62. How to Get Past Your Past with Andrew L. Anderson

Adam: [00:00:00] Welcome, revolutionary freedom. I'm gonna give you a little quick rundown about who you're about to be blessed by.

Everyone yearns to have at least one person in their life who believes in them, that they can do what they say they can do, who believes that they can be the person they want to be. Andrew is that person. 

He went on to receive a master's degree in education and loved teaching high school students for six years. Since 2015, Andrew has cultivated this teaching passion. As a number one international bestselling author, speaker, and coach, helping individuals breakthrough limiting beliefs, transform their lives and businesses, and find lasting freedom when away from work.

His wife and seven kids drive his life mission. At the end of the day, you know this, Andrew will take a stand for your greatness more than you'll stand for your own limitations. He will fight harder for your possibilities.

And you do welcome my brother. How are you? 

Andrew: I've got all kinds of good energy. I'm excited to give that to your listeners. Let's go, man. 

Adam: Strength of the Oak. [00:01:00] Strength of the Willow. You've been a professional coach for some time, helping people on an individual basis get breakthroughs in their own life and, and achieve some freedom that they're looking for, particularly for themselves.

Yeah. So if you wanna start off by giving us the premise of the book, just kind of freestyle a bit and, and go for what's comfortable for you. 

Andrew: Yeah. Thank you. You know, uh, I never wanted to write a book. In fact, when I finished my master's degree, I said, that's the last thing I'm ever gonna write.

And then God called me to to write this book. And I was standing in the Virgin River, which is down in Zions Canyon in southern Utah. I'm looking up at this rock wall. Beautiful. Have you ever been there to Zions National Park? 

Adam: No, I'm bumming. 

Andrew: We gotta go. We gotta go. But I'm standing there. I'm looking up hundreds of feet.

This sheer beautiful Red Rock. I'm just overcome by the majesty of, of this creation, right, that God has put on the earth and, and I'm feeling it, and I'm starting to get kind of teared up. And then the words just hit me, Andrew, if you're [00:02:00] experiencing this in front of a rock, imagine what people will experience when you fulfill the measure of your creation.

And then I was really weeping. And he said there are two books that have to be written, one of which will be called Strength of the Oak, strength of the Willow, and then the other I won't reveal yet. And that was a little over three years ago when I knew that I needed to write this book. 

Adam: Wait until people are impacted by the measure of your creation. 

Andrew: Just wait until you see what will happen. When you step into the measure of your creation, 

Adam: I want everybody to hear that because that's what we do here, like mm-hmm.

That's our mission. I, I could make more marketing polish, change the wording of my tagline, own taglines, and say, Become what you were created to be like. That's the old school way of saying it. But when you say step into the measure of your creation, that that un, especially for moms and, and cooks out there like the [00:03:00] measuring cup, you get, you have to get to the measure of the intention.

And we all have an intention that we are created with our souls. So that is beautiful. What so if, if, if the book was. Was boiled down to one sentence or one idea, is that it For the, for the reader to, to step into their own measure of their own creation. 

Andrew: Yeah. One of the chapters is called The Power of Your Presence, which is another way to say it, but uh, yeah.

In one sentence is how do we let go of all of the, the B.S. . And really become who we were meant to become. 

Adam: That's powerful. That, that, so it's it's a lot, right? It's heady. Yeah. It's heavy. I was even thinking more. Yeah. So we'll go with that. If we're at 50,000 feet mm-hmm. What hap, like what measure do we come, do we descend toward to get some more detail about where we begin with this to start taking it [00:04:00] in?

Andrew: Right. Well, you start with chapter one, it's called Grounded. You start with chapter one and we go from 50,000 feet and then we come, we get, we get grounded. And you know, the, the analogy of the oak is a beautiful analogy 'cause an oak tree.

Can live hundreds and hundreds and, and we don't even know how many thousands of years some of these oak trees live. And the reason why is 'cause the very first thing they do Adam, is they drive a taproot vertically to a source of water before ever putting out any lateral roots. And that taproot that connects it to its source is what allows it it to be grounded and build that root system that empowers this mighty strong tree.

So it is with us. The first thing we have to do is get to our source. Why are you here? 

And most people don't know how to do that. And I, and I walk you through and I share how I did it, and I teach you how to do it as well. It's a lot simpler than we seem to wanna make it.

We need it to be harder to justify not doing the [00:05:00] work. Hmm. Say that one more time. 

