 When I go travel and speak to kids, it's about being authentic. It's about being myself. And I talk about if I get up on stage or I'm speaking at a conference and I paint myself as perfect, the only message I'm sending to those kids is they can't be anything like me. And I don't want people to think I'm perfect. I am work in progress, but I want them to see that how important that work in progress is and it brings peace. And so that's what I hope to people. That's what I hope people see is Alton is working progress and he is going to use his horrible story to make a difference. And on the flip side of that is I get to encounter some amazing kids that are just as strong, if not stronger than I am. And that's like one of the greatest things in the entire world. Boom. What's up everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host Alan Sakyan. Very excited to be talking about The Boy Who Carried Bricks. We have Alan Carter joining us on the show. Hello. How are you? Thanks so much for coming on out. Really appreciate it. Glad to be here. Thank you. You've got one of the coolest stories and journeys that I've ever heard in my life. I'm really excited to be able to share it with you guys. For those that don't know, Alan's background. Alan Carter went from being tossed between foster homes to a director of youth ministries. His multi award-winning books, The Boy Who Carried Bricks and Aging Out detail his journey in courage and perseverance with the help of countless people. And you can find his website link below, alancarter.net, as well as his Twitter profile and his book profiles as well. All right. And before we get started, so Alan's background is so interesting and his talks online about how he got to where he is today. I would love to start by actually giving a synthesis of one of the talks that he gave online about his journey. So Alan's background was abandoned by his father. His mom was addicted to prescription medicine. He had five brothers and sisters all with different dads who severely neglected and under resourced. The Department of Human Services came and the judge told his mom, you are unfit to be a mother. You cannot have your five children. And that's when Alan knew that he would never hear those words. You are unfit to be a father. After 17 foster homes, three institutions and going to the boys ranch where he had punishments like having to pick up five bricks, lock them 40 yards and do that over and over again for two hours. He has this book title, the boy who carried bricks is a massive metaphor for life. God brought him love and light through so many people along his journey and at just the right times when he needed it. He was the first person in his family to have graduated high school. Then he dropped out of college, spent four years homeless in the streets. Then he went back and graduated from Oklahoma State University became a police officer and then the director of youth ministries. He has two sons and three adopted children with his wife. And he's the author of four books detailing his journey and inspiring children. Two of the siblings have died to are in and out of prison. And he currently speaks at schools around the USA inspiring kids to persevere. This is one of the best stories about being able to, no matter what the deck of cards that were dealt is to be able to find the gifts in that and to be able to share and inspire other people around the world to see that. All right, let's start by talking about how your journey ended up being a gift for you. Well, perspective. And so sometimes you feel like it's a burden and the struggles that you go through tend to tie you down until like it's interesting with the way the boy who carried bricks that for the longest time, honestly, until I wrote the book, it was kind of a burden. So I was successful in life. I mean, I was providing for my family. I had a good job, but internally I had all these issues. And it was coming to this point of sharing my story that I realized that talking about my childhood was a way for me to turn it around, to start letting go of some of the issues that were hidden inside that were crippling me and making me self-doubt and be insecure. And so to me it was, I didn't know what else to do with my story. Instead of holding on to it, I thought, well, let's share it with other people. And so what I hope is when I'm telling people my story, it motivates them, it gives them courage and also they figure out that they're not by themselves. So now when throughout the process of going through your life journey, did it register that these were gifts, that all on the other side of these traumas were the greatest treasures? I think it's a process. And what I mean is, I think it's self-discovery. And so it continues that what I've found is that I'll go, I don't always tell my whole story whenever I go speak at schools or workshops or conferences, but sometimes I'll share different parts of my story and it's amazing how it connects with other people. And so it's just constantly evolving for me to figure out that all these things that happen to me are still revealing themselves that are useful. Here's an example, like the boys' ranch. Our ranch dad was extremely abusive. He made us work like, I mean, hostages. It was horrible. Later on in life I figured out when I started looking at my family and seeing that most of them didn't have a job, that my ability to work hard came from the boys' ranch, that our ranch that exposed us to labor. And I figured out that I could work with my hands. And so it's just constant discovery. Okay, so it's a process of discovering that what can sometimes be, it feels like a lesson, but in many ways does it feels like it's being disguised in some way, but that only later do we recognize it's a lesson. So maybe a good question would be how do we more effectively realize through our life journey that some of the hardest things that happen to us are the greatest lessons? Absolutely. So I'd say this, it is important to have an internal dialogue with yourself, that you're having a constant conversation with look at how this abuse or this neglect or this trauma has affected my life, and then you figure out what to do with it. And so whether it's go to therapy, whether it's have conversations, whether it's get involved in community service, to me you have to look at yourself. You have to look to see how things have affected you. And to me, that's how I learned to turn it around. I was looking at how some of that stuff was bothering me, and I didn't want to repeat it. And so one of the things I talk about is we repeat what we don't repair. And so it's important if you're hurt and you don't want to give that to the people you care about, it's important to heal. And that's where that turning it into a positive that you look at two people who grow up in the same household by a dad who's an alcoholic. One of them becomes an alcoholic and the other one isn't. So part of its choice, but the one who chose not to be an alcoholic, he had that same circumstance and he thought, I'm not going to do this to my family. And so that was my motivation to take all that pain and suffering and make sure that I did not give it to my children. Yes. Whoa. We repeat what we don't repair. That's a really good one. So we heal the cards that are dealt to us that need repair that that we need to repair. And if we do heal, if we do do those repairs, then what we can do is then not it almost promises us that we don't repeat the mistakes and that our children won't have those same mistakes. Absolutely. And you also, here's the other part, you provide a blueprint for other people to repeat that process. What I mean is one of the greatest teaching tools, even as parenting, we want to tell people what they should do to better themselves. How about this? How about you watch me heal myself, then you know how to do it. And so that that that's all part of the process that by me going through all this and not that I'm perfect. You know, I talk about being unfinished, I'm still working progress. But if people can see me work on myself, that's a blueprint or that's a that gives people an opportunity to figure out how they can heal as well. Oh, okay. So if we more effectively were to have blueprints of repair that we went through, so for a specific card of like a lesson or a trauma that that we went through as a child, but different blueprints for different healing modalities, let's say, and then if all of these blueprints for healing were made available for people to learn from and to see how we can most effectively repair and heal and integrate and love that part of us, then it would make it so that way less repetitions of traumas and malevolent circumstances or hard circumstances end up occurring. That's a cool way of looking at it. So blueprints of healing and then being able to kind of take from different ones that other people have succeeded from and make our own combination. Yeah. And so people do, well, let me say this, what I find or what I found growing up, DHS, school