Life Through a Dram

Often in life, we're told big equals successful. Bigger houses, bigger bank accounts, bigger pay checks.

Yet is this true? Does big really mean success? Or is success defined by how you're truly seen, versus how you feel you should be seen?

This week's episode. Slaintevar.

Often in life, we feel we need something around us to make us feel special, and wanted. Family; love; success; and all that comes with it.

And, yes, family makes us complete, as does love. And, if that's a metric, self-value can also come from success (based on our perception of what success means).

But, as I found out this evening, when these things aren't around us, we don't necessarily need to feel less significant. Instead, we can truly see what it means to be valuable...

Recently, I had a little bit of a health scare when I went for a check-up at my doctor's. I'll be 50 later this year, so I wanted to see how I was doing as I approach that milestone. And it wasn't good.

Since then, I've taken steps to improve my lifestyle, habits, and more. As a dad to two young kids, I realized I wasn't being fair to them, as I put myself and my own "entertainment" ahead of their right to have a dad grow with them.

In this episode, I talk about that realization, and how we all need to take more responsibility when it comes to those around us, and the role we play in their lives.

Often, it feels like we carry the weight of the world on our shoulders.

Family stuff. Personal struggles. Work. The world. Kids, and helping them find their way in the world.

All this and more can start to weigh heavily on us and, if we’re not careful, can overcome and overpower, until we’re lying on the ground, breathing heavily, wondering what we do next and not having a clear answer.

We begin to stress, because we don’t want to fail, either ourselves or those that count on us.

We get weak, physically and mentally, and it becomes harder to pull ourselves out of the funk, so we continue down the path we’re on until breaking point is reached.

We never see superheroes break, because they don’t live our lives and we don’t live in comic book fantasy worlds.

There are many beliefs in the world - religious, spiritual and more. But what if we believed in the one thing that we can all agree on - the belief in humanity? A topic near and dear to me up for discussion on the show today.

Enjoy, and don't forget to subscribe for future episodes!

When my wife was taken to ER with heart pains, the reaction from both physical friends and digital ones reminded me why the world is better is we have someone in it with us, as I share in this episode.

Following the latest school shooting in the U.S., the mother of a child involved in the shooting shared her thoughts, fears, and hopes. This episode requests one thing: No politics. No sides. No judgement. Just listen, and then think how we can fix this.

Every one of us has a clock we work by – we just need to choose the one we want to live our lives by.

Sometimes, when reading the news, it feels like the world is on a downward spiral. Ignorance, hate, bigotry, and pointless tragic deaths. But then we have stories that can help remind us the world isn't defined by the bad.