And it is time once again to get solar powered. We welcome you back to another episode of the solar powered podcast where we celebrate the world changing magic of ordinary people telling extraordinary stories. My name is Ryan Hall. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us here today on YouTube, on our podcasting platforms. And I think we've got a really fascinating conversation for you here today.
Now, back during this past summer now, as I've spoken about on this podcast, this past summer was super challenging for me. Got laid off from my job, really kind of reinventing who I am as not just a person, but as an entrepreneur. And I met a guy through an online group that we both belong to.
His name is Keegan Schafer and Keegan was in process of writing, I think, a truly what is really gonna become a truly powerful and, I think, really impactful book on just what it means to overcome adversity, which I think the book could not have come at a better time for me in my own life. And Keegan asked me to be a, kind of a part of his develop developmental team, and it was truly an honor to kind of see that process.
And I wanted to speak with Keegan here today, just on what it means to overcome adversity in your life. And let's go to the, let's go to the lines right now and let's speak with my dear friend, Keegan Schaefer. Keegan, thanks for getting solar powered with us today. Ryan, thank you so much for having me here today. It's an absolute pleasure. Absolutely. And thank you so much for joining us.
Well, I think first of all, the first question that I usually ask my guests, especially if you're a first time guest is who is Keegan Shaffer? What's your story? That's a, that's a deep one, man. First question. I dive I dive in with both of you, brother. I love it. I love it.
So I would say that, when you take an individual and if you were to strip everything away from them materialistically, I mean, even take their clothes away and throw them out to the woods, That's what really defines an individual from the identity perspective. So for for me in that context, I think that I have been, able to go through certain things in life adversity, right, to be able to develop compassion, empathy, and a story where I can support and help other people.
So that has been a beautiful gift. And in that context, again, I would consider myself a servant leader. So being a servant leader, you've got to not only live and breathe what you speak on, but really help others to do the same thing. So, ultimately, when I get to the end of my days and I look back on the whole journey, who I am and what I would like to be remembered for is to be a servant leader, to help others that are in need, to really be a light in a time of darkness.
And and that's what I'm all about. I love that. I love that. And I think that's just what I what I've known about you and how you've supported me and kind of how I transitioned my own kind of professional way of being. I think that's a really apt description for you. Thank you, brother. Absolutely. Well, let's just, let's just kind of start at the beginning because you've got an incredibly powerful story.
You've got an incredibly powerful story of really overcoming, you know, things like homelessness, like addiction, you know, some really kind of scary stuff and really coming out on the other side of it. And I was telling somebody earlier today about being able to, and I'll get your reflection on this, but really kind of being able to find your voice so that you can tell the story of what tried to break you. What comes up for you when I say that phrase? That's very powerful.
What really comes to mind is the truth that we all face adversity. Every human will face adversity in life. And I think that's a beautiful thing because it connects us to one another. And that also gives us an opportunity to learn from each other and really grow and develop as an individual. So, you know, thinking about the adverse times, it is not really about the story or what we go through at the individual level. It's what we do with that information and data.
There's something that Alex Fermozzi says. He says, if I were to hold up a red flag and smack you in the face, how many times would I have to hold that red flag up and smack you in the face for you to understand that when a red flag comes up, you're gonna get smacked in the face. And I think that's a really good analogy for adversity. How many times are you going to let the same adversity beat you up, bring you down without learning and developing through that?
So, you know, again, it doesn't necessarily matter what my stories are. It matters what we do with that information and data moving forward. So, I, you know, somebody shared it with me like this. There are stages of development. You have the first stage where you go, oh, this happened to me, the victim mindset. And then you shift into this happened for me, the victor mindset. And then the third and final stage is this happened from me.
And so I think that's a really good analogy of the development of adversity. Happening from me. I love that. That's incredibly powerful. And what came up for me is I as you were sharing that was just one of Rocky Balboa's most famous quotes is not how many times you get knocked down. It's how many times you get back up and keep moving forward. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. The quote, you know, the world does not care how many times you get knocked down. They only care how many times you get back up.
