In this episode of The Brave Podcast, we get to travel across the pond and hang out with Lee Chambers. Having spent the last 10 years working in a variety of fields, including local government, a corporate organisation, and in elite sports, he has now brought his experience and qualifications with the aim to impact the wellbeing of thousands of individuals and businesses through organisational wellbeing advancement, while looking to promote conscious and purpose lead leadership internally. This is an issue very close to his heart, as after losing the ability to walk in 2014 due to chronic illness, he has battled back to achieve a positive health outcome, and is now on the pathway to become medication free.
He is a father of 2, coaches a disability football team, and enjoys eating good food with good friends. He is currently writing his first book, “How To Conquer Anything”, which will be released in November 2020.
In this episode, we discuss:
Follow the Brave Podcast
Learn More about Lee Chambers and Essentialise
Let's shop!
The Drifted Drum has apparel, gifts, and decor that are faith inspired and hand crafted by local artists in Tennessee. They will also host an online retreat on 12/5. See something you like? Interested in the retreat? Use the code "Brave" at checkout to receive 10% off your purchase.
Do you LOVE bagels? Coffee? Just plain joy?
Do you love to read but don’t have the time to sit down?
Try Audible! Get a month free: http://www.audibletrial.com/TheBravePodcast
Wanna learn more about me? Check out my website!
In this episode of The Brave Podcast, we get to travel across the pond and hang out with Lee Chambers. Having spent the last 10 years working in a variety of fields, including local government, a corporate organisation, and in elite sports, he has now brought his experience and qualifications with the aim to impact the wellbeing of thousands of individuals and businesses through organisational wellbeing advancement, while looking to promote conscious and purpose lead leadership internally. This is an issue very close to his heart, as after losing the ability to walk in 2014 due to chronic illness, he has battled back to achieve a positive health outcome, and is now on the pathway to become medication free.
He is a father of 2, coaches a disability football team, and enjoys eating good food with good friends. He is currently writing his first book, “How To Conquer Anything”, which will be released in November 2020.
In this episode, we discuss:
Follow the Brave Podcast
Learn More about Lee Chambers and Essentialise
Let's shop!
The Drifted Drum has apparel, gifts, and decor that are faith inspired and hand crafted by local artists in Tennessee. They will also host an online retreat on 12/5. See something you like? Interested in the retreat? Use the code "Brave" at checkout to receive 10% off your purchase.
Do you LOVE bagels? Coffee? Just plain joy?
Do you love to read but don’t have the time to sit down?
Try Audible! Get a month free: http://www.audibletrial.com/TheBravePodcast
Wanna learn more about me? Check out my website!
Lee Interview
[00:00:00] Alexis Newlin: [00:00:00] I'm excited to do this. Thank You so much for reaching out. All right. So I'm going to have you introduce yourself and tell people who you are, and then we'll kind of kick off the interview.
Lee Chambers: [00:00:11] Super. So I'm Lee Chambers. I live in a city called Preston in the North of the UK. It's pretty close to yet lumps it border looking across the pond to the U S on the side.
And we are known for of places, such as Manchester and Liverpool, and only around four to five hours drive from London. it's generally very wet here and I've grown up. In this part of the world. And I still live here today, despite traveling round a little bit in many ways, it's home. And I come from a blue collar family.
So my parents very hard working, instilled me with a work ethic. They identified quite young I was quite talented in education and push me to go to university chemicals. One of my problems was to do [00:01:00] so. I had some mental health struggles at university that challenged me to really have to look deep inside myself and start to, you know, navigate the world in a more adult whereas I've made that transition from child to adult came with its own difficulties. I managed to go back to university and graduate. Unfortunately, this was in 2007. So not the best time. I then got myself a job as a graduate and then lost it again, due to the economic crash in 2008, that led me on the path to start up my own business and go back into work in a different field, which led me on an interesting journey where I really, my business took off in a lot of ways and I became materially successful.
And now I was able to then meet people and meet my wife and have my son, things were going relatively smoothly and I've become more comfortable than I probably should have been. And then in [00:02:00] 2014, I became ill and over the course of a week, lost the ability to walk.
Alexis Newlin: [00:02:04] Wow.
Lee Chambers: [00:02:04] And that in so many ways changed my life worldview, gave me a, gave me a chance to reset and reconfigure on redefine what was going to be important to me in the future and the process to recover took me around a year.
