Aggressive Patience x Practical Optimism with Freeman Beals

[0:00]  guys welcome back to another episode of the heart and hustle podcast I'm super excited to bring my newest guest to you today for a couple reasons one me and this individual have been able to create a friendship that I am very proud of you know he is also aligned with so many things that I think about on a daily basis when it comes to mindsets entrepreneurship Stress Management but also just this uh Curious mindset to talk about topics that a lot of people aren't talking about today I've got entrepreneur and Stress Management coach Freeman Beals Freeman welcome to the show man thanks for coming and thank you so much Keenan a for that Stellar introduction and B for having me here it really is an honor every time I get to sit down and chat with you it's like I get this a this chance to just expand kind of I think

[0:49]  both the way that we think but also anybody listening as well so I just I get super jacked for these super excited I love that um I'm very much jacked to give everybody the opportunity to learn more about you you know people see the forward-facing positive guy who is now going above and beyond the 365 days of positivity and initiative so congratulations for continuing to push into new Landscapes with that but more importantly we always see you talk about Stress Management right we talk about you kind of adopting to a mindset that helps you be successful and that's where so many people who tune into this show really are going to get benefit from you but before we kind of dive into those topics that you are an absolute expert at why don't you give everybody an understanding of where Freeman came from where are you calling in from today and give us a little rundown on kind of you know what inspired you to be the amazing person who you are today awesome man

[1:36]  yeah I'll start at the top of that um I coming from Calgary Alberta Canada for those of you up here in the great white North I understand your pains with our winter and I'm glad it's almost over and I was like why do I not live in Florida or somewhere warmer as I've gone older I've realized that maybe Winters aren't my jam um that's what I'm calling in for as for where does where does Freeman come to what does my background look like it's an interesting thing that I've been thinking a lot on recently actually so that I'm glad you asked that question because I think for a lot of people and especially for myself in the self-development space we feel like we need to maybe have this super dark horrible background you know what I mean and I don't necessarily have that sure did I have struggles growing up 100

[2:23]  like there is no doubt about that um but I've been thinking a lot about like what has led me to where I am and it's still something that I'm kind of processing through myself I know the reason I am doing what I do now is because when I look back at my life and I kind of follow the common threads things like positivity and Stress Management have always been part of my life so I was thinking about that just the other day and I was like why am I why do I do what I do why am I here doing this and I was looking kind of back at stuff and I'm like I have lived through a lot of what other people would call stressful or challenging things and people with me doing those things have responded in certain certain ways that I didn't respond in and I thought well there's nothing overly special about me so to speak

[3:11]  so why have I reacted the way I have and what makes me resilient in these ways diving deep into that has helped me understand a lot more about myself a lot more about the issues that are around stress how to cultivate positivity and also then how to bring that now forward from my life into other people's lives Gail let's talk about that choice a little bit and thank you for kind of taking a little bit of a deeper dive I want to talk about some of those stressful moments that we had early in life because what you talked about there was the choice that we have when we come into you know times of hardship or seasons of you know tough times so when you talk about you didn't react the same way as everybody else what does that mean so there's a few things in in my life so let's go I'll go way back first let's go let's go way back in the time machine here to like five six year old me

[3:58]  uh when I was quite young my parents up and left big city to move to small rural town and we lived in and I'm not kidding here in a tent two big army campus tents for 12 months of of Our Lives throughout the winter we had Christmas in them and everything and I have a older sister a younger sister now but she wasn't around then I have an older sister and our memories of that time are very different I generally remember I still remember like you know waking up at like Christmas morning and I remember my mom having this wild idea to like hang all the Christmas balls off the roof of the tent which sounded great until like the squirrels were jumping on there and then those they were all coming down but like I have all these really interesting and in my opinion Vivid and Powerful memories of that whereas my sister doesn't necessarily

[4:47]  have those and that was kind of a common theme throughout our lives growing up is she just reacted to things differently um so that's at a childhood level that was definitely there was she was she your older sister in that situation is that we're talking about yeah all this okay yeah so when we talk about the age difference between you guys what does that mean like how older was she she's three years older than me okay yeah my younger sister is 15 or 16 years younger than me okay I don't know yeah not great at math but uh yeah so so that was interesting and then I you know I grew up in um you could call stressful I grew up in a family business family white water rafting company So that obviously stresses lots of stresses involved in that but aside from that working in oil and gas for a number of years at the

[5:34]  foreman looking after people looking after jobs dealing with millions of dollars of product and stock and things like that and I could see the people around me who are like smoking and you know they've got chewing and they're drinking a lot and they're complaining about their wives and their families and I was I'm like this is not a good way to live and not the way that I want to live and so I would work hard to like cultivate a level of positivity and happiness around those things and I could see it Ripple out to the rest of the organization as well so that's kind of where all that all started but like okay why do I do these things the way I do them and how can I help others do them in that way yeah so it's a very interesting experience because you know I would consider myself a very positive person as well and you and I connected on LinkedIn originally because of our positivity efforts so I thought that was so cool but you know

[6:21]  the more that I learn about myself I kind of do have that opportunity to be a little bit more intra respective self-reflective on why I'm so positive and at some point in time very much like you I think I kind of realized that this is the path that I want to go down because I'm very observant right one of the things that really gets underneath my skin is when I see people complaining about situations and I think maybe in today's society people complain because it's a shared experience that we can do with other people right they always say like misery loves company and I feel like when you get into a group setting when people start complaining it's very easy for other people to start complaining about stuff and that almost becomes like a cultural narrative and I'm more the thing that we participate in right and so that's what kind of reminded me when I heard you said you know I listen to people complain about

[7:07]  their wives they're smoking they're drinking they're doing all this kind of stuff and it starts to fester and almost become like a shared activity yeah and it is weird this need that we have it's got to do with the need that we have to like feel like we're fitting in so if we're surrounded by that level of negativity then we're going to be drawn to kind of feed into that right so we feel like we're part of it it's our tribal Instinct kicking in and it's hard to push against that when it's all around you but it is really neat what happens when when you kind of flip the switch on it and start impacting others in a way that you can see their mentality start to change because nobody wants to wake up and feel like crap and feel negative like we don't as human beings that's not what we're looking for in life so when somebody opens the door a little bit and says hey wait a minute like what if we look at it like this what if we just flip the script a little

[7:55]  bit on this it's wild to see what happens with people's mentalities yeah and I think it's that's such a needed shift for so many people you know what I mean but like you and I have talked about this privately as well it almost seems like because everybody is so used to doing the easy things and complaining and sharing in that experience and sometimes getting people to shift gears is a challenge and sometimes it's looked at from an effort perspective I know when I'm talking about this myself I think about putting things out about positivity on social media right and telling people to look at things differently often those posts don't get the type of Engagement type of reaction that the negative complaining posts do so why do you think that that kind of is in our society especially on social media yeah I mean it's unfortunate because our brains are wired to negative so I mean I'll dive into that a little

