I am ready to dive right into your journey and story, Shane, if you are.
Yeah, sure. You know, I'll tell you a little bit about my story as a young man.
What I mean by that is in my late teens and even in my early 20s,
particularly when I was in school, I think as a teenager, I had these voices.
And to some extent, we all go through what I'm going to describe.
But what I would hear is that something's not quite right with you, Shane.
You're not the same as the rest. You don't measure up. You're not quite as good as.
And I had a lot of that. I was super shy, super quiet, super withdrawn.
Just kind of lived inside, not very outgoing, right, introverted.
And, you know, I tried to fit into groups and really tried to be a part of it.
I did pretty good in sports and I tried to assimilate and be the same as.
But for whatever reason, and the thing of it is, is this is kind of important.
I didn't really have any trauma that I could say, you know, that made, that gave me these ideas, right?
Like a lot of times we can have a trauma that happens to us,
and then we have to decide what that means about us. I didn't have any trauma.
So I don't know where these noises, these thoughts in my head were coming from, but they were pretty consistent.
And at one point I was about 16 years old when I first experienced alcohol.
And what I found with that was, Harry, my problem was solved.
OK, this uncomfortable, it didn't feel good, right?
It didn't feel good to think that other people were better than me all the time.
And so when I experienced alcohol and I drank quite a bit of alcohol for the first few times,
I realized that, hey, these feelings that I have went away, right?
I felt better in those moments. So in part, if not fully, as a result of what I'm describing,
I went on to have a full, you know, become an alcoholic where I drank to excess every day without fail for over 20 years.
OK. And this process devastated and literally destroyed lives and caused so much pain to other people and to myself
that it's really incredible and sad, you know, looking back.
And there's nothing that can be done about some things.
They're just that's what happened and that's the way they were.
But it's kind of a sad story of what happened.
And so when I talk to teens and when I talk to people, when I talk to business leaders,
when I run my own company, when I talk about our beliefs about ourselves,
I'm very passionate about those beliefs because I know that they influence everything we do.
I mean, everything. A lot of times you'll say, you know,
well, I've got this thing going on with this person at work or this employee or I have this issue with my kid,
my kids acting out and blah, blah, blah. And the same thing goes with horses.
You know, I'm a professional horseman. I've been into the horse industry for 30 years.
And the same thing happens with horses, the same thing, because it's a relationship, just like we have relationships with people.
The similarity is, is when we have something that we want to change in a relationship,
the first place that we always look is to the other side of it. Right.
And while we can't control horses or other people or our employees or our spouse or our kids or any of it,
what the focus really is on what's going on inside of us. OK.
And what is going on inside of us is a result of our beliefs about who we are, our worthiness.
And the thing about that is, OK, so I'm saying that everything that we do at its core is traced to our beliefs about ourselves, everything.
OK, so if you got something that's not working out the way you want it to,
the first place to look is not over there to see what you know what that's all about somewhere else.
So the other side of the relationship, the first place to look is right here, because this is what we can control.
And we actually can control the beliefs that we have about ourselves. The thing about it is,
because we're just not aware of it, we don't intentionally do it.
And if we don't become conscious of it and have the awareness and commit to pursue these ideas, we can get by in life.
You don't have to be an alcoholic. It's not always as devastating as my story.
But you will not be able to reach the potential that you have. I can assure you of that.
Tell me more about that. OK, yeah.
The you know, I used to believe that I used to believe that that it didn't really matter what I my beliefs about myself.
I used to think that, you know, I can treat other people how I treat other people.
And that has nothing to do with what I think about me. I don't want to think about what I think about me right now.
I have too much shame wrapped up in it. I have too many unpleasant things that I did in my past that I don't.
I don't want to think about. I don't want to talk about. And so I'm not going to.
But I am going to treat everybody else the way that that I, you know, I want to treat them well and do good and all these other areas.
And I didn't think it was that important. I don't know why I just thought that.
But maybe because my past was too painful to that, I really didn't want to uncover it and really look at the true beliefs about myself.
And I think a lot of that can be true if we if we if we have something, if we have shame, you know, we all get to experience some amount of shame.
But back to the point was, is that I I know that.
It's not just a good idea to commit to improving our beliefs about ourselves.
It's not just that your business will be better. It's not just that the people that your relationships will be better.
It's not you'll probably earn. You will definitely.
Your earning potential go up, your ability to progress in every every area of your life is influenced by the beliefs that you intentionally or unintentionally have about yourself.
And if you don't become if we as human beings at some point in our stage of life don't become very crystal clear about this idea that it's not a task that we accomplish,
that it's a lifelong pursuit that we need to manage daily, we need to manage sometimes hourly and by the minute.
But certainly as we go throughout our life's journey, that we need to manage these beliefs and continue to intentionally develop them the way that we want to.
It's not just that that's a good idea.
I believe that it's our responsibility and our duty as human beings, because with without doing that, we do not have the capacity.
It's just not there inside of us to be able to give as much to the people that we love and to be able to make our contribution to the world.
It's just not there because what I thought that it didn't matter about me only I could do to someone else and it was unrelated to me is not how it works.
I was totally wrong about that. Everything that I do is influenced.
Everything that all of my actions and all of the things that I do in life are influenced by my beliefs about me.
So give me an example where what you did influenced what you believed by yourself and how that worked out in your favor or against you.
