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Introduction 0:03
Welcome to the #PirateBroadcast, where we interview #interestingpeople doing #interestingthings. Where you can expand your connections, your community, #kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree. Let’s get this party started.

Russ Johns 0:21
It's another beautiful day for the #piratebroadcast. We are here today and we're gonna be talking to #interestingpeople doing #interestingthings, and sharing a little bit of the story in the back stories about how they arrived at where they are today. Also, I just want to let you know that you can subscribe to the channel on on YouTube, Periscope, Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're not connected with the Pirate community, get connected with the pirate community because it's a lot of like minded individuals that are working together to increase a little bit of kindness around the world. #kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree Today we have Michael in the room. He's gonna be talking a little bit about his journey about getting struck with lightning, exercising, and a few Ironman competions. I think you started late, Michael. So I want to get into that story a little bit, but I want you to remember, everyone, that if you're not connected with Michael, reach out and tell him Russ sent you. You're part of the pirate community and you wanted to connect and engage, so Welcome to the #piratebroadcast. You're now a pirate Michael.

Michael Bryant 1:36
Thank you. I'm honored. How are you?

Russ Johns 1:39
Oh, I'm the one that's honored. Thank you for showing up and being here, being present and sharing your story today. Thank you. Thanks for being here.

Michael Bryant 1:49
Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a been an interesting kind of journey. I think my professional role is that of an unstucker. People come to me because they get unstuck, in terms of what do I do next with my life? How do I manage my day? How do I set goals? How do I communicate better? Those kinds of things, but my life itself has been sort of an interesting kind of odyssey. When we've all kind of been dealing with the new normal. This new normal has now gotten kind of normal. No, this is not new anymore.

Not new anymore.

No, it's just kind of normal.

Russ Johns 2:37
Let's take it back. Because the unstucker has a story behind it and I know that there's probably some history in there. I want to dive into the fact that you, you got struck by lightning and you're alive. We talked about it before the shaw and I want to dive into that story a little bit more, talking about circumstances and what the outcome was.

Michael Bryant 2:58
Yeah, sure. I've had a business for 40 years now and and I'm a management consultant and executive coach. People would ask me, what do you do? And I would tell them that I'm actually an unstucker, I get people unstuck and that kind of stuff, for lack of a better word. So I've spent a lot of time on, what is it that keeps people from moving forward in their lives? We're all doing something. We're not doing what we do during the day and I'm an endurance athlete, so I have a athletic background. I was a high school and collegiate wrestler. After college, there's really nothing you can do with that sport. I'm also kind of a little tiny guy, there's really not much I could do, so I became a runner. In the mid 80's, triathlons had sort of begun to spread. They started in the 70's in California. They created shorter distances. I'd heard of Iron Man, but there was no way I was going to do that because those people were completely out of their mind. Plus, it's just an insane event that you do 140.6 miles, and you have up to 17 hours, like who would do that? Like you just have to have something wrong with you. So the shorter distances though, Olympic distances, I got involved in those, and I did those in the mid 80s. But there weren't a lot of races and they kind of stopped. So after about five or six years, I sort of said goodbye to that part of my sort of athletic career. I went back to running and worked up to marathons. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my wife is from Albany, New York and in the summer, she and her family had a farmhouse near Lake Placid, New York in the Adirondacks. So I meet my wife, I go to the Adirondacks, I fall in love in the Adirondacks and about 20 years ago, we bought a house. Meanwhile, Iron Man is expanding. I'm not doing Iron Man. I'm not even doing triathlons anymore, but now I'm in the community, so I'll volunteer. I volunteered. For the people that are on the bike course it's 112 mile bike course, 256 mile loops they call it. What you do when you're a volunteer is at the end of the race, you go into town to watch the finishers, because these are people that don't look like your prototype of an athlete. These are people that you saw walking down Main Street, you wouldn't pay any attention to them. These people are finishing this thing. It was absolutely spellbinding. It was amazing. I'm not the kind of person that likes to watch. I like parades, I don't like to watch. I looked at this thing and I said, I'm doing this. I have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm doing this thing. So this is in 2005 and I'm 55 years old, that's kind of silly to be starting at that age.

