The Bite Size Podcast with Lorayne Michaels

My Spine Said “No Running” And My Brain Said “Watch Me”

• Lorayne • Season 2 • Episode 77

Share episode

What do you do when the experts say your best days are over? Our guest, Ian, heard that he would walk with devices and never run again after a rare neurosarcoidosis diagnosis led to a risky spinal biopsy and paralysis from the chest down. He chose a different path. That quiet inner line—watch me—sparked a long, unglamorous climb through therapy, setbacks, and stubborn persistence that ended at two marathon finish lines.

We unpack the turning points that made the difference. Ian walks us through RINSE—Remember, Imagine, Notice, Shift, Expect—a practical framework forged in recovery and refined with coaching clients. You’ll hear how remembering real wins creates proof, how vivid imagination plus emotion primes your brain and reticular activating system, and why noticing small wins builds compounding confidence. We dig into shifting attention from what’s missing to what’s possible, and we explore expectation as a two-sided mindset: plan for difficulty so you’re ready, and expect to win so you commit without a Plan B.

Beyond the comeback story, Ian opens up about fatherhood, a marriage that didn’t survive the storm, and the growth that helped him show up now as a present partner and stepdad. We talk about teaching resilience to kids, choosing your hard in fitness and life, and the “metaphysical backpack” of tools you carry from one challenge to the next. If you’re stuck, you’ll get clear first steps: define the outcome, map point A to point B, pull a tool from your past, and take one small action today. The takeaway isn’t hype—it’s a method you can run tomorrow.

If this conversation moved you, tap follow, share it with someone who needs a comeback, and leave a quick review telling us the small win you’ll stack next.


Contact Ian HERE

Where you can find me:
LinkedIn
Instagram
YouTube
Email Me: LorayneMichaels22@gmail.com

SPEAKER_02:

Well, hey, thanks for joining us again, guys. Welcome back to the Bite Size Podcast. And I'm so excited for you to hear our conversation today with Ian. Real quick, we met a few years ago at an event, became acquaintances, friends. Absolutely love his wife. She's a freaking rock star. And she's smoking hot.

SPEAKER_03:

Yes, she is.

SPEAKER_02:

We have stayed in contact since. Ian's just an amazing dude with an amazing story, and I'm so pumped for you guys to hear this. So, Ian, welcome to the Bite Size Podcast.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you, Lorraine. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. It's so great to have you here. I want you to touch on or tell us briefly how you got started in the space that you are in right now. I know you have a wild story.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And I really want the listeners to hear how you started and where your life seemingly was headed. And then all of a sudden it took a dramatic turn and how you have really made that test your testimony, and how what was once a big mess is now your ultimate message.

SPEAKER_00:

Well that. Okay, that's a lot. Um, well, I mean, I'll I'll just take it back to where I was uh in 2009. I was about 32 years old. I was in middle management of a of a beverage distributing company where I was the department manager. Um my career was on its way up. Um I had a, I think my daughter was six at the time, my son was one. So I had a young family. Life was good. And then uh the universe decided to, as you mentioned, give me that test. And uh long story short, um I was diagnosed with a very rare disease called neurosarcoidosis. And the only way that that diagnosis could happen is I had to have spinal cord surgery. I was having a lesion growing on the inside of my spinal cord that was causing me some issues, some tingling sensations and some mobility issues. And being an athlete all my life and being very active, it was really starting to interfere with my life as I knew it. And also, this came out of left field, like there was no warning sign. So, in a matter of about six weeks, I went from having this tingling sensation in my right thigh to it spreading down to my feet and both legs, up to my chest, and then starting to have some issues with ambulation just by getting up and being able to walk. So, not knowing what this thing was, um, I was referred to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, which, if people don't know about the male clinic, that's like the experts of experts are the doctors and physicians there. So after some exhaustive testing, they had no idea what it was. Well, I should I should rephrase that. They had a pretty good idea what it was, but they weren't certain. So after every test you could think of, including a spinal tap, also they had to take they took tissue from the inside of my eyelid to do some testing. Oh my gosh, I didn't know about that. It was it I'll tell you what, Lorraine, sitting in a chair and having a needle sticking stuck into your eyeball is quite the experience. Yeah, it's this it's as freaky as it sounds. But after all of that testing, everything came back inconclusive. How funny? And they said, well, we have one last effort that we can do, but it is very risky. We can go in and we can take a biopsy of this lesion that is growing inside your spinal cord. Because at this point, we think it's either a tumor, so it could be cancer, or it's this disease called neurosarcoidosis. And at that point, I'm like, what the hell is neurosarcoidosis? And I'm thinking, okay, so I either have this disease that I've never heard of before, or I potentially have cancer. So they're like, okay, well, we have to go in and take a biopsy to figure out what this thing is. However, this is a very risky surgery. You could be paralyzed for the rest of your life. So knowing that, um, and I think back, you know, being 32 years old at the time, I think I was pretty naively optimistic. And I'm thinking, all right, well, let's do the surgery. You're gonna go and you're gonna figure out what it is, you're gonna fix me, and I'll be on my way. Because as I mentioned, um, I was very active. I was a runner. This was in uh June of 2009. I had a 5K in August, so I'm like, let's do this thing because I'm trained for this race, right? Like, uh, to be clear, Lorena, I had never broken a bone in my body, right? I had I have never had like a serious injury. So I'm thinking, you're gonna do the surgery, scish me up, figure out what it is, treat me. Yep, boom, boom.

