What If It Did Work?
What If It Did Work?
Champion Mindset: Turning Adversity into Purpose
What happens when life delivers its most devastating blow? For Chuck Barnard, losing his wife to cancer became the crucible that transformed his decades of mindset expertise into something profoundly more powerful.
Chuck joins us to share his remarkable journey from grief to purpose, revealing how the very mindset tools he'd been teaching for 30+ years became his lifeline in darkness. With refreshing honesty, he explains how this experience birthed his Garden of the Soul method—a brilliant metaphor comparing our minds to gardens that require regular weeding to prevent negativity from choking out our potential.
This conversation cuts through typical self-help platitudes to deliver genuine wisdom about transformation. Chuck explains how real change doesn't require years of therapy but can happen in an instant once we truly decide to shift our perspective. His SOWS process (Self-awareness, Owning responsibility, Weeding negativity, applying HEAT) offers a practical framework anyone can apply to overcome anxiety, disconnection, and emotional shutdown.
We dive deep into why today's youth struggle despite having unprecedented access to information and resources. Chuck unpacks how social media creates artificial comparison traps and explains his simple yet powerful technique of "changing the channel" on negative thoughts—a method that helped his daughter overcome nightmares and develop remarkable creative abilities.
Whether you're facing your own personal Everest or simply want to cultivate greater resilience, this episode delivers actionable insights from someone who's transformed life's deepest pain into purpose. Chuck's work with thousands of students, families, and athletes proves that mindset rewiring sticks when approached with the right tools—many of which he generously shares throughout our conversation.
Ready to weed your mental garden and unlock your champion mindset? This episode might just be the catalyst you've been waiting for.
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I never told no one that my whole life I've been holding back. Every time I load my gun up so I can shoot for the star, I hear a voice like who do you think you are all right.
Speaker 2:Everybody. Another day, another dollar, another episode of the my favorite podcast. What if it did work? I got super excited for this week's guest. You're going to be one of my favorites already.
Speaker 2:He's a mindset mentor, a champion mindset mentor Chuck Bernard, best-selling author, master educator, mindset mentor with over 30-plus years of experience Dude, you don't even look that old man, so congratulations on that Experience guiding students, families and athletes through personal transformation. Armed with advanced certifications and NLP Hypnotherapy timeline therapy, he's helped thousands overcome anxiety which I had plenty of growing up, which I had plenty of growing up Disconnection, emotional shutdown not with talk therapy, thank God, but with mindset rewiring that sticks. Chuck's signature garden of the soul method was born from both professional insight and deep personal loss. After losing his wife to cancer and watching his own children face life-shifting adversity, chuck turned grief into purpose, building tools that now help others clear emotional weeds and grow into their fullest potential. Through books, courses and his podcast, chuck is leading a movement to equip the next generation and those who guide them with the mindset, habits and resilience to thrive emotionally, mentally and, more importantly, spiritually. How's?
Speaker 3:it going, brother. It's going wonderfully. Thank you for having me. It's quite an honor.
Speaker 2:It sounds like adversity hits you like an Amtrak train. You know, sometimes life does when, when it's least expected. Because I'm sure you know, but before your, your wife, you would have never thought adversity would would hit and hit so hard, huh yeah, no, I, I, you know I say a lot.
Speaker 3:I led a blessed life. You know, any of the storms of life that came up in hindsight were like little thunderstorms. Like you know, sometimes you get caught up in a moment and you think, especially as a as a kid, you might think, oh, this is the worst thing that could have happened, but but yeah, nothing like like um like the ultimate loss.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know you're you're not expecting that. And it it's like well, it's funny when you say that, because when you're a teenager you know we've all been there. We're so melodramatic. Oh my gosh, I can't believe this heartache. I'm going to this heartbreak. You know that this woman was supposed to be the love of my life and it was never meant to be anyways, but you know so somebody. That's why, a lot of times, when you see people going over the edge or doing something based like a knee jerk reaction on something that you know, in the grand scheme of things it's not even a molehill, especially in life, it's not even a chapter in your story. It becomes less and less significant. But no, I, I, I get it now. Did you have all these tools? Because, yes, I've. I'm not certified in nlp, so I know about nlp. I I can half-ass do it all myself. I I have triggers, especially when I work out or when I used to run marathons. Or was this like after the tragedy of your wife passing?
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I had those skills and you know I spent. I ended up getting into education kind of through the back door. When I first got trained in NLP I was right out of college went out to California to meet Tony Robbins.
Speaker 2:That's where I learned NLP about. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Back in the day Out of coming out of college, I thought I was going to be going into the Navy. The day I got the rejection letter saying I wasn't good enough for the flight program, I was like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do now? I got the book Unlimited Power by Tony Robbins and it changed the direction of my life. And after getting through the training and certified, I came back and I was going to be the East Coast version of Tony Robbins. Right, I'm going to do all these seminars and make all this money and do all this amazing cool stuff. I knew nothing about running a business, nothing about all that Failure. Right, I faced that head on.
