Episode summary & Guest Bio: Chad is a retired Army Sniper and combat applications instructor.
He has faced immense challenges from war to special needs children and two motorcycle accidents.
Despite all of this Chad has found a way to overcome through forming a superior mindset. We get into his background and the wild story that has led him to where he is today.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
Transcript
0:01[Music]
0:08hello and welcome to the mindset and self mastery show i’m your host nick
0:13mcgowan and on this show my guests and i unpacked the stories that shape us and the lives that we lead on our path to
0:20self-mastery today on the show we have chad osinga chad is a retired army sniper how cool
0:27is that and the combat applications instructor he’s faced immense challenges from war
0:34to special needs children and two motorcycle accidents despite all of this
0:40chad has found an incredible way to overcome performing a superior mindset
0:45perfect for the show right so we get into his background the wild story that has led him to where he is today let’s
0:52not wait any longer let the games begin [Music]
0:58hey chad welcome to the show man how are you doing i am awesome how are you i’m doing great i appreciate that you
1:04reached out and that you wanted to hop on i was looking through some of your background and my god man it looks like you’ve been through um i’m just gonna
1:11put nicely you’ve been through some so the fact that you want to hop on and kind of talk through some of this i
1:17really appreciate you being on um and chad why don’t you start off by telling us what you do for a living and one
1:23thing that most people don’t know about you so i now i’m i’m basically a
1:29motivational speaker i also help mentor and i write and one thing that most
1:35people don’t know is that i drink about a gallon to a gallon and a half of water a day nice
1:41um you could have gone several different directions you could have been like a vodka with tequila a day
1:49sure that was a different life yeah it was and i was close to that at one point in my life so yeah
1:55yeah so what’s the deal with the water you’re just trying to make sure that you do it is it part of a challenge what is
2:01it uh you know it started uh many years ago i started training
2:07doing jiu jitsu and fighting a lot and so without me even knowing it i started in
2:14taking just water and i’m one of those people that i don’t have to eat a whole bunch throughout the day but i’ve always
2:20had to hydrate with something so i was drinking water and next thing you know that’s really i drink water and
2:27coffee all day and that’s it i’m sure your colon appreciates that it does it loves
2:34me very much yes i bet man um so what uh you said that you’re a
2:40motivational speaker now and knowing what i know of your background the little bit that i know so far wanna give
2:46us a little bit of context like what what basically happened and led you to this point now it starts when i was first born right um
2:53my entire left side wouldn’t wouldn’t work and so my mother was a big drug addict prior
3:00to my birth and when i was born i don’t know if it was due to the drugs or what but
3:07my left the left side of my body wasn’t functioning and so the doctor basically said hey
3:12you know work work with this kid or he’s he’s not moving it ever again so she
3:18took a hiatus from all the drugs uh helped me you know get my movement
3:23back but then went right back into it so from like the time i i was born it seemed like i was
3:29in a constant fight um as i got a little bit older i started
3:35realizing that my mom was really getting worse when it came to you know alcohol and and
3:42her drugs turned much harder right she began to smoke crack cocaine
3:47all of the money was going to that and then she actually invited these drug dealers
3:54basically into my house so they lived there they sold drugs out of there they had their ladies come
4:01there um it was really their home right i was just visiting
4:06and you know i would sell drugs for them and i really thought
4:12growing up that my surroundings was all i could have like that was like being
4:18the top drug dealer was like the pinnacle or or you know the the top spot in life um
4:25and so for many years that’s what i thought but being 12 years old you’re not like the greatest drug dealer and
4:32you know the older guys always took all the stuff anyway right all the money and uh left me with with you know not really
4:39much to deal out as far as being able to get food and things like
4:45that um when i was about 14 the police actually raided my house
4:53and my mom went to prison i was sent all the way to oklahoma with family i really didn’t know
5:00and you know that that was a hard time of my life as well because when i
5:06got to oklahoma i was anemic uh due to the fact that i wasn’t eating correctly my mom you know again she was strung out
5:13there was no you know dinners being made and i was too young to really get a a solid
5:20job so you know the little bit i made off of drug dealings what i had to go to mcdonald’s and you know uh
5:26do a little bit i could do uh as far as getting food and and
5:32some type of substance but when i got there uh
5:38my aunt and uncle were very religious they worked at a church they believed that
5:46i was a very evil child i think and so when i got there um
5:53they they they treated me as if i was like two years old uh they would put me in the corner