So I'll give you a good example. This is not about me.
But I'll give you an example of how of why it matters. OK, that sometimes we not might not be aware of what I'm talking about.
This is just an example that hopefully will be helpful because it was helpful to me.
And that is this. OK. There's a toddler and a mother.
The toddler spills food on the carpet and the mother just loses her shit.
She starts screaming and yelling at this little kid and cleans it up and grabs him out of the way and makes a big deal about it.
OK. When she gets it cleaned up, these feelings of shame start to come in and she goes away.
She goes in her bedroom by herself and she says to herself, what the hell is the matter with you?
You can't hold your you can't keep it together. You suck as a mom.
Look what you've done to your kid. This and that and the other. And then so she has all this negative language towards herself.
She's like beating herself up. She's yelling at herself. Right.
Inside of her mind, because she has so much shame wrapped up in what she just did.
And as a result, the next time that something the same thing or something similar happens because of this pattern of what she's been telling herself about her and her behavior,
the same thing is repeated. Not only is it repeated, but that kid begins to learn to how this goes.
OK. And it has an impact on the relationship and it has an impact on this kid's future life.
Mom number two. Same thing happens. Same same age toddler.
The kid spills food on the carpet and the mother picks the kid up and said, I love you, honey.
These things happen. Hey, we don't want to do this again. Let me show you how not to have that happen.
And we'll clean it up together. When she's done with this little deal, she goes, she separates herself and she goes in a room and she says.
I treated my I forgave, you know, I acted, I came out and I showed up with love and compassion and forgiveness.
And that's the way that I want to be. And I'm practicing being the kind of mom that I want to be.
And so that language that she's telling herself. OK. The next time that happens, she repeats that.
And guess what? That kid learns that. Now, I want to that kid.
So it impacts the kid's future life, the child, and it impacts their relationship and it impacts the future of the world.
I want to come back to mom number one just for a minute, OK, because we all make mistakes like this lady made that I described.
OK. The first time that happened, she had the choice to remove herself from that and say.
I just acted out in a way that I wish I wouldn't have. I think that was harmful a little bit. It could have been harmful.
I could have damaged a trust relationship with this little kid. I could have had a bad impact.
And it's because, you know, she ties the thing that she did, the negative thing that she did to a positive value that she has.
And she can see why it makes sense for her that she came out this way.
But still, even though it was tied to a value, what I mean is, for example, maybe she believes that she needs to keep a sanitary house for the kid.
OK, so that's a value that she has and spilling food on the carpet isn't part of that.
So she reacted to that a little too quick. So she's trying to do a good job.
But in that, she overacted and she recognizes that she gives herself some forgiveness.
She gives herself compassion and she accepts what she's done and has it be OK because she's a human being.
She goes back and repairs with the kid. She picks kid up and says, honey, you know, sometimes I yelled at you, but I love you.
You know, she tries to make it well as much as she can.
Then she removes herself again and she's proud of how she handled it.
OK, and these things, these moment by moment, the way that we talk to ourselves and the way that we believe about us, this is what is going to change the world.
This is the vision of a better world that if we all were more conscious, more aware of the beliefs that we have about ourselves and see these beliefs are learnable steps.
They're learnable actions that we can become aware of and practice.
And that one one little action by one little human, one piece of the time is what changes the world, because we're not.
We're we are imperfect people and we every one of us does stupid shit that we wish that we wouldn't have done.
And some of us do it a lot. Right. In my case, I mean, a lot.
OK, I've done some things I don't want to talk about. Right. We're not going to talk about on this show.
I mean, I will talk about them. They're probably not appropriate for here because I've kind of resolved all of that stuff.
But the thing of it is, is we're not bad people because we've done bad things that we're not that we're ashamed of.
Right. We have to learn how to how to have that be OK and to move through it.
And once that we do that and we can we can maintain our worthiness or our invaluableness.
Right. And not be diminished, not believe that our value is diminished when we can if we can accept the idea, which is it's an ongoing process.
Right. Because we do things and things happen to us constantly. And if we're not intentionally deciding what we what we believe about ourselves in relationship to either what we did or what happens to us,
then our brain will default and tell us something. And it may not be most of the time it is not serving us and it's not the belief that we want that is going to help us in the future.
I can see the I can see a lot of sides to what you just said, Shane.
I can see a contradictory statement in that and I could see a positive statement for most people of the world that they can use the concept that you shared with us.
What are some of the values that you fall back to? What are some of the values that you share that center you in your life now?
Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, I've come to have a belief in God. That's number one.
Matter of fact, our our stable living program that we that we are coaching program for teens and parents, it's the same four principles that guide my life.
Number one is faith in God. Number two is faith in ourself. When I when I say faith in myself, my value is is what I've been describing.
Faith in myself means my total beliefs about myself, my self-confidence, my self-image, my self-esteem, my total beliefs that what I really believe about me at my core.
OK, that's value to number three is personal responsibility.
And that's something that the more that we're aware of the has a tremendous impact on our life.
And number four is communication, because I believe that that's the most valuable skill that we can develop in this world.
So my world is is these are huge values, right?
They're big concepts that have a lot inside them. But it's kind of simple in that it's just four.
Right. Because if if we could just focus on those four principles, the things are going to go pretty good.
Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
It's going to get more and more fun. More and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show. And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
I hope you have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a vision for yourself.