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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on
the show, psychotherapist, former firefighter and human performance coach, Vin Infante.
Now in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from his early life, his journey
into the world of counseling, his path into the fire service, his decision to be part
of the mental health solution outside our profession, forging high performance, coaching
and so much more.
And before we get to this amazing conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment,
go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and
leave a rating.
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for
other people to find.
And this is a free library of well over 900 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories to
I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I introduce to you Vin Infante.
Enjoy.
Well then I want to start by saying welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast today.
Thanks for having me, James.
So where on planet earth we finding you this afternoon?
New York City.
Beautiful.
Well, I want to start the very beginning of your story.
So tell me where you were born and tell me a little about your family dynamic, what your
parents did, how many siblings?
Born in New York, still here, never left.
We grew up in a house of two parents, my brother, he's seven years older, and we had a dog,
a childhood dog.
Like I feel like a lot of people have childhood pets.
So we had a little dog.
And my dad is a therapist.
My mom is a well, she was a teacher.
And I guess my dad is still a therapist, even though he's technically retired because he
had two other jobs.
So my dad worked three jobs virtually his whole life, where he was a director at a hospital.
He was a school social worker, but more appropriately, he was like a dean and a guidance counselor.
And then he had his private practice for psychotherapy that he started.
So it's been an interesting journey with them.
With your dad, with such a kind of long background in the mental health conversation, and then
you into why interweave it with the school system as well.
What has been his observations of how this conversation has evolved?
And have you also had any conversations with him about safety in schools and mental health?
So my dad, he retired.
I don't even know how long ago it was at this point.
Honestly, he my dad is in his 70s.
So he's been retired from the Board of Ed for actually quite a bit.
Like I don't even remember when he retired from the Board of Ed.
And the the conversation from my understanding back when he was there wasn't as big of a
conversation.
You know, my let's just say my dad's been retired for I don't know if this is true,
but let's just say he's been retired for 10 years.
10 years ago, I mean, it was still not a huge conversation.
10 years I was in my 20s and mental health was still this thing that was kind of stigmatized.
So I don't really know as far as what his conversations were.
But I know that even for myself, I at one point worked in the school system, roughly
almost 10 years ago.
I was a school social worker for a little bit.
And it's interesting, because I think it depends on where you're at.
The dynamics in schools and mental health actually very heavily determined are determined
by the demographics that you're serving.
So for instance, we were in a lower income, lower population area.
And a lot of the kids would need additional services and additional supports, like maybe
they'd be behind in reading or they'd be behind in math or whatever the case is.
And we would do these things called like an ICP, which is basically a plan to help your
child go up and get to where they're supposed to be.
And a lot of the times you call these parents and be like, hey, I need you to come in so
that you could sign this plan so that your kid could get additional services.
And they would be annoyed.
They'd be like, I got to come in.
Can't you just email it to me?
It's like, no, we need to talk to you.
We need to have a meeting.
We need you to sign it, be here physically.
I don't really want to come in today.
I just woke up.
The time she was like 11 in the morning.
Then it's like, well, when are you free?
It's like, well, I don't have a job, but I just like, do I have to come in?
And so it was really interesting because working in these lower demographics or economic areas,
these demographics were showing that a lot of these parents didn't really take too much
concern on trying to help their kids better themselves.
Meanwhile, there was another school I worked in that was in a higher income area and the
kids that needed support, you call the parent, you're like, hey, your kid needs the services.
They'll be like, all right, when can we do it?
I'll come in tomorrow.
And they're annoying the hell out of you every day after that of like, how's my kid?
What's the services?
How's he getting involved?
And so it's really interesting.
I think part of the conversation that needs to be had around mental health and support,
even in schools is not just about what is the school or the support that's being provided
to the kid, but more so about the family dynamic, which is why it's actually pretty good that
you even bring up these questions.
So you've got two human beings.
One is from a more affluent area.
If you deconstruct the actual reasons, why do you think that we have these issues more
so in some of the lower income houses?
Well, it's tough, right?
There's a lot of interesting things.
So because of the fact that my background is in social work and that's how I became
a therapist, I've worked in a lot of different settings and primarily most of the settings
I've worked in have been a lot of the lower income impoverished areas.
And there's a lot of consistency that I would say.
And to be frank, a lot of the times people don't want to hear my opinion.
So this is going to be a fun conversation because look at me, I'm a white guy, all this
other good stuff.
And people are like, well, you don't understand any of it or you don't get it.
It's like, I probably get it more than most people because I've worked in those settings
for nine years.
So there's a lot of consistency.
One major factor is that there is not a very good family dynamic.
For instance, in the school system that I was in, a lot of the children, none of them
had the same last name as their parents.
And I shouldn't say none of them, most of them did not have the same last name as their
parents.
And if there was a male figure in the picture, he typically was not the father, or there
just wasn't really a consistent male figure around.
It wasn't like a good uncle, a good cousin, a father.
And we see that there's the family dynamics, not a very broken one.
Another thing is there's a different level of standards.
Like you have this one woman who's unemployed, waking up at 11am annoyed that she has to
come into school to sign a document for her kid.
You have the other one where this woman is probably working a full time job and still
calling us every day to make sure her kid is getting what they need.
So I see a little difference in level of standards.
There was this one interesting thing that I also saw.
So I worked at this one school, it was a diploma plus school, where the youngest children,
the youngest people in there were 18 and they were freshmen in high school.
And it was interesting because as I was working with these kids, some of them had parole officers.
Now the second chance school is a school for people who either dropped out, failed out,
got kicked out.
And now they're going to try and come back and get their education so they can get their
GED or college diploma, high school diploma, whatever the case.
So one thing that I saw was this one kid I was working with.
I'd be like, dude, you got to study, like take your books home.
And he didn't want to take his books home because he was afraid that he would get jumped.
He was afraid that people would make fun of him.
He was afraid that he might just get jumped because he's studying and people would think
he's a loser.
And it's really interesting because then when I was in the more affluent areas, there's
like praise for getting these great grades and for doing well in school and for support
when in the other area, it's you're a loser and you need to be beat up and you need to
be jumped.
And, you know, who do you think you are trying to learn?
So it's not just like one thing.
It's so many things and even the experiences too.
And mind you, I'm not even talking about paid experiences.
The guys and girls in these diploma plus schools, 18, 20, 22, like that's how old they were,
have never been even on like these free trips.
Like when I was younger, we did a free school and I was in a public school, by the way,
but we did a free school trip to the Museum of Natural History in New York, which is a
again it's free to get in.
And so I've seen that, but these kids in their 18s and 20s have never experienced going to
a museum before.
Like it was amazing seeing a 21 year old being wowed as if he was three because we took him
to the museum for the first time.
I started, I started a young men's group in the high school that I was in and that diploma
plus school and the things we were doing with them were things that they never experienced
and they weren't complex things like they had a pizza party.
We friggin went to a free museum.
Like it's amazing because it just seems like they have such little effort poured into their
lives to show them what's out there, what's available, like what life has to offer.
And that was probably one of the sadder things to see a grown man who's like 22 run around
like he's three because he never experienced that before.
So there's so many, there's so many things, James.
It's interesting because people pick one.
Like if you think about the school shootings, it's the guns, you know, and it's just like,
no, it's, it's a pie chart that creates these issues.
And so when people are judgmental towards broken homes, I'm actually writing a book
at the moment and it's going to talk about this, that multi-generational trauma.
Well, why is dad not there?
What happened to dad?
Dad was once, or mom, they were once a giggling little preschooler that all they cared about
was, you know, playing with balls and picking flowers and chasing butterflies.
And then the environment that they grew up in started kind of encapsulating them.
So we have to look at what are we doing that's continuing perpetuating this issue.
And one of the things I talk about a lot in here is the prohibition of drugs.
If drugs were not illegal and addicts went to medical facilities and got mental health
counseling and addiction counseling and job creation, there wouldn't be people slinging
the dope on the streets anymore.
There wouldn't be gangs.
Therefore, a lot of these negative role models wouldn't exist around our children.
There would always be bad people that have found their way in a life of crime, but you
would massively minimize it.
And then conversely, what's interesting is if you look at the way that a lot of our poorer
areas, the school thing is funded, they're held to this standardized test.
And so they end up getting less support and less, you know, financial investment.
And if you look at someone like Finland, I've had a Finnish educator on the show, it's the
opposite where there are, you know, communities that are struggling.
They invest more resources into those communities so that they can try and break that cycle
because it might be that, you know, this happens a lot in the U.S.
You know, a lot of the child abuse is reported by our teachers, not the parents, you know.
So sometimes the teachers and the school counselors are, you know, that kind of beacon of light
for some of these kids that are in very desperate homes.
I can't agree more.
You know, even though I know we could segue this actually pretty funny, funny enough,
because when I was younger, I got bullied a lot and I was pretty much ostracized.
And as a kid that gets bullied, you never really feel comfortable talking to your parents
about it, especially because if you do, your parents typically make it worse because they
want to help and they'll call the school and they'll make us think and then nothing happens
because like nobody saw it.
And now you wind up just getting beat up worse or whatever the case is.
So after my parents had tried to help me before, my mom tried to help me before, I was like,
you know, it's probably just not tell anyone.
And so I used to hide out in the guidance counselor's office and I would go and I would
try and eat lunch there and be by myself and avoid all of the stuff that I had to deal
with.
However, there would be times where I just I couldn't get into the guidance counselor's
office or they had something going on.
And so they locked the doors and they were gone and I was dreading like, I don't want
to sit in the lunch room like this, the worst place for me.
And there was this one teacher and this was middle school that I'm talking about and his
name is Mr. Cottrell and he was the I forgot what his class was, but he was doing robotics
and that was like his extracurricular thing.
So they had the after school program for robotics.
We could like learn, I don't know, whatever that is.
And he would always have like the robotics kids could come to his class during lunch
and they can do more robotic stuff instead of waiting till after school.
