Transcript:

Ben Smith:

Hello, welcome everybody to The Retirement Success in Maine Podcast. My name is Ben Smith. Allow me to introduce my co-hosts, the Frosty the Snowman and Buddy the Elf, to my Clark Griswold, Austin Minor and Curtis Worcester. How are you guys doing today?

Curtis Worcester:

I love it. I love it. I need to know which one I am though, because I just ran about 3,000 Christmas lights on my house this weekend, so I'm hoping I'm Clark.

Ben Smith:

Well, I had you as Buddy the Elf since you were an ex-pitcher, so you could be throwing snowballs at high rate of speed.

Austin Minor:

Oh, there you go.

Curtis Worcester:

I like it.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, that was the thought. We're keep rolling here on our show. We're episode 94 today, and I know we've ventured into lots of topics, right? And there's topics that all of us have to deal with at one time or another, and obviously throughout our lives we spend countless hours planning for these monumental life goals, right? And as financial planners, those are the things we really get excited about is watching people get that culmination of things that they always wanted to see happen and celebrate. So whether it's graduating from college, getting married, having children, buying a house, retiring, there are certain milestones we're all going to aspire towards. We've taken that time planning and saving money to carefully map out how we want our lives to play out, but sometimes there can be some setbacks along the way, but most of us are okay making small compromises here or there, and we can justify minor concessions, right?

We know, all right, well, life happens and we mind ourselves the importance of being realistic. But there are certain things that we really look forward to certain people that keep us motivated through the day-to-day grind. So the question is, what happens when the things we strive for for years don't happen at all? How do we keep going when our best friends are no longer there? As we go through life, we're exposed to more and more situations where we have long-standing expectations of how things should play out and have to cope with disappointment or even heartache when reality falls substantially short of these expectations. So this emotional rollercoaster can be especially amplified when it comes retirement. We've spent decades planning our retirement and accumulating expectations. We call it the binge of vocation to binge on vacation.

But what happens when we say, "Hey, we're going to binge on this vacation," and then life throws a curveball and things go off the rails. Maybe we don't have the money to carry out our plans like the stock market does its thing and we're all ready to go and retire and we have 30% less than what we thought. Maybe we can't live where we want. Maybe our health or the health of our loved ones declines. How do we process these very negative changes to our carefully made plans? On today's episode, we're going to talk about what to do when things really don't go as planned.

Curtis Worcester:

That's right, Ben, and to stick with the theme of all of our shows, we like to bring on a guest who really can provide in-depth insight into the things we want to talk about. And I think we have a stellar guest today. Our guest is a self-made entrepreneur who has dedicated his life to helping others by sharing his own story of dedication, resiliency, and faithfulness. Our guest is the founder and CEO of the Adversity Academy, which is a coaching and consulting firm that helps individuals and businesses turn their challenges into opportunities. Our guest as a US Armed Forces veteran, he was a recipient of a number of awards during his career, including several Navy Achievement Medals with two bronze stars, the Combat Action Ribbon and the distinguished Purple Heart holding an MBA as well. He's also the 2022 recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from Indiana Wesleyan University.

As an entrepreneur, he has graced several magazines such as Forbes, Fox, The New York Times, and Entrepreneur Shark. He also currently hosts his own podcast, The Overcoming Adversity Podcast, and has been featured as a TEDx speaker. So I'm going to pause right there and tell everyone to pause our podcast right now and go to wherever you get your podcast and subscribe to The Overcoming Adversity Podcast and give it a listen. Despite the many challenges our guest has faced, he has successfully overcome each one and has finally been able to share his exact steps for doing so in his book, which is titled Overcoming Adversity: Getting Your Life Back on Track. So again, we're going to pause one more time and go find that book. We'll have links posted in our show notes for sure to get the podcast and the book.

Ben Smith:

Especially when it's coming to, there's a holiday season coming up, right?

Curtis Worcester:

It is holiday season. That's right.

Ben Smith:

That's a really good thing to gift, especially in Maine winters, in New England winters, when it's cold and you want to snuggle up to a fireplace and read.

Curtis Worcester:

Exactly.

Ben Smith:

Really good thing to think about.

Curtis Worcester:

We got you covered. So again, we'll have the links there in our show notes to get all of our guests resources here, but I'm going to stop talking and I'm going to take the time now to welcome our guests. So thank you so much, Michael Allison, for coming on The Retirement Success in Maine Podcast.

Michael Allison:

Gentlemen, thank you so much for having me. It's an absolute pleasure. Thank you guys.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. Well, Michael, first thing I want to say is we're recording in November and we just had Veterans Day, and I want to thank you for your service.

Michael Allison:

Absolutely.

Ben Smith:

I think that's something that I know people say it, but I don't think we say it enough and it's such a big deal and we appreciate your service to the country because it's huge.

Michael Allison:

Absolutely. Thank you, man, guys, for saying that. I appreciate it, man. Thank you.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, yeah. So Michael, obviously we're going to talk about lots of things in terms of adversity and what to do when things really don't go as planned. But we want to get into you, because I think some of this is what you're going to teach us today is a little of here's my life and things that we've gone through and what steps you've taken and how we can impart those lessons to our audience and our clients. So obviously as we heard in the intro, you help people overcome adversity. Can you help us paint the picture for our listeners and give us a brief overview of some of the adversity you have faced?

Michael Allison:

Wow, sure. It's been a lot, but my story is quite unique and pretty interesting, and it started at a young age. I was born in Jamaica and at an early age we experienced a flood and I did not know how to swim or anything like that. And when waking up in your bedroom and you've seen water next to the side of your bed and you've seen toys floating, that is a surprising eye-opening feeling, I would say, at early in the morning for a kid. With that being said, we woke up to a flood and my family had to get the ladder for us to go on top of our roof to sit on top of the roof until this water subsided. That left us temporarily homeless. Two years later, we went through Hurricane Gilbert, another category five hurricane, and this side devastated our family and we lost everything.

