Overcoming Challenges And Making A Difference Through Education with Mark Alyn

PR 059 | Overcoming Challenges

As a broadcaster, Mark Alyn has talked with more than 25,000 people from all walks of life. He is a lifelong learner with a goal of being in communication with as many people as possible about their successes and challenges and how they were able to achieve and overcome those things. Mark is no stranger to challenges. About six years ago his back went out and he had to deal with the insurance company after being denied coverage. Mark talks about overcoming challenges and how he was able to make a difference, not only in his own life but also in the lives of other people, through some form of education.

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Overcoming Challenges And Making A Difference Through Education with Mark Alyn

I feel so incredibly blessed and grateful to be here. It’s a beautiful sunny day in Southern California, so wherever you are at this moment, whether you’re inside or outside, whether the weather is warm or cold or it’s day or night. I love all podcasts for this reason as we get to consume the content at our leisure when it’s convenient for us and it meets us where we are, which is a wonderful aspect of this format for a program and the conversation. I want to begin by bringing us to the present moment. I don’t know that there’s anything more important than to live in this moment because it truly is all we have. The past, the moment ago, is gone and the moment ahead is to be seen. If you ever doubt that, in this moment we take a breath, we’re breathing all the time. This time when we breathe, we’re breathing with just a little bit more consciousness, awareness of our breath. As we are aware of our breath in this moment, it is absolutely a fact that there are people who are taking their very last breath in this moment, which makes this breath important. It’s sacred. It’s holy because there’s something special about our ability to be here in whatever this is and to show up in the best way that we’re capable of showing up.

I’m about to introduce somebody that is new in my life and somebody I respect and feel you are going to get a lot of value out of and learn some things from. I’ve learned from him in the short time I’ve known him, so I’m going to bring Mark Alyn on, but as you’re getting ready for that, if you’re driving or operating any heavy machinery, please keep your eyes open as you continue to breathe consciously and be in gratitude and appreciation for this moment and for your life and for all the blessings. We all have challenges, so I’m sure you have some challenges. Some of them are small, perhaps some of them are large, but there’s no question that there’s a purpose to your being here now and that it is a blessing. I feel honored to have you be part of our community.

I want to introduce this gentleman to you. We are going to have a great conversation about pivoting, so we will have another pivot story and learn some great things from this gentleman. As a broadcaster, Mark has talked with more than 25,000 people from all walks of life. He loves to learn. I love that about him. He is a lifelong learner and his goal is to be in communication with more and more people about what they’re doing in their lives and how they’ve succeeded and how they’ve had challenges and how they’ve overcome those things. He’s no stranger to challenges because about six years ago, he had a challenge when his back went out. On top of being debilitated with a back issue, and I’ve had that myself, I know how debilitating that can be. he had the double debilitation of working or trying to work through his insurance and being denied coverage and dealing with the insurance company. We’ll find out what his mindset was at the time, but he took on the role of a reporter filing complaints with anybody that would listen to his complaints and then all of a sudden, he got a call from a friend. This friend inspired him to pivot, to do something about where he was at in that moment, having some challenges physically, wanting to make a difference not only in his own life in the moment, but also in the lives of other people through some form of education, especially about the challenges that he had been facing, dealing with this whole insurance crisis while he was feeling physically not at his best.

This gentleman has a long history. He’s an entrepreneur, he’s an educator, he’s a radio talk show host on the topic of health. I want to bring on and welcome, Mr. Mark Alyn. Mark, great to have you on the show.

Thank you. It’s a pleasure, Adam. I’m blessed to be here with you. I appreciate that. You said as we take our breath and begin the show, many people are taking their last breath. What popped into my head from spirit is there are also many people taking their first breath.

I’m sure I’m not alone, but I got chills from what you said. For all the times that I have opened our show and even in the closing of them, remind us how important it is that we honor our life, I’ve used the reference to the fact that people are taking their last breath and have not looked at what is so obvious that you’ve pointed out, which is that there are so many people being born and taking their first breath now, so thank you.

[Tweet “Life is so precious.”]

In 30 years when we do this again, that’s our audience. Life is so precious. If somebody goes out, a candle is lit. I had to say that, and I appreciate you and Randi having me on the show. Thank you very much.

Thank you and I love being on your show as well. Tell us about the show. I want people to know where they can listen to you, but let’s talk about what the show is to begin with.