Now obviously, Mr. Cottrell, the guy that does robotics, bit of a nerd himself, right?
So he I think one day how it happened was he just kind of noticed I was walking around
the halls with my lunch because I was locked out of the guidance counselor's office.
It was closed and I was trying to avoid getting caught in the halls because they'd send me
back to the lunch room.
And so I was just kind of walking around with this tray, but trying to like hide in the
stairwells and stuff.
And he's like, what are you doing?
I was like, well, I was going to go to the guidance counselor office, but it's closed.
And I was like, I really don't want to be in the lunch room.
Like I don't, I don't like being in there.
And he goes, well, you could join, you could join us.
You can hang out with us in the robotics room if you want.
I was like, yeah, it's like, yeah, come on in.
It's like robotics open everyone.
I was like, I don't, I don't know anything about robotics.
I'm not in your robotics club.
He's like, that doesn't matter.
Come on in.
And so I wound up finding another place.
Like if I couldn't go to the guidance counselor, I would go to Mr. Cotrell's room and I would
hang out.
And even though I knew nothing about robotics, I just sit there and watch and eat my lunch.
And you know, that's, that's something that shouldn't be overlooked because even when
I would have problems in school, like I told the dean that this kid threw me down the stairs
and then I got blamed for it.
And the principal then, you know, labeled me as the problem and the nurses don't listen
to me when I say I'm not feeling good because I'm always not feeling good.
But I don't know at 13 years old, that's because I'm having anxiety attacks every day and my
body's making me sick because I'm so fricking nervous.
And so it's interesting because out of all of these people, it was always like that one
guy that would just, hey man, I come hang out here.
You know, and I think we need more teachers or people like that that are around, especially
in the school system.
See, I'm so glad you told that story.
Firstly, because I'm sure there's a lot of people that can relate either adults or maybe
they're seeing it in their own children at the moment.
Why do they always seem like they don't want to go to school?
Why they always seem like they're sick?
Well, maybe it's an emotional issue.
But also, again, the finger pointing, the blaming, the, ah, these, these broken homes,
there is a solution.
And I see it over and over and over again with all these, you know, people that have
come on the show, there's always a mentor and Mr. Cottrell or, you know, the guidance
counselor, whoever it is, there are people that stepped up that allowed a child at that
point to, to come make a turn.
And there's numbers of people I know that have been in the military or fire that easily
through their story could have ended up in gangs, singing dope in prison or dead.
That's exactly where their rope is taken.
And some of their friends that they used to run with, that's where they are now behind
bars are in the ground.
So what we can all do firstly is, you know, try and, and, and be there for your family.
But again, I understand the dynamic and some people just can't, you know, they're a too
far gone addiction or maybe they're in prison at the moment or whatever it is, or, you know,
the person they have the child with is such a complete, you know, psychopath that they've,
you know, blocked them legally, whatever it is.
But we have the ability to do, to be a, a mentor in our own community as well.
And it can be, you know, talking to the kids outside the fire station or, you know, being
that person who opens their door in a school or, you know, coaching a little league, whatever
it is that again, takes the finger pointing away from you and it turns it towards you.
And if every single person actually just tried and help one person, just mentor one person,
whatever that looks like, there would be a massive, massive shift, but the, the, that's
only going to happen when you stop blaming everyone else and actually start taking ownership
and becoming part of the solution yourself.
There is an interesting dynamic in today's society where I believe too many people are
victims and not enough people are willing to take ownership accountability or responsibility.
And I find that time and time again, I see it in my clients, but it's a different level
with my clients because my typical client is an entrepreneur or high performing individual
executive, things like that.
So when they're not willing to take ownership, it's really a fraction of their life that
they might not be willing to take ownership because to get to those levels, you have to
be able to own some part of it.
Right.
But then you have other people that are just, well, it's, it's their fault that I feel this
way or it's, you know, the school system or it's, you know, society as a whole, or it's
the politics or it's the war, it's this, or it's that, or, and none of that at the end
of the day really matters to some degree, because if you want to change your life, you
have to change yourself.
There have been so many times we're working with people throughout my history and in mental
health, which is now coming up on 14 years, there have been so many times where it comes
down to, I get that that has happened.
I get that that sucks, but what are you prepared to do about it?
And a lot of people don't want to answer that question.
And they try to just go back to, well, I need them to own what they did.
Why?
What, like, what does that do for you?
Will it give me peace?
No, you think it will, but it won't because realistically, the only reason you want that
from them is because you need something within you.
And you think if you get something from an external source, you can translate it and
bring it inside, but it'll just move the needle very little because now you're going to look
for something else to, oh, well, I'll be ready to change after now.
I get this thing from this person or this thing from this or, you know, if I have a
better job or my girl stops doing X, Y and Z or my kid stops acting this way or people
will always come up with reasons outside of themselves as to what needs to change for
them to change.
And it's that concept that keeps us stuck in victimhood because you can't change a problem
that isn't yours.
You can't do anything to actually change anything in this world.
You can only focus on you.
You have an opportunity to influence.
That's your power of internal mastery being pushed outwards is the opportunity to influence,
but you can never directly control change or do anything of the sort to anything external.
But if you notice that when you focus more on the internal world and you focus more on
what is the deeper thing that you can improve upon, all of a sudden your life starts shifting
because the world's going to respond to you different because you are different.
Absolutely.
I just shared a video and it was Morgan Freeman being interviewed.
A lot of people seem to know who the guy interviewing was.
I didn't, but he, the interviewer made some comment.
Well, not everyone can do that.
And that's how the clip starts.
So obviously he was saying, you know, everyone has the power to, to lift themselves out of
a situation.
And he goes, I forget what Morgan frames us.
That's bullshit.
And he goes on to talking about that and he goes, you know, the bus, the bus runs every
day is the phrase you use.
And so even if you're in the shittiest place, there is a, there is a bus leaving where you
live.
Now, of course there's more complications than simply that, but ultimately I think what
he was saying is until you make the decision, until you actually change your belief system
to I can get out of this, then you're going to stay in that cage.
And I agree with you, even in the kind of first responder of mental, uh, military mental
health space, there's almost an element of, of, of victim hood in the sense that the conversation
has stopped.
And I'm just talking to an SAS soldier about this.
It's kind of ground to a halt at stigma.
And so, you know, basically if you stop at stigma, then all you've got is like, Oh, mental
health is so sad.
What needs to happen in my opinion is there's that post-traumatic growth story.
Now that is a story of hope.
That is a story that when you overcome whatever it is that is troubling you and it's a real
thing, it's the pee under the mattress, then there's a better version of yourself.
I think address trauma becomes a superpower.
I really do.
So that's what I'm not seeing in so many conversations in, in, you know, the last two presidents,
where has there been any conversation about hope and you know, you can be anything you
want to be.
And you know, we're going to come together, any source of community and encouragement
and empowerment, we don't hear that from the president.
We don't hear it a lot of times from the people in sports or music or all the quote unquote
role models.
It's divisive, it's narcissistic.
And so I think this is what we need to infuse to inspire that little boy or girl that grew
up in that trailer in Florida or gang-ridden apartment complex in Queens or wherever it
was that you, you can change this.
You can get out, but the first thing you need to do is understand that is the cycle and
you have the power not only to break it, but grow from it and be a beacon of light for
others.
You know, that's probably one of the biggest things that I've noticed as a massive change
in society.
We used to be a society that valued doing the right thing.
We used to have great messages put into everything.
If you remember Mr. Rogers, I don't know if you ever grew up on him or you saw him, but
for the listeners who might not have experienced him, Mr. Rogers one time, his television show
was going to get canceled.
He was a children's show host and he had a very wholesome children's show and he was
going to get canceled.
He had to appear before a hearing and it wasn't like anything bad he did.
It was just, he was trying to save his show.
He wanted the, I think it was the state or whoever was going to cut his funding at the
time and he appeared before the hearing and the way he showed up and talked about why
his show was so important was because he cared so deeply about being able to support and
teach children the right ways to grow up.
He believed that through his program, his show, he was imparting general good and knowledge
and wisdom.
Then we had shows like Bob Ross, who was this guy with this giant Afro and he would always
talk about painting a happy little tree and not telling anyone about it and just being
a really kind soul.
We had so many of these people, at least for me as a kid that inspired me to be a good
person.
Now, when you look at the kids shows, they're stupid.
It's about being dumb.
There's no good messages.
There's no hopeful messages.
There's nothing about inspiring to aspire to be something amazing and then be a good
part of society.
Now, it's like stupid shows where you could rip somebody's head off and then it pops back
out of their neck and they're like, oh, that was crazy.
And these are the things that kids are watching now.
In my opinion, it's not just the presidents.
It's not just a few of the leaders.
It's actually society shifting as a whole where it's moving away from messages, wholesomeness,
values, and just towards stupidity, opinions, and realistically, what's going to get the
most views on news, social media?
Because Mr. Rogers today, I don't think he'd do good.
I think he was phenomenal, but he wouldn't do good because why?
There's not enough interesting quote unquote stuff on there.
He's not stupid.
He's not funny.
He's not sarcastic.
He's kind.
He's gentle.
He's loving.
He's teaching.
And the world has moved away from that because now our brains are so messed up because we're
programming ourselves to want the dopamine from all this crap we're seeing on social
media and news and everything else.
Additionally, if you understand about how the brain works, you know that the brain is
programmed to look for things that are wrong.
That's why being positive is usually harder because of the fact that the brain is programmed
to look for things that could cause harm, danger, et cetera.
So negative news always gets more views than positive ones.
That's why a lot more of the headlines and the shows and the socials are bombarding us
with negativity because we're hooked on it and we perpetuate it because we don't turn
it off.
Me, I don't even have social media on my phone anymore.
I deleted all my apps.
Like somebody told me the other day, they're like, hey, dude, like you should check out
my story on Instagram.
Like I don't have I have it on my phone and I'm not in front of a computer right now.