My family said, "We keep on rebuilding every two years and we cannot deal with this. We work so hard. We've bought all of these, I guess so to speak, things that to make our home a home and we keep losing it every single year." With that being said, I decided that it was time for a transition. Unfortunately, when we did this transition the way that I would say some immigrants when they come to America, they go by way of different routes. So for my family, it started where initially my grandparents came from England and then came from Cuba and they got to Jamaica and then my mom and dad said, "From this event, we're going to go to New York." So they went to New York and we stayed in Jamaica for a little bit, and then me and my siblings went to Miami, Florida to stay with my aunt. So for that time period while they're in New York, I'm in Florida.

The first night that I got there, I went through a traumatic experience that I experienced through a family member with being touched inappropriately. Furthermore, my family did reconnect with me, and once we got together, we started living in Overtown, Florida and we moved quite a few times because it was the projects, it was the ghetto. So you name some of the worst things a child could see at eight years old, nine years old, 10 years old. I was seeing it in those parts of towns as I got a little bit older, around 11 years old, the Boy Scouts became a thing where I was interested in joining the Boy Scouts. I asked my mom if I could join the Boy Scouts. I did join the Boy Scouts and during all of the things that Boy Scouts do, leading up to my final trip with the Boy Scouts, there was a trip to go to Washington D.C.

I asked my parents, "Could I go?" They said yes I could. So we went there, toured the monuments and thought the trip was going okay, but once we got to the last day, it was 12 boys and we split up in rooms. So some of us slept on the floors and sleeping bags, that's sort of thing as normal camping things that we did. The last night that I was there and I was getting out of the shower, I got out and there was five other boys on the wall and they were naked, and I was told to get on the wall too as well, and I experienced something that some kids should not ever experienced in their life. Once I came back home, my mom saw my body was bruised and injured, so I was removed out of the Boy Scouts and never returned after that.

Furthermore, I played high school football, I was pretty good. But my junior year, my senior year, I experienced two injuries, ACL, MCL injuries. I had the opportunity to go to quite a few different colleges. Wisconsin was the main one that was on the list for me. But through those injuries, those were taken away. And I think growing up in our environment or in our community, my family really spoke a lot about education or just making sure that you could find a job or find a way to make money or something like that. My parents worked two jobs as I was growing up, always working two jobs. So in regards to seeing a mom and dad every single day for a living and things like that, I did not get that experience. So when it came to understanding all of the dynamics of what it takes to actually go to college, I don't think I was equipped with that because of some of those things, because of understanding what they were trying to do for us.

So not to give my family that financial burden of paying for me to go to college or something like that. I looked around at some other opportunities. At that particular time, I was working at Papa John's Pizza when Papa John's just came out. I was offered opportunity to be a store manager, but that's not something I was really interested in doing at 17 years old. So I chose to join the United States Marine Corps. I looked at all the other branches. They just did not align with my personality and things I wanted to do in life. And the Marine Corps was the option that I chose. Went through boot camp, one of the toughest, hardest thing that I've ever done in my life. But I did graduate boot camp and actually to this day, I graduated the day before Thanksgiving, which will be next week. So it was kind of-

Curtis Worcester:

That's awesome.

Michael Allison:

I think about that now. So graduated boot camp, went to Marine Combat Training. The training was delayed because we was coming up on, I guess back then it was 1999, so the thing was Y2K, so everybody thought the world was going to end or something like that. But anyhow, it was delayed. But what happened was I had the opportunity to be a part of funeral detail and I had the opportunity to help learn how to do the 21-gun salute and how to bury our veterans and things like that, which was a pretty cool learning opportunity for me. Once Marine Combat Training started, I was going through it, and you guys probably know this, but it was January 2000 and it was cold, it was raining and it was freezing, and we had to do training for 10 days and it was horrible. I don't know any other way to put it.

And I froze to death and I went through a hyperthermia and I found myself in emergency room in a hospital because this was something that this kid from Miami, from Jamaica has never seen in his life, couldn't deal with, and it was horrible. Fast-forward, man, I seen what happened with 9/11 and seeing that and hearing about it with my eyes, I knew that there was always a possibility when you sign up to serve that you could go to war. But after seeing 9/11 and President Bush declaring war, I knew that it was inevitable that I was going to go to war. So 2004, my captain at the time, he's now a colonel in the Pentagon, but he says, "Boys, it's our turn to go." And 2004, I found myself in Iraq. We left from California to Seattle, from Seattle to Canada to Germany, from Germany to Kuwait, and from Kuwait, we took a convoy into Fallujah.

The first day we got there, we got mortared, and this is when I knew that this stuff is real and there's an absolute possibility that I might lose my life. The first sign that I see when I come into the camp or the FOB, the forward operating base is what we call it that particular time, was complacency kills, and that clearly rung in my head. If you get complacent here, you might not make it back home. The first mission that we went on, we got shot at mortars or RPGs are flying over my head and I'm literally seeing bullets and ricochets and stuff just flying behind me as I've seen them land behind me as we're covered up inside of our tank. We had to fire back. So we shot up the whole place and leveled the building that was in front of us. Periodically throughout that, we've had many scares.

