracing today fully as the being you are this second is the ideal, most impactful, and fulfilling way of living.

Tending to Your Wounds

Take a step back and give yourself a place to go. Learn to breathe and seek out your emotions so you can begin to understand them and process them, rather than letting them continue to control you and stop you from living this life to the fullest.

You are not a victim unless you have decided to stop working on growing and healing. You can learn a new, healthier, and more fulfilling way of engaging with and supporting your emotional body right this very moment if you are open to it and willing to do the work.

You need and deserve to keep living every day of your life in the most impactful way possible, and I am here to tell you that this way of living is achievable if you continue learning to heal and let go of the emotional baggage that is weighing you down.

I believe it’s time to do the work that you are capable of instead of just doing what you are used to or comfortable with. Create the intention to open your mind and heart to a more whole version of yourself, and be willing and available for the work that it is going to take to get you there.

You must seek out and fully feel the emotions. Learn to let them pass through you in a healthy way, and work to understand these emotions as best you can.

These pain points are the guides to the places that need the most love, and they can be healed if they can be uncovered and tended to. It is a lot like applying a bandage to a wound. You need to give these emotionally damaged parts of you the support and environment required to heal.

This means a safe, loving, open, and attentive approach. You can’t heal in chaos, fear, or confusion.

It All Started Within You

Our thoughts and emotions are not very comfortable places to spend a lot of time when you are in pain, shameful, scared, or insecure, but they all have a story to tell if you are willing to listen clearly and consistently.

Close your eyes and begin to seek out your underlying emotional state right now. Are you relaxed, tight, anxious, tired, uncomfortable, or peaceful?

What influenced you to be in that current state?

Do your current surroundings and circumstances logically match your internal environment and the thoughts and emotions that are coming up for you?

If you are sitting on your back porch watching a beautiful sunset and you are angry and frustrated, that doesn’t necessarily match, so there is something internal that is currently driving, and we need to take back our influence.

Ask yourself what it is about your current thoughts, environment, activities, or other influences that brought you to this state of being. No matter whether it’s something you want to seek or avoid in your life, you must first clearly identify these things in order to work with them.

I enjoy black decaf coffee in the afternoon while watching the birds in my backyard. I have identified that these two things bring me peace, comfort, and joy without an extensive negative or overly demanding impact on myself or anything in my sphere of influence.

These specific moments of quiet exploration and practice, where you relate to, work with, and understand your emotions, are critical for emotional intelligence. You are learning to speak a new language, really, and if you succeed, you will gain access to another level of communication.

Avoid Becoming a Thrill or Depth Chaser

It’s easy and fun to just start chasing emotional release after emotional release, or more emotional control to a fault, but both of these approaches will most likely slow you down and can be avoided.

Work to ask yourself what these emotions are telling you and where they would like you to open up. If you are constantly alert and there was a firefight in 2018 that you got caught in, maybe that is where your emotional tether keeps pulling back to.

This is why it is critical to ask for help when you need it, or be brave enough to confide in a loved one or friend who can be a good listener and sounding board.

We can easily trick ourselves into going into extremes, and this will most often just lead to a rebound where you swing hard back to the other side. It’s like yo-yo dieting or addicts who fall deeper each time they relapse.

You try to take full control of something that you aren’t even meant to carry anymore, and you will never have the capacity to hold it without being sick or dysregulated.

Let that shit go and just learn to do the small daily actions that keep you happy, balanced, and focused.

When you are constantly having to control or push yourself, then you aren’t available for, or capable of, taking on new opportunities as they arise. If you are reading this, then you are doing the work, so trust that it is enough and move on to the next learning.

The World Is a Mirror

It was 2012, and I was sitting on a rock just outside Yosemite National Park writing in the first journal I had owned in probably 15 years. I was among some of the oldest living creatures on this beautiful planet, the Redwoods, and I couldn’t help but imagine the amazing opportunities that were still out there to be seized.

I was still very externally focused, doing all I could to improve my outward appearance and my outward-facing personality, but I did understand that none of it would matter if I couldn’t also feel strong, kind, and capable.

No matter where you are or what you have on the outside, it will never be able to override what you know and feel on the inside.

I needed to be beautiful and whole from the inside out if I wanted to feel the whole of the beauty that God had awaiting me, and so do you. There is nothing you have to do except learn to embrace, share, and understand the love God gave you.

God gave you the most beautiful thing on this planet: life. Now it is your job to go out and engage and harmonize with it as the healthiest version of you possible.

The world can help you find the beauty within by giving you examples to relate to and examine. All of nature seems to find balance and harmony when we nurture and support it. Your emotional world is no different.

When you give yourself the space and attention you deserve, things can significantly improve.

Back to the Basics

You cannot ever underestimate the power of a healthy and stable routine and environment. We have to maintain all of the habits we adopted when we were focused on the external world as well.

Your body is a complex system that needs to be cared for and challenged just as your mind does. You cannot eat like crap, avoid the gym, and neglect sleep and expect to be on top of your game enough to make emotionally intelligent decisions.

We like to think that our willpower is the most powerful part of us, and yes, it is a very valuable trait to have, but it is also being created and made possible by a biological being that needs nourishment, enrichment, and recovery.

If it worked, everyone would be extremely balanced, supportive, and content with their lives, but we know from a collective standpoint that this is not the reality.

Your healthy and balanced lifestyle doesn’t have to be extreme or perfect. It has to be consistent and progressive.

You can start by walking two days a week, then add a third day, then add weights two days a week and go back to two days of walking. Then start by focusing on consuming more quality protein with each meal, not restricting everything in your life and hiding from everything you once enjoyed.

Embrace a more resilient, thoughtful, and creative version of yourself, and you will be able to make the most out of each opportunity instead of always trying to go all or nothing.

See It to Believe It

It is helpful to be able to see your thoughts on paper, or you can speak them into a note-taking app, or you can ask someone to help you bounce ideas, thoughts, and emotions off of them as they help you dig deeper and deeper into the root causes.

As you work through your emotions, you should remain open and curious to the potential solutions. Often, just learning to communicate your feelings more consistently and openly will resolve a significant number of problems.

You don’t have to relive every experience or go through 1,000 rebirth processes. These tools may be necessary occasionally, but much of the progress I have gained came from my clearer understanding of myself and my emotions.

Once you can label your emotions instead of labeling yourself, you can begin to release their grip on you.

You aren’t depressed; you are feeling depressed.

You aren’t angry; you are experiencing the emotion of anger.

You weren’t scared; you were feeling the emotions that made you scared.

You are you, having different experiences related to these emotions, but they are not you, and they don’t need to be hijacking your life 24/7.

So, who are you when you get to decide which emotions you would like to engage with instead of just accepting what the world wants you to feel, or letting a past experience tell you how to feel?

Leave the Judgment to God

This subject and content may make sense to you, or it may be something that doesn’t resonate at all, and both are okay. As you start working on understanding your internal world, I encourage you to try not to judge yourself or anyone else from a past moment or experience. This isn’t fair.

These processes open up deep-seated and very stubborn emotions and beliefs that need to be reexamined and seen from a fresh perspective.

Only let your actual present circumstances dictate your thoughts, emotions, and actions. Your current life and those you are living with deserve to have the most open and present version of you.

Give yourself and those you love the grace they deserve, and don’t push this process. Let it come to you as you have the space and ability to embrace it. Sit with it and really think about the most genuine and healthy way to progress as the emotions come up.

This way, you will be fully available mentally, physically, and spiritually to give and receive love with the world in the most healed way possible.

I offer you Love Always in All Ways, my friends.

Jake

It’s not effective to keep chasing some far-off life instead of showing up for the one you have been given. You never embrace your life because you are always chasing it. This seems to be the way of the world right now. Nothing is ever enough, and we are constantly seeking something outside of ourselves or our immediate tangible reality to be content and happy.

This can’t be the way we give away these precious years. We must slow down, take it all in, and be ready for whatever is to come our way. Your ability to remain present and engaged with today will determine what your reality looks like.

It’s not a magic trick, but in today’s world, it is very rare to meet someone who is coherent and engaged with the reality directly in front of them, so it often looks like magic.

Create a Relationship with Each Waking Moment

You aren’t going to find the answers you seek by trying to control and force everything that is happening in your life. There are many factors that will require your acceptance and adaptation rather than your manipulation.

Trying to control and influence everything in your life will leave you fatigued and frustrated. Instead, I encourage you to work on being in relationship with what is being presented to you and adjust appropriately to create the best outcome for all involved.

It’s not your job to always reach for something specific. Sometimes it is your job to allow the right things to come to you at the right time. Work hard to set the wheels that you can influence in motion and learn to be patient as the path is revealed.

Learn to leave room for God by staying open and prepared to act with an open heart and an open mind on what shows up.

The major challenge with cultivating this skill is that you will be required to keep a healthy and balanced emotional and energetic baseline. If you are chronically under- or overstimulated, then you will not have the space available for a balanced outcome to occur. Your imbalances will always influence the outcome, leading to fragmented thoughts and actions.

You do this work by understanding and integrating your ego-driven emotions, narratives, and mindset. This is a major issue most of us have with living out a balanced and available path. We can’t seem to stay emotionally or energetically regulated and patient long enough to allow God’s Love to help us align our emotions, thoughts, and actions.

Offer Yourself to the Life Being Presented

This is the practice of using meditation, prayer, and practices like mindfulness and focused attention to stay in the moment and offer yourself to the life that is being presented instead of wanting one that you somehow believe you need to chase and achieve.

Learn to focus on the present and stop constantly worrying about all your responsibilities. Slow down and take care of your responsibilities one at a time, and you won’t be constantly overwhelmed. We are always looking for an edge, and this is one that will forever pay dividends in all areas of your life.

Your spouse, your coworkers, and your kids will all be grateful to have the fully engaged and whole version of you there for them.

Learning to give your energy and attention to the things that you want to flourish in your life will provide much more favorable outcomes than focusing on what you don’t want to flourish. Your energy goes where your thoughts flow, so think about abundance, love, and joy in all ways.

No, your problems will never go away, but they don’t have to run the show anymore either. Learn to take life one positive, present, and committed action at a time.

What if Your Blessings Are Already Here?

Life has many blessings just waiting for you to open to them, but you’re too busy thinking you are smarter and more capable than God and always wanting to take back control instead of walking in faith and remaining diligently on the path God has waiting for you, one present moment at a time.

What if your blessings are already here and you aren’t healthy and healed enough to experience them?

That was the case for me. I grew up in an extremely unstable environment, and the only thing I could believe was that there had to be a better way. My reality was too painful, destructive, and chaotic for me to remain there fully coherent.

So, for most of my life, I have had a hard time being content even when things were stable and beautiful. The traumatic experiences left a controlling residue of fear, uncertainty, and a need to control.

Through my healing work, I have learned that God has a better outcome waiting for me than I could ever imagine, and I am now available for it. You too can find this.

You are here for this life, and you are here to stay, so it’s time to get comfortable and let the next steps come to you as you grow your faith, presence, and patience.

You don’t need to know everything. Learn to trust that you will know what to do when the time comes.

Love Always In All Ways,

Jake

 Love Jake

Going within to face your shadows isn’t easy, but it can be purposeful and transformational. Externally, today most likely isn’t much different than yesterday, but the way you see it and experience it has the potential to become much more enjoyable and rewarding if this is the path you choose.

Your external world and all that you have experienced has taught you and molded you into who you are today, and now it’s time to spend more time with the internal world that has been created. This will help you understand more about how you would like to experience life and embrace your own truth in the present.

The stories we hear and the stories we create throughout our lives have value and merit, but they aren’t always accurate or ideal. It is important to use your own introspection and begin to explore more about your own emotional world and how you are showing up for your thoughts and feelings without any external control or influence taking charge and guiding the journey.

There is no place like the present, and for this work, we will spend a majority of our time in the comfort and magnificence of our own mind, body, and soul.

You Are Not Your Experiences

Good, bad, or indifferent, these moments are part of your life, but they do not have to fully control who you become after they have left your present moment. This doesn’t mean that you can’t reminisce and enjoy the good parts of the experience and still learn from the parts that were challenging.

It’s also not very valuable to become hyper-focused on the future or the dream either. You can spend time daydreaming, planning, and working for a bright and beautiful future, but you should also enjoy a bright and beautiful present.

Learn to balance out your time focused on living presently while also sharing what you are experiencing with those around you. What you do today and what you focus on today will grow, and the path will be revealed as you continue to walk it diligently and purposely.

It’s easy to get caught up in what happened to you and end up stuck thinking that the emotions and memories you carry from these experiences control who you are today, but that does not have to be the truth.

You decide who you want to be today, and you have the opportunity to take back your attention and your emotions if you are willing to take back your thoughts, actions, and feelings from the stories you keep replaying in your head over and over again as if they are your current reality.

Only one moment in time exists, and that is the present. Your past is valuable and your future is inevitable, but real work can only be done in the present moment we have together right now.

Decide you aren’t going to keep the old stories on repeat anymore, and open your heart and mind to what God has waiting for you.

Show Up for Yourself

It is time to decide what you truly want and pursue it wholeheartedly. No one is coming to save the day, and you are the one who must show up for yourself. God and the universe want to be part of your life and all that you are on the verge of experiencing and creating, but it takes faith, determination, and courage to receive these gifts.

Where are you still neglecting your body? Are you pushing too hard to try and become someone or something else? Why not just give yourself some love and embrace the best version of you that exists today?

You are special, and your capacity to embrace this life can grow and strengthen if you are willing to admit the things that need to be admitted and deal with them. Some things can be processed just by accepting that they occurred, recognizing that they were purposefully painful, and believing that you no longer need to hold onto the residual pain and injury that these events left behind.

Just Learn to Have Fun

One of the things that I have had to figure out over the years is how to let my guard down enough to have fun just as myself without any excessive outside stimuli. Doing the same things will get you the same results, so it’s time to try something new.

As human beings, we are wired to identify threats above all else, and we are also programmed and told that the things that we enjoy aren’t of value or beneficial unless they serve the industrial and consumerism-driven agenda. That is actually the opposite of what is true.

You should bring pleasure and joy and connection and community into your life as much as you can. The story that you must be chasing a forever-evolving and unattainable vision of happiness keeps you from ever being there with your happiness.

How about you just explore, discover, build, create, or just be the happiness you are chasing?