It's a lot simpler than we make it. We almost need it to be harder to justify not doing the work. Yeah. 

Adam: So the premise of the oak is that that's the gist of why you chose oak. 

Andrew: That's right. It's the one of the strongest woods. It's the most useful, it lives longer than almost any tree that we know of. It won't ever break because of that strength.

And it has that longevity and it's got an incredible defense system 

Adam: . So strength of the oak, that's clear. Strength of the willow caught my attention. It was like, huh, well what does that mean?

And the first thought that I had, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I want you to explain it regardless, is strength of the willow. You don't necessarily think of a willow as being strong. I like the paradoxical relationship there. Sure. But the immediately came into my mind was compassion.

Andrew: Well, the subtitle of the book is How to Find Courage and compassion.

Adam: Well, there you go. You almost a, it's almost like I've read that. I shared that [00:06:00] because that literally was the first impression I got before I knew the tagline.

Andrew: There you go. So, so the, if the oak is that courage, and by the way, the word courage comes from the French word kur, and kur means heart. When we have courage, we lead with our heart. Mm-hmm. And so the willow is a different kind of strong, right? The oak says You cannot make me bend or break. And the willow says, I will go with the flow.

I will bend, I will allow the turbulent forces of life's winds to go through me and around me. And I will bend and not break. And I will be as humble. I will be as graceful and I will be as forgiving and I will be as meek as I possibly can. And guess what? If one of my limbs falls off, it plants immediately and it will grow that very season.

Adam: Yeah. I thought to myself in order to do that, to lead with the heart. First of all, you put [00:07:00] yourself in a vulnerable position. 

 It tends to be the more difficult thing for people to do. Lead with their heart, the non willingness for the vulnerability 

how do we get started leading with the heart?

Andrew: Well, well, you have to understand the relationship between the heart and your mind, and I've heard it said before, as you have never let your head talk you out of something your heart knows to be true.

I. Never let your head talk you outta something your heart knows be true. And, and what that means is we have a lot of conditioning. And so we, we take action.

I. Not based on what our soul and our heart are calling us, do we take action based on past programming and that past programming, those scripts that have run over and over and over again, they build this conditioning and then we take actions based on those beliefs.

And those beliefs are almost never in alignment with what your heart knows to be true. So we can't allow that past conditioning. To prevent us from [00:08:00] moving forward with where our heart is taking us. 

Adam: I want people to understand the power of that, because that's actually within the framework in the beginning of my seven pillars of revolutionary freedom.

Mm-hmm. It is this idea that we are taking action and making choices. Yes. In this moment, in this real situation, based on. The stuff that conditioned us way back there. That's right. That for most of us, we're not even aligned with Yeah. I don't think, my guess the vast majority of people don't even have the awareness that that's occurring.

Andrew: It's called, you know, the, the fancy way of saying it's called unconscious incompetence. And, and for everyone else, like what that means is you don't know what you don't know. And as a, as a trained coach, I can get someone in a five hour session to unpack things that have been planted deep in their unconscious mind that they never got to [00:09:00] in years and years and years of therapy and counseling.

Yeah. And once they see it, right, Muhammad Ali move like a butterfly sting, like be, he can't hit what he can't see. Once they can see it, we can uproot it. And plant something in its place. But most people have no idea why they do what they do or why they don't do what they don't do. Yeah. And we, when that's what we get to do, we get to unpack all of that to free them from that past conditioning, the mental and emotional baggage that has been holding them back from moving toward what they want.

And everyone wants two things. They wanna fill love and they wanna feel free. Love and freedom. That's all. That's all that matters, 

Adam: man. Amen. With the, so to ask something a little offshoot, many people will go to see a therapist and, and they'll invest significant dollars into those sessions and, and who knows how long those go on.

Maybe sometimes years for many people. Mm-hmm. What is something for the individual listening right now to consider why their therapist could fail to see or help them bridge [00:10:00] these gaps? Make these breakthroughs versus you giving some, versus you spending five hours, what are you doing differently? What does the therapist not know?

What's the disconnect? But what's the difference with someone like what you're doing? 

Andrew: Well, let's, let's, let's use an analogy, shall we? I'm the greatest rock climbing coach in the world, and you're the greatest rock climber, and we're at this face, and you are gonna set a new world record, and I'm gonna coach you through it.