teachers, counselors, they did an amazing job at teaching me how to take the ACT, how to fill out an application, how to pay bills. Nobody told me how to heal. Like, nobody said, hey, Alton, when you turn 18, there's going to be a large part of you that wants to go back home. Now you know it's destructive, but you're going to want to go back home. Hey, Alton, nobody told me, hey, what are you going to say? Nobody talked to me about, what are you going to say when your family asks you for money? Or how are you going to deal with the fact that you never got to meet your dad? Nobody ever talked to me about those things. So in life, what we want to do is we want to make men tough, can't cry, you can't show any emotion. And so what happens is you suppress these childhood issues. And so two things happen, either one, they morph into something else, or you end up repeating what was taught. The other option is you deal with it and work with it. And so that was a struggle that I had when I got older was trying to face all the millions of issues that I felt like unresolved issues. The blueprint for healing, if you've never met your dad? Yeah. And so for me, one of the struggles is I knew what a dad shouldn't do. So I watched multiple men come in our house. And I guess you could say they were father figures. They looked, they played that role in the house. They slept in the same bed with my mom. They were supposed to be the provider, but they weren't. There were a few of them that my mom tried to tell us to call dad. And so I saw the pain and suffering that they caused, and that's not what I wanted. That's not what I wanted. And so a blueprint of that, sometimes you can get a negative example and you know that's not what you want to be. And it kind of causes a different aspect because what it ended up doing for me was making me like really insecure because I didn't know. I mean, I knew what not to do, but I wasn't 100% sure that what I was doing was right. And then Al, what would we call the, so there's the blueprint for healing. And then there's also this blueprint like you saw when the judge said that your mother was unfit to have the five children or like when you saw that you had the different men coming in the home that what would we call that? It's like a blueprint of maybe like avoidance or like what would that be? My first thought would be blueprint of choice. Because some people don't, they don't think they have a choice. And we do. We have choices. We have a choice. I made a choice then that I was not going to grow up that way. I don't think my brother made that choice. I don't think my sister ever made that choice, obviously. And so that first thought is this is what I'm going to choose to do. And so the great part is that I did get to see examples later on in life. People model like my father-in-law was a great husband. So I got to watch him interact with his wife. And so I got examples and then I had a couple of friends old, you know, later on in life. And so I had a choice. I had a choice. And I didn't always make the right choice, but I learned that it was up to me. I like viewing it as blueprints of choice. And then that we get to choose from different healing modalities. We get to see how maybe like some of your siblings maybe had the choice of seeing what blueprints they could choose that had maybe more positive life trajectories. But there are these ruts sometimes that they keep us in. Like you said that if we don't repair, we will repeat. And I just this has been a really awesome start with analogies. I like I love these analogies, these metaphors. They can make circumstances in life a lot more relatable. Let's talk about how you've been sharing your gifts with others. You had this really good story too was was it Uncle Stewie, Stevie, Uncle Stevie, that that Uncle Stevie had had some abusive tendencies when you guys were growing up with the it was with the in your grandmother's home with your grandfather and a couple uncles three, three uncles and uncle Stevie, you had this story of how you were you would stop in the middle of the road and and Uncle Stevie would have you guys go and ask people for money based on like a needing help or going and taking things from the Salvation Army and pawning them or be having you forced to drink whiskey. And you said that that's it. I'm not drinking the whiskey. And then he threw you down the stairs. And then that's when you said that's enough and you called the police. And then you had that moment where the family was looking and and making it making you seem like you were a coward. But it was about perspective because later on in life people were saying you were you had courage for doing that. And so then how have you been sharing stories like that perspective change and all these other gifts with all the kids you're speaking to and through your books? Tell us about it. So sharing especially with that story what's interesting is that up until I wrote the book, I never said that but I thought that I was a coward. I thought I'd left my grandparents house because I was a coward. I didn't think I was strong enough. You know there's something wrong if you abandon, we'll say the tribe, if you leave the family that's like the ultimate betrayal. You know you just didn't do that. And so the fact that I wasn't strong enough to handle it made me feel less about myself. And it was actually at an assembly and I had an elementary school kid told me that it was courage. An elementary school kid said that because I said I kind of I finally came out of my mouth I said I was a coward and this kid said you're not a coward that took courage and I was like you're right you're right. And so for me like when I go travel and speak to kids it's about being authentic. It's about being myself and I talk about if I get up on stage or I'm speaking at a conference and I paint myself as perfect the only message I'm sending to those kids is they can't be anything like me. And I don't want people to think I'm perfect. I am work in progress but I want them to see that how important that work in progress is and it brings peace. And so that's what I hope to people that's what I hope people see is Alton is working progress and he's going to use his horrible story to make a difference. And on the flip side of that is I get to encounter some amazing kids that are just as strong if not stronger than I am and that's like one of the greatest things in the entire world to hear a kid say hey you inspired me or they'll share a poem or or something like that with me that gives me hope. So also what a what a just that wave of viewing what like the ultimate thing that you can't do is leave the family no matter what the circumstances are. But when does the tipping point happen when it becomes too abusive when you just have to leave and you have a better life trajectory by leaving going on a journey and an adventure and and then coming back and you you came back like you saved up 1500 bucks and came back and gave tons of presents at Christmas. This was another one of those perspective moments of you coming back and delivering a present for everyone in your family but nobody having a present for you and you remembered it as the Christmas where you got no presents. But I think it was your cousin that said that it was the Christmas where you gave everyone presents. Absolutely and so perspective is everything so the the bad part about that up until 2007 I mean I just got depressed around on Christmas time. I mean I really did. I just two days before or two days after Christmas I was in my room feeling sorry for myself with my wife you know away from my wife and kids so I participated in decorating the house and putting the lights up and all that stuff but for the other time I was just depressed and when my cousin came over I realized that I had grabbed the wrong perspective. Now the consequence of living in the wrong perspective is that I robbed my wife and kids of the husband and father they deserved because I was looking at it and so sometimes our negative or wrong perspective hurts and not cripples but it sets other people back because my kids didn't get the father they needed especially around Christmas time and so and again so finding the right perspective is about surrounding yourself or allowing yourself to to hear from other people. And I love how you also described it as being raw and authentic that you're not portraying yourself as perfect but that you are a work in progress that you're unfinished and that then this the students that you're speaking to are at the conference people that you're interacting with they get to also see themselves in that light that I am also unfinished and I'm also work in progress and that these cards that have been dealt to me that I have these blueprints of choice to repair to heal and so that it doesn't repeat. Oh this is getting good. Okay so then what about then when you are presenting you're sharing you sharing your gifts and you're seeing maybe other students you said sometimes you said that they come by