So like can't do it.
But we don't have like that's very uncommon, right?
Most people are on their phone.
And if you check their screen time, it's probably like eight hours a day minimum.
So I think a big part is also getting people to play a part in showing what we want.
And we don't realize we have the numbers.
There might be 50 executive heads, but there's eight billion people.
Why are we consuming what 50 people say we should when we have the number?
And so I don't think people and this comes back to that story of victimhood, right?
I don't think people realize just how much power they have.
We have so much power, so much potential because that's what the human spirit is.
And we just give it away all day, every day from things that we believe are disempowering
us.
But the only thing that disempowers us is this is your mind.
I couldn't agree more.
And I think you can look at it in so many ways.
For example, let's go back to the president.
Just for a moment, we look at it like that's the pinnacle of a pyramid.
And we forget that we're the base with this massive, massive group of people at the bottom
and then flip it upside down.
That's how it actually is.
Billions of people on top, the few at the bottom.
And remember, you work for us.
But when you divide and you distract and you create anxiety amongst vast populations of
people, it's almost like you make them forget the power they actually have, the power to
follow their own dreams and the power to challenge things that are just simply wrong.
I just did a post speaking on social media.
I try and put positive things out there.
And it's amazing that when the ball rolls, a lot of the positive stuff does actually
get traction.
Not that we're doing it for views and likes or anything, but you see that there is a hunger
for that.
You just got to get people looking away from the clickbait.
But when it comes to the collective understanding, for example, the prohibition of drugs, the
addiction crisis, I mean, this has been going on for almost 100 years now.
The most epic failure with a hundred year longitudinal study that trying to arrest your
way out of addiction doesn't work.
Add guilt and shame to people who are struggling with guilt and shame does not work.
We've empowered gangs and we've created homelessness and sex workers and all these other things.
But imagine if everyone had an awakening and goes, this isn't working.
We need this to stop right now.
Let's decriminalize drugs.
Let's stop putting addicts in prisons and put them in medical facilities.
I mean, you'd revolutionize so many things and broken homes would start reconnecting
again because these young men in particular wouldn't be dragged down the path of the criminal
world.
But when you're so focused on the Super Bowl and Trump and Biden or whatever is kind of
on your screen, your brain doesn't have the capacity to critically think with a calm mind.
I think this is the problem is that we all have to turn our damn devices off and I get
it.
They're addictive and I use it as a tool to promote the podcast.
So I'm not going to be a hypocrite, but you know, if it sucks you in and you can't even
think critically anymore and COVID was a perfect example, whatever people's beliefs, there
was a parting of the Red Sea and the middle where the seashells were was actually the
common sense.
But everyone went left and right because they were so anxious, you know, and so they lost
the capacity to think.
So I agree with you a hundred percent.
I mean, we've got it so skewed.
You know, it's interesting too, because we forget we are the gatekeepers of our mind.
Nobody can make you see anything you don't want to see.
You have to be conscious.
I recommend a book for every new client that I have.
I do an onboarding assignment and at the bottom of the onboarding assignment is to read the
book as a man thinketh by James Allen.
And it's a little bit of an older book.
You know, I mean, as a man thinketh, right, it kind of says it in the title and you're
going to get some old school lettering and wording or they'll be like the the mail, like
you'll get it.
You'll get that in the conversation.
But I say that that's the foundation.
Like if you're a new client of mine, you have to read that book because that is the foundation
of mindset.
Everything he talks about in that book about planting the seeds for the crops that you
want to grow.
In today's world, we allow too many people to plant the seeds in our garden.
Then we get plants we don't want.
And in addition to that, we're not tending to our garden.
And so it's full of weeds.
It's full of the wrong plants.
And we're wondering why is it that we have no food?
Our garden looks like crap and we are struggling to sustain ourselves.
And this is all where it comes back to like mindset isn't everything, but it does impact
everything.
And so you have to understand how you are showing up.
A lot of what I talk about is about putting the power back into people's hands.
When when I'm trying to help somebody or I'm trying to teach somebody something, it's all
foundational and rooted in your personal development.
And we always we always hear about personal development, right?
There's a guru for this.
There's a self-help book for that, a story for this.
You know, there's a course, a training, a workshop, a webinar, a seminar, a workbook,
an e-book, a regular book.
Where do we go?
Where does the noise actually stop?
When do you figure it out?
You don't ever really figure it out because there's always ways that you can grow.
However, I am a fan of telling people dedicate yourself to something like I've had clients,
for instance, that have come in, been with me for a few months and I know that they didn't
really put in the work.
And then they're like, hey, man, I'm great.
I'm good.
And then I see they have another coach and then they probably stick with that coach for
two months and then they go get another coach and then so on and so forth.
And it's this there's two types of people in personal development is what I've learned.
You have the personal development junkie.
There's the person that's basically shooting positive heroin into their into their veins
where they get a new coach and a new course and a new seminar and they just joined a new
program and they never actually utilize any of it.
They just go.
They said they did it.
They get excited.
They get excited to talk to people about how much they're investing in themselves and what
they're learning, what they're what they're doing.
But their their life never really moves forward.
That's the personal development junkie.
And then you get somebody that's really in personal development.
And they're the person that maybe gets with a coach and sticks with them for like a year
or two.
And they're the person that gets a program and like does the program.
And even after the program is over, continues to implement the things until they perfected
it.
And they're the person that reads one book because that book can actually sustain their
self growth for the next two years as long as they actually apply the things they've
learned.
And so you really have I mean, and that's kind of every part of life, but it's so freaking
clear in the personal development world because I've been here for so long that I just see
that there are so many people that don't actually utilize what they learn here.
And they're just here to tell people how amazing it is that they're investing in themselves.
And I think if you become the other person, where you actually just stick to something,
like here's a quick little story.
I had a client told me he wanted to read 52 books in the next year.
Like we were assessing what's your goals for the year because it was about that time.
And he goes, I want to read 52 books.
I'm like, so how big is your ego that you feel you need to read 52 books?
And he's like, what?
He's like, there's successful people out there that read 52 books all the time.
I'm like, I don't think so.
And I said very plainly, there's no way you're going to read a book a week unless they're
like 10 pages.
There's no way you're reading a book a week and you're going to take all the information
that you gained from that and you're going to organize it and you're going to utilize
it and you're going to practice it and you're going to try it and you're going to tweak
and you're going to add onto it and you're going to learn from it and you're going to
create actionable steps to get something out of the information you read in that book.
I was like, your goal to read 52 books in one year is literally the biggest ego project
you have created in your recent life.
I was like, I will challenge you to read two to three books this year and see if you can
even apply all the steps from just those and I guarantee you won't be able to.
So put your ego down, set a goal that will actually help you get one or two really good
books and apply everything.
And people don't always think like that.
We get stuck in our egos.
I like that term, the kind of self-help junkie because I've seen that a lot and people have
made the similar comment.
You know, they go to all the seminars and you know, and then dive in and do the, you
know, 4 a.m. ice baths and all that stuff, but then fall off.
And I think again, you're not, you know, if that works for you for a couple of weeks,
then great.
But understanding, you know, I mean, the way I look at it is this.
If you reverse engineer past a hundred years ago, there was, there were no self-help books.
There were no ice baths or anything else.
And we were still thriving as a species pretty much.
We were eating real food.
We were moving a lot.
We were out in daylight most of the time.
We had a lot of time in nature.
You know, we were eating around a dinner table, not distracted by devices, you know.
So there's, there's these fundamental things.
And so the way I look at it in my very kind of layman terms is, is this truly a holistic
thing that humans would have done for a long time or is mirroring something that we would
have done for a long time or is this biohacking?
Because biohacking is just that kind of easy button that you think is going to be sustainable,
but it's not.
You know, most people don't stay on a ketone diet, for example.
It has applications, but most people you hear like I did it for a bit.
I did it with plant-based, very, very beneficial for my blood work, very beneficial for my
gut health.
But there was a certain point where my body was like, I need meat and I went back to meat
again.
So I think there is absolutely, you know, the ability and like you said, the addictive
part of, you know, a lot of us, whether it's social media or, you know, food or whatever
it is can be a gym and it can also be the help to self-help stuff.
And I see a lot of people with Instagram pictures of stacks of books and God, every bloody ice
bar that ever existed is on Instagram somewhere as well.
You know, is it, is it actually for you and is it truly, you know, something that's going
to be sustainable or is this something that you just want people to see you doing?
Those are two very different things.
Yeah.
You know, and some of it is for show for some people because they need that.
They need that external validation to feel good about themselves.
But you know, some, some people are doing it and they're documenting it with the hopes
to inspire others.
There are some people, right?
Like they'll put out that stack of books as a photo, but then you don't see anything on
their Instagram for the next, I don't know, four months.
And then they'll come back with a new message and be like, all right, guys, I've been quiet.
I fell off a little bit, you know, but your boys back now I'm about to hit it hard.
They're not going to call this a comeback.
And then they go quiet for another four months.
And it's like, there are people out there like that.
And then there are people out there that are doing it like, like you and I, for instance,
I hate social media.
I don't care about it.
I don't like it.
I haven't been on social media and probably I recently deleted the apps.
I want to say it's been four or five days now.
I don't even care, man.
I like literally I have zero desire to figure out what's going on.
I'm so happy.
I'm so much more present.
And I know that that's the biggest benefit because of social media being gone.
I hate it.
But we also look at it as an opportunity.
It's a tool like you're going to be out there consuming somebody's crap, at least consume
mine because it'll help you.
And so, right.
I think there are those ways of like how we could show up to try to help people.
And we do it in a very genuine fashion.
Like I hate social media so much that I don't do it for me.
If I'm posting, it's literally for you because I'm fine.
Even though I'm not on social media, I'm still getting clients.
I'm still working.
I'm running.
I have four businesses I run.
Like I don't need social media.
I do it literally not for me.