So we did many convoys. We've been in many supports, we've gotten to different skirmishes with different peoples and things like that. I was there for nine months. The last month that we were there was the worst part of the entire time while I was there touring Iraq. And we was on a mission and supporting another unit. And that night we got into a firefight with the Iraqis. We spoke to the eye in the sky, which is through drones back then, and we captured the guys that were shooting at us. We turned them in. The next day we come back out to support our unit that we were with and while delivering the supplies, water, ammo and food to our unit, I spoke to my gunny, I spoke to the doctor, I spoke to my best friend, Salto, and I spoke to the gunner and gave them everything they were supposed to be getting and immediately pulling off 10 seconds from there.

I heard a lot of explosions that I could ever hear in my life, and this explosion rocked us, man. It hit my tank, tilted it, knocked me down, shrapnel hit me above the eye, injured my shoulder, injured my back, and knocked me out. My assistant, Lance Corporal Cassinelli, came and grabbed me, pulled me down from inside of the turret of the AV, checked on me, make sure I was okay, woke me back up. And once I came to and we came out, the same people that I was just talking to 10 seconds ago is covered in smoke, fire, a big gaping hole. And the same Humvee that I was just seeing that I was running is completely gone. My gun is covered in smoke, the doctor lost his leg, the gunner lost half of his face, and my best friend, Salto, is now dead. We quickly had to compartmentalize and put them in body bags, take care of them, apply medical aid, first aid, and get ready to prepare for the fight of our lives to get out of this situation.

And that's what we did. Fast-forward, man, I got out of the service after serving. This was probably one of the hardest things I could ever think that I could see, do, or deal with. And I got out. My transition was not the easiest. I worked on a railroad for a couple of years, but I suppressed mental health, PTSD, and all of these different things. So I never got help or anything for close to like 10 years. It was towards the last year while I was working on the railroad, I got called to two suicides of people jumping in front of trains, and that brought back all of those memories that I suppressed for 10 years. I started getting help, but that did not really help because for me, I needed... At that particular time, PTSD and mental health was a stigma that you don't talk about.

So I bottled those things in and it was a tough transition. So I had issues with learning how to deal with those things. So I had run-ins with the law, I lost my job and I had to go back and regroup. I had troubles with relationships, so I got married twice and divorced twice, and that brought me on to the brinks of almost committing suicide and trying to take my life. And it was at that particular moment when I decided to change my life because I was going down a road where I knew that things that I was doing was going to be the demise of me. So when you talk about either drinking, I was on 13 different medications and just thinking the lowest of myself and that I did not matter. So I lost my sense of identity and I lost my purpose and I lost my mission in regards to some of the things that I value so much when I served.

Austin Minor:

Wow. I mean, thank you first for sharing all that, Michael, that is heavy stuff, and I think it's so amazing that you've been able to take those experiences and not just deal with them or overcome them, but then translate it into helping other people. And I think it shows how truly qualified you are to do that. So obviously you have several different outlets to help people. You have the Adversity Academy, you have your podcast and then your book. But just so hitting on the book specifically, the Overcoming Adversity: Getting Your Life Back on Track, what made you specifically want to write a book and what can our listeners expect when they read it?

Michael Allison:

The reason why I chose to write the book, it's actually funny you asked me that because I have a friend, Steve Belber, you guys may know him. He helped write Goodfellas or he helped write some Netflix shows and he helped write for Law and Order. We met six years ago in San Antonio, Texas, and I was a part of a group called the Writers Guild, and he was one of my coaches that was helping me write my story. And I started it and he heard the first half of my story that I just shared with you guys, and he heard the last or the middle part of my story in Iraq. And he said, "Man, you got a great story here. What are you going to do with it? What else are you going to do with it?" And I kept telling him, whenever I start writing this book or whenever I start writing, I can't get past certain things in my life or I can't get past certain things within this book.

And I sat on this book for six years because I was not ready to be vulnerable or transparent or share some of the things that I just shared with you guys on this podcast. And it was not until I started getting the help that I needed to get past some of the hurt, some of the trauma, because there was lots of survivor's guilt, there was lots of unforgiveness, there was lots of self-doubt, a lot of things that was troubling me mentally. I couldn't get past that hurdle. It was not until I started seeking all of the self-help, self-improvement things in my life to get past that hurdle. And I was able to put pen to paper and actually tell my story and share it. And once I did that, I found that there were so many people, especially men that were going through so many things that they felt that they didn't have a voice.

And this book was an opportunity to do that with sharing my story. And it was so profound to find that so many people identify with some of the things that I spoke about, even not to the same magnitude, but some of the same experiences either for themselves or for family members that they do know about. So that's why I chose to start writing this book. And from there, it took me about 90 days to write the book and put it out. And inside of the book, every single chapter, there are at least five lessons that you could apply to your life now, or you could look back and reflect on some of the things that took place in your life and see how you could have done or handled situations in your life better.

So that's what the book ultimately talks about. So it goes through pretty much my entire life, but now based off some of the stories that I just shared with you, some key lessons that I talk about that's supposed to help you when it comes to personal growth, professional growth, and some of the things I told about some business things too towards the end of the book as well too, that helps for business owners as well too.

Curtis Worcester:

That's fantastic. And again, I'm going to plug your book for you here and tell everyone that if you didn't pause it the first time, I want you to pause us now and go check out the book. Again, we'll have links in our show notes to go find that. Michael, I think speaking for everyone who's read the book, I think a lot of people are happy you chose to write that book and share your story, and I can only imagine how difficult it was for you. But I do want to keep going here. And obviously your book and your podcast are both focused on the idea of helping others, right?

Michael Allison:

Yes.

Curtis Worcester:

Helping others overcome adversity. So I want to take what you're teaching and what you went through and discuss what the process that you used personally to overcome the adversity that you faced.