Alexis Newlin: [00:02:19] Okay.
Lee Chambers: [00:02:20] . And through that I really managed to chisel my character and what my purpose of mission was. and then I spent those coming years since then really recovering and spending a lot of time with my son and my daughter.
And now there started school, I've launched a business, which in so many ways just to help other people. Find that purpose of mission, define that, and then really start to look at the health and their energy and how they can propel themselves in that direction while ensuring that they are becoming happier, gradually becoming healthier and starting to really anchor into what they want to achieve by the time they're [00:03:00] travel to the next world from this world.
And really in so many ways, just half the time. It's best to think. Because we don't get into a car and then just start driving. We actually decide where we're going, where our destination is and our lives. How often do we just sit down and say, this is where I want to go. How am I going to get there?
Alexis Newlin: [00:03:23] Yeah. I love it. Thank you. That was a great like intro to who you are. So I'm going to have you go back to the mental health struggles. You said it was in 2007. Do you mind explaining what was going on and how that kind of started to shape your future?
Lee Chambers: [00:03:38] Yeah. So in so many ways that I had, that kind of late millennial childhood. So while my parents weren't around a lot because they were working, but they quite often work 12 hours a day. There was a point in time when my mom was working three different jobs, right. And rarely that was to ensure that we would never me in my brothers. I've seen younger [00:04:00] brothers and we were never hungry, never homless.
You know, we always had our basic needs met. And we have that childhood where in so many ways I would set myself off to church on a Sunday morning, we bought my parents away at work and I was like six. I was like six or seven at this point, walking down to be part of the congregation and truth, be told that comfortable childhood meant not in so many ways.
My parents smoothed out a lot, those bumps so that when I went off to university and moved out and suddenly got the autonomy and the freedom. It felt great, like in so many ways, it's that ability to step outside of yourself and really start to define who you are, except that about halfway through that experience, I started to struggle because I really was trying to access myself, really dig deep down into who I am, who I'm going to be common as an adult.
How can I express that [00:05:00] authentically? And bringing that to the world are what I found is. Didn't have the ability to navigate my emotions and feelings. Didn't have the self awareness to really figure out who, you know, who am I? And that's a challenge because especially as a young male, and again, when you have that background as a young man, I grew up in that society where you don't really talk about how you feel.
You don't really build that self awareness or emotional intelligence. You kind of taught to go out and be a Flesig to be intelligent, to excel a technical field. At no point,did I actually had the time to really sit down and say, how do I navigate my own thoughts, feelings, and emotions. How do I start to understand why I do what I do?
And what I found is I just didn't have the key. So we've got that self worth and emotional intelligence. I couldn't actually dig deeper into myself to find out who I wanted to be. So then lots out to [00:06:00] society. And again, as a young black male, I was, I'm very scientific, quite entrepreneurial. Look out to society and the sports stars who've got like me, the rappers that looked like me, there is film stars that look like me, except none of them were really liked me.
Alexis Newlin: [00:06:20] I totally get what you're saying. Yes.
Lee Chambers: [00:06:23] So you like, I could model from them because this wasn't a connector. So now I look back to my past and realized that quite often, we kind of model from our parents, our role male role models in our lives. My own father is a good man, but we're very different and we'd never really had a deep conversation beyond the surface in all those years, but just realize that ultimately, I didn't have anyone to reference from society.
Wasn't giving me a representative ability to model and I wasn't being able to find myself free [00:07:00] myself. So that led me to start to become quite frustrated. And I started to isolate myself because it was almost a void in this reality that had to really deep down. I knew that I had to be courageous and continue to push myself out of my comfort zone to chisel my character.
But at the same time, I'm quite introverted. So my own energy comes quite often from being around Musk. Okay. Then I was pushing out to be more neuro typical, and I was draining myself while trying to find myself and I didn't have the balance right. But also for years I, intelligence is, you know, I'm quite high performing academic student.
Without putting any effort in. So very lazy. And what then happened is obviously you've got one you can go [00:08:00] through going from, go through school and college on D just get the grads without trying. You suddenly find some point on educational journey. Things get a little bit harder and you have to try and hit that point at that same time as well.
So it's like all of a sudden it started getting harder for the first time in all these years are actually had to try. And I was a bit resistant to that because it was changed. It was different. and again, I was doing presentation in front of 300 other students and me being me, how to really prepare, I just fall.