Russ Johns 5:53
It's the new 30

Michael Bryant 5:54
Yeah, most people, they've long ago wound up their athletic career. They're not launching it. Yeah. So, the lake in Lake Placid, there's two lakes in Lake Placid, like Lake Placid Proper, then there's another lake, Mirror Lake. That's where the swim is. It's a 2.4 mile swim and it's a 2.12 mile rectangular, what they call loops. So I was a water safety instructor and I had been a swimmer and everything so I thought well, I'm really not in the kind of shape I'm going to need to be in. If I can at least go out a loop, which is 1.2 miles, I can go do that. So this is in August of 2005, kind of an overcast day, not a good beach day or anything. I put my wetsuit on and out I in the water. I'm swimming and I'm wet, obviously, then I noticed I'm getting wetter. I look up and it's raining, I don't care. It's raining and I'm in the water.

Russ Johns 6:53
You're in the water, you've got a wetsuit.

Michael Bryant 6:54
Yes, I'm in the water and I have a wetsuit, what's a big deal? Then I notice that I'm getting really wet. It's not pouring, but I'm in the middle of the lake, in the middle of nowhere. I can see off where the town is, people kind of scurring to get undercover and oh my God, okay. Well, as I look up, straight ahead of me, coming over a mountain range is this dark cloud and it's moving rather rapidly. So I looked at that and I said, that's not a good idea. I think maybe this is about time that we need to just sort of cut this thing off. I look to the right at the end of the lake. I see lightning hit the lake. I said, we got to go right now. I'm probably not more than about a minute or so into my sort of retreat out of the lake. I hear lightning a second time. I feel my right calf knot up and right through the top of my head. I said you just got hit. Lightning just hit the lake and went through you. Now, I was a water safety instructor. One of the things that you're taught to do is to deal with people when they begin to panic, never thinking you're the one that's going to have to be dealing with the panic. So important self talk, you have to go through big, big time, big time self talk. The one thing I knew is, do not panic. Now, this kind of panicky situation is not a good situation. One of the reasons we get stuck a lot of times is because something hits us. We don't have a model, so we go into a reactive kind of mode. So I said, okay, let's come up with a plan. We got to come with a plan really fast. I said, okay, here's the plan. I could still swim. My calf was sore, but I was okay. I'm going to swim, stop and scream at the top of my lungs for somebody to come get me. Swim screams, swim screams from me. One of three things going to happen, either I'm going to get to shore, somebody's going to come get me or I'm going to get hit again and I can't think of many other options that I can go with and i don't have a lot of time anyway. So I said okay, we're just going to see what happens, so off I go. Unbeknownst to me, now I'm the only the only knucklehead in the race because...another thing, by the way, that you learn as a water safety instructor is you don't go into the water by yourself but that's a story for another day. Obviously I wasn't practicing what I had preached. Somebody was in a metal rowboat had had the sense to get out of the lake and had called 911, but I don't know this yet. There was a boat rental place and two young ladies are taking the kayaks and the canoes out of the water because it's in kind of rough water, among other things. And they hear me. Off they come in two plastic. two-man kayaks, they get to me rather quickly. Are you okay? Well, I'd prefer to get out of here. Into the kayak, I go. We get to shore and I call my wife. We couldn't find you. Well, that got hit by lightning, are you okay? I think so. So they come over and I go into change. What do you want to do? I'm hungry. I have no idea what that means. I don't know if getting hit by lightning works up the appetite. I don't want to find out, I was just really hungry all of a sudden.

Russ Johns 10:08
I feel like some hot sauce. (laughs)

Michael Bryant 10:13
I come out of the hotel, where I changed. They had not seen me get out. They're looking for me. The lake is surrounded, EMTs, a fire truck, there's a crowd. The cops are there. I have to go over to one of them, tap him on the shoulder and say, everybody go home.

Russ Johns 10:30
What are you looking for?