[8:45]  bit but essentially we are tuned to look for negative things in our environment seek them out it's a survival Instinct in our brains our brains are trying to keep us safe by identifying a negative situation our brains are saying cool I know that negative thing's over there I've recognized it and now I know I need to avoid it that was sort of where that came from now obviously our society has changed into being this social media landscape in this online world but that core tool of our brain still happens and that's why like to go back into thinking about you know why are we positive and why are we the way the way that we are it's it's a sort of like a is an act that you have to do you have to you have to be aware of it you have to put work into it I think that's part of what people see is

[9:31]  they're like oh that person's just positive and I was like I'm not just a positive individual like there's there's back end work that goes into being the way that I am but it's easier for us to fall into the negative and complain and kind of just follow along that that path yeah I mean you know my positivity I like to share this story every once in a while is so when I first started on my entrepreneurial Journey Right started in 2014 by 2016 2017 I had been a couple years in the game and it was still very much rough going for me and the team right because we had started a Telehealth company back in the day no one really believed that Telehealth was going to be a thing and so I was sitting by myself at my house one day and I think we had just lost a deal or somebody was like no we're not interested video is not going to be a thing in our patient experience people

[10:18]  don't want that and I was like why does this not make sense to people like it's as clear as day to me and in that moment kind of started to reflect on my life and I decided that there's a couple things that I can control one of which is my mindset and how I show up every single day so let me do this crazy experiment July 1st or I'm sorry January 1st of 2017 I started hopping on social media and posting a positive video for myself on my Instagram story right and I did that day after day after day after day I was like days it's day 17 it's day 49 it's day 68 it's 114 whatever and before I knew it my brain started to change because I'd wake up and intentionally kind of put that action in every single day and before I knew it I started to subconsciously look for the positive side of maybe dealing or getting dealt like a bad deck or a bad

[11:05]  hand in the card game of business and that will always just be so profound for me because I don't know where I'd be at today if I didn't take that conscious effort to try and pray like program my brain to be as positive as possible that hardwiring process was so necessary that it's helped me kind of get to where I'm at today which has been a big game changer for me but it wasn't easy like your point no it's not easy and I'm so glad you called it like programming and hardwiring because people think it's just like you decide one day like I'm gonna notice more positive things in life and it's like you're not like that's not how it works and I'm sorry for anybody who thinks it is that way but it's it takes kind of putting that work in like you said you did you just said you started doing it and what happens in our brains is this concept called neuroplasticity right so you may have

[11:53]  heard this term you know the uh neurons that wire together fire together or fire together wire together sorry and that's like 100 true and so what happens is when you're constantly telling your brain hey I want like I want to remember positive things I want to write them down I want to make videos about them whatever Medium you're choosing to use them in you're actually using that part of your neural pathway in your brain and you're using it more often what's going to happen is it's going to become more efficient and I'm not going to pretend to be a neuroscientist and understand the entire thing that's going on here there's neat things with gray matter and stuff like that and makes it more conductive but that's what happens and that's why it's like it has to be a conscious Act and it's really interesting because at the end there you're like it doesn't get it it's important because it doesn't

[12:41]  necessarily get easier as well like it's easier to do but it becomes always as important as it was when you first started and a good example of this was literally yesterday I was laying in bed and I could not fall asleep which is super rare for me like I'm usually pretty good at like I sit down at night I write my journal out I get in bed and I'm like five minutes I'm out I usually do some like light meditating my brain was like just not it was not settling in yesterday so and I remember sitting down with my journal and I was sitting there and I was like what are my three positive things today and I really had to think about it so like when I look back at yesterday like yesterday was I don't know I you know I'll say it like yesterday was kind of a day okay it was tough

[13:29]  just be like there wasn't a lot of good that happened in yesterday but there was bits and I know that if I wasn't in the habit of looking for those bits of positive and at least like literally writing them down every night that I would have gone to bed last night like in a miserable state did I go to bed in the super happy State last night no I was certainly still stressed a little bit but it would have been far worse if I hadn't built that habit and you know trained that neural pathway in my brain to look for those types of things I mean so while you were talking there um I just want to be you know exact about what I was talking about so I looked up you know there's a terminology the reticular activating system in our brain right and if everybody doesn't know what this is is this is your brain's ability to start looking for things in your environment when there is a tension on that subject great example you're thinking about buying a new car

[14:17]  right you come Acro you go to the dealership and you see a brand new Subaru WRX it's beautiful right Silver Perfect Wheels six-speed or six-speed transmission for everybody who can drive a stick out there and the next thing you know when you're driving around in traffic you start seeing wrx's everywhere because your brain is used to and or looking for that specific image and or that subject around you and it's amazing what our brains can start doing when we start programming them and start kind of targeting them towards the things that we're looking for and so I like how garyvee also talks about this in some of his recent content he mentions if you think the world is bad and you want to look for negativity go hop on social media you know what I mean go look at the news you're going to find the world that you're looking for but if you're looking for a positive world you can also find those things out there as

[15:04]  well but you do have to train your brain in order to look for the good stuff because the bad stuff is always going to be an abundance around you and it's easy for your brain to pick up on those things because everybody's calling attention to it you know what I'm saying and so like you said building that habit through time is a tough practice but it is so valuable because the language that we use when we talk about ourselves talk about our situation does have the ability to impact our reality you know I'm not talking about like we have the ability to manifest the world around us but if you're consistently talking about negative things like I'm bad at this I'm not going to be a proficient I'll never be the leader I want to be I'm never going to be the partner I want to be it's very easy for your brain to start seeing all the reasons why that is true and I just think people need to really pay attention to kind of the language we use both externally and internally as well

[15:53]  because it does have the ability to shape your world and it's so important that stuff is real yeah I'm really glad that you a that you figured out what it's actually called I wasn't aware that it had a term and I love that it has a term so that's super interesting and the other thing that like you said in there was like oh that we manifest our reality we don't we don't really I mean manifest our reality but what we do is we do become aware in our sphere of what we get to call reality of what's happening and the reason that for that is our brains only taking so much information every day you've probably heard the concept that if we had to decide upon everything that we did like we wouldn't make it out the door by lunch we'd be so tired so our brains are constantly filtering our reality they have to in order to surely take in

[16:42]  what's going on around us when you choose to think a certain way you decide what that affiliate lets in all of a sudden so it's not that there aren't negative things happening or there aren't stressors in your life but you've chosen through your thoughts what to filter out and what to pay attention to and your brain likes that because it likes to be in control so you're like hey I want to look for this type of car and your brain is going to start picking it out because then it feels like yeah I'm validating the thoughts that are happening in my brain right now and unfortunately that works both in the negative and the positive so you've got to make that conscious effort to put that positive filter on it so that your brain starts looking for those and I love that you're calling attention to that because it is a conscious effort right if you're not going to try and do it you know you have to be able to reverse engineer success and although

[17:28]  one of you were talking about manifesting there I heard somebody one time come up with an analogy that that was very interesting they're like imagine yourself static in the world in itself comes to you so we talk about manifesting we're talking about bringing things to you and when you're trying to manifest stuff it really starts with that conscious effort of making decisions that align with where you're going and I like to think of myself as like kind of sitting on like an orb and the more I start walking One Direction the orb rotates or the other direction it rotates that way and so when we're talking about manifesting things being conscious of what we think about looking for the positive stuff or the negative stuff or whatever subject you're talking about you start moving the orb underneath you in the direction that you want to go and eventually that reality is going to turn the Horizon and be in front of you and so really thinking about how you can consciously kind of direct your life super important and I