And I'm here to support you. And you have slept well the night before. You had a great breakfast. You've trained, you've got the funny looking shoes, your fingers are chopped up. You're, you're ready. We've got, we've studied the line, you've watched others do it. We know the time to beat. I say, ready, set, go.

And you say, what about the pack? And I say, what do you mean? And you say, what about the 180 pound pack I have on? And I say, don't worry about the pack. You've got this, I believe in you. And you're like, uh, I don't know if I believe me. And then I'm a coach, right? And this is what most coaches do. They push you, they want you to ignore a lot of the stuff that you brought.

And they just, by sheer grit [00:11:00] and sheer vision and will, we are going to overcome this face. And you then quit. 15 feet up. Yeah. Either on yourself or me because you're not good enough or I'm crazy now. That's what a coach does. On the other end, the counselor says, come here honey. And by the way, I love counselors and coach, uh, uh, and therapists.

I had many that helped me survive, right? I don't, I don't wanna bash them. And they, they helped me stay grounded, but I never got any lift. And the grounding that happened with them was, come here, honey. Let's see what's in that pack. Let's open it up. Let's pull out every single item in there and let's talk about it and how it got there and why, and what that means and, and the relationship between mom and dad and and your sister, right?

And, and your brother and your first wife. And, and, and we, we, and then we come back and we do it again, and we love it because no one has ever validated this. We've only had coaches [00:12:00] that ignored it. And so I come back and we do it, and we do it, and we come back and we create this really powerful. Dependent relationship.

And most people come to me and they say, I'm, I, I'm, I'm tired of the, the counseling. I, I don't know why I'm here. So-and-so just told me to come. And so what we do is we do a very powerful process called mental and emotional release therapy. We let go of. By making very quick, sudden decisions, new decisions that create new neural pathways, that create new chemicals in the brain, that create new emotions in the body so that you can take actions that you've never taken before.

'cause you never felt like taking them. We cut the damn pack off and we send you up that face and you go faster than you ever thought you could've gone. 'cause you didn't know what you were capable of. That pack. There you go. 

Adam: A mutual colleague friend says, save your best [00:13:00] for first, right? And like what you just said there, if somebody grabs that clip or grabs this part of the podcast, And listens to that on a daily basis until they understand fluidly, what you said and process that through their thoughts.

Sorry, man. You might have lost a handful of clients on that one because they can do it on their own if they're gripping what you just said. I. That is huge. So why do so many of us think that we need to go and, and heal all the wounds from when we were two and a half and five, and, and all the words that were said to us that were hurtful, that created these lasting hurts that we guard ourselves from later?

I thought we're supposed to be spending years diving into the Freudian sort of mindset about how my mother said some things to me, and now why as a 30 year old man, I'm a chauvinistic womanizer. 

Andrew: Right. Why do we have to do that? Because a one-time breakthrough session is not a great business model for recurring clients, right?

Yeah. And And I'm serious, be because the traditional mental [00:14:00] health field is built on a long-term relationship with a therapist and a counselor, and they have the greatest intentions. I office with many here, and they're wonderful people, and they only can get you to a certain point. So that's why as a coach, it's nice because I say, great, let's do this quick release work.

Let's do the therapy and then tell me what mountain you wanna climb and let's coach you through the climbing of that mountain and let's build something on top of what we just uprooted and create a life that is worth living. Yeah, and that's the coaching part. The, the therapy is easy. We get that done fast, and then we just move forward building something that God needs them to build to match their life mission.

Adam: I wanna know how we bring this into the frame of helping the listener translate that information into the feeding and developing of them [00:15:00] living in their authentic self.

So we know we're, we're, we got this 180 pound pack on. Mm-hmm. But most of us, if we're gonna be honest, we're not living our authentic self. Throughout our life and we're gonna, we're gonna put a mask on for work. We're gonna put the work costume on, and we're gonna behave in a way that the people around us have come to expect us to behave.

Mm-hmm. Even if we're new in an environment, we're gonna go in with the preconceived stuff where people had us acting before we, we, we. We jump through the hoops, so to speak. Right. So we have these layers that are on us in, in different capacities. Relationship is different than professional. Mm-hmm.

Different than church. Different than the kids' sports teams. Everybody everywhere knows a different version of us. Yes. And it's appropriate to know your audience and, and be appropriate in the audience that you're in, but that doesn't mean you have to violate your core values and live as someone you're not.