6:00like and stand me there and make me eat my dinner there do my studies there and then go to bed all right and
6:07i remember because the corner was like at the front door and the living room was right behind me my uncle was a bigger guy he worked at like the oil
6:14fields and uh he was not the guy i was trying to get
6:19in a fight with you know being a scrawny uh 14 year old so i listened you know and i i
6:26but i was miserable and you know their their quote-unquote spankings to me were
6:32a little uh excessive i would sometimes bleed and i would be
6:38uh like black and blue from from that there was times where like he threw me down the hallway
6:45um all over very minor minor things in my opinion you know yeah and so i ended
6:51up running away from there uh the first time i got caught um i was like i got caught because i i
7:00i was in a i stopped at this uh little exxon and they had these donuts
7:06and i was so hungry man and i was like oh man i was like looking at them like they were like just t-boned
7:12steaks and they have a curfew in the tulsa oklahoma area
7:19and i didn’t know that but the cashier i guess did called the police police came here comes my my uncle
7:27and um the police and so they brought me back to
7:33their home and of course they were very unhappy with that um and it wasn’t
7:39maybe two weeks later i i finally my like while i was there they wouldn’t
7:46allow me to talk to my mother while she was incarcerated and they wouldn’t allow me to talk to
7:51um like my grandmother um or anybody i really knew from
7:57virginia where i was from and the few times in that year and a half
8:04that i i lived there the few times that they would allow me to you know talk to
8:09them or read the mail they always opened it they always monitored the
8:14phone calls and my grandmother said hey it’s okay to come home and i have no idea why she
8:21said that but when she did that’s that’s what sparked that i’m i’m out of here right
8:28so two weeks after that first you know attempt i uh
8:34i i got to a friend that was in in one of my classes
8:40and i was like hey man take me to the edge of
8:45this town right i didn’t even know where i was really going so he takes me and there’s like this dusty
8:51uh payphone gas station that like no one ever uses
8:57and um i think maybe two people uh stopped there the entire time i was
9:04there i was probably there like four hours five hours the second guy that stopped there
9:10actually gave me a ride to the to halfway to the airport right and paid
9:17the rest of the way for me uh to get a taxi and go and he he had talked to my
9:22grandmother on the on the on the little pay phone because i had about three quarters you know worth of phone
9:29calls back then so um but it all worked out and um
9:35i got home and then i was arrested uh for breaking probation so that next day the the sheriff’s came
9:42to my grandmother’s house they arrested me and sent me to detention home
9:48um they gave custody to my aunt one of my other aunts who lived in
9:54uh virginia and you know that but the damage had really been been done at that
10:00point i i was kind of a wreck um i didn’t care much
10:05about life i didn’t think that uh i was gonna have
10:11anything good in this life right and i was i was
10:16my anger began driving my life right like i was under the
10:21influence of of of anger uh there there’s no other way
10:26to really say that you know and i
10:32i just didn’t i didn’t i didn’t know if i wanted to really live you know
10:39and my grandmother she she tried to get me into church and tried to get me into those things but that became an issue in
10:45and of itself because um it just seemed to
10:53i seem to to get used right more than than help in those situations and so
11:00i that turned me a little more bitter um and i met this girl and we’re still
11:07married to this day but she changed my world man and she is the one that got me to stop
11:13selling drugs he’s the one that you know believed in me and said hey
11:19you can you gotta you gotta do a little more right if you wanna stay with me so let’s let’s get this thing right
11:26and so i joined the army in like a last ditch effort to
11:32be something you know to you know just try to have something more
11:37than what i had up to this point and i was a late bloomer i didn’t join into my early 20s
11:43uh well which you know most people are joining eight you know 17 18 years old uh right out of high school
11:50but i joined and at first it was a rough road because i was a street kid that
11:56that didn’t have a lot of guidance and direction and then you go into a completely different setting right
12:02like it’s night and day compared to the life i lived up to this point
12:08and at first you know like i said it was i was running into some issues uh
12:14but as i continued it made sense to me right and they
12:19taught me a lot about myself they taught me that there was a lot more in the tank than what i thought you know kind of
12:25like hitting empty there’s still probably 30 miles uh left of gas in in the tank so
12:32they they showed me that that i was much more than what i thought i could achieve a lot more than what i really
12:39had given myself credit for up up until this point uh
12:44while i was in the military though um i ended up joining you know uh
12:53i would say an elite version of that and i became a sniper i i was able i was allowed to go to
12:59a special operation sniper school and you know that and then