I'll be fine. I got hot, got halfway through and I chopped froze in front of him and another student finished off my section. And again, that kind of like chopped my confidence. And a lot of these events together just led to me starting to abide rather than approach the challenges of life. Cause I just felt like I didn't have the [00:09:00] key.
I felt like things were falling apart of it. So I started to miss lectures, miss exams. I stopped going to my job. I stopped going to any societies or events. I tried to start trying to, to avoid my friends and eventually led to a point where I slated myself in my dorm for two weeks. And my parents came to get me and took me home.
So what that did is it then gave me the space to reflect on sides of the cycle and out of the pressures of try and sort of perform and be present and be there. I'm going home, actually , give me the release rarely, but also the space and the time to just sit and analyze what had happened. And there was a realization that ultimately this is the first significant challenge in my life, and I've really not seen it as a challenge I've seen as a threat and try to run away.
But [00:10:00] obviously , in life, adversity it doesn't discriminate.
Alexis Newlin: [00:10:04] No, it doesn't.
Lee Chambers: [00:10:04] Everyone goes through challenges all the time. And that childhood of comfort, it set an unfortunate expectation that life would be comfortable. But if you're comfortable, you're not going to grow. And nobody's life is comfortable.
That kind of expectation had been smashed, but because the expectation had been smashed, they actually given me the space to think. Well, this is just one of many challenges I will first and yet it's how not the fact that the challenge comes because so often the challenges that we face are not in our control. It's going to be how you take the challenge and then respond to it that's gonna be the man who you become. So I spent that time. Not space at home and to actually look back and see what happened and look back and realize that on that stage, I had a failed, I'd just not been [00:11:00] prepared and started to re take the emotion away from a lot of these things are out where, you know, making me feel negative about myself, realizing that so often we touch emotions, to events, and so, you know, certain scenarios, but it's not always.
See, it's not that I felt that it stopped. It felt like that. So time I was not socializing, but it was, it wasn't because I was depressed it's because it felt depressing. Yeah. I met because people are gonna ask the question where have you been, you know, why have you been quiet? Why have you been avoiding us. The truth is at that point, I realized. I need to build myself back up. This is going to take time, but if you can take ownership of this, finding yourself, you're not going to sit here and be able to find yourself by thinking you shouldn't have to go [00:12:00] back outside of your comfort zone and gradually share who you are going to become through experiences, both good ones and the bad ones from the winters and the summers. Because the whole world cycles around and you're going to have good times. You're going to have bad times. You're going to be up for the top of the mountain and then you're going to be in the Valley again. But you need to have your head up to see the next mountain you are going to climb.
And I realized that through those challenges, To be honest, it was a, it was a sign almost like you get a pain in your leg, to tell you something's wrong. Yeah. That kind of struggle was telling me that I wasn't finding myself because I wasn't going about it the right way.
Alexis Newlin: [00:12:44] Yeah. Yeah. How long did that period of time take for you to kind of go back to reflect and to kind of let yourself heal to be ready for the next thing that you were going to do?
Lee Chambers: [00:12:55] so it took about six months. what happened is I then actually returned to [00:13:00] university and then finished and graduated. So that became validation that you can bear significant challenge. You can ultimately fail a year of university, but you can go back. You can bounce back again, go back with a deeper understanding of yourself, go back and apply yourself more thoroughly. So in that time I realized that I wasn't trying, yeah. That resistance to actually doing anything outside of university to develop myself. Academically is holding me back. But you don't see that way you're in the storm. So somebody pulls you out and you can actually see it from the boat.
And then you see all the bits around the storm that you couldn't see because you have to storm in front of you. And again, so often, like as that young man I had that fear of failure, [00:14:00] I didn't want to fail a parent said, you know, ultimately put me in that position to be the one who went to the university, set the path for future generations of our family, to know that they can do the same thing to be the precedent.
Because, I mean, so often naturally being from black background, the opportunities are less. For us to really access those high levels of education. Yeah. And my parents were really desperate for me to do that and then show our cousins and other people in the community that you can do that as well.
And that still forms part of my message today, where I go out and say, you know, you can't. If, if it's what you want to do, and you, you know, you deep inside yourself and you realize I want to follow it, academic path. So go and get this particular career that you could do that. And it was good for me [00:15:00] to be a beacon for that, because then, you know, I'll put myself in a position where my brothers could see me doing it.
