From Success to Fulfillment - A Quest for Authentic Purpose - Vince Kramer : 126 PART 1

Ever found yourself questioning the very foundation of your purpose and happiness, despite a seemingly successful life? Vince's gripping narrative is a testament to this universal quest as he walks us through the profound transformation from a life of material success to one of deep spiritual fulfillment. His early ambition to help others love themselves, influenced by the competitive spirit instilled by his father and grandfather, initially led him down a path of notable achievements in military and commercial aviation. Yet, beneath the veneer of accomplishment lay an unquenchable thirst for true self-awareness.

Vince Kramer is a military veteran and an airline pilot. He is now also a transformational trainer, speaker, teacher, mentor, and best-selling author of "Awakening Through Moments of Choice: A Memoir of Divine Guidance." He co-founded Imagine Miracles and believes that everyone can create their own life.

As we unravel Vince's story, we see how life's unexpected challenges, including the aftermath of 9/11 and personal losses, became the catalysts for his self-discovery. Vince's journey beautifully illustrates the power of self-reflection. His quest pushes him to question long-held beliefs and bravely step into the realm of possibilities that come with embracing one's authentic self.
Vince shares his transformative journey and reveals the courage it takes to follow one's true purpose.
Let's enjoy his story!

To connect with Vince: https://imaginemiracles.com/

Transcript

Daniela SM : 0:00

Hi, I'm Daniela. Welcome to my podcast, because everyone has a story, the place to give ordinary people, stories, the chance to be shared and preserved. Our stories become the language of connections. Let's enjoy it, connect and relate, because everyone has a story. Welcome my guest, vince Prammer, a military veteran, an airline pilot, a transformational trainer, speaker, teacher and author His book Awakening through Moments of Choice a memoir of divine guidance.

Daniela SM : 0:42

I really enjoyed this episode because Vince had so much to share and I found myself asking many questions. So I divided this episode into part one and part two, as it was quite long. Vince talks about his journey towards success after success and how his competitive spirit was installed in him by his grandfather. However, he eventually realized that he was missing important signs that life was offering him which he had been ignoring. Vince's journey is fascinating. On part one, the power of self-reflection is beautifully illustrated in Vince's journey. His quest pushes him to questions long-held belief and to barely step into the realm of possibilities that comes with embracing one authentic self. And this is quite interesting because a lot of people have long-held belief and it is hard to change that. So I hope you enjoy this part one and continue to part two as much as I enjoy conversing with Vince, welcome, vince, to the show.

Vince Kramer: 1:54

I'm so excited to be here, daniela. We've tried and tried and tried to make this happen, so I'm so excited that we finally made it happen.

Daniela SM : 2:02

Yes, true, last time we spoke was six months ago, so I'm happy that finally we got to record your story.

Vince Kramer: 2:08

Me too.

Daniela SM : 2:09

So, vince, why do you want to share your story?

Vince Kramer: 2:12

I think the biggest reason I want to share is because, as I started to understand in my life that we truly are each here for a very unique and special reason, that we don't get that support and we really haven't heard that from a lot of people. We've got a lot of rules in our lives and I'm sure we're going to talk about those, but those rules don't necessarily lend us to really understanding why we came to earth and how we can fully bring it. And that's my purpose to help people bring who they are fully to the earth.

Daniela SM : 2:50

That sounds beautiful. I'm very curious about the story now. So when does your story start then?

Vince Kramer: 2:56

We can say that it starts about five years old, because at five years old I told my grandmother that I wanted to help people love themselves so they could love each other. Now, where in the world does a five-year-old come up with that right? I'll tell you that pretty much right after I shared that with her. Obviously I knew at that point that I was here for a special reason, just like we all are. But almost immediately the influential men in my life started teaching me what it meant to be a man on earth and how I was supposed to show up and how I was supposed to act. The three influential men were my father, a neighbor of mine, and my grandfather. And my grandfather probably was the most influential because he was the most difficult to get his approval. So I really worked hard, even from five, six, seven years old, to gain that man's approval that I felt like he loved me, that I felt like I was showing up in a way that he accepted.