Michael Allison:

So the process that I used, I break it down to three things. I realized that once I got out of the service, as a kid, if you think about some of the things that occurred for me as a kid, I was always directed either or around my parents or an adult or someone of that magnitude throughout my life. I immediately joined the military. So I never actually really worked for anybody or anything. I never really had to pay bills, pay mortgage, any of those things you'd think that normal people do. So I jumped straight into the military. So my medical was always taken care of, my housing was always taken care of, my finances was always taken care of. So for eight years, I got up and I knew what my mission was, I knew what my identity was, I knew what my purpose was for eight years.

When I got out of the service, all of that got stripped from me and I was on my own and I was trying to go through that transition and trying to figure that out. And through that, there was nothing there. There was no mentors for me, there was no coaches, there was no accountability partners, there was no leadership or anything of that I would say to help me. So I had to figure out some of those things on my own. And quite honestly, I didn't do too well at that. And so losing those things that I identified with, I needed to figure that out and get realigned, get focused on what I needed to do to get myself to the best version of myself. For myself, this is what I did. I identify three key things. What are the decisions that I'm making?

I call it three Ds, what is the destination of where I'm trying to be and what's the direction I need to go in my life? And I look at it, even when I work with people now, what are those things that you're doing in the past and how we could change those to the future. Decision, direction, and destination. And I say that when I looked at some of the things I was making bad decisions, my direction of my life was going in the wrong place and the destination of my life was going in the wrong place. But once I changed those things and look at it from a different aspect, from a different viewpoint, then they all started aligning. And then the sub layers to the decisions for me was identifying some things that I needed to fix, clarify some things that I need to get aligned to and then verify some truth about myself, to speak life into myself.

When it comes to the direction of my life, I had to start building where I wanted to go, some of the things that I needed to put into my life, start creating some things in my life. Then truly, truly establishing that. Then lastly, when it comes to the destination is ultimately making sure everything aligns. And if they're not in alignment, then it's a no-go for me. Quite often I found when I used to think about, as I say, when I look at some of the things that I did, they did not align with who I wanted to be, the father I wanted to be, the husband I wanted to be, the business owner that I wanted to be, and I had to start changing some of those things and those viewpoints about myself. Then I had to start surrounding myself and get into the right proximity. And the proximity was who are there people that's going to keep me accountable?

Who are the people that's going to start coaching me? Who are the people that's going to start mentoring me and pouring into me? Prior to that, it was nothing but negative influence. It was nothing but negative things that I was feeding my brain, feeding my mind that was giving me all of that substance and it was not good for my health. And lastly, it was how to sustain that whenever I get to my destination. So progressively, is it personal growth, professional development, is it going to different conferences? Is it going to different seminars? Is it listening to your podcast? What are the things that I need to start doing to change my life? So ultimately, just to summarize that for you is decision, direction, and destination. I call it three Ds. Throughout that I did quite a few different things just to give you some more context.

So I started going to counseling. I started going to mentorships, I started getting accountability partners, I started attending different conferences. I joined a men's group at my church. I started doing all of these different things that I was going to change my life. And through some of those things, I was able to change my circle. I was able to remarry my wife that I got divorced with, just putting in all the work and start taking the actions and start developing all of these positive habits.

And once those things started happening, it was just amazing to see how many different doors in my life started to open up for me. And I created that resilient mindset in regards to I can do all of these things if I do participate in my rescue. And then the other part of thing was changing my cognitive thinking. I used to think so much about all of the limiting beliefs that was holding me back in life. And once I changed that, it was so amazing to see how I could start aligning these things where it started working for myself. And that's some of the things that I do work with people on. But that's the same thing that I did for myself. And it's been amazing just to see the transformation.

Austin Minor:

Absolutely.

Ben Smith:

Michael, I'm just listening to you and it's just I'm smiling because I hear the Marine come out, I hear the tenacity, and then I'm not going to quit and I'm going to keep going. And then I hear the MBA of, all right, I'm going to get a strategic plan and I'm going to get a sense for direction. And then I hear the coaching come through of, hey, finding internal motivation and strength and purpose and identity. And boy, I get the mixing pot right here. I'm just watching this come out of you. It's really cool. I'm smiling because that's a lot of our show in the evolution of what we've done for 93 episodes prior to you was all these elements that you're talking about, you're going through the things that we've been talking about. And eliminating beliefs is something we've talked about with multiple coaches that we all have.

And I just look at this of your personal, you say, loss of identity and loss of purpose. And you go, "Hey, I'm a boy scout," and that gets taken from you. And I go, "I'm going to be a football player," and then you have to change. Now I'm going to be a Marine and then I change. It's like, I get where, "Hey, I'm trying to find stability and structure and who I am and I'm going to insert myself into position that's going to give me this back." And you got to find resiliency all the way through it. So I love this. I think this is to now, it's not about what they are, it's about what you are. And I see that coming through and I think that's really cool. And I know our show here, what we want to talk about today is when things really don't go as planned, especially for our audiences where you talked a little bit about how you start getting this proximity and this negative influence around you, and there's a sense of autopilot that sometimes happens as we're just drifting through it.

And I think that happens with a lot of our clients and our listeners is like, "Hey, I'm approaching retirement. I've been doing this job for forever. I show up, I do my thing and I'm good at it and I'm making good money and that's who I am. That's my life purpose. And then all of a sudden I'm reaching the end and everybody tells me I have to retire and I got to get done, but I have all this time and all these things I can do in my life, and I don't know who I am, I don't know what I am in retirement, I know what I am in career."

So obviously there's a lot of those positives, but then that X, that the aging process, and there's adversity to aging and dealing with challenges as we grow older. So I know I'm giving a big background here and a build, but I promise there's a question here. So you outlined that process to overcome your own adversity. So I want now to ask you this question, how does that process translate to helping others, especially with the different type of issues and maybe specifically our audience when the retirement and aging conversation?