Speaker 3:But through a whole series of events and other people kind of guiding me and God clearly guided me I ended up getting an education and I loved working with kids and those skills I learned from NLP and time on therapy and all these others. I began to figure out how to use those in a classroom setting to help kids, because I worked with kids who weren't successful in school and ultimately it was about their mindset, right, all the beliefs and emotions and everything they carried with them were interfering with them being able to find success in school. So I had to find ways to utilize this to shift their mindset. And sometimes, you know, in that process you don't always realize what you might not be doing in your own life, right, so you preach it and then you kind of go. So I began really kind of looking at my own life and uh going, yeah, you know what I need to? I need to do better with a lot of these things I'm telling my kids to do so. I was, you know, I I worked on that for for a while and uh, when we um 2022 came around and and uh, my wife hadn't been feeling well by just April late April or so she went to the doctor, finally Ordered tests.
Speaker 3:It was June that we got the diagnosis. You know it was kind of like and we were ready to do battle with that. In July she passed away, never even got a chance to do chemo or anything, and it was all those things I've been building into my life that enabled me to get through those next few months. It was you know she was the risk of sounding kind of cliche with it she was my best friend. She was, you know, we'd been together for 28, married for 28 years. We'd been together for 30. I had envisioned spending another 30 years with her and you know it was gone and every day it's a fight. I recently said to somebody. It was kind of like I get these feelings of, and I kind of relate it to what they talk about with the phantom feelings when people have part of their body amputated. So when I wake up in the morning I feel her, and then I kind of wake up and she's not there. So you've got to kind of deal with that.
Speaker 2:Now, I know you're a spiritual person, but I'm sure talk about the ultimate test and faith, because so many people have this knee jerk at like reaction, even worse, like oh my gosh, there is, there is no god. There's no, there's none of that, because he's not like Santa Claus. I prayed to him for like this whole list of things and it didn't happen. I'm sure you've heard that from people, right?
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 2:I'm like, well, maybe you know that's not how prayer works or that's not how believing in God works. You know you can't just be like, well, you know, that's why everybody was so disappointed in the secret, because they didn't understand manifestation. They thought it was just like praying to God that, yeah, I want to have a six-pack abs and I want to have like $20 million in the bank and the Lambo. And I'm like, okay, well, yeah, manifestation. God would be like, okay, well, you have a sound mind, sound body, you know what you want, you've got all the tools, now go work at it.
Speaker 2:But it seems like people always go with the well, because you know I broke up with someone, or death, the death of a loved one, but ultimately we're not here. Long Tomorrow's never guaranteed for anyone. You know my grandfather is still alive at 101, but I'd say, like 99% of the people out there will never even come close to it. So it it's. You know, we all have it, we all have our own time and you just have to have that, that mindset, that don't piss away today, because it might be your last day today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. And you know I turned away from God and stuff in high school. You know, once I grew up in a UCC church, my mom, you know, made us all go to church and got confirmed and then she basically said all right, you're old enough to make your own decision.
Speaker 3:And I stopped going, turned my back on religion for a while, and some of that impetus was praying for people like my grandfather who had had a stroke and not seeing the results. And yet the Bible said you know, if two people come together in prayer, he'll listen to you. And it wasn't happening for me. But I came back to God, came back to religion and began to have a different understanding and appreciation. I still can't say I understand everything. I don't quite understand why my prayers for healing didn't happen with my wife or, you know, actually, my cousins. I lost two cousins to cancer as well. So I don't have all those answers, but I do know that the faith and the belief and beliefs beyond yourself are immensely important in dealing with with life's strategy, tragedies. When we're so caught up in our own self-centered part, it's much harder to make those shifts and thinking that you need to do to. You know to deal with life when life knocks you down.
Speaker 2:And through all this tragedy, though, you learned the garden. Well, it says here your garden is soul method. So you let your pain. You created a tool that can help out others. It's like cause. You know we can. Every bad stuff happens to amazing people. It's it's just called life. But you could have just packed it up and been like you know and just been angry and miserable and you would have been like why am I going to help people if you know? Look what happened to me. But instead you turn tragedy into being a person in service, and you've always had that in you teaching children. A lot of teachers don't have that that. You like what you said. You want it. You want to see everybody win. You want to see people succeed.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know there was. So after my wife passed and I was going back to school, I had been laying the groundwork for the business I'm now doing For about two years before my wife passed and it was going to be kind of like our retirement second stream of income kind of thing. That was my vision for it. We were both teachers and after she passed I wasn't really sure of what I would do. I was still kind of laying the groundwork, working on it a little bit, but in December. So she passed away in July.
