The Retirement Success in Maine Podcast Ep 082: How Brain Cancer Taught Me to NOT Live a Life of Comfortable Complacency

 

 

Transcript:

Ben Smith:

Welcome everybody to The Retirement Success in Maine podcast. My name is Ben Smith. Allow me to introduce my co-host, the 3 wood, two by pitching wedge, Curtis Worcester. How you doing today, Curtis?

Curtis Worcester:

I'm doing well. I don't know how I feel about the 3 wood. It's a struggle club for me these days, but I'll take it, I guess.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, well, it's spring golf, so especially it's very difficult right now too.

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Ben Smith:

I want to also, for those on video, you see kind of another person here. We have a new co-host that we need to introduce.

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Ben Smith:

He's the 22 degree hybrid to us, Austin Minor. So Austin, how you doing today?

Austin Minor:

I'm doing great, just with Curtis on not sure how much I love the 22 degree hybrid, but it depends on the day, so I'll go with it.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. Well, Austin, so you joined our firm in March of this year, so you came way by of Merrill Lynch and TD Ameritrade, and you're located in our Portland office, so we wanted to include you into our podcast craziness that we have here.

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Ben Smith:

And so listeners, we wanted to... Obviously, if you join me in welcoming Austin as a co-host, we're really excited to have Austin here and our colleague, Abby is actually going to be stepping away. She had three kiddos and two twins that she just delivered here a few months back, so she's going to be full-time mom here.

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Ben Smith:

And Austin is, we're really excited about having join us.

Austin Minor:

Absolutely.

Ben Smith:

So that's kind of our Guidance Point update today. But from a show perspective, one thing we wanted to do today was, we want you to just start out by closing your eyes and imagining the following. You're on a virtual meeting, looking at your face, hearing your voice, and you're thinking, "Hey, all these three things are really just disconnected." You're having a bit of an out-of-body experience. You then notice you're having a pretty intense headache, and you start to see a white flashing light that is getting progressively brighter and brighter, and all of a sudden, your vision starts closing. You call your primary care physician and they ask if you've ever had a migraine, of which you reply, you've actually never had one in your life. And the PCP ponders for a moment and says, "Well, geez, that's concerning. You should stop what you're doing. Get to an urgent care center. You can get an MRI done immediately." So you're sitting in a scan and it takes a half hour to 45 minutes, and as you're being wheeled out, you catch a glimpse of the screen and the scan wasn't right.

You see a mass, a white mass, and the doctor comes in and says, "We're really glad you came in today." Your heart sinks. The radiologist has confirmed that you have a tumor in your brain and is a four centimeter tumor. What a grim thought. The sound of that diagnosis doesn't come lightly to anyone's ears. So how would this news change how you spend your days? What would you say to your spouse, to your kids, or your other loved ones? Would you think differently of your past experiences and relationships? How would you plan your life to maximize your time alive? So this is exactly what happened to our next guest, and we'll talk to him about his current health, how he's been able to live focused on optimistic future instead of dwelling in the past and how to not live a life of comfortable complacency.

Curtis Worcester:

And Ben, as you just kind of teed up for me here, I just want to introduce our guest a little more here. And so our next guest is a brain cancer warrior, and after the successful removal of his tumor, decided to do something to shake up his daily routine. So inspired by a best friend, he started an Instagram page, @culminationpoint, and I'm going to stop right here and tell everyone to go give them a follow.

Ben Smith:

Yep. Pause.

Curtis Worcester:

Pause right now. We'll stop talking for a few seconds. Change apps. Go to Instagram. So he started an Instagram page, @culminationpoint, which he posts regular messages about surviving brain cancer, trauma and lessons learned about healing and growth. As a regional vice president for Nationwide Insurance, he understands the value of planning and is doing all he can as a husband and father of two girls to make every day count. His messages come from his experiences, his heart, and are the result of fighting through crisis and adversity. Prior to cancer, our guests grew up around divorce, depression, mental health issues and anxiety that took many years to accept, unravel, and pull out the needed guideposts. So with that, please join me everyone in a warm welcoming of Chris Gathers to The Retirement Success in Maine Podcast. Chris, thank you so much for coming on our show today.

Chris Gathers:

Thank you for having me. It's a great introduction and sometimes when you hear your history repeated back, you're like, "Man, I need some kind of hybrid myself. I got to get this... I need some kind of Hail Mary shot at this point." But yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. This whole experience as anyone who's gone through it or seen someone go through it is life perspective changing event. And it doesn't stop with just the diagnosis, it's an ongoing situation. So for me, what I've tried to do is turn this into a positive as early as I could after I accepted it and dealt with all the emotions that had me in turmoil for probably the first year. But it gave me the light to say, this is actually a gift because it's providing me with a daily, as you said, guidepost, guardrails, however you want to say it, a wake-up call.

If I feel myself drifting away from where I know I should be, with my family, with my career, with my friends, with blown conversation with strangers. If I get angry, if somebody cuts me off there, things that this automatically says, first of all, could be a lot worse, you're still here. Second of all, is this really bringing you, me, inner peace? Is this bringing me value and is it bringing the people around me value? Because I can't afford to leave anything on the table from a kindness standpoint or from a purpose standpoint. And I think it's the greatest gift that could have ever been given to me is that wake up call. As you had mentioned, comfortable complacency is where I was at, and I can touch on that if you'd like, or we can go in whatever direction you'd like from here.