Money isn’t synonymous with happiness, but that is the story that is drilled into your head. Smiling, laughing, embracing, making love, overcoming a challenge, seeing someone else smile, helping someone achieve their dreams, seeing a mother duck walk in front of you with her ducklings — now those things are synonymous with happiness and joy!

Do more of that.

I need to see you jump for joy and reach out to shake the hand of someone you respect. Understanding where your emotions are feeding the things you want to feed and where your emotions are leading you is a very worthy endeavor. You can then align your life with what brings you joy and fulfillment as you gain a clearer vision and deeper understanding of your emotional state.

The People That Pulled Me Through

Like any worthwhile journey, starting, building, and operating TriFitness has been full of challenging and rewarding moments. I had no idea what it would look like 14 years ago when it all began.

The first step was completely life-changing for me as I made the decision to go back to college and learn what it would take to become the best coach I could be. I was in a very comfortable and empty place when I made this decision. Life seemed good, and it was in many ways, but I felt empty and confused inside.

I didn’t like the potential future I was imagining, and I knew I could do more. When I accepted this mission, I had 10 years in the Coast Guard already and 2 years left on my contract. I doubted myself in many ways, but I did not doubt that I could help my clients with God’s guidance, and that was all the motivation I needed.

I looked at this 2-year period I had left on Active Duty as an opportunity to build a solid foundation of knowledge and experience before I left the security of a consistent source of income to go full-time in the gym.

I studied hard, earning 17 certifications, an Associate’s in Personal Training, and a Bachelor’s in Exercise Science. I went to conferences all over the U.S. and even Greece, listened to every podcast you could think of on leadership, growth, and business, and started reading voraciously after having not read at all since grade school.

In 2013, I attended a 3.5-day mentorship hosted by a very well-respected trainer and gym owner, Todd Durkin, and met many other amazing professionals working to help build businesses that changed lives. After this experience, I knew for sure that this was the path I was meant to be on.

In 2016, I faced another challenge in an ended marriage, and this slowed my progress a little as I signed on one more year of Active Duty while I collected myself and took time to understand what the best path was for me.

One thing that never wavered were my clients and my belief that I could help them live more active, healthy, and rewarding lives. Without my warriors at TriFitness, I wouldn’t be the man I am today.

I cared more for them than I cared for myself for many years, but my healing has led me back to the life I deserved all along. My clients showed me how to love myself, and they believed in me. This has opened my heart in ways I could never have done on my own.

I am forever indebted to each and every human being that gave me a chance to be part of their lives. I thank you from the whole of my heart, because of you, I am now operating with my whole heart in harmony with the world.

There Is a Process

Some things are only going to show up once you have proceeded to a point where you can accept and cherish them. God doesn’t want to give you more than you can handle, but He does want to give you more, so learn to handle what you have right now, and you will be given more.

This is the process of healing, growing, and integrating that we all have the opportunity to practice in our lives. God’s deepest blessings can’t be found by accident. You may not know exactly what you are doing, but following God’s guidance and love faithfully and confidently will lead you to experience your life on a level that eventually leads to the answers that you are seeking.

There is always a deeper level of understanding and experiencing from what I have learned so far. It’s ok to look forward to the next depth while you are learning to swim, but try not to get caught up in only looking for the next thing or the tide may shift without you.

You should look at life as a treasure hunter always looking for the bounty in reality.

Learn to thrive in your current position and accept the gaps in your capacity as a path to that next adventure instead of judging your weaknesses. These gaps in your current ability are the opportunities to continue raising your capacity and your understanding of what the next level of your growth will look like.

If you are comfortably numb or complacent, then you aren’t going to see the opportunity as it passes by, so you must be engaged and open for the life that calls you each day as you arise.

Hard times are part of the human experience, and death isn’t the end. It is just another journey to embrace.

As you learn more about the gifts God has offered you, the more thankful and grateful you will be, and the more joy you will have in each waking moment.

The pain hasn’t left, but it no longer has a pedestal. God has shown me that healing is not always about forgetting what happened. Sometimes healing is learning to place love, faith, gratitude, and joy back where the pain used to take up space in my heart.

Love Always in All Ways,

Jake

What it took to get you through the hardest calls, rescues, battles, or situations should not take complete control of your life. As someone who is trained to run into the fire, you must learn that not every emergency is yours to respond to, and always anticipating or preparing for these highly demanding situations is wearing you out and keeping you from enjoying your life in many ways.

We’re not taught how to properly debrief ourselves mentally, physically, or spiritually, and this leaves a lot of unwanted residue behind. It’s time to triage your past experiences and learn how to fully engage with your life as a healthy, stable, and whole human being.

I want to preface this with: I am not a doctor by any means, so don’t take my offering as a treatment plan. You are going to have to do your own work to figure this out, but I want to help as much as I can by sharing some of my story. I see people I love and deeply care for being controlled by the pain and terror they had to survive, and because of this, I won’t stop fighting for you or for me. It’s not easy or mainstream work, and it doesn’t stop us from being who we are.

We all know that as warriors, it’s in our blood to stay in the fight, and I pray that what I share will help you learn to fight again for yourself, your family, and your community.

The One That Changed It All

One of my biggest challenges and eventual blessings occurred when I was 21 years old as Cutter Rescue Swimmer on board the Coast Guard Cutter Dauntless.

On October 13, 2005, under the glow of the moon, at 12:51 a.m., our crew detected a “go-fast” boat attempting to illegally enter U.S. waters in the Florida Straits. This is the waterway that connects the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean. The vessel was being operated by two smugglers carrying 31 people coming from Cuba, aiming for Florida, seeking asylum using the Wet Foot, Dry Foot policy. Along with a Homeland Security fast pursuit boat and our rigid-hull inflatable, RHI, we intercepted the overloaded vessel, and it overturned, leading to a rescue and recovery operation.

As the lead Cutter Rescue Swimmer at the time, I helped recover all but one of the passengers and brought them aboard our cutter. It was discovered during the rescue effort that a 6-year-old boy hadn’t been rescued. I do remember the mother frantically yelling in Spanish, and I was asking our interpreter what she was saying. It was that her son was in the water and needed to be rescued.

We were scanning the surface of the water looking for any sign of life, but there was no sign of the child. I was very adamant about wanting to be deployed to breach under the vessel to go and find him, as this is what I was trained for, but there was policy in place that said we were not allowed to go completely under any vessel due to safety risk unless there was direct line of sight to the individual needing rescue. We didn’t have a visual. In the dark hours of the morning, I was diligently scanning the water and under the water but couldn’t directly see anything.

We pivoted to flipping the boat back upright, as it had capsized during the operation. Using our mooring lines, which were very thick and heavy in the water, I was free diving to find the transom of the boat’s motors to wrap the line around so we could use our capstan to winch the line up and flip the boat over. This seemed to take forever, but I don’t really know exactly how long it took. Much of my memory of this overall operation is still patchy.

I do remember feeling something hitting my fins and our shark watch mentioning we had sharks in the water, which is very common when there is this much commotion. I am not sure if I said it or just thought it, but I was thinking, “Don’t tell me, just shoot the damn sharks!” I had a mission to complete, and I didn’t plan on stopping.

Eventually, we were able to turn the vessel over, and the boy was discovered deceased and recovered.

Unfortunately, I would be deployed a few more times that patrol to recover two more deceased migrants, and these operations were just as challenging for me. I was having to swim intimately close to one of the individuals for an extended period of time and actually had the body dropped on me while trying to recover her.

These are only a few of the challenges I would face over my 20-year career, but they were very impactful as I was 21 years old and not even really mature enough to know how to handle them. I still spend much of my energy working to cope with the residue of these events.

I have learned that the impacts of traumatic and stressful events like these are something that you must accept and manage, not run from or ignore. Learning to thrive again has been possible, but I have had to build a very structured life managing my energy, time, tools, and resources smartly. I had to accept that I have a condition that requires my attention, and that wasn’t an easy thing to admit, but I knew it was required to continue progressing and live the life I deserved. Pretending like everything was perfect wouldn’t allow me to face the challenges at hand with the level of effort required to overcome them.

The Armor Gets Heavy

Learning how to be present and open to the life that waits isn’t an easy task, but it is a worthy one. Your position and your job are only one part of your life and trying to be everything to everyone is going to eventually lead to burnout and collapse in other areas of your life. When you leave work learn to take off your work hat and put it away.

Be a dad, husband, wife and a friend. Learn to embrace the version of you who likes to read or go fishing. This is hard when you spend so much time preparing for and performing your job, but you cannot continue to neglect yourself or your family if it’s a full and healthy life you want to live.

Yes, your job is important, and it requires your attention, but so does your health, happiness and relationships. Set clear boundaries and learn to put down your work, so you can recover, reset and be available for what is in front of you.

You are a dynamic being with many different areas of your life that deserve your full attention and energy, so learn how to let go and embrace it consciously and effectively. This isn’t easy when these traits and habits have saved your life or others lives, but they aren’t always practical or relevant to your reality, so learn to identify what the moment is asking of you and react appropriately.

Remaining hypervigilant with forward posture is exhausting and limiting. Your emotions and the emotions of those around you will most likely be neglected for you to maintain a sense of control and safety in situations that need you emotionally available. Eventually something is going to collapse if you aren’t proactive and learn how to better manage your attention and intention to be fully aware and available for the life and the people in front of you, so please act before it gets this far.

A Bird’s-Eye View

Learning to work and thrive in extreme environments that our jobs require as first responders, operators, military members, and leaders is not an easy task. Our work involves a level of stress, adrenaline, and trauma that isn’t healthy, supportive, or balanced, so we need to learn how to bring ourselves back to baseline as quickly and effectively as possible to survive.

In my experience, we are not taught how to do this. Continuing to add stress and blindly manage symptoms isn’t serving our nation and those trained to protect us, and it’s time we do better. There are ways to manage your symptoms and challenges, which start with accepting and identifying them. The challenges won’t always go away, but the ability to identify them and work with them can become a skill set to use daily. Doing this work efficiently has the potential to greatly improve your capacity to balance yourself out when you do the work and when it’s time to recover.

When you are in a stressful situation, take a bird’s-eye-view approach. Zoom out your mental picture and look at the environment from all angles. Is there a way for you to minimize your exposure or responsibility in the situation? Can you delegate some of the work more efficiently? Are you hyper-focused on one aspect of the overall incident that is limiting your capacity?

Asking more and better questions will offer you more opportunities to take a new and clearer approach and give you more capacity. This is an easy-to-implement practice to help you maintain your composure and expand your point of view.

Healthy Habits Lead to More Capacity

It may go without saying, but your overall health plays a major role in how well you can deal with the symptoms brought in by stress and overwhelm. If you are fatigued, in pain, and out of shape, then you aren’t going to manage the anxiety, anger, and doubt from your traumatic events very well.

You only have so much bandwidth to deal with stress, so you should work to minimize as many of the stressors in your life as you can. Creating habits and building your resilience in healthy ways are critical steps in becoming a more balanced and capable person in all situations. Adopting healthy habits like exercise, sleep hygiene, stress relief techniques like meditation, breathwork, journaling, and anything that brings you joy and fulfillment should be part of your plan. Being able to easily access and utilize these stress management techniques is critical, so you should focus on simple and accessible techniques.

Hydrate, sleep, eat well, move more, and cultivate a positive mindset. Mastering these basics will lead to more energy, more patience, and more confidence for you. It is hard to overestimate what these habits can do, so start here.

Plan a morning walk or an afternoon workout. Set a sleep schedule, buy a reusable water bottle, and invest in some training sessions. You don’t have to be extreme, but you do have to be consistent. As your mind and body begin to reap the rewards of your healthy nutrition and increased sleep quality and adapt to physical training, you will see significant increases in your capabilities and in your resilience.

Taking care of yourself is a sign to everyone around you that you value your health and you want to be your best self for them and for you.

Your family needs you. We need you. You need you!

Love Always in All Ways,

Jake

Today is the day, my friend. You and I both know comfort, fear, and anger can keep a good person stuck for a long time. But they don’t get to drive forever. At some point, we have to stand up, take a breath, and walk through the door.

You are going to have to lift the weight of your judgment and hesitation a thousand times before you ever walk into the gym, the boardroom, or the therapist’s office. Experiencing a breakthrough in your life starts in your head and comes to fruition through your heart. We get excited about the results a workout, a raise, or a therapy session can offer us, but it is the momentum of getting started that stops even the strongest and most motivated among us.

Becoming strong enough to move through these insecurities and consistently believe in yourself is where the real rewards are reaped. As someone who has taken this journey and now coached thousands of people through it, I can say with certainty that those who take an authentic, healthy, and balanced path get the best results. These individuals choose to consistently show up whether they are motivated and prepared or not.

Real change and growth take way more time and effort than you can achieve in a day, a week, or even a month, so settle in and look for the work that needs to be done. Staring in the mirror judging yourself, constantly pushing past your healthy limits, tracking your weight obsessively, and tightly restricting your lifestyle does not work for most people. Usually, it leads to rebellion and animosity.

Practicing Presence Over Perfection

You are getting a lot of your images of what a perfect life looks like from an artificially created reality, and it leads you off course and confuses you. When you seek change and growth, start with your internal world and your immediate surroundings.

For example, if you are currently a laborer working on a construction site, then be the best worker you can be. Show up on time. Put in meaningful and dedicated effort. This will lead to more knowledge and confidence, and eventually, you may become a skilled carpenter and have a chance to be the construction supervisor. On the other hand, if you walk in on day one and tell the carpenter how to do his work and give the supervisor direction, you will soon be out of a job.

No matter what area of your life you are working to improve, you cannot skip steps. Wisdom and improvement take work.

Show up for every moment of your life, even the most challenging and painful ones. This is the only way to progress past them. You aren’t going to go from hurt to healed by skipping the work of understanding what caused the hurt in the first place. This isn’t a path around your challenges. It is a pathway through them, and I am urging you to remain present.

If you want to make progress and change your health, happiness, finances, spiritual fulfillment, or anything else in your life, then you are going to have to keep opening the door and putting in the work. There will be guides and nudges along the way, but you must be on your way to find them.

Leveling Up in the Game of Life

If you have ever taken part in sports, a video game, or a skilled trade, then you understand what it takes to improve your capabilities and knowledge enough to level up. Life is no different. It takes the same level of practice and purpose.

Most of us, unfortunately, haven’t been taught how to understand our emotional baseline, emotional intelligence, or how our brains work, so we just assume that everything is how it should be. I am sorry to say that isn’t true. If you aren’t self-aware and don’t understand how your emotions and energy influence how you feel and act, then you still have work to do.

