How Rejection Sparked Elevatus: The Journey to Transformational Resilience

“Getting back to normal” is one of the most comforting lies we tell ourselves after a breakup, divorce, custody fight, job loss, debt, burnout, grief, or a full-blown identity shift. When life hits hard, the old version of you doesn’t fully come back and pretending otherwise keeps you stuck. So we ask a different question: what do you build now?

Danny DeJesus explains why he created Elevatus, what the name stands for, and what it actually promises. He shares the turning point that sparked it all. A rejected manuscript and the choice to stop waiting for permission and start building an audience through writing, speaking, and real frameworks. What began as lessons from co-parenting and child custody challenges grows into a wider message about life transitions, personal agency, and transformational resilience built on truth instead of hype, motivation, and inspiration.

We dig into the core idea behind C2R2E (Collapse, Confrontation, Realignment, Reclamation, Elevation): transformation is a process, not a slogan. Ownership doesn’t mean you caused the pain; it means you choose what’s yours to do next. You’ll also get a practical exercise to use right away, including four questions that move you from outward blame to clear action within seven days.

If you want more episodes on navigating change with structure and clarity, subscribe, share this with someone in a hard transition, and leave a review so more people can find The Next Baseline.

Transcript

Welcome And The Elevatis Promise

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to the next baseline. I'm Danny De Jesus, your host for this episode, and I want to talk today about specifically why I created Elevatus, what Elevatis actually stands for, and what I believe it really promises. Now, this is an important episode for me because I think people see this brand, they see the C2R2E framework, they see a website, they see lots of content that is being published and disseminated and distributed out regularly. And I think a lot of people assume that it all came together in a clean and polished way just from the way that it presents itself, especially if you go to elevatiscoach.com. And I want to say and be clear that that is far from the truth because it did not uh start out that way. And so what you see now came through rejection, it came through hard lessons, a lot of life experience, and a long process of getting honest about what I was really trying to say within my message.

Rejection Becomes A Turning Point

SPEAKER_01 1:10

And so this journey, if we go back in time, it started back in May of 2025, so May of last year. And at that time, I had written a manuscript on my on the CTR2E framework, which stands for collapse, confrontation, realignment, reclamation, and elevation. And I believed in that message. And I believed in what I was trying to build. And so I pitched it and it got rejected multiple times. The manuscript was rejected multiple times by every agent that I sent the manuscript to. And that was a turning point for me because at some point I stopped looking at the rejection and I started looking at the bigger question. And the bigger question for me was not, why are they not giving me a shot? Rather, the bigger question became why am I waiting for the for permission to share something that I felt that I needed to share with the world? And that is when I made a deliberate decision where I said, I'm done waiting and I'm going to go out and build my own audience. I'm going to put out my message out myself. I'm going to write it. I'm going to speak it. I am going to build the thing directly myself. And that is that is how this got started. And

From Co-Parenting To A Larger Mission

SPEAKER_01 2:35

so it was the summer of 2025. And in the beginning, I felt it was pretty simple. I I started writing articles on Medium because that was the method that came, in all honesty, came easiest to me at the time. And so I started sharing those articles within my own circle at first. And I had people around me, interesting, interestingly enough, I had people around me telling me to keep writing, to keep going, and to keep developing that message. And I would say that was probably the moment that Elevatis was really born. Now, in the beginning, the content was nowhere near as unified and codified as it is today. And a lot, a lot of what I was writing had a lot to do with things like co-parenting, child custody, parenting plans, and navigating post post-divorce challenges, uh, specifically involving children. And that made sense because those experiences actually, you know, those are experiences that I that I encountered throughout my adult life, and they shaped a huge, just a huge part of me for pretty much over a decade. And so I had lived through specifically over 10 years of child custody challenges. Um, I have two children, each with a different mom, each having its own challenges with respect to co-parenting in those relationships. And so in that, I had I had learned many, many hard lessons that influenced, you know, how how I show up, because those hard lessons taught me a lot about structure, conflict, responsibility, and endurance. So naturally, a lot of my first writing came as a result of that. But over time, over time, throughout this whole journey of building Elevatis, um, I realized you know something, something important. And what I was trying to say was much bigger than child custody, co-parenting, and parenting plans. It was it was bigger than divorce. And it was even bigger than just one solitary uh category. Because when I stepped back and I looked at my life and looked at what people around me were dealing with, I realized that there was a deeper issue that kept showing up again and again.