unknown:

I'll be good.

SPEAKER_00:

I'll be good to go.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So I opt to do the surgery. So I wake up in my recovery room, and good news, not cancer, it's neurosarcoidosis, which is treatable, it's not curable, but it's not life-threatening. But the worst possible outcome had happened. I was paralyzed from the chest down. 75% of my body was non-responsive. No feeling, no sensation, no nothing. And a couple days go by, and I at first I'm thinking to myself, well, okay, this must be the anesthesia. It's it's gonna wear off, I'll be fine, and I'll start my recovery. Well, that never happened. And a day or two later, my care team comes in, my doctor, my neurosurgeon, and my neurologist who were a part of the surgery, and they were kind of going over my prognosis, telling me what my future was gonna be like.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, and they said, Well, Ian, we we think you'll be able to walk again, but you're gonna need a cane, walker, or crutches. Lorraine again. I don't know if I just had that naive um optimism or I just didn't want to accept what they were saying. But my next question was, Well, am I ever gonna run again? Because I'm thinking I got this 5k, right? And that's when the doctor looked at me and said, No. For some reason, a little voice in my head and in my heart said, Watch me. And that's when my mental fortitude kicked in. That's when my positive persistence kicked in. And it was like, when do we start physical therapy? Let's go.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And people asked me, like, how did how did you come to that in that in that moment of having the doctor, as we all typically revere the doctor as the end-all be-all experts, like they know it all. How did you decide that you weren't going to listen to that? And I said that in that moment I realized if your listeners take anything away from this, I want them to remember this is that to never let someone else's perception of your capabilities become your reality.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

And in that moment, that prognosis that they had for me was so far away from the identity that I had for myself and the future that I had planned for myself, that there was just no way that that was going to be my reality. So I promised myself in that moment that I was going to do anything and everything in my power to be 100% recovered and get past this seemingly impossible situation.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. Now, up until that point, have you, did you have any kind of experience with, you know, mindset and, you know, positive versus negative, you know, mental blocks or any of these things that we know now in this space of, you know, entrepreneurship and you know, personal development. Did you have any of that experience prior to? Or was this more of like an internal?

SPEAKER_00:

I'll say yes and no. I'll say no in terms of I didn't know what to call it. I didn't know what to phrase it. I didn't know what the, you know, what the frameworks were, but just through my personal experience in life, absolutely.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

But that's the key. We all have those experiences. Yeah. And that is something that I talk about in the framework that I have worked on creating from this experience over the last 15 years. And that is remembering the things that we've gone through before, that we have survived before, that we have been able to overcome before. When we're standing in that moment, when we are hit unexpectedly by the universe, by life, and we are reeling and we're like, how am I supposed to get past this?