you know a hundred people come up to you after you're done talking and they talk to you about who they are and what they're going through and how you're inspiring them or what they're learning. Tell us about some of those engagements. So there was one I was in Louisiana speaking and I was telling my life story and the whole time I'm talking there was this teenage girl 16 or 17 she's like getting frustrated and kind of talking to herself as I'm telling my life story and so after it was over when I finished you know talking I started to walk out of the gym and she got up and met me halfway and I go can I help you and she goes I don't believe a word you said and I'm like what are you talking about she goes I don't believe a word that story was about you it's not true and I go why would I make that up and her response was because you turned out okay and so I was kind of puzzled by that and then after she left I asked the counselor and the counselor explained to me that that child's life that she had never seen anybody make it out and so that was foreign another encounter probably one that I tried not to get emotional but I was speaking elementary school again telling my life story and kids will usually say because I don't talk about my dad because you know I say hey I don't have a father so one of the kids said hey Alton what would you do if you met your father and I said well you know I don't know I don't know because I wouldn't even know how to find him his name's not on my birth certificate so anyway they started taking questions a few minutes later so the principal was handing the microphone around and this kid on the other side of the auditorium instead of getting the microphone he gets up and he walks to the front of the stage and he grabs the microphone and hands the microphone he said I got something to say about your dad and I was like okay what he goes I just wanted you know your dad missed out and so it was one of those things that hearing that from a kid I mean it it was a sense of peace so I talk and share my story hoping that I can encounter people that are going to I mean it was a third grade fourth grade kid poured that into me and and it just you know and then you go to places where kids will say hey I'm like you I don't have a dad or hey I'm like you you know I was in a foster home I was uh speaking at a school one time so I'm also dyslexic and so I was speaking and when I told uh the elementary school kids that I was dyslexic uh this kid stood up and said I'm dyslexic too so he was a fourth grader and behind him I saw this this lady start crying and I was like what happened well later on she told me that he had been struggling with this he had never told anyone and so it was like the greatest revelation and she went home and he went home and told his mom that he was dyslexic like Alton and so to be able to use that is like but if I don't put it out there and and I'm okay you know we always be dyslexic but doesn't mean I'm dumb it doesn't mean I'm stupid I get to decide who I am this also speaks so highly of the see it be it that when when that when that girl that that was you know you you turned out okay I don't believe that story well that now that she's seen an example of someone that has went through that story and turned out okay then now that's a new paradigm of thinking and we wonder how often that and same thing with the one the kid that stands up he was fourth he was a fourth grade I'm dyslexic too telling everyone revealing that about himself after struggling with it so how many untapped in opportunities exist for people to have their paradigms of thinking changed or for them to be able to come out and feel like they're expressing themselves more fully in the world and those untapped opportunities can be tapped into by having people like you go and authentically share your experiences so it in a sense it's almost like the more authentic sharing that we have about our journeys and the decks of cards that we were dealt and how we overcame them like the more that we have people like you that have different all these different blueprints that they've grew up with sharing the more that we can tap into those opportunities I think the adults I mean in our society today I think we've we've done nothing but taught kids how to be fake what I mean by that is we talk about how we don't have any problems you know everything is great if you do have problems you keep them to yourself and and I understand some of that but again it's we rob people of the opportunity to see what it's like to heal so here's an example my family when people somebody died or tragic tragedy happened people fought or they got drunk so that's all I saw I and so when I went to school I went to elementary school and I never saw any problems my teachers had because they kept it to themselves and they wanted to appear to be strong so one of the phrases I say all the time is the most important thing in life is to be sincere when you agree yeah once you learn how to fake that you've got it made so we spent a whole bunch of time trying to make people think that we have it all together but really we don't you know and it's okay if I don't have it together today I show up I run into Allen I'm like Allen I'm not doing very good and you give me some advice or or just even being with your feelings and just yeah holding space for you that yeah but if I walk around in that clock I'm perfect what happens is that it's like I start to lose myself like I got to put on this front and so again then we rob people the opportunity to see what it's like to heal so I needed to watch growing up as a child I needed to watch a teacher fall apart and then pull themselves back together to have a bad day instead of just being a great teacher no problems so but I got robbed of that opportunity because a lot of people wanted to appear to be strong let's stick on the importance of especially men becoming more emotionally intelligent becoming more vulnerable becoming more able to express themselves by holding space for other men or for other women and how that actually translates to being a better spouse to being a better father to being a better coworker to be more empathetic to be more collaborative tell us about that so for me like the discovery I think part of it is it's like you don't know where it's going to take you and for men we want to appear to be strong and so there's this confusion that if you're like me and you like taking pictures of flowers or writing poetry is that strong and so but I think I sure think so yeah I love it feeds yeah society teaches us that's not the way it's supposed to be why is this guy posting flowers and poems but the other part is well I'm robbing myself and again essentially essentially I'm miserable because I'm not being who I am and I'm this emotional I'm this emotional guy and if I rob that what happens is that I I invest what happens more often than not is we invest all our emotions in the wrong one so if I suppress this emotion of being emotional or sensitive it all goes into anger and frustration and to me I see a lot of a lot of us men we struggle with that being empathetic or showing emotion because we want to appear tough and we don't want to be weak and you know what we are weak sometimes and that's okay yes so a paradigm change towards making it cool for men to have flowers in their news feeds or poems in their news feeds or for them to hold space for the emotional or conscious evolution of other for other people that while simultaneously having some sort of like a balance with their desire to to be strong too which is totally cool and same thing with women the balance of being strong with being emotionally available and resilient okay let's talk about how there are right and wrong things to say with people that have their different cards that they're being dealt in life and also how you know you have this beautiful way of putting it you have to love people where they're at versus focusing on their circumstances teach us about this so example like if I take a group of kids to serve on a mission trip that's one of the things that we talk about is fall in love with with people get to know them don't look at their circumstance and let that dictate how you're going to treat them we need to treat everybody with respect and I think we need to have this conversation where we're looking people eye to eye not down on them we've had some great interactions with adults who were homeless some of the most authentic uplifting teaching moments and you think well how in the world can someone homeless inspire me so one of the trips we went on one of the homeless lady told one of my girls she was pouring her some water and so the homeless lady said don't you ever let me catch you doing that in a bar and she said you need to be rocking walking the runway or being the president of the United States and my girl who came from a upper middle class home her response was I'm not that smart and the lady got upset she goes don't you ever say that about yourself and so if you