Late Night Health started when I had an issue with my back and I’m going to maybe need your skills as an attorney with this because I share my distain for the insurance company. I woke up six years ago and my back was bad. I was giggling and laughing and in a great deal of pain and I steamed my back and went to my chiropractor and I was fine. Two days later, I woke up my back was bad again, and I went back to the chiro. After the third or fourth time, my wife handed me a business card and said, “Go to this doctor.” You’ve been married long enough to know that you pick and choose arguments with your spouse, that you feel that you have at least 50% chance of winning. There are not many of those.

Not that often. If I was going to pick and choose the battles that I fought based on a 50/50 shot at winning, I probably would never fight.

I’m stupid in that way and even if I had 3% chance, I’d do it. I went to her doctor and I’ve always had a holistic bet, an alternative health bet. I prefer going to a chiropractor than an orthopedic surgeon for example, so I figured, “At my age, maybe I have arthritis,” so she sent me to a rheumatologist. If the audience can imagine a doctor touching the lower right quadrant of your back for about fifteen seconds, that was the beginning and the end and even the middle of the exam. He turned to me and he said, “Mark, you screwed up your back. I don’t know what you did but you screwed it up and it hurts. Your muscles are tight back there. We need to do something.” I said, “Great.” He offered me three options. Option one was, “I’m going to give you a shot. The shot won’t help, but it’ll make you feel better.” I said, “No, I don’t think I want that.” He said, “I can give you some drugs. Do you drive, and do you work?” I said, “I do drive, and I love to work and want to work.” He said, “I guess drugs are out because if you take drugs, you’re going to be drooling all day. You won’t even be able to read because you won’t remember.” I said, “Okay.” He said the third is physical therapy. I’d never had PT before, so I took it. After five or six visits, a major insurance company sent me a note saying, “We’re not covering this. We’re denying the claim.” I called them up and asked why. The reason I got was, “Because we can.”

That is what they said to you?

That’s what the customer service rep said to me, “Because we can.” I said, “I am not an attorney. I have a degree in radio, TV, film, maybe I should’ve gone to law school. I could’ve gotten into the H. Smith School of Law. I looked at the contract and it said clearly 100% coverage if prescribed by a physician.” I said that to the rep and they said, “We know. We still denied the claim.” I was livid. I’ve found out that insurance companies pay third party companies to deny claims. There’s some clerk, they’re paid, I don’t know $12 or $14 an hour and they pick through a pile of claims and they say, “This one.” There is no real rhyme or reason and there shouldn’t be because they’re not doctors, they’re not chiropractors, they’re not even physical therapists, though a physical therapist said, “In my opinion, it’s not needed.”

A physical therapist said what’s not needed?

The treatment. There’s a company down in your neck of the woods that has three letters, ASH, and the insurance company has blue in their name or at least a blue cross in there. I said Anthem Blue. I’m not a professional.

I’m sure you’re not alone in having those acronyms burned in your memory.

It’s terrible. It also turns out that a third-party company who denies a claim, they get paid more. They get a commission on what they save. My prescription was for three months for three times a week and I believe a physical therapy appointment is $150 to $175 a visit. They made a lot of money there. They saved money for the insurance company, but they got a percentage and attorneys are having third-party companies look at their cases now and being said, “We know you got paid X dollars. We think you should be paid half of that.” They get a percentage of that. It’s not an equitable way of doing it. While I’m fighting and I’m filing claims with the California Medical Association, the Insurance Commission said “We wish we could do something. We know they do it. We have no teeth.”

They were toothless, is that what you’re saying?

They were absolutely toothless. The bottom line is that they said, “There’s nothing we can do.” I filed a complaint with the CMA, naming the physical therapist at this company saying she was practicing medicine without a license because she gave a diagnosis without even examining me where it’s clear that I couldn’t move. My back was that bad. I got a call from a friend of mine, Darrell Wayne. He’s known as The Insane Darrel Wayne, one of the top classic rock jocks in the country, though Facebook made him take off the Insane. You can look him up on The Insane Darrell Wayne. He’s wonderful. He owns a radio station and he said, “What would you do if you could go back on radio?” I’m a broadcaster. I’d been off the air for maybe a year. I’ve been doing a show in LA at a major CBS radio station, and the show ended. It happens in broadcasting. I was concentrating on my video production and marketing business. I do video marketing. I swear that when he said that to me from source, the universe, God spoke through me and I said, “I want to empower people who are 40-plus to take charge of their healthcare, to stand up to doctors, chiropractors, physical therapists, ask questions and to provide a forum that explores all kinds of modalities for treatment.”