[18:16]  think everybody needs to kind of maybe experiment a little bit and practice those things to be be able to see if it actually does work or not for you there's so much science and so much data that talks about you know all of the ability to kind of speak our reality into existence I always love the the conversations when I see on social media there's like people walk up and be like how did you become so wealthy and they're like dude yeah I mean like this is gonna sound Fufu but it's all about really kind of thinking positive and bringing that world into existence around you and I think just like the saying you know money doesn't bring happiness everybody always says like I'll figure it out for myself I think unless you are willing to figure it out for yourself you're never going to know and I think that's one of the great justices people can do is by giving themselves the opportunity to actually see if this stuff that we're talking

[19:02]  about today works because I think you and I are living examples of it does and there are people who are practicing out here and that's why it's so important yeah it's it's funny too because people tend to those social media posts that you're talking about a lot of the answers that people say are like just blatantly simple right they're like oh how'd you how do you get rich and they're like well you know I looked at what I was earning and I looked at what I was spending and I made sure that what I earning with more than what I was spending and people were like what that's all you did and they're like yeah like we over complicate things right we're like oh man it's Gotta Be it must be so hard to be rich or to be positive like I'm gonna overthink this to the point of not doing and it's and unfortunately the case is it is it's usually the easiest simplest steps repeated over and over that lead

[19:52]  to those like far-reaching goals that seem unrealistic like don't over complicate things just make the thing easy and then do it over and over again until the result happens like it's simple stupid you know what I mean like all you gotta do is just do the same stuff over and over again you'll get that result I think that's incredible um just the simple stuff you know the reminders are incredibly important so Freedom what I want to do is I want to Pivot the conversation um and I want to kind of hear about your childhood entrepreneurial experience so we talk about the family white water white water rafting company tell us a little bit about that because I think not a lot of people have had that lived experience what is it like owning and operating a white water rafting company man um it's it's something um it's two things a that job and profession itself obviously very high

[20:43]  intensive very go go go 14-hour days seven days a week like what are holidays what are weekends like that's when you're the busiest right and then you layer that with working in a family company and anybody who's worked in a family company will know that it's above and beyond working anywhere else yes like you take that Dynamic and it just makes it makes things harder it also makes things feel more I don't know what the word I want here is but just deep like when you succeed and when you fail with a family it builds valleys and those mountaintops are significantly higher and significantly lower like there's no doubt about it that's an amazing way to put it I mean I also am in a family business and I feel the same way like when we win we're winning but when we lose we're losing and it's just like

[21:31]  it's tough for people who haven't experienced the family business Dynamic it's like when you're trying to also operate a business there are some moments of tension that are very frustrating and I just like painted a picture of myself I could imagine like a young Freeman like being told like Freeman go fill up or go like blow up the rafts and you're like Dad I don't want to Mom I don't want to you do this you know what I mean I just think about some of those internal family struggles would be a kind of hilarious looking at them now you know oh then there was tons right and I mean I spent every summer you know the company was formed in uh in 99 uh I was seven years old uh it's still operating today and my Summers were that was that was every summer I had was was doing that I mean I started working at like I don't know 12 probably I was you know washing wetsuits and you know I was working for I don't

[22:19]  know 25 cents an hour or something crazy like I was taught to work hard um but you know with that came an amazing work work ethic that I can look back on and be super proud of it's part of the reason I can still work 12 hours a day when I need to I'm not saying you should but when I need to I do um and that's part of it is that that way that I was growing up and was it tough hell yeah like there's no doubt about it that I probably worked harder than it needed to um made less money than I needed to I mean I was at the age of 21 or maybe even slightly younger I was you know being a trip leader which means that I'm not only responsible for my boat but the entire operation of that day I got to make sure that me and the seven boats on the river with me are where they're supposed to be when

[23:05]  they're supposed to be on the time it's supposed to be and all 70 clients involved are where they're supposed to be and going where they're supposed to be and wow and it wasn't a simple operation I mean we're talking at this point in time we've we've kind of trimmed things down and simplified things but there was a point where we were running um three different trips each day on three different Rivers which means that there could be anywhere between three to six three to eight trips usually we wouldn't have three on each River every day but you could have anywhere between six to eight trips per day which means you've got multiple Vehicles multiple different guides boats things and all of that stuff has to work and there's time limits on things right you've only got eight hours in the day and people have paid so everything's got

[23:52]  to work smoothly so even the operational mesh that had to happen to make that happen in a professional looking setting was intense and we would have literally and I'm not exaggerating this by any means two pages of hour to hour things here's what's happening on that hour here's where this like you know what I mean and as like essentially as an operation manager which is what I became eventually it was my job to make sure that continued to happen and again a lot of hours a lot of stress a lot going on but it's what shaped me to be able to do what I do now right and that was kind of where I was going to take the conversation next it's like you know especially in a family business right now I would say that you guys at a certain point in time became experts at what you were doing but what were some

[24:40]  of those growing pains from an operational perspective that you experienced from Freeman's perspective from a company perspective like walk us through some of those early days I love this man there was there was a lot um I mean when we started operating it was and I'm not again I I sound like I'm making this up but I'm not we operate it out of those two tents that we lived in our first year um there was lots of mistakes now I was quite young so I don't remember a lot of these but I remember hearing the the stories that my parents would tell and we had our first trips booked before we even had the boats on site classic so the boat showed up I believe the day of that first trip when the first guy that we hired who's now my step dad he showed up that day as well the boats are and the guide showed up the day of the first

[25:27]  trip so like it's talk about putting like you know the cart before the horse that's just the way that my my mom lived yeah uh back then and she's changed since then we're a bit more controlled than that but that was certainly like some of the first stumbling steps right I think as entrepreneurs you make you're gonna have them just for anybody who's on that Journey listening just get used to it make them learn from them it's easier if you do it that way um so that was when we were quite early and then we were always changing and adapting always adjusting things um we used to do this ridiculous thing uh to get to the river we had to carry all our boats down and about you know it's about about 500 meters kind of down right so 900 feet roughly

[26:14]  down a hill to the river to get all our stuff in and we used to do that and then we tried to set up this other system that would like Slide the boat down this wooden embankment but that would ruin the boat so that was another mistake that we made so there was a lot of obviously things that that we made like that I think the biggest thing is what happened was we expanded our operations out note and continued finding new ways to kind of help our our consumers right and giving them more options more options and all that added to us was just layers and layers of things that could go wrong and it wasn't until we've been doing that for a few few years that we went hold on a second like this is crazy what's what's trim this down which makes this more streamlined which make our lives easier so that we can make a few