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

How am I supposed to come back from what am I what am I going to do? Like, wait, hey, wait a second. Let's look back on our past. Yeah, I remember. Let's start thinking about all the things that we've done before in our lives that we have gotten us to this point, big and small.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Those things that we didn't think that we were able gonna be able to do before, but we did them.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Let's talk about that. You developed this methodology, the rinse method. R-I-N-S-E, and you just told us about our remembrance through the rest of that acronym.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so um, and and just to I'll circle back to that in a second, but just to answer your question, like, did I have any training for this? Did I have any type of education in mindset or or resilience up to that point? No, I didn't. But again, my life experience was all the training that I needed when I looked back on the things that I had dealt with before.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So when we talk about remember, which you've already touched on, the next the next letter in that acronym, in this framework is imagine. And for me, once I was in that hospital and I was there for about four weeks, so I had a lot of time on my hands. And I was, you know, paralyzed from the chest down. So they literally had to crane me out of my bed to put me into my wheelchair because I couldn't do that myself. So I had a lot of time to think, right? And I had a lot of time to use my imagination, which I used to think about what I wanted to achieve. I used my imagination to think about what the end result was going to be and the things that I had to do to get there. Now, imagining having the thought is one thing, but then creating and connecting the emotion that you're going to have once you are there is another. And when you're able to put those two things together, I feel like you are really starting to now create your own reality through your imagination.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. And us as adults, we hear imagination and we probably think of like, you know, us kid stuff, you know, you dream about whatever and use your imagination as a kid. But it's so important because it's not only about thinking about what you want to achieve or creating this vision and then attaching the emotion to it. It's also that when you do that, you are now opening up opportunities that you may have never seen before.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

You may have never thought of before. You might overhear a conversation now that has something to do with what you want to achieve that you might not have paid attention to before. But now that you have this thought, this imagination of what you want to achieve, that sinks in, that clicks in. All of a sudden that starts to stick to you, right? So having that imagination is so important because if nothing else, it starts to open your eyes up to other possibilities that you may not have seen or heard before.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, a hundred percent. Um, Ed Milette talks about that, about visualizing and then like really walking through that visualization and and how you feel and what you know, the experience and and touching the dream and all those things. And Dr. Joe Dispenza also talks about that of visualization and imagining it and again attaching a feeling to it because your brain doesn't know the difference between imagination and reality. So if you imagine it and you visualize it and you attach a feeling to it, how it's gonna feel when you do it, your brain is already thinking that it has happened. And then your RAS kicks in, and like you're saying, you're gonna start seeing things and hearing things. So your reticular activating system is gonna grab that and make things a reality. I mean, we can go into manifestation that that kind of like absolutely as part of it.

SPEAKER_00:

And I will tell you that when they gave me that prognosis, I went from them telling me that I was never gonna run again to saying to myself, I'm gonna run a marathon.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Now I had never run a marathon before in my life. Five K's were the farthest I had ran. I had no business thinking I was gonna run a marathon, but that was the vision. Yeah, right. Like, and and in doing that, you know, once I started to make my recovery, then I started thinking about how I'm gonna how am I gonna make this happen. So I'm starting to, you know, look up things about running. I'm starting to look up things about training, how am I gonna train for this marathon? Like it's little things like that, like you're saying, that you start to pull into your periphery because you have this gravitational pull of the things that you need. Now, of course, like you said, the universe rewards you with what you need, right? Whatever you put out is going to return to you. So if you're putting out these ideas that I want to achieve these certain things or I want to have this success or this goal, you're gonna start to get these little tidbits of information that the universe is gonna give you. But you have to be paying attention to act on them, right? So for sure. And you it's always about paying attention. But getting back to the methodology, you know, after the imagine, then there comes the notice, and that's the end in rents. And that is noticing your small wins. And for me, this was so important because during my physical therapy, after I got out of the hospital, I was in physical therapy five days a week. And my physical therapist helped me go from a wheelchair to a walker to two canes to crutches to one cane to eventually doing the unexpected, which was walking unassisted. But, you know, my whole thing is about positive persistence, right? That's the name of my podcast, that's the name of my brand. And if you think about that, you're like, okay, this dude's like, you know, he's positive all the time. Well, I'm here to tell you that that's not always the truth, right? During my journey, there were many days where I was like, this sucks. That, you know, I went through the the woe is me's. Like, why did this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this? Why is this happening to me now? And why am I not making progress faster? So, luckily for me, I had a physical therapist who was amazing, who helped me physically and mentally. Right. So she would see me on those days. And we had the relationship, the rapport of where I would be walking in and she could just see it on my face right away. And she would know that I was just not in the mood to do the work. And she would look at me and she would she would let me sit in it for a minute. And then she would say, Are you done now? Can we can we get to work?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Right? Is your pity party over?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And then she would tell me, she's like, Look, I understand that you're upset that you're not walking yet, or that you're not, you know, haven't ditched your crutches yet. But let's look back on what you've achieved this far. You were paralyzed in the bed, in the hospital, from the chest down, with the prognosis of you're not going to be able to walk again. And look what you've been able to do already. And it was being able to look back and notice those small wins that I already achieved that gave me the power to understand what I can achieve in the future. So when we notice those small wins, we stack them up one on top of the other, and we know what happens when we do that. They turn into big wins. But more importantly, by looking at what you've been able to achieve in the past, you start to think about and figure out what I can do in the future.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_00:

And then that leads into the S, which is shift. And that is shifting your mindset and not focusing on the things that you are having trouble with or the things that you can't do, or the perceived inabilities that you might have. It's shifting your mindset to focus on the things that you can do. Taking that pause and realizing all of the amazing things that you've been able to achieve and how you've been able to achieve them. What were the things that you were able to do in those times that you overcame adversity? And you start to tap into those tools, those skills that you've had, and that starts to that starts to kick start your belief, your self-belief. Which again shifts your mindset into believing that you can, that you will, that you must achieve the success that you're after. Which now we're talking about expectation. That's the E in rents. And that's it's a two-sided coin, if you will. In our journey to be able to achieve what we want, in our journey to be able to achieve the success or overcome adversity, we need to expect that it's going to be hard. There were many times where I fell literally to my knees, to the ground, and had to pick myself up and start to try to walk again and run again. Right? So we need to expect that the journey is gonna be difficult. Right? No one's gonna make it easy for us. And when we do that, we start to create mental fortitude. Right. So I believe that when you expect the journey to be hard, you prepare for it to be hard. So when the stuff hits the fan, you're ready for it.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

You're prepared to deal with it.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

But on the other side of that expectation, we also need to expect to win. Like that's the goal, that's the focus. Like, no, you have to have that no matter what mentality, whatever those metaphors are, like you need to take the island, you need to burn the boats, or you know, there is no plan B, there's only plan A, right? Whatever it is, but you need to expect that you have to, like, whatever it takes, yeah. I'm gonna get there. I'm going to achieve the success that I want, no matter what.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's the other side of that, that expectation.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, and I feel like when when you can work through this methodology, you now have the skill to come back from any adversity that is facing you. Time and time again, right? It's not just a one-shot deal. Like you can use this for the rest of your life because we all know it's not a question of if adversity is gonna happen again. It's when.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Because that's just life.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, exactly. No, totally. Um, I love the expect part because I know like with my coaching as well, you know, with personal training and everything, part of that is, you know, I ask them what obstacles are they coming up against, but what obstacles also think about that might happen. And it's not so much that I'm wanting them to think negatively or expect the worst or assume the worst, but we do have to prepare for obstacles to happen because we don't want to be in this, you know, positive Pollyanna, la-da-da, everything's good. You know, I have said goal. We'll use fitness for an example. I'm gonna lose 50 pounds, you know, but I'm starting in the fall and uh I'm gonna lose 10. And then next thing you know, there's Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, you know, and oh crap, I didn't think of all this food. You know what I'm saying? So having the expectation, like what can you what obstacles can you expect to happen and how are you gonna prepare for them? But also I love how you say that it's a two-sided coin, you know, expecting obstacles, but also expecting to get that goal, expecting to win, expecting to achieve this. That's a really good mindset frame of mind to keep.