Michael Allison:

One of the things that I do when I work with people is I give people the harsh truth of a reality check. And a friend of mine, he challenged me and he said, "I'm 68 years old, and I was in the hospital at age 48 almost from a heart attack." And I was like, "Tell me more." And what he said was, "I was living a very stagnant, complacent life and I was waking up and I got used to doing what I do," and he didn't get his wake-up call when at that particular age at 48, he was close to 300 pounds and his brother was about the same, and his brother was 51 years old and his brother was in hospice. And he told me that once he went to the hospital and he had this heart attack, he immediately changed his life and he dropped the weight and got down to 200 pounds.

The reality check is when I speak with people and I work with people, we could pull up a measuring tape and let's say we look at the measuring tape and we put on there your age. Let's say for example, my age is 42, so we rip it, and if you look towards the end, the average person passes away somewhere in their seventies, maybe early eighties. So what are you going to do with the rest of the time that you have here on this earth? Are you going to wait till retirement or are you going to start doing something now?

Are you going to wait till you're 65 until someone says it's time to start collecting a check or are you going to start doing something now? And that's the biggest reality check that I give to people before. And then I start working with people and giving them practical steps, real tools, that's going to get to some of the goal settings, some of the mindset, some of the relationships, some of the things when it comes to your well-being some of the things that's tied to your purpose, that's tied around all the things that I coach and I talk about.

So we could start creating healthy habits, so we could start creating actionable steps, create action plans and things like that. So for me, man, just to summarize that, man, it's really coming down to the habits, some of the practical things that we could start doing right now that's going to be tied to our purpose, that's going to be tied to our mission, that's going to be tied to making an impact, that's going to be tied to giving back and helping people as well too.

Ben Smith:

Awesome.

Austin Minor:

Yeah, that's great. So one of the reasons that we wanted to have you on here and we thought you'd be such a great guest is that with our podcast and then as financial advisors, we're constantly talking with clients who are going through different levels of adversity, different events that are tough. And so I thought it would be helpful to bring up more of a real life situation that we've heard about recently. So Ben and I were meeting with some clients a couple of weeks ago, and it was a husband and wife in their late seventies, and they mentioned that earlier in that year, the husband had become very, very ill and actually had been in the hospital for, I think it was two or three months.

And the doctors thought he was going to die for weeks, and the wife had shared that she just sat at his bedside very helpless, just thinking, what am I going to do when my husband of 40 plus years, who's my best friend, who I spend every day with, what am I going to do if he passes away right now? What is the rest of my life going to look like? And she had shared that obviously it worked out out very positively and he's now back in good health. So it was a happy outcome to that moment. But what would you say in that situation? She's at the bedside really trying to grasp the situation. What would you say to the wife in this situation to help her cope with the situation?

Michael Allison:

Man, as you're saying that to me, I thought about my wife and I am in that bed and it connects with me deeply because me and my wife actually had this conversation a while back, and sometimes people actually joke around when they say, "You're going to miss me when I'm gone or I'm not going to be here." Those types of things. And when me and her spoke about that, we said that we need to enjoy every single moment, enjoy every single minute that we have with each other. A lot of times in the past, couples spend their times bickering, complaining, worrying about things that are not important opposed to the person that you chose to live with, the person you chose to be with, the person you chose to love. So what I would say is time that you do have with someone, enjoy it, embrace it, tell them that you love them.

Tell them that you care about them because what you have left when either one of you go away, and I say that because the topic when I spoke about with my wife is, "I don't know what I'm going to do when you're not here with me because you make me laugh, you make me cry as in good, happy thoughts. You're here cooking dinner with me, you're here spending time with the family, you're making the phone calls. I see the person that you are now. I've seen the change, man, that you are, and I love this version of you." And when I think about that for this woman, she has to start enjoying the moment with her spouse, whether it's the walks and it's the little things, it's the talks, whether it's the little note cards, whether it's the date nights, those are the key important things that you're going to remember because when your loved one is no longer here, you don't really think about all of the material things.

You think about those conversations, you think about those hugs, you think about those kisses, those are the key important things that you think about. You asked me that now, the memories and the moments that stick with me about my mom and dad, I know they won't be here whenever, but it's when my mom told me she loved me, it was when my mom told me that I'm so proud of you graduating boot camp and you got through it and surviving through boot camp. It's when my wife's family embraced me coming back into their family after we reconnected, remarried and embracing me. So what I would say to her is enjoy the moments that will give you so much peace of mind whenever or if and ever you guys separate.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, no, I love that answer, Michael, and I think you did a really good job answering that question and honestly making all three of us think, I think, a little bit, and hopefully our listeners as well. I want to zoom out a little or look at this achievement of dealing with adversity, conquering adversity. I want to look at it as a whole, and my question for you is if you zoom out and look at individual, you experience adversity, you overcome adversity, do you ever get back feeling the same as you did before or is this a new normal post adversity? I guess the question I'm trying to ask is what is the end goal that you're striving for when trying to overcome a difficult life event?

Michael Allison:

I think the end goal is creating a new norm for myself and creating a new norm for anyone that I work with. Because as I mentioned earlier, these limiting beliefs, we tie ourselves to it and it anchors us down and we have to get past that disbelief. We have to get past that change. So doing those, it helps create that cognitive thinking as I mentioned. So I talk a good bit in the programs that I talk about, the people that I work with, the linguistic programming of things that's attributed to why do we think this way? Why are we acting this way?