Start by identifying your emotional tendencies. Are you anxious, scared, angry, jumpy, or needy? What really matters is that you get clear about the emotion you want to improve and start there. You will be able to track where it shows up most in your day and what thoughts, situations, or people trigger that specific emotion.

This understanding and expansion will come from knowing what causes these emotions and how you can work through them. It doesn’t mean the emotion disappears. It just means you have a choice in whether to let that emotion have control when you identify it showing up in your life. Keeping it simple is the key to this work.

Don’t Get Caught Up in Your Story

We are all tied up in the story that is our past, and it isn’t currently serving us as it should be. This was a very hard lesson to learn, and I am still battling it because my story is a great one. It has been tragic, beautiful, and so far, triumphant, but it isn’t what is going to lead me to the present I am seeking.

This life, in the moment I am writing this, is full of immense potential. I can choose to manifest that potential into these words and share my heart and soul, or I can let my lack of traditional literary training and insecurities tell me I am wasting time and no one will want to read this. I know you wanted to read this, though, or you wouldn’t be here. So I am going to create this story with our harmonious growth and understanding as the pillars I write from.

This is the story.

Love and connection can make it hard to fully embrace the new and improved version of yourself because it takes a certain amount of letting go of moments and emotions that were created with people you love dearly. You aren’t leaving these people behind. You are only growing to be more available and present for them without the distraction or drain of past emotions and energies pulling you in a thousand different directions.

Your presence and your energy are now fully available and able to be used for the interaction you are having with these people right now. This story has more potential than ever before because you are now more available for it than you have ever been, so celebrate that fact.

Community Equals Success

Having like-minded and dedicated people to engage with and share your experiences with will bring more depth and enjoyment to this journey. It can be lonely when you feel like you are the only person around you who is trying to grow and change, and it isn’t easy to go it alone. Luckily, there are many options in our hyper-connected world for you to join different organizations and groups doing similar work as you.

It is a beautiful time to be on this planet if you like to connect and put in work focused on healing, community, and connection. I personally am part of, and have been part of, many different organizations — civic groups, churches, training programs, mentorships, social networks, and my local community — that hold me accountable, lift me up, and provide much-needed social proof that helps me see how my work is affecting society.

People and relationships are the real reason you were sent to this planet in the first place, so you need to find healthy, fun, and fulfilling ways to create relationships and connections that improve your life and the lives of those you are spending your time with. You, your family, and your community need a whole and healed version of you.

The door will look different for each of us. It may be the gym, the boardroom, the therapist’s office, the church, the apology, or the quiet moment when you finally stop running from yourself. Whatever door is in front of you, take a breath and open it. The life God is calling you toward is waiting on the other side.

Love Always in All Ways,

Jake

 I could stop now and be comfortable, but I have never believed in comfort just for the sake of comfort. We need to find challenges to give back love to the earth, animals and our brothers and sisters here. I am enjoying perfecting this part of this life. My life is a blessing from every angle and sometimes I have the ability understand and enjoy it. Other times I am still in pain and I am struggling and lost. It's just all part of this path I guess. You have to face it all if you want to live a deep and touching life open to being the best conduit you can be.

There must be a lot of ways to get there because it seems we all have a unique capacity and a unique journey in a way that brings light to the world. We each bring our own story to the collective and share the lessons learned along the way with others. I am exploring the depths of humanity and the love and energy we can bring into this world. If it’s just my journey, that's ok too. I would like to help others, but I am ok with it just being me and my family. I haven't always understood that fact. I am human, so that is ok too. We have to keep walking to discover the next step on the path and you can't skip steps. Those steps were required to get here.

Jake

We're going to need to take our cue from someone and I choose to trust God as my copilot. I feel uncomfortable and out of place often with the words I use and the energy I produce, but I mean what I say and I trust God will lay my energy and my words where they need to be heard and felt. I am not here for my Glory and I have honestly always known that. I just had to figure out who I was looking for to give the credit and God leads me to them and he allows me to build them up and show them the love that is meant to be shared. Call it what you will, but I call it a way of life or more like THE way of life. You have a choice and that's what tends to stump most people.

Jake

It’s time to learn to embrace the most present, capable and available version of yourself. You are going to have to cultivate a growth mindset and seek out the work that will help you finally embrace yourself for who you are instead of trying to be someone or something that you are not. You are told that your ego is your enemy, but I believe your ego is shining light on the areas of yourself that you need to work on and understand better. By slowing down and asking yourself where you are still hiding your heart you will begin to see what needs to be understood and released. The initial exploration of your heart most likely will feel daunting and fruitless, but the more you are willing to let go, the easier and clearer the path gets. We are going to spend quality time getting to know ourselves and nourishing our mind, body, soul and spirit with our thoughts, words and deeds. As we grow to know ourselves better, we will see the amazingly powerful and fruitful creatures that we are. We will learn to no longer let our interpretation of what others think of us control our actions or consume our energy. By taking back our energy and attention, we can progress towards the things that deeply matter to us and live life in harmony with God and all of his creation. Adopted and absorbed beliefs, ideas, opinions and institutions will all be replaced with our own Truth. If the Truth is what you seek then you must find your path to it!

Helping others flourish is the most rewarding and motivating thing I have found on this planet so far. I have been honored to lead many teams and individuals over my lifetime, and I believe it’s critical to accept that you are a leader and you are capable of great things. Your life is going to follow your lead in all ways, and you can learn to be confident and faithful enough to step out into your beautiful existence. I want to share the structure and the approach I have worked on to cultivate many deep and rewarding relationships with myself, my family, those I lead and those I serve. The things I miss most from my past are the people I have met and the moments that we made together. I am not always the most efficient, politically correct or compassionate leader, but I have always been fiercely loyal and supportive of my people. Much of the growth I’ve experienced came from improving my relationship with my internal world rather than the external world so we’re going to focus on what is happening inside your head and heart as well as what you can see in the mirror.

Your truth is what you are experiencing and doing in person right in front of your eyes right now. Not the story you have written in your head, what you are watching on TV, reading on the internet or being shown on social media sites. A virtual world has been sold as reality, because your attention and energy are now a commodity and this curated world can be used to make you feel less than and lacking. Once you feel inadequate or less than it is easier to make you think you need to buy or achieve something to fix your inadequacy, but what they are selling most likely isn’t achievable or attainable in our world. Virtual worlds use stories, images and technologies to display a more exciting and intriguing existence than could ever be created in our physical world. It’s time to stop chasing something that isn’t currently possible and chase what is very real and very rewarding right now. A fully engaged, healed and powerful version of yourself who is in love with life and all of its beautiful wonders.

In other words, no matter how hard you lift you will never achieve the picture of someone who is genetically and chemically more primed for muscle building than you, so create your best reality and ignore someone else’s reality or you will never improve. You have no control over their reality, and your world is not meant to mimic or mirror theirs. You are meant to do all you can to fully embrace your own life now and always. It’s time to stop watching and wishing for a different reality and begin the required work to cultivate your own beautiful existence with every waking moment. Lead yourself to the life that you deserve today my friends.

Clearing and Preparing Yourself

You will not have the energy or clarity to grow and expand if you are still clinging to your old mindsets and ideas of how things should be. You must accept exactly how things are and be willing to admit it when things need to be altered, adapted or released. The truth doesn’t care what you were taught, what you believe or what you think. God can only heal what is real and true and you must be honest with yourself and open your heart and mind to your current Truth especially if it is painful or limiting. The Truth cannot be hidden, altered or filtered through your ego If you are going to work at the level required for God level healing and blessings.

Your capacity to heal and progress is both life altering and accessible. You must be willing to let go of who you are today, so that you can become a healthier and more authentic version of yourself tomorrow. This will not require you to leave anything that is good for you and it will lead you to a Holy, Healed and Whole version of yourself. The things that are no longer serving you will be easily identified as you do the work to breathe, move and seek genuine Love from the inside out. The best version of you already exists, you just have to do the work to uncover her. She can’t be held back, silenced or judged anymore, She needs to be taught, nurtured, guided and mentored. This is the work that your soul deserves and heart can deliver with the right support from God and effort from you.

Sit with your thoughts, fears, desires, addictions, health conditions, emotional stuck points, responsibilities and anything that needs to be taken into consideration for potential realignment. Write out what you are spending most of your time and attention doing. I have created the RX3 which is an easy-to-use guide to help you do this. It is a critical step to gain clarity of what consumes your energy and your attention if you want to take and use this energy and attention to progress in this life. Some of these things you cannot control in the immediate present, but that doesn’t mean you can’t create a plan to redirect your attention over time to what you what you know is your truth. Don’t let the obstacles keep you distracted. Work on the things you have control over and as you begin to do this work you will gain clarity and understanding of what needs to be done. Learning to lead from the heart will allow you to embody your most authentic and harmonious self, re-energize your connection to your spirit and teach you how to execute effectively creating harmony in your daily life.

Listen to Your Body Before It’s Too Late

We tend to think that our brains are completely in charge, but the body never forgets. Any trauma or pain that you have been through has the potential to become stuck within your emotional body. This is where much of your emotional dysregulation comes from. You were yelled at by your parents, and it hurt your feelings. If you don’t then have a conversation or a series of conversations helping you process those emotions, they can get stuck. You start to embody the pain and fear you felt instead of being able to process and integrate the experience. So, any time someone yells you revert to the pain, shame and guilt you felt in a previous moment instead of it just being a new experience to understand in the present moment. The story from the past experience layers on top of the present moment and you are suddenly not only reacting to the present moment, but you are also re-reacting to the past experience that you haven’t integrated or processed. You can release these stuck points and stop the re-reaction happening with the right work. This emotional dysregulation can be greatly improved with somatic movement and integration practices.

With exercise and movement your body needs a consistent and practical dose to remain healthy and functional. If you want to look a certain way, then you will need to train in the ways that help you look that way. If you want to perform a certain task, then you will need to train for that task. If you are dealing with health conditions or disabilities then you will need to learn what it takes to train with them and focus on the things you can control. If you are trying to release trapped energy or pent up emotions then you will need to follow a specific protocol for that. Consistency, intensity and variety are three factors that I suggest you pay attention to when you are engaging in an exercise routine for health and longevity. Some days you may need an intense lifting session and some days you need to just work on mobility and mindful movement. Walking may be healthy and convenient for you during one stage of life, but stationary biking may be the next best activity for you to stay healthy.

I believe what exercise you will perform most consistently without overtraining or hurting yourself is the best default activity for you to start with. If you need a coach or an accountability partner, then go and find one. If you want to work with me then send me a message here. No matter what you do, you must move consistently and smartly to remain healthy, energized and able to fully enjoy this life and engage in the activities that make your life rewarding. As you begin to see your physical traits deteriorate or energy weaken you should be looking for ways to turn this around and keep doing the things that maintain these physical attributes instead of limiting your life and avoiding anything that challenges these capabilities. It puts so many amazing people into early graves because they have one incident or one sickness and they start to put guardrails around themselves while ignoring their physical health as it deteriorates.

We tend to get caught up on the popular, most effective or the latest trend in fitness or healthy aging while sitting on our couch or recliner wasting away. Get up and go out and pick something up and carry it, stand up 10 times, walk down the street and visit a friend, join a gym or hire a coach. Your bank account can’t save you when your muscles have deteriorated, your heart is clogged and you have a hard time standing on one leg. Don’t wait another day. Get up and get moving in any way that feels good to you. If you can do yoga in the morning and weight training at night, then go for it. If you can walk at lunch and take a Group X class after work, then go for it. If you can only get a 10-minute walk in, then do that! Something is better than nothing as long as it’s not damaging your body.

Recovery work isn’t negotiable

Healing is where the magic happens with exercise and we must keep recovery activities in our programs as well. Overtraining and a lack of movement both increase disease and inflammation, so we must also manage and apply them smartly. Most people don’t know that exercise does damage to the body and the recovery process is what builds back the tissues and biological systems stronger and more adapted to the stressors applied to them. So, jogging/running will improve the efficiency and strength of the brain, lungs, heart, arteries, capillaries, lower body and core tissues, but each time you go for a significant enough training run you will have to re-hydrate, sleep, eat adequate nutrients and let your body heal before pushing yourself again. Recovery gives you the capacity to do more and handle more without your body breaking down. In short, you can’t improve without doing the work to heal and rebuild yourself between each stressful training session.

Your stress, nutrition, sleep, hydration, environment, emotions and mindset all play a role in your healing, and you must put work in all these areas on a consistent basis to remain balanced and connected. We all know what to do, but we are too distracted and too busy to really take care of ourselves. It’s time to take back your daily habits, mindset and approach to thrive in this world. You can learn how to be more mindful, consistent and engaged with this life in a way that is efficient and sustainable and that is what I am sharing. I know it looks a lot like purposeful work done with love, hope and joy. That’s because it is. It’s the labor of loving yourself and your life. Your body needs to be nurtured and cared for as much as it needs to be pushed and challenged, so get to it!

External work can only get you so far

We are a society that easily identifies when someone is physically healthy through our eyes and we make snap judgements that the individual looks healthy because you can see their anatomy and the structure of their muscle, but this is really only one portion of someone’s overall wellbeing and once you have made significant progress in this realm you will begin to understand that there is so much more to explore and work on. This is the point I am now spending much of my time and attention on. Still, I work on my physical health, but I don’t obsess over, work tirelessly to perfect or idolize a certain physique or specific skill to prove that I am worthy of some fabricated perfect person. You must trust the work that you put in and then go about your life working to identify and connect with the other areas of your existence that deserve your attention and have been neglected or ignored.

Emotional awareness and eventually emotional coherence are something that I have been consciously working on for 13 years and it is a huge part of my growth. By 28 I had achieved a certain level of understanding, acceptance and consistency with what it takes to maintain a healthy, energized and balanced body, so I began to investigate the other areas of myself and where I had gaps that needed to be filled. This was naturally my brain which lead to what the brain has impact over and which includes your thinking and your emotions. Growth mindset means that you are open to allowing your brain to expand and continue to develop, which is one way to say you are seeking the path to becoming a fully harmonious and optimal being in all area of your existence. With just this one acceptance of the desire to grow you will open the door to immense learning, grand experiences and eventually holistic fulfillment from your life. I have experienced many very emotionally charged experiences in my life and I didn’t realize how many of these past emotions still controlled much of my current existence, but once I did I was not going to allow it anymore and that is how and why I developed many of the processes and understanding I speak of and refer to. It was purely a survival technique to replace hundreds of imbedded survival techniques.