And it's it's so true as long as it's one more time that you're getting back up. You know? And I think that often we go through experiences and we label them as good or bad, mainly because that's part of our evolution and the way that our brain is wired, it's to mitigate danger. But life isn't all just black and white, good and bad. There is a balance in that dichotomy. So if there's a balance within the dichotomy of quote, unquote, good and bad, don't they need one another?
Don't they thrive off of one another? You know, we can't only live in one side or the other. We need both of them to have a full life. And I've seen both extremes. I've seen people that are total optimists. Everything in the world is sunshine, butterflies, and rainbows no matter what's happening. And then I've seen total pessimist where no matter what happens, it's all negative and bad and gloom. Neither of those polarities really serve the individual at the individual level.
You need both of them. Right? Because if you're super hyper positive all the time, you're not going to actually carry the weight and the message of the lesson at hand. And if you're always negative and and in gloom, then you won't find the good and the positive, and you won't really live in joy. So, again, we need to be able to experience both polarities and any elite performer or highly successful individual that I have met has a remarkable story.
It's the fact that they faced adversity, they triumphed over it, and they kept going. And that's really honorable as the in in an individual, you know, to to continue marching forth. Right? Absolutely. And that is in that's just an incredibly powerful statement because so many people in the the servant leadership space, the coaching space, and we're both coaches here.
But so many people in that coaching space kind of have a they've got that story of overcoming again, overcoming that thing that tried to break them and learning new ways of being learning new steps, learning new formulas. So where to where they can create new ways of accomplishing their own goals. And you've I think you have really, really put that together in a just an incredibly beautiful way. I appreciate that, Ryan. And that's one of the things I admire about this book.
It wasn't easy to share these stories. In fact, I was forced to have some difficult conversations just to publish the book. But I also think that's something that we miss in society today. So many people, they would rather hear a lie than to hear the cold hard truth, and that has repercussions over time. And we're seeing that. Right? There's the quote, strong men make easy times, easy times make weak men, weak men make hard times, hard times make strong men.
And I believe we are in an era of weak men. It is so important to continue marching forth regardless of what is in front of you. Right? And in the book, I share some dark stories about being, you know, beaten down, about being molested, about developing a speech impediment, about, being suicidal, about facing addiction as a 13 year old. Right? These were all things that were were my story about about witnessing a murder. These were things that occurred in my life.
And, admittedly, for a long time, I held on to a victim mindset. It was always, well, why did this happen to me? Is the world against me? And the more and more I faced those battles, the more I realized no matter where I went, I was always there. And so until I actually faced it head on and truly defeated those demons, they followed me around everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. No, totally. And alright, we've had a couple of those difficult conversations in the developmental process of this book.
And, you know, one thing that I have really grown to admire about you is just how matter of factly you were able to deal with a lot of these with a lot of these adversities, with a lot of these situations in your life. Does it mean that it's still that that it doesn't affect you? No. But it means that more often than not, you choose to see the gifts, the lessons in those particular, adversities. Absolutely. I had this conversation with my son last night.
He is getting into cross country, and he had an ankle injury. And my question to him was, well, what did you learn in this? Because and there's a quote here. We never lose. We either win or we learn, but we live to fight another day. And that's what it's all about. I think today, it's very easy for people to give up, to compare themselves to others. We have this immediacy. We have this comparative social construct around us, and it debilitates a lot of people.
But we all have this amazing power within us. I mean, we've evolved incredibly beyond the original humans. And and that's something that we have to really recognize and understand that that power, it's within us. It always has been. But we gotta learn how to master it. And to your point there, I think the way that we frame something is extremely powerful. I mean, think of a good picture in your house. Right? You've got a picture right behind you.
The frame that goes around the picture, it sets a lot of the tone. And the frame that we put around our experiences in life, it really sets the tone. Again, are you looking at this experience and saying, oh, well, that really beat me up and it it broke me down. Or are you looking at that same experience and going, wow. That was my greatest teacher? You know, that choice is yours at the individual level and I think that things are gonna happen.
You know, the quote that I really like is that you're either headed into a storm, you are in a storm, or you're leaving a storm. Storms are always going to come into our lives. It's inevitable. But if you're going to experience pain, why would you not get a reward out of it? Why would you let it beat you down and keep you there? I truly believe that rock bottom is the best foundation to build upon. It gives you an element of humility. It gives you an element of strength.