And now my youngest brother, he starts a university last year. And that's a really good feeling. And yeah, through that are then managed to finish and graduate and then graduates. It really opened me up to realize, so you can go very deep into these challenges and you can fall quite far, but you can still pick yourself for it's not terminal.
And therefore you shouldn't be, or these challenges in the future. Cause it's gonna keep coming. But ultimately when you're in that place, you're very self-absorbed you don't see the whole world around you, supporting here all the other human beings who feel, feel the same way and have been pretty similar challenges because we're not alone.
There's billions of people on this planet who are feeling just the way you are right now, going through those [00:16:00] same challenges. , when you open your mind to see that. You realize that you so far from alone, you're actually together and that gives you the strength to keep going, because you know, that's what helps you get your head up to see where you go in.
And so often when things get really, really difficult, that's when you start making progress and grow in and start getting closer to your potential.
Alexis Newlin: [00:16:28] Yeah. Was it hard to explain to your friends? once you came back, what had happened? Was there like any shame or anxiety in doing that?
Lee Chambers: [00:16:37] it was certainly challenging to kind of, I think the bigger thing is it was more difficult to articulate at the time, because this is, this is 15 years ago and how it was 2005. When I went through this and the wasn't, the mental health awareness, there wasn't the resources and the online support. And that just wasn't [00:17:00] there. Wasn't, you know, almost atmosphere where people could have these conversations more openly.
. The best thing you could actually do was actually explain it to people. Like I might explain it to you now. I just say if you know, I choked on stage, I wasn't applying myself and it just, it just all got a bit much for me. And I couldn't, I didn't know who I was.
And I've gone home now and I've spent some time really reflecting, looking back on the past and what I actually want for the future. And I suppose I kind of said, no, I'm back. And I've got more clarity of mind and know more of what I wants to become. And now having that kind of destination in my head, I feel so much more aligned to what I'm doing.
I feel like I've got a path to move on. Whereas before I was like, looking ahead and it was just all organic. I couldn't see anything. Yeah. And that's kind of how I described it. Almost described it through like analogy. Okay. I [00:18:00] couldnt find the terminology to really kind of express it to people other than try and create a picture in the mind of how I felt and how those stages then pled out.
Alexis Newlin: [00:18:10] Okay. And so you said you, what did you graduate in by the way?
Lee Chambers: [00:18:15] Yeah, so international business psychology.
Alexis Newlin: [00:18:17] Okay. And so you got a job and then you said you lost that job and you decided to start your own business. How did you come to that conclusion? And what steps do you take to like build your own business?
Lee Chambers: [00:18:28] Yeah. So what happened is I'd always been quite entrepreneurial in mindset. So as well as being like an academically talented child who was also quite disruptive and curious, Yeah. So I was a child who was asking my mom, mom, you finished with it. It's kind of going to sell it on the end of the street, selling candy at school for double the price I bought it for.
Alexis Newlin: [00:18:50] That's amazing.
Lee Chambers: [00:18:52] Yeah. Yeah. And I, I was, I was that child and then, you know, Naturally , the principal comes and tells you that you can't carry so many sweets around [00:19:00] being, you've not got hygiene license. We can't sell them on property. But yeah, to be honest, I'd written a business plan for a video game business while I was at university, when I'm starting to figure out what I wanted to do, and I took it to a business advisor and he said, you know what?
This is a great plan. Really sound, watertight, you know, this business will work in principle, obviously naturally business can, it can go anywhere it's science, but you said like this plan, this forecast, you'll struggle to pull it off because this is a market where you're trying to penetrate into it.
There's someone with, you know, zero credibility because you're just a young student and also it's a market that's heavily controlled by the old guard, old fashion, more traditional, people within Europe. Effectively said that, dont take it personally, [00:20:00] but you're, black , you're young, and you've got an attitude problem. That is how they will see it.
I see, I see you as a talented, young man. Who's got disruptive attitude who wilmake change in the world, but they will see you like that. And they'll see you as someone who's going to come and disrupt the patterns and make, try to make change. They won't like change. You're going to struggle. You're going to walk into that room to pitch to them.
And they're going to look at you and not this guy don't trust him. he looks like he's going to bring something that's going to change things and we don't want change. So that kind of made me think, because this didn't come from a place of hate came from a place of if you're going to go for it, expect it to be difficult.