Ben Smith:

So I think one thing when we just kind of watching your Instagram page and then we have a mutual friend in connection, Matt Moran who Matt came on our show as well and talking about his practice of gratitude. I just want to kind of give our listeners a little preview here of that moment that you found out about brain cancer diagnosis. So we did that, but I want to hear a little bit about your life prior, because to your point about that life awakening event, well, you weren't born this way and having your attitude as it is today. So I want to hear a little bit about, let's start with just from the beginning a little bit about your upbringing. What was that like, and how did that shape who you were in your relationships prior to your diagnosis?

Chris Gathers:

That is a... How much time do we have? Yeah, I mean, I'll give you the cliff notes version. I was raised by a mom that had chronic depression and anxiety issues. And back when she was born, back in the '50s, and then they started to develop into the '60s and early '70s, mental health, it doesn't even come close to existing in the current form as far as awareness and treatments. It was kind of like my grandparents always phrased it as it's her just being down a bit. But thank God we've come a long way with it. But that led to a lot of bad decisions, specifically, around men in her life. So my father happened to be one of them, and they were too young. They got married when they were 19. She had me when she had just... Actually, she had me when she was 19. And she wasn't ready and he wasn't ready.

He had substance abuse issues. And then from those substance abuse issues, he turned abusive towards my mom. And we were in that environment for probably the first four years of my life. Lots of alcoholism, lots of drug use, lots of abuse, just terrible stuff. And obviously, that has a profound effect on people, not only my mom obviously, but as a child I would've a tough time dealing with seeing that now, as a 49-year-old person watching that happen. But especially as a four-year old who can't really process things like that emotionally, doesn't know words and how to label emotions and purge them or feel them, it just all gets bottled up and then you go into a defensive mode. So I went through another couple of divorces with my mom and abusive situations or neglectful situations, a lot of abandonment things came from that because both left and never looked back.

And so here are three father figures who pretty much just left and disappeared. They were there in my life and they were gone. So as you can imagine, there was a treasure trove of conversation both internally and to therapists and anybody would listen to try to get this stuff out of me. Because I was committed to living a better life than what I was presented as the model of life. So I remember when I was 18 years old, maybe 17, it was right around that time, I hit rock bottom. My mom had just gotten divorced for the third time. She had all intents and purposes and nervous breakdown. I was a sole caregiver for her, basically, from an emotional standpoint. And so I was supposed to go to University of Pittsburgh and I decided to stay home and take care of her. And the problem is no one was taking care of me.

It was just me in turmoil watching my mom disintegrate. So where does that take me to, right before the diagnosis? It takes me into a life of trying to logically and emotionally dig myself out of darkness, and try to take as much goodness out of that as possible. So at 17, 18, I was thinking about, I'll be very frank, just ending my life. And so I made the commitment. It was this, if anyone's heard the song, Don't Give Up by Peter Gabriel on the album. That song literally saved my life because for some reason that song was playing and it saved me from doing something that I'm so glad I didn't. But I guess this offers up a semblance of hope for anyone suffering from any type of mental illness or darkness that you just hold on, and you just have a vision in your mind of what can be created.

And I believe, we're all creators by nature and we have a lot more control over what we get out of life than we give ourselves credit for often. So I lived a lot of my adult life figuring it out, taking steps back, figuring it out, taking steps back, and I ended up being very closed off from everyone, but just a core group of trusted people. And so that was comfortable complacency at its best. I still had issues, trusting, loving, accepting love, believing I was lovable. And I carried that all the way up till my brain tumor diagnosis. So if somebody would tell me, "I'm proud of you." It would make me cry.

Literally, it was too much for me to bear because I didn't believe it. I didn't believe somebody could do that because I never received it. So that's a big portion of my page is around showing people that things can get grim for everyone and anyone, but hold hope in your heart and in your mind that you can dig out and create beautiful stuff, beautiful existence. It is really about acceptance of what's happened and loving yourself first and everything else just kind of starts falling into place.

Austin Minor:

Wow, that's a lot to deal with, especially at those ages. I can't imagine. And kind of fast forwarding to when you got the MRI scan. Can you share with us a little bit about what your initial reaction to that news was like? And what the process was like to get treatment to successfully remove the particular cancer?

Chris Gathers:

Yeah, absolutely. The initial moment I heard, I remember being in the urgent care center and I was by myself. My wife was traveling at the time, racing towards where I was. And I remember just kind of falling backwards and it was a 45 degree angle the bed was set at and looking up at the ceiling and I could hear the doctor talking and I wasn't hearing what she was saying. And all I was thinking was, "I'm just starting to figure this whole thing out at 47. What an unbelievably unfair piece of news." And that was the first thought I had, was like, "I can't believe it." When you hear brain tumor, it's like, "I got two years to live." That's the initial... I gave myself a diagnosis that that's the end of it. And then my thought went directly to my wife and daughters, especially my daughters.

Obviously, my wife is beautifully strong and I know she would obviously be torn up, but not having a father figure that was stable. And me promising myself that I would be that person for them to think of them having to navigate life without me was devastating. It was easily the most painful thought I've ever had in my life that I was deserting them, not by purpose, but physically not going to be there and emotionally not supporting them through their toughest challenges. So that was another reason I started the page was I wanted to create a diary of my thoughts and my views. That was the initial genesis of it was like, if I'm not here, I want to let them know if you go through a tough time or you are thinking this, it's normal. Everyone's thought it, your dad thought it, and I wanted to share that. And I didn't want to share it in a book, I wanted to have them see my face communicating as if I was in the room with them.