Discipline is critical in the development of mental health and overall emotional clarity, so working to hold your thoughts, words and actions to a higher standard is the beginning of this journey. When I started this journey, I hadn’t done enough with my life in full control and intention to trust myself. My thoughts, words and deeds had been primarily uncontrollable emotional reactions to the outside world rather than well thought out, understood and precise actions taken with my heart and soul in tuned. Once I had made enough progress to gain some self-control and start making decisions that compounded on each other, I could build a blueprint for the life I desired. This work allowed me to finally trust that I was in control, and I had the ability to lead my life with the love and respect I truthfully desired. No one and nothing were going to be able to give me what I needed. I first had to prove to myself that I could do this with my own heart and guidance from our God and his many angels and saints whom I share and have shared my life with.

There are a lot of books and information out there on emotional intelligence, the brain, discipline, personal development and pretty much anything that you can think of, but it will all mean nothing if you don’t cultivate a harmonious operating system from the inside out. This is a relationship between your own physical, emotional, energetic and spiritual body that you can consistently operate and create with. You are an amazing creature that has the capacity to achieve anything that you desire if you just do the work and stop trying to constantly look for the easy, convenient or popular way to achieve these things. It’s got to be your own self worth and faith that opens your mind and heart to this ability, so learn to connect with, test, develop and trust your own thoughts, words and actions first and everything else will be that much more rewarding and accessible.

Breathing Into Your Heart

I choose breathwork as a tool because everyone knows how to breathe, breathe work does many different things for our health, has many different modalities to choose from and there isn’t much of a learning curve! By keeping it simple and focusing on improving and refining this mostly automatic skill you will have a tool that is always available to you. I was born with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck causing some lung developmental issues leading to childhood asthma. This was a big part of my life between the ages of 5-10 whether it was breathing treatments or having to stay in the hospital in an oxygen tent, it impacted me in ways I didn’t even fully understand until recently. I also had 3-4 adults smoking in the house for much of my childhood which didn’t help. Breathing wasn’t just something I could take for granted and this is why later in life I started to really put more emphasis on running and cardiovascular training alongside musculoskeletal training.

As I have focused on maximizing human potential, growth and coaching I have taken many courses on somatic and energetic breathe based healing practices that alongside my personal lived experiences have taught me a lot about breathwork and its capacity to enhance our lives, regulate our central nervous systems and lead us to a deeper connection to ourselves. The breath can lead the way, open the door and raise your capacity in real time and tangible ways especially when you use it alongside chanting, humming, singing, dancing, exercise and other somatic releasing techniques. Your heart is the path that you most often aim for in your breath work and the more attention you can hold and the more consistency you can cultivate the more effective and impactful this breathing practice can be.

I honestly use as much of an intuitive approach as I can, but this is difficult without having a lot of practices to choose from in your database. I either sit or lie in the most comfortable position possible and make sure I can move around a little if needed. I often wear dark glasses or a face mask. Start by bringing my awareness to my breath and my body. Scan my body, my feet, hands, neck, shoulders, core and any other body part that can help bring your awareness internal. What matters most is that you bring as much of your attention and energy internally and connect to the breath and the heart while letting go of any other thoughts. If you are having a hard time focusing start to make your breathing more audible. This will give you something to focus on and if that doesn’t work you can try and hum or chant with each breath. You are going to want to practice expanding your rib cage fully inflating your lungs with each breath. If you find yourself still chest breathing or not able to expand your ribs consistently with your breathing, then you need to practice diaphragmatic breathing link here.👈 Improving this capability before you get to intense with the breathing will help you make more progress with most all breathing techniques.

Sometimes we need support and guidance too. The 4x4x4x4 box breathing is a technique where you breathe in counts of 4. It goes like this Breath In for 4, Hold for 4, Out for 4, Hold for 4 repeats. . Another technique I will mention is the WIM Hof method. WIM Hof is a great teacher who keeps it simple and there are a lot of different ways to help you learn from a free APP to YouTube videos link here👈. I encourage you to explore his method. It’s easy to understand and apply anywhere anytime. Finally, I suggest downloading and using the Insight Timer app here👈 to help guide you with your breathwork, meditation, affirmations, yoga etc.

Choose curiosity over control or judgement in this work

In a relationship you aren’t going to make much progress or learn much if you decide what you think about someone or something without openly engaging or giving them a chance first, but how often do we do this to ourselves? We tell ourselves. Oh, you can’t ever do that, or you’ll never be able to reach that level or you’re never going to change. This is the story you have decided to create in your head about yourself before understanding yourself or testing your capabilities and this isn’t a fair, effective or beneficial way to build an internal relationship. Giving your own thoughts, desires and emotions some of your time, creating space for the pain, emotions and obstacles to show you why they are there and being able to identify whether they are valid, still serving you or just a stuck emotions from an experience you haven’t integrated yet. Meeting your emotions where they are in your heart and trying to understand them will help you to develop a much more cohesive and constructive relationship and a repeatable process for this work. It’s not easy to do internal work when life is beating on your door, but I wouldn’t always rush to open the door if you don’t have your house in order first. Take it slow and follow the truth of the present not the idolized story or externally driven version of what you hope you will be or wished you were.

Create some space for the truth to be a new story and a new space that you can actually embrace and be engaged without the ruminating negative stories or distracted judgements filling your head. The right things often happen as they should when you let them. I personally tend to assume the worse as a natural reaction, but that truly isn’t the case most of the time. Using an open-minded and open-hearted curiosity approach has provided me with very rewarding outcomes when I am able to follow my own advice.

This should also be the case with your internal dialogue. You are always overanalyzing what could go wrong or what you haven’t yet accomplished, but what could you ask yourself instead? What have experienced so far in my life that gives me confidence and a reason to trust that things are going to go right and things are going to fall right into place for me? I can think of so many things that have gone right in my head right now even though my Ego or my shallow self wants to keep preparing for my inevitable demise that hasn’t happened in 15,358 days. Yes, like you I have had many significant challenges and I did carry those challenges around with me as my trophies for a long time, but they are now stored away in a box that I open only when I want, instead of letting them be the filter I process all of my thoughts, words and actions thorough.

I overcame these traumatic moments by becoming curious about them and by asking how I might recover from the pain that they each left inside of me. I accepted that I would be letting a part of myself go, but I also eventually realized that the version of myself that I created to handle these situations was no longer helping me and was stunting my physical, mental, emotional and spiritual growth and I wasn’t ok with this. That version of me had to be contacted, nurtured, consoled and let go in a healthy and conscious way. I am proud and thankful that God and the past versions of me were able to work together to allow for this release. I wouldn’t have been able to continue this expansion of myself if I continued to deny that part of me. Burying it does not and will not work. This mindset and approach are literally a hole that you are digging for yourself every time you try and bury the residual energy and emotion that came to help you in a tragic moment 20, 30, 40 years old.

I think much of the reason I was in this hole for so long is because I was scared of what it would feel like to step into my truth and let myself feel again. The amount of pain that I had collected was so damn heavy and powerful that all I could do was run from it. I did this in many ways by denying my own humanity and value in this world.

A lot of the work that I did was to help others and to just keep myself so contained that I wouldn’t let any more pain, sadness or weakness enter my body. This may not be the case for you, but the story you are telling yourself is asking to be rewritten every day and it can be the most amazing story ever written if you are willing to be there for it. Let’s stop denying our humanity and stop trying to bury the emotions that need to be integrated and reimagined. No one is telling you that your past isn’t valuable or that you didn’t face extreme challenges. What we are saying is that this version of you today doesn’t have to always filter through a lifetime of pain that hasn’t been a logical threat for decades. If you are ready for the next steps then so am I and I look forward to sharing more amazing moment with you my friends.

Love Always In All Ways

Jake

P.S. I have been working on something very special and I’m super excited to share it with you soon. It is my E3 Framework designed to help you with this work. We all deserve to grow, expand and excel in our lives and I want to share my path with you.

Don’t forget why you have this Monday off!

Because of you, I am!

As you begin to practice listening to your heart, observing your breath and paying closer attention to your thoughts, each moment of your life will seem to slow down and become more fulfilling and fruitful. Communication with the world around you will expand and your understanding of the significance of the present moment will become clear. Spending years seeking different self-help and personal development processes and programs often leaves many questions unanswered. Not to say that seeking mind and heart expanding resources like books, mentorships, courses, workshops and conferences aren’t important because they are often required and can be some of the most enjoyable and rewarding parts of your journey, but eventually you must look within and trust the process. Making a complete and full commitment to understanding yourself and the Love that God is offering you will allow for an expansion that can’t be found externally. Only you and God really know what you need.

One thing about this level of growth and healing is that you may first need to see that it is possible or hear it from someone who has gone through it to believe it. Just because someone shares a specific pathway from their perspective doesn’t mean God won’t come and offer you a totally different path. God gives you gifts in the way that you need them. You must have faith, trust that these gifts are meant for you and work to build the capacity to pursue them. Every day you must gather your attention and set an intention. Learn how to bring yourself back to the present and make the most out of this moment. Don’t spend your days chasing mental or cyber rabbits leading you in circles. This will only waste your time and lead you right back to where you started without any real progress or expansion. Connect to, direct and protect your energy and attention every waking moment.

You have a physical, mental, emotional, energetic and spiritual body that you should be working to consistently tap into and understand. They all work together in inseparable ways and they can each be understood, nurtured and developed like any character trait or skill set. By focusing on nurturing these aspects of your existence with discipline, sacrifice and full engagement you can learn to utilize the present moment. Which is the only place you have any real influence over. It sounds counterintuitive to how the world is trying to operate right now and that is because it is. If you have tried it the other way for this long and still feel as if you’re yearning for something else, then it’s time to try something different my friends.

This work that you are called to do always starts from within. If you aim to expand your human capacity and skills to share with the world then you must work on the human aspects of yourself. You were never meant to shy away from your own heart, energy and capacity to grow. Surrender is the process of allowing God to be the start middle and finish. You will never know what things are to come until you are fully there, so you must learn to be fully engulfed in this beautiful gift of a present life, learning moment by moment what to do as you continue to embrace all that comes your way with faith and openness. Shutting down to the influence and intuitive guidance of God or trying to plan and control every second of your life will never leave any opportunity for you to develop true communion with God that he is offering you. Only a faithful, open and committed heart can fully hold the depth of Love that God has waiting for you.

It’s not time to sit on your hands and ignore the strength and the ability that you have. It’s your job to admit that you are much more capable than you have ever given yourself credit for and get to work. When you are pushed into a corner you have always figured out a way, but it shouldn’t take you being pushed into a corner to act! It should only require the breath of life that flows through you right now. It’s a gift not to be wasted or neglected. You must believe in the mission you’re here for and get to work learning to embrace this amazing body mind and soul you have been offered. There is a reason you are reading this right now and it’s your job to figure out what that is. I am only a messenger here to offer the pain and the suffering I have turned into lessons learned and to share the once broken heart that I have worked diligently to make whole again. It doesn’t really matter how big and scary your list of hardships is or how much shit you are going to have to take on. What matters is that you KNOW how strong you are!

If you really want to be part of this world in a harmonious, productive and effective way then you can’t just wander around looking for the easy path or the way around the situations that are meant to help you grow and expand. So many are only seeking the path of least resistance, and it has left many of us incapable and cowardice. You don’t need to be a slave to the grind or create a false sense of security by building the biggest and baddest ego you can. Instead, you must learn to connect to and begin to work with the pain, shame, guilt, anger, pride and prejudice that are keeping you from sharing love and healing. You must work to grow strong enough to admit that you aren’t healthy. For me it was the mental doubt, emotional fragility, energetic dysregulation and physical dysmorphia that had me feeling inadequate and desperate, but I am 100% in a better place today than I was 12 months ago and for that I am forever grateful. Acknowledgment is the first step to expansion and it’s time to be honest with ourselves.

I turned 42 last week, and I am on the precipice of the most significant moment in my entire life. Alongside my beautiful bride Tania we have worked through IVF to have the opportunity to bring another human into this world, and we are very hopeful in all the work that we have done to get here. There are still many more steps to go, but we are at least now carrying our embryo and awaiting the pregnancy test. We weren’t always sure how much we would share, but it wouldn’t be like us to hide or cover up our challenges when we know there are others who have struggled just like us and they deserve a voice too. Yes, we understand that there are still many things that could go wrong, but we do not operate in fear and have faith.

No matter what happens we will be grateful for this opportunity to bring a human into this world. This journey has forced us to grow immensely, and it has helped our relationship evolve in ways that only God can guide. We choose to focus on these gifts and the beautiful opportunity to bring another life into existence. We have faced many difficult decisions already and we choose faith over fear. We’re proud of the people we have worked hard to become for our child. We are savoring every step of this journey, and we’re going to continue to act and lead with faith, hope and love in all that we do. There are many differing opinions about IVF and we have faced some difficult conversations and have been mistreated by people we deeply love, but we have also been openly and fiercely supported by mere acquaintances. I guess that is what living a full and faithful life based off of your authentic desires requires sometimes. I have made many decisions over the past 14 years that on paper weren’t the smart, popular or safe bet, but that is what God has asked me to do and I am willing to face all that the world has to throw at me to keep my connection to our God and to expand my capacity to grow and share his love in my heart, my family, my work and my community.

I still believe in the beauty and potential energy that this world and our God has in store for us. Our child will be brought into this world with sacredness, reverence, love, compassion, faith, trust, care and patience. We will remain open to the possibilities that we can create in this beautiful world and anticipate growth, connection and longevity for us and our entire planet. It’s very easy to identify the negative and talk only about its strain on us and our society, but we can just as easily cultivate a life of love, hope, and joy with this beautiful existence. The amount of effort we put into this life each day is all that we can muster currently, but we are constantly working to expand our capacity, so we will soon have more love and light to share with our little one and y’all. Let’s all work on giving more while building our capacity to learn from each other and share the gifts our God has offered us. We can also learn to help carry the burdens of others when they are in need.