Vince Kramer: 4:10

He had a very interesting way of teaching and a very interesting way of looking at life. So his belief was we all have to compete, and compete at the top level. Good is never enough. Great was never good enough that I had to be better than everyone else around me and I had to compete with them and I had to do whatever it took to be successful, and I truly learned his way of living his rules. And in learning that I was very successful for a long, long period in my life. But there was always something missing for me and I couldn't put a handle on it. I couldn't grasp what it was that was missing, so I just started looking for the next thing, because that's what I've learned the next job or the next material thing or the next opportunity to prove myself was going to be that one thing that brought me the happiness that I deserve, the happiness that I was working for.

Daniela SM : 5:19

What were you successful at?

Vince Kramer: 5:21

A lot of things. I've owned four businesses successfully. I was a very successful military officer. I held positions in the Air Force well beyond what my rank should have been holding. I left the military early because I didn't want to stop flying. I was an Air Force pilot when I left the military.

Vince Kramer: 5:43

I worked at American Airlines for a while. I spent 28 years at United Airlines as a commercial airline pilot. I held director level positions at United. I taught people how to fly at United Airlines. I built airline training programs so many things and I just kept looking for that next thing that was going to take me over the top, make me feel successful. Hopefully I would feel fulfilled and on that journey is really what pushed me. The sad thing is there's so many of us in the world that they don't step up from that. They actually step back and kind of climb in a shell, and that's what I wanna share with people. That's why I wanna say that, yes, these people are giving us our rules, but when we find our own set of rules, when we chose the beliefs that empower us in our life, it really opens us up to so much more.

Daniela SM : 6:45

Well, you also grew up in times where kids were to be seen and not to be heard and the adults always knew better. The kids didn't have a voice. You were always trying harder and being the best at everything. Do you have siblings that, with the same behavior of your grandfather, didn't react the same way?

Vince Kramer: 7:05

The interesting thing was they kind of pulled themselves back from it so they limited themselves pretty much through their entire lives. Part of it was because of a belief that my mom gave them out of love, so they didn't feel that they were worthless or couldn't live up. So my mom, at a very early age for them, started saying well, it's okay, not everybody can be as good at baseball as Vince, not everybody can be as good at school as Vince is. And in doing that she kind of gave them permission to step back and not live who they were fully. So I got a chance to see both sets of beliefs the really empowering ones and the ones that were disempowering, but how being loving could be just as disempowering as being mean and nasty. So it was interesting.

Vince Kramer: 8:07

But I'll be honest with you, daniel, I didn't understand any of this until I got older and really started doing some research and understanding about our belief systems and how we gain them. So I live my entire life wondering when were brothers were ever gonna step up. And then, when I started doing this belief work and really understanding how we take these beliefs and we're truly making decisions in every aspect of our life from them, I noticed that, ah, that's why they're who they are, and they began to think, through my mom trying to make them feel better, they began to think that they weren't good enough or they weren't worthy from that aspect.

Daniela SM : 8:54

Interesting. I mean, it seems that your mom was saying something good, but I cannot even think what will be the best thing to say instead of what your mom said.

Vince Kramer: 9:03

Well, for me. I believe that we first of all need to take the time to get to know our children and what really excites them and where are their talents and where are they being pulled to be more of who they are, and then encourage them on that journey. We spend so much time and I know the world's changing. We're moving from I-consciousness to we-consciousness, people are more understanding of what's going on, but we still have all these societal beliefs that this is what it's like to be successful. This is where you have to go to school here, or you have to do this, and I think if we get to know our children a little bit more and give them the opportunity to really find their groove, then we can support them fully as who they are and not compare them to someone else or not push our beliefs on them and give them our set of rules for living life.

Daniela SM : 10:09

Very hard. It is very hard.

Vince Kramer: 10:13

It is very difficult. It starts at home and when I say at home, it starts inside of us, because we need to get to know who we are, why we're really here on earth, what our gifts and talents are, and if we can learn those and then start supporting ourselves in living who we are more fully. Now we already know how to do it, because we've done it for us and we can help our kids in that way.