don't put yourself in a position to listen to people we we've never would have got that advice and to this day that girl says I was the best piece of advice she's ever gotten because it came from somebody that she felt like was being real and so but it's lessons like that where you get to meet people and and again loving them where they're at not well you're homeless or you're rich or you're poor you're black or white if we just erase all that and get to know people to me that's that's where you learn damn sometimes the the advice or these reflections that we're getting from our family members about our own like personal development and journeys don't really land because they're coming from the people that are closest to us but when they come from someone that's real that's like this you know this third party that maybe you're not engaging with too often but that comes up and then drops something like don't you ever not love yourself like that don't you ever not believe in yourself like that yeah yeah and then you know there's lots of things we we tell people like especially with dealing with uh children you know if we go visit a children's home you you you don't tell them you're going to come back if you're not going to come back because they're used to that they're used to people and so the other thing we talk about is when I take my kids to either a mission trip or a nursing home don't look at people like they're zoo animals you know go have a conversation and and I remember that so when I was at the boys ranch our ranch dad would stay just outside playing you know like we were happy kids or get this are you ready um Perkins used to have a parade and every year we rode on the back of that trailer that said Oklahoma Lions boys ranch so we felt like zoo animals and so people really didn't it's like they didn't know what to say they forgot that we were children and so we want to have a conversation I want to have a conversation with everybody I don't care how different you are um another thing you don't tell people like if somebody's in a like my mom was a drug addict um I had lots of people say this to me all the time you you well they just say uh do you want to turn out like your mom well of course I don't of course I don't but I don't need you to tell me that I don't of course thinking it would be like motivation for you you thought it was motivation and and what happens is it just makes me not like you because my mom was a drug addict but that was my mother and so for me it's how do you have this conversation where you lead people to tell themselves I don't want to be a drug addict so that's the end it's not so much about like my mom it's I don't want to be a drug addict so um you know there's lots of things like that what we want to talk about uh helping people think through the process instead of just telling them what to do um questions are so powerful for that absolutely well think about this when you look at kids in the system they're forced to go to counseling which some of them need counseling and they need therapy but here's the thing that's missing nobody's asking them hey can I can I help treat you they're forced to go and I realize as a kid being forced to go to counseling nobody ever said Alton can I help you I was forced to sit down and people crammed questions down my throat and I felt like I didn't have any power well if you give me the power then I understand that I can change and overcome whatever I'm in your office for does that make sense yeah and so nobody ever asked can I help you it was just forced upon me what would the optimal dialogue look like between a counselor or any types of like human services that may be trying to help um or even just like a mentor to yeah yeah well just ask them questions so here's an example um I was in Oakland California visiting a prison and I sat down with a kid who was in there for murder 12 year old kid in there for murder so we were having a conversation about his family so instead of degrading him um I'd say I'd ask him questions like uh so where's your uh where's your dad and he'd say uh he's in the prison across town and then I'd say well who would you call if you needed something since your dad's in prison he'd say well I can call my dad he's in prison I'd call my dad and I was like explain that to me and the kid would think through and he goes oh yeah that didn't make any sense so instead of telling him how stupid it is let them figure out through them you know by themselves by asking questions but all too often I think we want to give them the answer and you don't allow people to think you know let me help you sift through it and so that internal dialogue if we can help people create an internal dialogue about their issues about their insecurities I think that's how you come out on the other side and it's by asking questions asking the right questions asking questions that facilitate internal dialogue towards realization and towards repairing to not repeat that's really good stuff that's such a in a sense it's a lot of what we're do here on the show we ask questions and we hope that the guest shines at their best passing along transmitting this these great stories or wisdom to other people that then get to do something like also take what is being transmitted and further build on it ask more questions about it have more internal dialogues or creative processes about it right now all these different things that you've been teaching throughout our conversation that these these blueprints for healing or that we have to repair so we don't repeat or how we can ask these questions for internal dialogues to happen that can transform people there's so much richness present right here in those concepts that can be built on even further I I'm just I'm so curious as to how we ask questions like this example that you gave in the prison with the 12-year-old that's in there for murder that gets him to further realize that you're again you're not giving an answer you're asking questions that get him to realize how ridiculous that that logical thinking process was and even if he didn't get it right then it's I hope that he'll get it so sometimes you ask a question and they don't get it till later on but if you don't ask the question they may never get it or if you tell them they reject it right off the bat yeah and so here's here's an example of this internal dialogue so one of the statements my mom said to me that was like I struggled for years that she said to me that sent me back so my mom said one time that the only reason why I was successful or I made it is because God blessed me more than the rest of my she said God blessed you more than the rest of my children and so that was tough now if I didn't think about why she said that I would just be bitter I mean because you think why in the world would a mom ever say that to her child and that wasn't good enough for me I wanted to know why and so if you don't cycle through that then you just arrived that there's no good reason then you're bitter so here's what I figured out I think my mom sort of resented me because that I was the only one of her children that made it out now here's the other part the rest of them stayed home I got taken away and so my mom every time she looked at me she couldn't take credit for the way I turned out and so that's why she said that and so once I arrived at that was that's what I thought was the issue it made sense and I could let it go but if I didn't think about and cycle through that process and come up with something it's unresolved issue that morphs into something else so I take that issue and now I'm bitter at my mom and my mom's dead and so now I take it out on someone else so it was important for me to work through that you had an internal dialogue with yourself that helped you repair so that you didn't repeat yes it helped you heal there's an aspect to what you do that also helps people check their privilege I want us to talk about that it's a touchy subject there's there's a lot of people that don't like to have their privilege pointed out and and it's tough to figure out what percentage of has to do with someone's hard work has to do with them having a head start you know if you have two parents and both your parents are college educated and you grew up in a house that always had food and water and love and I mean that kind of makes sense to people they're like okay that makes sense versus if I'm constantly if I don't know my mom and dad if I was moved between foster care centers if etc so speak about that so when to me when you talk about privilege I look at it kind of as a different way so privilege is like something that you get to do like you get the privilege to drive a car or stay up past the curfew and so some of those privileges are based off of where you come from so if you look at a family that came from a lot of money they tend to be privileged and so to me it's not necessarily or always negative to me the issue comes with what do you do with it so I look at people who don't have anything but