So every time I get people trying to sell me like, hey, we can enhance your social media
and we can do this and we can do that.
And like I'm sure it'll probably get me more clients or whatever the case is.
But I don't really look at social media as that because I don't care about it.
I look at it as like the content is for you.
So at the end of the day, I think it's really about asking ourselves like how do we show
up?
How do we want to show up?
Who are we trying to help?
And why do we want to do it?
And that kind of is a big guideline for me and obviously a guideline for you.
And hopefully even some of the listeners out there, like when you're on social media, you
have to ask yourself like, why are you there?
Like what are you doing on it?
Are you doing it for you?
Are you doing it for others?
Are you doing it to quote unquote stay informed?
I love when people are telling me that, oh, I'm on social media so much because I'm staying
informed.
Great.
What are you doing with all the information?
Like, it's my number one question, you know, and so it's just choose to show up intentionally.
I think that's what we have moved so far away from.
And that's something I really try to teach now is like, just please be intentional with
your life.
I guarantee it'll be so much better.
Yeah.
No, I couldn't agree more.
And I mean, there's times obviously where I'm going to post a family thing.
Like I turn 50 tomorrow.
I'll do a post turning 50 because it's cool.
Thank you.
But most of the time it is, okay, here's an interesting, here's an inspiring video or
here's something that made me cry.
So I'm going to make you fuckers cry now.
You know, but it is, it's to get a reaction, to get people thinking.
And a lot of times it will take time to write on the comments, but it's like an episode
of the podcast.
It's an opportunity to get people thinking about whatever the thing is, but it's not,
you know, a selfie or yet another video of me in CrossFit or, you know, whatever, you
know, a lot of people that, that, that do put that out there.
But you know, I just had this, this soldier on the show that was talking about the SAS
guy and he was saying that social media or just, just content in general, you know, the
way that you consume information is like food.
You know, if you want to have a long, healthy life and perform at a high level, then you're
diligent about the kind of food that you put in your body.
If you get your news from CNN or Fox and you're on Instagram and Tik TOK the whole time, that's
the McDonald's of, of information.
And so, you know, you reap what you sow and he was absolutely right.
It's true.
But we could talk a little bit about kind of piggybacking off of what he said to one
of the biggest things that I'm passionate about in personal development is your identity.
Nowadays, there's a great conversation.
And when I say great, I'm really being facetious.
There's a great conversation about identity and everybody's so focused on sexuality being
like the biggest part of your identity.
But nobody talks about that.
Everything is part of your identity because the interesting thing is that we create our
identities from the information that we are taking in and processing in our worlds.
Now a lot of the times where we're getting stuck is we're not determining what our identities
are.
So I talk about how do you go from passively experiencing life to consciously creating
it and foundationally, it all starts within it all starts at the identity because there's
actually an interesting chain that I've discovered with people.
So the first thing is that we all have this desire to be consistent to who we believe
ourselves to be.
That's your identity.
The identity starts building out your your behaviors.
What are behaviors?
Behaviors are your attitude there, how you're viewing life there, what it is that you think
about or should I say what it is that you believe on your experiences or whatever, like
you're waking up, you have a crappy day or you believe it's going to be a crappy day.
That's your behavior.
That's your attitude.
It has nothing to do with anybody else.
Do you so we have identity goes to your behaviors, your behaviors start forming these actions
that you're going to take because the behaviors are now going to dictate how you're going
to show up what you're going to do.
Actions are just extensions of the behaviors that you already have.
Those actions, if you do them long enough, it's like a math equation that going to compound
over time.
The compounding actions start forming your habits.
Your habits are I mean, that's obvious.
Now you're just running on autopilot.
You're not thinking about your actions.
You're not thinking about your behavior all along unaware that this all comes from your
identity and now you have these habitual behaviors, aka actions, aka activities you're doing every
single day, which continues to reinforce that life or lifestyle.
Then you get to the last part of the chain, which is just your outcomes and results.
Your outcomes and your results in life are literally just stemming from your habits.
The habits are from the actions, the actions are from the behaviors and it all goes back
to your identity.
If we are passively experiencing life and we are not consciously creating our identities,
you're going to have an outcome or a result you're not a fan of.
But then the question is how do we start shifting the identity?
You can't unless you know who you want to become and you start taking action based on
who you believe you can be instead of who you currently are.
That's where people get caught up because they don't put in the work to actually roadmap
what that's supposed to look like.
So you say, Vin, I want to be a great 50 year old.
Too late.
Cool James.
Then the question is, what is the most empowered version of a 50 year old James look like?
What would he say?
What would he think?
What would he do?
How would he act?
How would he inspire others to feel?
How would he show up daily?
What's his habits going to be like?
His routines, his lifestyle, etc.
And there's so many things that go into understanding what is an empowered identity look like.
And then from there you want to actually challenge yourself to live that out day in and day out
because now you have the clarity.
Now it's about taking the steps and then people get stuck there.
They're like, well, what are the only things that I could work on?
And that's where I talk about go inside.
There's only five things in this world you can control.
That's your thoughts, your actions, your behaviors, your emotions and your language.
And if you gain mastery over those five, as I call them the five aspects of self mastery,
you then pair that with your empowered identity.
And now you're actually really creating something and that is forcing you into consciousness
because we don't change from conscious conversation.
We change from subconscious reprogramming.
And if you can't do the things daily to get yourself reprogrammed, you can never create
an identity shift and the identity shift can never lead to a different outcome.
And the different outcome will never lead you to that lifestyle you dream of.
But it always is consistent.
It just starts with you.
What are some of the mistakes that you see people make?
Because just as you said, there's a lot of, you know, whether it's reading, whether it's
taking a self help seminar, but then there's the application and there's a lot of resistance
to that.
And sometimes people just try and change everything all at once as well, which is, you know, unsustainable.
So someone's going to identify where they where they are.
How do you coach them in starting to change those those daily practices and embed them
so they can become an actual discipline?
So that's a great question.
I actually really love that.
Everybody's at different places pretty much all times in their lives, right?
Especially when they come to me.
I mean, I'm going to get somebody that's here and then I'm going to get somebody that's
here and then somebody that's here and then somebody that's over there.
And so I'm always dealing with people at different stages.
I believe that the teachings that I go through with people are kind of fundamental to life.
Now, you actually made a comment before about like, you know, 100 years ago with self development.
I believe self development has been around since the dawn of time.
We just call it different things.
We call it the Bible or we call it stoicism or we call it philosophy.
Personally, personal development is ingrained in us because the human spirit always wants
to expand its capacity.
That is a deep spiritual truth about the human race.
And I'm not talking about religious, right?
So if any of your followers are atheist, you should still be able to believe on this part
because this is just the deepest part of your of your being.
If we don't want to call it a soul, that's fine, too.
But I look at it as that we always have these desires to be more.
Sometimes we don't do it, and that's when we start feeling like crap.
So my thing is you have to figure out where you currently are in life.
The process I take people through is very simple.
When you first start working with me and for all of you listeners, I encourage you even
just do this for yourself.
Maybe make this a home assignment, make it a fun exercise for you.
It could potentially create some awareness and shed some light on your life.
When a client first starts working with me, I've created an onboarding assignment for
my time as a therapist and then becoming a coach and combining the two modalities.
The first part of the onboarding assignment is we do an in-depth assessment of your life.
Go back, write down everything that you believe was important to your history.
Like where were some pivotal moments in your life?
What were some of the things that shaped you?
Can you think about a time where limiting beliefs started?
Can you really get back to just these pieces of who you were and start piecing together
your story from then until now?
Then we go to the present and then the questions are based on what is your current lifestyle
like?
Do you believe that somebody's holding you back?
Are you living as a victim?
What do you currently believe about your state of being in this moment?
Then we create the hopeful future.
What do you want to see from your life?
If you were living in your best state, what does that life look like?
How should that life be?
What do you see for yourself?
What do you experience in that life?
What kind of emotions do you have the most abundance in?
What are the experiences you're enjoying?
Really create this amazing vision.
When I do that assignment with people, it roadmaps for them.
We start with where you've been, where you are, and where you're going.
I actually like to tell them it's not really a linear thing.
If you think about it, it's almost like you're starting up here because I believe that the
past is something that we should spend some time analyzing.
It's actually really important, so I believe it should be at an elevated spot when you're
working on yourself.
You don't spend a lot of time there.
Just get what you need.
Then we drop down to reality.
Then it's like, all right, we're in the thick of it.
Now you climb out of that because you're creating your hopeful future.
I like to say that almost this is shaped like a you.
You go back up into the clouds and your dreams of your past.
You come down to reality, maybe a little hard, and then you go up with your hopeful future.
Beautiful.
Well, you've been talking a lot about psychology.
Let's start your path into the mental health side, and then we'll lead into how and why
you joined the Fire Service.
Sure.
Well, mental health has always been a desire for me.
My dad was a therapist.
Ever since I was probably fifth grade, about 10 years old or so, I always said I want to
be a firefighter and I want to be a psychotherapist, or a therapist more appropriately because
I don't know, 10 year olds like to say psychotherapist.
Maybe I did.
I don't know.
But people would always lump the two together.
They'd be like, wow, that's so honorable.
You want to be a therapist for firefighters?
I'm like, no.
I want to be a therapist like my dad and a firefighter because they're heroes.
I basically always was wanting to do the two.
I also, as I mentioned before, I struggled a lot when I was younger.
I was diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and panic disorder.
I had a lot of suicidal ideation.
I had self-harm tendencies, and I never fit in anywhere.
My whole life was always just getting bullied.
I was thrown in trash cans.
I was thrown down the steps.
I was pushed into lockers.
I was made fun of.
I had rumors started about me.
People would steal from me.
Everything that could happen to somebody was happening to me.
I was really in these just terribly down states for, I'd say most of my teen to young adult
life.
When I say young adult, I mean in my early 20s.
Things started to subside around 23.