Yeah. And that kind of put me off slightly. I decided to, at that moment in time, maybe I'll go and get a career instead. So I had a real think about what I wanted to do. Try to align and look back on the things that I enjoyed and why I enjoyed them. Try to connect [00:21:00] those threads and realize that the two things I really liked doing, helping people, what can we, data statistics and figures put them two together.
And I decided I wanted to pick my financial advisor so I could work with people's finances to increase the financial wellbeing. Also be able to work with all the percentages and the compound interest. So I've got both sides of that.
Alexis Newlin: [00:21:25] That's a gift. That's a gift. Yeah. People like that.
Lee Chambers: [00:21:29] Yeah. That seemed like a great path. But as you can imagine , in 2007, that was right at the top of the boom. I managed to get on a graduate scheme here at national bank in the UK. And that was obviously quite, it was quite a prestigious position to get at the time. Naturally then what happened is only three months in, the economic crash credit crunch hit and all of a sudden people around me were packing their desks.
So, [00:22:00] my training professional qualifications were all funded through the company. So I had $12,000 of $12,000 of qualifications that were going to be paid for me. As I worked through the big, pulled me in and said, we're not going to fund any of those qualifications because of the economic crisis.
And I was like, man, but I don't have $12,000. Yeah.
Alexis Newlin: [00:22:26] You just graduated. Yeah.
Lee Chambers: [00:22:28] No, I've just graduated. I'm a student. I'm not from a, I'm not from a wealthy background. It didn't really matter because it was only a few weeks later, the other then was made redundant from the job. So what that really did is it reinforced two significant points.
Firstly, if you want professional education, don't rely on corporations and organizations...
Alexis Newlin: [00:22:55] yeah. That's a good point
Lee Chambers: [00:22:56] to do it for you. Save up your own money. [00:23:00] Pay for it yourself, choose what you do. So then be accountable to yourself when you have ownership of the outcomes. And you'll be much more likely to complete because you've got skin in the game you've invested in yourself.
The second thing I really took away from that is I would really like to run something that I couldn't be made redundant from, or fired from. In fact something where the only person who could fire me would be myself. And that was in the catalyst for I'm going to launch this business. So I got the advice, but you know what?
I like being an underdog. And I like to do things when people said you can't this, I don't like conforming to society. Okay. So that disruptive nature said, you know what, I'm going to do this. And I'm going to show them that even though he said it, wasn't the best idea for me, that I'm going to break into that market and I'm going to make success of myself.
So I [00:24:00] went full on heading head on into that. Naturally that time I looked for other finance jobs, because I'd really mapped that pathway at my head. Saw it as something that I could do. There was no finance jobs at that time. It was like a desolate.
Alexis Newlin: [00:24:17] There was not there's nothing but that time.
Lee Chambers: [00:24:19] Yeah. So I actually took a job in local government, which really helped me then see and start to understand the other side of the comb from corporation to government.
It was a very, very different atmosphere that gave me some skills and ability to navigate different industries, which was really useful. Well, I sat with our business and it was set up. I have my permanent spot bedroom because I've moved back home. I didn't, I didn't have much by way of capital at that time. I started it off one paycheck on, in a year, it was up to six figures.
Alexis Newlin: [00:24:56] Really?!,
Lee Chambers: [00:24:58] And it went big. [00:25:00] I was really in so many ways, 2009. It was a really good time as all of a sudden the recession hit. Yeah, the online world suddenly exploded. So I was in the right place at the right time selling really what at the time was a very good thing to sell and that business then doubled in revenue for the first three years.
So it took off like a rocket. . And all this time I was still working in local government for $25,000 a year. And. There became a point, where when the austerity hit here, so local government's budget starts to be cut. I then left the job because I felt like it was taking a job of someone else who could really do with that money because obviously tech and second money from the business.
and I decided I wanted to do something else, helpful, [00:26:00] something more voluntary. So I started helping people who become unemployed. And help them to really find what industry they like to work in based on the type of person they wanted to become. Then lots of starting to build the confidence often, starting to help them see themselves as more valuable to the world.
Because so often when you lose your job, you lose that part of your identity, your confidence. Yeah. and then I would help them to communicate the value. And no passion for that position in interview. And that was the start of me helping someone on my journey from not having that clarity. So having more clarity and then more confidence and then more ability to articulate it.
And I've realized that that was very similar to my journey in university, from not being able to see. And confidence being law. So getting more [00:27:00] vision, then more confidence and then more ability to speak it. So I really am convinced of that. And obviously, because the business was doing so well, I then bought my first house.