Speaker 3:In December I had kept in touch with a former student who has an amazing story of facing adversity and and she was the first in a long line of kids who went through um, the district I was working with, to actually graduate high school. She did it a year early but she lost her brother to a drug overdose and her grandmother who had raised her. Two weeks before christmas that december after my wife and we connected and kind of talking about grief, she knew my wife had passed. That's partly why she had reached out again and she was going into a dark place. Her family had a long history of drug and alcohol abuse and depression that she had avoided for most of her young life. But she was headed in a downward spiral. So, you know, worked with her and talked her through it, but she had said that what really helped her was some of the foundational principles we taught her back in middle school. And I was like all right. And then that spring a classmate of hers, same same time frame, had taken a year off from college to be with her sister who was dying, and and we, she and I had talked and she said the same thing. So I kind of found my big why. Again like all right, what I'm teaching is it's a lot bigger than than you know what I've been doing in the, in the schools, Um, so I, I left and and was doing this full time.
Speaker 2:Well, adversity is is ultimately to me a gift in the sense that if we were all comfortable and everything was like Lionel Richie, like easy, like Sunday morning, there'd be no growth, there'd be no overcoming obstacles, there'd be no David and Goliath type story. There is no Rocky. We all have a champion within us. We all are a superhero of our own story. You know, a lot of times we just need to unlock it.
Speaker 3:We just, you know, after being beaten down as a child or having limiting beliefs, you know all someone needs is is that, that little shift, that little mindset shift yeah, you know I I talk about um, telling people that you need to learn to be able to be somebody who sows seeds of possibility and the sows stands for the process that you need to go through to kind of shift that mindset, to shift that thinking, if you're one who kind of tends to dwell on the negative and beat yourself up and all that self-esteem issues that quite a few kids have nowadays. But the first step of that is self, and it's self-awareness, it's self-reflection, it's beginning to identify those things in your life, those beliefs you have, the emotions you're holding on to the glass ceiling you might have placed there because what you say oh, I can't do this, I can't do that, and you've got to begin to identify those. Then the second step the o is owning it, and by owning it we're talking about really showing them how to take responsibility for changing those or letting go of the ones they don't want. The third part of that is the weeding of the garden. It's what I also call applying heat to your life, or habit, emotion, attitude training. So once you kind of clean things up, you weeded things out.
Speaker 3:You need to do that every day and that's where that garden of the soul comes in and you know it comes from my experience after my wife died and she's a very popular teacher and there's going to be a big service. And then after the service we were going to have a smaller gathering, but it's still a fairly large gathering at our house. And there was one spot, as you enter the backyard, we had a big backyard where we had wanted to have a garden, just a small little flower garden, and we planted some flowers there and all, but we never tended the garden so it was always overgrown with weeds and I was going to change that. I wanted this as a memorial garden for her. So I got my sister to help me out. She's an expert gardener and we identified the weeds, we dug them out, we cleaned it up, fixed the soil, planted plants in there that would bloom your full season, spring through fall and it was beautiful. It was just what I wanted.
Speaker 3:Well, that spring, over the winter, I had an opportunity to actually become a caretaker of property my cousin inherited, so I took advantage of that. I kind of joked that I was having a hard time kicking my 20-something-year-old kids out of the house, so I moved out. It was easier. But when I came back to the house in the spring, early summer, it was like a gut punch because there the garden was totally overgrown with weeds and at first I was angry at my kids. Then I was angry at myself, because it was my garden, it was my responsibility, but I didn't take responsibility. I had to keep weeding that garden because, if you know, I cleaned it out once. But the world has a way of sending all kinds of weeds into your garden and if we don't weed our garden on a regular basis, that beauty that's in our soul will get overgrown and choked out by all the weeds of life. And that's kind of the story I tell people all the time, and there are tools for us to do that.
Speaker 2:I have to ask you this, charles we have so much more tools. You and I are about the same age. So then, what we did back then? But yet to me, I see more and more not only society, but especially younger, the younger people, younger generation, just overgrown with weeds. Horrible mindset, emotionally weak, emotionally weak, letting others take control of their emotions, doing rash decisions, trying to base decisions on whether it's likes or views, or to become the hashtag Instagram influencer, instagram influencer. And you would think, with the amount of tools, that heck weeds, you would think it would look like Adam and Eve's garden or like Disney World, disneyland, all these perfect gardens that you're like, oh my gosh. But yet all these tools, all these resources available, and to me it's gone the other way.
Speaker 3:Yeah, totally, totally yeah I. You know, when I was again I worked with kids who were well I, one of the districts I worked in, I started what's called a day treatment program, a really strict residential or sometimes a very heavy duty therapeutic setting, and they're coming back through our program to stabilize them or they could potentially be heading the other way if we couldn't get them stabilized. And in the last district I worked in it was a highly affluent district but there's a. It was kids who had. They didn't know how to deal with the pressures and the stress of life and they would.
Speaker 3:You know that term snowflake that isn't really used. It's not a compliment when we use that with that generation. You know, spur sign of pressure, they melt away, but it, yes. You know, sign of pressure, they melt away, but it, yes, I. You know, I saw it a lot in there the, the programs that they run, and then the, what they go to. And there's more and more growing research. I don't know if you're familiar with jonathan height at all, but he wrote the book the anxiety generation. He's co-author of the book Coddling of the American Mind and there's a growing body of research that says our phones. It might not just be correlative but causative in a lot of the depression and stuff and from personal experience and looking at some of that research, it really does seem to have a pretty strong causation there, with kids that get drawn into all that negativity that's out there.