A big part of the story that I feel is so important for listeners to understand is I
lived in this state of victimhood for pretty much all of my life.
There wasn't really a time for me, which is why I was so hung up on the idea of suicide
and self-harm, is because the mindset is you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel.
It gets really exhausting fumbling around in the dark for such a long time.
For me, that was a big reality, even though it wasn't like this crazy stuff of experiencing
gang violence or whatever.
I had my own reality.
I had my own life that wasn't really adding up the way I wanted it to.
In high school, going into college, I thought that I needed to change something.
My name is Vincent, but I wrote on my college transcripts that my name is Vincenzo.
I was trying to reinvent myself to something cooler.
The Italian guy with the cool Italian name, Vincenzo.
It worked and it didn't.
I started getting girls.
I changed up my image.
I grew a beard.
I started working out because I was a little bit fat.
I was a little depressed, all that.
When I changed up my image and I changed up my name, I realized, oh man, this is working.
I have friends now.
I got a girl or a girl's interested.
However, the internal is still the same.
I was still that anxious guy.
I was still that guy who was awkward.
I was still that guy who didn't know how to approach people.
Then anxiety got worse and panic got worse and depression got worse and everything continued
to get worse until I was having a lot of mental breakdowns.
Every few months, I was in the worst place mentally I could have ever been.
At about 23 years old was when I decided, I decided that I just couldn't live that way
anymore.
It didn't go in the opposite direction.
When people hear that, that's saying that I decided I couldn't live like this anymore,
they think the worst.
For me, it actually was the best.
I was so fed up with how my life was.
I was pretty much in the bathroom in my parents' house and I just slammed my hands on the counter
and I was like, what is wrong with me?
Why is it that at 23 years old, I've graduated, I have my license to practice psychotherapy,
I have my master's, I have a really great car, I have money in the bank, I just landed
a great job.
Why am I still depressed?
Why am I so anxious all the time?
Why am I so angry?
I have everything society says I should have, so what's up?
You really can't figure it out.
But I looked at myself in the mirror and I was like, oh my God, I get it now.
It's like you're Vincent.
That was the first time in seven years that I said my own name, my actual name, my real
name.
And the reason that was so powerful is because I was finally willing to take my power back.
I was finally willing to accept that that's who I am.
All the crap that happened in my life, the way my life currently is, it's all because
of that person, even though I spent time trying to run from him.
And so in that moment, I had to ask myself a very hard question.
I was like, all right, well, you're Vincent.
Who is that?
Well, Vincent is depressed.
He's anxious.
He's suicidal.
He's sad.
People pity him.
He gets panic attacks.
He gets a mental breakdown every now and then.
He doesn't feel good about life.
Okay, cool.
Is this who you want to be?
The answer is no.
Who do you want to be?
Well, I want to be a leader.
I want to be inspiring.
I want to be someone who's excitable.
I want to be powerful.
I want to help others.
I want to teach.
I want to be happy.
I want to be empathetic.
I want to be enthusiastic.
And all of a sudden, everything's just flowing.
It's all just coming out.
I could see it.
I'm like, oh man, yeah, this is what I want.
And then it just came to that question of like, okay, so how do you become all of that?
What do you have to do?
Who do you have to be?
How do you become those things that you just said?
Because they all have a way of showing up.
And that's why I talk so much about building these empowering identities because I did
it.
That's how I changed my life.
And I went on that journey at 23 years old.
And conversely, that same week, I walked into my therapist office and I said, it's been
real, man.
I'll see you later.
I'm never coming back.
Because I was ready to embark on my journey to take my power back.
I didn't need my therapist to validate me anymore because he let's be real.
He wasn't really helping me anyway.
And I was finally ready to just own everything in my life and say, everything that happens
now is by my hand, good and bad.
And I'm ready to take this trip.
And so I did it 23.
And then the fire department happened at about 28.
But I'll take a pause in case James wants to weigh in here.
Yeah, let me just throw one thing in there.
And this is related to the fire department.
So as I progress through all these interviews, I realized and through the education of some,
I guess, like Jake Clark, the importance of the formative years on us struggling when
we get into adulthood and maybe putting uniform on.
And it's not a doom and gloom conversation.
Because again, to me, addressed childhood trauma, childhood struggles, addressed becomes
a strength, becomes a superpower.
If you push down left unaddressed, it's a fracture in the foundation.
When you look back now, I mean, you had some pretty strong emotional feelings as a teen,
especially suicide ideation.
Were there elements of your upbringing that you can identify now were the kind of the
root cause of some of these feelings?
So my mom has always been a bit anxious.
And I've come to learn that anxiety is learned.
I think that perhaps my mom in her own anxious way contributed to my state of anxiety.
However, I can't blame her because I took it and ran with it.
And we know that we might take other people's crap on, but it's our choice as to how long
we want to carry that crap and how much we want to say, well, it's not my fault you gave
it to me.
It's like, OK, well, that's cool, because you'll never change your life if you believe
that.
And so I think my mom had given me some anxiety.
My brother now, my brother, he I don't talk a lot about my brother growing up because
my brother wasn't really around growing up.
My brother had been on his own path and.
I didn't really learn much from him.
I just kind of learned more of what not to do in life by watching him, if that makes
sense, and I'll kind of leave it there.
And my dad, my dad was interesting because though he's a therapist, I think that he at
times he was a great dad, but he at times could also lack some patience.
And so I feel like there were things that I learned from him, which was, you know, if
it's not happening right away, maybe it's maybe it's not supposed to be or whatever
the case is.
And that set me up.
And even if he didn't teach me that, that's how I kind of interpreted it.
But that might have set me up in a state of, well, if I can't figure out these issues and
I can't resolve them, maybe it's just like I'm going to deal with them forever, which
I learned.
Like that's a terrible way to think because every every problem has a solution is there's
no problem in this world that you can't fix.
You just maybe don't have the answers at the moment, or maybe you don't have the tools
or the resource or the skill set or the knowledge.
Doesn't matter.
But that was a big thing that I think I had to figure out, like those few things from
my parents and my upbringing.
Is the kind of phrase that came to me a little while ago now.
Their reasons, not excuses.
If you were sexually abused as a child, that is going to have an impact.
That is a reason for some of the ways that you feel now.
But the moment you turn that reasons into an excuse is when you slip into that victim
mentality.
When you acknowledge that reason, you acknowledge the impact that had on you, and then you empower
yourself to believe that you can grow from that.
That's a beautiful thing.
So I think the difference between a reason and an excuse and not invalidating the trauma
because it had an impact, whether it was something horrendous like that or whether it was being
the middle child and feeling unloved.
It had an impact.
But the moment I think that slips into the world of is an excuse for my behavior is an
excuse for my depression and that's why I'm an asshole to everyone.
But now you're an asshole because you refuse to address the thing that's going on.
I'm not saying it's easy at all, but you are choosing, like you said, to...
You're not choosing to hold on to it.
You're choosing not to release it, I guess is a better way of saying it.
Yeah, 100%.
Well, similar to yours, I love what you just said.
Similar to that is one that I hear is like, you're not responsible for what happened to
you as a child.
However, you're responsible for what you do with that as an adult.
And that's the truth because I've gotten people all the time who they'll come in with something
that happened when they were like 12 years old and now they're 50 and they're still perpetuating
it.
And I'm like, you do realize that you've lived for, oh, I don't know, 38 years without growing
as a person.
You stayed stuck at 12 when you decided that this thing was so deep, so heavy and so impactful
that you refuse to grow in that area of your life from the moment you were 12, that you're
now 50 years old dealing with this thing that happened to you at 12.
That means that you have carried it with you.
That's like, well, I didn't do it to myself.
It's like, I know you didn't, but you're choosing to use it.
You're choosing to hold it.
You're choosing to keep it somewhat as a crutch because if you think about it, to your point,
James, what you just said is like, if you don't do that, you then have to deal with
it.
You then have to work on it.
You then have to go on the journey.
You then have to come up with the answers to the questions of why you, like, I don't
know why you, you need to determine that, not me, but then you have to sit with yourself
and you have to make sense of it and you have to process it and you have to overcome it.
You have to switch the mindset and change the experience and empower yourself.
But that's a lot of freaking work.
You know, it's easy.
Just be an asshole for the next 40 years and say, it's not your fault.
It's the easy way.
Absolutely.
Well, that also parallels our conversation earlier.
It's easy to point at broken homes and politicians and say, it's your fault rather than looking
in the mirror and going, what can I do?
And do I need to even fix me?
Am I adding to the problems in the world?
Am I so infuriated by a tweet because actually it's something in me that I haven't let go.
And that's why I'm saying I hate all person of this color, political persuasion, whatever
it is.
So yeah, I mean, that is it.
It really is the root cause is the easy button is when you blame someone else.
You expect someone else to fix your problems.
You know, whereas if we all look in the mirror and start chipping away at the things that
we can actually touch and address again, imagine, like you said, eight billion people doing
that.
I mean, you'd be a paradigm shift.
It'd be a powerful planet, my man.
We are so much more powerful.
And I always say this.
And I hope I hope this resonates with at least one of your listeners.
You're so much more powerful than you know, the human spirit is truly limitless.
We have all of the like we literally have all the power of the world.
If you think about it, everything that we've created has been something that the spirit,
the mind has thought up.
Nothing was here when we got here.
There was nothing here unless you subscribe to the alien ideation.
Maybe there was something here, but let's just for all intents and purposes say there
wasn't anything here.
Everything that's here now is because we dreamed it.
We created a vision.
And before it was a vision.
It was just an idea.
And it was something that somebody probably thought was stupid.
And now it's being sold like crazy.
Like I think those poodle pool noodles, like you ever seen those long freaking things that
are just their pool noodle and they're stupid.
And people probably laughed at this guy for wanting to make these ridiculous styrofoam
noodles guys, a multimillionaire from freaking styrofoam noodles.