13:05you know and the thing was like i was still a wreck though like even though i was i was beginning to
13:12uh achieve some really high level stuff i was i was still
13:17fighting a lot with internally um i began to
13:24uh instruct soldiers which ended up becoming something that
13:31was offered to the fbi dea u.s marshals so i trained swat teams and all kinds of
13:39different entities like that and that was it was a real cool experience uh but i had acute by this time i
13:47a lot of injuries through deployment and uh just trainings i i mean your body
13:54gets really beat up when you live uh that type of life and
14:01so the the army was like hey you know it’s about time i was about 10 years in into my career and they were like hey um
14:08you’re really beat up you’ve had multiple surgeries it’s it’s time for you to to take an
14:13exit and i didn’t want to go but you know there’s not much you can do in those moments
14:18as i did and when i exited it i didn’t know i thought i i had
14:25been dealing with some demons but they say an idle mind is the devil’s playground
14:30and i really believed that once i got out once i got out i was banged up i was mad that i was out of the army and i
14:37couldn’t stay in the army it was the one thing in my life that i had found success in right and so now
14:44that was being stripped from me and so i i i got really depressed i
14:50started drinking like a fifth of of whiskey a night uh smoking like an ounce of weed a week
14:57i was spending an outrageous amount of money just on on marijuana you know
15:04and um so i was lost you know i
15:10i didn’t know which way i was gonna go and
15:17so i i i was i was i was definitely struggling man i i was a wreck i was
15:22losing my marriage you know and she’s my best friend right like she she is
15:29uh my world but i was i was up right i i wasn’t treating her well i wasn’t present with
15:35my kids you know and and so and let me actually take a step back
15:41while i was in the military my my daughter i have four kids all together um my my second oldest which is my
15:49daughter had a stroke when she was five i was stationed in germany and um
15:55she uh had this really severe stroke that you know we didn’t know what was going on i
16:01was actually ramping up to go to afghanistan and um
16:06so when we get to the hospital they misdiagnose her and they think that
16:13she’s just having seizures well there’s language barriers there’s a lot of different things going on that
16:19are at play i guess if you will and so
16:25um finally a neurologist walks in that next day and is like hey have you guys given
16:30her an mri and they’re like no no right like that’s probably a
16:37smart thing to do well her brain was uh basically swoon like
16:44super swollen and she was gonna die in the next few hours if she didn’t have emergency surgery so they had to send
16:51her to hamburg germany and they have a specialty hospital there they did a craniotomy where they basically cut out
16:59half the skull released the pressure and she lived but they told us that she
17:04would never you know walk again she would never talk on her own she would never eat and you know as a dad that’s that’s a
17:12hard pill to swallow man like that that is a rough one you know uh i remember
17:19me and my wife like crying and they gave us like a little room in the uh ronald mcdonald uh
17:26uh i don’t know what they’re called little ronald mcdonald houses they’re attached to the hospital they
17:33gave us a room there and um you know it was
17:38i remember sitting there and and crying and screaming
17:44you know for for some type of help because i just didn’t know what to do you know you as a father you
17:51you always want to do something right like fix it but you can’t there’s nothing i
17:57was going to be able to do this was completely out of out of my realm of of
18:05of anything i couldn’t i couldn’t touch it all i could do was sit there and watch you know and it was it was rough
18:11man so at this time my my wife is also pregnant with our
18:17third child so she gives birth while she while my daughter’s in icu so
18:23she’s she all of a sudden pops and i’m like oh my god so i have
18:29a kid that’s being born in one room right and i have my daughter who’s fighting
18:35for her life in another with my oldest son who’s sitting there having to be a champ
18:40you know through all of this i mean if anybody’s a rock star as far as my kids my oldest son has gone through a lot
18:48and so she she has the baby
18:53and they’re like hey we’ve only seen this like about three times in our lives we need to send you to america
19:00like okay he would not allow my wife and my newborn to fly because he
19:07was just born so didn’t have a passport didn’t have uh dual citizenship
19:13and so we she had to get all those things in order to to make the flight
19:19so my oldest son my daughter and myself get put onto a medevac flight with
19:24wounded warriors from like afghanistan and iraq and they sent us to walter reed
19:30and this is the old water read in washington dc uh
19:35and once we get there uh we’re there for probably the next
19:40couple months my son had to go live with family and you know it was me and my
19:46daughter in a hospital room for like two months you know it would i made a
19:52a pact with her that she would walk again and so every day they would they would bring
19:59these stuffed animals and she was getting she was angry you know she she had started to somewhat