Speaker 2:But here you're going to laugh. Just the information is superhighway. You and I grew up in a time information meant we had to go, literally physically, to the library, go microfiche, dewey, decimal System, and it was outdated, outdated information. Or we got lucky and our parents bought us the encyclopedia from the traveling sales guy, the Encyclopedia Britannica. They never sent you the whole thing. They would literally just send you one book every other month or whatever, and it was never A, b. It was always like they'd send you Y, x, y, z, and then maybe A the following month and then E. It was no rhyme or rhythm. Those books were already outdated anyways by the time we finally got to them. And you know, you and I we love the big guy, but back then, before he moved to West Palm, I mean way back when he was living in the castle in San Diego.
Speaker 2:If you're feeling suicidal and you watch that you're depressed, you know you can order personal power. We'll give you the rush order in 10 days. In 10 days, man, if you're on the verge of suicide, you better hold on to dear life, because that's a long time now. If, if you and I wanted, we, we could literally download not only his programs. We, we could be the best seller, zig ziglar, we could download all this stuff, information like that, in your phone. But you know, even with ai it's funny we have all these tools, you can, you can use ai for so many things, but instead we're trying to build little characters of ourselves.
Speaker 2:Remember that, like last month, where it's like no, that that's not what AI, yeah, it's cute, you, you, you created an action figure of yourself, but you're depressed. Why don't you at least type in what can I do? Cause it, cause it's. The information is out there and, yes, the the phone can be, can see, be seen. As you know, anxiety driven. But, man, 30 years ago, if somebody would have told us we'd have the power to do all what we have, we'd be like oh my gosh, we're probably on the verge of going to Mars and curing cancer, not taking pictures of the slice of pizza that we had today and maybe a piece of pie. Take a picture of the pie or dessert that we had and post it and show the world that there's pizza or there's hot dogs where I'm at.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, the younger generation is also getting caught up in this fantasy world. Really. I mean, there's like this idea of they're constantly comparing themselves. So they'll see things on the internet and on, you know, instagram posts and TikTok and all these other stuff of teens, other teens and and oftentimes what they're seeing has been doctored right, it's been, it's been dressed up right, of course, but in their mind, oh, look what this person's doing what, and and they begin to feel like inferior and more depressed and it just begins to to feed itself and they don't know how to change their. They don't know how to change the channel.
Speaker 3:I, my daughter, she, she tells a story, I vaguely remember it, but when she was little, like I think she says, said she thinks she was like a kindergarten or first grade. When she was little, like I think she says, said she thinks she was like a kindergarten or first grade and she was having nightmares, and it has happened pretty regularly. And so I, just when she said that one morning or whatever it was, I I said, well, why don't you just change the channel? And she's like, what do you mean? I said, well, there's a little switch. You know, I'm telling her this little switch in her mind and all. And she says to this day, she's a budding author, she's written a couple books and she owes her imagination, she says, to her ability to lucidly dream, which she learned to do because I just told her to change the channel. A simple little thing like that to a kid. She went oh, I can change the channel. And I, yep, she began to change her thinking patterns.
Speaker 2:And this is something that's going to mind blow. Everybody's going to have their mind blown. You can change the channel instantaneously. There's no, it's not like trying to make a right turn, a 90 degree turn with a Titanic or some huge ship. You could literally change your focus, change your mindset, like overnight. You, you don't, you don't need to go talk to a therapist. Over and over the wall, you know, while while 50 minutes not the hour, even though they say it's an hour and rehash the same thing over and over again, it's like, okay, okay, I want to see you next week. We'll we'll discuss the same topic that we've been discussing for like five years now. Yeah, you can change your mindset like that, and I know you, heck, that's what the aha moment.
Speaker 2:Not only your daughter learned that, because other people would be like, oh my gosh, well, let me go. Maybe she needs to see a therapist, or better. Yet why don't I post for other people's opinions on Facebook? Hashtag worried, what shall I do? Does anybody have any recommendations? Yeah, quit posting stupid stuff on Facebook and tell your kid, like what you said, change the channel yeah, she was and it's.
Speaker 2:It's funny because I mean we were, we were we. We come from a generation generation x and older that you know it's like suck it up and but I'm not going to say let's go back to that, but to this, the days that we're going, it's like sometimes not only mindset, but let's just have a simple conversation and tell kids hash, you know, know that influencer that you want to be, that's as rare as playing baseball for the yankees or major league baseball, that's, that's one out of a billion people that had that same dream. But it's. You know it looks easy because anybody can do a reel. You know it's like everybody wants to, everybody wants to become famous without or wealthy without doing any work, and you know that's called delusional right, absolutely yeah chuck, can I, can I hire you and you be my?
Speaker 2:you teach me about mindset, but can we do it within like I? I just want to go from like ordinary to rock star. Okay, can we do that like in a week, because I'm in a hurry. I know I've got a little time.
Speaker 3:I'll give you a week yeah, I can squeeze you in, right, I can, like I've got this little window here and yeah, it's right, totally it right.