And so it's just funny because everything you see, everything you utilize in society,
everything that makes society society is because of the fact that we dreamed it, we thought
of it.
And now guess what?
We all rely on each other to use it.
Like James, I don't know how the internet works.
I mean, I have an idea of it.
I have a vague idea of it, a basic understanding of it, but I don't actually know how the internet
works.
I couldn't create it if you asked me to do it right now.
I have no idea how to create this microphone I'm using.
I have no idea how to build this computer in front of me.
I have no idea how to, you know, uh, put together a screen, the lighting that I have, the curtains.
I don't know how to make any of this.
I don't even know how to make the t-shirt I'm wearing.
And yet I gained the benefit of all of it because of the fact that there were humans
out there that were intuitive, that had visions, that had ideas that were willing to take the
risk, take the leap and jump and create something.
And we also continue to innovate on the things that have already been created because somebody
looks at something and says, wow, that's amazing.
Maybe I can make it even better.
And they do oftentimes the human spirit truly has that unlimited potential and sometimes
so untapped.
So I want everybody to truly believe you have so much more within you greatness isn't achieved.
It's displayed.
You just got to figure it out and show it to the world.
Absolutely.
Well, let's go to your journey into the fire service and then out the back door.
Yeah.
So journey into the fire service was I took the fire exam twice in New York.
It's very different.
New York, you age out of the fire department at 29 years old.
You are not.
And that means you're not able to take the test past the age of 29.
You also are not eligible to take the test until you're 18.
And the test is given once every four years.
So let's say you turn 18 and the test was given a month before your birthday.
Can't take it.
And now you have to wait four years until you're 22 to take it.
The test being given only once every four years means that pretty much at any given
time from 18 to 29, you only have two opportunities to take this test.
And it's so competitive because there's over 8000 applicants every year that the test gets
released that you have to be within the top mind you top 5000 to potentially be called.
So the opportunity to become a firefighter is very slim.
Additionally, because there's so many applicants and it goes by social security number, they
will rank you.
There are let's say you get a 93.
There's probably 10,000 people that got a 93.
So you have to be somebody that is going to get and this is this is pretty factual here.
You have to get 100 on the exam or a little bit higher to know for a fact that you're
going to get called.
Because if you get 100 or higher, it puts you at the top of the list.
So the first time I took the test, I got a 93 and my number was like, I think my number
was like 18,000.
And I kind of was really frustrated because I always wanted to be a firefighter and I
hated college while I was in it and I wanted to drop out of college.
And I was hoping and praying that I got a good score on this test because I could drop
out of college and become a firefighter and I was so set to do that.
And I didn't.
I got number 18,000.
I never got called and I had to finish the stupid school and then I had to go and get
these stupid jobs.
And yet the second time I took the exam, I got a 103.
I was number 1217 on the list.
And typically they go through about five to 600 people per class.
They have two classes a year.
So that's how we get the number of about 5,000 a year, you know, 5,000 every four years to
get called.
And so I wound up getting called while I was working as a psychotherapist at a private
practice and I was now making this really hard decision because after searching for
the freaking place I wanted to work from 18 to 28 as a psychotherapist and being everywhere
like inpatient, outpatient, hospital, clinic, homeless shelter, Department of Education,
applied behavioral analysis, traveling home therapist.
I finally settled in a private practice and I was loving it, man.
I had 40 clients.
There's an awesome caseload and I was in a great private practice where we actually had
like some great individuals.
We had people that had steady jobs.
We had entrepreneurs.
We had all types of people and I loved it.
And now it's like, oh man, I'm 20 years old.
I just got called to become a firefighter.
Like this is my only shot.
If I don't do this, I'll never become a firefighter.
And so after some really tough decision making that took place, I decided to take the leap
and be like, all right, cool.
I'm going to go become a firefighter.
It's like my childhood dream.
And I could always go back to being a therapist, but I could only have this one shot to ever
become a firefighter in my lifetime.
So I'm going to do it.
And so I did it.
Past all the past all the preliminaries became a firefighter jumped into the fire Academy.
It's going strong.
It really sucks.
It's not fun at all.
They got the drill instructors yelling at you.
You're getting up at 3am.
You're getting yelled at on the lines.
You get home at 5, 6, 7, 8pm.
You go to sleep.
You have tests every week, functional skills training, hands on training, all this great
stuff.
And then about two months before we're supposed to graduate, the pandemic starts.
So it's funny because I'll never forget that moment where the drill instructors and James,
I'm sure you and a lot of these other first responders listening, you guys know how they
are right.
They're like, Hey, even though things are going on in the world, you better be prepared
to be here.
So I know it's Friday, but stay, you know, stay on your toes.
We'll see you Monday.
You're here until the end.
Okay.
We come in Monday.
Things are really going sideways.
You leave tomorrow to go to your firehouse.
Good luck.
What?
So it was very interesting how they just kind of sent us off.
They were like, your city needs you.
And mind you, they haven't done one of these, which they call a wartime graduation because
we graduated early.
They haven't done one of these since 9 11 because everybody was going out sick.
And obviously because nobody knew is literally the start.
People are extra cautious.
Like if you had COVID, like they were quarantining the whole house.
If one guy had it and a house might have like 20 people in it.
So now they're down 20 guys and you have people working triple OT because what else are you
going to do?
Everybody's out.
So it was a very interesting transition time.
So what did that look like when you got to the firehouse?
I had an interesting conversation with a firefighter recently and he was hired, but they were literally
in the tower when 9 11 happened.
So when he graduated as a pro be, he didn't have this intact firehouse and these crusty
old guys and the senior man taking him under his wing and saying, let me show you, you
know, the things you need to know, kid.
He went into a station with grieving men and women that were heartbroken in a city that
had been shattered.
And so it was really kind of fascinating hearing his kind of onboard story as far as being
a pro be.
What was that perspective for you entering COVID of all times?
It was interesting.
We definitely didn't get much like much like that gentleman.
We definitely didn't get the same experience that a lot of other pro be's had because one,
we didn't get to do a graduation.
We didn't get to like, I don't want to say we didn't get to finish our training because
we did, but we didn't get to do the things that really built the bigger brotherhood bonds,
you know, in the academy.
Like we went through five or four months of crap.
We did all the hard stuff, but then at the end is really where you build and you come
together as platoons and you do like the platoon games and you know, you have the graduating
ceremonies and it becomes this big deal of like, Hey, we made it.
Nobody ever really got to feel that or experience that our graduations were canceled.
We had like, we had like groups of 50 go for graduation after like six months in the, in
on the job, like actually in the firehouse.
And they'd be like, Oh, you can go and get your diploma and we all had to sit spaced
out with the masks on and no family could come.
And it was like, come get your diploma, just shake the chief's hand and then go back to
your, your seat and then like your release for the day.
So it was a different dynamic.
There weren't any boys night outs.
There weren't really many, there weren't any functions.
There was nothing to do.
The streets were completely empty.
So it made commuting to work super easy.
And I mean, it was just, it was interesting.
So also as a pro be typically you're supposed to have to earn 24s and we had to have 24s
right off the bat because of the fact that the COVID protocol is in place where it'd
be like you're on 24 and then you're off to, to make sure, you know, no incubation, yada,
yada.
So it actually made it a little easier for me because I was building my side business.
So I've been, I've been building the coaching business since I was in the academy actually,
because I was doing it on weekends because the fire Academy was Monday to Friday.
But now I was in the firehouse.
I was able to do it on my two days off and it made a little easier, but it was, it was
definitely a little bit of a weird time because no matter how anybody felt about it at the
start when nobody knew what was going on and you're just kind of seeing the news hyped
up and you're seeing people like saying everybody around them is dying.
It was weird.
You know, my girl was working in Manhattan at the time and obviously Manhattan is tight
and dense.
And I was telling my girls like, Hey, you know, make sure you bring hand sanitizer.
I was like, make sure you do this, make sure you do that.
Like maybe you should call it a work.
Like why don't you just quit your job?
I'll handle it.
Don't worry about it.
And so it was a very interesting and concerning time at the start just because of that.
But it was also interesting because I was in one of the houses that was one of the first
two houses for nine 11.
So I was stationed in downtown Brooklyn right over the Manhattan bridge.
And so I would at least once or twice a week, I would clean.
We had a memorial for all the guys that passed because everybody on tour that day passed
and I would always clean that memorial.
And it started, it was an interesting feeling, honestly, because it was like that immediate
realization that if something like that happens again, it could be me in a memorial next to
these guys because that's what the duty would require.
And there's like another level of respect for that.
So it was very interesting just experiencing the pandemic and then being in that kind of
house and seeing that like you didn't really get that opportunity to bond with the guys.
So I guess I never really felt super close with a lot of the guys in my house.
And my house also had a lot of younger guys.
Like one of the senior guys was like seven years on.
Like there was one guy who had like 20 years or two guys that had like 20 years or 10 years.
But then the next guy had like six and the guys who had 10, 20 years with chauffeurs
and they were kind of just chilling.
They weren't really like, come here, kid.
It was the six.
It was the guy that was six years on.
It was like, come here.
And he was a massive, massive fun person to be around.
So correct me if I'm wrong.
You didn't end up staying with FDM.
Why that long?
So what made you transition out after testing twice?
So I did it for a year combined with my time in the academy.
And it, I don't know, man, it wasn't really what it wasn't.
I guess it wasn't really filling me up and making me feel fulfilled.
I wasn't really enjoying the experience.
Like I liked it.
I liked being a firefighter.
I thought it was probably the coolest thing I've ever done.
I thought it was, it was, I don't know, it was a very, it was a very interesting feeling
or a great feeling to be kind of what we're talking about.
Like be that hero as a kid where, you know, you always imagined as a kid running into
danger making you the real life superhero.
It was a very cool feeling to kind of live that out.
Be like, I'm here to help people.
I'm here to like serve and save and protect.
And that was the best part of being a firefighter, but I didn't really feel that it was for me.