Late Night Health is a media sponsor for the Komen Race in Los Angeles and they talk about mammograms, mammography and other treatments for breast cancer that are more traditional. I backed that up with looks at thermal imaging. I talk about other forms of cancer treatment and we blended allowing people to stand up and make their own choice. Let me ask you a question. You go to your doctor, he says, “There’s a little something wrong. We’d like to take a look at it and here’s the treatment.” What would you say to that doctor?

Overcoming Challenges: Doctors work for us as patients. Those chiropractors, doctors, any healthcare professional, we don’t work for them.

I would ask a lot of questions but let’s say he says to me, “This is what we found something wrong. We’d like to have you take a treatment.” If I trusted that doctor and if I thought the treatment itself was in alignment with what I would typically do, I wouldn’t ordinarily take drugs right out of the gate. I wouldn’t ordinarily jump into surgery right out of the gate. If there was some place that involved therapy or some therapeutic modality that I was open to, I would say, “Tell me more. Give me more of the details.” I’d probably also ask, “Is this covered by insurance more likely than not?”

I applaud you for that because a lot of people say, “Okay.” They don’t ask questions. A doctor says, “I need you to jump,” and the only question is, “How high?” I’ve come up with a theory. Doctors work for us as patients. Those chiropractors, doctors, any healthcare professional, we don’t work for them. You walk into a doctor’s office and they come in and they say, “How are you? I’m Dr. Smith.” You’re twenty years older than the doctor, so you should be calling him by his first name. He should be calling you Mr. Markel. It’s common courtesy.

I walked into a doctor’s office about two years ago, called the doctor by her first name and she was insulted. I said, “You just called me Mark.” The reason you do that is to create a level playing field because you’re on the same team, and frankly the doctor is not the captain, you are. When you go into your doctor, you want them to know you’re in charge, you have a lot of questions. The more questions, the better. That’s why the internet is so great. I’ve been married for 40 years. My mother-in-law had a condition and the family was concerned. My son looked something up and said, “When you talk to your doctor, ask this question. You found it on the internet.” She did, and his response was, “Did you get your medical degree on the internet? I’m a real doctor. I’ll tell you what to do.” I would’ve fired his tush on the spot.

What you’re saying makes a lot of sense to me personally that it’s not necessarily level playing field and there’s a certain level at which the uninformed are more easily led astray. That’s the way it is in anything, whether it’s in finance, investing, your medical advice that you seek. Being uninformed is a risk and that’s a personal responsibility that a lot of people abdicate to doctors. They abdicate their responsibility to politicians, their senators, to all sorts of people, to their boss or whoever and we pay a price for that, but that’s a whole different topic on some level, but advocacy for ourselves is important. Our demographic in many ways covers the age group that we’re talking about. We’ve got folks that are in there, we’ve got Millennials in the audience, and lots of other people of all ages, but we have 63% of the audience is in that range of 35 to 55, more women than men even. Becoming an advocate for yourself is important and there is no time like the present to do that.

Even if you’re 35 or you’re 25 or you’re 60, it’s better that you get started advocating for yourself now than waiting until, God forbid, you end up in a situation where you’re incapacitated, where your health is such that you’re not at your best, maybe not even at your best mentally because when we’re in pain and physically not well, we want that pain to stop and we’re looking for somebody to help us and it’s almost like we revert to being children. We’re always child. There’s always that child element. We do that with doctors, even Millennials. I don’t believe a person is fully formed until they’re 42 years old.

There’s hope for me. I could still grow.

Everybody can grow. When you shut down and don’t want to learn, you might as well die. What else is there?

Part of what we’re learning here is that advocacy is important. You found self-advocacy and so that became a bit of a lightning rod for you in your pivot. We’ve got a new book that we’ve started and will be coming out soon called The NEXT Pivot, because we are continuing to Pivot. This is one of those things that we’re pivoting once and then on the trajectory that we wanted and will take us to the end because we’re always either in growth mode or by the same reasoning where we’re in decay mode. It’s one or the other. We’ll either continue to grow and live and thrive or we’re atrophying.

