Transcript
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As much as we may enjoy it.
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Christmas is not about getting presents.
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Christmas is not about giving presents, If you ask me.
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It's truly about being present.
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Today, we outline the unknown benefits of being present on episode 231 of Share, the Struggle podcast.
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Let me tell you something Everybody struggles.
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The difference is some people choose to go through it and some choose to grow through it.
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The choice is completely yours.
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Which one you choose will have a very profound effect on the way you live your life.
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If you find strength in the struggle, then this podcast is for you.
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Do you have a relationship that is comfortable with uncomfortable conversations?
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Uncomfortable conversations challenge you, humble you and they, they build you.
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When you sprinkle a little time and distance on it, it all makes sense.
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Most disagreements they stem from our own insecurities.
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You are right where you need to be Back on time.
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We can back off the whole day gone, we'll be fine.
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Oh, what a do do do, hot diggity, damn.
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I'm so excited to be back with you.
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Oh, it's true.
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Oh, it's true, it is damn true.
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Hot diggity, damn.
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Episode 231.
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The fun has just begun.
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Two, three, one.
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If you don't already know, then you should know that that means we have been recording episodes of Share the Struggle podcast for 231 consecutive weeks.
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That, right there, folks, that is called a winning streak.
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And man do I love winning.
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I mean America, right, that's what we do.
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We love to win.
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I'm going to be honest, y'all, let's get today's show going with a little sidebar podcast confessional.
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I'm going to grab my Cabela's catalog right here, left hand on the catalog, beady little eyes to the sky.
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The truth from the sky Winning doesn't come easy.
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I don't know if that's a shocker for anybody.
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Let me just kind of peel the layer of the onion a little bit.
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Let's state the obvious Winning obviously doesn't come easy.
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But does anybody listening feel like winning comes a little bit more difficult for others?
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Boy, I've been on this streak of even the good things just are difficult and even the difficult things are another degree of difficult.
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Does that make sense?
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You guys have been in that rut where, hey, you're believing and achieving and you're accomplishing things, but just little nonsense, ridiculous things.
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Are these obstacles that are in the way, right?
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Let me just give a classic example Last week's episode we made an announcement that we're advancing the brand, we're taking another step and that we actually are purchasing a building for the business to expand the business and have storage and all these different options.
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Right?
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So the scheduled delivery for said building is tomorrow.
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Okay, now let me peel the onion.
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So I ordered some gravel.
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I've been working on this site, on our land, to put this building starting last year because I've been anticipating working towards this goal.
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So I actually purchased some gravel from some good friends of mine, the Ruck family.
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They came over to drop off some gravel.
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I spread it out, decided I needed a little bit more.
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So Wade came over with another load of gravel and I had some projects to do working on some custom orders, trying to get some you know Christmas stuff up on the site, doing whatever I can to, you know, make as much as I possibly can during the holiday season before things kind of dry up.
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So I had to delegate my time a little bit so that gravel had to sit for a couple of days.
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And then my intentions were on Sunday I would go ahead and spread out said gravel, and on Saturday I had to DJ a Christmas party for Arundel Ford and I was at a local golf course I don't know what little event center and did their Christmas party.
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Came home, everything was great.
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The next morning I wake up and it's like holy shit, it snowed.
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Last night I didn't know it was gonna snow.
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And then there's a bunch of snow on the ground and I go outside and I could no longer see that spot of land.
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I shovel it but there's no sun, it's overcast.
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So I can't spread the dirt.
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On Sunday, because I can't really see where everything needs to go, and I decide well, I'm gonna have to do that, uh, on Monday.
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Right, so Monday comes around, I get out there to start doing this and, uh, now my pile is frozen solid.
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Thankfully I have a backhoe on my tractor, so I have the bucket out and I'm clawing and digging and trying to break things up and defrost this sucker and smooth it out enough to be able to spread it out.
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But it's frozen, it's lumpy, it's difficult, as all get up to try to make a smooth, level surface.
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It's not level anymore.
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But I couldn't level things out because some of the ground had frozen so much in areas that I can't knock it down and I don't really want to spend another $300, let's say on more gravel for this building.
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As I'm doing this, I already have, give or take, 600 bucks in the dirt.
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I've got a load of lumber sitting on my dad's truck right now, and that's just the beginning of all the things that you know are going to go into this build.
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So I'm trying to just make this one and done, right, I'm trying to get this straight.
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But everything is so lumpy and crunchy and hard and yeah.
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So nothing goes easy, right, nothing goes smooth, no pun intended, as I'm trying to smooth out the gravel here.
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And then we get another storm last night, big old snowstorm, I'd say nothing crazy.
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I mean, I don't want to exaggerate when I say big old snowstorm, but there's a good four, maybe five inches right now and the building's supposed to be here tomorrow.
