 I'm gonna mute my, and my camera. Okay, here, oh, I'm there, I did it, I did it, okay, good. I'm actually on StreamYard on my phone, on the other phone. So I did a call the other day yesterday, and I talked a little bit about my learning challenges as a child, and somebody says you need to tell that story more, so I'm gonna tell you my story about how I thought I was dumb for a good portion of my life. If you know anybody that has a learning challenge or learning disabilities, or maybe you have a child that is behind other kids. So as a kid, I was at a speech impediment, I think that's what they call it. It corrects my language if I'm wrong, but I had a speech impediment, so basically I couldn't say like S's and Z's and certain letters. Even today, I can tell that my tongue goes, it wants to go one way, but I've re-trained my mouth to work differently. And so I was in this training process to retrain how I talk. And that's when I was really, really young. At the same time, I never really caught on to reading. It was, I was way behind, I was in reading, remedial reading, so I was like in the, you know, like I was years behind my classmates in reading, spelling, reading, grammar, so I just never really caught on to it all. And we didn't know why, I didn't know why our life and our family was so crazy that it just kind of, I was in the school systems and I just tried to keep up whatever I could do. And anyway, you know, after a while, you know, you read out loud in class and people laugh at you or whatever else you feel, you know, and you don't realize it, it probably wasn't that often, but it felt like it was a lot. So like any time that, you know, I'd read in school or out loud in school, I would spend the whole class trying to figure out which paragraph I'm going to read and try to memorize it. So I would take it word by word and see if I can memorize it and then I'd read it out loud. And most of the time I would, you know, I would say something stupid and it'd usually bring a chuckle, right? So anyway, this was ongoing. And then at sixth grade, my family moved and went to a new school. While I went to that new school, I was no longer part of the reading program and the reading remedial side of things. I got just thrown into the regular school system and I got really far behind. And so by, through high school, I just cheated. I cheated on everything. And I went to take the ACT test and I just kind of always thought it was dumb. My brother would say that because sometimes I would say things. If I write stuff, if you ever get a text from me, is anybody got it? Just really, really quick questions. If anybody got a text from me and you're like, what is Dustin trying to say? Like, what did he say? Put me down below if you ever got a text from me. You're like, what is he talking about? Like, is he speaking the same language? I write things backwards. My brain doesn't write in certain words and it was really tough for a long time because I'm trying to articulate what I wanted but I couldn't always, the right things couldn't come out. But yet I was very in my mind and knew what I wanted. And so anyway, long story short, I went to go take my ACT test and I only got a 17 on the ACT, a 17. If you're a teacher out there, it's a 17 any good. It's, I think it's like, you get 15 points for like spelling your name right or something crazy like that. But I got a 17 on it and I couldn't get any colleges and so it was just like confirmed for me what's up on peg that I had, I was kind of dumb and stupid, I didn't know. And I didn't, I think I thought this is where I was, you know and I've always been somebody that had a good upbeat attitude and I worked hard, I didn't want to fail. So I always found a way to pass but on the ACTs I couldn't cheat. And I just cheated my way through school and but I also didn't realize that all my strengths, I didn't realize what I was good at. I didn't realize I had all these other qualities that really showed that I wasn't stupid and dumb. And but I just want to share this because if you have somebody that you know and I got a good friend of mine I was with this weekend, she thanked me for telling her this because she has a child that a daughter that is dyslexic and doesn't quite fit into the mold of everybody else. And you know, and without that awareness sometimes we, it's doing me wrong. I'm sure it's frustrating as a parent. I know it's frustrating as a child but there's so much other things that that person's great at. If you can amplify their strengths it can really, not only can offset the weakness of somebody else, it can actually, they can excel in big time in the world. And truth is, some of the most powerful successful people on this planet are dyslexic because they have to think differently than the norm. And so anyway, long story short, I went in the military, I got screened into Intel. I'm like, how does a guy like me go to Intel? Like how's that possible? Like I actually thought that everybody in the military had to be the stupidest people in the world if they let me into Intel. Like I didn't understand it but I apparently I tested off the Richter scale on some porous portion of the test. And so I took the test and one side of it I just was off the charts. And I don't know. So I get to my bootcamp and next year I go through all this gamut of testing and I'm doing all these crazy tests and they kept pulling me out of like the traditional bootcamp and they'd put me in these rooms and they would test me. Not like probe me. I didn't