Austin Minor:

Oh, wow.

Chris Gathers:

That was... Yeah.

Austin Minor:

How old were your daughters at the time?

Chris Gathers:

7 and 13.

Austin Minor:

7 and 13. And so you had mentioned that your wife is unbelievably strong, your daughters were very young for that kind of a situation.

Chris Gathers:

Yeah.

Austin Minor:

What was the reaction like from your daughters, your wife, other family coworkers about your diagnosis? And did that have an influence on your overall health?

Chris Gathers:

Yeah, it's a great question. My wife is a pit bull of strength and determination, and you would've thought that somebody told me I had a strained knee. She was like, "We're just going to figure it out. It's going to get done. You're going to be fine. We're going to find you the best care. We're going to get this thing out of your head. We'll get you the best treatment in the world." And so she was the immediate rock that I needed to say, "Okay..." Because as you would imagine from my past, at that time, it was very easy to just throw myself off the cliff and be like, "I'm done. This is that." So she pulled me up instantly. My daughters, that was tough to share the news, but we got very good advice. We know the chief of surgery at Connecticut Children's Hospital, and so we asked her, "What is your advice on delivering tough news to kids?"

And her opinion immediately was, share it all. Be an open book. Be confident about the care you're receiving. Be confident about how you're going to give it everything you've got and that you're still here. There's no imminent danger. And her main point was that our thought of brain tumor is different than a child's thought of brain tumor. They haven't had experience with brain tumor diagnosis around them. And so she didn't want us to have them find out from somebody on the bus that was like, "Oh, your dad's got a brain tumor. He is going to be gone." So it was a proactive approach that they accepted with tears and worry, as you would all imagine, but it was the right move because the transparency is where I think they found comfort in that openness and the strength we were exuding that this was going to be fine. So it was good. It was a good move.

Curtis Worcester:

I want to keep going here, Chris, and just talk about, and I'm sure this is a question that you could also probably answer with unlimited time, but the topic of... I want to talk about how brain cancer has changed you. And I know we've touched on it a little bit to this point, but can you just talk about what the process was like for you to bring acceptance and peace into your life and start living today differently than you ever had before?

Chris Gathers:

Yeah. It's a fantastic question. And there was no acceptance of my brain cancer diagnosis for a while. I didn't want to say the words. I didn't want to hear the words. I would always say, "Oh, they found a tumor." And people would say something like, "I'm sorry about your brain cancer." And I'd be like, instantly withdraw. And I was almost like, "I don't have brain cancer." There's a grieving process that I believe that if we are all to move on from these situations, it needs to be gone through.

And so I committed to myself, instead of bottling up the emotions or using some coping mechanism that was taking my eye away from this, I was going to dive in and I was going to feel everything. Because to me now, I had a time clock that was ticking down. And I said, "If I feel like crying all day, just going to cry all day. If I feel like laughing all day or being angry or just sleeping all day." Whatever I went through, there was an acceptance that, over time, came to be because I knew in my heart of hearts that this happened for me to finally see the light. And the light is that I wanted to do bigger, more important things. I wanted to love more. I wanted to accept love more. I wanted to be compassionate and caring towards everyone instead of just a small group that I felt safe in.

And so I knew the only way to do that was to dive deep. And so with all the tears, as you would imagine, that all brings up not just the cancer diagnosis, but then stuff that I had never dealt with, pain that I had never felt a feeling of. I went back and visited myself in a lot of different ways as a kid and had empathy for that for me back then finally, instead of just being able to say like, "Oh, it was terrible, it happened and cried out." I went back and thought like, "Man, I finally just came to peace with comforting myself and knowing that I've got a tough road ahead. I've got to learn how to be kinder and more self-compassionate and loving of myself. And when I need help, I've got to learn how to ask for help instead of just thinking I can do it all on my own."

And I know a lot of people can probably relate to that, especially people that have been through a lot. You become very self-reliant and independent, and that's a beautiful thing for a lot of stuff. It's an absolutely limiting thing for many other things, and especially around loving and accepting it. It can be tough. So I wanted to clean the table. I wanted to clean the slate and say, because the one thing back to that hospital bed, I said to myself, and I would recommend anyone go through this exercise a lot if to say, if I was given two years, and I then picture yourself two years later sitting on that same bed and you're getting your final rights, shame on all of us if we don't live those two years the best of our ability, if we don't make the most of those two years.

And for some reason, it escaped me that we were all going to die at some point. Until that moment, I thought, "Well, it'll just happen at some point." And this was like, "I'm going to stamp it that I'm not going to be..." I can't change the regret I feel from the past. I can accept it as mistakes I made, but moving forward now, I got to go big. I got to live the best life I can. I got to be as joyful as I can and love the people and accept love back. And if I don't do that, then man, that's on me, that I have no one to blame.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, and Chris, I know that's something that came up on when we had our pre-show chat, is this whole concept of how really not to live a life of comfortable complacency, which is what we wanted to be the theme here today. Because I think for our listeners out here, it's like when you described being the self-reliant and being independent and "Hey, I take a lot of pride in not asking for help and being strong." I think for when we work with our clients, especially as they enter retirement is they have that shield up, they have the armor on. And "I'm strong and everything's fine, and the life I'm going to have is, it'll be okay." And which we are wanting to break and hammer and chisel through the armor a little bit. It's like, let's talk about all of the, not just what you're saying here is that almost if I had that two years to live, what would I want my life to look like?