Daniela SM : 10:41

To me that's like the journey we are here to figure out who we are, and it could take a long time, and by that time you already have the kids and say things that you shouldn't have.

Vince Kramer: 10:52

Well, the exciting thing is for me that when I uncovered why I was here, I learned how to help others do it In our work.

Vince Kramer: 11:02

Now I have found the way to help people uncover those three parts of their purpose fairly quickly, fairly easily, mostly by learning how to tap into your guidance and get your answers to the big three questions who am I, what do I have to offer and why am I here? And those are the three parts of your purpose. It took me eight years to figure all this out, by reading and going to this mentor and finding that mentor and learning that I did have this ability to tap into the higher vibrational energies and get answers, because I learned it and it was like okay, I've got all these gifts on building training programs, I've got all these gifts in helping people learn and understand concepts that are pretty difficult, so why can't I put them to use in helping people find those three parts of their purpose and make it at least a little quicker? The older we are, the more beliefs that we take on that aren't necessarily empowering us, so it might take a little bit longer when we're older.

Daniela SM : 12:16

Right, that sounds super interesting. Then, going back to the lining of the story, so you did all these successful things and in between, I assume, you got married.

Vince Kramer: 12:27

I just kept doing more. The next job, the next opportunity. We had a nice house on the hill. I had a very good marriage with my first wife. We did a lot of things. We traveled, we enjoyed life. I had a big bank account. You know I was flying airplanes. I love to fly airplanes.

Vince Kramer: 12:48

I've been blessed with two reasons for being on earth. One was to fly airplanes and one was to help people love themselves. And I got to do both of them, but I still had that something missing. I didn't have the capability to truly find what that was because I thought it was always material or always an accomplishment. So I had three major wake-up calls in my life. I had a bunch of them leading up little what we call conscious wake-up calls. Conscious wake-up calls are I should be much happier than I am. Why am I not fulfilled even though I'm doing all this stuff? Why do I feel like something's missing? Those are conscious wake-ups. They're trying to get our attention to see and understand and notice that there's more for us on the earth. I don't pay attention to any of them.

Vince Kramer: 13:41

I followed grandpa's rules. I did a really good job of taking on his belief system and living it, and then 9-11 happened. 9-11 was a wake-up call for many people, but I was a United Airlines pilot. I lost a really good friend on flight 93 that day. He crashed in Pennsylvania. I actually flew that flight one week prior. So if it would have been 9-4 instead of 9-11, I probably would have been in that smoking hole in Pennsylvania. It was the universe saying to me, my higher self saying to me Vince, pay attention, just like everybody else. It's like wow, I want to be nicer to people, I want to be fulfilled, I want to enjoy life more.

Vince Kramer: 14:27

But that lasted a very short amount of time as I went back to grandpa's set of rules. So another crisis wake-up call shows up for me. In 2003, united Airlines went bankrupt and in that bankruptcy I lost all my retirement. I lost 60% of my pay. I downgraded in my seat, so I wasn't flying in the bigger airplanes in the captain's seat. All of that I started. Okay. Well, what's really important? I started following my dad's rules a little bit. Vince, you are here to support your family. So I shifted into that mental gear and I bought three pretzel businesses to bring my retirement up, because it was my job to have a retirement when I got old enough to not work anymore and I had to make sure that my family was taken care of, so I didn't follow that calling then to find more of who I was.

Daniela SM : 15:27

Yes, what happened?

Vince Kramer: 15:28

So what happens? The hammer gets a little bit bigger and all of a sudden, bam, the hammer comes down. Why? I was trying to run those pretzel businesses during Dr Atkins carbohydrates time. The businesses took a dip and I had to work more hours than I had thought I had, or had to work than I was going to need to. And I ended up working between the two jobs 95 hours a week trying to keep the pretzel stores going, still bringing in the money needed from United Airlines, especially after that big pay cut. And while that happened my wife had an affair and the divorce was the final wake-up call that finally got my attention.