[27:02]  products significantly better and then versus having a bunch of products that are on a mediocre level so who leads some of those conversations like when it's time to optimize the business and I love the entrepreneurial kind of conversation like when is it a moment of realization that like we can do less but we can do it better and at the end of the day we're going to create more value for our customer our consumer as well how did that kind of stuff get identified what was that like I mean a lot of it is again the hard way right you notice that your staff are working too much we've got you know a few years where we had unhappy staff year after year um and we're like What so really I think what the the big changes started to look like was when and so me and I think even my wife with my girlfriend at the time was involved in conversations and then my parents would sit down and have these

[27:50]  conversations in our living room right and I can remember these very well it was like what happened to the company in the first 10 years it was this like tight-knit family and so people used to call it right what happened to that type of organization and why do we no longer have that and why is it not coming across and things you know even on the customer side were changing you could see the reviews weren't quite as good they weren't getting those super Stellar reviews anymore we're getting bad ones but they weren't kind of at the same level of you know uh authenticity and the genuineness wasn't coming through in the reviews it was like oh yeah you know four stars it had a great time with my family right it wasn't like oh you know our guide Freeman was great and we've added them on Facebook and we had them for dinner and we weren't getting any any of those anymore so it was time to step back and

[28:38]  go hold on we were doing this one way and now we're not getting that same response what has changed in our operation and how can we begin to bring the life back to where it was before and that's where those changes started and did it feel less like gratifying did it feel less fulfilling when you were doing that work and it was like this kind of is starting to feel a little bit more transactional from a business perspective rather than like this jovial communal family experience that you had before yeah 100 I think that was definitely part of it is you you begin to kind of run through a conveyor belt right people are just kind of moving through the system instead of being part of it not with a big change brush how do we get people to be back part of that experience again which is a challenge I mean we moved away from it not because

[29:24]  we were trying to streamline the business necessarily but weirdly enough it was because we were trying to make things safer and make things you know more professional looking so it was like cool like none of the clients were touching boats anymore right our guides are going to move them all around like you know just give them their paddle before they get in the boat right like so then the people were suddenly not a part of it and that was a big a big change for us to make it's tough for me to say exactly I mean I personally as well went through a development stage during that time I mean we're talking somewhere in my early to mid 20s probably when I was sort of having my own identity crisis so even though the business was reshaping and that was amazing like I was having my own internal like what is it that I'm doing and why am I doing it kind of crises so it's hard for me to say what the change looked like and kind of

[30:13]  even afterwards because I kind of moved away from it all um right after he implemented everything yeah do you mind if we kind of talk about that crisis kind of situation because I feel like especially in the entrepreneurial space there is always going to be a moment of extreme realization or if we call it a crisis right and we start to do a lot of internal reflection on like what am I doing is this going to make me happy and I guess long term does this align with who I'm trying to become so I know a lot of people have gone through that experience we've all asked ourselves that question so what was Freeman's experience like in kind of going through that can you kind of you know take us on a trip yeah for sure the biggest thing that initiated it for me was I had always been the guide that was like I was full on man I was like you know not

[31:02]  to my own horn but like I was one of the best like people would request me to have them as a guide right you know it's fun now with full energy and I you know had this way of being and what I noticed was I began to be a bit more kind of self-reflective of it no idea where the self-reflection came from but I do remember suddenly being like I'm just acting this now I'm not doing it because I want to do it I'm doing it because it's a role and I'm playing the role and when I made that connection to my brain I was like oh I'm not being Who I Am anymore now I'm just playing the role of the RAF guide who's great and fun and I was still doing that well I was playing that role really really well people were still loving the trips and stuff like that but I would go home the end of the day and not have that level

[31:50]  of passion that I used to anymore and I wouldn't be you know I would I would like I don't really want to have to get up and I don't want to go rafting tomorrow which just sounds wild to say because it's like supposed to be this dream job I'm out there I mean I'm in the the water and I'm in the Rapids all day but I and then I had this realization that it was like I am losing the passion for a sport I enjoy because it's just a job for me right now and that was for me a big wake up to be like I'm gonna lose my enjoyment of this activity if I don't change something and you're how old at this one time I was this is between the ages of 23 and 25 probably okay so we're just like we're still like in the middle of it right all the energy in the world but we have to ask me about the things we

[32:36]  want so here's my question for you when you start having these moments of I guess that reflection on kind of like you're not in alignment with as happy as you used to be do you talk to yourself do you talk to your girlfriend do you talk to other people around you like who do you naturally go to first or what was your experience like so thankfully at the time I had and still have a very supportive partner um and that was a big a big mover in that space there was certainly a time where I spent a lot of time in my own head about it as well where I was um and I'm not going to say that I immediately was like oh cool like I'm not enjoying the passion for this anymore I'm gonna go do this other thing like there was a period there where I was just kind of lost and I was like I I know that I'm not enjoying what I'm doing and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do now because when you grow up doing something like that I was five

[33:24]  or six when they started the company that's all I'd ever knowing so like itch that I mean you're talking about shedding a whole identity at that point in time all right like that's what people knew me as oh Freeman's the guy who is he's the white Rada rafting person right people still kind of know me as that so it was it was tough to like shed that level of identity and I'm really grateful that I had that I had a supportive partner to help me through that yeah I think that's fundamental I mean having somebody else that's you know close enough to you that your relationship with who you can be vulnerable with is incredibly important um so when I I've been through an identity crisis or an identity molting in my life as well so athlete my entire life played all the sports played baseball in college and then stopped playing baseball and you know that transformation of going from who I was

[34:12]  to who I'm becoming was incredibly Rocky for me and it took a lot of experimenting but more importantly a lot of getting to dead end roads and realizing like this isn't for me so when I stopped playing baseball it was 2012 2011 2012 I moved here to Las Vegas where I'm located now and let me tell you the adjustment from Conway South Carolina just outside Myrtle Beach to Las Vegas in 2012 before the days of uber I'll be honest I made a lot of bad decisions right going to plea people's houses and partying and participating and all the stuff and going to the clubs and blah blah blah and at the end of the day I started realizing that a lot of these roads that I've been going down were fun for a time but they still weren't in alignment with who I wanted to become someday and so at some point

[35:00]  in time I had to make the tough decision of like okay either I can continue to do this and become a version of myself that I don't like or I can start trying to reprogram myself and that's when those positivity days kind of kicked in it was out of desperation and I don't know if this is going to be me being overly vulnerable for the audience today but it's like the positive person that you see in front of you was not a choice that was just like oh I'm gonna turn 10 degrees left and just to be a little bit more positive it was like there was tough times times of real darkness and I had to pull myself out of that space and I'm glad that I did but I would love to hear a little bit more about kind of you know your Discovery process what type of things did you try what were you getting into what moments were you like okay this is a dead end for me I gotta turn around what was that kind of like yeah I

[35:48]  I feel quite grateful that mine I was never at least not for like you know years would I ever kind of down a road in that sense because the way that it worked for me and I think this is very unique in the fact that I my white water rafting was seasonal which is that every September would come and I'm like okay what after they're done from school what do I do now and living in rural Alberta Canada there was an abundance especially back then there was abundance of work in the oil and gas industry and that's how I ended up going there and I remember the first time I was 19 or 20 the first time I got a job working this oil and gas industry and the boss I I'm always been a parent with people I'm super authentic and I hate to lie so I told them straight up I was like hey I'm here for the winner but you know come May I'm I'm