A good plan might be to never stop seeking more depth and understanding from all that you are and all that you can be. Separating God from anything that you do in my opinion isn’t a very effective way to progress in a world that he created, so I am going to stay fully engaged and working in harmony with his guidance getting the most out of this reality. If you’re always avoiding the things that are on the path to your destiny then you aren’t going to reach that destination. God can only meet you where you are, so you must continue to follow him down the path. It’s your time to step up and decide how much you are willing to follow the path that leads to your next level of healing, loving and living.

Overpreparing for the perceived negative in this world while hiding behind an enormous ego, clinging to unhealthy coping mechanisms and projecting a fabricated façade are some of the most popular addictions right now, but these approaches will never lead to clarity and expansion of your authentic self. You would be much more effective if you did the work to identify the emotional cage you have created and break through it. Living in fear, hiding behind your emotionally detached avatar isn’t the real you and it never will allow you to access the deepest version of yourself. If you are consistently stressed, distracted, desperate, lonely, depressed and anxious then you have work to do and, in my experience, you can heal on a deep and sustainable level. I haven’t magically gotten rid of 41 years of anxiety, depression and PTSD, but I am no longer controlled by the symptoms that they bring into my life. I can now identify and manage them in healthy and rewarding ways.

It’s amazing to see the different levels of life that you can access as you begin to open up to the full experience. I have accepted that my life is full of infinite potential and I can either use this potential to progress and grow deeper into the most developed and engaged version of myself or I can let it pass right through me onto the next source. I am here for the best life I can experience, and I am also aware that all the challenges and the triumphs have lessons to learn even if it’s painful. When I have a conversation with someone, I am fully engaged with them and seek out the most real and available version of them. This makes our interaction so much more valuable and impactful. I may ask about their favorite color or their favorite genre of music. I may just offer a word of encouragement or admire an article of clothing or piece of jewelry. I genuinely want to get the most out of every interaction that I can. I don’t go places where I feel my energy won’t be useful and I try and interact with people that I only genuinely want to interact with. This means I must be direct and structured with my time, attention and schedule and I suggest you learn to do the same.

There are habits tied to each area of your life that you can implement to make things easier. Like routinely having your workout bag packed, keeping spare healthy food around, structuring a buffer around days or times to allow you to decompress and disconnect, so you can recharge and recenter. Schedule important things like workouts, prayer, meditation, recovery, journaling, sleep, mealtimes etc.. I have many different habits that I have picked up and put down over the years, but I am always holding myself accountable in one way or another. This ensures I am healthy and capable of being there when I am called upon. When God has a task, I am open and fully available for it.

I like my mornings slow and my life in flow. I usually start my days with hydration, movement, breathe, meditation and reflection. I have an intention for my life, and I am open to that intention being fulfilled in whatever way God has in store for me that day. I primarily focus on being a clear and conscious vessel for the energy, love and work of God and that is my ask of God each day. Guide me, strengthen me and heal me Lord, so that I may continue to do the work that is asked of me. My word for 2026 is cultivation and I am working my hardest to cultivate a life of peace, hope, love and joy in all areas. I am striving to be the same guy whether I am at church, work, home or in the woods. I know I am a little loud, direct and rough around the edges, but fiercely open, loyal, passionate and determined to share the love and energy I have to give. I don’t expect anything of those around me anymore, but I welcome and embrace everything that comes my way and I will celebrate this ability to hold such a strong bond with the world and those who exist in it.

I trust that I will have enough when the time is at hand. The life that I live takes into consideration the planet, the animals, the sun and the moon. My family is my backbone, and I have and forever will work to develop a better more intimate relationship with all of you. I understand that Love is not finite and God will always refill my bucket each time I empty it. I understand that my body is the temple in which I carry this precious energy and I am not going to neglect my gift of life, and I will help you also learn to highlight the beautiful creature that you are if you let me. We truly are on this path together and if I can help you in any way I am going to try to figure it out. This is why I am writing to you and why I am so hopeful. I have seen the beauty in the world, in you, in those I love and in myself. Together we can continue to work and grow our ability to cultivate and share love in deep and meaningful ways. This is the goal of my soul and the goal of my work.

The pain hasn’t left, but it no longer has a pedestal in my life. Only God at the center of my existence will be the siren that I open my ear to each morning I wake up. This doesn’t mean I neglect this life and those in it, it means I am fully present and aware of its value and grateful to the universe for allowing me to have another opportunity. As I have expanded it has become less about me and more about us. I think about the future and our descendants and the world we’re either going to leave them with or without. It’s not just environmental or societal. It’s spiritual and energetic as well. You cannot sever our existence from the one who has created us and expect us to keep our harmonious and fruitful existence. We are struggling in all arenas of this existence, but it doesn’t have to continue. If you begin to acknowledge the challenges and heal then we will all begin to heal.

Building a life that neglects the gifts and blessings of our God becomes empty and fruitless very quickly and it’s easy to see what that looks like. Despite our many blessings and gifts, we cannot see them because we are so blind to their significance and deny our dependence on God to provide the very air and water that allows us to go on day after day. If God wasn’t constantly blessing us we would have destroyed each other and this planet many years ago, but he continues to give us grace and a path back to healing and harmony. I have no idea when our luck will run out and I don’t plan on letting us forget God’s gifts for as long as I have a breath in my body. Your life is a gift, and I pray that you get to unwrap it infinitely.

We aren’t here to appease or entertain anyone else, and you need not worry about what others think or how they feel about your life if you want to accurately identify what is holding you back. No one knows what you have gone through and they don’t know what you must go through to get back to the whole and healthy version of yourself. Different aspects of healing relationships will be a part of your journey, but your ultimate path should be undertaken on yourself and how you interact with the world. Not primarily on how you feel the world is reacting to you. Trying to control how the world is reacting to you is much more difficult to undertake.

I encourage you to learn how to open up to the life that is meant for you instead of trying to force yourself upon life. I know this is completely against much of the self-help and personal development guidance that is out there, but the life you’re meant to live can be the one you are living right now without the need for anything different or the need to chase something different. Like you, I too have searched every corner of the world for the answers and eventually I realized it was my heart and God’s voice that I needed. So, I learned how to open my head, heart and ears to the message and energy that led me to Movement, Meditation, Mindset, Mindfulness and My Faith. God is waiting to take the reins and help guide you today and every day, but your agenda is too full to let him have any say. The more I learned to savor each gift and each blessing the more these gifts and blessings begin to show up in my life.

Fighting for a world of mutual respect, growth, expansion, love and joy will never get old and I believe almost all missions will at some point meet back at one of these destinations. For me it wasn’t easy to fully embrace the level of Love that God wants us to feel, but as I pour my heart consistently out onto this paper I can see the Love that I am carrying, and this makes the story that much sweeter. I know that I am offering you the Love that God has offered me in the most elegant and thoughtful package I can imagine, so again my work has led me back to God’s love as all things do.

Learning to make choices thoughtfully and presently isn’t about being lazy, emotionally handcuffed or aggressively driven to get all you can out of every second. It is about accepting the work that shows up, trusting when you are done it is ok to savor the moment and be proud of your work. Being chronically busy, desperately flamboyant or always abrasive is not authentic. What if for once you asked for the guidance and love that God has for you and you were patient enough to trust it to come through? Asking God for the guidance you need is the ultimate cheat code and the path to a rewarding, exhilarating and fulfilling life that has the potential to lead you to an amazing existence. Your work can become life-giving, heart centered and focused on making the world a better place in all ways and this is the existence that I can say for certain is attainable. Learn to wake up genuinely looking forward to each chance you get to share your love and passion with all you serve. I have learned to savor my days in a way that only a connected, whole and healed heart can and I have faith that you too can learn to do the same!

Love Always in All Ways!

Jake

The more you work to heal and learn to open your heart, the more painful it is to navigate in a world full of negativity, volatility, hatred, division and manipulation. We have become less human and more materialistic, and it is killing our ability to feel, understand or communicate on the level that is required to build long-term mutually beneficial relationships and offer the level of love and support that we all require to be healthy and connected human beings. I will speak from personal experience on this and offer a perspective that helps you to learn how to stay in the arena sharing respect and love with all as you are very much needed and critical to the progress and viability of our community, nation and even our species.

Our current trajectory and status quo are not safe, healthy or sustainable for the entire human race or our planet. We have created a world that is making us operate and live less like healthy and content humans and more like well trained and emotionless robots. We sit on the most powerful muscle group in our bodies and stare at electronic brains while we neglect our own brains and bodies. This leads to atrophy and disconnection, taking us further from being optimal human beings and making us less equipped to thrive in this world. Atrophy occurring in the body and the brain is just another way of saying we are slowly dying. We have poisoned our food system, our bloodstream and the air and water that keep us alive because we need bigger cars, houses and trophies to feel more important.

You could try and optimize the human body you have been given with love, compassion and discipline, but that would take a little planning, effort, faith, sacrifice and forethought on your part. The goal of my work is to offer hope and a framework to help us all be the living, loving and life-giving gifts from God that we are. I don’t care what you own, where you travel, what you drive or how nice your clothes are. I care how your day has been and whether you feel a solid connection to your family, community and friends that is real and fulfilling. Why would you not want to have the full human experience in harmony with the beautiful planet, wonderous creatures connected to the life-giving nature that our God has offered us? If this is something that interests you then it’s time for you to read more, believe more, listen more, take ownership and take action in meaningful, compassionate and purposeful ways. When it seems hard, inconvenient or seemingly impossible dig deep into your faith and listen for the wisdom that awaits in your heart.

God didn’t ask you to gather up all the resources you can and lock yourself in your house and hide from those who are struggling and lacking. He asked you to go out and share love and light in all arenas of your life and be the light in the darkness. Are you doing this? I am so proud of the amount of vulnerability and anxiety that I have learned to transmute into faith and belief. I have done this by opening my heart, letting down my guard, asking God to lead me, trusting the process and the wisdom that I am being offered. You too can have this level of faith and belief within your heart and mind every day if you just put down all your adopted survival techniques, self-serving stories, invisible obstacles and mindless distractions. I encourage you for once to actually have faith in yourself and the love that God can provide for you. Sit down and ask God point blank for help and guidance and be willing to follow what you are led to no matter how you feel about it. You will know what to do!

Let’s agree that you are going to have to remain curious and thoughtful for the rest of your life. Not closed off and rigid. You cannot be part of the change if you are not willing to change. Ask yourself questions constantly. Why does that one person trigger me when we haven’t even had a conversation? Maybe it’s their negative attitude or aggressive mannerisms. No matter what it is that distracts or triggers you, it is your job to figure it out and work to manage it or move past it. It is not their job to adapt to you and it is not our job to fix them. I am not condoning anyone’s actions or behavior, and neither should you, but you cannot let them consume all your precious time and energy either. Trying to change someone is going to leave you frustrated and struggling because no one is going to change for you and even if they try, their pace of evolution will most likely stunt or halt your growth completely. It is about you and your ability to handle life and all that comes with it. If you begin to set an example and light the path, others will be intrigued and the right ones will find their way into your life.

It’s important to get to know yourself at the deepest level possible if you plan to build a better approach to this whole life thing, so that is where we will start. I was tired of being sick, disconnected and on a path that was leading me further from who I believed I could be and closer to who the world was molding me to be. I used every ounce of energy I could to try and be someone I was not. I wasn’t satisfied with or confident in myself because of the lack of control I felt and the mistakes that had piled up in my life. I am naturally a sensitive, helpful, thoughtful and creative person, but this wasn’t really the best way to succeed in a military or a blue-collar work environment, so I gave in for many years and just went with the flow to fit in and get by. The thing is I wasn’t “doing bad” in life. I was serving my country, I had triumphed over a lot of hard challenges, and I had come a long way as an individual, but still deep down I knew this wasn’t my ceiling by any means.

I adapt easily and can put up a very capable front if I am forced to, but I eventually got to a point where I was not ok with this dumbed down version of myself anymore. I think many of us hit this crossroads and can’t find a way to elevate, but I am here to tell you that you must learn to consistently evolve if it’s maximum potential that you are seeking out of yourself and this life. Investing a few minutes, hours, weeks and eventually months to better understand yourself and your place in this world isn’t optional in my opinion. You need to have a better grasp of your current physical, spiritual, emotional, energetic and mental state if it’s an authentically and holistically fulfilling life that you are seeking. Ask important questions and openly and humbly seek the truth and avoid trying to please the current version of yourself and the stories that you are carrying. If you want change then it is time for you to embrace and move toward that change fearlessly. Prepare for this better version of yourself and welcome a healthier and happier version of yourself with all that you have.

Growing up I seemed to be seeking more stable and cohesive connections in all my relationships, and I believe in many ways this was a survival mechanism and most likely not safe or healthy, but it was what I needed to survive. I lived in 20 places before I left home for the Coast Guard at 20 years old and this left me grasping for any sense of stability I could find. Committing myself fully and openly helped me to quickly create bonds that were more meaningful and rewarding for me and those who were open to this level of relationship, but it also alienated me from many others because I took it personally when they couldn’t reciprocate or open up to that level of commitment. Most of the time these relationships weren’t meant to give me the depth of support and stability that I sought. I should have had this stability internally, but my childhood didn’t provide an environment where this was possible, so I was unknowingly and unhealthily seeking this support and stability. At this point in my life, I don’t care why or how this occurred, I just need to understand it enough to heal the wound, so I no longer give away my energy and let some distant memory or experience control my internal existence and attention in this the present moment.

Despite all the years of confusion and struggle, I believe that the skills required to create meaningful relationships quickly and to remain open enough to accept them have now become some of my greatest strengths. I now focus on offering this depth of love and respect in healthy and stable ways to those who I am blessed to spend this life with. I know now that I don’t need this depth from every relationship and the stability and love I seek can only come from my relationship with God and those that I am meant to have this depth of connection with. I work hard to never shut down my heart because it leaves the space required to create deep and meaningful connections in my everyday life. Whether it’s a passing conversation a kind gesture, smile or wave. You can create love with everything you do. Remaining open to sharing and experiencing the love and joy that God has waiting for you is never going to be a bad thing, so why not be more open to this instead of putting up a front or assuming the worst of others. Your thoughts, words and actions are either bringing you closer to Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Muhammad, God and those you care for, or they are pushing you further away from them. Choose wisely my friends.