Vince Kramer: 16:18

One of the big gifts through all of that was my ex-wife really loved the work that Jack Canfield does the chicken soup for the soul guy. She listened constantly to Jack's audio tapes actually little cassette tapes on self-esteem and peak performance. I tried to find any way possible for us to stay together. I actually bought both of us a ticket to his seven-day breakthroughs to success and I thought that was the thing that would bring us back together. But when she found out I was going to go too, she decided she didn't want to go. So I went myself and Jack gave us this wonderful meditation, a guided meditation, where we got on a magic carpet and that magic carpet took us to a top of the mountain and at the top of the mountain we had an angel come in and give us a gift. We got the gift and then we took the magic carpet back down to that room and he still kept us in that meditation and we opened up the gift. When I opened up my gift, it was a golden microphone.

Daniela SM : 17:35

Vince. You never really believe on any holistic things in the past, or you did.

Vince Kramer: 17:40

That was my very first guided meditation. Wow, very first. I grew up Catholic. I was religious, but spiritual, metaphysical stuff no, I didn't believe in any of that stuff, but it was so real. When I opened that box with that golden microphone I didn't understand what it was, but I heard in my head what's missing in your life is you, wow. And instantly the tears started rolling down my face and I kind of opened one eye because I didn't necessarily believe in any of this yet to see if anybody else was having an emotional reaction, and there were several, so I allowed it to be okay. And then that truly was the start of me really opening up and understanding life, the universe, spirituality, even metaphysics, in a way that I never believed I would have.

Daniela SM : 18:38

How interesting, just through one meditation, and the gift that you received.

Vince Kramer: 18:43

And being in the right place at the right time. For sure I needed to be in that man's room in that moment.

Daniela SM : 18:51

Wow. So it was incredible. And so you came back and you had to let your wife go.

Vince Kramer: 18:57

Yes, I told her that I would do anything that I could, up until the time that signed the paperwork, to keep our marriage together. It just wasn't meant to be, so I let her go. I started on my journey of learning and the sad thing was I wanted to be like Jack. So all I did was I moved from my grandfather's rules to Jack's rules and I started to try to live life his way. I wanted to be on stage, I wanted to be in front of 400 people, I wanted to use that golden microphone to share, and I looked at things all from, shall we say, traditional self-help. How can I help people self set goals? How can I help them understand how to use visualization? How can I help them feel better about themselves and get beyond the roadblocks? At about seven or eight months into the journey of divorce, I asked my soon-to-be ex-wife can we go to all our friends and can we tell them why we're getting a divorce? Because I don't want them to feel like they're in the middle of things. I just want to explain why you no longer want to be married, why we agreed to the divorce, and she agreed to it. So we went to all our friends and shared. And the last couple that we went to, we sat down, we told them you know this is what's happening. They were sad with this, but they understood and we left.

Vince Kramer: 20:39

And the very next day, that friend called up on the phone and he said Vince, how are you doing really? And I said I'm falling apart. I don't understand why this is happening. I don't know how to fix it. I'm truly falling apart.

Vince Kramer: 20:53

What he said was Mary, my current wife, but someone that I had met 10 years earlier and had this really strange energetic connection with, was getting divorced at the same time. He said why don't you get in touch with Mary and ask her what she's going through, so maybe you can understand what Martha's going through and maybe it will help you understand what's going on. Martha was my current wife. I ended up really contacting Mary. Actually, she showed up at a party I was at one night and we made plans to get together and talk and for 18 months we became drinking buddies to help each other through the divorces, to help understand what was going on, and during that timeframe, mary started to share more spiritual concepts with me, being religious and being the scientist that I am. Every time she gave me a concept. I went to science to figure out or to show her why. What she was sharing with me wasn't quite right.

Vince Kramer: 22:02

And Daniela every time I went to science to prove her wrong or at least to make myself feel better about what I believed. I proved her right because science and spirituality line up hand in hand. They line up perfectly.

Daniela SM : 22:16

Yes, I think the people that believe in the spirituality can understand that, but people that are scientific they can't. Can you give me an example of something specific that you were investigating and you noticed that she was right?