maybe advice to offer if you're keeping it to yourself that's just as bad as somebody who has lots of money that may not be using it to help people so I think we all have privileges that are meant to help people but you do and I think sometimes people use their privilege to gain an advantage yeah like market advantage absolutely or or honestly sometimes to keep people down and so for me it's not that I want to go head to head with those people I'm not about arguing or fighting what I want to do is show people that there's a better way so I came from absolutely nothing and am I privileged yeah to some people yes I am privileged but how am I using it how am I using what's been given to me that right to share my story that you know I felt like I was given a deck of cards that was horrible that turned into a privilege that I can use to help other people so it's again it's kind of perspective now it's not always easy sometimes it's not easy being a may sound crazy it's not easy being a rich kid it's not easy being a poor kid sometimes but it's what you do with it and and so whoa okay so at one side of the of this like bell curve of socioeconomic status or it's not even it's a well it might be maybe actually both a a a bell curve and a power law distribution and on on the heavy on the heavy rich side on the socioeconomic status are you taking the the privilege that you have and are you reshaping rules and regulations to propagate your own privilege or are you doing things like truly giving and feeling how God like it feels like when you can uplift other people that have abuse or neglect or whatnot and help them creatively realize themselves in this world and then and that's where some of the that that that like you said that when you are wealthy that at times it can be really hard when maybe your parents constantly have security teams around them and then you don't know if people love you for who you are or for your parents all these types of things and then on the other end on I actually really like how you gave this because actually this example because it actually ties us into what we were talking about throughout which was this these unceased opportunity these untapped into opportunities that if you have come from a rougher socioeconomic status that you have so much potential to share how you've overcome or persevered through a card that was dealt to you that ended up being a lesson that you repaired so you didn't repeat in that it's literally you holding that to yourself doesn't actually help other people it helps when you share that gift how you've overcome that and persevered I like that one a lot too that that's so that's actually a privilege too that sometimes we don't we don't share that gift and then that that but it can be seen as a privilege when we do share that gift and when it does help other people just like when we share our excess amounts of money with other people well you know we look at sharing trades on youtube and videos all the time that's how people learn in this day and age technology um twitter instagram and so it don't you think it's funny that you can find a youtube video on how to do everything but heal i mean think about that it's but it's because we keep it to ourselves and we keep it to ourselves because we don't want to appear to be broken um and so if we can put it out there you know if we can put it out there that hey i'm broken but i'm going to put myself back together someone else will go man i can i think i can do that i think i can do that and again it's not that i'm great i don't think i'm any better than anyone else but one of the most rewarding things ever is when a kid comes up and says i think i can do it because you did it that's just one of the most rewarding things in the entire world and we're usually it's it's stuff that i can graduate from high school it's i don't have to be abusive like my dad i i get letters and emails and emails all the times where kids tell me stuff that they never shared with anyone else and it is absolutely priceless to know that my crazy story matters to a kid that's struggling because who knows maybe that kid's at the end of their rope and if i keep that to myself to myself they may they may feel alone who knows when the next one the next not outing but the next person willing to share comes along and and i think we're all broken in some some way so one of one of my quotes that i talk about i got from a movie and it was uh uh uh box trolls i don't know if you ever watch that but this little cartoon but in this movie it said sometimes when a heart is broken it grows back crooked and so there's two parts to that number one uh a heart grew back crooked it's still together and it's beating and it's and it's thriving and it may be different but it's still working it's the hearts that don't grow back together and so that's what i look at like my brother or my sister or my other brother that i felt like their heart never grew back now i had a conversation with my brother uh my oldest brother about did you ever have anyone any adult that you felt like really mattered and cared enough about you to help your heart he only said no and on the other hand i did and so i look at um like people who grew up in different places so uh if you grew up with two parents and life was great sometimes people say i can't relate to you there's nothing i can teach you that's not true i can watch you and learn how to be normal i mean i can watch your family function and at least i can get those aspects and those tools and and some of that stuff to learn how to be if nothing else a good son or a good husband by watching people who come from a good home so it's not about having a story like mine just the fact that we're different we all have something to learn that i'm hoping people look at me and go you know what if i'm kind to a third grader that kid might graduate from high school if i believe in them that may be the one thing that they need to believe in themselves and so it's not you know so that's what i'm hoping that people can look at that and and gain lots of uh listen to my story and say hey man if we just believe in people maybe that'll help speak so highly of the see it be it mentality in essence that is so necessary and you're giving these examples of us becoming more vulnerable and sharing our stories and our journeys on youtube or on the other social platforms and what it'll enable other people to do is to see that look like first of all people aren't perfect like in so many ways and a lot of the platforms portray especially instagram geez um and if we maybe post something about our own conscious evolution or personal development and transformation then it can elicit other people to feel comfortable with saying hey they're talking about a card that they were dealt that wasn't that good or a couple cards that they were dealt that wasn't that good but that they learned how to love those cards and they learned how to repair themselves and to not repeat the mistakes and that's beautiful i i have um there's a video on the channel of uh me talking about the four months that i spent in jail because i went for cannabis and you know there's videos on our channel as well of interviewing different leaders in their fields when they talk about you know different psychotherapies like psychedelic psychotherapy there's different styles now and for best practices of ways to to integrate these cards that have been dealt and feel really comfortable with talking about them and and healing and making healing cool and making making it popular and so you have more young people that feel like they can walk in out in shoes and go out and and give these examples where they give talks about what cards they were dealt and how they persevered and overcame them okay i feel as though we have so much to still talk about um will you talk to us about that those those you know that moment specifically for you when the judge told your mom that that she wasn't fit to be a mother and that you were like that's never happening to me as a father then you found someone that you were in love with and were able to have two children with and then you went and adopted three other children two years ago tell us about your relationship with family and your relationship with your children and how that's just in one generation you were able to go from you know your mother your father's all being gone mother in the circumstances she had four of your other siblings not being able to persevere but you being able to and now all five of the ones that you have now able to persevere in one generation have that massive of a familial lineage transition is huge it's huge and it's gorgeous and talk to us well so my relationship with my kids and my family is it perfect no it's not perfect but it was it was a process so you go from thinking or wanting to be the world's greatest dad and having people say that and not feeling like that on the inside so when people would tell me man you're the world's greatest dad it had the exact opposite because i knew i