Speaker 2:Totally, or when you work with athletes so literally, when people don't understand that, yes, that's a God given ability, but they work on that, they hone on that skill. We all have some God given talent in us that if we hone on it on a consistent basis, we can excel at anything. But you know, when people read oh well, andre Agassi was ranked like 111. And then he went to Anthony Robbins and he started winning everything again. Yeah well, 111 in the world is not too shabby in the grand scheme of things, when there's like millions of people playing. So you had that within them. So, yes, you have to. You know, it's like me telling you well, I, I want to write an opera and you're gonna be like well, do you have any musical ability?
Speaker 2:or no I just want, you know, change my mindset, scratch the record, change my focus. I want to do it. You, you have to. You have to have the skill, you, and then let's hone on it. So I know, though, you, you get like a lot of people that are like, uh, no, um, do you get a lot of people that just want these? You know, they watch an infomercial even though it says, you know, extraordinary results, and they're like Chuck, like chuck. Yes, I want let's work on things, but I want to be able to. I want to be the. I want to write another war and peace. You know, I want to be the next steven spielberg yeah, no, I.
Speaker 3:Part of the screening process is to try to find out all right, where, where, where are you at what sort of all right? Where are you at? What sort of background do you have? Where are you going?
Speaker 1:Because, Instagram is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right, you know.
Speaker 2:Right, oh, Chuck, I just saw this program. The guy was mowing lawns like three months ago and now he lives in a mansion and all I have to do is like send him some money and then within like overnight, you know, it's like no, yeah, If you know people send them more money that he rented out that that mansion, you know he too can can be very successful.
Speaker 3:You know, with a sports thing which you mentioned is is done a few YouTube videos on this. But sometimes you get for the parents of like nine, ten-year-old kids and they are signing them up for all these elite travel teams. Oh yeah, like nine or ten years old. Well, can you do this to help them? I'm like what we can train is some good habits about how to practice and how to do things like that and their beliefs. But the kid's nine years old. He's like let him be a kid, let him find his way.
Speaker 2:A little bit like exactly you're gonna speaking of that. You're gonna love this story. Both my kids did the travel soccer. My oldest went all all the way through high school, was even touring schools but didn't want to play. She was short like her dad. So you know Division II or NAIA, which is even lower, and you know she ultimately didn't have that passion enough. But yeah, so cutthroat, all these parents thinking their kid's going to be Mia Hamm and being like the next Neymar or whatever. And I remember the first tournament and there's like thousands of little girls everywhere, so many teams, and I just screamed out and all the parents were there. I'm like so all these kids here are going to get division one scholarships and all of them are going to become superstars. And everybody looked at me like this guy is stupid, of course. God, what a hater. And what ultimately happened, which you know kids quit because they let's have them just be kids man.
Speaker 2:You know, quit vicariously living through kids, you know, have that mindset. I had that mindset. I had that mindset. I just wanted my kids to have just that mindset to use towards business or the real world that you have to deal with people you don't like or you know competition, and that not everybody's a winner, but yeah, no, I mean everybody's a winner, but yeah, no, I mean. So ultimately, I that's why I know that that you probably get a lot of people that and it's like you want them to be a champion of life Ultimately, an eight year old, a nine year old, Absolutely.
Speaker 3:I, you, you know, there was a Facebook group. I would kind of margin is a baseball Facebook group and I think baseball is kind of a our sport, my family sport. And uh, I was responding to somebody talking a little bit about this and I don't remember exactly what I wrote, but about you know, champion mindset using that and uh, somebody responded, uh, and how many champions have you created or something out of your, your household? And I was like, all right, I'm not sure the tone, but I'm gonna assume he didn't mean it the way it sounded, right. So I just said, hey, we lost championships, we've won championships, like many others, but what I'm talking about is this and then I shared what my son had wrote on Instagram the December after my wife passed, because that fall he went back to college. He was playing college baseball at a really good division, one of the top Division III schools in the country. He was a walk-on. He wasn't even supposed to be able to make it. He's played two years there, but that fall he got cut and he wrote a post on Instagram saying how 2022, for all those who know me was just a horrible year.
Speaker 3:I lost the two most important things in my life, my mom and baseball things that pillars of my life, that I've been part of my life first in my whole life. Blah, blah, blah. But I'm not going to hang my head. You know what? I am so grateful I had those. I'm so grateful that my mom was a wonderful person. I'm so grateful for the friendships I had on the baseball team. These guys are still my brothers in arms. I'm not going to hang my head. 2023, bring it on. And I put that in the post and said that's what I'm talking about, that's right, no victim there.
Speaker 2:Did you see that? Zero victim? Because, because most people, especially young kids well, what am I saying? Most people in general would be victim and would be weird. And that that's a champion. Post right there. Every everything that he learned. You know everything that he lost and he still had that mindset that. Just bring it. You know tomorrow's and tomorrow's, a new day.