Vince Kramer: 22:28

Well, one concept that Mary was sharing with me was the concept of shadows and mirrors. In one of our discussions she was saying well, you were married to Martha for a reason and the things that you're seeing in her right now that you don't like are parts of you. And it was like, well, that makes no sense to me at all. Why would they be parts of me? But then, as I started looking at energy and quantum physics and there's one energy and we're all interconnected, we're entangled, and how law of attraction works and we attract into our lives what we are, what the energy we put out is the energy we attract back. It's like, oh my God, she's right. Martha was showing me parts of me that I need to look at. It was difficult to get there, but the deeper I got and the more concepts she shared, the more it was. I couldn't deny that they line up.

Daniela SM : 23:35

So when you break a relationship in general or just with a partner, whatever you don't like from the person anymore is what you have.

Vince Kramer: 23:46

Well, not just if you don't like him anymore. We attract who we are energetically, what we're putting out energetically in the world, and by understanding that we can look at someone who is showing us something that we don't like and we have to understand that we don't like it because we have judgments on ourselves being it or not being it. That concept is so huge because now it helps us understand that we truly are the creators of our lives and we can choose the energy that we put out and start attracting more of what we want into our lives. Interesting.

Daniela SM : 24:34

Interesting, a lot of food for thoughts. So Mary started to teach you a lot of things and you were quickly finding out if she was right or wrong. But then suddenly you just were open to accept everything.

Vince Kramer: 24:49

I was at that place where, when I found out that what was missing was me, that I was willing to do whatever, to try whatever, to learn whatever, and then decide does that work for me or not? So I opened myself up to the possibilities that are available to us in the universe, knowing that I could always say, nope, that doesn't work for me, I'm not going to believe it. Or oh yeah, that makes sense to me, I'm going to hold on to it. That journey led to more spiritual things happening around me. Really, I couldn't deny, and I had to start paying attention to One of the interesting things. This is all in our book Awakening Through Moments of Choice. For anybody who might be interested in a little bit more detail in this, one thing that happened was when I learned that I was missing. I decided okay, I'm going to take these workshops, I'm going to take these seminars, I'm going to learn and I'm going to grow.

Vince Kramer: 25:56

And this was when Mary and I were still just early in our drinking buddy relationship. As we got towards the 18 month point, what we realized was that we really did like being together and we really enjoyed ourselves and we were really good for each other, but we still couldn't find a way to really start dating. And then it happened. The first date I took her to Alaska on a layover. Our second date was Washington DC on a layover. So we had some pretty exotic first dates. We got close really fast because we had become friends over that 18 months and I was scheduled to go to this event called Illumination Intensive. It was up in Canada, the Vancouver area in British Columbia. I don't even know why I signed up for it. The only reason I did is because other people said, oh, you really need to take this.

Daniela SM : 26:53

So I signed up, and what year was this?

Vince Kramer: 26:55

This was 2008.

Daniela SM : 26:59

But, vince, when you say a layover, it doesn't mean that you're still working as a pilot.

Vince Kramer: 27:03

Yeah, I didn't retire as a pilot until September of 2001. And I officially retired just this year.

Daniela SM : 27:11

Which airline you were working.

Vince Kramer: 27:13

United Airlines.

Daniela SM : 27:14

Oh, so you moved to United Airlines and started from scratch. But interesting part is that you actually work a pilot and you had three businesses. You were not present at home.

Vince Kramer: 27:24

No, I was, like I said, working 95 hours a week sometimes.

Daniela SM : 27:28

Yes, because you wanted to support your family.

Vince Kramer: 27:31

Yes.

Daniela SM : 27:33

So you went for dates and you went to this course in Vancouver. And what happened?

Vince Kramer: 27:37

Well, before I went to the course in Vancouver, mary called me up and said Vince, I'm up here in Aspen with my son and my business partner. Why don't you come up and join us? I've got to go to this workshop tomorrow, mary, I don't think I can. And she said I really think that you should come up.