You know, I, and I was kind of ashamed to feel that realistically because I had wanted
it my whole life and I had worked really hard to achieve it because, you know, building
a business on the side while going through the academy was not easy.
And I'm not going to sit here and say I was a star student in the academy.
Like it was, it was tough for me because of that.
And then me and I was in a brand new relationship and we had just moved in together and we were
fighting every other day.
So going through the fire department was hell for me, man.
And I felt like I worked so hard to get there and then it was very sad to realize it wasn't
for me.
And the day that I had that true realization was it's Friday night.
A couple of the firefighters were out and I think it was about 10 or 11 PM.
And I guess the guy realized he didn't want to go in in the morning.
He had the seven by tour on a Saturday.
And so as the pro be and 10, 11 PM at night on a Friday, I am supposed to step up and
I'm supposed to say, I'll go in buddy.
Don't worry.
You stay out and do what you do.
I will go into work.
And yet I found myself having anxiety because I knew I didn't want to go into work, but
not because of the fact that it was going to be a Saturday morning.
I didn't want to go into work because of the fact that I had five coaching clients scheduled
for that Saturday.
And I felt such a sense of duty and obligation to them.
I felt like I've already canceled on some of them before because I have put the firehouse
first, but I started realizing more and more and more the disparity of how I felt emotionally,
which was pushing on the fact that I didn't feel aligned to it.
I did not want to cancel on my clients.
So I did what anybody would do who's brave and powerful and tough.
I pretended I was asleep.
I think Biden does that, doesn't he?
Yeah.
I mean, if you can't see me and you don't know I'm not awake, then you can't say nothing,
right?
So I didn't answer the text messages and the whole house was flipping out and everybody
was getting pissy and they're like, where's the pro be?
Where's the guy that's supposed to step up and like talking about me the whole time.
And that felt terrible too.
But that night really prompted a level of honesty and truth that I was not allowing
myself to get to, which was that I had one foot in both opportunities.
I was being a firefighter to the best of my capabilities.
I was showing up.
I was coming in.
I was getting called in.
I was doing the pro be things.
I was cleaning the dish.
I was doing my best to be a good pro be.
And I was also doing my best to be a good coach slash business owner.
And then the realization was that I'm not really being there for anybody because I keep
flipping who I have to show up for.
And I wasn't doing them a service because they wanted a pro be that's going to be fully
dedicated.
I wasn't doing them a service because they want a coach and a therapist they could count
on that won't cancel on them last minute when they have made time in their schedules to
show up for what we do.
And so then I had to ask, well, where do I feel like my heart is really aligned here?
Like where do I feel when I think about what I'm doing?
Where do I feel the most connected?
Like where do I feel like if I didn't do this, I would feel crappy.
And it came to be true that that was the therapy coaching that I was doing.
And so now I paced back and forth for about four weeks, almost another month.
And I kept on trying to hand in a letter of resignation.
But every time I was like, all right, I'm going to hand it in and put it back down and
be like, maybe tomorrow.
And it was one of the harder decisions I had to make because it's scary to bet on yourself.
It's scary to go into uncertainty.
And it's also hard to give up something that you feel like you really, really wanted for
so long to realize like it's probably not for you.
And so I decided that that's what I had to do.
I tried to take a leave of absence from the fire department.
They wouldn't give me one because I was a pro be.
And so that actually prompted that I either had to resign or stay in until I was off probation,
which would have been probably another six or so months.
But I felt like I had to do this thing with therapy and coaching.
I wanted to give it my all.
I just felt completely called to it.
I wanted to show up and support powerfully.
And so I just took the leap and it was hard, but I did it.
Well, I applaud you.
And the reason I say that I know, if I can think of firefighters that, good people, but
their side business is more important to them than the fire service.
And I think that's just completely backwards when of those two, one lives are actually
at stake.
Again, like I always use the plumber analogy.
If you're a plumber and you're doing real estate on the side or whatever and you asleep,
half asleep and you flood someone's house, shame on you, but you didn't kill anyone.
And when it's the fire service and you're not exercising, you're not studying medical
protocols or whatever, because you're too busy doing your side shit at work even, then
that's detrimental to the men and women in the firehouse and obviously the people that
we serve.
So I think it's a very courageous thing to look in the mirror and go, my heart isn't
in it.
And this is how I'm going to serve through this other side.
And then also taking that leap of faith, because even though arguably the benefits in the fire
service are nowhere near what they used to be, the old time is talking about it, the
leave with health insurance and all these beautiful things.
And now we actually look and we have an 80% or 20% copay before we get any benefits now.
And it stops the moment you leave the fire service and the pension gets cut by Rick Scott.
And the next thing you're looking at the tatters that were the benefits that used to lure us
and they're not even that great anymore, but there is that feeling of security.
I'll put on my uniform, I'll show up every third day, we'll have insurance, we'll have
a paycheck.
And so it is scary to make the leap of faith.
I did the same thing with the podcast, but the only thing that really is fuel for that
is when you just know that's what you're supposed to do.
And I knew that this was what I was supposed to do.
And the last place I worked made it easier to leave, God put me in a very toxic place
and pushed me out the back door and said, go fix it kind of thing.
But yeah, but I mean, it is a courageous thing.
It really is to push against what society has told you is stable and have the courage
to actually go chase the thing that you truly, truly want to do.
And I think that's one of the biggest things that when people ask, couldn't I do both?
The answer was, yeah, of course I could have.
But I felt exactly as you're saying, I didn't want to feel like I was doing anyone a disservice.
And I did my best to really be the best pro be I could, because I felt like that's what
you're supposed to do, right?
Like kind of to who I believe I am as somebody who shows up as best I can.
And so I don't know what the guys at the firehouse would say about me if you went to ask them.
I'd like to imagine that they say, like I showed up, I did what I was supposed to do
and things like that.
You know, who knows, maybe they wouldn't.
But that's how I viewed it.
But I also realized to your point is I didn't want to put the firehouse first.
It wasn't my first priority.
And that's where I said, I do need to leave because that's not right for them.
And they deserve somebody that's actually going to show up that wants to be here 100%
that will put the firehouse first, that will look at this as this is the main thing and
most important thing in my life.
And when I realized that wasn't true for me, that's when I realized like I have to get
out of here and I have to actually step into what I do believe that is, which is what I'm
doing now.
You know, and there was a lot of sadness around that for those multiple reasons, like one
of it being that, you know, that was a childhood dream that I lived and realized isn't my dream.
But the other part, which I don't really talk about too much, but I'd love to say on here
because I feel like this is the spot for it.
I felt like, you know, and a lot of the guys talk about having these bonds for life of,
hey, you know, you go through this hell together where you're in the academy and, you know,
we go through all this hard crap and like we bond or we're supposed to and we're supposed
to have these brotherhoods.
And I didn't feel like I had that mostly because of the fact that I didn't.
After I left the fire department, a lot of rumors started about me, people who I've never
even heard, like never even met, I should say, who were in other boroughs were talking
crap about me.
And I was kicked out of all the group chats and a lot of the firefighters or the guys
that I was talking to stop talking to me.
I was kicked.
I was removed from every group chat.
And the excuse was, well, you're no longer a firefighter.
Meanwhile, in those group chats were a bunch of retired firefighters and guys that weren't
even in the house anymore.
So it's like, that's not true.
And it's interesting because I even asked somebody, I was like, Hey, did they remove
me from the group chats?
Like, ah, nah, man, something happened and they got rid of the group chats.
I was like, okay.
And I found out they lie that he lied, like they removed me and don't know.
I think he was trying to be nice, but it's that interesting thing is like, so because
I'm not one of you anymore, there's no, there was never any brotherhood or at least that's
how it felt.
And it was kind of sad because I did think that with some of these guys, I really did
build a bond or at least that's how I felt.
And then it just kind of feels like similarly that everybody turned their back on me.
But what's even worse is that everybody said things that weren't true.
Like there are people that were like, Hey, Infante, I heard you said you're going to
leave because you could get treated better and make more money elsewhere.
I'm like, I literally never said that.
I just said, I'm going to go follow my dreams.
And so it's really interesting to see that things could get so disproportionate.
And then even later, a few years later, as I'm continuing to do my thing, I remember
there was a post I shared on my Instagram, my work Instagram, right?
Or the one that I use full time now, but it was a story about a night that meant so much
to me in the fire department that I learned something and it was my, it was my first do
nozzle job ever.
And it was like a really memorable moment for me.
Like I still have over here in my office, I have four of my favorite tickets from when
I was on the job.
I have my first do nozzle job.
I have my first fire.
My first fire was back to back, which was even cooler.
And you know, I have all these great tickets and memories and things like that.
And I talked about it.
And man, when I tell you guys that I haven't talked to, cause this was almost three years
later, guys that I haven't talked to and almost three years later who don't follow me and
I don't follow them came to leave negative posts on my post about when I was a firefighter
and talk shit about me and be like, Oh, thank God the city had you.
And it's like, what's wrong with you people?
Do you have nothing better to do?
So it was, it was a very disheartening thing for me to see that that's what I experienced.
And I don't know how many of your listeners or anybody out there might be experiencing
anything like that.
I feel like you're ostracized, but you know, I just, I want to bring it back.
Cause the thing that helped me most with that was just the understanding of like what I
try to teach people is like external worlds are just a reflection of your internal.
They're not doing this to like personally to me, they're doing this because that's who
they are on the inside.
And I'm the target of their internal world.
So anybody who might be feeling like there's some sort of ostracization or you might be
feeling like maybe you don't fit in.
I hope that that piece of advice maybe gives you a little bit of comfort and you could
switch the perspective a little.
Well, I mean, thank you for sharing.
I think it's an important perspective in a couple of layers.
I mean, even if you were in that cohesive group, what I've found, and I've had this
many, many times, you know, firefighters that get hurt or they get cancer or whatever it
is, there's a certain point where the phone stops ringing.