Michael Bryant 10:32
Here I am, everybody go home now. Not much happens in Lake Placid. The next morning, I am like two inch headlines in the paper. Man zapped in lake rescue before...or something like that. So for the next week, I'm now known as lightning man. Oh, you're Lightning Man. I'm not Lightning Man, I'm just like a regular guy. So I thought about that and I thought there's lessons here. There better be, you got out of this thing. I thought about this about like, how does this apply to what happens to all of us. If you think about what's happening right now, change can happen in an instant. So that stuff comes, it was a overcast day, all of a sudden, that storm came in 10 minutes. That storm was right on top of me. Nobody had planned a year ago for what life's gonna look like right now, so what do you do when change comes suddenly? Well, the first thing you do is you come up with a plan. People's ability to balance this thing and deal within their lives have had a lot to do with where their lives...when it started. So for example, I'm in my home office. I have had an office in my home for 40 years, to work out of your home was like, oh, like yesterday? That was not a major adjustment. Now what was a major adjustment? Well, I'm a face to face kind of guy, I go see my clients. So what did I learn? I learned this, I learned zoom, I learned what worked, what I learned and why did I learn it. I was in Rome, and that's what the Romans were doing. That's what I need to learn how to do. So one's ability to adapt and adjust is one of the most important parts of getting and staying unstuck. So, basically, I said, okay, so here's my plan. The other thing I did was this, I didn't have a lot of time to focus on what if the plan didn't work. Alot of times, the plan...

Russ Johns 12:31
yeah, you just dive right in, and you have to get on it.

Michael Bryant 12:34
Yeah. I mean, a lot of times what happens is that people will come up with a plan and say, what if this doesn't work. Why don't you just try it? Then we'll see. We spend so much time in the future making up that "what's going to happen." If something doesn't happen, we just go into this sort of paralysis by analysis and think ourselves into a stupor. The other thing that I...go ahead.

Russ Johns 12:58
Well, I was just gonna say, we know what happens when you do nothing, right?

Michael Bryant 13:03
Yes, yes, the decision to do nothing stinks for this reason. The decision to do nothing, unfortunately, is not a decision to do nothing, the decision to do nothing is to passively let things get worse. Because the natural order of the universe is deterioration. If I put a piece of metal out in the backyard, and I don't do anything to it, it'll rust. I didn't touch it, but it rusts. What if I have my arm in a cast? Because I broke it and when it comes out, It's going to atrophy. I didn't do anything. I know, it got worse. So unfortunately, you can't not participate in your own life. That's not an option. I just don't want to do today. Well, today is going to do you so things are going to happen with or without you. So this whole thing that's happened in the culture is happening with or without us. Some people have decided to dive right in and say, well, what can I learn from this? What is here? What new skills can I learn? What new technology can I learn. What new creativity can I do? Other people are saying, I'm just going to go ball up in a wad and go in a corner and hide Well, okay, well, fine. Tell me how that works for you. I didn't have the option in the water. I really didn't have that. The last thing I figured out was that this change happened, suddenly they kept have a plan is that you have to ask for help. I'm not trying to get out of that thing by myself. I mean, I don't know much of significance that happens in our lives without other people.

Russ Johns 14:33
Say that again because I want to make sure that people understand this.

Michael Bryant 14:37
I don't know much of significance that happens in our lives without other people.

Russ Johns 14:43
That is so true. That is so impactful. Being a coach, and somebody that helps executives get unstuck, I think there's a lot of relationship with how you can help people build teams around them, build a support system, have mentors, have coaches, have somebody that's gonna call you out on your bad days as well as your good days.

Michael Bryant 15:13
Right and also be willing to acknowledge the obvious, which is, I don't know what to do. The companies have been really successful with this, my client companies, they all got together and said, What do we do? We don't know what to do. We've never been through this before. Why would we expect to know? There was no way when I got in that water that I was going to try to figure that out all by myself. Like, that wasn't going to happen. The interesting thing from that is that after that experience, I do the race. It was a magical day. Oh my gosh, it was just one of the most amazing days of my life. On the finish line, the last hundred yards is magic. It's just me Just take your breath away magic. They have a saying...