You’re dying. Two of the smartest guys I know, they have not pivoted since they were nineteen years old, and they are well past that age. One guy does a certain thing. He is a broadcaster, and he wants to do the way he’s always done it. Broadcasting has changed. Podcasting, like what we’re doing, video podcasting. The other is an engineer and when he applies for a job, he never sends out a cover letter because he never had to before. He hasn’t worked in fifteen years. If you don’t pivot, if you don’t make that change, if you don’t swing around and say, “I’m going to approach something from a different point of view,” which is why your program is so beneficial to people, you’re going to rot.

You can’t see a different point of view, Mark, if you don’t pivot or if you don’t swivel. For the audience, you’re sitting in a swivel chair, which is wonderful as a way to explain that. I’m also in a swivel chair. If you swivel, if you pivot, you get to see things you don’t otherwise see. That’s the point of it. For you, you were in a place in your life where you had been in broadcasting. You had a successful show, that show ended. The natural order of things in nature is that things begin, and things end. It’s not in this moment, even right this second that people are taking their last breath, but there are also people taking their first breath. There are things being born and there’re things that are going through the process of entropy. Things are decaying.

You were in that same stage where something was ending, natural order of things is things begin and they end, and at that same moment that you had this health issue, a crisis even, and got pretty good and worked up, lathered up about what was happening in the insurance space, a friend of yours holds up the mirror or says something to you and says, “Sounds like you want to get back behind the microphone again.” Tell us about the next. What was the process like for you to look at the next pivot? You could’ve probably said, “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll coast from here. Maybe I’ll retire from here. Maybe I’ll go play golf every day.” You have those options.

That was not an option. The golf might have been. You live near a golf course. I live near like six, including the one that Tiger Woods had his charity event at in Southern California. The point is that I was absolutely shocked when Darrell said, “What would you do?” My first thought was “I want to do a food, restaurant, and wine show” because I’ve done those before. They are a lot of fun to do. I love to eat, fortunately nobody can see the tummy, but that’s what I probably would have answered. I didn’t answer it. The pivot was you have a choice when you do that pivot. You can go left, you can go, right. Am I correct in that?

Yeah, and every degree in between.

It’s Wednesday night, 8:00 PM, I’m in studio listening to Darrell do a live show. It’s called The Knuckleheads. He’s been doing it for eighteen years, and when he asked me that and I answered, “I want to do a show empowering people.” He goes, “What a great idea. Nobody’s doing that.” I wanted to blend allopathic and alternative health and everything in between. He said, “Let’s start it Saturday night.” Here’s the pivot. I said, “Huh?” That was my response. I can’t even think of what it would be like. He said, “It’s now Wednesday night.” He wants me to start a radio show for two hours on Saturday night and I said, “Can I get back to you?”

[Tweet “It’s better that you get started advocating for yourself now than waiting until you end up in a situation where you’re incapacitated.”]

My brain is racing. I’m going, “What an opportunity?” I said, “I need a day. Can you give me a day?” He said, “Sure,” so I called a couple of people the next morning. One on the radio station and it’s Thursday morning, I’m calling him at 7:00 AM Pacific. It’s 10:00 AM in Florida. I talked to John and gave him the idea. He said, “I’ve had a lot of help radio shows on over the years.” This is a guy that I’ve worked with or known for over 30 to 35 years, and he said, “Nobody’s doing that. Let’s start at Saturday night.” What’s going through my head is, “Two radio stations want a show that doesn’t exist.” I didn’t know what to do.

The spirit brought me the idea. Understand that my background as a broadcaster. I’ve interviewed 20,000 or 25,000 people. I’ve interviewed people on the street. I’ve been a news anchor. I’ve been a reporter for both radio and TV. I have talked to people from finance, entertainment and politics and you name it. A lot of what I’ve done in the past, I’ve interviewed many people in health, both alternative and allopathic, and now they want me to do this show. There’s no show and they want this show. They want to start it in 48 hours and what am I going to do? I backpedaled and said “I want to start this show. Will you two help me do that?” and we formed a little team. We got the show going. We just had our 300th episode. We’re on Amazon in the audiobook section called Late Night Health, which is a compilation of some of our interviews over the last almost six years that we’ve been doing the show. It’s become a major part of what I do.

Is there a next pivot?

Yes, there is a next pivot.

I love the way you answered that because it could’ve caught you off guard here. The answer is yes and it’s for me, it’s for you, it’s for everybody. The answer is always going to be, “Is there a next pivot?” “Yes.” “Do you know what it is?” “Maybe, maybe not.” “Do you need to know at this moment?” No, not from my perspective anyway. Understanding that there will be a next pivot, but it sounds like you have some clarity about what that might be.