And then from there we go through breaking down and removing some of these thoughts and these beliefs and really clarifying how true some of these things are, and then trying to get past those things. Once we gain that clarity and clarify that and start verifying some things, then we could really get past some of the trauma, then we could get past some of the hurt because we have to create that new identity for ourselves in regards to what are we aiming for? What's the next level in life that we're trying to get to? And if we never shed that, we'll always constantly be in a place that we don't want to be in.

Ben Smith:

So Michael, obviously we've been talking about, as Austin said, a little bit of adversity in terms of health, but in a situation we had with somebody we know, they'd saved up, he and his wife had saved up their whole lives, their whole career, all their savings that I dream of. Again, we're in Maine, right? You got to give us a break. So we dream of the weather you're experiencing now, 80 degrees. I want that. I've been thinking about this for 40 years. I'm going through snow and blizzards and freezing rain, and I just got to get out of here. So I save for all this.

I move to that climate, it's going great the first month and hurricane hits, comes through, destroys the neighborhood. His house is very damaged and it's like, "I've worked my purpose and I'm envisioning my life in a climate that I just cannot believe I get to do this." He arrives there, gets to it, and poof, all that just gets off the rails. So my question to you is, so overcoming adversity and that level of moment, you've done it, you talked about the flood and growing up and you've gone through that. So love to hear your perspective of building to it and then having a restart.

Michael Allison:

It's never easy to restart, regroup, and rebuild. The thing that comes with that is where's your mindset at in regards to getting over this or getting past this? That's first and foremost because you can either sit and sob or deal with it, even if you do, you quickly have to recalibrate, regroup, and learn how to figure out how to get past this. And I applaud my parents as that's what they did when they said, "All right, this is not going to work out here. We've been through this twice. It's time for a change," and they did what they had to do for that change. When it comes to handling tough situations and dealing with adversity, the number one thing is self-awareness and developing and understanding self-awareness of where you're at and what is actually going on and then becoming resourceful. If you are in that particular situation that you just mentioned and you just saved up, you've done all of these things, you build up and you relocated and something bad happened, now it's the mindset.

Now it's time to become resourceful, and now this is the point where either you have to start taking some actions, you have to start either working with people that's within your community, within your circle. Oftentimes I've found that there is so much strength within our own network, but we are so timid to even ask for help, and that's one of the biggest thing that I see with some people, and you'd be surprised how many people are willing to help you, willing to work with you. People are so compassionate. If you think about it, whenever this world is facing with so many things, do you see how much donation that this world gives to so many things? And we'll be so surprised and so reluctant to actually ask for help. And that's what some of the things that I had to do. I had to let down barriers. I had to let down guards and let people in to help me if I'm not in a situation to regroup, fix certain things that's going on within my life.

Austin Minor:

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. My next question here is about perspective. So with what Ben just said, maybe it's someone that is losing a dream home that they've been saving for years and that seems terrible in the moment, but then someone could arguably say, "Well, what if your spouse was dying? Or what if something happened to you health-wise?" And you can kind of say that phrase of, "It could always get worse." But it seems like our own issues always seem to take the center stage in our minds regardless of their severity. Do you think that it's important to take a step back and compare the adversity that we're going through to what others are going through? Or do you think it's more important to sort of follow the same process to overcome these obstacles regardless of how they might compare to others?

Michael Allison:

I think it's important to not compare to other people's situation because they're not the same in all aspects of things. I think it's important for you to understanding your situation and how can you resolve your situation, how can you fix it? If you wanted to compare, I would say assess it and then see what are some things that you could probably take from certain people's situations and if you could apply to your situation to make your situation better. But I don't ever think that you should be in a position to start comparing when I don't think that's a fair thought or fair thing that you're doing to yourself. I think you're doing the disservice to yourself when you get into the lane of the comparison game. Whenever I face situations, I first and foremost look at it and I do do what you just said when it's like put things in perspective.

Yes, it could be worse, but I'm always super thankful for what's going on. I'm super appreciative of where I'm at in life because based off the things that I've seen in my life and things that I've done in my life, it could be a lot worse. I know that there's people that are in worse situations than I am, and I do know that for most situations that I've been in my life, I figured out a way how to get through it. I've gotten past it. I faced every single thing that I was dealing with. I did not sit back. I did not cower. I did not become a victim or I did not start playing the blame game. And that's where the resilient mindset kicks in regards to facing things that we're facing, facing things that we're dealing, having that mental fortitude to push through, having that mental fortitude to be resilient, having that mental fortitude to break down barriers and just shatter whatever limits and beliefs, if it's imposter syndrome, any of these things, just breaking those types of barriers.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, no, I think that's really important. And I know that's something that personally that I struggle with sometimes and I understand maybe adversity that I'm facing. I completely understand it's nowhere near adversity that others are facing, but it's not fair to myself either to say, "Oh, you're fine. Get over it. There's someone who has it worse." So I really appreciate that answer. Michael, I want to talk about you again here, and obviously you're doing some really great things right now in your life and obviously you're doing well right now. And I just want to ask for everyone listening is how do you stay so positive and what do you try to focus on while things are going so well, so that when adversity does strike or if it strikes again, you're best equipped to deal with it?

Michael Allison:

Wow, man, I love that question. I would say it ties to what I just said, and I maintain a positive mindset knowing that there's other people out here that is in worse situations than me. In addition to that, and I've been through hell, I've been through a good bit of things of my life, man, to be in a space where I could wake up every single morning and smile, I could wake up every morning and tell my wife that I love her. I could wake up every single day now and I have my two boys where I could call them, I could text them, I could take them to school, I could pick them up. And so now it's from operating from a space of being very, very intentional, being very, very in the moment. So I make sure every single day I'm telling my wife that I love her, I'm giving her a kiss.