Let's live with the intentionality and kind of break out of the comfortable complacency part of like, life is fine. We asked the happiness scale that Curtis and I had a guest on and rate your life from a zero to a hundred and hundred is the happiness, and it's this. And I think that's what we wanted to ask you, just kick off the questions of comfortable complacency and how not to live that way. Can you just define in your life, how you were finding yourself in a state of comfortable complacency, and what it means to you? And then again, I think, we know how you broke out, but I think understanding that piece of it in that cycle of being there. Could you just define that a little bit?

Chris Gathers:

Absolutely. It's a great question. Comfortable complacency to me was going hour-to-hour, day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, year-to-year, with no self-awareness of, am I actually living my life to the fullest? Am I actually making the most of my opportunity here? And this whole thought of, "I'll do it tomorrow. Or I'll make that call next week that I've been putting off. Or I'm kind of rushed right now, maybe I won't do that apology that I was supposed to do, that I've been meaning to do for somebody." Those are the things. It's this malaise that we all get because we have technology. We'll find ourselves on a whole afternoon just kicking through Facebook, Instagram, the news, whatever your thing is. And Hey, listen, I'm guilty of it. Everybody's guilty of it. But there's also this thing that we have to stop and pause and understand that rushing to the next thing and getting in rhythms of unhealthy behaviors.

Because if something was bothering me, I'd call up a friend, we'd be like, "Let's go meet for happy hour." And I still do that, but there's a different intention to it now. It's because I want to hang out and just have a good time with friends. And I think too much in the past, if I felt uncomfortable, I would make instant comfort. I'd find a way to get out of that raw emotional state. And I think our society right now, especially on places like Instagram or Facebook, everyone's best foot forward. Everyone's saying, "I've got it." Everyone's saying, "I'm the first one to get up and I'm the last one to go to bed. And it's like I'm powering through it." And you're like, "All right, that's fine. But how are your relationships? Are you fulfilled with what you're doing? Are you living your truth as far as what really brings joy to your soul?"

And it's funny, with this whole endeavor that I'm doing, and I'm sitting here on a podcast talking about this, which just shows you in action, things just start to open up. And I think people over-complicate how easy it is to live the life they want to live. And I'm not talking financially only. That's almost... I actually think the financial life is actually harder to do than just living your truth as far as how you treat people, relationships, communication. And I think we over-complicate things. And so the comfortable complacency is just kind of kicking the can down the road. And yeah, it's in the back of my mind, I should probably do something about it. I should probably take somebody up on an offer that I know would bring me a lot of joy, but I'm fearful. And to me, the biggest thing that used to hold me back is just fear.

And so courage, that old saying, there's no absence. Courage doesn't happen without fear. So stepping through that fear, all it takes is a step forward and all of a sudden you forget. It's like going to the gym. You're like, him in and hoeing, "Should I go to the gym? Oh, I'm going to go to the gym." And you forget, "Oh, I'm not going to the gym." And then you find yourself at the gym within the first set of whatever you're doing or the first 10 pedals on the bike, you've forgotten that whole thing. So my thing with comfortable complacency is just break out of it. Do the things you want to do because you'll never regret it. There's no regret with it. You're never going to look back and be like, "Man, I took that on, that huge challenge that I've always wanted to do. Maybe I failed, but I did it." That's the key. So I hope that's what you're looking for.

Austin Minor:

Chris, I had-

Chris Gathers:

Yeah.

Austin Minor:

Oh, I'm sorry. Kind of following it up on that. So you said, just breaking out of comfortable complacency is kind of what you would end as far as a simple point to change that cycle. A theme I've heard you talk a lot about kind of sprinkled around this conversation as well as the act of being present. And so I think if you ask anyone on the street, if they're present, they kind of get dismissive and just say, "Yeah, of course I am." But you talk about, before your diagnosis, you were always trying to control outcomes and experiences and you were defensive due to your past closed off. What advice would you give about how opening up will allow us to experience a new level of present?

Chris Gathers:

Yeah. I know it's not easy. I lived 47 years not present. Maybe the early years of hanging out with my friends, riding my bike and doing whatever we did when we were kids, you were present in those moments. And I think we get so trapped in what's next or what happened yesterday or what could happen tomorrow that I started to realize that the only true joy is really an inner piece is what's right in front of you. There is nothing more meditative than just walking. And so a simple way, and this sounds so trivial for people who might not practice it, but the only thing I could do when I was out of surgery was walk.

And I knew I had to stay active to be present, to be healing. And so I would go for walks, slow walks, and I would start to hear birds chirping and I would start to look at trees. I'm looking at them right now in my window, just blowing in the wind. And I realized what inner peace it gave me, and how much being present was valuable in taking my mind off of things that it wants to go. I mean, our brains kick off 6,000 thoughts a day. A lot of them are subconscious, but they are going, going, going. Do you guys want to guess what the percentage of negative thoughts that it feeds us on a daily basis?

Austin Minor:

Two-thirds, three quarters?