And admittedly, it tells you what you're capable of. So once you're able to face adversity and conquer some of it, you start to seek more adversity because you know, it leads to the growth of you. And and that's a really beautiful thing. Absolutely. It is. Absolutely. It is. You know, one thing that one thing that came up for me and we're certainly gonna get into the details of the book here.
But one thing that came up for me and what you just said is if you have so many of us, I feel like men really can kinda lean into this. But so many of us have a tendency when we're going through rough times, when we're going through adversity, we go into what I like to call bunker mode, where it's just, you get like total, like you put on blinders to the world where there's nothing that anybody can do to help you.
And that's not how we get, that's not how many of us or any of us can get through those adverse situations. It's about finding our, like, finding our team, finding our band. It's like there's a, you know, there there's a great quote from I'm blanking on who it is, but he was he was the and and I'm gonna butcher this, like, the actual wording of it. But, Elvin Jones, who was the long, who was a long time collaborator with John Coltrane, he was a drummer for a long time.
And he said something to the effect of when you're on stage, you gotta be willing to die for each other. And that's the kind of trust. That's the kind of, like, team mentality that any of us need to really get through those dark times. Absolutely. And I I would I would argue that that trust first starts with self before you can gain it anywhere else.
If you say to yourself, I'm going to do x, y, and z. If I'm going to read the book, if I'm going to go on the run, if I'm going to start the new diet, if I'm going to take this business venture and you don't do it, you're only losing trust in yourself.
You know, I heard this, this statement the other day, when, when you're a kid and you're growing up and you're figuring out the world and you think that you're just lying to your teacher or your parents or your coach or whatever it is, the truth is you're lying to yourself because you have to actually go to sleep with those thoughts. And to your point there, you know, you have to be willing to die on stage with these people.
Absolutely. And I think part of that journey, especially in adversity, is to generate self love. And where do you get that self love? From trust in yourself, from saying I'm going to do this, and you honor it. That's that's part of the journey, and that's a beautiful thing. Yeah. It's like it's like something that's been coming up to mind for me a lot lately, the phrase that I think I made up, but this too shall pass.
It may pass like a kidney stone or it may pass like a fart, but this too shall pass In the best and the worst of times. Right? And I think that's the that's the beauty of it is that that brings a neutrality that we all need. It's to say, hey. If I'm on cloud 9 and everything's going well, you don't wanna get complacent because, eventually, that height, that peak, that will pass. Same with the lowest of times. If you're at the bottom, it's going to pass as well.
And and we don't have data to conclusively measure when or what rep or whatever it is to calculate when those things will pass, but every single time they come to pass. So if we know that that is going to occur, we have to hold faith in that outcome. Yeah. Couldn't agree more. Couldn't agree more. Well, I wanna talk a little bit about your journey as an author.
Overcoming adversity, it's not your first book, but I would love to kinda hear some just a little bit of your journey and how you, I guess, came to want to write a book, write about your experiences, and write about the things that you have, that you have overcome to become the to become the businessman, to become the father, to become the husband that you are.
Well, it's an interesting story, Ryan. When I first got into the coaching world, I had my own coach and I went to him and I said, listen, I wanna impact more people and I wanna get on more stages. What should I do? And he said, write a book. Not one week later after we had that conversation, I came back to him and I had a whole blueprint. I said, man, I've got this book, I wanna share this with the world, I think it's really powerful. And he said, nobody's gonna care.
Nobody's gonna read that book. You haven't established yourself yet, and you don't have enough of a following. And I said, okay, I was a little hurt by it, but I said, okay, you're probably right. So went back to the drawing board and less than 60 days later, put a 550 page book together with a totally different blueprint. And then not even 2 months after that, we had it edited, designed, and on the shelves for sale. So that was really the first book that went out, and I think it's a great book.
I I I'm really passionate about that book, and I definitely think it connects to this one as well. But this book, the growing through adversity, it was true to my heart. And I think this one reads a little bit differently.