I make sure every single day that I'm telling my kids, good night, we're praying together. Those are things that are important to me. I make sure that when I wake up in the morning that for me, I read the Bible, then I listen to some meditation, some of those things to get my day going. I go to the gym in the morning, then I'm in the sauna getting a quick workout in. Then I make sure that I'm actually giving back. So now whether it's me working with somebody or whether me helping somebody, whether it's me telling my story, and you'll be surprised when that energy that you're pushing off or somebody's pouring into you, how it just builds up your endorphins, where now you're on a different level operating. So I make sure that every single day that I'm pouring into somebody, and it's crazy how they just start pouring back into me and that fills me up and that fills up my mindset.

So it's some of those simple things that I'm doing. It's some of those simple things that people are doing for me. Like I said, one of the biggest things, one of my coaches and mentor share with me was the power of saying no. And he was always telling me of guarding my time, your time is one of the most valuable thing that you could ever have. So you have to learn how to say no to some things if it does not benefit you. And it has to when it comes to alignment, learning how to say no, things do not align to what you're trying to do, where you're trying to be, and that will guard your peace of mind, that will guard your time piece, that will guard your freedom in regards to some of the things that you're dealing with, some of the things that you're facing.

So if you want to guard your happiness, if you want to guard your peace, you could learn how to start saying no to things, and you'll realize that you got to start pouring into yourself, pouring into your cup, pouring into your happiness, and you'll find out when you fill up your cup with all of these things, that there's not too many things that could take it up to down because you're pouring so much into yourself. And that's how I'm able to help other people and pour into other people too as well.

Curtis Worcester:

That's great.

Ben Smith:

Michael, that's awesome. You've shared a lot with us and just thinking about a few things that you've said today is just even going back to your first day in Fallujah where you saw that sign and complacency kills, and obviously that meant one very specific physical danger in that moment to you. A couple of our guests talked about that in a different way as you've just experienced in your life. So Chris Gathers and Matt Moran where Chris had been diagnosed with brain cancer and Matt had been diagnosed with stage four kidney cancer, and all of a sudden you then go, "Hey, to being intentional is being intentional with the time," and they realize they may or may not have much time. So they had to be very, very intentional to it. And Chris talked about how the realization that he was a living a life of comfortable complacency, that he was asleep, he was letting things happening to him, and what you just said was his values.

He knew what his values were. He hadn't purposely aligned his time to his values. Just what you said is that work was the thing and he's going to dominate and he's going to be career-driven. But if you asked him, God, himself, and family and friends, and you'd go through the list and then work, but how did he align his time? Work would take over family and friends and personal and how do we get to 300, 400 pounds and how do we do things? We are are misaligning values to time a lot. So I think the secret of what you just said was it's easy to say no when your values command it and you structure your time to the values. And that's the awakening I've had just from our show and our conversations with folks like yourself. I get my son on the bus every morning and I try to get him off the bus every day, every afternoon.

My workday doesn't start until he's on his day and we spend 15 minutes sitting in that car together. It's cold out, right? It's cold, but we're talking, just me and him. It's he and I time talking about our day, getting what's going to happen, tell some jokes. That is our time. Then when he gets off the bus, "How did your day go?" I get him settled, get him, "Hey, where are you?" And then it's not he got to seven o'clock before I talked to him and he is like, "Well, that was four hours ago, dad. That was five hours ago. I don't even know. I don't remember that. I've been playing Roblox."

So I can just say, and that's a little thing, but I wasn't doing that. I wasn't. I was career-minded, got to build this thing, hammer through it, not taking care of myself, not investing in enough people until I got that coaching and that thing. So my build up here is obviously there's people that help you overcome adversity just like Chris, just like Matt, just even things that I've redone in my life, but I didn't have to have a cancer diagnosis. I didn't have to wait until I got a heart attack at 48 to then restructure things because it got so out of alignment. So with you, in terms of diversity, how has your network, you just talked about pouring in, how has your network helped you? Because it's not a single person that can do all this. How have they built you to be able to handle that adversity that you've overcome?

Michael Allison:

And I love that question. I'll just piggyback off what you just said too, man. Before I was so career-driven, I would probably say that led to my first divorce. I'll also say that I was so career-driven that when I was going through the struggles in my life and things like that, I found that I was getting energy and I guess a buildup just like making money. So I was always focusing on those things and realized I was missing out on some of the intangible things like with my wife, with my son. And once I changed that and changed the perspective of things and having that little conversation with my son in the morning when I take him to the bus stop now, and we're in the car and one of the biggest things that I make sure that I do every single day is I compliment him every single day.

So I tell him that, "Man, you're looking sharp this morning." And those are some things that spark some of the conversations that we do have. And just to be another transparent as well. So obviously I went through a divorce and we had an older son. He's now in college and now the conversations that we do have as he's now back in my life is totally, totally awesome, as in now we're communicating on a different level and the love and the appreciation amongst each other because I'm intentional with that relationship that I do have with my stepson now, and it's 10 times better when that bond and that relationship and that buildup that we have is so, so amazing, man. So I agree with what you just said too, is what I'm saying. It's so much of a difference with the people that we connect with that we're most important to in our lives. Now, the people that are most influential in my life.

So I have a bucket of people that's influential in my life. Number one is my faith. Every single morning I'm praying, that's my foundation. So I put God first in my life. So in my scriptures, I'm praying. I listen to some gospel music just to get my day going. I listen to KB. That's one of my favorite songs, just to get my morning going. The next thing is my wife. It's amazing now the relationship that we do have now knowing we were divorced 10 years ago and we're back together now. And it's amazing how almost every single morning she says, "I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of the man that you've become." So she's pouring into me even before I could even pour into her, like, "Have a blessed day," all of these different things that we do.