[36:37]  going back rafting again and he was like yeah cool shirt whatever right yeah sure kid yeah sure kid right yeah yeah and he was like he's like man the minute that I remember him saying this he's like oh the minute that Freeman gets a taste of this oil field money we're gonna have them forever yeah and I was like no you're not um because thankfully I grew up and I had parents that enforced in me that it wasn't about necessarily the money now that's a limiting belief that I have now that I'm working through but that's another conversation but for me it was never about that I was happy to kind of have money and then lose it and then have money and then lose it and it happened to me like over and over through these Seasons but in the winter months working on the oil and gas in the oil and gas industry definitely led me to some of those like dark moments right

[37:24]  where it's like is this kind of all it is like if I stop rafting is this my other option that I'm just gonna like and I'm looking at the people around me who are scary again like I said you know miserable and they've got unhappy family lives and they're drinking too much and they're smoking all the time and like I'm like this is not like I don't want that life either and I don't like so then when I had that identity crisis where I was like cool I don't want to do this anymore but I don't want to do that either because I don't love how that looks um yeah it was a super tough place to be like how do I move forward here because in the oil and gas industry I had you know I suffer from and I'm still aware of like seasonal depression like I have to take vitamin D in the wintertime or like things get dark um literally and literally yeah

[38:15]  um you know and that was something that I became aware of in that oil and gas industry um and thankfully that experience led me down that road of like it needs to be more than just money because I thankfully learn really well from what other people are doing and I saw that right I'm like here's people making six figures and up you know on a purely basis and they are just misery miserable so it's like okay well making three 400 000 isn't the answer because clearly if it was all these people I work with in the wintertime would be happy so then it was like well then what's what's the answer what's the solution here um and I found myself kind of there for a while so what you're describing is what Keenan had an experienced and I'll call it the Dion moment so I was working one summer and I was having a very similar experience to you

[39:02]  um this summer job that I had was moving office furniture around the Las Vegas Valley and it wasn't cold but it was also 114 degrees so it was tough work moving cubicles and desks and all that kind of stuff just swimming buckets sweating buckets exactly and I was a little bit uh I'll just call it fluffier at this point in time so you know I was there I've been there maybe it was a you know just a lubricant to realize kind of you know why I wasn't happy um but more importantly one day after work I had a conversation with this guy Dion right he walks up to me and we just get our checks on a Friday and I'm pumped because I just gotta check and he looks at my check and he's like oh yeah man you're not making enough money yet but don't worry next summer after you've been here for a year you're going to be eligible to get more money and then things are going to get a lot better and in that moment I kind of had like a

[39:48]  That's So Raven experience where it's like I just like kind of flashed and saw the future picture of like Keenan standing next to a 45 year old Dion as a 23 year old kid hanging out in the casinos or you know kicking it in the warehouse and in that moment I was like I can't do this and so it sounds like you had a very similar experience when you were kind of hanging around with everybody and it's like dude if these guys are making this type of bread and they're still not happy obviously there's something wrong and I don't think I can see myself there is that what happened with you 100 yeah and it was it was tough and I think this is part of what led me down to like understanding there's more to this than just you know deciding to be one way or the other because in the summer times at least you know I was generally happier right mainly because I was outside I was being active right

[40:36]  um and at some point time I was doing what I loved right on the other side when in the winter time I was just working for money right it was dark I was still active so that was that was not nearly as much as I was but that's where it would slip right and I could if there was a scale you know the Summers would go up and I'd feel great in the winter time it would it would dip down again and then the scary thing happened where suddenly the summer times the scale's not going up anymore because now I've lost right I'm still outside I'm still in the sunshine I'm still being active but now my scale is not going up anymore because I'm losing the passion yeah so then it's that's where you begin to have that crisis of like okay like hold on I'm not happy here I'm not happy there and the things that are the things that I thought were making me happy in the summertime which was being outdoors and being exercised aren't doing it enough anymore so like what

[41:24]  how do I fix this this key ingredient yeah and I think a lot of people start looking towards activities we'll call it that areas of like kind of instantaneous gratification where it's like doing the drugs smoking drinking right those moments almost or those activities kind of give us a moment of escape from that sense of you know realization I think that sense of realization is incredibly important to not run from you know what I mean and it seems like one of the statements that you made a little bit ago was like I'm very observant I would consider myself somebody who's an observer so it's like I realize and recognize when people aren't happy or the things they're talking about the behavior that they're participating in but they don't take action actually get changed and I just think it's so important to you know they said a stupid man learns

[42:11]  from other people's lessons a wise man learns from everybody else is experiences in general if they're good or bad you know what I mean and so like being somebody who's an observer you're realizing that first of all the money's not going to get you there second of all you're not as happy third of all you don't want to participate in these activities like doing drugs and drinking and smoking and blah blah blah I think that's incredibly powerful to kind of hold yourself and let's be a little bit of appreciative for a younger version of Freeman for kind of you know having the the fortitude and bravery to kind of stand up in that moment to himself because I don't know where you would be at today do you ever think about what would life be like if you would have gone down that other path yeah and I I don't have to think very hard honestly if if I'm being truthful like it's not it's right there like it's not far away

[42:58]  um I know we've talked in the past about very briefly anyways that I had and I'll fully admit I had a full-on addiction to playing video games okay and I remember it's interesting and it sparked my brain when you said people feel this need to go in like get that somewhere else right something cool I've lost my passion in this job that I'm doing I'm not fighting over there in this other job and I remember saying and I still catch myself doing this where I'm like I just need to win I just need to win you know and like that was literally the video gaming thing where it was like I now I just need to win I need to win I'll feel better if I win this next game I'll feel better if I win this next game and then you lose and you'd fall into that slump right like video games are design especially a lot of like online ones are designed to kind of hit like a 48 win percentage that's what they're aiming for anyways because

[43:46]  it keeps you just about there right and it's a bit of dirty psychology because they're keeping you addicted to that I just need to win I just need to watch dogs need one win right you get that one win and of course it's not enough you need another one right and I can easily look at that and I spent too many years playing too many hours of too many video games and so like in that sense that's that's right there like it's it's there's a shin a thin sheet between me and the person spending the same time in this exact room six eight hours a day playing a video game um working a dead-end job just so I can make money so I can go home and play my video game yeah and again back to that support of of um

[44:32]  of my wife is like she kind of made me aware that like hey like you're spending a lot of time like playing these video games like how important am I in in this relationship um which is a good wake-up call but I mean honestly like it still took me until probably a few years ago to shed that level of like I would say even I would call it a level of you know need for the video game yeah it took me a long time to shed that for sure I mean there's a couple things that you know it's it's very it's tough because sometimes we naturally as people and this is something I think about from a social media perspective we are naturally kind of training ourselves all the time right if we're talking about social media we're hopping on social media all the time looking for that next 48 51 percent you know 52 whatever it is