Mm-hmm. So how do we, what can we do with that towards achieving authenticity?[00:16:00] 

Andrew: It all stems from what we talk about in chapters one and two, which is getting grounded and having a life mission.

Okay. When you know why you were put on this planet, what you have been called to do, then those values derive, and we're gonna go deeper here in a moment, but we've got a life mission. We've got values that derive from that life mission. We then have principles, and I, and I outline all this in the book, principles are the personal playbook of success.

How do we show up with these values to reach this life mission? And if someone doesn't know that life mission, then they're gonna be continuing putting on different hats. They're gonna feel outta alignment with their values. They're going to be struggling with the principles, and they're gonna be out of integrity.

So it starts with that life mission, having that taproot grounding you to your source, your purpose, your meaning. 

Adam: Okay, so someone's feeling the, the discontent, they're driving home from work and, and usually they're, uh, they're thinking things [00:17:00] like you're familiar with is. Is this it like forever? Like, I'm not that old yet.

Am I gonna do, am I gonna be old and gray doing this? Or there has to be something more, right? Most of us, in my experience, I'll, I'll speak for myself. I had a harder time figuring out what my mission was early and I had an easier time figuring out what I hated. 

Andrew: So, and here's why. Because we are more prone as a natural, fallen mortal human to move away from pain than towards pleasure.

Yeah. Right. And, and that's the challenge if I am on a mountain bike with you, 'cause I love a mountain bike in the, in the foothills and mountains here of Boise, if we're on a mountain bike and we are trying to get away from the starting line and we are looking behind us while trying to ride our bike forward.

We're looking back, trying to move forward. What's gonna happen? We're gonna crash. Crash. Yeah. We're gonna crash. And 

Adam: whether it's [00:18:00] wipe out other people too, probably. Yeah, 

Andrew: that's right. And, and what we are trained to do is we show up and we say, here's all the things I don't want in my life and I love this.

Right. You, when you work with people as well, they come, they tell you everything they don't want. They give you all the pain. Moving away from pain. And then I love asking this question, what do you want? And you know what? They most often say, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times over and over and over thousands.

Now they say, I don't know. 

Adam: I thought you were gonna say, I wanna be happy. That's what I thought the answer was gonna be. 

Andrew: Well, they say, I don't want to be so stressed. I don't want to feel so anxious. I don't want to feel stuck. I don't wanna feel trapped. Then I say, what do you want? What's the opposite of all that?

And then they say things like, freedom, I want fulfillment. Right. But they don't know how, because they're so attached to these things. Their identity has been built in these things, and then they label themselves as such. I am anxious, I am depressed. I am an addict. Oh, really? Like you were born that way. I just had a baby.

His, his name is Tanner. He is five weeks old. [00:19:00] I look at him and I, I'm like, oh wow. You are depressed. You are anxious. You are an addict. No, he's not. He's, he's perfect. But we've been conditioned to identify with and believe all of these past, uh, um, emotions that we've experienced and beliefs that we've held onto, and we're trying to move away from them.

And if we don't cut that umbilical cord to our past, that provided us life. And how can we ever live and breathe and move forward on our own? So once we are able to let go of that with simple decisions, that's all it takes to decide is to cut off pesticide, genocide, ho, all those things. Something's dying.

And so to decide is we cut off every other option and we move forward in that life mission and that perfection that God created you to be when you were being held by parents who said you're perfect. 

Adam: Yeah, you're perfect. You're perfect.

Yeah. And then over the next decade to two decades, those parents do everything they can to create a clone of their own mistake [00:20:00] self 

Andrew: because they tell you what not to do and the unconscious mind cannot process the negation in a sentence. Let's play a game with our listeners today. I want everyone here to not think about a pink elephant with purple polka dots.

Go ahead. I don't want anyone to do it. Okay. No one, no one. Think about a pink elephant with purple polkadots. The unconscious mind cannot process the negation. So what do we do as parents? Well, I'm trying not to, but, but our parents did this with us. They say, don't do that. Don't touch that. Stop crying.

Stop being such a bratt to your mom. Don't be such a a crybaby. Don't be disrespectful. They don't ever say, Hey, please be kind. Please be patient. Please be pleasant. Please be respectful. Please keep your hands to yourself. They tell us what not to do. 