Why Most People Struggle With Change

SPEAKER_01 5:08

And the one thing, the the concept that kept on showing up is that I felt that a lot of people do not know how to navigate transition or change. And we talk about a lot about resilience. We talk about that term, that word. We tell people to be strong, we tell people to keep pushing, we tell people to bounce back, we tell people to grind, we tell people to hustle, and we also tell people to stay motivated and inspired. But what I found is that most people that I've encountered at least were never actually taught how to move through disruption in a clear and structured way forward. They were never taught how to go through a breakup and become someone stronger on the other side. They were never taught how to go through a divorce and rebuild and reset with some form of clarity. They were never taught how to handle a job loss, a career shift, financial pressure, a leadership setback, a major lifestyle change, grief, family disruption, or even an identity change. They were never taught how to face the reality that that life changed them, in fact, and that the answer is not always about getting back to the to the old life or restoring what was lost. And that became a major, major realization for me.

Build A New Baseline After Pain

SPEAKER_01 6:48

Because I do not believe in restoration in the way many people I think talk about it. I do not believe the goal is to restore your life, in fact, back to the way it was. In fact, I think that's impossible. Because to restore something means to bring it back to a former state. And I do not think that is how real transformation tends to work. When life really hits you, when disruption really hits you, when the pain really reshapes you, the old version of you is simply just gone. You're not the same person anymore, nor will you ever be the same person again. The person you were before the divorce, before the breakup, before the court fight, before the debt, before the burnout, before the family loss, before the career shakeup, before the pressure, before the setback, that version of you is no longer fully there. You have been changed by whatever the experiences are. And I think I personally think we need to be more honest about that and have more conversation, a real conversation about that. Because a lot of messaging out there that still sells people the idea that the goal is to get back to normal. Here's the thing: I am not interested in getting people back to normal. The brand that I'm building is not interested in getting people back to normal. I am not interested in helping people build a you know build the same, re-try to rebuild the same life that just no longer exists. What I am interested in is actually helping people build a new a new baseline. And that is why this podcast is called the next baseline. Because the real question after disruption is not how do I go back? The real question is what do I build now? And that is where elevatus comes in. The word elevatis points to elevation, to rising, to moving upward. But for me, it is not fake positivity. It is not hype. It is not pretending life did not hurt, and it's not bypassing pain. It's about building upward through truth. It is about becoming more honest, more clear, more structured, and more intentional because of what life had revealed to you. And that is the promise behind Elobatis. The promise is not that transformation is going to be easy. The promise is not that I am going to save you in any way, shape, or form. And the promise is not that I'm going to give you some polished, feel-good answer because I'm not. The promise is that I'm going to speak honesty with honesty and about what change actually requires. The promise is that I am going to offer you a framework that helps people think more clearly about transition. And that promise is also that I'm going to treat transformation like a process and not like a slogan, not like a brand. The promise is also that I am going to tell the truth as clearly as I can. And that matters to me because truth and clarity were the biggest difference makers in my own personal life. That no nonsense approach is a huge part of who I am.