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And then now they're calling for high wind power outages, freezing rain that whole scenario for tomorrow and I can't see the land that this building is going to go on.
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So they reach out to me and they cancel the delivery, which is fine, right, I'm okay with that.
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But what I would say if I had known that I wouldn't have tried to spread said frozen dirt because we have 60 degrees and rain coming, I feel like sometimes I just have to go outside and smash my freaking head into the side of a wall for a good seven or eight hours just to accomplish the most basic things.
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What I had to do should have been two hours on a Sunday with a coffee, just enjoying myself, living the dream.
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Instead, it was about seven and a half eight hours, freezing my ass off, yelling, screaming, bitching, complaining, throwing things and doing my best just to complete things, only to find out yeah, you got another week to do it, building won't be here for another week and oh, yeah, the warm weather it's right behind it.
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Should have waited.
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That's what I get for trying to be proactive.
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Oh, that's what I mean by things.
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Even when they're going right, there's a touch of difficult, okay.
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Even when things are going oh so smooth, there's a touch of difficulty.
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Now, here's the ironic thing, as I'm explaining to you my day, my previous day, my yesterday, my stressful, angry, frozen yesterday Okay, my stressful, angry, frozen yesterday, okay.
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And now, as I'm explaining this to you and I begin to connect the dots with the opening of today's show, the main message of today's show being present.
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I'm here having to practice what I preach.
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I am here realizing I could have used a big old dose of being present, and I'm here recording now, realizing I got a lesson on being present yesterday and it's only coming to me right now.
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That's the funny thing about Share the Struggle podcast.
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We come into this thing with some intentions.
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We turn the microphone on, we open ourselves up, we bare our souls, we share our struggle and we often educate ourselves, we enlighten ourselves, we motivate ourselves and we often call out ourselves.
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So that's where we're headed today.
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Let me go ahead and explain this for you.
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So at the time I'm recording this episode of the podcast, it is December 10th.
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That, by the art of a calendar, would make my day of struggle December 9th.
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The significance in December 9th is that one year previous, 365 days previous, on December 9th 2023, I was giving my father's eulogy.
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On December 9th, I was standing up in front of friends and family and honoring my hero, my dad.
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If you're interested, I feel it is the greatest speech I have ever written, the greatest tribute I have ever paid and thankfully, I recorded it and you can find it in the archives of Share the Struggle podcast If you go back to episode 179, I actually recorded the entire service from my dad's day of service.
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So one year later, one crazy year later, you think about if I go back to December 9th 2023, and all the difficulty that went into number one.
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Think about all the emotions, you know, the experience, all those things.
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I'm not going to go down that road right now.
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That's not the subject for today.
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I don't want to bring up all the emotions, but if you can envision the heartache and the struggle in and out of the hospital, all those things having to say goodbye to my hero, all those emotions.
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We just talked about those things recently as the one-year anniversary of my dad's passing has just come and gone.
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We are now at the one-year anniversary of giving that speech.
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Now, the crazy thing about that speech and I've said this before is that I make reference during that speech about not making my dad a grandfather, not giving him a grandchild.
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What's incredibly amazing and astonishing is that I made that speech and then, one year later, I'm at home on the couch with his granddaughter.
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It is so crazy what can happen in this life.
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It is so crazy how much things change in this life.
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So, as I'm talking to you about my day of struggle, I'm outside just smashing my head against a pile of frozen dirt.
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One funny moment in this is I went inside, had a little vent session with my mother and I grabbed a snack.
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And I went back out to re-approach the situation and my mom said well, your dad would have done this the same way.
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He would have been bitching and moaning.
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The only difference is he would have been in here blaming all of us.
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And I said well, yeah if this was my dad, he would have said you know what, if I didn't spend all day Saturday with the three of you running around gallivanting, I would have got my shit done.
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But instead, a two-hour job on a Saturday enjoying myself is now going to be a 10-hour job on Monday, beating the crap out of myself.
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And my mom said it's exactly what he would have said.
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I mean, he would have swore quite a bit more than me, but that's the truth.
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So here's the thing Now.
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I've had intentions of doing things for these important anniversary dates for my dad.
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I had intentions of getting tattoos family tattoos on the one-year anniversary of his passing, and I had intentions of going to the Eagles Club where we had a celebration of life on the anniversary of his service.
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I didn't get a chance to do those things.
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Now, on the anniversary of his passing, we all did go out to eat and I've already kind of told you guys that story but I had intentions of going to the Eagles and having a beer with my mom and kind of taking the opportunity to reflect on all that has changed.
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But that didn't happen either.
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And you know, my Monday didn't go the way I wanted it to go.
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But the ironic thing here is, as I'm sitting here now with a microphone in my face, I'm realizing it went the way my dad would have wanted it to go Now.