And this is what happened in the Old Testament with Moses'. People, they were ready for a higher law. Moses comes down, he breaks them 'cause they're not ready, and he now has to tell 'em what not to do. Don't kill. [00:21:00] Oh really? Like that's where we're at now. Yeah. Don't steal, kill, commit adultery, lie all this stuff.

And then Jesus comes says, you know what? Why don't you just love your brother? Why don't you just give your, 

Adam: I've never made that connection. 

Wow. Thank you. 

Andrew: Jesus told them what to move toward and the old law says, here's all the stuff you need to move away from. So as parents, we have been just, we've learned 'cause we didn't know any different 'cause our parents did it.

We have told our children what not to do and therefore the unconditional, uh, the nature of the mind is the unconscious mind is they become all the things that we don't want them to become. 

Adam: I really appreciate that perspective. You discussed that in the book? 

Andrew: Yes. And I tell a beautiful story about my son learning how to ride a bike without train wheels. Do you wanna hear it? 

Adam: Tell us. 

Andrew: Here we go. All right, so, uh, my wife and I are in like our second year of marriage.

I brought three daughters. She brought a son and a daughter. The [00:22:00] two youngest are six months apart. Brody at the time is four. Talen is three TALENs. My daughter Brody's her son, and they're just this awesome, happy family. I get a, a video texted to me one day from my, uh, first wife and it's of Talen, three years old, riding her bike without training wheels.

I'm in Texas, miles and miles away from Idaho, and I'm looking at this video and I feel pride in two senses immediately. Good pride. I'm so proud my daughter's riding her bike without turning wheels and then bad pride, because guess who's helping her do it. Her stepdad. Mm. Right. So I, I come home from this, this, uh, this trip that I was on for work.

And I come through the door and I say to Brody, who's six months older and four years old, I say, Brody, today is the day you get to ride your bike without train wheels. And my wife looks at me and she says, you are such a man. And I said, thank you. She said, you're only doing this because you don't wanna get passed up by his little sister.

I. [00:23:00] And I shook my head and I said yes. And then, uh, I said, Brody, do you wanna ride your bike without training wheels today? And he said, yeah. And I said, great. And I looked at mom and I said, see, he wants to do it and she can do this, uh, like the rock, like one eyebrow up kind of a thing. You can do it too.

So she looks at me like that and I know I'm in trouble. And then she says it's a good thing God made husband so good looking, or else I don't think I'd be able to stay with you. So now she's called me the man and good looking, which is feeding my pride and I'm definitely gonna teach this kid how to ride his bike without training wheels.

So I said, Brody, there's three simple rules to riding your bike without train wheels. Number one, mom gets to stay home and we get to go to the park. Because I don't want her 

messing with this. 

Adam: Yeah, you don't want interference. 

Andrew: No interference. So we go to the park. I said, Brody, rule number two, look at the tree. Can you look at the tree the whole time? He said, yes, dad. I said, great. Rule number three, just keep pedaling.[00:24:00] 

Then I bend over, and this is before we had balanced bikes, right? The strider bikes, and you're trying to hold your kid up while lunging and you're running and your hamstrings and your lower back are screaming and you're like, I don't know how long I can do this. They better figure this out 'cause I don't wanna do it again.

And so I'm holding onto the back of the seat and I'm saying, look at the tree. Keep pedaling, look at the tree, keep pedaling, look at the tree, keep pedaling. Then you let go and you pray and then you realize you're the greatest. Bike riding coach in the world because he's heading right for that tree, which is getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

And that target is, is he's gonna hit the target. And now I have to sprint to catch up to him. 'cause I didn't teach him how to stop because if he hits that tree, we're both in a lot of trouble. 'cause mom's right, and then we don't ever get to ride a bike again. P T S D sets in and he's never the kid that can't ride a bike.

So I catch up to him, I give him big hug right before he hits the tree. And I, I said, you did it. Now we're gonna learn how to stop. Now, what did I not say when we were back at home? I did not say Brody mom can't come. She, she's not allowed to come. [00:25:00] If I had said that Adam, what would he have said in return?

Adam: Why not? 

Andrew: Yeah. Now I'm creating concern and doubt and fear and, and, and worry. I want mommy to come. That's right. I said we get to go to the park. Mom gets to stay home. Awesome. We get to the park. Rule number two, look at the tree. I did not say, don't look back. If I had said, don't look back, what would he have done?