You know, even, even the widows have said this, you know, we're all there the first
couple of weeks and then it just kind of dies off.
And you know, to be fair, a lot of us are running calls 24 hours a day and we're so
exhausted and we can't think straight.
But I think we have to take a step back and look at, you know, who's falling between the
cracks because that, you know, for you, you ended up moving on, you had something successful
and you're thriving now.
But for some people that's crushing.
That could be the difference between them sticking a gun in their mouth or not, because
that was their tribe.
And to feel ostracized from something that in the rock, you'd been indoctrinated to be,
this is who you are.
This is your identity.
And now you're getting treated like that.
But I think from the inside, there's also this feeling of when you leave, you're not
one of us anymore.
And I, you know, again, I disagree completely.
Like to me, I don't tell people I'm a retired firefighter.
I'm a firefighter.
If I drive down the road and someone's car comes flying off the side, I'm going to be
breaking glass and trying to pull them out.
You know, that's who I am.
I'm still a paramedic on paper too.
So, you know, we've got to get away from this kind of the negative element of tribalism,
which is almost like, oh, you left us, fuck you.
Instead of it, look at it as the global fire family that we're a part of.
And if someone put a uniform on for a year and served, will they put a uniform on for
a year and served?
Will you tell a Marine he's a piece of shit because they're into four years?
No, of course not.
It's something about the fire service.
If we don't stay until that magic number that some pension company made up, then we're a
lesser person.
Why'd you quit?
You know, and it's such a bizarre mindset.
And again, listening to your story, fantastic.
I talk about the same with the mentorship programs that they have in town.
If a young kid comes and tries a mentorship program and goes, oh, I don't want to be a
firefighter.
Actually, that is a huge win.
Beautiful.
We saved you time.
We saved the department's money.
And you know, you've taken something valuable from this process.
To be, you know, offended that someone leaves the fire department before 20 years and to
ostracize someone, whether they were fired, hurt, whatever it was.
I mean, there's a near miss here in where I live.
And I've asked numerous people.
This was a paramedic that basically injected himself with a paralytic in a suicide attempt.
And I've asked numerous people, OK, where is he now?
Well, I don't know.
I didn't know him.
I'm like, one of your people that wore a uniform almost died and you don't even know where
he is now.
You know, that's the kind of shit.
Those are the people that fall through the cracks that maybe he's not with us anymore.
Maybe he that underline he was already in a bad place.
And then when he realized his department, they would fuck about him anymore.
Do you think he's doing well now?
I fucking hope so.
But chances are probably not.
So this is where we've really got to regain that brotherhood and sisterhood.
It's not an empty word.
And you see it.
You've got rope rescue competition.
Amazing display of brother and sisterhood.
The three, four, three hero challenge that they do in Orange County to to memorialize
the the FDNY firefighters that we lost in 9-11 and raise money for a local charity.
That is camaraderie.
That is brotherhood and sisterhood.
And you see it and it's alive and well.
But it's the same kind of people and faces that I see in all these things that really
get it.
And so we know those people have got to start pushing the walls back out again because brotherhood
and sisterhood is an incredible thing, but it's not just a word.
It's an entire philosophy that we have to embrace.
And that means if someone works side by side and they gave everything and they didn't do
something horrendous, then just because they left the department doesn't make them a piece
of shit.
Yeah, man.
I mean, I left there with the intention of telling people, hey, man, I'd love to see
you.
I'd love to stay connected.
Let's plan a night out.
Let's do this.
Let's do that.
Thinking that perhaps that would happen.
And I even offered.
So I was one of the few firefighters that was a therapist before becoming a firefighter.
It's very rare.
And there was this guy and they had a program.
And this is also something that I found to be silly.
They have a counseling program in the fire department, like in the fire unit.
And the guy, one of the guys was asking, he's like, hey, do you want to be a part of this?
I was like, yeah, man, I would love to help out.
That would be amazing.
He's like, well, you know, you can't do it because you're on probation.
Like, OK, fine.
But obviously, I left before my probation was up.
So even the guy called me, I think it was sometime after like my probation should have
ended and said, hey, man, I'd love to get you in now.
And I'm like, dude, I'm not in the fire department anymore.
He's like, God damn it.
I lost another one.
Like every time every time you guys go through this is like, you know, a bunch of you guys
wind up quitting, whatever the case is.
And they said, well, listen, dude, I was like, I would still love to help.
Like my heart is still there for the first responders like I to your point about a year
ago.
And now I've been out of the fire department close to four years or whatever it is, three
years.
I don't know.
But about a year ago, I was running in the park and some guy was on the floor, pissed
himself clearly had a heart attack and somebody was doing CPR.
And I jumped in.
I'm like, you need a break.
I got you.
I'm a former firefighter.
Like I would have still helped to do CPR.
I would have still helped to save that guy's life because I still feel that sense of duty
and I still believe in it.
And so I still carry that with me.
Like I don't believe that if there was a way that I could show up to help, I wouldn't do
it at this point in my life, no matter what, because it stays with you.
And so I still wanted to even support in the fire department and be like, hey, man, I'll
help with the counseling unit.
Like I don't want to work for the counseling unit, but I would just I could volunteer.
Like if you guys need support, even though I'm not still a firefighter, like I'll help
with these guys that might need the help.
All right, cool, man.
Yeah, we'll give you a call.
It's been three years.
Haven't heard from I'm not going to call him.
I'm going to it's not it's not it's not for me to do.
But there's just that continued like I had the intention to still be somebody that would
be involved in these areas that they didn't want it.
And that's OK.
I can't do anything about it.
And it said in me for a while for you know, and I'll be transparent.
That really made me sad.
Like I was not OK with that for a little bit.
And it was through talking to my girlfriend and changing the perspective and really and
the biggest thing that helped is now that I became an entrepreneur, I made new friends
and I built my own community of great people.
And I made an intentional practice for about two years to actually build a network and
a circle of people that I can consider friends.
But to your point, if I didn't do that, maybe because I wasn't an entrepreneurship or whatever
the case is, I would have had nobody because I lost a bunch of friends when I became a
firefighter as well.
Some of them were jealous and some of them were just like, we don't really connect anymore.
And then leaving the fire department, I lost all the people from the fire department and
now I had nobody except for my girlfriend.
And then I had to figure out who I'm going to become friends with.
So it's it's really it's really an interesting thing any time you transition, but especially
in something like this, because if you're somebody who believes that this is deeper
than the job, that could really mess with your head.
And it did for me for a little bit.
I was like I was literally sitting there.
I was like, I don't get why nobody wants to.
Like I told this to my girl, I was like, I don't get why nobody wants to be my friend.
Like I spent time with some of these guys, like a lot of time because we were on the
same tours all the time.
I was like, and we just we just don't talk anymore.
They kind of get it.
And so, you know, there's that level of acceptance you have to come to.
It's not easy.
Absolutely.
Well, let's talk about what you're doing now for people listening.
What are the services that you offer?
So I've created a hybrid that combines therapy, mentoring and coaching on one service.
And essentially what this is, is it is my attempt to create the service that I needed
when I was a kid.
It's I found that therapy is good in its own way and coaching is good in its own way, but
they also suck in their own way.
And my biggest mission right now is to impact a billion lives positively and change the
way the world views how we're getting support and mental health.
And so my attempt is to create this methodology, my own methodology, because therapy can keep
people stuck.
Coaching can stop helping people move forward.
But I believe if you combine the two, you actually fix what the other one's lacking
by utilizing the other service.
So I've been working really hard on perfecting this and a lot of it comes back to these aspects
of what we were talking about before, identity, self mastery, and just giving you the tools
to empower yourself to live the life that you believe you could be living if you're
willing to take those steps and really invest in yourself, because that's what it comes
down to.
I often have to tell people because I believe this is so important.
And even if it's not for me, for any of you listening who might have a therapist or a
coach and feel like you're not getting a ton out of it, you have to evaluate is it you
or is it them or is it both of you?
But the biggest thing that I think is that a lot of the times when we get a therapist
or a coach or even a mentor, we think that they're going to make the biggest difference
in our lives because the fact that we're paying for it or we're showing up.
But the reality is that I'm not here to change your life.
I'm here to facilitate a space for change to occur.
But what you do in that space is entirely up to you.
And so I really promote like be mindful, be intentional, give yourself the best and show
up as powerfully as you want.
Get what you want out of these services.
The other thing that I do is I'm a speaker.
If you and everybody else couldn't tell because I talk a lot.
I am a speaker.
I enjoy going up on stage, sharing my story, sharing some lessons.
I talk to, I guess, at events or companies, organizations, anyone who could use some practical
steps for personal development, leadership, communication, self mastery.
And I have a few other businesses, but those are kind of just for funsies.
I think this is the most important one to me.
Brilliant.
And where can people find you online?
You can check out my socials, which I'm not super active on.
They still have stuff.
And don't worry, I'm going to have a program schedule post.
But you can check me out at Vin dot Infante on Instagram, Vin Infante on TikTok or LinkedIn
or Twitter.
And you can find my website at www.vincentinfante.life.
And there's some free resources on there.
If you'd love to check them out.
There's a mission board, which is a free download.
It'll help you basically create the trajectory of your life.
It's like a vision board, but better.
I made it.
There's a newsletter.
It's free.
I put it out twice a month.
It's all about personal development.
And if you like some of the stuff you heard here today, that's in the newsletter.
And then for anybody who's really curious about diving deeper, you can always book a
free call and just have a conversation and see if it goes anywhere or not.
I'm always just a fan of providing value.
And I would invite anybody who's super curious to book.
Beautiful.
Well, Ben, I want to say thank you.
It's been a really unique perspective, basically coming through the world of counseling.
And then you're going to entry and exit at the fire service and then the entrepreneurial
side.
So I want to thank you so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the
Behind the Shield podcast today.
That's been great, James.
Thanks for having me and for being such an awesome host.
And I hope the listeners got tons of value out of today.