I think it's a little bit more authentically me, but the journey was was tough because, again, what you're essentially doing is you're sitting down with these past stories and you're revising it and you're going through and you're adding and you're editing and you're articulating these things, but there's a great power and beauty in that.
When you sit down and look at your story and you revisit it over and over again and you change the words and you move things around, it doesn't really have much of an impact on you anymore. It's almost like you're an existential third person looking down on this story with reduced emotion. And and I truly believe and we've talked about this before, Ryan, but I truly believe that every person has a book in them.
Every person has a story to share, whether it's about adversity or knitting or playing basketball, it doesn't matter. Whatever your experiences are in life, you've got something to share out there. And so many of us get trapped behind, I don't know how to get started, or the fear of criticism. So the journey of putting this book together, it was a really powerful one. It was a difficult one. It had its ups. It had its downs.
But now that it's out, I really, really believe from the bottom of my heart that this book will change the lives of many. Not only because I share stories that are my true stories, but more importantly, because there are actual actionable tools and perspectives that people can revisit, practice, go over and over again, and there's almost like a workbook format to it. So, the journey was it was an interesting one.
It was definitely different than the first one, but I think that it's a very powerful book, especially in today's day and age where more people would rather be told a lie than they would to be told the truth. But this book gets real and it gets raw and it tells some things that not a lot of people are comfortable with, but I think we need that more than ever before because, again, we are in this era of weak men.
And and to get to that next level, we need strength, we need fortitude, and the only way we get there is by having difficult conversations and facing the truth. Yes. Yes. I totally agree. I think, and yes, it definitely gets real. It definitely gets raw. You get about as vulnerable as any author that I've read in a long, long time.
But did did you find that there's a line between being like, telling those inspirational stories about what you've overcome, what you've grown through, and essentially, and I don't mean to sound harsh here, but whining about the things that, that have happened to you, because I find that a lot of people and I I'm very, I'm super open on social media, but a lot of people are kinda turned off by those, like, super vulnerable kinda posts when in reality, those
are the types of post I feel like really not not just post, but books, but those are the types of stories that I think really resonate with people on a deep kind of emotional level. Well, absolutely. I mean, take any great movie you've ever seen or any great book you've ever read. It wasn't monotone and baseline the whole time. It had ups and downs. It had hardships and villains and success and trials and tribulations. I mean, that's the essence of any good story.
But to your other point there, I believe we've been conditioned systematically for the last 130, 150 years to not be vulnerable. And that really originates from war because a man could not go into war and have emotions and take another man's life. So what did they tell these men? They said, suppress, push down. Don't talk about, don't share, don't be real, don't be raw. And what happened?
For decades, we had these men and the identity of a man was based around, you don't show emotion and you work and you produce income. That's what a man did. But I'm here to tell you that exact formula has got us to the place that we're in today, because you've got children that haven't even had a real conversation with their father. Right? And then they think that's how they go into the world. And, also, as a coach, I love helping people in fulfillment and purpose.
If you ever want to attain your own self fulfillment or purpose in life, it is not about income. There's so much more that makes us up as individuals. You have personal development, recreation, health, living environment, excuse me, spirituality. The list goes on, but the point is is that, yeah, the vulnerability a lot of people shy away from because we have been conditioned to, but that doesn't make it right.
And I think, honestly, by sharing these truths and being real, it gives other people permission to do the same. And when you face these difficulties, it makes you a stronger version of yourself. It's like, and I shared this in the book, but if you were to face a level 9 experience and let's just call it adversity, a level 9 experience of adversity, but you've only ever gone through a level 7, you don't have the fortitude to wear that level 9. But the inverse is also true.
If you've experienced the level 9 and you're faced with a level 5, you're gonna crush it. So what does that tell us? It tells us that we should seek more experiences, and adversity, in fact, is not a bad thing. It's a it's a great thing because it develops our character and our strength and our identity, and it shows us what we're capable of. Absolutely. It teaches us I think it teaches us more about who we are than pretty much anything because you know?