[45:21]  kind of win if it's likes its comments whatever even when we play video games you know I mean like at first it feels like a sense of escapism and we kind of go into this world and we get that feeling that we're not seeing from the other areas in our life but eventually that feeling of escapism isn't as gratifying it's not it doesn't feel as good it doesn't give us that release of dopamine and so we're always chasing you know some of those early experiences um and I've really recognized that and you know part of my maturation process has been trying to figure out what type of activities can I train myself well that are going to kind of help me reverse engineer my version of success that I'm chasing and often it's not the video game stuff it's not Instagram and I'm still having a tough time with that it's not the other activities as well that kind of fill that void sitting with some of those tough moments has been

[46:09]  something that I've realized is necessary but it's still no matter how much you train yourself is still a difficult task to kind of go through you know what I'm saying yeah because it is it's right there right the phone is right there you could pick it up like I you know if I'm being fully transparent it's like I know that I could download that game right now yeah right like and for those people out there who can play video games on a on a um a sheerly you know fun basis and a show like a social level like man I wish I could but I I that's not me um and I have to essentially you know like pretty much like somebody who's addicted to alcohol and it seems wild that it's almost that level you know like I almost feel like an imposter to say that that's the level that it's at but it's like

[46:55]  it's right it's always right there right and especially it's it's interesting like you said like this it's like when you are struggling with something that's when your brain looks for it yeah right and I see that when I see that win that's all I need like I'll just I'll get it I'll get that win and I'll get out it's like no you won't though right like and I had to learn the hard way you know because I would I would delete the program I'm like no I gotta get my together you know spend too much time on this I'll delete it and then it was like that she's the one I see the one yeah and it's tough because it's like that voice is always gonna be there you know what I'm saying and like I have to recognize I've been having those conversations myself over the last couple weeks recently it's like when I want to be distracted I'm realizing that like the lower version of myself that guy who's always hanging out in the background and

[47:42]  being like dude come over here and just like hang out you know what I mean he's very powerful when I give him more attention yeah exactly you know what I mean but like sometimes I've had victories where it's like no I'm not gonna go do those things right now that could be whatever for you that could be you know playing video games that could be you know smoking that can be um just a whole bunch of different things that we know aren't truly in aligned with what we want and sometimes times that little voice in the back of your head is so persuasive but when you do defeat it it feels so good you know what I mean and like the farther and farther I get away from those things the better and better I feel about myself for being true to who I truly am you know what I mean I'm not sure if that's similar to your video game experience because I'm sure you get that itch to hop on the sticks dude every time the fact that we're talking about it right now it gives me the itch right um but I think for myself anyways and

[48:30]  and for people listening like if this is something you struggle with and you want to be like cool like I'm I feel like I understand these guys and I'm in the same position like how do I get out of here you've you've really got to narrow down to like why you want to change it's not good enough to just say I need to stop playing video games I want to stop drinking alcohol I'm going to you need to know why you're going to and for myself you know after a lot of self-reflection and looking at things it was like I want to nay I need to build a better like I can't build the life I want my family to have playing video game six hours a day can happen so I want to build this certain style of life for my family like what is it going to take to do that

[49:16]  and then you continually remind yourself of that you've got to have that strong why and it's it's got to be something that you continually drive towards it stops you from doing that thing that's right behind the sheet yep and like so for me it really is providing a certain lifestyle to my family it's helping people again like I have way more impact now as a Stress Management coach than I ever would playing six hours of video games a day and when you take the why and it's no longer about even yourself but about others that really begins to kind of unlock the ability to push past all that that you know you shouldn't be doing yeah and sometimes giving ourselves the responsibility to care for others I think is a big motivator I was having a

[50:02]  conversation with my sister there today and she was like you know Akin it's just like interesting I've realized something about myself that I'm not very motivated when it comes to doing things for me but I am motivated when it comes to doing things for Jason her fiance right she's like so I think about you know he's going to be retiring in a couple years and I don't want him to work as hard as he's working right now and it's like when I have that conversation with myself I'm much more motivated to go out and make stuff happen rather than being like I'm just gonna do this for me and so I think it's incredibly powerful that you've given yourself the authority to take responsibility for others and how that is almost reverse engineered your need to change because you're in true realization of the alignment of the man who you're becoming and you know like me and you have had other conversations about like the topic or the book Atomic habits right he talks about you know if

[50:50]  you truly want change you have to change who you are or who you're becoming your identity and when I kind of have those moments of weakness one of the most powerful things that I do for myself is calling action back towards Keenan who are you becoming are you going to be the version of yourself who you want to be if you're going to be doing these activities and often the act the answer is no and it's like okay well future version of Keenan wouldn't do those things so why should the current version of my lesser self pull me back down and kind of erode at all this progress that I've been making and that's just a powerful statement and like I don't think enough people do that to realize that you have so much more responsibility to not only yourself but to the future version of you plus the people who you're trying to build a lifestyle with especially as a man yeah they're the really powerful

[51:37]  practice that goes along with that that I believe I got um from from Lewis house and it's you have essentially a photo of your younger self and then a photo a blank photo and that photo of the future self right and having these two photos lets you be okay what do I do today that makes that the younger version of me proud of who I've become and what I do today to make sure that I'm living the best version of me so that the future self me has the best things that they can do to become even more right like and it's so as much as we say like be in the present and don't pay attention to the past and don't look at the future it's like you have to a little bit I think in order to if you want to achieve kind of any level of anything

[52:23]  you have to be willing to to learn from your past and and you know set goals for your future and having weird little visual Keys like a picture of a younger self and a blank photograph um I think are really powerful ways to do it that visual triggers I think it's important as well and it is you know a lot of people do talk about you know just be in the present moment I think there's value in that but I just want to be very transparent for all the people who are listening out here as a man a lot of my motivation comes for the future version of me being able to provide for the people who I want to you know what I mean and it's like I cannot consistently live in the moment without having a direction that I'm forging towards as a man to be able to provide the lifestyle that I want for my future kids and the future family that I will have and at some point in time I think we stop being little kids and we start

[53:10]  having to realize that we're more so responsible for providing for a family and a future that's going to be kind of built on our foundation and I want to use that as a transition because today we are a few days away from you at the time of recording kind of expanding your family you know what I mean so it's like this kind of stuff kind of sitting a little bit heavier on you these days as you kind of have a a little one that's just right around the corner I wouldn't say it's sitting heavier um and the only reason I say that is because a boat maybe just under a year ago or so when I began to get really clear about why I'm doing what I'm doing and why I want to make these changes like even then I was like no it's like to your point it's to help provide for

[53:58]  the family that I'm going to have so that was already there um you know obviously my wife being literally about to give a baby certainly adds maybe urgency to it and that's something else that I'm certainly struggling with um and we've talked a lot about this about the whole like urgency game right in the immediate gratification and how long is our Runway so that that's been a really again to be brutally honest hard internal struggle of myself right now but as for like being more aware of this is something that I have to you know support and you know it's going to literally depend on me I kind of put that stuff into my brain a while ago I would say it's kind of crystallized maybe yeah in the in the last in the recent months but it was