Russ Johns 16:05
What did you train for that first time?

Michael Bryant 16:07
The training for my first one... The training for that was probably from November to July. That was my very first one. If there had been a fourth discipline called rehab, I would have killed it because I was injuring body parts I didn't know existed because I didn't know how to train I finally got a coach 10 weeks before the race. I had never ridden a bike more than 35 miles in my entire life. Even though, in 10 weeks, I was going to have to ride a bike 112 miles after swimming 2.4 miles but before running a 26.2 mile marathon, so I really needed some help. It's amazing what you can do when you don't know what you can't do. Yeah, I mean, when this thing was over, I had created this little plan in my head. I'm going to do an Olympic distance race, which is a 1.5 kilometer swim, 40 kilometer bike and then a 10 kilometer run. Then I'm gonna do a half Ironman, which is 70.3, just half the distance. Then I'm going to do a full, which... this is insane. You don't do this, you don't just jump into this thing and do that, not at 56. That's crazy. So I said to my coach, what made you think I could finish this? She said, I had no idea, but you thought you could. Who was I to tell you what you couldn't do? Yeah. It's just amazing.

Russ Johns 17:29
The doesn't know your age.

Michael Bryant 17:31
Exactly.

Russ Johns 17:32
Water doesn't know your age.

Michael Bryant 17:34
You got that right and most of the time, I don't know. I was so excited for this year because I had done what's called, age up. I was the baby in the 70-74 age group. I was so stoked for this thing. I said, I'm gonna make noise because I discovered by accident about three years ago that I'm actually a competitor now and not a participant. I didn't know that until I started finding out where I was finishing in my age group.

Russ Johns 18:04
Oh, wow.

Michael Bryant 18:05
And that was just by accident,

Russ Johns 18:07
What's the difference?

Michael Bryant 18:09
Well, competitors, it's somebody that's actually going to podium and be one of the top five finishers in your age group.

Russ Johns 18:15
Oh, I see.

Michael Bryant 18:16
I've trained so...

Russ Johns 18:18
Because your time and everything that goes into it,

Michael Bryant 18:21
Yes, you just finished faster in your age group. I just wanted to finish in an upright position with a pulse, was my goal leading up to all these. I mean, I just wanted to be alive.

Russ Johns 18:35
No lightening.