i didn't know what to compare it to and i thought i was getting it even that i was getting it all wrong you know i felt like that i felt like no matter what i did my kids i was going to disappoint them and i wasn't going to be good enough and so i had a couple of things that taught me what was most important so it wasn't buying stuff you know i went through that process where you thought man if you buy your kids everything that's it what i found is that the greatest the greatest thing ever is time with my children and and it's doing stuff that they want to do you know it's not hey i'm going fishing you want to go and then i call that quality time what about me doing what they want to do and and so that's what i've learned as being a father and so also you have to be willing to be taught by your children so my kids sometimes said some of the most hurtful stuff that was true like somebody one time you know i'd just gotten onto my son i think i was probably a little over the top getting on to him a few minutes later running to somebody and and here's what they said man kelton you got a great dad you got a great dad now this is a few minutes later earlier i was chewing him out and so when we got in a car here's what my son said to me i wish i had that dad that they were talking about and it it hurt but he was telling the truth and so that's that process if i really want to be a good dad be be be that and it's tough i mean i make mistakes i get it wrong but man i'm telling you that my children are my heart and soul that is my motivation to get up every day to to go to work to share my story um for them to be proud of me you know i always talk about how you know when i'm on my last few days of life i want my children saying we're proud of you over anyone else i mean i want other people to say but i want my kids to say you weren't perfect dad but but we're proud of it and i and i think if you go with that that's it so we have this conversation on what's the difference between being a good man and a good dad there isn't one if you're a good man you're a good dad if you're a good dad you're a good man there's there's no separate and so sometimes same thing with mums absolutely but we struggle with that and being a good dad doesn't mean you're good all the time but when you're bad let your child see you fix it and that's what makes you a good dad yeah well yeah the way that we can optimally communicate wisdom from as our grandparents are at the latter end of of their life and they're trying to communicate wisdom down um to the youngest um as well as how the youngest are able to kind of be at like this like edge of curiosity and childhood and playing with the newest technologies and whatnot maybe they can also help communicate up to the parents and to the grandparents as well so there's this like transmission of wisdom and knowledge that happens between the youngest to the oldest the oldest the youngest and to be open-minded to that yeah there's there's so there's so much there's so much here yeah oh that's like my six-year-old Curtis that we adopted he so like we talk about being present and it's a struggle in today's age what does it mean to be present yeah if i'm sitting on a couch and you're on your phone that's to me that's not what it means to be present so present is engaged so here's an example about getting it wrong so he was telling me a story my six-year-old now six-year-old he goes on and on and just full of words and i don't know where his story is going so i check out about after 30 seconds and i get on my phone and he's talking i'm on my phone all of a sudden i don't hear anything and i'm like go ahead Curtis go ahead and he goes it's all right i'll wait till you're done see what i mean it's like what he was saying was that i know right now i'm not important and i'll wait till i'm important again and my goal is to not miss those opportunities yeah because maybe i can't get that moment back and that may have been that may have been when he was wanting to share something or connect with me yeah when he needed it most and so it could also be a bunch of blob lying that's not as that important so it's almost as though like how do we parse those moments for when we want to most critically listen to our six-year-olds telling stories because there could be really important moments of being present or for learnings for us but also that we could potentially be helping spread our ideas around the world by route maybe rather than engaging in that story with the with our own genetics with our own offspring for a period of time maybe it is more effective for us to be engaging with the world and spreading memes that way maybe there is someone that if you were to just had you know made that call or sent that message or engaged on that social post or whatever it was that maybe there were two or five or ten kids that could have seen something that could have altered their trajectories so it's kind of this like how do we figure out those moments and what to do also it's important for us to mention that all of this has your story has so much to do with the importance of what children experience from the moment that they're born so that whatever inputs children are taking into their spirit once they're born into the world if parents weren't ready to have children if they weren't financially ready if they weren't able to provide the child with love or compassion or water food shelter or any of these basic needs that the child needs these are kind of like the roots of the tree of the child and that the only way for the tree to have its own unique creative expression of fruits happen into the world for the gifts to happen that all of those nutrients need to be in place in the root systems and the the the rapidness that neural architecture gets laid out in the brain from zero to two is just so fast and that it's so evident that that it's actually it's you're like you are a miracle in so many ways you are because and it's really important for us to recognize that parents being ready and having more optimal circumstances for their children being brought into the world is exactly what's needed for their children to have more opportune life trajectories than when in many ways like that your other siblings who weren't able to have yeah and I think like I said I made it or I overcame because people started feeding that tree and it wasn't just one person it wasn't just one person one of my all-time favorite projects I do with teachers is I give them sticky notes and I have them write if they could give a message to a child what would it be so imagine you do this with 300 teachers so I give them a sticky note and then I have them come sticking on the wall so at the end of that what I'll do is I'll go let's say Alton comes into your school and I'm a foster kid my mom's a drug addict and I come into your school and I walk down the hallway and I run into Miss Johnson who says and I take the sticky note and I stick it to myself and it says you are somebody I love you you're awesome and I walk around for a few minutes with those sticky notes and I think that's what happened I think I had enough of those that I made it and imagine if you don't get those yeah you know how do you how do you do something that you've never seen how do you give somebody something you don't have and so I learned how to not only love other people but love myself because I watched other people do that had people say amazing things to me that I sort of rejected in the beginning but later on again in life they they showed up and they made sense I love that one so the little like sticky notes of of wisdom that people could be passing along to to others and we kind of like grab them and if we wear them long enough we can feel that light and love that was initially brought to those notes and that if we are missing any of those nutrients and the flourishing of our gifts that if we get enough of those little pieces of light and love that come into our life that they can kind of fill some of those spottingness in the nutrient deprivation in the root systems and then the gifts can come into the world well yeah well imagine if just one teacher shared I mean that's important but if 300 teachers if a kid goes into the school and in one day he runs into 10 teachers that say something nice to him he's gonna like school he's gonna like school he's gonna like education he's gonna want to learn he's gonna feel loved and then he walks out the door and goes to maybe a place that's full of misery but if nothing else here's what we've done we've taught him the difference see what I mean and if you don't share that that word of encouragement that's robbing people of sometimes that opportunity to grow or the and it could be a simple you look nice today or glad to see you or handshake and sometimes that matters yeah yeah yeah the tiniest butterfly effects of positivity and light um let's have you talk about the relationship of you mentioned this a couple times throughout but that these these what was brought forth to you as maybe light or love through different people it kind of at times it felt like god was there kind of bringing forth some light or some love through different people into your life to help your trajectory what's been your relationship with god or source or tell us about that so it's interesting so one of my struggles is that my abusive ranch dad was a deacon in a church and so that was a struggle and it kind of soured me really with faith and so here's here's another issue people don't think about people often refer to god as father well how you think that made me feel so i listen to people say god will never let anything bad happen to you that didn't make any sense to me i mean my mom's a drug addict i don't know who my dad is i've been beat with everything and so when people would say god will never let anything bad happen to you i thought god forgot about me that's what i thought and honestly my relationship with god only became what it is today is because people who loved god loved me people who said that they loved god started loving me and that's what made sense and so honestly i didn't see god i felt like he abandoned me i was looking for him but i felt like he was either hiding or running for me and he had forgotten about me and when i saw these people going to church who wasn't trying to cram religion down my throat loved me for who i was like the church that i go to now first united method of church and still water unconditional love and it's not about me being a youth director it's not about me being an author it's about me being family their church family and that's how i think we should approach people it's not about denomination it's not about my faith being stronger than yours it's about if i say god how about i do what i say and i'm going to love you even if you're different and so that that's what turned my faith around and so you know to me it's a i'm constantly thinking you know i hear people say i heard from god i'm 100 percent well i can say this i'm not 100 sure that i've ever heard god tell me something specifically to do however i know what i'm 100 sure i know what god wants me to do love you and love everybody else and if you get that part right and it's not always easy don't get me wrong but serve people you know find ways to to help people and children and elderly people and you know get yourself involved and that that's what we should be doing and it's not that complicated so yeah what do you think is the relationship between the amount of free will that we have you know um that that's interesting and i'm not sure i have an answer for free will uh i believe that god gives us free will to make our choices and so like this predestined it gets complicated to explain i think god allows me to make choices um i run into like when you look at the bad stuff that happens so like people say it's predestined i would argue that i do not believe that god wants people to hurt people so if you say life's predestined so how do you explain that child molester i mean god predestined for that kid to be molested you know what i mean and so to me it gets tricky so i think that's just where we get it wrong in my opinion i think people are hurting and broken and they just do bad stuff and so uh predestined in terms of choices does god make it easier no i think god gives us everything we need to be who we should be and who he wants us to be and we get to choose so to me that's the kind of the way the way i look at it does it feel like our spirit comes from god or from that source or from that all that is into these into meeting these bodies for these lessons oh absolutely absolutely and and again its perspective if you don't know where it's coming from you might not use it in the right way you know i mean if if you don't know what that's and i that would be my argument if you don't know that that that whisper that spirit or that that that hope that's coming to you if you don't know where that's coming from sometimes i think it's tricky and so for me it's understanding where my source my my strength my encouragement comes from and when i don't feel it this is why it's important for us to be active and help that maybe you can remind me that it's still there does that make sense so but when i lose it that's when we should show up yeah and so because there are times that again i feel like either inside my own head that maybe i'm not good enough or i'm getting it wrong and almost always the right person shows up yeah and part of that's because i'm looking for it so versus looking for somebody that's going to pour negativity on me and then what about for young people and adults that are still identifying like what maybe their divine purposes in the world what their gift is in the world what would you recommend for people so that that's another interesting um one of the churches i went to a long time ago they did this study called a purpose driven life and so it confused me because i thought we all have one purpose and how do i know what my purpose is so if i'm homeless am i worthless if i you know and so that i struggled with that so to me when you look at purpose so i was i was talking to a mom at our church and she was talking about how she didn't know what her purpose was and i said there's a purpose and you being a mom that's one of the most important things and she didn't look at it that way there's a purpose and me being a dad there's a purpose and you being a son there's a purpose and and so for me sometimes your purpose changed sometimes your purpose it's evolving i think you know my purpose was to be here and do this interview tomorrow it's going to be you know to speak at that at that professional summit so it's not about in my opinion one specific thing it's about one purpose to the next one purpose to the next not one big big big purpose interesting since like you can divide your maybe your life purpose your north star etc into a bunch of micro experiences and purposes absolutely i like that yeah instead of one big one i think it's just it's one step at a time and every one of those micro purposes cascades of butterfly effect out and impacts people positively absolutely and then maybe at the end there is sort of this like grand calculation that you can see of what you've done and your contribution to the interconnectedness of everything i like that i like that the micro purposes because i don't i don't want to paint myself into a box i mean if you think here's my example if your purpose is to play professional football what happens when you blow your knee well i'm not playing professional football anymore my purpose is over well we see that happen more often than not well maybe now my purpose is to get involved and do something else or my purpose may be to have a conversation with a football player that's struggling with addiction or something else and so to me its purpose is it's those little little bitty things as well as the big ones i like that a lot for identifying meaning in life and seeing it as micro purposes along the journey and the impact that that has on other people along the way so what about then with we're approaching this exponential technology age i mean your children have at their fingertips more power than ever before and their children will have the same thing as just going to continue happening what are some of the most important principles that you think children and adults can embody going into this exponential technology age you know my first gut answer is that life is about relationships that if we can work on building relationships face to face with people that's that's what's important because we can get lost in that and i think if we can continue building relationships and instilling that we care about each other and that's what i hope even through this technology and that's what we lose i mean i can get on twitter instagram and post anything that whatever i want to make my life look as great or as bad as i want to and there's no relationship in a communication with with twitter and so having these face to face conversations and and working on the hard stuff that that's what makes that relationship strong so that's what i hope that we go back to at some point that we can go back to making sure that relationships are at the the forefront of our our thought instead of just sending messages and and you know faces and and all these things that you know smiling faces and whatever just to get our expression across and not you know they're effective but we lose that and then what about on a geopolitical level that there's eight billion of us now there's a lot of humans there's more and more growing democratization of these exponential technologies what are maybe what would you say is maybe a core thing that we can do around the world to help bring us closer together towards that unity so well let's let's take that technology and use it for education and and purposes to where we can help each other and and i see a lot of it getting twisted you know we talked about you know in the car ride about how people they want to channel things and make it look a certain way and if we know it's wrong let let's stand up and and and not take part in whether we're bad mouthing people and so you know when you look at technology let's use that in a way to educate people let's shoot videos that show people healing let's shoot videos of people who are hungry so we know we have to feed them and so that's what to me that's what i think we should use technology for or if we can guide more to that helping people yeah that's great leverage the exponential technology for helping people for healing for education and they'll get us closer to that unity a lot of indigenous leaders around the world are saying that our disconnection from nature from source from god is the reason why we have so many of the issues that we have in our world how do you feel about that so here here's my example um but i would agree um i i think we technology has taken us away from relationship uh with people and and god uh i i really think it has and so um damn well i went to bolivia went on a mission trip to bolivia and my goal i thought was i'm going to teach these people about god now i live in the city i got cell phone so we pack up we go to bolivia i'm up in the middle of nowhere high altitude and my job is i'm supposed to play with the kids and then help pour the cement floor but i want to teach these people about about god but what happens when you get there and those people already know about god yeah it was the most eye-opening experience ever damn what did they how did they how did they express that they are well so i figured it out real quick i figured it out real quick when you listened to talk yeah so what were they saying that made you feel well because their life was centered around unity yeah um together so like in this village there may have been 200 people in this village and what was interesting is that i got to see what true unity looked like so there was a baby that passed away and people walked for days to celebrate life so we get upset and cry and and emotional which rightly so but they celebrate life when the baby passed away but people walked for days to come be together when they build like every one of the houses had like these mud fences so anytime somebody built a built a fence the whole village came and helped do that and then you talk about what does happy look like those people were happy they didn't have technology they didn't have cell phones they didn't have to worry about what was happening really on this you know on the other side of the world about the stock market they had everything they need they pitched in they did it together and it was a it was a great lesson and the heart the hard part is sometimes we become complacent you know i go to bolivia and i experience that and it's eye opening and then i come back to united states and i'm on fire and i'm changed and then it slowly starts to chip away and so that's the hard part but up there in bolivia they didn't have all that stuff and those people loved god they loved connecting and and being together it makes me in so many ways kind of in a sense question what's going on with productivity and this economic machinery and what are we building all this for and if i can't take moments of my time to just slow down and just be and just be in nature and be with family and go on like a couple day walk just to be with other humans to help them build fence etc with their homes these types of things then what is the point of the speed at which we're moving so fast and in so many ways having so many mental health or stress issues or there's like this weird situation that's happening with the speed of the economic machinery with the same time that we're feeling that disconnection from nature that disconnection from source from god and when you slow down and you look at that divine nature in other people you feel it right there does it ever feel like we're in a simulation sometime i i think it it seems like the world sometimes could be that way personally i mean there are moments in life where i feel like that's happening the other part the reason why i think people don't slow down it's sometimes if you slow down you have to self-reflect and you just it's easier to keep going you it's easy to keep going so i think i i think that's why a lot of times people don't slow down i mean i've been that way where i've been so busy that if i stop then i i may have to think or i may have to deal with some issues that i don't want to deal with so i just keep running so i have this weird analogy of what it's like to self-reflect so imagine you have a car and your car is smoking and we've all seen that car driving down the street right but smoke coming out of the back of it well the car's driving smoke's coming out of the back of it and you're you don't care because smoke's not getting inside your car well guess what happens when you come to the stop sign eventually that smoke starts to come inside and you recognize that there's a problem but instead of turning and going to the gas station or the mechanic and getting your car fixed what do we do step on the gas and start moving again so as long as i'm moving gas is not coming in the car interesting but the minute i stop and so this is this is my point that every once in a while we need to stop and not get choked out by the smoke but we get enough smoke or we self reflect or we be still long enough that we realize that we have a problem that we've got to get it fixed and so that's why i think people keep moving so that's such a beautiful analogy the economic machinery is making us move and just keep pushing on the gas every time we get to a stop sign instead of slowing down at that stop sign and engaging on that self-reflective process of who am i what am i doing here these deepest questions of life what how how can i engage with my family more my purpose more last question what do you think is the most beautiful thing in the world hmm my first first is a parents love for their children i think to me that is just the the the greatest i'm in both ways i mean all my kids that are adopted they're my kids it to me they've always been my kids and so watching not only me love them but them love me is like the greatest thing ever that some kids could love me you know when we when our kids when we adopted the three you know we had the judge ask our three children would you like to adopt Kristen and Alton and Kelton and Colin we wanted them to have a part so to me that just a a a family love a love from a stranger to another stranger unconditional love that's not judgmental that's not critical and so to me that's what it is and part of i think why we missed that is for the longest time i didn't love myself and i believe it's impossible to love someone else truly love someone else if you don't love yourself and so when you when i what what is love that's when you can walk side by side you can help people you can be in the presence of people without judgment without criticism without looking down on them so that's that's what i'm talking about and so with my family uh i feel like that that's it so Alton this has been such a beautiful conversation thank you for joining us on the show i appreciate it thanks for having me so enriching i feel like we covered just a gorgeous array of topics that and metaphors and your perspective has been so fun to understand more and share with the world so thank you thank you thank you appreciate it thank you man thank you all right it's been awesome yeah i was looking forward to this so awesome you are you are so incredible and i highly recommend everyone to check out the links in the bio below we greatly appreciate you tuning into this episode thank you everyone again the links in the bio below again that's alan carter net also his twitter profile also check out the book links check out those books and share them with more people have more conversations with your friends your family's co-workers people online on social media about what we talked about in this episode about these blueprints for healing and about these blueprints for choice and about love and how to build a better future all together i'll support the artists the entrepreneurs the spiritual leaders the organizations around the world that you believe in support them and help them grow support alton's organization support ours as well sport simulation all the links are below you can find us paypal patreon cryptocurrency you can design cool merch and get paid all those links are below and also go and build the future everyone manifest your dreams into the world we love you very much thank you for tuning in we will see you soon there it is buddy that was so awesome thanks man appreciate it a lot of fun a lot of fun so i hope you got some good stuff so we're beyond unique and you are wise for the level of complex cards that your adult it's beautiful the way you're sharing inspiring other people to share i'm so grateful this opportunity happened and i hope that we ripple out and uh and impact a lot of other people positively