20:05talk again and you know so i but i wanted to put in her mind’s eye that hey you’re gonna walk
20:11you know i don’t care what these doctors are saying i don’t care what you know uh has happened to another
20:16patient this is you this is your situation let’s go and we would stand i would stand her up
20:22and she would throw stuffed animals against the wall and just trying to get strength in her legs
20:29i would move her and try to just get her to envision what walking looked like right and so we would we would walk down
20:35the halls and you know of course with me helping her but by the time we left two months down the
20:42road she actually walked on her own with a you know with me kind of just making
20:47sure she wouldn’t fall but she walked she was talking and she was you know eating on her own within
20:53the that two-month time frame and so i really
20:58when you talk about inspiration she is my inspiration she is my if she can do all of that then i don’t
21:06have an excuse anywhere else in my life uh
21:11fast forward back to where we were uh my wife well now we’ve had two more kids
21:18we’ve had the one that um was birthed while my daughter was in icu
21:24and then we’ve had about a year after that we had another one and both of them now get diagnosed with
21:32autism and they’re both on two different spectrums uh you know uh or two
21:39different ends of the spectrum should say i’m sorry one it will scream and cry and go crazy
21:45and the other one isn’t talking right at all and we have my daughter who’s in therapies
21:53constantly so it was just it was a wild wild experience trying to to figure that
21:59out and i hit a level of depression once i exited the military even though i you
22:05know my kids were starting to to learn how to to overcome some of the
22:11disabilities that they had had by that point and you know i just crumbled mentally i
22:18started like i said drinking started smoking a ton started just you know not
22:24just being like a recluse you know i didn’t want to talk to anybody i didn’t want to be around anybody
22:31so i take up riding motorcycles and i got out of the military in 2015.
22:39this happened in 2018 the first one uh i was making a left turn on my motorcycle
22:45some 19 year old kid playing pokemon go blows through the the red light
22:51and blows through me puts me on a guardrail and destroys the bike uh
22:59you know i everybody thought i was gonna die somehow i didn’t right somehow i i lived
23:06through that and everything was gonna be everything right i was gonna be okay
23:12but i was super scared now of intersections of
23:17you know i i had my own i already had my own ptsd from my past the military
23:24and now i get hit by a car right so my mind was was was a wreck and i so
23:30i continued to drink continue to smoke uh because i thought i needed those things to to numb
23:37my my mental state right and it took me about a year and a year
23:42and a half or a year and a half maybe maybe about a year to build the courage to get back onto a motorcycle again but
23:49i refused to allow the fear to beat me i had a good friend rebuild my old
23:54motorcycle and i said all right i’m i’m gonna get on it and i’m gonna try so i think that i’m doing all the right
24:00things i get on to this motorcycle i’m riding i have a group with me
24:06and in 2018 about just shy of two years after this last accident a car we’re riding i’m
24:14actually on my way home and i’m in the far left lane of of i-95
24:19and this van in the middle lane doesn’t see me because their lane was slowing down he
24:25wanted to jump into into the fast left lane and when he did he ran into me at 65
24:32miles an hour uh he hit me so hard that my motorcycle
24:37never like the jury like he hit the jersey barrier but it never fell back down it was like
24:43into the jersey barrier and what they told me was uh he continued to drive a little bit
24:50with the bikes on the vehicle like dude like he still didn’t realize fully that he had whacked me
24:58they were expanding i-95 at the time and so i got my body got sent into a
25:05construction zone i died on the way to the hospital and then
25:11after my first surgery they realized that the damages were so bad that they needed to go in and do a second surgery
25:18uh right before that the medications were something mixed wrong and uh i
25:24don’t know if you ever had surgeries but they they put you on the gurney and like
25:29you’re right across from wherever you’re going to get surgery at right uh
25:35it’s like a little pre-op area and they check your vitals well next thing
25:40i’m slurring my words they thought i was having a stroke uh they didn’t know what was going on next thing you know i flatline again
25:46they have to rush me uh and i stayed in icu for about seven days uh after that
25:53uh so and the story gets even even funner
25:59because while i’m in icu this covid so no one can see me right i
26:04still haven’t seen my family since i i got whacked uh i don’t have a cell phone to can
26:11really communicate i have the little messed up phone that’s on the side of the bed and i have reruns that’s it
26:20so i had that for seven long days and now and i can’t move i can’t get up out of my bed i can’t you know i can’t do
26:26anything right um it really
26:32it really put you know what’s crazy is i think what was meant to be a very
26:37negative piece in my life actually turned very positive for me