We have tuned our radars to attract the abundance of negativity, distrust, anger, lack, fear and anxiety of this world rather than tuning it to attract the abundance of love, joy and understanding of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I don’t know if Jesus is the only path to this level of existence and fulfillment of God’s mission, but I am 100% sure he is one of them and the path I have been blessed enough to experience through my own works. I am not here to tell you what to do, I am just here to share my own personal experience and to help in any way I can. I speak form a place of healing, knowing, doing, sharing, loving, supporting, believing and understanding. We aren’t meant to be perfect, but we are meant to remain fully aware and engaged with the present moment that our God has given us again today as we opened our eyes to this glorious day. This is what my writing requires of me. Being fully coherent in what I am experiencing and feeling in this raw and painful life we have all accepted and are now immersed in. The world I believe in and work for is a world of health, hope and happiness for all. It’s a place where we all meet to do God’s work and all share in the blessings that await us. It’s not a world where we run from the present moment, numb or distract ourselves. We are always fully coherent and seeking more and more understanding and accepting God’s love and lessons.

Most of the people I work with and know don’t have a problem with legitimately empty pockets, pantries or savings accounts, they are more likely to have empty hearts and minds. They have given all of their own power to this propagated agenda that has them running from empty task to empty task with very little depth of thought or feeling. How many deep and meaningful conversations are you having about your actual life and the blessings and beauty that surrounds you on a daily basis? We have become obsessed and controlled by a pixelated reality. If you aren’t taking your hands, feet, thoughts and words out into the real world and engaging then you aren’t even really living in my opinion. You are giving away your precious energy to an electronic box that is teaching how it wants you to conduct yourself for its own benefit. Again, I am not against TV, Computers, social media, Books etc., but you need to be out and involved in the world if you aim to fulfill your purpose and experience God’s glory during your time here on this planet with those of us who we were sent here to share it with.

There are always going to be challenges and obstacles that you must face, but you don’t have to give away the rest of your life anticipating or ruminating on them. When they come, face them and move on! Stop wearing the emotional straight jacket that is making it impossible for you to experience and share love to the depth needed for you to connect to this beautiful life we are all living. If you learn to take back control of your own energy, attention and do your work then you will begin to see things in your life change for the better. Stop trying to be enough, have enough or do enough. You always have been and always will be enough, and God provides for his people in all ways. This doesn’t mean you are going to create a life of gluttony and excess. It means you are going to create a life of meaning and purpose. The fruits of your labor will come to you, but maybe not in the same form that you are worshiping now. If your main goals are to be important and comfortable all the time then you can keep following the same path you’re on. If you are ready to be in position to fulfill the life that God has waiting for you then let’s keep moving forward.

The depth of your heart plays a big role in the depth of your life. The surface is the place you stay when you are fearful and projecting, but the heart is where you go when you are fully embracing life and in harmony with the world and you. I pray that you are strong enough to break the surface my friends and begin to create a healthy and harmonious place between your ears, inside your rib cage and all the space that your beautiful soul inhabits. Every day I pray for us and I believe in you. I will not stop looking for love in my heart and I will run to share it in the best ways I find to do this. I have so much hope because of the gifts God has offered me. Including the one who has given me everything I could ever ask for in a partner. My beautiful bride Tania. God knew what he was doing when he introduced us. She has taught me how to understand, receive and share my gifts in ways that only God could see. A true partner in life is the most rewarding gift God could give you and her hand in mine is all the proof that I need that there is a God and that he loves us. We are truly a force for God and a force for good in all that we offer this world, and I am an extremely lucky man to walk alongside her. Her soul attracted me before anything else, and it still gives me butterflies to this day when I am strong enough to approach her at this level.

There is no turning back for me and I will forever follow God and my wife as we take on this beautiful life side by side with faith, hope, charity and love in all that we do. We are dedicated to a better world, and we are willing to stay available for the work that God calls us to. In my experience most of the changes or sacrifices we make are challenging in the beginning, but the rewards they produce are greatly disproportionate in a good way. Once your work and life begin to mirror the life God is asking of you then the work you do is compounded greatly and the precision that you operate with becomes instinctive. A Godly life is faithful, forgiving and fruitful for all who accept it and stay diligent and on the destined path. As I walk this path, I am excited beyond measure to see you and cheer you on and do anything I can to support and encourage your own expansion and growth in your relationship with God and share the beauty and love that I have to share.

It is tempting to ignore it and remain comfortably numb and blind to the pain and suffering in this world and just soldier on, but that isn’t what a follower of Christ is asked to do. You as a disciple are only asked to share the same life and grace you have been blessed with. Does God come down and take your oxygen or your heartbeat because you sin or you refuse to be grateful for this life? No, and He never will do this. You can choose this life and that is what is so beautiful about God allowing us to have this free will. He doesn’t want to control or manipulate us, he wants to guide and support us in our endeavors, but we somehow have forgotten who is beating our heart, providing oxygen, water and sunlight that keeps us alive. You are NOT God and you do not exist without his own divine blessing.

Why do we have this ideal that a Godly life is limiting, when it is the path to ultimate freedom and understanding. I believe we have tried so hard to mold God into what we want him/her/it to be, but our minds cannot even fathom anything near the depth of what GOD really is, so we need to listen to our hearts and the message that only can be received form the seed of our soul. The clearer and healthier the heart, the clearer and healthier the message that comes through. If you are addicted to distortion and denial then that is what you are going to receive, but if you are dedicated to openness and understanding then that is what you will receive. It really is a simple equation if you want to break it down. What you seek=What You Find! So, it’s time to embrace the faithful, open and prepared version of yourself instead of the scared wounded and hidden version of yourself. This surface level existence is never going to fill the void deep in your heart. Only God can do that my friends!

14 Years ago, I finally gave in and accepted that my path had always been waiting for me. Up to this point in my life, I wasn’t ready or willing to acknowledge and pursue the task at hand. I can remember even as a child knowing that God had a plan for me and that I would have to step up and figure it out at some point. This constant tugging at my heart and the deep knowing that my life would never change if I didn’t change first was beginning to draw me closer to the inevitable. When I opened to the possibility of this life, I understood the immense amount of effort and energy it was going to take. It completely overwhelmed me, but the chance to create the life God had waiting for me was strong enough to pull me through and I hope you too can find this purpose and fulfillment in your own life.

The change and growth started with small things like giving up smokeless tobacco (dip) after 13 years of consistent use, eating healthier, looking for ways to open my mind, expanding my knowledge, and using my energy for impact instead of distraction. I had a close friend who was preparing to leave the Coast Guard and start his own business and I had another friend who was always working on something on the side and I admired their work ethic and resiliency, so I started to look for ways I could also work harder and be the best version of myself. Exercise was always my medicine, and I had worked at a gym in high school and remember enjoying the atmosphere. At the gym I worked at there was a retired Marine in his 60’s and he was consistent, disciplined and in great shape because of his efforts and I always looked up to him. Who knew, 12 years later I would begin my journey helping 1000’s of warriors build healthy and active lives myself.

At 25 I started to spend more time growing my own fitness and wellness knowledge and expanding my capacity to share the gift of exercise and its many benefits with those around me. In 2009 I received the opportunity from the Coast Guard to travel to Kodiak Alaska and attend a course to learn how to be a Unit Health Promotion Coordinator. This was a catalyst that fueled my desire to start using exercise and healthy living to help others. The course material helped me learn many different aspects of holistic health and behavior change along with exercise instruction and how to apply it. School was never my forte, but this was the first time I remember learning something that I was truly interested in and excited about. The course instructor must have seen my enthusiasm, and she gifted me with a brand-new copy of the Encyclopedia of Body Building created by Arnold himself!

The instructor may never know how much this gift impacted me, but I am forever grateful for her vote of confidence and the energy she invested in me. At this point I still didn’t have much confidence in my ability to make an impact, but her support made me feel seen and worthy of the task of helping others through healthy and holistic living. I cultivated an intimate and mutually beneficial relationship with exercise from an early age and this newfound confidence really pushed my level of dedication and effort even deeper into fitness, growth mindset, and healthy living.

I was transferred to Texas City and moved to Clear Lake in 2011. This is where things got serious. I had a new lease on life, and I was prepared to put my best foot forward. Despite my increased level of effort and energy I still wasn’t fulfilled or content with my life and the impact I was having. It didn’t seem like I was doing enough. Much of the reason for this were my struggles with mental health and my lack of a true understanding of what God wanted from me and where I needed to go with my life. One thing I knew for sure was that I couldn’t just keep doing what I was doing. I worked hard to gain the clarity and confidence to trust that I had the capacity to do more or follow a different path other than the Coast Guard. Up to this point I still believed that being comfortable was the goal and I was just going to ride out my 20 years and retire, but I soon discovered that comfort was definitely not where I needed to stay physically, mentally, or spiritually.

I stepped up as a leader in many big ways in 2011 and I began to hold myself and those around me to a higher standard. This provided real results, and my experience, confidence, and self-worth were growing. One major milestone was when I was able to help one of my shipmates raise money to help their father who had cancer. I attended a fundraiser at his home and bid on an Autographed Arian Foster Texans helmet to help raise money, but I wasn’t content with just that. A little while later I attended a USO Hosted Texans Practice and got a lot more signatures from other players including a second Arian Foster Signature. My plan was to auction this helmet off to help my shipmate further, so I coordinated with the Houston USO to attend a fundraising banquet hosted at the Galveston Country Club. I stood in front of the attendees in my uniform, and I shared my shipmate’s story and asked if they would be willing to help him and his family by bidding on this autographed helmet. I was blown away as a bidding war broke out and we were able to raise several thousand dollars that evening to help him out.

This deeply impacted me. The feeling of giving back at this level was more rewarding than anything I had ever done for myself. I had finally proven to myself that I had the capacity to create special situations and do good if I was willing to put in the work. I fully believe this is what God always wanted me to understand, that I could do transformational work with his guidance, mentorship and my unwavering faith and trust in the process. We tend to think we are alone and we are in charge, but this is not the case. God, your ancestors, your family, your friends and the entire universe want to help you, but you must let go and take a leap of faith first to discover this truth.

I want you to understand that taking on this life dedicated to creating impact and leaving a positive mark on this planet isn’t a path away from your problems and your challenges. It is path through them. You must do the work to understand where your blind spots are and be willing to sacrifice and look harder at yourself and the person who you could become or the person that you are settling for. This is a road paved by personal sacrifice, and mutual respect. You can create joy, enjoyment and success that fulfills every ounce of your being if you’re willing to let go of your limiting beliefs and your need to be safe and comfortable. Your authentic self isn’t one that is halfway invested or chronically hesitant. It is a person who lives in full understanding of how their energy and their actions are impacting themselves, their family, friends, and community.

You need to stop chasing some magical moments that are far off in the future when your life will finally be rewarding. Every moment of your life is a blessing and a gift if you’re willing to remain fully aware and available for it. That false sense of security that you are clinging to is stopping you from progressing and growing, so you are going to have to leave it behind. Dig deep into your faith, take a chance on yourself and trust that God will catch you when you need it. You will no longer need to build a persona or portray an image to impress the artificial reality world that is keeping you from being present for your tangible life. You will learn to be fully involved with the reality that you are working to create second by second with all your time and your attention. Start savoring this opportunity for life even when it’s painful. You cannot let someone who isn’t invested in your wellbeing and looking out for your livelihood steer your existence any longer. It’s time for you to take back control of your thoughts, action, and life!

The focus of my working life for many years now has been TriFitness and becoming the man I would need to be to fulfill my role. TriFitness Gym is a product of trust, sacrifice, commitment, understanding, struggle, belief, faith, relationships and so much more. It has required more of me than I could have ever imagined and I am so grateful that I’ve become strong enough to help lead this amazing group of human beings. I’m proud of myself, my business partner John, Matt our Lead Coach and our team. We’re providing a service that is centered on loving, supportive, and symbiotic relationships. I did not accurately calculate how much this journey was going to take from me, but I can tell you that it has given every ounce of energy back and then some. Building something special requires some special work and that is 100% what we have done as a team since 2017.

We started TriFitness in 2018 in my 240 sq foot garage with 7 clients, faith, a work ethic and a dream. Things started off rocky and weren’t going exactly as we had planned, but as is life. We were looking for a location in 2017 and 2018 and one of the places in Clear Lake that had initially turned us down a year later reached out because they were about to sell the entire shopping center and wanted tenants in the spaces, so they took a chance on us. We still didn’t have the financial backing to take this on, but God sent us some Angels to help us get off the ground as he has repeatedly. We wouldn’t be here without God’s blessings, and this was one of the many times that things serendipitously fell into place for us. I know God has guided our steps and I am forever thankful for these blessings.

Our clients have been our angels in many different aspects, but one in particular has always believed in us and supported us more than we could ever deserve. One of our clients offered to buy a lifetime training package for $20,000 in 2018 and completely changed my life in the blink of an eye. Together with what I had saved, John’s initial investment and this Angel we’ll call PJ we were able to secure a lease for our first location 2417 Bay Area Blvd Houston TX 77058. This is where I hit the lottery that made me the richest man alive. It sounds cliché, but it feels as real as anything has ever felt for me. I am the human being I am in many ways because of the beautiful people who have walked through our doors at TriFitness and I am content if this is all that I ever get from helping build this amazing place where we can all learn to grow, heal and connect.

We believe that exercise is a path to confidence, freedom, growth, relief, community, belief, discovery, and healing. We help our clients learn to push past the initial desire to be lazy and comfortable to build discipline and confidence in their capabilities and themselves. Learning how to overcome your own surface level fearful or limiting emotions o step out of your comfort zone and begin to train will lead to knowledge and hope. This is a powerful lesson to learn, and it is a powerful tool to use day in and day out as you continue to build the ability to hold yourself and your emotions accountable. Just making the decision to walk into the gym is a HUGE growth point! At TriFitness we say the door is the heaviest lift in the gym. This is because of all the emotional inertia, worldly distractions, and self-doubts that you must ignore to reach out to pull that door open and face all that is holding you back.

Building a maintainable and healthy exercise routine is not an easy task, but it is one that plays a massive role in your life’s energy. Life is a game of energy and the more you have, the more you can experience and achieve throughout your life. If you are tired, how well do you engage with others? How well do you do your job? How many healthy food choices do you make when you are tired and distracted? There is no separating your daily activity level with your daily energy levels. At TriFitness we specifically focus on individuals 50+ and those with higher coaching needs, so we take a detailed and personal approach to ensure we don’t over train or under train our clients. If someone comes in for a session and they are dealing with a challenge we modify and back off and get them focused on recovering, breathing and performing purposeful mindful movement instead of intense all-out effort training.