even like analytical test and these crazy tests around my brain and they would do like non-morous intercepts. We would do like just crazy code breaking. We would do foreign languages and all these other things which I didn't thrive in foreign languages by the way which we knew, but I did in these coding and in other ways in my brain works. And it was the first time I realized I wasn't dumb and that there was a way that my brain worked differently. The good thing about the military is they didn't, they don't, you don't really, reading isn't a high requirement in the military. There's so many other factors that you can accelerate through and I just accelerated, just completely accelerated within that, within the military. So it's just crazy to think that if somebody like me that couldn't read, I read my first book, full book, my first full book I ever read was, I may have read Curious George as a kid, I just don't remember, but my first full book I ever read was else 36 years old. And so, and it took me a long time. I think it was like six and a half, seven months to read the whole thing. It was, it's a book about the brain. It's called Ig Cognito. That was my first official book. I did read, I have read, Think and Grow Rich. Usually it takes me six months to nine months to get through the whole book. How many of the words I actually read properly? No idea, but either way. But it's just, it's an interesting process. So if you know anybody out there, if you have a kid out there, you have a friend or family member out there that maybe can't read or learns differently, give them grace, really look at their strengths of what they're great at and really try to reinforce those strengths because it doesn't mean that they're dumb or you're dumb. But I mean, if I could even just unpack like what I've, you know, a feeling dumb is not a pleasant thing. But if you could even unpack what it's like to basically just think that's, I just thought that's the way it was. Like I didn't realize it and even today I get caught up and do it like, man, you're being dumb. Like I even call, like it's so programmed inside of me sometimes that I get myself in trouble. I mean, I legitimately this weekend, I spent, I don't know, a few hours with the former chairman of NASA. He's been come a good friend. I can call on him and just ask him questions. Like I'm literally having conversations with, you know one of the smartest people in the planet or at least wisest people, let's say in the planet. And he's talking to me. We're just, we're having a real conversations. He's asked me, hey Dustin, what do you think about this? Oh, you know, and we're going back and forth and we're talking about different discussions and perspectives and concepts. And I'm like, you know, obviously I'm not dumb. I mean, that guy's not going to hang out with the dumb person if that makes it, he says. But it's just kind of weird to think that, you know this guy that, you know, this kid from small town of 700, you know, dyslexic and can't, you know spell two words properly in the right, can't text for shit and is able to spend time with some of the top minds in the world of health and wellness and vitality, Mars programs to go to Mars and outer space and rocket engine rocket or a jet or what are they rocket scientists, I guess they would be called. It's, you know, it's, it's just really reassuring that you got to be careful. So if you know somebody that's struggling with some things, be careful with the words you use. My wife and I really work on that. Like she catches me, I catch her, we're like, hey, language, like meaning a depowering word or a depowering language on towards somebody because it matters. Like I was never dumb, never. I just never was in a position to thrive intellectually. I was physically, physically I was accelerated in sports, you know, I was able to take my gifts and put it that way. But intellectually, I never was. I always felt like I was the dumbest guy in the room and I was always far behind everybody. And it couldn't be further from the truth at all. And when people meet me today, they just, you know it's weird for them to see that because of the individuals that I get to spend time with and I do have a really unique knowledge base. I know a lot about the human body and I know a lot about health and wellness and I guess I know a lot about a lot of things but because I've exposed myself to a lot of things. And so I just say that because man, I really think that the next generations are gonna have their hands full of some really cool things and I don't want anybody to be limited by that and to be slowed down by that. So if this helps anybody, I told people I would share my story more. I don't share a lot about it because I don't look at it anymore at my 40s. I don't look at it as something that has helped me back. I look at it as one of the best gifts ever to struggle through school intellectually. But part of that is because I didn't, my mom didn't tell me I couldn't. She didn't tell me I couldn't. Now she didn't necessarily know how to help me with my situation. But she never told me I couldn't achieve. So I was never held back that way. But at the same time, so being not reading and not writing and things like that that are just normal for today's individuals, I had a gift of reading people and understanding people and connecting with people probably differently than maybe people that could read out of a book. And because of that gift, I've been able to make a big impact in a lot of people's