Vince Kramer: 27:57

I had already not taken an invitation once with her before and ended up missing out on possibly dating her and somebody else came into her life for a period of time. So I didn't want to take a chance of losing that because I was energetically attracted to her, and that's a whole other story. But I did have that energetic attraction and when I went up to Aspen we went out, we had some margaritas, we had a good time, probably a few too many margaritas, but when we went back to the room we ended up having sex. But after we had sex, mary said Vince, I need to tell you this. I see this woman standing next to you and she described this woman perfectly for me to realize that she was seeing my grandmother. The grandmother that I told that I wanted to help people love themselves. The grandmother that reminded me, at 17 years old in her death bed, that I told her that A woman that Mary never met, but described her perfectly, that she was standing there beside me.

Daniela SM : 29:20

In that moment or all the time.

Vince Kramer: 29:22

In that moment she saw it Very rude. You don't want to. I had enough tequila to say OK, that's pretty cool. You just described my grandmother. And then she said and I want to tell you about someone else I see with you. And she started to describe this little blonde girl About five years old, a blue dress, frilly Blouse, bobby socks, patent leather shoes. She described this little girl in such great detail and it was like well, why is she here? And Mary said I don't know. And I had enough to drink to accept what she was saying or at least be curious about it.

Vince Kramer: 30:10

We fell asleep. I got up at four o'clock the next morning to drive to Denver, hop on that airplane, fly to Vancouver for this workshop, and the whole time driving, the whole time flying, it was like who's this little girl? Why did Mary see my grandmother? What's this all about? Type of thing. I get to the event and I truly did not know this. I found out that it's five days and you're up at six in the morning and you go to bed at midnight and for five days all you do is answer the question tell me who you are.

Daniela SM : 30:49

And then so you have to write it down or you have to tell people.

Vince Kramer: 30:53

So there was about 220, 230 people there and what would happen is they would teach us a little bit in the morning on how to interact with each other and how to get the most out of the experience, and then for the rest of the day we would break up and you would go into a room and you would sit down. There was chairs facing each other all through the room and you would go sit down. Somebody would sit down in front of you, knees about 10 inches apart. For the first 10 minutes, one of the partners let's say partner A would say tell me who you are, and partner B would give the answer that came to them. And then partner A would say thank you and then say tell me who you are. And that would go on for 10 minutes. Then you would switch. Partner B would say tell me who you are and partner A would answer. You would do that, you'd get up, you'd go to another set of chairs and you would do it all over again.

Daniela SM : 31:54

That's from like eight o'clock now, because six o'clock you got the instructions eight o'clock in the midnight. Well you, got it.

Vince Kramer: 32:01

You broke for lunch, you broke for dinner, and then there were breaks in between so you could go out and walk around for 15 minutes or whatever, but that's all you did for that time period. Well, it started out well. I'm a pilot, I'm a brother, I'm a son, all the surface level stuff. And then you get deeper, and you get deeper, and you get deeper. I truly had an awakening on day four where all of a sudden it just came out of me I am everything and I am nothing. And I just started to shake from all the energy that came in. But the most, let's say, eye-opening thing for me in those five days, five times during those five days, somebody said to me do you know, there's an energy of a little blonde girl with you? And I asked them tell me what she's wearing. And they described this little blonde girl exactly the way Mary did. That was my first. Oh my God, there's something going on here and I have got to pay attention.

Daniela SM : 33:10

But what about other people? Other people also had similar experience that you noticed.

Vince Kramer: 33:15

Most I wouldn't say everybody, but most had some type of awakening experience and that's what it was designed for. I don't know if anybody else got any. Do you know? There's a little blonde girl type of situation or not? At that point I was so into. I have got to figure out what this is all about. I spent most of my time just thinking about that. Plus, we couldn't talk to each other during those five days. We were to be polite to the staff, but except for the time that we were eating and you could sit at a table that there was no talking. Or you could sit at a table that you could only talk about what was going on at the workshop, but you weren't supposed to talk. When you went back to your room, because we all had a roommate, you weren't supposed to talk to anybody. So it was all really introspective work.

Daniela SM : 34:11

Wow, how interesting. I hope you enjoyed part one of this episode and you continue to part two. Thank you.