Guaranteed. Looking back. Yeah. What's all the down 

thing? Yep. Yeah. 'cause when I look back with training wheels, I'm fine, but when I look back without training wheels, my handlebars go too and I fall. So I told 'em what to do rather than what, not to rule number three, just keep pedaling rather than whatever you do, don't stop pedaling.

Why not? Because when I stop pedaling with my, you know, training wheels, I'm, I'm fine. So I told him what to do. As a coach, right? 

They just need to focus on what to do rather than focusing what not to do. We gotta have that vision to move toward [00:26:00] rather than the pain that we're moving away from. Yep. So now we say to Brody, please be pleasant. Rather than stop being so annoying to your four sisters, please be pleasant. We tell 'em what to do just like Jesus did.

Here's what you do, 

Adam: We have to start catching this, right? So to raise awareness, we gotta catch things, right? So if, if we realize we're wanting to make this. What, what is something to raise our awareness on this? I mean, do we just have to literally begin the willpower and the consciousness of ev, of hearing ourselves to the negation, to the negative side to do this?

Do we just have to begin practicing that with, with our own brain power? Is that how we start that? 

Andrew: Yes. And my client, it's like I, once I teach you this, I mean, you're gonna find yourself saying stuff to your kids this weekend. You're gonna be like, Staying in Andrew, but at the same time you'll be so grateful.

'cause you're gonna recognize all the things you tell your children and your wife and yourself not to do. Stop doing that. You're such an idiot. Don't do that. You're like, you say that in your mind. Yeah. And, and, and so the, the tagline if there was one, is move toward what you want. [00:27:00] Focus on what you want, right?

Play offense rather than playing defense. My dad, my dad is a, a big sports fan. He still goes, he's 73 years old. He still goes to high school sporting events in his community because he just loves to support the kids. And, and here's his greatest pet peeve. His greatest pet peeve is when the team is up.

It's the fourth quarter, right? It's the end of the game. There's a couple minutes left and they run out the clock trying to play not to lose. He gets so mad. I mean, he says, play to win. Go score another touchdown, make another, like if we play offense, if we play to win, then we don't have to play defense.

If we focus on what we want, we don't have to worry about all this stuff back here that we don't want. Yeah. We have to play to win rather than playing not to lose. 

Adam: That's powerful. All right, let's shift gears for the last segment of the show for today.

I know you're big on gratitude. It's a, it's it's foundational in your teaching. Yep. It's foundational in your life. And I'm a big [00:28:00] believer as well, and so gratitude has changed my life in more ways than, than I probably even understand at this moment give thanks in all things.

Right. This is, this is scriptural. 

I want this, this overworked, stressed, strung, out, working, family oriented professional to understand the opportunity and the blessings that they are sacrificing. By focusing on what's annoying in the complaints rather than beginning with a base of gratitude

so I'd like to let you riff on that for a little bit. 

Andrew: Yeah, thank you. It's a simple question that has to change in our mind. And this morning when I got to my office, I forgot my backpack. It has my laptop. It has one of my cell phones. It has my water bottles. It has my food. It's how I live at work.

I forgot my backpack and I found myself laughing, which is not what I've been [00:29:00] conditioned to do for the first 37 and a half years of my life. I. Usually when things like that happen, I get fresh. I'm like, gosh, you're such an hectic drive all the way back home and get that. I'm gonna be late for my thing.

And, and then I just like, I go into that state normally. That's what I've been conditioned to do this morning for the first time in 37 and a half years, I laughed, Adam, I'm not even kidding. I laughed. And I'm at day five of this five day gratitude challenge I'm doing with my tribe on social media. Ugh.

And I, and I'm watching myself and I'm laughing, and the question that is happening unconsciously, 'cause I teach this so much, the question that's happening in my mind is not, why is this happening to me right now? Why is this happening for me? Yes. And we so often from a place of victimhood, believe that everything and everyone else is causing me to feel this way.

Why is this happening? We look up to the heavens. Why is this happening? The universe to me, and we make a [00:30:00] simple shift and we say, why is this happening for me right now? Well, it means I get to go back, get to hug my daughter one more time on her 13th birthday. I get to, uh, listen to this audio book for another 14 and a half minutes.

I get to make one more phone call and I get to laugh at myself. For being human. Yeah. And we can make that one simple change. Why is this happening to me? To why is this happening for me? Then we can find the seeds of potentiality in every situation that may seem problematic. Every problem has a seed of potentiality.