26:43uh that those seven days like i’ve been telling a lot of people uh
26:49opened my eyes because i had to face me right like i there was nothing that was gonna
26:54i don’t know you know i see you will do it to you um you’re just having to
27:00to visit a lot of different things throughout my life and there was no turning away from it there
27:07was no numbing it there was there was nothing it was just facing it and dealing with it and moving on
27:13so i think when i did that i realized that i had a purpose right that was so much
27:19bigger than just myself or just my family uh god the universe whatever we want to call it
27:27him her whatever is very real and and
27:33definitely had had a plan right because most people don’t survive one motorcycle
27:40accident much less too um and so yeah and so
27:47you know i left the hospital and i still had a long ways to go you
27:53know what i mean uh with my my mental state um you know when i got
27:59back to that to my house you know i was i was bedridden you know i i
28:05had to relearn how to walk i had to you know i had to and i still had more surgeries
28:11like that was the other thing like i still had more surgeries to get uh you probably can’t see it but my hand there’s like a
28:17zipper scar all the way up right here and that was a mess you know because in my
28:24only my pinky and this finger work um
28:29and i had to somehow work my way through all of that
28:34right and it was definitely a journey it was i began to
28:40to read a lot i began to to really pursue like mindset stuff right and and
28:49devoting devoting myself to being a better me somehow someway i quit drinking i quit
28:54smoking um you know and it didn’t happen right right away uh but it it definitely
29:02you know this last wreck um it changed me for the for the best i
29:08think right because um i think because of that the purpose part
29:13of it right like i knew without a shadow of a doubt i was here for a reason right and and
29:19um i just had to figure out how to to get out of my current situation right
29:25because i just there was a many points where i didn’t know if i was gonna walk again so
29:30you know i didn’t know what what my tomorrow was necessarily gonna look like you know um
29:38so yeah um i started to really dig into the writing
29:44and started digging into putting myself in uh a different
29:50surroundings as far as as people right uh entrepreneurs and people that thought
29:56differently than than the average bear and as i began to do that i began to
30:03really excel you know just in every area of my life my marriage uh
30:10you know it began to flourish again and my kids began to like me again so you know
30:18everything started coming full circle for me you know uh and i i was
30:25i was very grateful not not to get hit but i’m i’m thankful that i was able to
30:31refine myself right my purpose in life and and know that that
30:39you know it is i think that this world they we have this belief system right that we
30:46develop and you know there’s a lot of different people that talk about this how we
30:52associate uh situations to us right uh just like
30:57we associate green with go and red with stop we associate uh specific things to us
31:07and a lot of that is just really really false like my
31:13thinking that all i could be sorry my dog
31:20no worries um
31:26my my association um with my past i thought was all i could
31:33have all i i could be right um and
31:39you know it took it took me to be around certain mindsets for me to really break free and
31:46know that man there’s more i’m capable of more i you know i
31:52this is this is it was just a moment and there’s a lot of good information to
31:57extract from the bad things in our life and that’s what i think that you know kobe said that losing is exciting to him
32:05right because he can find you know those weaknesses those chinks in his armor those
32:10and now he can begin to work on those things and become that much stronger of a player or a person right and so once i
32:17began to realize um that all that bad stuff all the those
32:22hardships there were a lot of positives to take away from that a lot of a lot of things that
32:29i could apply to to my armor fill in some holes and and move forward and
32:34really be able to help other people that were in similar or worse situations than than i was and that’s what i’ve been
32:41trying to do uh whether it be speaking or writing or you know uh mentoring people just i you
32:47know a lot of just like i i love working with kids as well so you know anything i can do with with the youth i i i’ll do
32:54that and you know um it it’s definitely uh it’s been a blessing to say the least
33:02sure man what a story just to be able to think through all of that stuff when you’re sitting
33:08there in bed for seven days and you cannot move you can’t do a thing
33:14this i just think for you to have that transitional period that literally moved you from a fixed to
33:21a growth mindset to start to say okay well things have to change
33:26it’s wild how i think that things have to happen to us or happen for us in a way to go okay got
33:34it i think of those as little god nods where god’s up there like hey here’s a curveball and you’re like oh that
33:39almost took my head off yeah do you got the point you’re like yeah okay i think i get the point
33:46man you’ve gone through so much from a child on up even through your own kids where i’m sure you could pick out
