A Clean Slate

The importance of giving yourself permission to fail or start over again with a clean slate after a breakup, career change, mid-life-crisis or if you simply decide that you need to make major life changes.

In this video coaching newsletter, I discuss an email from a viewer who shares how my work has helped him to get over some very dark thoughts he has been having on a more frequent basis this past year. He says his therapist, who said he should check out my work, recently diagnosed him with PTSD. He is a seven-year active duty Army combat medic and has served two combat tours in Afghanistan. He shares how his marriage has been negatively impacted while he was deployed, and his wife started hanging out with another guy who was supposedly only a friend, even though he caught her in several lies about the true nature of her relationship with him.

Just over a week ago, he started watching my videos non-stop, read my book once and says the dark thoughts are now gone and are replaced with a renewed sense of purpose and optimism about his life and future. He talks about how a perspective change has completely changed the way he looks at things for the better. My comments are in (bold parenthesis like this below) in the body of his email.

Viewer’s Email:

Coach Corey,

I’m writing today to say thank you for what you do. The subject says it all with no exaggeration. Your YouTube videos were recommended to me by my therapist, who I’ve only been seeing for a short time, after years of struggling with what I did not know until recently was PTSD. But there was more, and my therapist, a Vietnam war infantry veteran, saw it. One week ago today I watched the first video and haven’t stopped since. Four days ago, I bought your book and just finished my first of many reads. (You can actually read my book for free if you go to my website and subscribe to the email newsletter. You don’t have to invest anything other than your time to learn the best of everything that I teach. The reason I’m able to give away my best stuff for free is because I know that once you see the value, you’ll come back and you’ll buy books, or maybe just make a donation. Or you just tell a friend. Either way, what I care about is that you get the help that will improve your life.) I feel like I’ve been asleep for so long, and now I’m awake. Over the last couple of months, some very dark thoughts had been coming into my mind, and they were becoming very frequent, something I never thought would happen to me. (I’ve got to commend you on the fact you went out and got yourself a therapist. Especially one who was a Vietnam veteran, because someone like that has already been through it. He’s been through those combat experiences, he’s gotten over it and he’s able to help guys like you. It’s a traumatic thing for anyone who’s been to war and to see the things that they see and to come back and try to explain those kinds of things to people. The average person, they just don’t get it.) One week after your work came into my life, and they’re gone, I feel more alive than I’ve felt in a very long time and I’m hungry for more. (With our six essential human needs, the fifth need is growth. What’s great is, now you’re in that period where you’re hungry. You want that knowledge. And not only do you want that knowledge, but you get it, and you go out there and apply it. You have to take action.) I plan to book some email coaching in the future once I reestablish myself and am in a better position financially, but I thought I would say thanks and tell you a little about my situation as the start of another future success story that your work has inspired.

I’m a 32-year old man, and I’ve been an active duty army combat medic for almost 7 years. (Thank you for your service.) I joined the army later in life than most, after I lost my passion for the business I started that was reasonably successful, original, paid the bills and then some. But I was bored with it, and felt the need to do something I always thought would be the adventure of a lifetime, and I wanted to serve my country like every man in my family back to World War One. I loved it from day one and was very good at being a soldier. (I highly recommend you get the Steve Jobs Biography. Steve Jobs said, “Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.” He got fired in the mid-80’s and he didn’t come back to Apple until 1996. Apple was literally about 90 days away from being completely bankrupt, running out of money and going out of business. And he didn’t do it for the money. He did it because he believed in the vision of Apple, and he wanted to make the company great again. Here’s another great quote. This is something all of us should be doing: “When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: ‘If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.’ It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” Most people, when they experience that feeling, make excuses and say “It’ll pass. I’m just going through a phase.” And that phase turns into years and years of life, until it gets to the point where they lose hope and they give up, and they don’t even try anymore. They have one foot in the grave, and that’s a fucking tragedy.) In November of 2010, I left America for Afghanistan. I was attached to an infantry platoon who became my new family. In a year, I saw and did things that I won’t go into at this time, but I will say that I didn’t think human beings were truly capable of such horrific things until it was happening before my eyes.

I met my wife of 4 years on a dating website during that time, and we became pen pals with a promise to meet when I returned home. (That woman gave you a compelling reason to get home safely. Those are the kinds of things that when you’re about to roll off base in the morning, you make sure your windshield is clean and your guns are clean, because the guys that are looking to attack troops are looking for the guys with the dirty windshields, the guys who aren’t paying attention. It’s the same reason why criminals go after the old ladies or the defenseless women or children. They go after the people who will give them the highest probability to get away with their crime. And you see the same shit in war.) She was not physically my usual type, but she was driven, motivated, confident and by far the smartest woman I’d ever met who was nearly finished with nursing school, all things I found sexy, as they were new to me. We married after dating for 8 months. Yes, I know, but I’d never felt the way I did, (Remember what I say about sales, people buy based upon emotion, and they use logic and reason to justify their purchase. In most cases, the infatuation period lasts between six months to a year. So you figure, after eight months, and especially with all of that time away, emotions are really high, and then you talk yourself into it. But you really don’t know that person, because you’ve been away for so long, being deployed), and she was hooked on me as I was seemingly a happy and centered man back then. Looking back, it was not the real case. I was just happy that I was alive, and my priorities in life had changed. (You had a compelling reason to come home, obviously her.) I wanted a living family, something I didn’t care about before war. (When you see all of that death and destruction, it really sharpens the senses. It really sharpens, what is the point of all this life? People really question their belief systems.) Things fell apart slowly, and I deployed again to Afghanistan in 2013, during which time my wife may have had an affair with my neighbor. I never got sure evidence, as a different neighbor, who was my friend and didn’t deploy with us, kept an eye out saying he saw them together often, took a picture, but said he never saw a kiss or anything he could offer as sure proof. Though after I told her a friendship with any man was not okay while I was gone, she lied to me over and over about the “friendship” with this man being over, and I caught her in those lies 3 times from 8,000 miles away, thanks to my buddy who truly honored the soldier’s creed. (Thank your buddy for that. He sounds like a true fucking friend who was looking out for you.)

In summary, I became a weak, spineless bitch and blamed my experiences in combat, blamed my wife and everything else but myself, until now. And while I still have 2 years of active duty left, I can begin building a business I’m truly passionate about now and focus on numbero uno — me. (Which is what you need to do. Get back to being that awesome, interesting, fun guy you were that your wife fell in love with.) There’s a lot more to how fucked up my life has been these last years, but I already sent you a book instead of a thank you message.

Thanks so much for what you do Coach. (Thanks again for your service and what you do, because without guys like you, I wouldn’t be able to sit here in the comfort of an air conditioned office and share these things. So without you, I couldn’t be me. I couldn’t do what I do, so thank you for that.)

Bob

“Everyone goes through transition periods in their lives where they start to feel stuck, like their internal enthusiasm for their lives is no longer what it once was and an internal drive starts to push us to make changes and move in a new direction. Success and happiness comes from feeling like you are making progress. Growth as a human being is an essential human need, and if you do not feel like you are growing and expanding as a person, you will feel like your life is lacking in purpose, meaning and value. Why? Lack of growth causes the feeling that you are not making progress. In order to reach your full potential, you must always have emotionally compelling goals and dreams you are pursuing, and emotionally compelling reasons why you want them. Without having emotionally compelling and worthwhile goals and dreams to pursue or aspire to, you will feel like your life lacks meaning, purpose and often like it’s worthless or pointless. The whole purpose of life is to enjoy it, not to simply find a way to get through it. “ ~ Coach Corey Wayne

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