The next thing is I meet weekly. So I have an accountability partner and someone is keeping me accountable on all of the things that I said I was going to do. And if I don't do it, there's consequences to that. So that's one thing that I do have. The next person I have is a counselor. So I have a relationship counselor that speaks to me and my wife monthly. The next thing I have is a mental health counselor. So I meet with a mental health counselor every single week. The next thing that I have is a mentor, and I have a mentor for my personal growth, and I have a mentor for my business growth. So there's someone helping me in business and there's someone helping me with my personal growth as well too. The next thing I do is I read books every single day.

So this is the book that I'm reading now, but I read books, you guys can see here. So I'm a complete book junkie, book nerd. So I'm reading, and what I love to read is books of real stories, real things that's going to help me. And so that's the next thing that I do. And lastly, the thing that I'm doing is, so I was one of those people that put business first. I was one of those people that put other things first. So I got someone to help me with my physical health. So now I'm working on me getting in shape, me personally, doing all of these things that's going to contribute to my health.

So now me and my wife, so she's a part of it too, so she had to be a part of that. So we cook together, she's making all of the meals, we're actually putting out whatever is a part of the diet, of the nutrition, and then actually working out together. So every single morning we're in the gym together, working out because she's pushing me as much as I'm pushing her to as well. So I would say that covers most of my life and all of the things.

All of the things. So that's what helps, keeps me leveled and that keeps me going. And then the last thing I would say is the people that I choose to be my friends, the people that I choose to be within my circle is all people that are for me and people that are supporting me and wants to see me do well in life. And for the most part, man, those things have changed my life. Last thing I would say is, so I'm a part of these men's group from my church, and it's a group of 12 guys. We all have our text messages that we pour into each other every single day, but we meet from these men's group. So I help lead the men's freedom group and it's a 12-week program. But from there, we've built up a bond. We've built up a relationship for the past three years now. So man, it is just been amazing just to be a part of that and just having these type of people in my life has been tremendous with my transformation, man.

Curtis Worcester:

That's incredible, Michael. And it's clear just hearing you talk about every single one of those people and how important they are to you and the impact they're having on your life, it's amazing to hear. So we've reached the end of our conversation today. I do have one final question for you. So obviously the name of our show is The Retirement Success in Maine. I know you're not in Maine right now, and as you've reminded us, it's 80 degrees where you're sitting right now. So I won't hold that against you, I promise. So the question I want to ask you, Michael, is how are you going to find your own personal retirement success? What does a successful retirement mean to you?

Michael Allison:

I actually have been to Maine twice.

Curtis Worcester:

All right. Perfect.

Michael Allison:

So I've been to Maine twice and I've been skiing up there, and I had quite a few friends that actually still lives there in Maine.

Curtis Worcester:

Awesome. Awesome.

Michael Allison:

Yeah, man. But how do I find my own personal retirement success? And it really comes down to what me and my wife had put in place together. We said to ourselves that we're not going to wait till 65 to retire. This is what we said between us. We're going to enjoy every single moment of this life together, doing all of the things that we wanted to do. It's amazing where all of the things that we said that we've wanted to do since being back together somehow some way it has happened.

Curtis Worcester:

That's awesome.

Michael Allison:

One of the biggest things for us is we always want to travel. And we have a son in college and we have a son in high school, and we've said that we wanted to travel every single month. We've traveled every single month in 2023. We've been to Paris, we've been to Italy, we've been to Chicago, you name it.

Curtis Worcester:

That's awesome. That's great.

Michael Allison:

We were supposed to go to Egypt in December. Obviously we have a war going on, so that's the only reason why it did not happen. But every single trip that we've put on our board, every financial goals that we said we was going to make and hit, we've done that. Just working together as a team, working together and preparing for our future. So we've done our investing in our stocks or all of these different types of things that for retirement as they come. So that's there. But what we did say is we're not going to wait until 65. We're going to enjoy this and live in the moment. That's what we said. We're going to be intentional. And for us doing so, we've stuck to that and it's been working out really, really good for us.

Curtis Worcester:

That's incredible.

Ben Smith:

Michael, you are an inspiration man. This was a lot of fun. Thank you for your time today and just sharing your story, sharing a lot of your life lens and your life view. I've taken a lot out of it. I know Curtis and Austin, I'm sure you have as well. But I know from our listeners they're going to love this one and we can't wait to put it out. So thank you for coming on our show.

Michael Allison:

Man, it's been an absolute pleasure. I truly, truly enjoyed this conversation with you guys. Thank you, man.

Ben Smith:

All right, be well. Take care.

Michael Allison:

You too. Thank you.

Ben Smith:

So I think there's somebody that knows adversity is, I guess, what I would say out of that is Michael has seen probably at all, and to be able to go through that with him, and again, I think you really do have to go through the level of the bio that he shared with us today to really get a sense of appreciation of what he experienced and what he's gone through to get to where he is. And I think the fun part is, hey, you go through that level adversity, and he is where he is like we all can take strength from the things that he's done and what he's been through and what we can apply to ourselves. So I hope you all enjoyed that as much as we did because I think that was a really great show. And especially I think the better shows that we've ever done, I think are based in stories and hearing some of those has been really great.

I know Michael has a lot to offer in terms of coaching and books and things like that, and he has a really great presence on social media for those that even just want to check that out. So we will have the links to his coaching practice link to his book, and he has his own podcast and social media there. So we'll have that, all that in our blog. If you go to blog.guidancepointllc.com/94, because we're episode 94, and again, this theme of what to do when things don't really go as planned. Appreciate you tuning in from the three of us. If you're listening to this during the holidays, happy holidays to you all. We're really looking forward to what's in store for 2024 and hope you're along for the ride. Be well.