33:53different people in life where you’re like yeah you would have jumped off the train you would have jumped off the train most people would have so
34:00in that space of the seven days when you’re lying there and you’re thinking i’ve got a lot of work ahead of me i got
34:06a lot of stuff but there’s positives that are happening how did you manage your mindset in that space and not go
34:12bonkers i think a few times i did um sure maybe
34:18you need to you know you know um i just i i think that i i leveraged the fact
34:25that that i was alive um i leveraged the fact that if for whatever reason if there was nothing
34:32more to this this life that i was living why would i still be here right after
34:37all the things that i’ve been through i mean i you know i skimmed through my life a little bit um there’s a lot of
34:44stories i can tell you and a lot of things that were where
34:49i probably shouldn’t be here right i i i not probably i know i shouldn’t uh be
34:54here and and a lot of a lot of that i i really believe is is
35:00that purpose that overall purpose it took me a very long time to figure this out uh because i’m hard-headed but i
35:06also think my hard-headedness was what kept me alive right um
35:11but in those moments i i began to leverage that and then that desire for wanting more and so okay i have a fifth
35:18chance a sixth chance at this thing i don’t want to waste it this time you know i so i got to start looking
35:25i have to start looking in inward right and then i started saying okay but i’ve done
35:31a lot of badass things along the way and so if i’ve done those things right then
35:38that means this thought process isn’t real it’s not true right it’s not accurate it was a it
35:44was a moment in my life right and it definitely uh you know helped define
35:51me and make me who i am but it doesn’t it doesn’t define who i’m gonna be
35:56tomorrow or the next day or anything else it’s just a you know an accent in the overall picture right
36:03and i i think that that’s what i tried to leverage in those moments and what
36:08would help me get through all of that right right when when you face death so many times
36:14and and sooner or later you just you’re like okay god i got it like i’m i’m supposed
36:21to be here uh let me stop trying to sabotage my own existence and you know
36:26yeah do something with it so uh i think that was the key for me
36:32and and that’s a good point about uh sabotaging your own existence yeah it’s it’s almost like you just get
36:38in your own way sometimes and then when you think about it and it hits you you’re like oh
36:44silly me i’m the in the group here i’m the one who keeps getting in the way
36:49uh so if you think about what you know now and what you’re going through
36:54and the stuff that you went through as a child if you could look back and have conversations with that kid and maybe
37:00you’ve gone through and you’ve dealt with some childhood trauma and maybe you’ve even sat down and with your past
37:06self to talk through that stuff but what sort of advice would you give to that kid that was going through that
37:12that everything that i could have ever needed was already within me right
37:17we we look for a lot of extra stuff and whether it be you know the world that we
37:24live in or are introduced to on a daily basis commercials tv rap songs
37:30it’s always fill your life fill the voids with this uh you’re going through this have this
37:35uh you know this is just all you deserve no everything that you’ve ever needed is
37:41within you and you have we all have a north star right something that’s pulling us to
37:47to have something great right and listen to that pool don’t listen to
37:52everyone else listen to what’s on the inside of you and go for it right you’re not going to get any younger so just do
37:58it like a nike commercial and and stay committed to it and and trust the process
38:04yeah i think a lot of people have a hard time with being okay with that fear um where if you’re facing fear even as a
38:12sniper you’ve i would assume you’ve got fear going through you like i’m about to take this person out or what have you
38:20and then the other fears of the things you’ve gone through where kind of had that fear muscle stretched
38:25in a sense like all right well what else you gonna throw at me there’s certain people in this world that maybe they
38:30weren’t spoon-fed but maybe they’ve had some tough things and then just broke and they’re like i can’t get past it so
38:37how did you how would you help them actually switch from fixed to a growth mindset
38:44you know it it so hesitation is the magnifier of all fear
38:51right it will make something small look ginormous in your mind’s eye
38:58so when i said just do it that is the best advice i can give anybody stop look
39:05if even if you failed in the past right the next time you get up and you’re not
39:10starting from scratch anymore you have feedback every mistake every
39:16miss is feedback right it’s it’s not the end of the world it’s not you know it’s not that you aren’t good
39:23enough you just didn’t know well now you know right you know that that doesn’t work or that does
39:29work or or you need to do it just a little bit different to to make it work right but
39:35now you have that feedback so instead of quitting and turning the back with your
39:40tail between your legs take that feedback take that information and apply it to the next time just keep
39:48look small steps right and eventually you’re gonna look back and say wow look how far i’ve come