Something that is great. Yes. Buried. Buried in something that looks bitter. And when we can take that bitter and make it better, we can take that victimhood and make us a victor. Then we are grounding ourselves in gratitude, giving grace and grace and gratitude. Free us. The [00:31:00] word grace. Grace is free.

Something done with gratis gratuity, it's, it's done there. We, we just do it from the, from our heart and it frees us. We don't have to be holding onto that victim hood feeling like we are at effect. We can be at cause. We can be the cause. For what shows up from 

there on. 

Adam: Hmm. Do you have a practical start here?

Andrew: Yes., I'm 20 nine years old. I'm living in my parents' basement. That's where the story starts. Strength of the oak, strength of the willow, and, and I am going through a divorce and I've lost my career and I have $9 in the bank account and I am at the lowest of the lows.

I take this, uh, this real estate sales training course, and they tell me to write down five things. I'm grateful for every day, and I am obedient. If you tell me to do something and you show me the results of what happened, then I do it. So I did it. Yeah. And I wrote down five things. I was grateful for.

That grounded me. [00:32:00] And so I created this oak and Willow gratitude journal that everyone can get on Amazon today, and I just teach you what I went through and how to do it, and you write down five things you're grateful for. Just start there. There are three other powerful steps of what I call applied gratitude that you'll learn about.

You gotta get the book to find out what those next three steps are. But that first step, just write down five things you're grateful for. The following three steps will take it deeper and do some things that you've never seen before when it comes to gratitude. But just start there. Five things every day that you're grateful for.

Adam: What would you say to the person who says they can't think of five things 

Andrew: full? 

Adam: Say it, right? 

Yes. 

Andrew: And here's what I say, because sometimes with my clients, by the way, Adam, every client call that I get on. The first question outta my mouth, and they even jump to it before I ask. I say, what are you grateful for today?

Hmm. And sometimes they're not because they're going through hard things and I then I tell them this. I say, look around. [00:33:00] I want you to find one thing in the room that you're grateful for. Say, I'm grateful for this picture. I'm grateful for this plant. I'm grateful that I have a cell phone. I'm grateful my wife bought me this good looking shirt.

I'm grateful that I can shave. I'm grateful that I don't have gingivitis in my teeth. Just look around. I'm grateful that my wife bought me this water bottle. I'm grateful for my children 'cause there's a picture of them here. Just look around. Yeah, I'm grateful that there's grass outside. 

If you look around, you will find things to ground you in the moment, get you present, rather than being upset about things from the past or worried about things in the future.

Get present. Ground yourself in now. Look around, find things that you're grateful for right here, right now.

Adam: You listening right now, wherever you are. There's nothing you can do today in this moment that's more powerful than doing what Andrew just suggested.

What he implores. You do [00:34:00] that. Think about it right now, wherever you're at. We're gonna leave it there, brother. We know that you have the book and the set on Amazon. We're gonna include those links in the show notes. Where else can people find you?

Where can they hire you? Where can they, all the things. 

Andrew: Well, I wanna give your listeners a gift. Is that okay? Beautiful. 

The strength of the Willow in me wants to give them a gift, and I want to give 'em a gift.

Not if they will just send an email to Andrew. And that's A N D R E W, Andrew, and you can put this in your notes, Andrew, at andrew l anderson.com. That's my email. So Andrew at Andrew L. Anderson, spelled o n at the end, andrew l anderson.com. And if you put gratitude in the subject line, we're gonna send you a choice.

You have two different things that you can choose from, two different gifts that will bless your life today. And that would be the place i'd, I'd have your listeners go. Send me an email, you can follow me on social media. Andrew L. Anderson eight, five, or go to andrew l anderson.com and we wanna give you, we wanna give you some gifts [00:35:00] and we wanna be a part of your life.

Adam: Hmm. So it's a person who likes surprises too. You'll hold out on that. Keep it a mystery. That's right. There you go put in the subject line. Gratitude. Mm-hmm. And just send it. No body, just 

Andrew: you just send it. 

Adam: Look how easy that is. 

Andrew: If you wanna put something in the body, that's fine. 

Adam: You can just, yeah. Say hi. Thanks. Heard John Adam show. 

Yeah. 

Andrew: There you go. 

Adam: Thank you for the time. It's been a true pleasure. God bless everybody listening and, uh, we'll see you next time. 

Andrew: Thank you, Adam.