Ben Smith:

Yeah, I was going to say 70%, 75%?

Chris Gathers:

It's like 85% to 90% based on couple of different things over it. So that's why we love the news. Because the news, if you look at the news, it's a very similar parallel number, 85%, 90% of the news is negative. Our brain is on that wavelength. And why is it doing that? It's because it's trying to save us from ourselves, save us from our surroundings. It's trying to keep us comfortable. It's trying to keep us in the zone of safety. So if it worked yesterday and we're still here, then it's going to work today and it's going to work tomorrow. 90% of the stuff we do is habitual by nature. You look at the autonomic nervous system and all of our reactions, you're talking to me, you could probably reach me on any day and these are the exact same reactions I'd have to your questions on any given day.

So everything is pre-programmed. By being present, which is tough to do because we have all these built-in habits, built-in thoughts that are taking away from where we are right now. There is no more important part of the day than right now. And talking to you, it is, to me, the connections of being open and having dialogue with other people has never been richer. And so I ask all the listeners, to be present, we need to stop worrying about yesterday, tomorrow, when you're in the presence of someone else. I'm not perfect at it, but it's a constant reminder to sit with someone, and what ends up happening is you have dialogue that you've never had with people. You start to learn things about them that you didn't know. They start to open up themselves. You start to open up. The conversations just create deeper connections with people. And truly that is why we're here on earth.

And so if you're not feeling present, take a walk or talk to somebody that you care about or somebody you want to learn more about that you're interested in, or not. The present moment, it sounds cliche, but it really is the only moment that matters because it's the only one we have. We get very... And everybody will use the cliche, "Well, you could be in a car accident today and go..." But it's true. We could all be gone in a moment. I think cherishing the moment is key. I don't think there's an easy answer to it. It's a practice thing.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, man. I could just have a whole conversation. I think we could do a whole podcast, I think, about being present. And I know that's something I work on kind of individually as well. But I do want to keep going, Chris, and I want to talk about a recent post you had on your @culminationpoint page, and I'm going to share a couple quotes with everyone. So one is, "Our past happened to us, but it doesn't define us." You posted that. And another part of that post was, "When we allow our pain to define us, we strip away our power and end up falling into the place of looking at life through the lens of victimhood." And I think everyone here, Ben and Austin agree with me, there's a lot of truth to what you said there. And life transitions allow us to reevaluate our lives through new lenses.

And I think, a lens that we, or an example that Ben, Austin and I see a lot in the work we do is we see many people as they approach their new beginning, and in our examples, new beginning may be retirement. And they have these beginnings, but they're so hurt by how they perceive what they perceive as mistreatment by their employer, say throughout their whole career. And they don't see this freedom that's about to happen in their new life, but instead they just focus on the resentment towards the past. And they have, again, this whole new beginning of retirement in front of them. So how have you been able to reconcile pain in the past? And I know we've kind of talked about this here, but if we could just really hammer in how you're able to reconcile pain in the past? And so you're not looking at your life through this lens of victimhood?

Chris Gathers:

I love the setup of this. I love my pain that I went through. I don't know how else to say it. Why would somebody love their pain? Because I finally realized how many gifts it gave me. It gave me empathy. It gave me compassion. It gave me strength. It gave me an appreciation for relationships that work, that are good. It helped me communicate my emotions in a way that could help others. So I felt like a victim. I labeled myself a victim for many years.

I felt like, "How did that happen to me? Man, this is like, how unfair. Where's the justice in the world? I can't believe I had to do that. I can't believe I had all that pain." And then I remember walking into my neurosurgeon's office and she said, "I love how you're approaching this. You're just so positive about it and you have this strength, and that's what you need to face this. I wish we could bottle this and give it to everyone. Because anecdotally, I can't report, we don't put a check mark next to people that just demonstrates strength and their outcomes, but we just know that the people who come in here like you do better."

And so all my pain gave me that. Who knows if I would've had this with or without everything I went through? I'm assuming I would've, but I wouldn't have approached it like I did. It would've rocked my world in a way that probably I wouldn't have recovered from. And so it's a gift, all that pain. And if people look at it as, it's that cliche of how can you appreciate the sun if it never rained? And people throw shade at those things, like, "Oh, that's just like this..." But it's true. All those cliches are so popular because it's true, it's people that have lived life and examined it from that other perspective of, it doesn't need to be a hundred pound weight across your shoulders.

It can be the tools that you use in your darkest times to extract the most out of them, to make you the strongest, to, in the end, make you the most joyous you could be in your life. Because it's not possible without pain. And nobody goes through life without it. And nobody goes through life without suffering. And so if you realize that no one's alone, and it's just as difficult to look at it my way as it is to look at it the other way, what choice would everybody make? You have to understand, it's not easy to take a brain cancer diagnosis and be like, "This is great news. This is a gift." It takes time, work, effort, and pain to get there. Just like anyone who's taken something terrible that's happened to them and turned it into gold. So you have two choices, two paths.

It's that easy. You can take what's happened to you and extract the strength and move forward in a brighter, more positive way. Or you can just sit in it. And I don't look down on either side. I get both, because I've had periods of time where I've sat in it. And sometimes you have to sit in it for a while, but if it continues on too long, it becomes comfortable and it becomes a favored state that you want to live in, which when this happened to me, kicked me out of that state forever because the clock was on. That's my thought on that, on pain.