Speaker 2:When, when people, what champions did you train? Where Was he expecting? Unless you had, like Aaron Judge? And you know, oh well, you know, for the past 30 years I've had like every major New York Yankee, from Don Mattingly to Tino Martinez to Mariano Rivera to Jason Giambi to now. You know, yeah, I still dabble. Bellinger is my client. No, most people don't even have that, you know. And success is like heck. Most most parents would make their kid feel like I've seen it because I've seen that delusional mindset that, oh my gosh, if you didn't have this champion mindset, this is what your post would have been. You know what? I can't believe. My son's 11th grade, his coach, not only his travel baseball coach, but that high school coach, he him back, you know. I told him he was a leadoff batter. Instead he had him batting like seventh. He snotted the kid and look look at him now.
Speaker 3:You know can't believe that yeah, yeah, and you laugh because because it's.
Speaker 2:these are parents, like soccer parents. You know what. Let's discuss what happened two years ago in some tournament. It's like, why can't we just discuss, hey, what are we going to do after? Let's be civil. And then also, yeah, hey, what are the kids going to do? Hopefully they play great, hopefully they give it their all. The only people that should matter is the owner of this club. You know, nobody's signed the contract, nobody's on their walk here, nothing like that. Enjoy. In fact, as a parent man, not only did I hate all that and I couldn't wait for it to end, but then, when it ended, it like, oh my gosh. Now, like whenever I try I drive anywhere and I know it's it's travel soccer, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm if, if only I could see, because you know life, it, it happens like that, because you know what you think is is, you know, is a burden, is actually a gift. That's why I enjoy today. That's always been my motto.
Speaker 3:Yeah, from baseball. The kids would play for me and stuff, teach them about trying to apply it to life. But it was always one pitch at a time and we became known for having some really dramatic comebacks. My oldest son's all-star team the bottom of the last inning down by four runs with two outs. They came back and won the game. One pitch at a time, focused on just in the moment, and that has tremendous applications across the board.
Speaker 3:I love some of those sports metaphors and all, but there's this young man who's a motivational speaker, austin Hatch. I don't know if you know the name or him at all. His story is an incredible story. But when he was like eight years old he lived in Michigan, grew up in Michigan. His dad was a doctor, older sister, younger brother. His grandparents lived in like northern part of Michigan. His dad was a pilot also. So they were flying home from visiting his grandparents and plane crashed and he lost his mom, his sister and his younger brother. He and his dad survived, you know. So he deals with that, but time he's a junior in high school, he's a, he's a top basketball player and that summer he got a scholarship to play at Michigan. So for a Michigan kid, that's a big deal.
Speaker 2:Well, anywhere in this country. Charles playing in Ann Arbor is huge in any sport.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's right. It shows that he has some talent. And all right, his dad had gotten remarried a few years before that right, his dad had gotten remarried a few years before that and after he accepted the scholarship, like this, this early summer after his junior year, they were flying up to these grandparents in a second plane crash. This time it took his father and his stepmother's life and he was in a coma for months. When he came out of a, he had to relearn to do everything.
Speaker 2:I saw that story.
Speaker 3:Oh, incredible story. Yes, he scored like one point in Michigan basketball because they gave him a chance to play.
Speaker 2:Yes, he came back.
Speaker 3:after all that adversity, he goes around and talks to people, but it's his mindset that is so powerful, because he's grateful. Number one that's one of the most powerful things you can start and end your day with is doing a gratitude list, and his faith was another huge thing, right, so it's about going forward. You know, I've got decisions like this. Happened to me. Now what, what good does it do me to like, just mope around and feel sorry for myself? And his ability to think and see the bright side of things is?
Speaker 2:it's teachable, it's coachable, for sure we, once we see it and I'm not just talking about teenagers once we see someone can do it and it's achievable, it's. It's like, um, when roger bannister, nobody could be break that four minute mile and it took forever and they thought that once you did, you would just stroke out and just like die instantly. And then he did it and then, like all of a sudden, people were doing it because it's a possibility. It was like when um karen switzer I think that's her name ran the boston marathon illegally. Back then they thought, uh, a woman's uterus would fall out if they ran 26.2 miles. And you know, now here we are and I think it's like at 52% compared to 48%, it's 49, 50. More women run long distance than men because they see the possibilities.
Speaker 2:And you know the one thing that I do want to talk about, because I know this book, chuck, if I had this book growing up because man, talk about an anxious kid, talk about a kid that had I was the severe, severe introvert they thought I couldn't even speak english. Clearly, it's my first language. Confidence for teens. I I didn't start getting confidence until many years after that, but I know you wrote a book confidence for teams, a new chapter for the family by the one, the, the great chuck bernard, which is you. So. So talk to me, man, what's like so essentially it is.
Speaker 3:It's the jackson family, which is a kind of a composite of family I knew and the the situations that that happened to the teenagers are like real situations that I know of, that people know of. I kind of wove those in the story.
Speaker 2:So you just change people's names to protect the innocent Right.
Speaker 3:So the Jackson family is a real family, but a lot of the things in there are real stories.
Speaker 2:So it's quote-unquote fiction with the Jackson family.