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He would have wished me to have my project be a little bit smoother, but he got a great deal of humor and enjoyment out of me struggling, but stepping back and finding a way to re-approach a situation, make the best of it and get the job done, to learn from my failures and my mistakes and to get the job done.
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So here's the thing.
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The more I think about this, I realize that yesterday I wanted to make a bigger deal of things.
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I wanted to share my dad's anniversary episode from the podcast.
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I wanted to make a post, I wanted to go spend some time at the Eagles with my mother and to take that break.
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But ironically, that's not what my dad wanted.
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My dad wanted me to do a couple of things.
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He wanted me to be outside.
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He wanted me to work.
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He wanted me to struggle, he wanted me to come to the brink of giving up and to overcome and to figure it out.
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And he wanted me to not sit in my feelings.
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He wanted me to not wallow in my emotions.
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He wanted me to not sit at a bar and cry and think about his memory.
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He wanted me to live and he wanted me to be present.
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What my dad forced me to do was spend all day outside on a tractor working, something that my dad would have wholeheartedly, absolutely, undeniably loved to do.
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I made the decision to purchase my tractor when my dad was laying in a hospital bed at Maine Medical Partners or Maine Health or whatever you want to call it.
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It was the major hospital in Portland.
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I made that purchase and I was so hopeful that when my dad got healthy and he was released from the hospital, when he got home, he would have seen all the projects that we accomplished, all the things that we had gotten done, and he would have said how the hell did you get this done?
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And then he would have saw me come rolling out with a brand new tractor and he would have been so proud and he would have been so happy.
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He also would have yelled at me for making sure that I can afford said purchase, but he would have been so proud and he would have been so happy.
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Me and my dad had been doing things by hand for a long time.
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My driveway's 300 plus feet long and previous to buying my tractor, we had blown up our plow truck and I spent a good two years shoveling that driveway by hand.
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My dad would have been so proud.
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I was disappointed in the fact that I never told him that I bought that tractor.
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I wanted it to be a surprise.
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And he never learned of that surprise and he never heard of that surprise and he never got to see it, to feel it, to experience it, to ride it, to use it.
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So on his day, on his anniversary, as I'm sitting here now Recording and being present, I'm realizing Yesterday he spent all day on that tractor.
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He was with me, by my side, cussing up a storm, throwing a fit Big old shit, fit, with a big ass grin, happy as can be.
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And you know how my night finished I was so frozen, I was so beat, I was so tired.
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I actually went inside.
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I had dinner with the family.
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I sat down on my mom's couch and I was like with my little baby girl in my hands and we both passed out on my mom's couch, my little girl with her head on my heart, both of us fast asleep.
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When I woke up, I headed home with the wife and, uh, I sat on the couch with the family and everybody was snuggling up and I was doing some work on my computer and um watching a football game.
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And there was a time when, um, I got up at the end of the game and I just stood there and I watched.
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I watched my little girl, paisley Rain, fast asleep in the arms of my wife and I envisioned for a minute that's probably the view that my wife and my mother had just a few short hours ago.
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So I stopped there and I watched and I was present.
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I counted my blessings.
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I was beyond thankful, incredibly grateful.
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I stopped for a minute.
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I went and found my phone and I took it out to take a picture, to capture and remember that moment, so that in those days and times of high stress, you stop and be present in that moment.
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I think I was too tired to process the fact that this is what life is about.
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This is what it's all about being present, because in that moment I forgot being cold.
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I forgot about my whole day smashing my head into a pile of dirt.
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None of that mattered.
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What was important was right in front of me.
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As I'm here recording with tears streaming down my face.
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I realize that yet again, my father delivered me a message that is oh so important to me.
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He delivered me another message that is wise advice to live by, be present, slow down and be present.
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So the fact that I went into yesterday, december 9th, with all the intentions of the world of honoring my dad which would have probably resulted in me crying my eyes out into my beer, reminiscing, sharing stories, laughter and tears that's not what my dad wanted me to do.
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He wanted me to work, he wanted me to get out there and to just be active and to get things done.
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It's funny.
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I got a message from my wife during this whole meltdown I was having on Monday where she said I'm so proud of you with everything and I was like, well, I wish things were going a little bit smoother.
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And then I explained to her what was happening and she did a couple of things.
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Number one, she threw some of my advice right back in my face.
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And then, number two, she built me up and I'm going to break the um, the bond here, the secrecy bond of text messaging, and I'm going to read to you what my wife sent to me yesterday when she said you've got to be more positive.
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Good vibes in, good vibes out.
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You have a building coming because you outgrew your workspace.
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That's amazing.
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You have a tractor to help you move dirt for the building and not a shovel, I get, you have spread the dirt.
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If you knew it was going to snow, but we didn't know.
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So now we have to do what we can.