Michael Bryant 18:36
They have a saying, it's called the person that finishes last and Iron Man. It's a pass/fail course. So if you finish, you're in? So, that was that and there was one more lesson about getting unstuck that awaited me that I could not have anticipated. In 2006, I looked at this thing, and I said, oh, that was way too cool for one and done. They have a saying, you either do one or your are one. Yeah, well I'm signing up again. It was 2008. It is going to be the 10th anniversary. I'm like, this is gonna be really cool. I get up in the morning and the weather does not look good. But, the weather's the weather. The weather changes up there all the time. This is the mountains. I'm like, the the two years before I freaked out because it was raining in the morning, I came out of the water. It was a beautiful day and I wasted energy. I get in the water, it's overcast like a shower. It's like showers during the day and no lightning. I get out of the water and it is like, you know how when it's raining so hard, you have to pull your car off to the side of the road. It's like that. I get out of the water. I get on my bike within like five minutes. I am soaked to the bone. It is pouring and I'm looking and there are certain points on the course. You're at a high elevation, you can see around you There's nothing but clouds and rain everywhere as far as the eye can see. It's the most miserable day of my life. I get into this thing and I'm soaked to the bum, but that's okay cuz it's 60 degrees and I'm freezing. I'm a skinny guy and I'm burning all these calories to stay alive. Just to stay afloat. I'm getting slower and slower. The slower I go, the longer I'm out there. Longer and more tired. I beat the cut, they have cut offs for this thing, you have until 9:20 to get out of the swim, you have until 1:30 to do the first loop of the bike 5:30 to do the second one and 9:30 to do the first marathon and then 12 o'clock to do the whole thing. If you miss these cut off, they take you out of the race. You're done. you're disqualified. I barely make the cutoff for the bike. It's just not gonna stop raining. It's gonna rain for the rest of my life. I start on the run. I actually raced in the rain before and I'm like, well, this isn't so bad for the first hour. I hit a wall. I cover like seven miles in like two hours. I mean, I'm toast. I go back to the...I could come in and you can actually have what's called a special needs bag. You can get dry clothes and stuff. You just put that stuff there. I put on a pair of dry socks. That helps because they're soaked into minutes anyway, but it made me feel good for 30 seconds. I get this on. My wife is there. I said to her. I don't know if I'm going to finish, but I'm not going to quit. So here we go. Then it starts. I'm on the course. It's about 10:30. I've got about seven or eight miles to go. I'm walking. It's over. It's amazing how these things will happen in your life when you're stuck. It's a confluence of events that will happen, that was suddenly propelling you, so this is what happened to me. There is a trailing vehicle that picks up stragglers. I had heard about it, but I had never seen it. A course, is what they call an out and back, you go out, you turn around, you come back to our town. As I'm coming back, I see this thing coming out. I go from getting really tired and really depressed to getting really annoyed and I said, are you kidding me? Like, seriously? I've been out here all this time and that's going to happen? I don't think so. Here we go back to the thing that happened in the water, I said, you gotta have a plan. This pity party has got to stop because you already came up with what's not gonna happen. So a lot of people enter this thing right now and they said, okay, my business is not going to go under. I am going to figure out a way to balance kids and work and zoom and I'm going to figure this out and they took all their energies towards solution. When you do that, that's one of the most effective ways that you can...when you don't dwell on the way things were and you focus on what's not there. It doesn't change what's not there because it's not there. It just doesn't allow you to see what is there. I said, Man, you better get creative in a hurry. The rain had stopped. The stars were out. I'm still wearing a little raincoat because I think it's gonna rain. Because I'm delusional by now. I mean, I'm like, out of my mind. I already had, by the way, hallucinated once. I have seen a concrete bunker in the middle of the road. I found out later, not only had I become hypothermic, I was also hypoglycemic because my blood sugar dropped so bad. Now, here I go in my head, and again, this is what we do when we're stuck. We do a little survey internally when we're stuck and we say, okay, where am I stuck? Let's focus on that. I said, okay, you need a plan. Here's the plan. You see those two people in front of you? We're going to go get them. I took my raincoat off, threw it into the bushes. I said, let's go. Now, I'm not moving yet, but I'm starting to. While this is going on, they put signs out for people. They encourage them I read a sign. The sign says, the races are always on a Sunday, the sign says don't make a decision today you'll regret on Monday. In other words, Vince Lombardi, the coach of the Green Bay Packers once said, fatigue makes cowards of us all. When you weren't rested, and when you feel better, you're going to think differently. So don't react, come up with a plan. That's the key to staying unstuck. Come up with a plan. Don't react. That is a lowerbrain function. So I think into that, my coach who I love my coach, I mean, I've coached myself for years now, but at the time, she was still my coach. She was a wonderful coach. Not real touchy feely, though. So I had, among other things, I had tendonitis six weeks before the race, so I really couldn't train all that much, but that's okay, because now I'm 58, I can just kind of cruise on in for something like this. I don't really have to be in my top shape for this. I said to her, do you think I can finish and I thought I'm gonna get this memorable pep talk and she simply said, if you want to finish your will. I thought, well okay. That was so helpful because it was so simple. There were no moving parts to that message. If you want to finish, you will. So often what happens when people are stuck? I say to them, what's your goal? Oftentimes we'll say, yeah, if somebody says to me, I don't think this is going to work, then I'll say to them, well, it probably won't. Why? Well, because you just set a goal for it not to work? I mean, your brains like, I don't care what you tell me to do. So if you want to finish, you will. I'm like, oh, I want to. Then the last thing that happened, and this really kind of pushed me over the edge. We've been to a church that was at an Episcopalian church and the priest was also an Iron Man. He said, some good things are gonna happen to you tomorrow, but they're not gonna last. I thought, that's inspirational. Thank you. I'm gonna have to take that with me. I thank you very much for that. He stopped and he said, but some bad things are going to happen and they're not going to last, either. I hung on to that for dear life. It's so important, when we're in a dilemma and we don't know what to do next to say, this is going to pass. This is going to pass. Energy follows attention? How much attention do I want to spend on this. Now feeling emboldened all of a sudden, my body is shot but my mind is perking right now. So here I go. There were those two people. I said, let's go get them. We're not moving nuts yet, but I caught them, five in front of them. Now I'm moving with about probably 30-35 people I aksed and finish with about 14 minutes to go, but I finished. That remains probably the race I'm probably proudest of. I'm proud of stuff. I finished much faster in other races, but that was such a special thing. Because what happens is when you when you face a dilemma, when you're really stuck and you go deep inside of yourself you own something. You get something that you get to keep forever now that belongs to you. When I get stuck, I'm like stuck. Dang stuck. Let me tell you stuck, man. A lot of things that happen now they're just kind of, I need to take a little detour. I've been stuck. I guess that was bad. That was bad.