Yeah. No. I I think it teaches us more about who we are than pretty much anything. Yeah. I mean, I always I I share this story in our group the other day, but I've got a friend that I grew up with. Right? He and I went to college together, and his parents were always there to nurture him, to catch him, to support him. And when we were going through college, that looked really cool on the surface, you know, and this is a true story.
This man one day drove a brand new vehicle that his parents bought for him, threw somebody's white picket fence into their backyard, and sunk the vehicle in their pool. Now as you can imagine, the the vehicle was totally damaged and there was a tremendous amount of damage to the property. And guess what? A week later, his parents bought him a brand new vehicle. And again, in college, when we were children, right, when we were young adults, we saw that and we were like, wow, he's got it made.
But as we started to develop and grow as adults, he couldn't handle any adversity. He couldn't solve any problems on his own. And so fast forward, you know, 15, 20 years later, still to this day, if something happens, the first thing he does is call mom and dad to come save him. That man has never ultimately grown into his true skin. And and I think when we're going through it, it looks it looks arduous because it is. But what better way is there to develop yourself as a human?
Maturity doesn't come through age, it comes through hardship and battles and adversity. And guess what? The beautiful message in this is if you want to be successful in any component, you're going to face a tremendous amount of adversity. I shared this the other night with a friend of mine who who has also experienced a a ton of trauma as a kid. And I shared with him, I personally believe the children that endured trauma as children will be the saviors of the world.
Because one of the advantages that the trauma survivors have that ordinary people do not is that they know how to think outside of the box and forget the fear of criticism because they've already been chastised as a black sheep. So what difference does it make if I do something, you know, extraneous? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what anybody else says says, thinks, or does because I've already been I've already faced that for so many years.
So, again, it's it's about the framework we put around that adversity. Yeah. Totally. Totally. And I think just to your point, I feel like the the p the kids who have overcome trauma in their lives, if you and I say we because I've definitely gone through this.
But if we get the right support, if we get the right help, if we get the right people surrounding us, there's no limit to what we can create, or we could fall deeper and deeper into that victim mentality and just end up a shell of who we could have or really were put on this planet to be. Absolutely. And, also, I believe there's an element of delayed gratification when you're a child experiencing these hardships.
And, they they conducted a survey where they had 26 kids, and this was an elementary school. So these were, you know, young young children, but they conducted this survey, 26 kids. And the teacher said, listen, you have 2 options. I'm going to give everybody in the classroom 2 marshmallows, and you can either eat the marshmallow or both marshmallows right now, and that's all you get. Or if you wait until I get back, I'll give you 2 additional marshmallows. So you'll have 4 just for waiting.
All you gotta do is wait. So she goes out of the room. She makes some copies. All the kids have their marshmallows in front of them. A third of the class gobbled the marshmallows right away, gone. Another third of the class waited, and after 5, 10 minutes, she didn't return. They ate theirs as well. The last third of the class waited until the teacher returned. Fast forward 20 years later, they went and found all of the children, but one. So they had data from 25 of these children.
All of the children that had eaten the marshmallow right away, they had a higher crime rate, a lower income, and a higher divorce rate than any of the other kids. The kids in the middle, they surpassed the previous group by a little bit. And the 3rd group, the kids who completely waited and delayed that gratification, they were the most successful in the class.
So again, I think that adversity gives you an element of delayed gratification because when you're in the moment, you don't get things the way that you want them to be, and it teaches you strength and fortitude. And then later on, you have no problem waiting for the desired outcome to reach you. And that's that's a very powerful thing that I believe as a society, as a culture, we have started to dilute, and and that used to be a part of what we were founded on.
Yeah. No. There is such an instant gratification mindset in so many of us, and I think social media is really a big contributing factor to that because we see these, you know, beautiful trips to, you know, all over the world to Ireland, to Hawaii, bring up a great subject that I wanted to talk about next, but they see all these beautiful pictures and beautiful settings. And we don't really realize just the kind of.
The kind of things that we might have gone through to be able to not only afford those trips, but to be able to enjoy those trips without the guilt that comes with, Hey, I'm taking time away from work or I'm spending so much money to, you know, buy a plane ticket out to Hawaii or Ireland or, or, or Japan or whatever. Absolutely. And we have a therapist who's in, in our men's group and he was sharing that he went through 12 vigorous years of schooling to attain his degree.