Ben Smith:

And Chris, I just want to react to that because just kind of hearing that is, again, you have to have that appreciation for all that to get to where you are, to have that outlook and have that opinion because no one's just always positive. No one's always just appreciative, and you have to have that active mindset all the time. And just to share myself is, I'm a kid from a rural town where there was not a whole lot of aspiration to college. And so I go to college and it's like, well, people said you can't achieve that. And I was using that as the anger. The anger that people would tell me I couldn't do something to then go do it.

But what I found was I was always in a state of anger to accomplish something. And by being angry all the time, and it kept going, well, it's like now I have to always be angry at something. And it's like, well, hey, on the outside I'd be friendly and happy, but in the inside, I would be angry and pissed off. I just got to show them that, Hey, I did this CFA designation and I failed the first three times and everyone told me, you better quit because Ben, you might not be smart enough to do this.

You probably can't achieve that, so maybe you should try something easier, Ben. It's like, okay, you just flooded another fire on that log. And I just would keep going. And to the point of, well, I'm going to the point of the comfortable complacency, it was like that was mine. Mine was being angry. And here I'd go with my relationship and I would be angry everywhere, and I'd find ways to get angry at my spouse. I'd get angry at lots of things. And I had to work on, I need to change. I need to be present. I need to work on being grateful and happy for... I don't need to prove everybody else wrong. I need to prove myself right.

Chris Gathers:

Yeah. I love that.

Ben Smith:

So that's where, for me, and Curtis has heard me say this about going to Disney, and I'd be angry about Disney because we'd spend a lot of money, well, this is money, money, money. And we're accumulating things and accumulating a lifestyle. And I had to get over that to say, "No, we're investing in our life and our happiness and memories together and being present together and doing the things we want to do together." So I shared that with a setup of the question here is, obviously if we're comfortably complacent, we have old habits and behaviors that need to actively move towards the life we want. And we hear, of course, to make habits, you have to do 21 days to make a new habit, and sometimes things are hardwired in. But how have you, again, pulling yourself out of, here's your lifetime of emotions and thinking through things to build this act of being present, to get through just complacency of what you were to go where you want to be today, how did you work through that?

Chris Gathers:

Yeah, that takes a huge amount of commitment. And the commitment, going back to what you just talked about, the fuel. What is the fuel? So if the fuel is acting out of anger, that is destructive, if that's your fuel. And I have that. Actually, that's how I got successful in business was if I didn't do something, I'd get angry at myself or at somebody else, something didn't go my way. And I remember yelling at myself, "You can do better than this." There was that... And I see a lot of that on social media of this anger thrusting people forward. And while that works for a while, I think, there's a much cleaner fuel to use, and that fuel is love and purpose. So if you keep everything being fueled by that purpose or that love of something or someone, you become consistent and you have an intention on a daily basis that is in-line with your purpose-filled life.

And so that's not a foolproof system, just as using anger is every day you're going to get it right. And I think what ends up happening, and I can only speak for myself and close friends, is that you get sidetracked and then it's gone. But if it's based on something that is undeniably perfect, which is treating other people with love, kindness, and providing for them, or providing good to the world, like you're all doing by doing stuff like this, you didn't dread this podcast. You weren't sitting there thinking like, "Oh man, I got to do this podcast." When I knew I had this, I wasn't thinking, "I can't believe I have to do this." So those are the things, it's like, I'm not saying everybody starts a podcast, starts an IG page, but there's something that can be your fuel, whatever it is for the things you might have to do and the things that you want to do that you start to use that to move forward step by step.

And it's that whole Kobe Bryant thing where he was talking about shooting jump shots or going to the gym an hour earlier than everybody. He'd get up at 5 in the morning. And it's like, it doesn't add up until five years later when the difference between what he was... That one hour every day made him undeniably one of the best basketball players of all time. And so it's that incremental work that needs to be fueled by something bigger than us. And that's how you break out of it. That's how you don't mind doing it. You don't mind putting in the work, you don't mind feeling the pain of the process. There are times I'd be holding my camera shooting videos where I'm like, "What am I doing?" This is the wackiest thing to be doing this. Nobody cares. Nobody wants to see this. Nobody thinks I provide value.

And I kept saying, "That gives me even more reason to post, because I know this is going to make a difference for somebody and that's why I'm doing it, even if it just reached one person today." And so that was my fuel. It was kindness of heart. And so to me, while for some listeners that might be like, "Well, I want to do a business." Or if you love what you're doing, just do it. Get going. But do it out of the right fuel. It's not to prove somebody wrong. Because I never went to college, I would be like, "I'm going to make money. I'm going to go and do a bunch of great stuff in my life." And I'm going to be like, when somebody says, "What college did you go to?" I'll be like, "It doesn't even matter."

That was my whole attitude. Look at what I'm doing right now. And after a while, you start driving nice cars and you start having nice things and then you realize it's all empty. None of it matters. Because nobody's paying attention to you because they're paying attention to themselves. And so it became very shallow and unsatisfying. But I can just speak for, I see all the nodding of the heads, what you're all doing, this is satisfying. You helping clients and seeing them reach their goals and their futures are attained that they dreamed of, that's satisfaction. That's a beautiful thing. So do more of that. Do things that bring you that.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. And Chris, I love that too because just from us with look, I think the fun of what we do is to go, Hey, when you love somebody in the act of what you do so much, it's like, hey, when they're pouring their hearts out to you and saying, "These are my problems. These are the things that I struggle with on a daily basis." We're not therapists, we're not psychologists, we're not life coaches, we're not any of these things. But we want to see them succeed. And at the end of the day, as you're saying Chris, it's like, Hey, even if it's just, it's a selfish thing where we're doing this is like, us, we're going to be better people from having these conversations with folks like yourself just in-

Chris Gathers:

Likewise.