Speaker 3:But they meet up accidentally with this mindset mentor who brings them in under his wing and shows them ways to begin to take control of their mindset. And with that comes the confidence, right? Your confidence comes when you begin to see yourself differently, and that's all mindset related. It's those beliefs that you have about yourself, it's those stories you tell yourself. It's those beliefs that you have about yourself. It's those stories you tell yourself. When you begin to tell yourself different stories, when you have different beliefs, like I am fearfully and wonderfully made, I'm made in the image of God, when you have those beliefs, wow, you carry yourself differently, right?
Speaker 2:Your confidence is just magnified, right so those you affirmations, I'm assuming that that's that's one thing that could definitely get us on the on the road every day, in every way, I'm getting stronger and stronger absolutely, absolutely all I need is within me now yeah, those affirmations are really powerful.
Speaker 3:The other thing I even weave into that book is part of the rituals that I encourage to do everything in my power to help families build. But one of those things in there positive affirmations, anchoring, but music is a powerful anchor strongly encourage people to get playlists of really upbeat songs, uplifting songs, meaningful songs now all of us upbeat songs, uplifting songs, meaningful songs Now all of us have songs that trigger some positive memories. Sometimes we have songs that might trigger the negative memories too, always Anchoring yeah, anchored in. But having those variety of playlists are powerful and actually some of the ones that have some really great lyrics to go with music are showtune songs. You know there's just so many of those that are just powerful. You know there's some great rock songs too, right?
Speaker 2:Well, when it comes to show tunes, just not the Phantom of the Opera, because, if you think about it, the Phantom writes that amazing show for her, he kills the leading lady, does all this stuff, but because he looks horrible, she rejects him and that's the story in general. So you want uplifting like the greatest showman, I would assume.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. You know, like, well, one of the classics from Sound of Music right is when the dog bites, when that whole thing's all about what you do to reframe negative stuff. The whole song's about that, you know. There's just there are tons of really good uplifting songs and I've told students this before. I said listen, I get it Like after my wife died there was some music I would listen to that actually made me feel a little sad. It was kind of our songs and she wasn't there to share them and all. But I wouldn't allow myself to wallow in that. It's easy to begin to get sucked into that negativity and just begin to play some of those things or do some of those things, say those those things over and over. And that's what was happening to that student I referred to earlier and we were able to get her out of that. She remembers some of the things we talked about with music and other stuff. She began to change what she was listening to, change what she was saying to herself. It's simple, right.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's simple and it's common sense, but everybody tries to complicate things. That's why, like when you're, oh, chuck, change my mindset. Is this like, is this going to take me years? No, it's not man. It's not man. It's, it's not everything, can you? You, a person, has to at least have awareness and then want change.
Speaker 3:Man, you know, you have to be sick and tired of being sick and tired of the same stuff different day yeah, you know, I think tony robbins is one who says change really happens in a moment, moment that you make a decision oh, that's your destiny is created by something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yes yes, yes, we both butchered it I'm gonna have to Google the actual quote.
Speaker 3:But it's true. I mean, it's right. I had a student who came to us as a sixth grader. Usually I wouldn't get into seventh. We'd have a seventh and eighth grade and he was a very likable kid but kind of a goofy, awkward kid Didn't realize that he didn't feel good about himself so he became the class clown. He didn't realize that kids were laughing at him instead of with him and we worked with him on that. It took a while but he finally made a decision and realized that those labels that he had about who he was weren't true. And once he finally got there, once we finally got him there and showed him how to kind of make that decision like you can let go of these. And he did Well.
Speaker 3:He had not been a good master at all. He tested in the bottom 10th percentile three years behind grade level. His 8th grade year he gave him some new habits to do. He had made the decision that that's what he wanted, let go of some of those limiting beliefs and all, and he went from bottom 10th percentile to 50th percentile, increased his math grade level three grade levels in one year. It was all about changing the mindset and he had to make the decision that he was going to own it right, that he was the one responsible. And once he did that boom, then we could really work with him.
Speaker 2:And it was like, I'm sure, and that's a real story Usually people would be like oh, come on, charles, is that on the ABC Sunday special? Come on, charles, is that on the ABC Sunday special? And it's like no, because act that, but you also instilled that into them A lot of times. What happens, though, is people are like oh you know, kid's an idiot, screw him, and then he becomes one because no one believed in him, no one gave him the tools, and, a lot of times, people heck. Look at how many people are waiting for someone to believe in them. Instead of just realizing that, all you have to do is believe in yourself, and if there's someone else that does believe in you and pushes you towards that person that you were always meant to be, then that's just like the icing on the cake.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, absolutely beliefs are. You know, it's the essence of mindset, really right? Mindset really is the what you believe to be true?
Speaker 2:you know globally for sexually so, yeah, heck, but years ago you and it'd be like a silent podcast. It'd be pretty boring because you know I couldn't talk to people, especially a stranger. Oh my gosh, who's Chuck Bernard? And oh my gosh, what if he doesn't like me? And you know what if he's?