Over the years we have adapted our training and our philosophy constantly, but a few things always remain at the top of the hierarchy. Keeping exercise safe, accessible, effective and consistent are the most critical aspects of training or you most likely won’t get results and quit. We help you avoid this at TriFitness by making the training fun, engaging and personal for each of our members. If you can stay engaged and enjoy the exercise, then you will nine times out of ten make progress and begin to push yourself, which is where all the magic happens. A teacher or a coach can only take you so far. You must embrace the journey and begin to find your own way as well to find what works best for you. Just as your relationship with God, exercise too will give you the results that you need depending on where the weaknesses lie.

Education based coaching is what we work to do at TriFitness and in our experience it brings another level of adherence and increases the effectiveness of the training because we are reinforcing why the movement is important and how you can use it in your daily life. TriFitness is a space designed for connection and growth. We encourage our clients to explore their own movement capabilities and practice different ways to enhance their training and make it personally rewarding and fun. Our coaching is not just about counting to 10, getting tired and sweating. For us, it’s about improving your life and creating a better relationship with active, healthy and positive living.

Business success has lot to do with learning how to lead others and finding enough solutions and resources to survive. You’ve got to stick around long enough to learn what is required to grow and expand. It’s not that complicated, but it is extremely hard to sustain if you don’t approach it from a place of faith, respect, and love. Trying to control everything or being greedy with the gifts you have been given will wear you out and leave you alone in the fight. This is not a smart or sustainable approach to building or leading a business or leading your life.

To get TriFitness where it is today, we have had to constantly grow and learn to be good at every level from day one to day 2,000+. Staying the same person doesn’t scale well, so you must always be learning and growing as a leader. A team of growth minded dedicated leaders can build something special and agile. With the right mindset and plan executed openly and consistently you can build an impactful and sustainable business. TriFitness has changed so many lives, and I know we can help others experience this same level of impact and success. Things have actually gotten smoother and more manageable as we have grown and I can honestly say I didn’t think this would be the case. It is a testament to the team that has decided to work with us, the systems we have developed and the love and respect we operate with day in and day out.

As we begin franchising our goal is to make it as easy as possible to run these businesses while training and mentoring our Franchisees as if this is the most important job in the world because we believe in many cases it is. Our approach has always been focused on finding ways to share love and respect with our coaches, clients, and community. By offering an effective and accessible coaching program and thoughtful and compassionate support and communication we fully intend to build stronger, healthier, and more fulfilled businesses, clients, and communities. At TriFitness this is being achieved through fitness, and it is allowing for healthy and happy outcomes for everyone involved. Our coaches want to be at work, and our clients want to be there to train together. They create relationships and support each other when things get difficult. We are fiercely dedicated to our entire community and we’re not blind to the level of support and help we get from so many of our members and our community. They help us as much as we help them and we cherish the times we have with them and the moments we create in the gym, at our events, in the community or on a personal level.

We need more communities that lift each other up no matter what their beliefs are, and this is one way we have found that we can build others up no matter who they are, what they look like or what their capabilities are. We all deserve to have help, and we all deserve to have others who love and support us in our lives. Some of our clients don’t have a lot of people left to spend their time with. We also all need a community that is trying to be positive, cooperative, and healthy. Fitness is a straightforward way to keep yourself happy and healthy, so who wouldn’t want to have an amazing community and be part of a business that also makes you feel happy and good about supporting it? Well, we aren’t asking for permission. We are going to continue growing this capacity to help more people build these same businesses within their community and change many lives with love, respect and support from a company that believes in and trusts them.

TriFitness is a gift that we won’t hand over lightly, so make sure you are prepared to do the work to support your community, build trust in and out of the gym, step up when someone around you needs the support or stand strong when your community needs a helping hand. This is the type of business owner we are excited about supporting and watching grow and build lives they are proud of and happy to share with the world. Work is a natural and rewarding part of life and you can choose to do something that will never leave you wishing you had chosen a different path. Hard choices build the foundation for an exhilarating and rewarding life and easy choices build the foundation for a shallow and unfulfilling life in my experience.

A common misconception is that an easy life is the goal, but I would 100% disagree with this. Nothing easy ever fulfills me or makes my life better for the long haul. It may seem like it is in the moment, but the results are always underwhelming, and the satisfaction is short lived. You don’t have to go out and seek the hardest tasks in the world, but you can’t run from hard work either. Following the path that God has in store for you will require, sacrifice, dedication, growth, and expansion in ways that only God can lead you to, so stop running from your destiny and turn around and start chasing it instead. Your life depends on it. Most people actually like work when it is meaningful and interesting to them, but many of us just take what is in front of us instead of building something special that we’re proud of and excited about. I realized that I enjoyed doing meaningful and impactful work, so I decided why not build something that would make the world a better place and give me and those who work with me something to be passionate about and dedicated to. TriAffect was the name of my first company, and it was formed from the work I had done to grow, heal and better understand myself.

The Tri in TriAffect and TriFitness stand for Mind, Body, Spirit or Soul. I had to heal my body enough to have the energy and the emotional bandwidth to gain an understanding and clarity of my thoughts and emotions. Once I was able to consistently manage and control my emotions, I was able to make decisions from forethought and experience instead of emotional outbursts and coping mechanisms. This still isn’t easy, but it is critical for growth and evolution. I can honestly remember the first time I experienced complete peace of mind. I wasn’t dreaming of being somewhere else, I wasn’t overwhelmed or stressed over things I couldn’t control, I was simply ok with just being ok. This was a real revelation for me, and I am forever grateful for God’s grace keeping me alive long enough to experience it.

What do you need to work on or overcome to take the next steps in your life. I don’t care if it’s business, spiritual, religious or work related. You can learn from anyone else’s journey and how they were able to overcome challenges and persevere. If you have read this far then I know you have learned something or at least learned what you don’t want to do. If you are someone interested in learning more about a franchise then reach out to info@trifitnessgym.com and we will reach out to you. We aren’t completely ready to progress yet, but that could change very quickly with the right support and partnerships many of which are already in the works. As a team I believe we ready to progress to these next steps very soon. Have faith and take action in your life today my friends. The task awaits if you’re willing to go far enough to find it and who knows you may be the next richest human alive 😎

Love Always in All Always

Jake

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Because of the complexity, immense focus energy and surrender it takes to let God lead our lives, most people never even fully commit to this path. It’s a commitment and relationship built on trust, sacrifice, communication and openness. It’s not a relationship of control, despair and confusion. God doesn’t want you confused, frustrated and distracted. He wants you to learn how to focus on the right things and use your energy to do what you know in your heart is the right thing. You cannot wait until you have enough time, money and resources before you follow God’s commandment of loving one another. There cannot be another path. You either decide you are going to love, respect and protect each other or you are actively choosing not to. What ignoring this commandment results in is not in my wheelhouse and I hope to never find out.

To succeed in this endeavor, you cannot separate and neglect any part of your existence mental, physical or spiritual. My approach has been TRI Mind, Body, Spirit for a reason. I learned that until I was physically healthy enough to feel safe, capable and stable I would not be able to focus enough to make clear and conscious decisions leading to a level of mental clarity and capacity that gave me the space and confidence to let go and trust God to take his place in the center of my life. I carry the love and the light of God in my heart, and I don’t need anyone’s permission to let him guide, console and lift me up when I am in need. You too must do this work and get healthy and disciplined enough to create a comfortable and solid space for God in your heart. A broken heart, fragmented brain and a poisoned body are not the strongest foundations, but they are a well-prepared starting point. The things you will learn on your journey to heal yourself will one day become the basis of all the growth and expansion that you need in this life

Designing the foundation for your life without the love of God will eventually lead to collapse, causing a fall even further from your heart and your spirits’ truest intentions and desires. You cannot cling to a false sense of security built around a structure that worships the almighty dollar. Your foundation must be God’s gift of your life. It’s not fully your fault you have fallen this far, but it is your job to stop ignoring your gift of life and return to your heart. The constant barrage of information trying to tell you how to think and live is a real problem. Artificial reality is trying to make you think the pixelated reality is the way to measure the value of your life and this leads you further from a Godly life not closer. In this fantasy world designed by engineers to manipulate your thoughts, control your attention and leave you feeling inadequate. You will never be enough, and you will always have to seek permission to be happy or at peace. That’s not your actual present reality. You have always been enough whether the outside world recognized it or not. Your life alone is all the proof you need that God loves you and wants to see you live this life full of peace, love and joy!

Where are you going to be when you finally take back your life and follow God’s calling? You’re never too far gone to drop the self-limiting labels and repetitive stories that no longer serve you. You adopted many of these survival techniques and coping mechanisms because of acute traumatic events that weren’t supposed to control you forever. They are meant for emergencies only. It may be the feeling of never being enough because your parents didn’t know how to show appreciation or you may need extra physical reinforcement because you didn’t have a caregiver who provided the physical bonding you needed as a child. There are almost an unlimited number of possibilities that cause developmental problems in our adolescence and most of us are never taught how to process and get past them, so they haunt us our entire lives especially in our relationships.

You do not need to prove anything to be worthy of love, value or respect. I am proud of you, and I am aware of the warrior that you are. I know me saying that most likely doesn’t help you much, but you need to find this belief, trust and love for yourself on all levels. That is why I have put so much effort into showing you your heart and your own inner strength. It’s time to trust God and just walk away from all that is stopping you from leading your entire life with love, respect and dignity. Stop asking for others to give you the love only God can lead you to. You are worthy and you are needed in this game of life. We are all here to witness your greatness and your love, so take back your energy and your attention and focus on the things that are actually important.

It’s time to turn your attention back to your heart and see what a life focused on Love and God’s blessings can offer you. You cannot go to work day after day using your God given energy supporting something that is destroying you, the world or others. You say you want to follow Jesus’s lead while your actions are saying I want to follow a propagated agenda based off profits margins, abuse, destruction, manipulation and consumerism. It seems as if we have put the value of the human life even our own way down the list of importance behind control, “safety”, “security”, money and resources to name a few. This sacred life entrusted to you by God is the only thing that should be on your list, and you should be working to make it as enjoyable and rewarding for every single person you interact with. Even that person who cuts you off in traffic or the co-worker who always seems to make your life difficult. They too are your brothers and sisters and it’s your job to leave the judgment and the control to a higher power and turn the other cheek.

We cannot continue to get further away from the source of our existence and expect to keep the spirit of life alive within our hearts. The further we travel the weaker the signal gets, but there is always hope and it starts with you. You must be the one to turn around and open to the light and the salvation that await you here in this present moment. It isn’t a far-off place. It is in every second of the gift of life that you are currently living and the sooner you realize this the sooner you are going to bring yourself and your energy back to the work and the blessings that God has in store for you. This isn’t a surface level intention or prayer. It is a practice of always seeking to share love and kindness above all else with everyone. It is love in action day after day after day.

If it is a Godly life you seek then this relationship cannot and will not be one-sided. You must acknowledge and ask for God’s gifts to be your guiding principles and then follow your path as it plays out with faith, reverence and respect for all of God’s gifts. Your life is sacred every day of the week, not only on special occasions or on Sundays. You woke up? You are blessed! Learn to live like it and you will receive blessings and experiences like you could have never imagined and may not even fully believe when they occur. Many amazing real-life blessings are at your fingertips and within reach if you are willing to let them in. Stop trying to impress your ego or to be more important or valuable than others and just remain open to the work. Leaving the pain and the distraction behind doesn’t mean you are ignoring it. It means that you aren’t letting it control your attention and your energy. You want all of this attention and energy to create things out of love for the world and those in it.

This may mean cooking a meal for your family or painting a beautiful mural for your community or providing an experience that allows someone to feel joy or reduce their pain and anxiety. Sharing God’s love and light in your life looks a lot like every day activities done with care and concern for their impact on the world. It looks a lot like a helping hand or a kind gesture offered to a neighbor. These don’t have to be out of this world creations or huge achievements. It’s as easy as sharing a little bit of your energy and joy with someone you interact with daily. It’s going out of your way to be patient with someone obviously flustered or confused. It’s being grateful for your job and your health. It’s Just trying to be a better person!

As we look around the world today it seems like we are blindly stumbling through our lives stuck in a consumerism trap chasing material heaven and financial importance rather than caring for ourselves, our families, our communities or our planet. There is a seemingly significant imbalance in those who are trying to support those in need and those who are trying to take advantage of them. I am not sure how much of this is true or how much of it is just being pumped into the media outlets. A glaring issue is those in charge are increasing turmoil and causing damage instead of limiting the suffering and helping build constructive relationships. The only way to be part of the change is to look at your own life and see who or what it is that you are supporting? Where are you giving your time, talents and treasures? Are you supporting those in your community who are trying to spread love and light or are you fueling the major organizations seeking more control and resources for their portfolio? It is a simple choice to seek out the ways you can support those in your community doing good and use your own energy to help lead us to a world of peace, love and joy for all.

I always maintain hope and belief in us and our Creator. Answers don’t come easy, but in my experience with enough discipline, faith and effort they do come eventually and that must be enough. Staying available for the life that is your current reality must be the goal. Not seeking an escape from reality through a pixelated screen. I want to know the real you, not the person you think I want to know. I honestly believe there are many of us starving for real life relationships, but we have lost the ability to open up because of the amount of negative and frightening information being pumped into our central nervous systems. When you are in fight or flight you shut down and guard, you don’t let anything in and you become more on edge, irritable, anxious and fearful. Your sympathetic nervous system wasn’t designed to remain heightened 24/7, but it has been and it is making you sick and disconnected.

You literally cannot hold this amount of threatening or disturbing data, so your systems start to break down mentally and physically. Your hormones and the organs involved with keeping them balanced start to fatigue and cause disfunction. Your brain becomes hypersensitive and begins to anticipate everything as a potential threat and obstacle. Physically you are always tense and ready to defend yourself, not able to relax enough to sleep or enjoy any present moment without some sort of distraction or mood enhancer. God didn’t give you life to be scared, sick or lonely. You were put here to be fully aware of and available for the life that is unfolding right in front of your eyes each and every waking second, but I am willing to bet you are getting a majority of your reality from a screen, sound wave or publication that most likely takes you further from your actual physical reality rather than closer to it.

I understand it’s painful to think about what is happening around you right now, but it is also possible to begin seeking the love to pump into your own heart, mind and soul if you are willing to build a stronger, deeper and more coherent connection to this beautiful gift of life. I am cheering for you at the top of my lungs my friend and I am here to help you continue walking the path back to your strong, steady and satisfied self. You are so special and your gifts are precious to all of humanity. Please take a look at your life and decide whether you are creating more division and manipulation with your life or are you supporting more connection and cooperation?