[54:45]  always it was always part of it was always part of that initial change yeah and I think I've seen maybe you know from the outside looking in kind of that realization starting to manifest itself yeah the way that you're moving you know what I'm saying because it's like I want to take this as an opportunity to kind of transition so we listened to your young life chapter entrepreneurial experience and I think to be transparent for my the way that I sit in history I think people that have an entrepreneurial example when they're younger are more likely to pursue that and so you've recently made the pivot into being you know a Stress Management coach and taking on your own entrepreneurial new season in your life and what that represents and so let's kind of talk about you know the uh that sense of urgency that we're talking about so one of the topics for today

[55:33]  that I talked about or that I wanted to talk about was aggressive pace and that in itself kind of is kind of a sum up of that sense of urgency like you know we need to make things happen we need to be attacking but we also have to be patient for things to happen and I think with your background as being somebody who can help people deal with stress maybe you can give the audience an experience or a little bit of you know real life experience about kind of how you have this sense of urgency pushing behind you it's creating stress in your entrepreneurial journey and kind of how you're dealing with that yeah totally so I mean it's definitely in the last I would say six months probably it's been a lot more of kind of eating without my own menu right it's like okay I have to start living these things and I got to love them really hard because

[56:19]  it seems wild for if I were to look at what I'm doing from an outward perspective right it doesn't it seems a little bit crazy you're like you're about to have a kid you're starting this new thing like what are you doing like how are you gonna make all this work and it's like I know that I'm gonna make it work I'm gonna do that I know I have the skills I have the abilities and I've put the practice in to push through this level of intensity that I know I'm going to have in the next you know few months for sure um so like that would be the biggest thing is like I've done that mental the mental prep for it I know what's coming and it is it's incredibly ambitious there's no doubt about that and in the most in the most recent month I've had to lean into those things a lot more I've had to be far more aware of I'm big on the book ends of my day so

[57:07]  I've had to be far more aware of what those bookends look like yeah I know because then when I slip off of them things start to kind of look a little shitty and then I go like wait I gotta get these back into back into order again so that would be a big thing is just look at pay attention to those book ends of the day those are the parts you can control and I've had to become a lot more sensitive to what's going on in those to make sure that I can show up to be as optimal as I possibly can in that middle chunk of the day because I'm trying to start a new business Rebrand run a new podcast work a full-time job and support a pregnant partner it's a lot right but it's like when I get the bookends right I can do it if I slip on the bookends I lose the ability to do it in the middle so when we're saying bookends we're referring to these

[57:54]  boundaries that you've established for yourself is that what that means or what does bookends mean yeah so for me it's to it's all its boundaries but it's also to like to lean into the metaphor is a little harder it's like what am I leaning on at the end at the end of the start of each day right so it's things like having that consistent sleep schedule in and out of bed it's having the workout and the hydration first thing in the morning delaying the coffee so that you know I get the most benefit out of the rest of the day as well and at the end of the day it's like you know turning off my computer at a certain time which is really tough when you're driving hard right and I I'm not gonna tend to be perfect right I'm supposed to stop working at eight it's probably 8 45 or 9 some nights it's later some nights too but again when I work later the next day is a bit of a mess

[58:42]  so like having those important bits so at the beginning it's structure and at the end it's structure and Boundary where it's like cool this isn't this I'm done with work I'm doing you know uh the last hour last two hours is spent with with my uh significant other um and preferably maybe a bit of TV time and then a bit of reading before the end of my day as well and it's really important to keep those boundaries and those structures in place when you're driving hard even though that's when it's really really really hard and I think that's we all have those experiences where it's like I just want to work harder longer farther and it's like sometimes you know when I heard you saying this it's like I love having these conversations because you and I both have enough life experience to recognize when we start to get a diminishing return on our extra effort

[59:31]  you know what I mean it's like if I do not get enough sleep at 32 years old I realize that I'm not as efficient when it comes to making decisions I'm not as cognitively clear I'm not as creative I'm not as productive and I often get easily distracted and so when I think about you know working less but being more effective it means being more locked in during those times and the one thing I want everybody who's listening to this today if you're listening to this conversation you're like yeah but I still can't find enough time in the day and I'm working as much as I can my question for you is to be very transparent with yourself how much time are you spending on this device how much time are you spending distracted I heard somebody on Tick Tock or Instagram the other day that was like if you just waste five minutes of your day by the time you get to the end of the year you've wasted about two and a half weeks of time total and I was like okay that's very

[1:00:19]  interesting to hear from that perspective because I know there's been so many times during the day where it's like I'll just be like oh looking through something and then I get distracted then I go down a little black hole and I look up and it's been 15 minutes you know what I mean it's like no wonder I can't achieve the things that I want to because like I do not demonstrate the actual properties and the actual character traits of true Focus I think I am but maybe I'm lying to myself in that sense of authentic or that a sense of accountability to myself is something I'm really trying to get better at yeah it's tough It's and I you know I won't deny the fact that it is tough like we're not sitting here saying that it's easy to just not look at your phone or if you just not do these things it makes you feel better in the moment um because it's not easy and again you know if it if it was easy everybody would do it and we would be having this conversation

[1:01:06]  right it's part of the reason that we have to do these things um and part of the reason why they're hard the thing is as well with with that I mean I have to continually remind myself of is we often will start sacrificing things because we think we get more time to then work on other stuff if we sacrifice certain things a big one is sleep right well what if I only sleep six hours well then I can you know I gain two hours back and it's like you might gain two hours of time back but what like what are you losing focus and this can be applied to I mean I use sleep because I think it's one of the easiest things people to identify with but this can be nutrition this can be Fitness and it can even be social time and and downtime for that matter you're like oh I'm you know I'm gonna work

[1:01:52]  right until I go to bed because then you know I don't like if you're like Freeman you know he spent two hours that's two hours you could be doing something it's like no that's two hours I'm spending recharging so I get that level of focus and energy back in my next day and I know because I've done it where I'm like I'll just squeak it in I'll just you know I'll work a little late tonight and I still do like don't get me wrong again I'm not perfect but I know if I trip up one day's okay to even two days is all right if it like goes to three days of missing that sleep schedule or you're not going to the gym yeah I feel it right away I'm like um something's off I'm not clear I'm not focused I want to look at my phone more now throughout the day because I've I've lost my ability I haven't given myself enough recharge to have the capacity to not do that type of

[1:02:40]  thing so it's really important it is and I think it's just you know I see a lot this is uh separate from anything that you know was on the calendar to kind of talk about today but you know I think that Society in itself is always willing to prescribe the best practice for you based on somebody else's experience right and we see a lot today in social media where it's like I'm gonna participate in minimal minimal effort Mondays where it's like I don't like working on Mondays because it gives me the scaries I feel stressed blah blah and then other people are like well you should work harder at the beginning of the week to have quiet weekends you know what I mean it's like everybody is always going to have a prescription for how you should be balancing your own levels of stress but until you actually kind of have the fortitude and you take responsibility enough to audit what makes you the optimal version of you I don't think you can really prescribe to