I met my wife. And had our son. And then in 2013, it was a really, really busy year where we bought our first house and renovated it. We went holiday and in Florida and the Caribbean, we got married, it was a, it was a really naturally like a, a time when things were very settled and comfortable financially, we were very comfortable.
And what kind of happened is in so many ways, I wasn't really growing. Because the business was great, but it wasn't really a great expression of me because I started to feel actually a little bit uncertain, not, you know, transports in video games around the world is great as a business, but [00:28:00] it doesn't, it didn't really feel very purposeful.
I was like, I feel that I can make more of an impact, but maybe I'm going to have to make impact by running the business, but then using the economic benefits from the business to volunteer. Okay. And try to find more purpose that way. And it was around that kind of time that then became ill and lost the ability to walk.
And naturally what that did is put me in a hospital bed for a period of time. Well, I had a lot of time to really start to reflect because you have a lot of time to reflect when you can't move.
Alexis Newlin: [00:28:38] Yeah. What diagnosis? Cause I work in, pediatric rehab and so I come across kids who have certain diagnosis like that. So what did you get diagnosed with, I'm just curious?
Lee Chambers: [00:28:46] Yeah, so it's autoimmune arthritis.
Alexis Newlin: [00:28:48] Oh, okay. I haven't heard of that one.
Lee Chambers: [00:28:50] Yeah. So it's, it's, it's similar to other, autoimmune conditions, but effectively my immune system attacks particular type of connective tissue in my [00:29:00] giants. Okay. And obviously cause massive acute inflammation to the point where literally my knees were like footballs and ligaments, tendons were all over the place.
and it happened very quickly, so less than a week from absolutely fine to be stuck in hospital bed. Not able to show myself God's Tyler. I couldn't even feed myself properly because it had got hit my shoulder on my wrist as well. So I was effectively imobilized on very, very painful initially because of the share inflammation and the sheer, force .
it was putting through my joints . My body literally was like, I'm going to reject, not happy.
Alexis Newlin: [00:29:45] Wow. How old were you when all this was happening to you?
Lee Chambers: [00:29:48] So I just turned 29. So obviously during this period of my life, I, my wife was six months pregnant with my daughter. Wow. Sony's 18 months old. Now just answer [00:30:00] in scenario and I'm thinking, I'm assuming I'm going to be yeah.
The 30 year old father of two. So that sounds like compare per have to be more sensible. So I was like of myself, like. I've just turned 29. I'm going to have a little project of things to do before I'm 30 that are not so sensible. No, not really. Because I know after that, after that threshold, you almost have to be more sensible.
And, suddenly that didn't matter at all because I was in hospital and suddenly completely. Lost my mobility, but also my independence. And naturally in that position, you're in shock at first. There's no, no ability to process the severity of it and initially, but after that shock, dissipated, , the frustration and despair came so, obviously from [00:31:00] my own studies, but from my own challenges in life, I knew negative emotions there for a reason to express, you know, something, and it's not about suppressing them or about the fact that you feel this way. It's about the fact that as human beings, we are blazing joy all the way to deepest despair for a reason, how you express that in this healthy way as possible.
And that's the human experience. We wouldn't be human if we only felt part of that. So that, despair, it was ultimately the why now, why me? I'm young. I've looked after myself, I've got young children.My daughter is going to be born soon. That's all of that suffering, and that kind of passed. And then it became grief. So start to, I start to grieve for my mobility, my physicality, [00:32:00] my athletic nature, and just the fact that, you know, I want to run around with my children.
My son's looking at me with big eyes like," daddy, why can't you play?" And it's like, that makes you feel so, so, so, so, so sorry for yourself inside. but in the second week they moved to a longer term ward. And I could look out of the grasslands across the road from the hospital. Those are grasslands that looked across the Valley where we live to the place where I was born and brought up.
Yeah. I'll look over those grasslands and realize that I'd walked off of those a lot of times over the years. And now, I wasn't in a position where I could walk. But what occurred to me was. And so I lost the ability to walk. I haven't been grateful for it. Yeah. And that lack of gratitude hit me like a [00:33:00] lightning bolt.
I was like, right. So all these people are going to help you do these basic things. Your wife is coming after work. She's six months pregnant. She's about to go onto maternity leave and she's helping you come in and shower and do the basic things. You've got your friends and your family comments and support.