39:54but you have to just start making those steps and and taking the feedback as it comes and applying it
40:00yeah you remember when we were growing up we didn’t have social media so you would just hear things or see stuff on tv and
40:07see celebrities or you’d read something in a magazine or what have you but we as kids didn’t really have all of
40:14that coming at us like people do now i even find myself at times where i’ll be thumbing through instagram or
40:20facebook and just feel anxiety coming up or like oh this
40:25person posted something i should probably post 10 things i’m like what is wrong with you calm down
40:32and people now kind of go through all that stuff so even taking those little steps i think sometimes we as people look at
40:39well other people are doing greater things but they forget that you don’t see a lot of the little steps
40:45and the little failures underneath of it before that post came out so
40:50how do you manage kind of through that on the daily right now knowing you still got those battles and those traumas
40:56behind you yeah well one i you know the only person i’m competing with is me right so when i
41:03see someone else do x y and z good for them i platform hooray right that’s not my journey right
41:11i’m i’m 40 years old just starting to figure out that you know i’m better than
41:17what i thought i was right so yeah um you know i’m not the the 30 year old that that
41:24claims to have it all figured out but you’re right like you know behind
41:31everything there’s a lot of things that have to happen before it actually uh
41:36comes to fruition right and we we tend to forget that right uh that
41:41you know you look at uh because i’ll stay with kobe kobe bryant right he makes this amazing last second
41:49shot in in the the finals but to him it’s just another shot that he’s taken a
41:56zillion times before i think that if you want success in this
42:01life it’s all about preparation um you know and and when you prepare for it
42:07and you put the work in uh good things are gonna happen so don’t worry about what somebody else is doing
42:12don’t worry about what social media is saying you stay you stay focused on your purpose stay going through the steps
42:19right and and you’re going to find greatness just in your own time yeah
42:25how do you suggest that dealing with the triggers of things that come up because those triggers are emotional awareness
42:31factors for us to say hey there’s this thing for you to look at or this thing for you to do but some people will just shut off they go oh trigger when
42:38they just they’re done but how do you how would you suggest somebody deal with those so i think in the beginning it’s it’s
42:45a few things right i think meditation is is a really good um
42:50you know place to to really start looking back on on things that maybe you’ve done the day before depending on
42:57when you do it um journaling i i know it sounds kind of
43:03fairy but uh writing helped me so much right like you know feeling
43:09one we i think that that these triggers are
43:15misunderstood right like you said they’re there to help us
43:20right they’re there for a reason right it’s it’s like your body giving you a warning signal right so you it’s
43:27relevant you just we blow it out proportion right so it’s good to understand what these
43:33things are there for and what our system is trying to tell us right so being able
43:38to write those things down uh you know how did i act how did i respond how should i have responded uh and then also
43:48putting in you know the way the things you’ve done right that day uh constantly filling your your memory bank
43:54with positivity so that way the next time these things happen you react with more of a positive manner than a
44:01negative one i think has really helped me uh i still struggle i’m not gonna sit
44:06here and lie um but that’s that’s what i do i meditate i journal and i try to
44:12fill my mind full of positivity right so that’s what comes out when
44:18those those negative feelings start arising right
44:24and i also and i’ll say this i also like to trace uh
44:29kind of like a root you know or or a wire i like to trace the origin of of why do i feel that way what what i
44:36talked about associations right there’s probably something in your past that has you associating that feeling to
44:44whatever negative thing that you’re thinking right uh whether it’s you know when you’re young
44:49as a kid or sometimes it’s multiple things like for me i have i i have anger
44:55things right and and i man sometimes my anger would would just
45:00be on level a zillion and i had to really say okay why why is this happening man
45:07like what is going on and it wasn’t just one thing it was multiple things so keep
45:12an open mind when you’re tracing it back uh don’t be afraid to keep going down
45:17the rabbit hole a little bit to find out what’s going on just don’t stay there
45:24good stuff man so yeah taking that action doing uh journaling and meditating i
45:29mean you’re preaching the choir with that one i’d do that daily and i i fought that for the longest time like i
45:36don’t want to journal my handwriting’s atrocious blah blah blah and it’s not as much about going back and rereading it
45:42maybe for some people but it’s about the act of actually getting it out and allowing the brain to start working
45:47through and getting into a better space it also sounds like you’ve set yourself up for a positive default