Yet when he walked across that stage, there was only a 4 minute celebration. It took 12 years to earn 4 minutes. Right? And so I I think that's a really beautiful analogy is that to your point, social media jades what hard work actually takes, what it took to get to that result. You know, we see these overnight celebrities and sensations, but that's all you see is the glory. You don't see all the blood, sweat, and tears that went into it.
You don't see the decade of hard work these people put into master their craft. And so it jades the reality of what's possible. And I'll, I'll tell you a true story. My cousin was going through a difficult time. So he came to stay with us for a little bit. He's a 19 year old kid. I mean, the level of work ethic from him as a 19 year old kid, and I'll just use myself as an example, compared to when I was a 12 year old getting my first job, it's not even comparable.
You know, they they it it's a different mentality that, hey, I can work really hard for 30 minutes and I'm done. That doesn't it doesn't work like that. The world doesn't work that way. And so you have these people that are bouncing from job to job, from geography to geography, and they just keep chasing fleeting things and they don't buckle down and really embrace the path that it takes to be successful. Yeah. Because do you want the, do you want the outside validation?
Do you want the do you want the great body? Do you want the just do you want the money? Do you want the nice car, or do you want the full fulfillment of what goes into those things? Do you want the great relationship? Do you want the good health? Do you want the just the freedom to be able to live your life on your terms? And I really feel like social media has taken that kind of fulfillment away from a lot of people. Absolutely. It's about the person you become on the journey.
You know, it doesn't really matter what personal development avenue you go through, whether you're reading a book or you're listening to audio, or it's a seminar, a tutorial, a speech, a class, whatever personal development you get into, it's always about self mastery, about mastering the old version of you that doesn't serve you anymore and becoming a better version. I don't care who you are or where you are geographically in the world.
We all have relatively the same definition of success, us progressing as an individual. That is the attainment of success. It's us being better than we were yesterday. And if you continue to compound that over a lifetime, it's tremendous who you become. And listen, everybody's already doing that. If we did not do that, we would still be crawling around in diapers, but we're obviously not doing that. So we continue to grow. We continue to progress.
But so often we put ceilings on that limit when really it's infinite. How tall will a tree grow as tall as it possibly can? That's the nature of, of nature. And we have that in us as well. Yeah. Let's not forget there's footprints on the moon because somebody said, let's go to the moon, not because it's easy, but because it's hard. That's right.
Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I wanna talk about your book specifically and just a lot of the, like, a lot of the stories that really touched me were just, like, a lot of the, I guess, the things that you grew through and really how you were able to find yourself. And I think one that really stood out to me takes us to Hawaii and just how how relatable that is to what you're, you know, what you're kinda going through and what you were growing through at the time.
I'd love to hear about a little about that story. Certainly. It's an interesting one, Ryan. I have It is. No. It is. I I I can attest to that. There's a lot of beauty that came from Hawaii, but the origin to get there, what transpired, and me leaving Hawaii, There's a lot of gold in that. You know, for example, I did something that not a lot of people do. You know, I was this 20 year old kid. I didn't know a single person in Hawaii. I bought a one way ticket.
I got an internship opportunity and I flew over with 1 backpack carry on. That was it. And I said, you know what? I'll figure it out. Now I had never stepped foot in Hawaii. I never visited it. I barely even heard of it. But when I went over there, a multitude of events happen and and you'll read this in the book, but some things occurred and essentially I was faced with a decision. Do I continue to go through this path or do I try something new? And I tried something new.
I walked out onto the beach with my backpack packed and I was homeless for weeks. You know, I was at the Northeastern point of Oahu and I was trekking down to Honolulu and this was before Uber. So it was a it was a pretty solid track. I wanted to enjoy the moment, but I also learned a beautiful, lessons in that. Right? I think that sleeping under the stars and eating out of trash cans and surviving on fruit trees and really having absolutely nothing gave me the foundation of gratitude.
Because when privilege is completely eradicated, you find that real beauty in life is life itself. It's not about the things that we acquire or attain. It's a it's, again, it's about who we become.