Yeah. You've not been grateful enough to them either. You've been complacent and you've not realized just how an amazing support network that you have. And so again, you fell into that net and then that went wider. So it was like, you know what Lee, you grown up in the,UK, you never been hungry, never been homeless.
You've never faced famine, environmental disaster, never faced war or conflict. In fact, you got free education, you got free healthcare. Opportunities to work in a number of different industries, freedom to set up a business, you have all these amazing things, [00:34:00] all this opportunity, all this abundance, and all of a sudden, you become a little bit of unwell and lost a little bit of you that you can probably get back with the right mindset and the right approach.
You've got so much. Why are you going to lie here and be sad about the one thing that you feel you might've lost for awhile? And that rarely just hit me very much deep down, but what it actually did is it made and realize through this suffering, I'm going to grow as a person. That ignited me like a fire inside.
I was like, you know what? This has happened. I'm going to have to manage this disease for the rest of my life. And yet it's not about the fact that this has happened. It's how I respond to it. So my health outcomes are directly related to how I know approach this. So I'm going to attack this disease as much as attacking me and by being proactive in my recovery by taking ownership of the health outcomes and doing [00:35:00] everything I can to get back on my feet and walking again.
I'm actually going to really think who I want to become. Remove those limits and boundaries that I'm going to place on myself or the overs mind in the recovery. And I'm going to shoot for the moon and see where I land hopefully on my feet. So I took that approach into walking rehab, and I saw other people with lower limb injuries with other unfortunate situations, which could cause them to lose the ability to walk.
And you could see like the people who I was with, some were still suffering at the headstone in that way to room. Whereas others had the heads up, they were determined the hard that resilience to really keep pushing because recovery is never easy. I had setbacks and most mornings I was in agony and I was stiff.
I didn't want to do my physiotherapy, my stretches, my exercise, but I [00:36:00] decided. This is going to be outside of your comfort zone, but the only way to grow that is to stick your toe out, literally stick your toe out of comfort and push that boundary a little bit further every single day. And I also decided that feelings don't actually matter, not when they're aligned to your actions, because if you act on how you feel.
Don't feel great at the moment. So you wont do what you need to do to recover. I'm going to align my actions to who I want to become. So I want to be walking round with my children playing in our garden. In fact, our daughter has just been born. She's going to be walking in around nine months time. Now, I hold her here in my arms.
And she's got none of society's expectations, any boundaries or limits on her. She's pure. She's just there she is, but she's going to be [00:37:00] walking and I'm going to be walking with her. Power of why that reason to push through is like a fire inside me. So the winds of adversity hit that fire. I had some problems with my spine and that set me back a few weeks.
And yeah, in so many ways, because it was a fire when it got hard, that wind, it fueled that it made it grow. I didn't have that candle inside that was going to get blown out. Every time he got hard, so much effort to then relight that and carry on. It was, it was being fueled by the fire. And I was determined.
I kept going. After 11 months, I walked a mile and edit and stood by a light shed and just fall. If I can push myself this far and get myself back to this level of health, then what else can I do essentially as a normal and really [00:38:00] looking at it from a wider perspective, it wasn't anything, but having that bit of courage to really push. And that's, ultimately what it comes down to realizing now.
You've got support. You've got people. Yeah. You can then show a little bit of courage and that amplify everything else in your life because you actually need to be able to step out of that place. We're all in a world now where you almost start to expect that comfort is the default you want to well life, but your life isn't like a flat line.
No, no. It's like a massive zigzag up and down all over the place. You never really know where it's going to go, but you embraced that uncertainty because that's our experience on this planet. It's uncertain. The future. You don't know what the future's gonna hold. No one knew six months ago of the [00:39:00] challenges.
We were all going to face as a, as a human race against this pandemic.
Alexis Newlin: [00:39:05] Exactly. It just blown our world out of the water.
Lee Chambers: [00:39:08] Yeah. But almost in some, in some ways we need crisis to bind together. We need crisis to slow us down and help us see. And in a lot of ways, again, this has been a very challenging time.
Well, I see it as a challenge for people to step up into rather than a frat that we should divide and run away from. Exactly. It's about really starting to see that as human beings, it's the same set of virtues that have been talked about for photons and poses of years. That will help you to define who you are on this planet and express that and be able to move through life.
Knowing and feeling that you're on your path, that you're aligned to what you do. And the more and more I've kind of lots and start to experience the world and [00:40:00] realized no matter where you live, what culture you're from, what religion you subscribe to and how you see the world. It's always comes down to those same few virtues.