My light cannot outshine your light as each of us is one flicker of the same flame. When your light goes out my light dims and when I tamp out your light, I tamp out the fire in my own heart. That is partly why we are all collectively in such a disrupted and chaotic state right now. At this point I don’t care who or what led you astray or is distracting you, I only care that you take back your energy and your precious attention. Use all the focus and energy you can to share God’s love and light with your life. If you are strong enough to let go of your fear and doubts then you will have more room for the faith and knowledge that will lead you to more peace and joy from this life. You have the power and now you need to use it for good and for God. My goal has been to heal and to prove at least to myself that it could be done. Well, I am here to tell you that you can live a very rewarding, successful and impactful life while also dedicating every waking second of your life to the work God is asking of you.

I do things differently and I always will. I love my people and I am always willing to do all I can to seek out and interact with the most human parts of you. I don’t want to interact with the subconscious and robotic version of you. I want to know the deep down wild and free version. The version that is healed, free and ready for the blessings that hide right on the other side of trepidation, fear and vulnerability. If you can learn to let go of your false sense of safety and connect with the fully alive and engaged version of your heart, life will become much more real and sacred. You will understand and respect the connection you have to the world around you, and you will have the capacity to make alterations and changes leading to significant growth and transformational work. There will be no more distractions or desires leading you further from your heart. You will be in communion and flow with the realest most sacred version of you.

Let Go and Let God My Friends!

None of this is going to change unless each one of us begins to change first. No one likes to hear it, but we all know there are things that are keeping us from sharing love and support in the most open and genuine ways we can. We all have areas of our lives that we are using our energy and focus to do something that isn’t fair to someone else, ourselves or the planet as a whole and we should make the necessary changes, but we choose not to. It may be that you need to stop gossiping or maybe you’re wasting your precious time in this life on social media. Maybe you should be making a mends with someone you love, but your too proud to let go of something that happened years ago despite the fact that you are both now completely different people in a completely different moment in your life that could be anything you wanted it to be.

Many of us are exhausted, frustrated and in pain and we are often distracted by the idea that something external is causing it. It’s important to understand that we cannot control many of these external factors, so we must use our energy where we can have influence if we want to make real progress. By focusing on how you are using your energy and your attention you will begin to gain back control over your life. Look inside and identify where you can make some personal improvement and ask God to be your guide and your partner in this endeavor. Have faith that with God, your own faith and your energy you can work to gain back your excitement and zeal for all aspects of your life and love deeper in all arenas.

We tend to believe that happiness and fulfillment come from something we do or have, but it really comes from being the person we were sent here to become. You cannot receive this amazing reward without seeking it within your heart and your life right now in this the present. Stop wishing and waiting for something to make your life great. Open your heart, mind and soul to the blessings that surround you right now. The more you do this, the better you will get at identifying these amazing gifts. Always chasing something means you aren’t happy with where you are and what you have, so stop constantly chasing and start enjoying the moment fully aware of its significance and blessings.

Would you rather not have had this chance to build something special with this gift of life? Many have died trying to preserve this freedom and way of life and I have a hard time wasting any of it. Yes, the human condition is a confusing and messy one, but it is so full of love, joy, excitement and beauty. You must be willing to open up to it and accept it into your heart. You can’t keep running toward a virtual reality like it is going to give you the actual reality you deserve. Only working in the present moment can improve your REAL life. The pictures and messages on a screen, magazine or soundwave cannot and will not ever directly lead you to the focus and energy that will change your life. Technology should and can be one of your allies, but you must first know where you want to go in order to know what type of allies to call upon.

Why wouldn’t you want to know your limits and push past them seeking a full, exhilarating and inspirational human experience? Holding your baby for the first time, making deep passionate love to your partner, Laughing so hard that your stomach hurts, hugging your mother for the first time in years and feeling your hearts vibrating as one, sitting with family crying and grieving a loved one whom you share many beautiful memoires and stories from your time together, cheering at the top of your lungs for someone you love and feeling your soul light up when they are triumphant, or spending many years working to build something that leaves the world a better place? This is the human experience. This is the beauty of this life today!

I’ve often said I want to leave this world symbolically with my body and soul completely on fire for God and for us while wrestling an alligator that symbolizes real world problems in the middle of a Hurricane which symbolizes me harnessing all the energy and emotions I can to be a force for God and for Good in all that I do, everywhere I go.

I am calling you to live this beautiful existence full of energy and passion for the earth we’ve been blessed with. When was the last time you stopped to admire the amazing creatures that we are so lucky to get to spend time interacting with and cohabitating with? Much of your fear of living comes from something you haven’t and may never face and your anxiety comes from knowing that your pain and trauma aren’t going anywhere until you are willing to face them and deal with them. Today is the day to face the emotions and the traumatic situations that are stopping you from living with a fully open heart and mind. Your spirit can’t soar when you are only partially engaged with your life

You act like this isn’t the only life you have, so are you saving your resources and energy for some other life that is happening tomorrow or next week? Doesn’t that seem a little ironic? All that money sitting in the bank while you sit wishing you had more time and energy to “enjoy” life. I know you are scared and you are confused. Me too, but you can’t let this stop you from working on yourself. Work is the answer and this work isn’t easy, but it is the only way I have personally found my own healing and now aim to teach others. Going into the darkness allowed me to find my light. God has your back and he has plans for you if you are willing to go inside and ask for his love and his light to show you the way. You must open your heart and your mind to the work God has in store for you. Only you can seek out and do this work!

How would you suggest we handle these political issues?

You have gotten to a stale mate with your current approach to this whole governance thing and it’s got to be discussed, examined and improved in real and effective ways if you want to build back your unity and your pride in yourselves and your nation. You have done a lot of heroic things and you have done a lot horrific things, you must face and deal with all of them cordially and respectfully and actually join hands day after day across every state line to bring you back to the initial image your forefathers portrayed. Yes for many of them their words contradicted their actions, but that doesn’t mean you can’t rectify this problem and build a beautiful home where you fully agree and practice the understanding that every child, women or man is created equal and always has been and always will be no matter what they look like or believe.

You need to stop putting your focus on all of the nations around the world and start to focus on yourselves long enough to heal. You created this divide and you are the only ones who can fix it. Yes bad things are occurring and you need to support others, but you wouldn’t ignore your own house fire to water your neighbor’s lawn would you? You keep neglecting your own people while being distracted by all of the problems and atrocities happening around you. If you want to come back together and heal as a nation you have all got to meet in the middle, drop your weapons and open our hearts and our minds to build a mutual understanding and respect for all.

How do I begin this work of redirecting my own energy, focus and effort?

Stop trying to control everything and stop looking for the answers and validation externally. You are a passenger in this journey in many ways, and you must develop a healthy level of trust and faith in your creator if you are going to follow your God given path. Things aren’t always meant to be easy or comfortable and most often the real lessons come from real life experiences that require a significant amount of mental, physical and emotional energy, so be at peace when tough times set in and keep walking the path. This is where you have opportunities to find the biggest answers to life’s questions. Remember to have fun and take time to savor your life even when you are hurting. These challenges too shall pass and God will always be available to help guide and console you as long as you are willing to ask for and open up to these blessings. The more you start to connect with your thoughtful, purposeful and emotionally balanced energy the more synchronized and impactful your decisions and actions will become.

Why are we constantly facing so much pain, loss and trauma?

Pain, loss and trauma are an unfortunately normal part of your life, but they usually carry messages and blessings that you can either recognize and listen to or ignore. Choose wisely my friends. These challenging life experiences and traumatic moments are meant to be lessons learned from and then released, but too often we refuse to recognize and release them thinking they will go away. Ignoring them actually means we continue to carry them everywhere we go and they constantly weigh us down and influence our emotions, attitude, thoughts and actions.

What do you think happens when you lose entire generations of selfless warriors from the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Vietnam and the list goes on? Wouldn’t you think that the pain and trauma from these massive losses would be enough for us not do it again and learn to do better?

Well, we have free will and many amongst us are choosing not to see these as lessons and make the necessary changes. Instead they are in denial that they are carrying such heavy emotional burdens and they are destroying themselves and their families still because they cannot turn and face the pain, shame and sadness. This is weakness and this is the real sign of someone who is afraid and cannot learn to actually give themselves and those they love the life they deserve. Your family needs you. We need you. You need you!

Some among us have also turned many of these tragedies into opportunities to gain more control and advantages over others and this has led to many layers of pain, trauma and ignorance that now buries most people, destroys families, separates communities and is dividing our nation day by day. We have seemingly become our own worst enemy, but I don’t believe this is the final destination and I have hope and faith in God, Me and in You.

What about all the awful things we have done as a nation?

You wiped out entire nations who lived in harmony and would have lived alongside you and taught you how to live in harmony with the earth because you decided you had the anointing to act in God’s place. Your self-proclaimed superiority has made you the God in your life and has replaced me. I made the entire Human race, not just American’s Australian’s, African’s, Cherokee, Mayans or Chinese and I gave you the ultimate Commandment to do unto others as you would want done unto yourself, but you have chosen to continuously move the goal post constantly changing the definition of a Human Being. Again, making yourself the God in your life. This must be recognized and left behind to unite with the one and only God once again.

The United States has been made up of many different ethnicities and backgrounds from day one and even though you didn’t treat everyone equally like you wrote out or swore to, eventually you were able to grow closer together for a while, but most recently you’re starting to choose sides more than you’re cooperating and this will never lead to real progress and has caused us to regress, but I believe you can overcome this. You must look in the mirror and be honest about the wounds that need tending. Are you still judging those who look different from you, but have the exact same DNA as you. Are you using and abusing your family, friends and colleagues as commodities and resources rather than loving and supporting them as the brothers and sisters they are. You can always turn and ask God to forgive you, forgive yourself and ask others for forgiveness while doing your part to reach out and lift up those around you. There isn’t a better time to do this than today.

Our differences are the things that make us so amazing. If you could only eat one type of food or listen to one genre of music or buy all your clothes at one place, would you be happy? Then why are you so damn scared of people who look, sound or think differently than you. Open your mind, ears and mouth and you may just add some depth, variety and fulfillment to your life.

This historically tragic way of treating each other has greatly diminished our ability to trust one another because we are constantly betraying each other and it must stop. We aren’t really that different at all and it’s time to show the world that a nation of powerful, proud immigrant Americans are sorry for the things we did to ourselves, each other and all we have hurt and now we want to again prove that all walks of life can come together and create harmony and beauty in a world of opportunity that is still the United States of America.

Ok, how do we change this?

It all starts with YOU first beginning to heal and open to a faithful and hopeful life instead of a distracted and fearful one. It all starts with one person, one thought, one question, one action at a time. Stop looking for some far-off big moment and start asking for guidance and for healing at this very moment. As soon as you accept that you are and always have been a child of the Almighty God part of the 1 Human family the quicker you will be able to walk in faith in all that you do and act out of hope, joy and love instead of anger, trauma and pain.

Only you can do this internal work, and you can’t rush it or control it. Make yourself 100% available for and open to it, remain curious and seek understanding in all that you do. This is a daily devotional practice that takes work to remain open to God’s will and God’s blessings in your life. Not a once a week checking a box. The more you can identify the patterns of pain and the emotional reactions you have to situations that trigger you the better you will be able to understand work on healing and releasing them.

How do I protect my energy?

This may look like quiet time and setting boundaries for some of you and it may be offering a helping hand and spending some quality time with true friends for others. You can’t afford to just give away all the love and energy that is meant for you, your family, friends and impactful work. If you are consistently choosing to use your life for activities and distractions that zap your energy like scrolling social media, gossiping, watching TV or engaging in harmful or meaningless work, then you are not going to receive the reciprocating energy that God’s work provides.

Be cautious of others who may drain you of your energy or try and manipulate you for their benefit. They may not always even know they are doing this, but that doesn’t mean you should let it happen. Every relationship should have healthy and clear boundaries and clear and consistent communication. The more you do this work, the more important it will be for you to spend time doing the things that you are aligned with and called to. People in your life may not fully understand this, but they will respect it if they Love you. They will eventually get to witness and experience your balanced energy and expanded ability to love and be available for them if you do this work consistently and openly.

Why do I feel disconnected?

The further you travel from your authentic self the more you lose your spirit. Losing your spirit leaves you disconnected and discontented with your life, and it stops you from having the drive to put in the work to grow and expand, so you begin to lose yourself energetically. As you search for yourself again, unfortunately you tend to create an image based off the ideal artificial reality that you see around you instead of going to your heart and learning who it is you are being called to be. Figuring out and following your true path is the only way to connect to the energy of your spirit and the wisdom of your soul.

Stop sitting and staring at a propagated reality that is forming an image of existence in your mind that is neither real or fulfilling for you or anyone around you. The only reason you can stay there staring for hours at your phone or your TV is because your energy is being drained not boosted, so go do something that boosts your energy and lights up your soul, not something that wastes your energy and leaves you feeling empty and wasteful every single time you come out of your trance of the algorithm.

How do I get back to my spirit and re-energize my life?

You must begin to listen to God and work with his love to heal your mind, body and soul. You can’t continue to be led by external motivations and being pulled away from your own God gifted mission and purpose. Chasing only money, prestige or control will always lead you astray. If these gifts are the rewards of work that is Godly, meaningful and positively impactful for the world then it is a blessing, but if you are choosing to treat yourself or others wrong to achieve success you will not receive the blessings that are meant for you.

You tend to think that you need to keep working this job or building this false sense of control to be ok, but you really need to let go of trying to control everything and do the work that is fulfilling, rewarding and re-energizing for you. If you are constantly grinding and always stressed, sick and distracted then when are you available for your life? You weren’t sent here to escape your life, kill the planet and use those who are here with you. You were sent to create a better world internally and externally, so I suggest you get to work doing that.

This concludes another session of Chatting with God on Back Porch. Again, I am truly grateful to get to share my journey and my heart with each of you and I am excited to see the world around you light up as you walk with the spirit of a Warrior carrying God’s Love and Light throughout your life.

Love Always In All Ways,

Jake

P.S. If you enjoy my writing, you can always pledge each month to help me out, share my newsletter and Substack page with those you love, like and comment on this post for exposure. Or just shoot me a message so I can keep improving and focusing on things that matter.

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