Ben Smith:

That's the thing of, there's so many triple bottom lines that are happening here. And again, what's been pretty awesome over the 80 plus shows that we've done is you get that feedback and you hear that people go, "Hey, I went for a walk with my husband and we each shared an AirPod and we go through this and we heard that episode that you talked about this." It's like, that's exactly what we're going through right now. And it was amazing timing of I needed to hear that the right moment and it happened and you guys got me. And I'm just, I'm hooked now. That's your fuel and the kindness and the generosity you're getting back. That's worth it for us for a purpose. So I know-

Chris Gathers:

It's so awesome.

Ben Smith:

And I got to transition because I know Austin has a question and he'll ask you too.

Chris Gathers:

Sure.

Austin Minor:

No, that was great though. And you were talking about posting on social media and stuff, and so I was just thinking, we all know no one's perfect and we all know that there are those that will roll their eyes at wisdom givers or influencers on social media. Obviously, Curtis, Ben and I are not perfect, and as you've shared, neither are you. What I like about your social media page though is that you've been open about sharing where you've struggled and had trouble. So where do you feel you still need to improve so you're not settling into being comfortably complacent?

Chris Gathers:

That's a very good question. And that's my next thing is that, I don't know. It's funny, going back to plans and everything being in line, when I started this page, I had no end path in mind. There was no end goal. There was nothing that I wanted to accomplish. I didn't want to become like Tony Robbins and go... Even though I love to speak in front of groups, it wasn't like there was none of that. It was more of, "I'm just going to do this because I've always wanted to help people and see where it goes." And then I sit here and I look at my content and I'm like, "I'm being honest. I'm being vulnerable. I'm being open about my strengths and my weaknesses and my fears." And it's funny because it's been weighing on my mind. Where do I take this next?

As far as, because I am comfortable. I take my walks and I talk to my phone and it's working, but I want to have an even bigger impact. Now that I've grown my audience, it's kind of like, "Where do I take it next?" And so I don't know. I don't know that answer. I'm glad you asked. I appreciate the ask because if you have any suggestions, I'd be more than willing to listen. But it's pretty on Instagram. There's a lot of prettiness going on from a graphic design standpoint, from a content creation standpoint. There are a bunch of people like me walking and talking, holding phones and doing stuff.

I think my next goal really is to, I've kicked it around, is do a lot more live interactions with people and to do this type of stuff. I want to be part of more podcasts and I want to do... I don't think I'm organized enough to create my own podcast, so I would never fool myself into thinking that. But I do think that this is very valuable as far as this content back and forth because it does get stale. People only want to hear so many messages from people. And so I want to stay relevant, I want to stay impactful. So you've planted the seed. I don't know yet, but I got to pay more attention to it.

Curtis Worcester:

I love that. So we've seen a few posts, there's kind of a common thread we've seen in a few posts of @culminationpoint where you mentioned that we should be kind to ourselves. And I'm going to ask probably the most open-ended question of the conversation today. Why do you think we, as people, are so naturally critical of ourselves and not focused on building ourselves up? I know you mentioned earlier we had the conversation about the news and the 6,000 thoughts through our head. It just feels like everything's negative. And I guess I want to ask you why you think that's the way that we are?

Chris Gathers:

I think there's a couple of reasons that come right to my mind. One is, you were never shown the importance of... Or I was never shown, I'll say, I don't know if you are. But I'm saying as a general you, I think people struggle with it because either they didn't have good role models who loved themselves and took care of themselves and showed themselves compassion and patience, or they never instilled in someone through constant reminders that you have to be gentler with yourself, you have to be kinder and more compassionate towards yourself. That there is no such thing as perfection. And I think, as a society, comparison is one of the biggest roots of evil in our world because we could take somebody who is, I saw somebody post the other day and they were very honest. They said they had posted something that's a big influencer.

They were at a dinner and somebody took a picture of them and they were smiling. And they said it was one of the saddest dinners they were actually at. And they just threw a smile on. But the world saw this person smiling and thought, "What a life this person leads." And I think that happens just day-to-day where people are comparing themselves to an image of their perception of others. It's not what is actually going on. We've all had that situation where we're like, "Oh, they got the perfect marriage. I wish we could be like them." And then they get divorced and you're like, "Oh, I didn't realize they were cheating on each other for 10 years." Yeah.

But those are the things that, it's the marketing efforts by everybody to, you go on vacation, you have the perfect vacation, and then when you fall short of that perfect vacation, you're like, "Oh my gosh. What's wrong with me? Why can't I just have that picture perfect thing?" And so we all post on Facebook those perfect moments to make everybody think everything's perfect. And it's all glossy and it's all filtered and it's all pretty. And so I think that's where we're not kind to ourselves is that, like somebody said on here, no one's perfect. And that is awesome. If we realize it, if we take that to heart and go, "You know what? I'm going to give myself some grace and I'm going to give myself compassion." And the hardest thing that I ever had to do was tell myself that I loved myself and accepted myself.