Ownership Over Blame

SPEAKER_01 10:24

Some of that absolutely comes from my military background, so I'll admit to that. Because I spent over 20 years in military service, um, still serving on active duty at the time of this episode. So, to be clear, everything I say is independent of my service in the military or not representative of the government either. So let me be clear about that. Um, but I will tell you one of the things that the military has taught me. It was an environment that taught me that excuses do not move reality. Clear thinking does, responsibility does, ownership does, and action. But this also did not just come from the military. It also came from life. It came from what I had to learn along the way, and especially the hard way. I had to navigate child custody battles over the course of nearly 10 years. I had to navigate challenges in my own military career. I had to navigate debt. I had to navigate painful personal transitions, painful losses, divorces, breakups. And in every one of those situations, I learned the same core lesson. You cannot change what you refuse to own. And let me be very clear here: owning something does not always mean you caused it. And that is where I think people get stuck. Sometimes the pain was not was really not your fault. Sometimes the betrayal was not your fault. Sometimes the legal mess was not your fault. Sometimes the breakup or the divorce was not your fault. Sometimes the pressure, the loss, the unfairness, the behavior of another person, none of that started with you. But even then, if you want your life to change, you still have to ask yourself, what is mine to own now? And that is where personal agency begins. Because if all you do is point outward, then your life stays in somebody else's hands. And that is exactly why I say C2R2E is inward first. C2R2E does not work if your main focus is what everybody else should be doing. It does not work if your main focus is who failed you. It does not work if your main focus is waiting for another person to take responsibility before you do. It really starts with you. It starts when you stop asking, when are they going to fix this? And you start asking, what can I do with what is actually in my control? And that's not easy. In fact, sometimes it's brutal. Because the truth is, real transformation is going to hurt. There will be pain in transformation. There will be sadness. There may be even tears. There may be depression. There may be some confusion. There may be anger. There may be rage. But there may be, but that also there may be a season waiting for you where it feels like your whole uh uh inner world is even getting pulled apart. These are real feelings. Okay, so I'm not discounting any of it. And but here's the thing, I am not interested in pretending that none of this is real. But I also do know this. There's gonna come a point in the story where something starts to shift. There comes a point where you stop living like only the wounded version of yourself. There comes a point where you stop waiting for the rescue. There comes a point where you stop negotiating with reality, and there also comes a point where you begin to become the protagonist, the hero of your own story and your life again. And that shift matters. And for me, that shift happened every time I stopped blaming and started owning. Not because blame was always inaccurate, but really because blame never really gave me the power that I was looking for, but ownership did. And when I dealt with my debt, for example, I could have stayed focused on all the reasons it happened. I could have pointed out to the legal fees, I could have pointed to the circumstances, I could have pointed to everything else around it. But at the end of the day, that debt was under my name. That also meant that if I owned it, I had the opportunity to defeat it. And I sure did. And the same thing, the same process and mindset applied during my child custody cases. The same thing also applied during my career challenges, and then also the same thing applied in my personal setbacks. So if I wanted to change, I had to take responsibility for my responses, my structure, my decisions, my boundaries, my mindset, my discipline, and what my next move was going to be. And that is the core of what I teach and what I instill. Not because I'm claiming to have all the answers because I don't. Not because I'm here to diagnose anybody because I can't. I'm not a therapist. I'm not a mental health professional. And also not because I'm here to tell you exactly how to live your life. Because your life is there for you to live and for you to own. But what I am doing is sharing a perspective built from my lived experience, hard lessons, my formal, you know, parts of it coming also from my formal education, and a framework that I spent the last 10 months refining since May 2025.

Credibility And Accessible Coaching

SPEAKER_01 15:56

And so, yes, I do want to mention my education here, but I want to do it in the right way. Because you see, last year uh in 2025, I earned my Master of Education in Higher Education Administration with a concentration in coaching. And I want to be honest about why that matters for me. I did not pursue that degree because I thought the title or the degree alone would make this message more meaningful because, in all honesty, I don't think it does. But I pursued it because I understood that credibility does matter. I knew lived experience was important. I knew my military background had its own uh perception as well. And I knew my own life lessons also mattered. But I also knew that formal preparation would strengthen the foundation and also help um people understand and take my work a little bit more seriously. So that's why. And even then, you know, even despite all that, you know, I still see myself in a very simple, simple way. Because at the end of the day, all I am is I'm just a guy with a message. And that is it, nothing more, nothing less. I'm a guy with a message who decided to stop waiting on someone's permission to get out there. And rather, I started focusing on the action that I needed to do to start building. And yes, I know the way I'm doing this. There, there's parts, probably parts of what I'm doing that may seem unconventional, and that's okay. Um, but one of the things that I promised myself is that if I was gonna put a message out there, I was gonna make as much of it easy for people to access and to use. Um, you know, I know building the way that I'm building right now may not match some typical formula, and that's by design. And I know that there's people out there, um, there's coaches out there, plenty of them, that hold information behind a paywall. They make the path more narrower or they keep lessons locked away. And that's not how I see this. You know, I believe people need access to real frameworks. I'm adamant that people need honest perspective and they also need practical guidance. I believe a lot of people out there, they they are truly, truly hurting. And for me, just from everything that I've experienced, things like religion, therapy, and mental health, you know, you know, although they have their place, I don't think it is it is simply enough. Because I believe a lot of people are trying to navigate life transitions that there's no language for, there's no structure for, and there's no direction for. And I believe that if I have learned something real, I felt like I needed to share it. I had a responsibility to share it, especially from a lot of the folks that have been influenced by and follow and hear their message that if you have something, you have a responsibility to share that, to make the next, you know, to make other people better. And so that is the path that I'm choosing. And so over time, over the last eight to ten months, my message has expanded because what started from co-parenting and custody, I'm finding to be something more complete. The same framework that I think helped me through through custody type of situations, I think also helps people going through divorce. It also helps people going through a breakup. Maybe disruption, a career disruption, a career change, a financial setback, people in debt, for example, leadership challenges, or even when your health comes into question and there's things that you need to change because you're receiving signals that you need to uh that your health needs a wake-up call. It can also help, I think, um, people that are going through identity shifts, the hap which uh happens when life no longer looks the way that it used to. And that is, and and really that that is um the core message um here that I want to be clear about. And the other thing is, you know, that transformational resilience. You know, I spoke about this in in in um, you know, my my second episode about trend uh or my first my first or second episode about transformational resilience and why that that term is important to me. Because it's important because it's not about bouncing back. Resilience to me is not about bouncing back. It is about is not about pretending nothing changed. It is not about trying to restore the old life. And in fact, what it is about is moving forward through a real process that I call collapse, confrontation, realignment, reclamation, and elevation, otherwise known as C2R2E, and building a new standard from what that disruption has revealed to you. And that is what Elevates is all about. That is what C2R2E is all about. And that is what the next baseline podcast is all about. So if I had to tell you the promise of Elevates as directly as possible, I would say it this way. Elevatis promises to tell the truth about transition. Elivatis promises to treat transformation like a real process. Elevatis promises to help people think inward instead of living stuck outward. Elevatis promises to bring structure to disruption.