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Everything will all work out.
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The glass is half full full, not half empty.
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In that moment I might not have wanted to hear all that, but she was absolutely 1000 correct.
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God, I heard her say that.
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Oh, she's gonna rub that in my face.
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Here's the thing.
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I'm gonna break down her message here being present, being grateful.
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I'm out there doing what I'm doing, not because I'm working on something that's broken.
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I'm making improvements because we have achieved a milestone.
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We have outgrown our space, our business is growing that's a major thing and we have a beautiful building on its way.
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Also, I'm spreading that dirt with a tractor a brand new tractor that I bought last year, instead of a shovel, which is the way I was doing it all the way up until last year.
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Now, another layer in being present is that my wife said I get it, you would have spread the dirt if you knew, but you didn't.
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Here's the thing.
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Do you know what I did instead of spreading dirt on Saturday?
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Do you want to know what I did instead of spreading dirt on Sunday?
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Well, on Saturday I took my wife, my mother and my baby girl to a church Christmas fair and then I took them to an elementary school craft fair and I spent the whole morning and afternoon with the three of them and then I went off later on at night to work and DJ for a Christmas party.
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And then on Sunday, after the storm, when I couldn't move any dirt, I went out to dinner with two amazing friends of ours, matt and Sarah Perkins from Wedgway Farm, with my wife and my baby girl.
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We had dinner in Freeport and then we walked around LL Bean and to all the sightseeing, all the touristy sightseeing things that I've never done.
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I haven't been to LL Bean in over 10 years and I can tell you this the last time I was there, I definitely didn't stop and soak in the moments.
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I definitely didn't stop and be present.
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I didn't sit down on heated benches, I didn't take photos and archways and chair like rocking chairs.
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I didn't stop and do those things.
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I didn't stop and stare at lights.
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I probably just moved about the place and didn't take those things.
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In Saturday, I was present.
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I sat down at a church with my little girl talking to friends and family.
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I brought my wife and my mother to an elementary school craft fair and on Sunday, my wife and my baby were absolutely present doing touristy things, with two of our best friends Present being present.
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You know the thing about those experiences they didn't cost anything, granted.
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The opportunity to spend money is there, you know, at the craft fair I think we might have spent $20, right, but it didn't really cost money and everything that I did at LL Beam with our friends, our family was free, but we were present and we made memories.
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That's what it's about, folks.
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If I think about the lesson that my dad gave me, it was that, listen, boy, you might want to honor me in a certain way, but that's not what I want for you.
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Today, I am going to kick your ass yet again to create an opportunity for you to learn a lesson yet again.
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That lesson has many layers to it Stopping and realizing all that I've achieved, all that I've acquired, all that I've earned, all that I have, and then being 100% present.
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I had to take time to think about how far I've come in one year.
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Sitting here today recording this episode of the podcast, thinking about this episode one year ago.
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This episode one year ago, episode 179, was a recording of me conducting my dad's funeral.
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Here I am now recapping a day preparing for business expansion with new equipment and new buildings, recapping experiences with family and friends and talking about my beautiful baby girl.
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One year ago, I'm giving a speech about never being a parent, about not making my dad a grandfather, and then here I am ending my day taking a nap with my little girl.
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It's incredibly, incredibly crazy how time can change everything.
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I've always said that life gets a whole new perspective when you sprinkle on time and distance.
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Time and distance isn't going to bring back people that you love.
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Time and distance isn't going to fix all those big losses in your life, those failures and mix-ups and mistakes.
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It's not going to fix all those big losses in your life, those failures and mix-ups and mistakes.
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It's not going to fix all those things.
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But if you can be present with who you are and where you are, you're going to realize that there's a lot more blessings around you than you could have expected.
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Now, when I think about being present and I think about where I'm at today and where I was at one year ago at this time, giving a speech about my dad versus taking a nap with my daughter, there's no way I could have envisioned this.
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There's no way I could have expected this.
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Standing in my living room watching my wife and my daughter sleep, being present, made me count my blessings and put my life in a whole new perspective.
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Being present, realizing those things and sitting here thinking about those things, is proof to me that being present has a multitude of benefits, and one of those benefits in being present is overcoming very difficult things.
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Now, I'm not saying that my Monday was like one of the most difficult days of my life, because it wasn't, but if you think about this for one second, it's one year to the day of giving a speech to say goodbye to my dad.
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I spent all day outside, frozen, struggling to complete something that needed to be completed and working hard enough that I literally just pass out on the couch.
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I'm not saying this is the worst day, the most difficult day, but at the end of my day, being present put a whole new perspective on my day that made me appreciate my day.
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So to understand how one small change of being present, changing your mindset to being in the moment, living for the minute can actually resolve difficult challenges Does that at all make sense to you guys?
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Are you seeing any of that?