Russ Johns 27:26
Yeah, you know, we have this idea that things aren't temporary, and they're all temporary.

Michael Bryant 27:34
They are.

Russ Johns 27:36
And you know, there's been times where in fact, I have a bike hanging on my wall in my room here. And I've had this bike since I think I bought it in 1976.

Michael Bryant 27:48
Wow.

Russ Johns 27:49
And I've been on that bike thousands of miles in. There are times where you're just looking at the next telephone pole if I can get to the next.

Michael Bryant 27:59
Oh, yes.

Russ Johns 27:59
I'll, be okay. Yeah, it's the next telephone pole. I'll be okay. All right, good. Yes. And that's kind of how you have to, you know, when things are tough and things are challenging in your life, you just have to set a small, tiny, incremental goal. Absolutely. To get unstuck.

Michael Bryant 28:17
Yeah, you eat the elephant one bite at a time.

Russ Johns 28:19
because like you said, you know, like the sermon, you know, bad things are gonna happen. And they're temporary. Yeah.

Michael Bryant 28:29
Temporary, yeah, yeah. I have a sign in my office. It's by Dane Rauschenberg. And the sign reads, someday I will no longer be able to do this. Today is not that day. I'm Dane Rozenberg ran 52 marathons in 52 weeks. So I mean, it's so I just you know, when you get stuck, what you do should go, but not today. Not today. Not today. No. Is it a little tough? Yeah, it's tough. You know, you know line of Scott pets book the road let's travel is life is hard. But it doesn't mean life's not amazing. It doesn't mean what life's not incredible. You know.

Russ Johns 29:10
Life is amazing.

Michael Bryant 29:12
It is amazing for when you get get when you get stuck, it's like okay, what's the next thing here like what is the meaning I want to give to this and what is the meaning that I want to give to this? What is it that I want to do? I will tell you what happens is when you go to these areas of extreme challenge, my ability to focus is razor sharp, I can lock in like nobody's business and I would not have had that without this incredible gift. What Iron Man's given to me has just been amazing when I'm able to do the reason I even got started besides the fact that I was just excited by it is my goal in my work is to get people to stretch to go outside of places. that they're uncomfortable. What happens developmentally as we age is we naturally become more risk averse. Because we've experienced pain and loss. And we're scared. And we don't want to hurt and we don't want things to happen to us.

Russ Johns 30:18
Well, we believe the illusion that safety is there. And there's security in place,

Michael Bryant 30:23
Right? Yeah. certainty is one of our favorite lies that we tell ourselves just like, you can predict things you're right. Ever heard the phrase, if you want to make God laugh? Tell him your plan.

Russ Johns 30:35
Exactly.