The Four-Question Transition Exercise

SPEAKER_01 21:54

So before I close, I want to give you a short exercise. Because I do not just Want this to be something you just listen to. I actually want this podcast, this episode, to give you something real and then to give you a taste of how I think, but then also how I tend to coach as well. So here's the exercise. I would like for you to take a piece of paper or open to the notes application on your phone and write down one transition in your life that is still affecting you right now. And you only have to have a conversation with yourself. So there's no harm nor foul. Just be honest with you. But focus just on one transition. Okay. It could be a divorce. It could be a breakup that you're still grappling with. It could be a debt. It could be a job change. It could be maybe you're feeling burnt out. It could be a loss of some sort. And so, you know, loss could be whatever it is that you define it as. It could be maybe you're a single parent and you're going through co-parenting stress. It could be whatever you define as a personal failure. Or it could be something you have never fully named, and maybe it's time to give it a name. And once you have it, I would like for you to answer four questions that I'm going to pose.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

Question one, what happened? Not the full novel, just the truth. What happened? Question two. What keeps pulling your attention outward?

SPEAKER_01 23:44

In other words, you can ask where am I still focused on them? The system, the unfairness, the betrayal, the timing, or the past? And be honest. Question three. What is actually mine to own now? Not what was yours back then. What is yours to own now? It is could be your healing, your boundaries, the way you communicate, your financial plan, your discipline, your choices, your standard, your next move. What is yours now? Question four. What is one action I can take in the next seven days that reflects ownership? This is not a fantasy, not a giant life overhaul. So don't go blown up your life. One at, you know, this is intended to be one action, one boundary, one budget, one budget decision, one journal entry, one hard conversation, one document, one step. So at the end of the day, what is one action that you can take in the next seven days? And I just gave you some examples there. Then uh moving on to the last piece here is and this is uh this is something I want you to sit with. Sit with this for a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Sit with this final sentence I'm going to deliver to you.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

I may not have caused all of it, but I can still choose what happens next. Okay, say that with me again. Say that with me. I may not have caused all of it, but I can still choose what happens next. And I think that sentence is the difference. And that is where the shift begins. That is where blame starts losing power. That is where personal agency starts coming back. That is where a new baseline can begin.

Final Reminder And Next Steps

SPEAKER_01 25:58

So that is why I created Elevatis. And this all started because my manuscript was rejected May of 2025. And this message has grown through writing, reflection, and lived experience. It's been sharpened through co-parenting, through my co-parenting experiences, my career lessons, my path of financial recovery, my personal challenges, and my hard-earned clarity. And it became a message about transformational resilience because I believe people need more than just motivation and inspiration. They need truth, they need structure, they need a process, they need language for what transition actually requires. And above all, they need to know that while they may never go back to who they were, they can still become someone stronger, clearer, and more grounded moving forward. And that is the work. That is the message, and that is the message of Elevatis. That is what Elevatis stands for. And that is why this podcast also exists. So with that, I'm Danny DeJesus, and this is the next baseline. So if this episode gave you something to think about, take the exercise seriously and spend some time with it. If you want to learn more about Elevatus coaching, C2R2E and transformation resilience, the links will be in the description. Until next time.