lives. So I say this with all those kids out there and that are struggling to maybe feel like they can fit in or maybe learning differently than other kids. Man, parents, don't put them in that bucket. If anything, accelerate them in a different bucket. There's a million people out there that can read a million books, but there's not everybody out there that can do other things. Because it's, you know, you can be the lion or the sheep, I guess is the way we can look at it. So anyway, I just wanted to share that with you all. Cheers, happy Friday. Finish up my keto. This is actually really, really good. That's one of my favorite. I don't drink a lot of the canned keto. They're like my powder packs, but this is really good. So with that said and done, this is my first time doing a live on Project Broadcast on StreamYard. So if you're on Instagram, I did it on all my Facebook platforms, but aww, that's awesome, thank you. Yeah, I mean, here's the cool thing about what we get to do is like, you learn this over time when you're given the gift of, I don't wanna say this, I hate to say this, I don't know how to say it in the right word, but the ability to be in front of a lot of people, a status, I'm not thinking the right word, but anyway, when you're given the gift to be able to speak to a lot of people, what I've learned in my career is that the more you have to really be able to give up credibility, and it's probably the wrong way of even saying that as I was training on this this weekend, but give up credibility for relatability. And what happens is, a lot of times is we, I think we have a higher obligation to talk about our struggles and our challenges or the things that have helped us back, because what happens is when people, if you were to see me get on stage today and talk, you don't know what it was like when I first got on stage and presented. I was really not good, I was bad, but I was willing to do it. I was willing to step up and try, I was willing to suck, I was willing to suck good, I was willing to fail, and that's because of all those challenge I'd been into. They had a teleprompter, I literally had to try to read out the teleprompter, talk at the same time, and then present to the audience while I was introducing somebody else, thinking about what I needed to do next. That's how I started. And I'm like, I told Lauren, I don't read very well, so be careful what you write on there. And then you're saying names like Mojique Perotti. I'm like, well, how am I gonna pronounce that? So I butchered it and now I'm okay with it at the time, it was tough. And so, but I think we have a responsibility. I think everybody does. My wife, we talk my wife often and we talk a lot about how she's had multiple miscarriages. I talk about what it's like to lose your leg and feel like you never can walk. You may never get to walk again. These are things that are important because what happens is when some people see you at the other side, when they see you in the other side of your life once you've gotten through these sometimes challenges, they don't relate. They think that you're, oh, it's easy for you. I've always been into fitness and so I've relatively been buff and strong and people go, what's easy for you? Well, yeah, it was easy because I started when I was six, working out. I got my first weight set when I was eight and it's become just part of my life. So I found it, that's the gift I got. But the reality is, is that my body type, I'm prone to be bigger, I'm prone to be slow, I'm prone to be fatter, like naturally. So it's not easy for me. It was just, I had made a lot of choices that allowed it to become easier for me and you can do that same thing, just start now. Just start now. At the same time, because I started so young, I had more surgeries than most people have. Every action has an opposite and equal reaction. So a lot of my friends are getting to fitness right now. They're not starting out with 13 surgeries. They're starting out with no surgeries and they have a clean slate. I just have a metabolism that has been built from fitness so I can kind of get away with some stuff. So this is, I'm gonna encourage you if you're watching this right now, if you know anybody that, man, I just see too many kids. I see all the kids medicated and I was supposed to be on ADHD medicine early on in my life. And I don't know what that would have done for me but the reality was is my mom chose to have me wrestle instead and do other things and it worked out well for me. And I just wonder sometimes though, and I'm not against any kind of medications that y'all just so you know, but I wonder sometimes if that is that, are we changing that kid's gifts? And maybe there's a blend and balance of the whole thing. Boys need to get out and run more. I have a boy I know it's different. It's just, they're different, they are. My daughters can sit and focus. My son, he can do actually, he's actually really good at sitting and focus but he still needs to be like, he's like a wild horse. You gotta go out and run him every once in a while. Otherwise it's, he's gonna go crazy. So there's just a difference and it's just understanding that as a parent but I really have a passion for kids that have learning challenges, traditional learning challenges. And the reality is they really probably don't have a learning challenge. They have a learning challenge within the traditional current model is what they have. Not necessarily a learning challenge of wife, right? There's so many ways to