So, anyway, I went from, you know, getting this one way ticket, going to Hawaii, being homeless, you know, most days not even really eating, to meeting an an incredible family, a lot of amazing people, buying my dream guitar at the time, saving up 1,000 of dollars, and then getting my ticket and coming back to the states. And I think that it's a really powerful lesson, not just because of the people I met and the stories, but because I realized what I was capable of.
I could be stripped away of absolutely everything, thrown out into a jungle, and find my way still. And the beautiful thing is I'm not unique in that. Every single human carries that with them. But until you actually face that, how do you know what you're really capable of? And and and that's a really powerful lesson. It really is. It really is. You find out what you're capable of, but you also find out who's in your corner.
You also find out the people that are in your corner who can help you out, who can motivate you, who can kinda keep you going and believe in you even when you don't believe in yourself. Absolutely. And again, I think sometimes we lose the sight of the fact that we are all interconnected. Even if our stories are different, we can relate to the emotions, and and that's a powerful thing. And so in that chapter around Hawaii, one of the exercises, the takeaways is a practice of self love.
And the 4th point of that is your support group. It's your support system, you know, and we all have them. We all do. Even the the most isolated introvert has a support group. We all impact people throughout our lives based on the decisions we make. But sometimes you just have to go back to the drawing board and you have to get into that darkness and face these things and really tear yourself apart and break you down at the individual level to build yourself back up.
And that's a powerful thing that only rock bottom can teach you. Yeah. Absolutely. Only rock bottom can teach you, I think, who who you are at your core. And so often, I feel like those can be, like, those rock bottoms can really be it it doesn't necessarily have to be an addict waking up in a gutter or whatever. It can be how you deal with a crisis in your life.
And there's also a really powerful analogy, a really powerful anecdote rather, in this book about some situations that you saw like that. Absolutely. And and to touch on this, Ryan, it's around a crisis. We've all faced a crisis. It's part of human nature. But what I have found is that more often than not, we wait until the crisis occurs in order for us to act. Whereas what we should be doing is acting before the crisis comes to greet us.
Because the thing about a crisis is, it's not asking for your participation anymore, it's demanding that you act, you have no other choice, Right? And I think some people wait until the very last second for that to come up. If you've ever had an element of procrastination, there's probably an unresolved crisis that occurred in your life. Right? Because what happens is you wait until the chaos comes to greet you because it's a familiar place. Doesn't make it right. There is a better way.
And and there's there's 5 beautiful steps in that chapter on conquering a crisis. The first one is to see it as it is. So often we go through an experience and we exaggerate the depths and the stories of what occurred. So first and foremost, you really gotta see it as it is. The second piece, you gotta get to the truth of the scenario. And and here's a cold hard truth that not a lot of people want to admit. Whatever situation we are in right now, it's not because of somebody else.
It's because of us. And I I share the depth of that as well in the book. It wasn't anybody else or their decisions that led me to that point regardless of what happened in my childhood. It was my decision, and that's the freedom we all hold. So you gotta see it as it is. You gotta get to the truth and deal with it. And then you have to create a vision.
I I heard this quote the other day that there are some people in our lives that are presented to us because it's there to show us what we do not want to be. Again, we talked about that dichotomy of good and bad. We can't all just be great and elite. There's a circle that contains all of us, but that's your choice. What side do you wanna be on? So you see it as it is. You get to the truth. You create the vision for the future. You know what you don't want it to look like.
What do you want it to look like? Then the 4th piece of that is you gotta get a role model. You you've alluded to that on support groups. Right? The fact of the matter is most people are very intelligent at the core level. They can figure these things out. They could read the book or watch the video, but the benefit of a role model, a mentor, a coach, the benefit of having that person in your team, they save you a tremendous amount of time.
So instead of you going failure after failure after failure, hitting roadblocks and obstacles, reading all the books, doing all these things, you get a role model that comes in and they say, hey. Here's a system. What do you think about this one? And what that allows the individual to do is go, okay, instead of me spending all this time on figuring that equation out, I can just jump right into the impact, the fulfillment, the purpose. So it saves a tremendous amount of time.