Speaker 2:smarter than me and just like all the limiting beliefs, just like piled in and like every or does he want to meet in person? Or how about if he lives here? And I don't, how about if? But that's but once you get, once you realize enough, enough of that story that, because we all can easily go playing victim, you, we could have all we've nobody's had. It's the ebb and flow of life, because we all can easily go playing victim. It's the ebb and flow of life.
Speaker 2:And if some people had an amazing life and hardly any adversity, hey, life isn't fair, but you know what it is, what it is. We're dealt with cards and live it to the fullest. And, heck, man, like I said, you're a perfect example. You took adversity, you created that pressure and you became more service oriented because, you know, god gave you the option. You could have gone the other way, chuck. We could be like, yeah, chuck was a great guy, man, but he, he became a recluse, started drinking, was an angry guy, thinking life was against him, but you didn't. And you had that choice. We all have choices. So you know what, though? You haven't told us where to get this book that I wanted to read or that I should have read, like 35 years ago yeah, um, people can reach out to me.
Speaker 3:I will have a special deal for your guests. We are just shipping and handling. That's all they would need to do. So they can reach out to me at coachchuck360.com and there they can text me or email me and I'll send a link to them where they can get that shipping. Only, it's available on Amazon. So if they want to go out on Amazon and just yeah, well, you know what.
Speaker 2:It's capitalism, chuck. There's nothing wrong, man. You put your blood, sweat and tears in it. So if they want to buy it, then let them. I know you're in service. You want to make the world, you want to shift. Have them do that positive shift. But it's okay to be a capitalist once in a while.
Speaker 3:That I totally agree with. I was, you know again, I said it. So the gift's there, but Amazon is on Amazon, they can get it there.
Speaker 2:Help out Chuck, Help out Jeff. Jeff needs just in case this marriage doesn't work. So it's okay this way. It's a win-win for everybody and you get the book Now your podcast. Now your podcast. When's your podcast? When's your show?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I am about to start actually season three and three Congratulations, brother.
Speaker 3:Thank you. Thank you, it's been. I've taken people from all walks of life. It's um mindset, mentoring for athletes, families and entrepreneurs. So I'm always looking for potential guests, people who overcome I've been especially interested of late school mental health related type stuff, so people who are coaches, educators, who kind of see the front lines. But I've had actually I'm doing major renovation of my house right now and my contractor was a podcast guest of mine and he had an amazing story of overcoming. So, yeah, it's, and it's on YouTube and Spotify and it's uh, and it's on uh, youtube and spotify and it's uh they. When I get into season I, I try to release one show a week look at that, chuck, you're an amazing man, and also so coach chuck360.com.
Speaker 2:Can we? We hire you to do that mind shift?
Speaker 3:Absolutely, absolutely. The core programs are Mindset Transformation Program and that's followed up with a Transformative Habits Integration Program and then a follow-up to that is the mindset assessment. So, essentially, with a mindset transformation program, that's where we take you through those first two steps of getting you in a place where you're identifying, sowing those seeds right. It's the self go through a whole cleanup process, get those, those weeds out and the habits. I'll do everything in my power to help the family develop some powerful, powerful habits in their and their kids' lives. And then that follow-up is all about all right where we add, after these 10 weeks and then showing them how to amp up their goal setting. So that's my core trilogy of programs.
Speaker 2:Well, chuck is a real-life, Mr Miyagi, he'll get you to win the All-State Champion. You'll be the next Daniel LaRusso. He's got that ability. He'll make sure you don't sweep the leg or anything crazy like that. He's all about winning. One final question, brother, because I I have to ask on, got it? Is anybody with a great mindset? What advice would you give this person? I'll play this person, charles. I don't know man. I just have sleepless nights. I just don't know man. The years just keep on going by faster and faster. I just feel defeated. I just feel defeated in every aspect of my life. Chuck, any words of wisdom? I'm just tired of all this. I'm tired of the grind.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know what? I can appreciate that in there, and the whole key is for you to finally recognize that you are the one driving the bus and once you realize that you're driving the bus and you could take it wherever you want to go, sometimes all you need is a map and having a nice tour guide along the way to get you headed in the right direction. That's what I do and, man, there's some fabulous destinations out there. But asking for help is something that we sometimes don't like to do. But hey, the best have coaches, and sometimes you need to reach out and have somebody get you in the right direction, get you going.
Speaker 2:Great answer. Charles will get you from zero to hero. You're going to be the bus driver. You'll be like Ralph Cranman, minus sending Alice to the moon, brother.
Speaker 3:Thank you for the hour.
Speaker 2:Thank you for everything, dude. Thank you for being you. I love the conversation, learned a lot and man keep on being the champion mindset guy because the whole world man, there's so many people out there that need it. Thank you, brother.
Speaker 1:thank you really appreciate it what if you took action and made it happen and started living inside of your purpose? What if you're d word? Right now you can make the choice to never listen to that negative voice no more. The hardest prison to escape is our own mind. I was trapped inside that prison all for a long time. To make it happen, you gotta take action. Just imagine what if it did work.