learn. True story, it was funny, I was talking to Stephanie earlier this week and she said her daughter can watch something and learn it in seconds, right? So I learned how to drive a manual transmission is three in the tree on a 1968 Ford pickup. I learned how to drive a manual transmission by watching. Nobody ever taught me. I just got on the truck and I drove it. Why? Cause I watched somebody else do it enough times. I just could do it what they did. I just literally copied exactly what they did. And I did that and learned how to back up a boat like a boat trailer. That's like one of the hardest things for people to do. It was seconds it took me to do it. Learned it, I learned it like that. Easy peasy. I couldn't read a book, but I could do those things really. I'm like, how do you do that? My mom asked me, my mom couldn't, she couldn't drive the actual truck. I was only 14 and she's like, we had to switch cars. And she's like, I couldn't, she couldn't drive. I had to drive the truck home cause my mom couldn't shift the three in the tree 1968 Ford pickup. So I'm 14 with no license to drive in my mom home because she couldn't even drive her own car because it was really hard for her to do. And I taught myself how to do that. And so I just, I say these things because, you know, I was learning, I was learning the whole time. The challenge was I thought I was dumb because I didn't, people didn't directly say that but that's the association my brother did. And you know, some kids would say certain things but it wasn't like the teachers would say he's dumb. But you know, when you're going to a remedial reading class, you know, when you're going to a, you know, to speech classes and they're teaching you those things and you're not in the normal classroom. You know that you're off. You know that something's not right. It's not like it's, and that's okay. I understand that I needed that extra time without that training in my mouth. I don't know how it, I literally present and speak for a living, right? So if they didn't train my mouth to work right and my tongue to work better, I would have had a, I would spoke like this and that's how I would spoke when I was like, this is how I would have spoke, you know? And so that's, that would have been me. But now I get to speak in front of people across the world, because they helped me do that. And that was the time I needed. Yeah, so somebody just said their son's, you know pretty hyper at five years old, I was off the wall. My mom tells me, she goes wrestling kind of saved your life. She says that, because what it did is when I was really active, I calmed down. You know, and this is something I'm still working on today, guys. And I know that after a lot of surgeries, a lot more, there's a few more to come. But after a lot of surgeries, I knew that, you know, 46 years old, I'm like, that old pattern can't, I can't keep running and operating at like a crazy fast level. Most people were trying to inspire to go do more in their life. And for me, we're kind of, one second. I'm turning on the dome lights, but for me, I'm trying to like slow down. And so I'm actually working on how to like find a normal that's a little slower. But the truth is, is wrestling gave me that opportunity to kind of burn off that energy. So if you have a boy that's hyper and got a lot of energy, you find things that just get them to wear out. But also realizes that as a little young boy, this will be another topic I'll have one of these days, is that I got praise for how active I became because it became my new norm. I became this adrenaline junkie and this addiction to adrenaline. The problem with that is that, because I got praise for it, I had a lot of head injuries because I was so, I didn't get praise for my reading. I didn't get praise for my school work. I didn't get praise for any of that stuff. So I got praise for basically running my head into a wall through sports and athletics. Well, that causes a lot of damage too. And I didn't have anybody to say, slow down. Also, I didn't feel good when I slowed down. I only feel good when I go 100 miles per hour for a long time. And then my 20s, I lose the use of my leg for a year and I was forced to slow down and I realized how empty I was as a person. I realized how disconnected I was from myself. And that was kind of the beginning of my journey of realizing if I'm gonna be complete as a person that I need to find a way to be okay up here. Not being 100 miles per hour physically. I go, what if my body doesn't work? What is my life then? And this is something I got to learn from and I'm still learning from that. And it's something I spend a lot of time I'm in the meditative world now and meditating and finding other ways to find this fulfillment. But that's the only thing I would say is if you have a young boy or girl that needs a lot of activity and you're reinforcing with activity and you're pushing them and you're pushing them and you're pushing them and you're pushing them just remember that every action has an equal upper reaction. It's not a bad thing. So the more active I was the more I could focus and slow down and the more joy I had. The challenge was that became my identity of who I was and it was reinforced by praise and joy and everything else. And they're, you know, not hindsight. Now, right now I have three kids that are old enough to know kind of know what's going on with them. The other one's a one month old. So, and all my kids aren't like me. We want them to learn like I do. We want them