If you're rebel to encapsulate them, live them on a dare to their basis, then all of a sudden you will be that person who shines not only as a light inside yourself, but you will shine the light on other people as well. And allow them to become someone who can become a beacon for their community, but that people.
The who they're resonate with. And that's so important because gifts inside of them that we need to dig out over the course of our lives and really chisel ourselves to be able to utilize those and give those to other people. Because so often people, they don't shine a light on themselves. They hide in the corners and [00:41:00] stare out at the light.
Well, the light is there for us to step into what we've just got to be courageous enough to step into that spotlight on the stage of life and be X-Box. Because you're not alone in never alone. Saw often today we become very individualistic and it's all about us. We've come self-absorbed and we're all then in our own minds, thinking that it's only fair like that, and only we console with it and only weekend Matt, the transition.
Well, it's not just you we're as human beings. We're all about connection. In fact, We live in a massively and connected world, as much as we might like to think that such a person is a self made man or a self-made woman or a self-made business, nothing self-made. Cause we're all in this together.
Alexis Newlin: [00:41:56] Oh, that is awesome, Lee. , your story is just amazing to me. All the [00:42:00] resilience that you have and just your outlook. And I feel like this, people are something that need to hear your story. So I'm so glad that you're on today.
Tell us about your business that you have now, because from this you have, I'm going to say it wrong essential list. Centralize
centralize. Sorry.
Lee Chambers: [00:42:21] So yeah, it's, it's got two parts and it's obviously come from my journey, my qualifications, my experience and the industries I've worked in risk got caught inside. So I take individuals through that journey to really define the purpose and the mission direction they want to travel in. And then I bring my experience from.
The health side of things. So I could call it nutrition, sleep practitioning, and we look at movement as well and how we can really get more energy travel on our path as we travel that bit. Further that bit faster and help more in German. Yeah. For the challenges of life. And then look at the [00:43:00] psychological aspect around our mindset, our habits, and how our beliefs can sometimes move us forward.
Sometimes it can hold those back and about how it can actually start to break through some of those societal limits. And some of those self-imposed boundaries that we've put on so many barriers that we happened to finding our way, but those obstacles can be. What's around there can be jumped over, that can be smashed through, but it just requires that belief and that bit of courage.
Now I help people to plan how to gradually become consistent with that in the role Myers by building little hobbits together, and really starting to spiral forward are not words. And I also have a workplace wellbeing side. So we go into organizations, mocha, how we can create a place. Well, everyone can express themselves and find ways to help them ensure the wellness within the workplace.
So we do [00:44:00] stuff around the emotional intelligence leadership. We look at wellbeing, wellness strategy saying, hi, we can bring that into the workplace through looking at inclusion and belonging. What can home management communicates to the employees and just looking at the environment that the employees work in and seeing how we can change that to ensure that they feel more well, more happy, more engaged, and connected with the work that they do.
And by combining all that together, along with some of the workshops again on sleep or nutrition, mindset, movement, and habits, we buying altogether to really help. Workplace has become happier, healthier, more engaged, and more, most innovative places to be. Because at the end of the day, we spend up to a quarter, sometimes a third of our waking lives at work.
So it's a massive part of who we are, how we identify, but also how we then go back in our relationships and our lives and our [00:45:00] fast and going to express that if we have the energy from work, because so often people. Leave work without energy. My mission is to help you. People still leave, work with energy so they can go and do and be the people that they want to be.
And the things that they love and the things that they enjoy. And not helps them to give back to society, be part of the society that they are. And again, be able to do things such as volunteer, do the things which glue societies together find ways to give back to contribute and to really help that temperance for other people.
Alexis Newlin: [00:45:39] All right, Lee, thank you so much. I'm going to put all your info. Are you just in the UK doing your business or do you go global?
Lee Chambers: [00:45:47] so I currently go global online. I work in the us, Canada and Australia as well at the minute.
Alexis Newlin: [00:45:53] Okay. I will put all that info in the show notes for all the people, so they know where to find you.
And I'm so [00:46:00] glad that I got to chat with you today and have you on as a guest of the brave podcast, you are amazing. You have an amazing story. I think it's going to touch a lot of people.
Lee Chambers: [00:46:09] Yeah. It's been a pleasure, Alexis. Thank you for inviting me.