[1:03:27]  anybody's answer no cold plunge no sauna no sleeping with a mask or duct tape or tape over your mouth or you know doing infrared light or different stuff is going to work unless you truly know who you are and that's why I kind of get excited because it sounds like you've been experimenting and now you've gotten to the point where it's like I've tried all that stuff but that just doesn't work for me and I think that sense of accountability and authenticity to yourself is super important especially in this world of entrepreneurial jargon and different stuff you know what I'm saying yeah and I mean people can look at it like that's such a powerful point and something that I try to harp on with my clients as well it's one of the reasons that my program is a customizable program and it's they're the reason I built it that way when I first built it it's if there was a silver bullet that I could tell

[1:04:13]  everybody right now right here on this podcast if I could tell everybody listening and start doing this one thing life's going to be great like I would I wouldn't keep that to myself but that's not how it works we're all individual we all have the only thing that works for us like entrepreneurship and if you ask any really highly successful entrepreneur you know who's been doing it their entire lives there is a entire flaming pile of wreck behind them of things they tried to do and it's the same thing with your self-development and what works for you on a daily basis like you've got to try those things find what works give it a shot you know drive with what is intriguing you at that point in time if you're like man this Wim Hof guy is cool dig into that for a while do some Wim Hof breathing try some cold plunges right if that's not working for you and like oh no like it just it kills me

[1:05:00]  every morning and it adds friction in my life and stop doing it because you're not going to anyways right like you have to do things that you're driven to do because it's not about the thing you're doing it's about the consistency that you do it and that's just a mic drop in itself it's true I mean like at the same time it's like everybody has a version of what is going to work and at the same time everybody has a version of what is not going to work do you know what I mean it's like and at the end of the day if you're not happy doing what you're doing you're never going to be able to survive anyway um I want to spend the last couple minutes here kind of talking about stress and Stress Management um and so you know I recognize that you are proficient at articulating what stress is to so many different people but let's talk about the fact that stress is represented by so many

[1:05:46]  different things and depending on what type of Industry you're in depending on what type of season you're in or what point you're in in your life I think stress kind of is represented by multiple different things so when people come to you and they say I'm stressed what is part of the process and being like let's identify and actually recognize what stress means to you and why is that important so it's hugely important and this you know Harkens back to what I was doing as a as a younger kid stress is a response our body has bottom line that's all stresses it's not good it's not bad it's simply something our body does in reaction to our environment how we deem to interpret that stress is really really important because for example they do this amazing study where it's people who think that their

[1:06:36]  stress is causing them harm actually have constricted blood vessels that's why their heart rate increases people who deem their stress as being beneficial to them have been shown to have expanded blood vessels to drive oxygen oxygenated blood to the muscles to get things running and it actually increases heart health wealth the first thing is like let's understand what stress is hold on so what you're telling me what you're telling me here is if we identify stress as being something positive it can be beneficial to the body if we identify stress as being something detrimental it can be harming to the body 100 wow so um oxytocin which we all know is like the love chemical is actually a stress response from the body so it's yeah it's not it's and it

[1:07:25]  actually has been proven to actually help heart health wow so oxytocin and I'm not again I'm gonna get some things wrong here but feel free to go Google this whoever's listening it binds to you know essentially the neurons in your heart and can actually start making your heart healthier the problem that occurs is when we start dealing with what we call chronic stress or long-term stress that's when we start seeing things like you know depression anxiety burnout that's a negative level of stress so it's like what's a what's first understand the difference between a good and a bad stress the response in our bodies let's change that perspective in our brain and then let's begin to look at what

[1:08:12]  happens when we when we fall into the rabbit hole of chronic stress or burnout or depression okay um I think that's incredibly powerful I had a friend um Katie friedlander and a couple years ago I want to say I was like 2013 and she said something incredibly proficient to me she said or profound she said Keenan you know feeling excited excited and feeling nervous are the exact same thing to your body but your brain is telling you which one is which and I was like oh wow because I was getting ready to like go talk to somebody or talk to a group of people and I was like yeah I'm feeling nervous and she was like nervous and excited or the same thing tell yourself that you're excited in your body is feeling that no matter what so tell it that you're feeling excited and ever since I've had ever since that experience whenever I've come into a stressful situation I'm like this is my

[1:08:58]  body getting me ready for something that's awesome you know I mean it's not the nerves that are creeping in but it's the excitement and that feeling of stress that is the same but I'm just painting it in a different coat of a color another easy way to remember this there's a amazing uh neuroscientist uh Dr um Elise something or other I can't remember her last name was Tommy head right now um this is her concept so I don't want to say it's my own but she's like be the good be the line not the gazelle both of those things are under a stress at that point in time right if they're if a lion's chasing gazelle the gazelle is stressed because it's you know it's nervous it's scared the lion is excited and energized it's the exact same response in your body so be the lion not the gazelle and that's an easy way to

[1:09:45]  just remind yourself of stuff like that yeah I think that's incredibly important but it comes back down to that ability to kind of you know audit how we feel in the moment and actually narrate what we're feeling to our body because we're just reacting at like you know a cellular level from an endorphins a hormone level uh body of fluid and tissue you know what I mean and being able to kind of architect and tell it what it's feeling in that moment is so powerful and I love that analogy of being the lion rather than the gazelle I think that's super powerful you know this has been an incredible conversation today Freeman I can't thank you enough for kind of hopping on and you know sharing some of your wisdom why don't you give everybody an understanding of kind of how we can find more about your Stress Management coaching practice how we can get in touch with you but also give a call to action about your socials as well because you continue to put out

[1:10:33]  fire and I think everybody could benefit from getting you know a dose of positivity and groundedness that you serve up every day and thank you Keenan I appreciate it I appreciate this conversation it's always such a pleasure like I said chatting with you at the beginning here I said it's so great it really expands upon what my understandings are of things that are going on in the world so so thank you so much for that uh for those of you who are looking to kind of find out more information on this everything I do is under my name so Freeman Beals so on LinkedIn Freeman beale's Instagram Freeman build my website is freemanbills.com I make it really easy for everybody to find what I'm doing and where I'm doing it so go on there check that kind of stuff out I'm always giving a ton of free information to people I'm very open with how I do what I do why I do what I do and I don't hold that stuff

[1:11:20]  back even if you're like hey if you just want to message me on any one of those platforms and be like hey I'm struggling with X Y and Z thing what should I do like do that 100 I will try my best to to give you a response and maybe may be useful to you if you want more information too as well I have my own podcast from stress to success where I sit down with you know CEOs entrepreneurs and kind of thought leaders and kind of understand this stuff at a more deeper level as well so if this did intrigued you go check that out as well I highly recommend it well I mean thank you so much guys and you know Freeman it's been an absolute pleasure hosting you and I can't you know thank you so much for you know willingness to contribute to the heart and hustle podcast and everything that we talk about today you've definitely kind of given us a better understanding for where the heart of Freeman deals comes from but also that background of hustle

[1:12:08]  and why you're so driven to be so successful so positive and so uplifting to the people around you guys it's been an amazing episode if there's anything that we missed today or anything topics that you think we should be talking about on the podcast drop them down in the comments and we'll try and include those in a future episode but thanks so much guys really appreciate it take it easy thanks everyone sick