to understand my learning methods because I think that it's crucial. I think the way I learned is I think it's superior to the way most people have been taught in school. At least I think, but they're very good readers. They're gonna read better than me. My kids will out read me. My son will out read me before he's 10 years old easily. Before he's in fourth grade, he'll be a better, he's probably already as close to as good a readers. I don't read to him anymore because most of the time I mess up words. My daughter already catches me. My six year old already catches me when I read, if I read aloud, if I say something wrong, she catches it every time. So it's, what's up, Jen? So anyway, if you have a boy and you're pushing them to be more active and you're noticing that's helping them, just be aware that we also gotta find ways to get them to slow down. Otherwise, you're reinforcing this excessive activity behavior, which then, you know, it's a good thing, but it can cause long-term obstacles. So just find ways to blend it, you know, one of the reasons why I didn't perform as well in sports long-term is I burned out. By the time I was 16, I peaked physically. And then after that, I was just injury after injury after injury after injury, because I didn't have an off switch. I could train for eight, nine hours a day. I mean, I could out train anybody. I probably still can. But the reality was is it was breaking me down and then joint replacements and surgeries and injuries. I was injured all the time. I've been injured. Kind of been, I've slept at DISA on my body for majority of my entire life. And I can wear that as a badge of honor, but the reality is that's not the right approach. That was, there's a huge lesson in that to learn, but it's just finding that blend. And as a parent, you know, be aware that you're the, you're the leader of that. You just have to find the right way to articulate it. And if you have young kids and you need me to talk to them, I have no problem doing that either. Give them perspective. Because I've done some, I mean, if they're active kids, there's, I've done some crazy stuff, some nutcy stuff, things that are absolutely kind of mind blowing. I was telling Dr. Ford about my incident with the stonefish when I stepped on a rockfish or stonefish out in Guam and he's like, oh boy. And he's literally describing what happened to me internally. And it was just like, it's like the most gnarly thing ever. He goes, you know what they need to do for you? I go, put me in boiling hot water. He goes, yep. And they had to hold me down. And he's just, it was just funny and it's crazy. So, but Angela Angelic, I have to actually go in and I'll say again, I think Angie, I mean, I think Angie, I'll just call her Angie. Hey, I appreciate it. If you have any questions, let me know. It's something that, this is huge. I think it's something, I'm gonna do my best to talk about a lot. I don't talk about a lot of these things. I'm always usually, I really help be really, really focused, but I gotta find a way to do that. Cause we've had a lot of crazy things, you know? And I know there's a good friend of mine, Jennifer on there. She's, she's somebody that's overcome a lot in her life. And now leading and doing some remarkable things. And I think, and I've been encouraging her to tell her story about her previous addictions and her way super mom, because she doesn't, you don't realize how many other people have those same challenges. And you're just on the other side of it. You know, I lost my father to suicide at a young age. I never had a really good relationship with my father. So I'm one of those, you know, young boys that didn't really have a father figure growing up. Not until my teenage years, my stepdad kind of played a role, but it was more of a friend than a father. So, you know, not, not having a father, now becoming a father, there's just a lot of layers to that. And, and, you know, when you, when you find peace, joy, love, happiness, fulfillment, you know, financial abundance in your life. And you kind of don't want to go back and think about all those things. But the reality is there's somebody going through it right now that just needs to know that it's okay. And it can be, it will be okay. And there's a, there's a way through it all. In a process of surrounding yourself with the right people, number one, more importantly, military was powerful for me, college was great for me, but it was the people that I put myself around. And I didn't know that. I just, I just always looked for good, healthy, positive people. That's, that was my, if you're negative, I didn't spend a lot of time with you. If you're happy and positive, I spent a lot of time with you. If you're going somewhere, I spent a lot of time with you. I didn't always feel like I should, but I always found a way to just to be around. And then I'd listen, I'd listen, I'd listen, I found a way to just to be around. And then I'd listened, and I learned, and then I did what they did in my way. And that's, you know, that's the recipe right there. So find somebody that has what you want and do what they did in your way. And you can create a lot of success in all elements of your life. Joy, love, happiness, all of it, spiritual across the board. So, all right. I shared it. I will share it more often. I promise somebody challenged me to do that and I figured it's time to do that. I am on my car charging it right now, so it's getting dark, it's light, and I gotta go pick up my daughter. Bye, y'all.