And that only happened in the last couple of years. And I remember going through therapy, this is how bad it gets for people. And I'd ask anybody, if you've got a problem feeling lovable to do this simple exercise. My therapist, a handful of years ago, asked me to run through some people and you're like, "Does your wife love you?" And I'd be like, Yeah, of course, she loves me." And he was like, "We all know what happened in your history as a child. And can you tell me that your kids love you, that your daughters love you?" I literally could not say without crying, hysterically, that my daughters loved me. It hurt so much to accept that. And so it made me realize how unlovable and closed off I was as a person, not unlovable, but how much I felt unlovable.

And that was a huge wake-up call for me. And I think if we look through that lens of being unlovable and then we see perfection around us, it's a compounded issue for a lot of people. And so to quiet that, we go spend more money. To quiet that, we go hang out and drink some beers. To quiet that, we take huge vacations. And we buy nice cars. We do everything to put on a facade that everything's okay, when the fact of the matter is if everything's truly okay, none of that actually matters anymore. Those are nice things to have. But I don't know if that's what you wanted, but to me, that's the kindness thing for ourselves.

Curtis Worcester:

Chris, I think you absolutely nailed that question. And I'll just say, I have one final question for you, but I think this entire conversation, and I don't want to speak for Ben and Austin, but it's just been incredible to meet you and hear your story and just to allow us to pick your brain with all these things that I can't even imagine are how difficult they are to talk about and to relive. So I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you so much for the last hour and seven minutes we've had together. And I wish we had more, but I do have one final question for you, Chris. And this one, it's one of my favorites to ask. So, the name of our show is The Retirement Success in Maine Podcast, and we like to ask all of our guests, how are you going to find your personal retirement success when you get there?

Chris Gathers:

Yeah. Retirement used to be a big thought process of mine before this all happened. And so what had happened, and truly my diagnosis, my prognosis, even though it's good, well, I don't know what that's going to look like. What my ideal retirement is, is knowing the fact that my wife and I are not worried about stuff. We're living a peaceful existence where we don't have to worry about the financial stability of ourselves, and almost equally as important our children. We want our children to not have to deal with the burdens of a lot of the things that we had to deal with.

But more than anything, I just want to reach that point where in retirement I'm just who I was meant to be, from an emotional standpoint. Before all the clutter and before all that other stuff. I want to be comfortable in my own skin, 100%. And I want my wife to feel the same way, and I want us to just revel in that peace that we did it right and we lived a life of meaning. And we did more good for the world and for the people around us than anything. So I don't know what that necessarily means financially, but I know I'll be happy if those things come true.

Curtis Worcester:

That's awesome.

Ben Smith:

Chris, thank you so much for coming on our show again.

Chris Gathers:

Oh, my pleasure.

Ben Smith:

As Curtis said, sharing your story, sharing your thoughts with us, be able to kind of rat-a-tat-tat back and forth is pretty fun. And to kind of go through it together. And again, these are things that I know was just going to be in our heads for the next several months as we kind of think about our lives. So thank you again for coming on the show. I'd love to maybe... And we'll get down the road a little bit and love to check in with you because, again, I think as we all are on our own walks and trying to figure out who our kind of highest purpose is, I think that's an ever evolving thing. I'd love to check in with you another time. So if you're up for it, I'd love to have you do that.

Chris Gathers:

Oh, that would be an honor. Yeah. I thoroughly enjoy the conversation. Obviously, you're like-minded people, and I admire all that you do. In this podcast, you're planning practice, you're doing amazing work. It's what the world needs. There's a lot of trepidation and other fears in the world right now and it's good to have guiding forces like you to help out.

Ben Smith:

Likewise, Chris. Thanks.

Chris Gathers:

So thank you.

Ben Smith:

Thank you so much, Chris. Be well and we'll talk to you soon.

Chris Gathers:

Excellent. Thank you so much.

Ben Smith:

So Chris Gathers, again, from Nationwide Insurance by day and obviously kind of going through a lot of things in terms of personal health and discovery and purpose. And so again, when I saw that our friend Matt Moran interviewed him on his podcast with gratitude, Matt, I was just like, "Man, this guy. I got to check more out of..." So when we saw the Instagram post and it's like, I think there's something really aligned here. So I was really excited when Chris said that he was willing and open to do a show with us.

Curtis Worcester:

Absolutely.

Ben Smith:

So hopefully you wrote there, got as much as we did out of it today. Again, there's a lot to unpack. This may even be a multiple listen show for us here. Might go back and kind of hear a little bit more of what Chris is talking about. But again, thank you so much for checking out our show today. This is episode 62...

Curtis Worcester:

82.

Ben Smith:

82. Sorry, 82. So 82, and so you can check out more of Chris's @culminationpoint page, our show notes, more there, if you go to blog.guidancepointllc.com/82 for 82 and you can kind of check all that out there. Again, and Austin, thanks for joining us today as first time co-host.

Austin Minor:

So thanks for having me. It's been fun.

Ben Smith:

So obviously out there, we're going to put Austin's contact info on that blog as well, so you can check that out to make sure if you want to drop Austin a line, you're more than welcome to do that. But we really appreciate the listenership, tuning in, and we will catch you next time.