I’m not exactly sure how to reach it, but I’m going to go back to what we said at the beginning of our chat and that is a pivot to me is like a first breath. It’s a change of life. About a month ago I was meditating, and I don’t meditate long nor well. I am still in the process of learning. It was like taking a first breath because it is a change of life and that change of life is I am determined that I want to become the spokesperson for my generation. I’m a generation or two ahead of Adam, so that’s my goal. I’m a TV host. I’ve hosted hundreds of hours and thousands of hours of radio. I want to be the Dick Clark of the Baby Boomer generation.

I interviewed him. I did a video many years ago for the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and he volunteered to be interviewed. We did this in the lobby of the Capitol Records building. That’s the round building architectural marvel. We’re in the lobby and he was talking. We were setting up and the way you focus on somebody’s face is to go tight on their face so that you can see the nose and the eyes, and I like to get a little light, a little sparkle in the eyes, so my cameraman is focusing upon us, and Dick turns to me and says, “Please, nothing above waist. Don’t come closer than the waist.” That was the funniest thing he could have said to me, “Don’t go tight.”

He had a very youthful look. Over the years, they pan the camera back maybe a little bit to keep his youthful glow because this guy was killing it and rocking and rolling people since Elvis days and we know that’s a long time ago at this point.

His name was on TV. Dick Clark’s rocking New Year’s Eve.

It’s a legacy to him and talk about a pivoter. I forget what it was, I used to know, maybe 33 businesses or something like that. His net worth was ridiculous amount, half a billion dollars or something, but in any event, he certainly lived a full life. I love how you created some definition around pivoting as change of life that this breath, like a first breath when we pivot, and we are doing something new in the moment you said “yes,” you said yes to this new pivot, to this next pivot. It was profound because you didn’t know what it would all look like. You had some concerns as you were smart to have some concerns as we all might have concerns about doing something new and different, but you still took that breath. You took that breath and that was a change of life.

A lot of people at my age are starting to retire. I have a friend who was financially secure and could retire early and that’s great. He works very hard doing wildlife photography. He was a photographer in high school. As you said at the beginning, I talk to people and I learned. My idea is that if I’m talking to Adam and learning about a pivot and learning about how you went from being a corporate attorney and saying to your wife no more and creating this program and becoming a speaker and all of that, that’s terrific. I don’t want to retire because I’ll get bored. I like going on vacation, but if I take a three-week vacation, ten days of that are, “What could I be doing at home?” I know that that’s not right, but it’s my personality. I want the next part of my life to be in service speaking to people. I talk about marketing. I could talk about health; I’m not a doctor; I’m not a healthcare professional. I’m a Host, that’s what it says on my IRS, Host Producer. That’s what I am. In talking to people, I’d like to think that I bring out information that listeners or viewers can learn from and say and have that a‑ha moment.

About three and a half or four years ago or longer, but we’ve been doing the show for six years, and almost from the beginning, we had a radio groupie show up in the studio. It was a friend of Darrell’s, and after a year or so showing up, he stopped showing up and I asked, “He was busy.” I asked after a couple of weeks, “Where is he?” and Darrell did not know, so we checked in on him and he was sick. He had cancer and I wished him well. I didn’t call him or anything, but I sent a message to him, and about four or five months later, he shows up at the studio and he looked great. I was so happy to see him and I said, “Smitty, nice to see you. How are you doing?” and he said, “Not so well. I’ve got about a month left or six weeks left to live.” I’m like “What?” He said, “I have liver cancer. I’ve been going through treatment at a major medical facility in Southern California and it didn’t work and it’s okay, I’m ready.” He’d always wanted to be on the radio. Adam, what I did was I said, “Can you make it back next week? I want to interview you,” and I did, and he passed away. His family called me and told me how much that meant to him and of course, it made me feel great, but making me feel great is not the important thing. About a month ago, I got an email, “Listened to your show, great stuff. Heard the interview with Smitty. I have terminal cancer. You’ve given me hope.” That is what Late Night Health is all about.

Overcoming Challenges: We all have a purpose. Sometimes we don’t even know what that purpose is.