And I think there's a lot of value in that. That's the 4th point. Once you get to the 5th and final point of of of conquering a crisis, it is to give back. That is a final stage of ultimately surmounting a crisis. Is now you have endured, you've exemplified compassion and empathy. You've really understood what other people are going through at some level. Now you have to give, give, give.
When you give that back and you complete this full 5 step process, not only will you master whatever crisis is in front of you, but you'll be able to prevent future crises from even occurring at all. I love that. You can be able to see and almost anticipate those crisis before they can even before they can even manifest. 100%. And we all have that capability. Yeah. Sometimes we just have to be told or reminded of just how powerful we really are. It's true.
And don't wait for the crisis to be the reminder. Yeah. There you go. There you go. Well, we can certainly talk about this for hours. I I love having I love having conversations with you. I think you're incredibly inspirational and have been a huge support for me. I think last but not least, the question that I wanted to ask is and I I can certainly attest to that because I saw this I saw the manuscript at a at a very early stage. But this book is very raw. It's very vulnerable.
It can be, it can maybe be triggering for some people if you're not ready to face some of those demons that you might have in your own life. So the question that I have for you is for somebody who might be in that situation of, am I ready to, am I ready to receive these kinds of, these kinds of stories? What kind of value do you anticipate your readers who may or may not be in that place? What kind of value do you anticipate those types of readers taking away from, growing from adversity?
I would say the value would be that the power is within you. Whatever answer you seek, you can't find that externally. It's it's always been inside of you. And there is a quote, another day waited is another day wasted. And I think so many people and one of my best friends from high school, I spoke with him yesterday, and we have the same conversation that he and I had 4 years ago. And I haven't seen him in some time or talked with him, but we had the same exact conversation.
And, and he said, ah, well, you know, I just, I just don't have the time right now. That's that excuse tears me up because we all have the same amount of time. It's what we do to prioritize that time. So more often than not, and I've been here myself, so there's no judgment here, but more often than not, what happens is we wait until the stars are aligned, until the conditions are perfect, until we get that result that we desire, and then we act.
When the truth is, the stars are never going to align. So how many days are you going to wait for the perfect conditions to arise? Because what ends up typically happening, and I've seen this literally on people's death beds, the biggest regrets people have are the opportunities they didn't take or create in their life. And that's with loved ones. That's in business, that's in health. That's all of the things. So how long are we going to wait to act and build the life that we truly desire?
You know, the time is the time is ticking, man. There's no machine out there that can print more time. You can never get that time back. And the longer that we wait to act, the less opportunity we actually have in front of us to create that purpose and that impact for other people. And and listen, out of all the experiences in life that I've gone through, the sole purpose of life that I have found to be true for all humans is that we can shed light on other people's journeys.
What greater meaning is there to life? Totally. Totally. And I think that's a beautiful place to leave off here. Keegan Shaffer, this has been truly a it's been an inspirational conversation. I hope our viewers and our listeners can really get that same value that I have experienced, from having this conversation with you here today. And how can people find you online, and how can people find this book? Yeah. I so we've got a couple web pages out there. It's just ckc.coach is an easy one.
We also have tribal stoics.group. Both of those are websites, and people are always welcome to email me directly. It's just coach Keeg. So c o a c h [email protected]. And and I love talking about this stuff. We also have a men's group to to really help support men in that real and raw conversation. And last but not least, I wanna say thank you, Ryan, so much. You are a part of this book.
And not only have you been able to help me bring my stories to light, but I think you've been able to peel back some layers as an outsider looking in to, you know, really, really express the stories themselves, and I I just can't thank you enough, man. It's a it's been a privilege. It's been an honor, and I'm I'm grateful to have been a part of this book, my friend. Thank you, brother. Alright, my brother.
And we thank you for watching and listening to the solar powered podcast, a presentation of Royal Hearts Media. For more information about me, just go to royal heartsmedia.com. Follow me on the social media machine at Ryan Hall Writes on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, or shoot me a good old fashioned email [email protected]. That'll do it for this episode. Until we meet again, this is Ryan Hall saying thanks for listening so long for now.
I love you all, and go get solar powered. Let's go.