SPEAKER_00:

That's where that manifestation comes into play. Right? When you are expecting to succeed, like you expect to see the sun come up tomorrow. When you have that expectation, like you just know it, right? Is in your body, it is seeping out of you at all times. Like you just have this expectation that it is going to be hard, yeah, but I know that if I continue to do what I need to do, and I believe that I can, eventually it's gonna happen. Yeah, you know, eventually I ran my first of two marathons 13 years after my surgery. Like it took me 13 years to get to that point. But that's where that persistence came in. Like it, and knowing that this is an uphill battle, yeah, knowing that this this journey that I'm on is going to be really difficult. But having that, like, what's more painful? What's more difficult to live with the obstacles and hurticles, hurdles that I need to deal with to get to where I want to go, or accepting this other fate that was given me by somebody else who didn't know me, who wasn't going to live my life, yeah, but said that you're gonna be stuck with some sort of durable medical equipment and you're gonna be handicapped for the rest of your life.

SPEAKER_02:

So, like what can't even imagine like a word for the two. Right. I just can't even imagine the thought of being told that and laying there going, well, okay. And not even trying. Can you imagine if you didn't even try?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes.

SPEAKER_02:

That's crazy to me.

SPEAKER_00:

And the reason I can imagine it is because I have seen that with other patients. As I go into, as I was going into physical therapy after I got home, and even at the end while I was in the hospital, you would see the um, I guess the the personalities of other patients come out to where they just they didn't want to work hard. And they allowed themselves to be relegated to this lesser version of themselves because they didn't want to get uncomfortable enough to do the things that they needed to do to move themselves to the next version of themselves, of their recovery. And we see this, I think, all the time, even in the in the fitness world where people will come in to us with with a problem they want to solve. They either want to get in shape, lose weight, they want to train for an event or something like that. But they don't necessarily want to do all the work to do it because it's hard.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Right? And so again, it's a choice when it comes down to it. It's a choice. What are you willing to live with? Are you willing to live with where you are right now, which you are clearly not happy with because you wouldn't be seeking help if you weren't? Or are you gonna choose to do the hard thing and make yourself uncomfortable and do the things that you typically probably don't want to do necessarily to get to where you want to go?

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

And so it's like, well, if if you put it like that, I guess I I want to do the work. Yes, you want to you want to do the work.

SPEAKER_02:

Choose your hard.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, choose, choose your hard.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh my gracious. Um, so what would you say to maybe someone who's currently feeling stuck, whether it be in their career or their health journey, or they've faced a personal setback? Like, what's the what's the next practical first step that you would have them take to create a comeback?

SPEAKER_00:

I think two two things. Number one is what is the outcome you are seeking? Like, what is it that you want to either achieve? Or what is it that the thing is that you want to overcome? What's the end goal? And have that clear. Like we already talked about using your imagination and creating that vision for yourself and being able to see it, feel it, touch it, like have that dream, have that idea, have that imagination, that vision so vivid that it's almost like you can touch it. Like you've got all the details figured out of what you want to achieve. And then pause for a second and say, okay, where am I at? What is the obstacle that is in front of me? And for some of us, it's just looking in the mirror and it's ourselves. But thinking about, okay, I want to get to point B. I'm at point A. What is standing in my way? And how do I get past this adversity? How do I get past this challenge? What have I done in the past that I've been able to achieve that can help me get over this next hurdle? Because here's what I believe. I believe you walk around with what I call this metaphysical backpack, right? This invisible backpack. That every time that we figure, or every time that we come into contact with a challenge, with an adversity, with a challenge that stands in our way, we go to work on it somehow. And we create a tool for ourselves. Whether that is a skill, whether that is a mindset, whether that is a heart set, whatever it is that we use to achieve success, we've created this tool. Put it in that metaphysical backpack. And the next time that adversity strikes, when challenge strikes, when disaster strikes, when trauma happens, we pull that tool out and we go to work on it because we've been able to overcome something before. So we use whatever we used before on this challenge here. And as we do that, guess what? We're building a new tool to take on this challenge. And when we overcome that, put it in the metaphysical backpack because we're going to use it again on the next one. So we just need to remember, and this is what resiliency is all about. Remembering that we have been able to overcome challenges before, that we are more powerful than we realize, because we, I think we forget, we forget that we've been able to be successful before. And again, big ways and small ways. But when we can remember that, remember that we have the power to overcome, remember that we have the power to believe in ourselves, to have that self-belief that I can achieve great things and I will, then we can use that again as our ammunition, if you will, to take down whatever is standing in front of us as a challenge, adversity, or obstacle.