You described a few minutes ago the a-ha moment that’s a part of your intention, so I want to get solid on that point of it, that your next pivot is about your having even more of an influence and a voice and access to people that are in their Baby Boomer years and maybe some of them are retired or retiring and some of them have no plans to retire, like yourself, and that you might be able to convey something to them, give them that opportunity for an a-ha or for hope or what have you, is the guiding principle in your next pivot. That’s what I feel is clear. Is that correct?

When you have a pivot conference, I’d be perfect to be one of your speakers.

How does that feel, me reflecting that back to you?

That’s what I want to do. We all have a purpose. Sometimes we don’t even know what that purpose is. I finally know what my purpose is.

I feel like there should be a choir that is singing because there’s so many people that are an audience who knows what it’s like to wonder about that, to be confused even or clear on certain days and unclear on other days “What is ‘purpose’?” That’s like out of a personal development manual. It is the first chapter, Find Your Purpose. How would you define that? I want to get your sense of it. How do you define your purpose? You said you found your purpose, I want you to put some context around that.

You’ve thrown me. There is a pivot. Finding a purpose in life is something that most people do not do. I mentioned the two friends, smart guys. One guy will not change what he does. The other guy will not change what he does. They don’t have a purpose and I feel sorry for them. I think that we all have to dig down and look. We have mutual friends, Swami and Robert Clancy, and they both teach the same thing, love. I have a new friend. His book is called The Clarity Cleanse. It’s all about love. That’s what we need to do so that as I grow, as I find my purpose and hone that purpose, I want to host a game show for seniors, I want to do a show where people may be competitive with each other doing something. I don’t know how this is going to happen. Half the time, I’m not sure it will, but finding that purpose is going to keep me alive and young.

What’s another way to describe it? Let’s replace the word ‘purpose’. I appreciate you playing with me on this because this is important. Language is important. You’re in the communications business, so what’s a word we could replace purpose with the way you described the game show and these other things that are coming up in your heart or in your head. How would you describe purpose with a different word?

Life and purpose can be synonyms. If you don’t have a purpose, you don’t have a life. If you have a life and you don’t have a purpose, you don’t have a life.

A life without purpose maybe doesn’t feel the way you want it to feel. These two guys that you mentioned earlier, I don’t want to make the assumption, but I want to close the loop for our audience, your feelings about them, and what you’ve observed in them is that these are not terribly happy people or they’re not.

They’re not.

That’s a part of the story that we don’t need the details on, but is an important element because to look at them and feel sorry or to feel like what’s missing for them is purpose and that they’re rigid and stuck in their ways and don’t pivot, if they’re happy? If they’re content, if that’s where they’re at, then maybe people would go, and I would say, “Don’t mess with what’s working,” but if it’s not working, and maybe that’s what you’re saying is that they’re not happy and not fulfilled and it’s not working, but yet still stuck and rigid in their ways, that the challenge, that’s the issue.

Exactly, but they are only two guys. They keep doing studies, 85% to 90% of the American workforce hate what they do for a living.

53% of that workforce is actively looking for a new job. That’s the recent Harris Poll. There’s a lot of unhappiness. This is our purpose, so we talked about why we do this show and what are our trainings and curriculum and is about is to help to meet people, hopefully people that are on the path and help them to get more momentum on the path, so the inspiration, the information, the a-has that they get out of these kinds of things is important. Then occasionally we feel like we’re meeting a person on that road who might resemble one of those friends that you’re talking about, somebody that is stuck or is stagnant and isn’t looking to stay stagnant but wants to do something to catalyze, create some catalyst for change for themselves, but is also fearful, is also not knowing what to do or who to trust or what their “purpose” is. Until they know what their purpose is, then they’re stuck in their job or they’re stuck in their life and that becomes a vicious cycle.

Fear, not knowing, it’s something that we all have, everyone of us, even somebody who’s self‑actualized like you. There’s got to be times where you go, “What the hell am I doing now?”

I thank you for the compliment. No, I’m not self-actualized, but working on it and that’s the point and that’s what we’ve got to be doing. When we talk about some of the themes here, which is the openness, you’re open to change, you’re open to that fresh breath, to that pivot, the next pivot, even if you don’t know whether it will happen or how it will happen or all those things, but you’re still open. What do you do on a conscious level, I’ll call it a ritual, you might call it a habit, but something that you do daily even to keep you in that forward-thinking space, that momentum in that open mindset? What do you do if there’s anything?

I cry a lot.

I like to cry, too. I don’t know if you’re kidding or not, but crying is very therapeutic.