45:53where at default i’ve got some positivity where you how you grew up the
45:58default was everything everyone should die yes yes
46:04yes yes yes yes man well dude i am so glad that you were on the show today i appreciate you
46:10being here i appreciate you being open um i appreciate you sharing what you’ve gone through and the fact that you’re
46:16still here and doing what you’re doing today man well i appreciate you having me it was a
46:22blast um and you know i don’t mind if it helps even one person
46:28i’m i’m a happy camper so yeah i think about that too it doesn’t matter if there’s hundreds of billions
46:33of people listening to this as long as there’s one person that goes that thing can help me that’s what this
46:39is all about so on that note why don’t you tell us one piece of advice you’d give somebody that’s on their path
46:45towards self mastery so know your why okay so once you find your purpose and
46:52okay that’s the thing that’s pulling me i want to do that why why do you want to do it uh what
46:57i’ve found in my life is that if i don’t have a defined why i quit
47:03right like because eventually things get hard you have to do the work right the work’s the hard part so why are you
47:09gonna get up at five o’clock in the morning right why are you gonna journal why are you gonna follow those wires and
47:15and go down the rabbit hole why um what is the the reason that’s gonna motivate you to
47:23do those things on a daily basis when no one’s watching when there’s no gratification when you don’t see
47:30uh the big wins right what what is going to to drive you to do that you know and and
47:38so i would really encourage you guys to find out your why i love that you know we’ve all been told
47:44you know find your why or figure out the why i think for the most part some people just brush it off like it’s just old hat
47:50like i get it i should know what my why is and they kind of think a little bit about it but i think back to what you’d
47:55said about tracing back because if you start to look and go well why do i like this thing why is it sports that i like
48:01or music or why is it this you can go back and back and back and back i know you can’t really see it on the shelf
48:07here because i actually changed out the books but behind that mindset book is a book called qbq the question behind the
48:13question that’s something that has always stood out to me it’s like well why do you like ice cream well i like it because of this
48:19well why because of that it might go all the way back to well my grandfather took me to dairy queen when i was five and we
48:24got ice cream and you’re like oh my god that ties to this thing so man i appreciate you being on and
48:30talking about all this stuff before i let you go please tell us where people can connect with you
48:36yeah so my website is mr tenacity.com you can also email me at mr tenacity40
48:44at gmail.com and chat osinga on facebook if you message me on there i got i have
48:51a facebook group and i’ll add you good stuff chad well again thank you so much for being on the show appreciate
48:57your time thanks for having me [Music]
49:08another great conversation on today’s episode of the mindset and self-mastery show
49:14so wow what a friggin story now be honest with me here be honest
49:21with yourself while listening to everything chad went through how many times do you think and
49:27that’s when i’d snap yep right there it that that was that moment that’s when
49:33i would lost my i would have been off the train that’s it whether your childhood and upbringing
49:39looked similar to chad’s or the complete opposite let’s remember that tenacity looks different in
49:45different situations so what can you take from the conversation today to be more tenacious in your daily life
49:53what did you think of today’s episode i’d love to hear your thoughts on the topics we got into and if you enjoyed
49:58the episode please jump over to itunes subscribe rate leave a 5 star review if
50:04this episode opened your eyes made you think or smile at all then i’m sure it’ll do the same for your friends and
50:10family if you really enjoyed the show go ahead and share it with somebody specific we covered a lot and went through some
50:18really tough traumatic times of chad and i’m sure really resonate with a lot of people
50:24check out the show notes for more information contact info for chad and check out other episodes on the mindset and
50:32selfmasteryshow.com as well as our youtube channel just go to youtube and search the mindset and self-mastery show
50:39and ta-dah you’ll see it all right there thanks again chad for being real for being honest vulnerable with us and as
50:46well as sharing some strategies that you’re using and that you’re sharing with others to get through tough
50:51traumatic times and i’d like to thank our sponsors the manly club and the powerhouse men
50:57brotherhood men do you consider yourself to be a powerhouse man the criteria for becoming one is simple
51:04live with virtue and do good work you see a powerhouse man builds his life
51:09he doesn’t settle for it he attacks mediocrity at the root and that’s exactly what we do in the powerhouse men
51:15brotherhood visit themanleyclub.com for details and thank you to you yes you for hanging out with
51:22us today your support means more than you know thank you and with that remember your mindset matters
51:30and so do you [Music]
51:37you