SPEAKER_02:

That's awesome. I love that. How has this your story and everything that has happened to you, how has it helped you as a father, as a husband? How have you learned to show up different because of it?

SPEAKER_00:

That is a great question, Lorraine. And man, okay, so not to take this in a totally different direction, but my journey has really gone all over the place, right? So I'm remarried. I have four awesome stepsons, and during my recovery, um, you know, I was I was going through it personally, emotionally, and I think because of part of that, a marriage fell apart. But I didn't know it. Yeah. Uh became lonely and and unhappy and but I didn't know it. Yeah. Um, and in this journey of self-improvement, which is one I've really have been on since that day waking up in that hospital bed, you know, I had these experiences that I've had um to help others to be very fulfilling.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And being in a a new relationship, which is now five years old, it's not really not new anymore, but being with a a partner who has taught me so much emotionally about teaching me about what I am capable of emotionally, which I didn't know that I was before, because in the old version of myself, I was very emotionally closed off. But she has she has taught me like emotional resiliency. She has taught me how to be emotionally available and how to overcome some of the uh emotional roadblocks that happen in everyday life with with uh just relationships in in general. Yeah. So the the experience of what I've gone through in terms of you know, as was supposed to be medically improbable, if if not impossible, and dealing with all of that trauma and those emotional challenges and physical challenges, and being able to achieve something that wasn't supposed to happen, again, using that to help my clients achieve things that they didn't think were possible, it's been again very fulfilling. But when it comes to now being a stepdad, and our our kids range from um nine up to 22 so there's a big gambling there.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Um I have another I have another shot at at being a dad. And what I mean by that is as I was going through it in my first marriage, like I wasn't emotionally available for my kids. And I have two about from my first marriage. And that has come back to bite me because I was so focused on my recovery at one time and then really focused on becoming an entrepreneur and building a business that I wasn't making time for them. And but luckily for me, I guess we'll say I I was getting fulfillment out of helping other people find the next best version of themselves. So that that kept me sustained happy happy wise I guess that even makes sense. But now in this in in this new relationship, I guess not really my my my life now taking the the rinse methodology and teaching it to our kids and helping them at a young age realize how to overcome adversity and being an example for them is is really great. And that's something I I love to do and and love to talk to school age kids to be able to plant the seed of you are able to overcome whatever stands in your way. And here are the steps to do it. You know, because we don't learn that in school we don't learn things about mindset in school. We don't learn things about how to bounce forward as our friend Amber Lee will say from adversity right we don't we don't learn those things. So it's super important I think that our youth be introduced to these ideas of how they can become the best version of themselves even in the face of adversity that they're going to have to deal with yeah for sure. That was a really long way to get to that point I'm sorry there it is.

SPEAKER_02:

I love it. No I I 100% agree uh I mean the youth is up against a a lot the these days they have a lot against them so um training them up in that way um is necessary 100% agree so as we're wrapping up um Ian where is the best place for people to contact you if they want to work with you um if they want to book you and hear you as a speaker um or yeah need you as a coach where's the best place to find you so they can go to uh my website thepositiversistence dot com uh they can check me out on socials uh Ian R Bowen that is Instagram Facebook LinkedIn all the spots and you can check out the Positive Persistence podcast which is wherever you can download podcasts from so a lot of different places to uh check it out and uh get that information if you're interested in I'll have all of that in the show notes as well. Ian thank you so much for your time for telling us your story I think it's a huge huge need in this world that people realize that their story matters that things that have may have happened to them is not a setback but really um a setup for what they were created to do. My friend you were created to tell your story and to encourage others and to equip others by your example your methodology and just your existence is a light and I thank you. I thank you for your friendship and I thank you for being here today.

SPEAKER_00:

I appreciate that. And I will leave this with uh a quote from Les Brown that talks that says that setbacks are nothing but setups for comebacks. But that is only true if you are looking through the correct lens of self belief. So thank you Lorraine I really appreciate being here.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely all right guys if this episode has helped you in any way please make sure to like and share or send it to someone who may need uh to hear this message today because it's a powerful one. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you on the next episode. Peace