I’m kidding because I’m stalling. I’m trying to figure it out. I don’t have rituals or daily habits other than hygiene, which is probably wrong.

[Tweet “The word try should be stricken from the English language, it’s a negative word.”]

On behalf of your wife and all of your friends and close co-workers, I say thank you for that.

Yes, I do. I’m searching too. I talk to people. When I was a young broadcaster in my early twenties, I was the youngest talk show host in LA. I met a psychic and she said, “You’re moving very quickly to a bigger radio station.” As I think about this, I did, but not in the position that I wanted to. I became a producer at a major station in LA from a smaller station. I did both jobs and she said, “You’re going to be doing TV.” That took a couple of years. I’ve always wanted to host and to talk. I don’t know why and I don’t say always. After I got to college because trigonometry and I couldn’t tell a pancreas from a kidney in biology lab, so the idea of being a doctor, I realized, wasn’t going to happen. What I do is, and the word try should be stricken from the English language, it’s a negative word, I work every day at projecting what I want. I do visualization. I’m seeing two heavy women fighting right now to win a prize, which is a date with a very wealthy senior myth. Those are the crazy things that I see in my head all the time, and so that would be the big thing, visualizing where I’m going to be next.

As far as ritual goes, you’re a visualizer. I don’t know where that image came from that you described. I don’t know what to do with that, but we don’t have to do anything with it because you just said, things and thoughts come up and I personally do believe in visualizations as well in the sense that they’re a form of intentionality, and I do believe that our intentions become our life because they are self-fulfilling prophecies.

I want to say thank you, Mark, for being on the show. I have enjoyed the conversation. I know our folks, our community, our audience is enjoying it as well. We have information about Late Night Health because I’d love for folks to tune in and check out that broadcast. You have 300 plus episodes and going. I love the conversation we had on the show.

I want to remind our audience that if you’ve not yet subscribed to The Conscious Pivot podcast, please go ahead and do that, feel free to do that. Feel free as well on iTunes to leave a review. We love the reviews. The five-star reviews are wonderful, but any and all feedback is incredibly welcome to us. You can get to that obviously an iTunes. You can go to AdamMarkel.com to access the podcast episodes. I know a lot of folks who like to binge listen and watch, etc. Please feel free to subscribe there. Those of you that have not yet joined our Facebook community, it is such an incredible open space for ideas, for collaboration, for incubation of these next pivots. That community is called Start My Pivot Facebook community, so you can get there on Facebook or you can go to PivotFB.com. We shortened the URL to make it easy or you can go to StartMyPivot.com and you might want to visit that site as well. We’ve got a kickstart guide. It’s absolutely free six questions to help kickstart your pivot. Whether it’s this year, next year, or whenever it is that the next pivot is coming, we know one thing, there’s a next pivot. That is a guarantee and I don’t say a lot of things with that certainty. I know that like I know my own name and we want to be prepared to maximize those incredible opportunities.

Thank you so much everybody. It is a joy. It is a pleasure. It’s an honor for me personally to be able to spend my time doing this. I welcome all your feedback and I love the fact that you are a part of this community. Once again, as a reminder, tomorrow, let’s all wake up. I get to do this because I got the microphone, so I get to hold up the magic wand and wave this wand so that the audience, we all get to wake up tomorrow and that’s the first step. There’re three steps in a ritual that I’ve been able to share with folks for a number of years now. The first step is to wake up and we wake up ourselves consciously, we wake up ourselves physically, spiritually even. This idea that we become a little more awake and a little more alive and a little more evolved tomorrow than today, and we’re doing well to do that and to be in gratitude for that waking breath is the second step. It is never a moment in the day when gratitude isn’t going to make that moment better. That’s a fact.

We wake up, we’re in gratitude, and lastly, if you’re interested, if you’re willing, tomorrow and for a period of days after that, 21 at a minimum, say these words out loud, “I love my life. I love my life, I love my life.” I wish you all a beautiful day, and we’ll see you again soon, so for now, I’ll say ciao. Bye.

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About Mark Alyn

Award-winning host and hands-on producer incorporating traditional and web/mobile media to generate sales and leads. Hosting and producing innovative media projects that sell, educate, train and inform.

Working with public relations firms providing content creation is the next big thing. Media has changed and PR Firms need to change as well. From audio programs to videos for websites, I help PR firms and their clients craft exciting content to brand and educate products, books and more.

From initial client meetings to concept, implementation to the final edit, I help take care of all the details for you.