Michael Bryant 30:37
And look at that and say, when you're able to take these events that happened to you, you put that in the bank. There's so much now that people can look back over the last six months and say to themselves, look what I did, I can do this.

Russ Johns 31:00
When you can, once you know that you can go beyond what you thought you could do, right? Everything changes,

Michael Bryant 31:07
which is always

Russ Johns 31:11
And that's why I believe that you know, and you probably share this with your clients is that you make progress every day, if you make progress every single day just like exercise, you make progress every day. When you look back, you'll be surprised how far you've gotten, and it's just like we have to do that in business. We have to do that in life we have to do with our family and everything else that goes along with that.

Michael Bryant 31:40
Yeah, it goes back to where the saying from Scott Peck in the road less traveled. The first line is life is hard. So you get up every day and I make the decision to actually think this way, I regard it is in many ways, kind of a selfish decision. Like, I'm in my head all day, like everywhere I go, there I am, I don't want to hang around with a miserable guy. I don't want to hang around somebody that's not in a good mood. I just want to do that, because, I'm with him all day. And I would rather be hanging out with somebody that's really having a good day. It's a conscious decision that you make, to focus on what's possible and doable today. I think if you wake up each morning, and you're healthy enough to just get through the day, and you have at least one person you love that loves you. I think you're in the bonus round. I mean, I think it's good stuff after that. And the reason I think that way is I've said to people, I will give you anything your heart desires, but you have to trade me one of those two, either good health or someone that loves you. That's the deal. So part of that getting and staying unstuck is to Stay in the state of gratitude and thankfulness. In your brain, gratitude and thankfulness. And one of the things that I really love is the brain, I studied the brain, right? Everybody has one, and it's fun to know how it works, because it kind of works the same for all of us. It's the same construction and one of the things that they found out is that it is neurologically impossible to access a negative thought in a state of thankfulness and gratitude. It's like sneezing with your eyes open you can't do it. So when I get stuck, I look around and I certainly need to see what is I need to work on. I'm not saying that when you're stuck, you take this pollyannish attitude that everything's gonna be okay. I mean, it's gonna, you're gonna have to many times make it okay. By having a plan and getting help and being grateful. But when that happens, you can look at this and say, Okay, this is going to be my life. There are days that are awesome, or amazing. And other days where i have to say I made it through.

Russ Johns 34:13
Yeah, I just love the idea that I wake up with gratitude and make it through the day if I can make a change in somebody's life is my greatest goal.

Michael Bryant 34:28
Yeah.

Russ Johns 34:30
Michael this has been great. I know that we're wrapping up I know. there's a couple of people Swathi, Laurie Knudson. We got Jimmy Clem in the room. I like this one. "Pain is weakness leaving the body". I obviously have too much weakness.

Michael Bryant 34:50
Go get them Jimmy

Russ Johns 34:53
Then Good morning, Russ and Michael I love the enthusiasm and energy.

Michael Bryant 34:57
Thank you. Thank you so much

Russ Johns 35:01
"Please show the bike Russ", I'll have to show the bike. These are people in the community that just inspire me to continue to go. And it is like a marathon with the power of broadcast and bringing people on board, making sure that we have great conversations that inspire others. Yeah. And I know, people can get ahold of you, Michael, I know you got a new website coming out, let us know. Share what that is.

Michael Bryant 35:33
unstucker.com and it'll be up later this week, but you can reach me right now. You can email me, Michael@unstucker.com. And I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me there and so we'd love to hear from the other pirates out there.

Russ Johns 35:52
Thank you so much. I really appreciate you being here, Michael and great stories and let's come back for another episode.

Michael Bryant 36:00
I would love to Great, thank you so much

Russ Johns 36:02
When we start running again and continue our, our journey

Michael Bryant 36:07
open to be at that starting line in 2021.

Russ Johns 36:10
Fantastic.

Michael Bryant 36:11
Well, thank you so much.

Russ Johns 36:14
Thank you. You know what I always say, #kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree, and you #enjoytheday. Take care. Take care, everyone. Bye bye. Stick around Michael.

Exit 36:29
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai