Mark Motsenbocker shares his transformative journey of finding purpose after losing both parents in a car accident at age eight and being raised by his grandmother Dorothy, who taught him valuable lessons about giving and legacy.
• Lost both parents at age eight in a tragic car accident three days after Christmas
• Grandmother Dorothy Hanson, a widow, took in Mark and his four siblings
• Mark’s grandmother embodied discipline and generosity, becoming “grandma” to everyone
• The importance of giving as a universal principle – everything in nature gives without taking from itself
• Finding father figures through mentors like Coach Holland who helped discover new skills and build confidence
• Creating intentional habits that form the foundation for purposeful living
• Overcoming depression through learned optimism and perspective shifts
• The five Ps: “Prior planning prevents poor performance”
• Setting intentions at the beginning of each day rather than evaluating at day’s end
• Finding purpose through giving our time, talents and resources to others
Join me each week as we explore how to release doubt and reveal your true purpose through conversations with both ordinary people living extraordinary lives and elite experts.
Transcript:
Speaker 1:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt or worry and wondering what your true purpose was all about, then this podcast is for you. In this show, your host, sylvia Worsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, sylvia Worsham.
Speaker 2:
Hey Lightbringers, it’s Sylvia Worsham. Welcome to Released Out Revealed Purpose. And today is Mark Matzenbacher, and he’s going to be talking a lot about legacy and purpose, and when I read his Podmatch profile, I was really impressed. I said I definitely want him on my show, and I’m so glad he reached out and said yes, I want to be on your show. So, without further ado, mark, thank you so much for joining us today. Where are you hailing from?
Speaker 3:
Long Beach, California.
Speaker 2:
Far from Texas, are you? Yeah, because I’m in Austin, texas, as most people know, and so I wish I had your weather.
Speaker 1:
Yes, because I’m in.
Speaker 2:
Austin, texas, as most people know, and so I wish I had your weather, Because Texas weather is not fun, especially as summer approaches. I kind of wish I had a second home in California or maybe somewhere else in the mountains in Mexico, because at least it gets cooler in the evenings and you don’t melt, but I’m so grateful you’re on.
Speaker 2:
I know you have a ton to share regarding gaining your grandmother’s wisdom as it pertains to legacy and purpose in life. And so, without further ado, mark, do tell us. What is that wonderful story of transformation?
Speaker 3:
So my story really starts back in 1964, december 28th, three days after Christmas, my parents my father was a pastor and they went to a ministerial Christmas dinner. It was a little delayed, I think, but they got in the car at about 445, and within 15 minutes they were both killed tragically in a car accident. And so, yeah, it was a pretty startling fact of life, right? And my mother’s mother, who was widowed in 64 at the time, dorothy Hanson, came in and took five kids. So I had a brother that was 18, a brother that was 16, a brother that was 13. I was eight and we had a little sister that was three, and so she took the five of us and an amazing woman.
Speaker 3:
She was truly a godsend in my mind and really, if you talk to all my brothers today, or even my sister, they’ll tell you that I was her favorite and so she had a huge impact on me. I don’t think I was necessarily her favorite. I think she loved us all equally, but she was a giver. That’s just a fact. She gave everything she had. And when I say that, you know, kind of one of the pieces I wrote one time in my career was I was trying to help people understand. You know how giving really works in life, and it’s really about time, energy and emotions, right, life is asking you to produce things that people need, and a person who is very intentional, I think, and very purposeful looks to do that for people, and so my grandma did that for everybody. She was grandma to everybody. When I grew up, there were ladies down the street that were older than her and they would look at me and say is your grandma home right now Because I want to go by and talk to her about something I’m baking or whatever, right? So an amazing woman and had a huge impact on my life.
Speaker 3:
She was very, very disciplined, born in 1899 on a farm, and you know, at seven years old she was up at four o’clock in the morning helping her mom fix breakfast for 40 ranch hands and they would clean up and start lunch and they would clean up and start dinner and that was kind of her lifestyle. So very, very disciplined I think I was. Maybe I’m pretty sure I was the only kid in grade school and junior high that had to make my bed before I left the house every morning, because those were just disciplines, right, they were just. You make good disciplines in life and you get good results. So I had a huge influence on my life and the one area she doesn’t meet no fault of her own was, you know, I did spend a lot of time searching for a father figure that was missing because there was no grandfather and no dad and I had enough memories of my dad to know that there was a great loss there just not having him right. So I’ve worked most of my life.
Speaker 3:
I am a giver. Everybody will tell you that knows me. I’m a giver and I’ve worked most of my life to try and work and perfect that, and I think in the last decade or so I’ve really kind of come to the consensus that that’s a critical piece. It’s a central element to us as human beings because and I say this because the entire world, the universe for that matter, are givers. Right, when you look at what we possess as humans as we walk through this life, we’re really the only thing that gets to choose Plants. Grow whatever they’re supposed to grow. You can’t have an orange tree in your yard that says give me an apple out there, come on, I want an apple this year. Right, the sun doesn’t wake up tomorrow or show up tomorrow and say you know I’m really burned out on being hot, I’m chilling for a while. You know everything does what it does because it has to, but everything that does what it does is a giver, that you know. So the fruits and vegetables don’t consume what they produce. The rivers and the snow and the rain they don’t consume their own waters, they don’t do that. And when you look at the whole complexity of life, you know the sun comes up, the moon and the stars are there to light the way, everything. They’re all there as a giving entity and I think it bodes well for us, as the complement of humanity to nature, to play that significant role of giving, to play that significant role of giving. And so for me now there’s this kind of a dual role that I have as I walk through life. I can either be the giver when I see the need and that comes in all shapes, forms and sizes or I can be the receiver when someone is trying to give to me. And I think those are two critical points that I learned through the process of growing and had a number of men involved in my life who I think were gifts. They were just gifts, they were just people that walked into my world.
Speaker 3:
I was a skinny, scrawny little kid and I never got picked. So I’ll give you an idea. In junior high, coach Holland, I got picked to be on teams when we did PE, but I never played because I was just awful. I was just a skinny little kid and I couldn’t really do anything right. And so in my eighth grade year, at the beginning of the year, coach Holland came to me and said hey, I got something special for you to do this year, but it’s going to take a lot of time and you’re not going to get to be with everybody else, but I think you’ll do fine with that. And so he said let’s get the game set up. So we did our thing. And then he said let’s walk out to the field. So we walk out to the field and he has some clubs and he pulls out a bunch of golf balls and he throws them on the ground and he shows me how to hit the ball. And then he says OK, you try. And then he gives me a little coaching and everything. And then he pulls out some more balls and throws them down. He goes I’m going to go back and check on everybody else. He says you got 20 minutes, let’s see how good you can hit in 20 minutes, right. And so he began to give me something that gave me some value, right. And what ends up happening is, before that year ends, I get pretty good, and he actually brought me a set of golf clubs and gave them to me and then told me a place that I could go to not too far.
Speaker 3:
One of the downfalls of my youth was my dad really didn’t leave us much. He was making about $100 a week as a pastor and we didn’t own the house we lived in. My grandmother took money she had and bought a house for us to move into, and so I didn’t get anything, not like the kids I grew up with. Right, christmas was pretty frugal. I’d get maybe three gifts, that was it, and some of them were like a jacket right, a nice jacket. I’m not complaining about any of that. So I had two paper outs by the time I was 12 years old. I was throwing two paper outs, and so he told me about this place and said you go over and you tell them. Coach Holland sent you, and so I taped some clubs to my bike. I would throw my paper outs and then I would go over there. Long story short, I became friends with the guy that owned the golf place and he allowed me to play there for free from time to time.
Speaker 3:
When I come back after the end of summer, coach Holland, the first thing he says is how did you do? I said I think I did pretty good, but you know, you’re the expert, I’m not the expert, right? So, long story short, he gets everybody set up the second day of school and he walks out to the field and he brings some jump ropes and he builds these boxes with jump ropes four jump ropes and he goes out about 30 yards and builds a box and then goes out about 60 yards and then goes out I don’t know how far. And then he’s got like 10 balls there and he says hit 10 and let’s see how you hit the middle box. And I get like six in there. He looks at me and goes that’s not bad, that’s not bad. And I get like six in there. He looks at me and goes that’s not bad, that’s not bad. He says let’s do the close one. Well, I got nine out of 10 on the close one, right? And he says that’s really pretty good, and so his encouragement, his affirmation of my work was priceless. I can, that’s all I can tell you.
Speaker 3:
I didn’t have anybody else that was walking in my world at that time that felt I had value or felt that I could do something, and so that was the brilliance of some of the people I met in my life as I began to grow older, and so some of them are educators, some of them are neighbors, some of them are relatives.
Speaker 3:
There’s some uncles and a great uncle that influenced me, but all this stems back to grandma, because I did become good at receiving, but I did become good at giving right. I always tried to give back, and so I think my relationships formulate that. There’s a gentleman today. He’s 20 years younger than me, he’s still in full-time work, he’s a lawyer, and he’s just the most gracious, kind and he’s impeccable. The guy is just flawless. I mean his image and what. And it’s not, it’s not fake, it’s all real, it’s who he is, it’s what he loves, and so so I still find that in life and we enjoy our time together. We get together about every three weeks for lunch and just have a great conversation about family or politics or what’s happening in the news, but he’s just a strong encouragement to me all the time and so that’s awesome.
Speaker 2:
You know I love your story. I really do. Because in this day and age, I love your story. I really do Because in this day and age, with the me, me, me, me, me, me, me, this story, really it needs to be heard because the giving aspect we all have gifts and we’re not meant to keep those gifts to ourselves, we’re meant to give them away to others.
Speaker 2:
That’s why I have my podcast and I wrote my books and people are like, oh, you must be making so much money. I was like, no, no, no, you don’t make money with books unless you are like a New York Times bestselling author and you make money. It’s really like an extension of yourself. Chapters to help others, like to kind of like, you know, use your hand and pull these people up from the chapters they’re in and just say, hey, you’re not alone in this and, of course, reminding them that God is always with them. You know, you came from a faith background. Your father was a pastor and, as you were talking, like flashbacks of things that my father went through came to me and it’s a really interesting time for me because my father’s first year anniversary of his death is coming up next Monday and I think this is God’s way of kind of helping me kind of cope with it in this week, because it’s a really hard week for me, I mean.
Speaker 2:
I’m staying busy. But I also know the pain is. Eventually I need to address the pain and just sit with it and realize that it’s going to come up.
Speaker 2:
But as you were speaking, and your grandmother, my father, was raised by his aunt because his parents, when my grandmother was pregnant with my dad, were separate. Like they separated because my grandfather was a verbal and physical abuser and she just couldn’t take it anymore and so she took she was pregnant with my dad and she took the two youngest ones and the three older ones stayed with him and for several years they were separated until my father turned seven or eight. They decided to reconcile, but my father, he couldn’t be in that house because he would continue to physically abuse her in front of him and he wasn’t used to that. And so his maternal aunt the sister, the older sister of my grandmother took him in and was the one that raised them and gave them everything His education. He ended up becoming a doctor in Monterrey, because he’s from Mexico, and then he came to the United States in 1967 and served in Vietnam and did all that. So, but as you were speaking, all of that started to come to the forefront.
Speaker 3:
And.
Speaker 2:
I thought she was just the giver, just like your grandmother was, and it’s such a gift, you know, and I always think that God sends angels our way when we’re going through really dark chapters, people that are meant to guide us into our light, into our strengths. And so I saw that when you were discussing it with your the coach the PE coach that comes in and says you know, I want you to have purpose, I want you to feel good about yourself.
Speaker 2:
Let me empower you, and I see that throughout my dad’s life as well, like people that stepped in to empower his journey to become a doctor here in the United States and despite having to go to Vietnam and recently married, and my mother felt alone, but she also had angels that got sent to her in the form of neighbors and people that stepped in to help her assimilate into this country.
Speaker 2:
It’s not easy when you don’t speak the language fluently when you learn it via textbook and then you come and live here. That’s a whole different animal you know my mom because we suffered so much in those years. But I see your journey and a lot of it came forward to me and I know that’s also God kind of helping me cope for this week.
Speaker 2:
So I love your story and I do think it. It does play into the question of legacy, Like what kind of legacy do we want to leave behind when we start off our day of god? Please use me to the best of my like. Use my gifts to benefit humanity. That’s how I start off my days.
Speaker 2:
That’s my discipline you know, and I do have my 10 year old make her bed before she starts her day. Just you know, because I don’t want her to think that just because we have comfortable settings does not mean that you take for granted what you have. The gift of having a home, of having a family, of time with your family, those are gifts. People normally don’t take the time slow down and actually thank God for the simple blessing of a cup of coffee in the morning, or I’ll tell you one that really it took me a while I used to hate to do laundry.
Speaker 2:
I used to hate it. And then when I started to do gratitude journaling and I used to say thank you, god for having a washing machine so I don’t have to physically wash my own clothes like in old age, like my grandmothers had to do. And then the more I I started to say how grateful I was, the more it didn’t bother me to do laundry. And I think it’s true when, when we look at our how we’re using our gifts on a daily basis, we don’t see it as work or oh, we have to do. No, no, we get to do that, right, we get to do this life. We’re still alive and we do kind of have a responsibility to use the gifts that we’ve been given with others to help them. You know, I would hope that people have more of your attitude in life.
Speaker 3:
That’s been my goal, right, and so because of my grandmother, I think I probably got kind of extremely engrossed in the whole thing about habits, right. So there’s a couple things I think are important for everybody to consider every day. So the first is life is neither good or bad, but thinking makes it so right. Every day is exactly what I want it to be, right. For a couple of decades, when people would see me and say how are you doing, I’d say I’m living the dream and they would say, oh really. I said yep, yep. I tell my kids every morning it cannot, could not, will not get any better than this and if it does, don’t wake me up, I’m enjoying the dream too much, right. And so that was just kind of my, but that was my mantra, that was my thought process and that really stemmed from some of what you, you just shared.
Speaker 3:
Right, I had extreme depression with the loss of my parents. There was no counseling, there was no. Nobody sat and talked to us as kids, nobody spent time with us. It was just spent time with us. It was just one day they were here, one day they weren’t. And I became rather resolute not rather extremely resolute about not crying, crying, I cried and I cried and I cried and I cried and I cried.
Speaker 3:
And you know, as a child I think we you know, because I didn’t understand and I really didn’t have kind of anybody guiding me. I had people encouraging me but you know, I really thought my 13th birthday my parents were going to be there, shocking as that sounds right. So we’re five years down the road and I had. My only birthday party I ever had as a kid was when I turned 13. My grandmother said you can have a birthday party this year, you’re 13. And so I had about nine or 10 friends from the neighborhood there and had this expectation Mom and dad are going to be here, that part of the dream is going to die and they’re going to be here. And they weren’t right. And that was just kind of the, I think I kind of the. I think I kind of came to the conclusion I can’t let happy endings I mean I can’t let unhappy endings, fatal things destroy the happiness that tomorrow can bring.
Speaker 3:
My grandmother had all these, you know, little quirky sayings that made no sense to me at all as a kid, but but she would say, and she would see the depression she under. She understood. I think she understood it the best um, I had a dresser drawer and so underwear and socks, and then some t-shirts and then some shorts and some pants, and then I had a bottom drawer that just kind of had sweaters or whatever in it and, and I remember so this was a year and a half later, after my parents we went into summer, my grandma said we need to clean out your drawers and and get rid of some stuff. You’re going to get some bigger clothes, you’re growing and all that.
Speaker 3:
Anyway, we opened the bottom drawer and there’s a couple pieces of clothing there and when she pulls them off, there’s every lunch bag I had for the last year, folded nice and neat and all stacked in there. And she said what is this? Right, I could hear her voice right now, right, and I said, well, you wrote my name on all these. And she said, okay, but what? And I said I was afraid if I lost you, I wouldn’t have anything to remember you.
Speaker 1:
Oh, my God.
Speaker 3:
So this is what I had felt at the loss of my parents. Right, there was what I was trying to clean. This was a thing and that was part of the depression I had to deal with. But I end up overcoming the depression because I begin to become very optimistic. I read a book called Learned Optimism and I took the test and I was very pessimistic. I probably should have. You know, I’m glad I didn’t own a gun type thing. Right, it was that bad. But Seligman that’s the guy’s name, martin EP Seligman. He showed me a way to see beyond my depression and that influenced me in such a significant way, because I am a big. It’s all about habits, and habits is all about really good work, ethic and dependability, and so and follow through.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, the consistency of the habit is what forms that mindset and those new neural pathways too, because the more you do something, the more your mind gets used to it. It becomes a habit, and that’s how we start changing things in our mind, right.
Speaker 3:
You’re absolutely right. Yeah, I think habits breed habits. Right, aristotle said we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, it’s a habit. So you want to be excellent in life is what he was telling you was. Form the right habits that produce excellence. And I do believe habits breed habits. I’m a big advocate on health and so I walk regularly, I work out regularly, but that’s affected my eating habits, it’s affected my sleeping habits. It’s affected some of my choices about I walk. I don’t run anymore because I don’t want to fall Right.
Speaker 2:
And so injury is not going to make it.
Speaker 3:
Right, so so I’m, those habits are all formulated, and I do think, then, the habit of giving is a really important piece of life, absolutely, because we do have gifts and talents, we do have abilities, absolutely because we do have gifts and talents. We do have abilities and I think, if we’re perceptive, and from my vantage point, my grand I I don’t think my grandma loved me more than anybody else, but I think she, she doted on me because I listened. My brothers didn’t listen, my sister didn’t listen, right, they were also.
Speaker 2:
She said a lot of her. They were like like 13. What was it? 13, 16 and 18.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, and they gave her grief.
Speaker 2:
No, they’re not going to listen.
Speaker 3:
They gave her grief, and I tried to never give her grief. I hated to disappoint her. She could just look at me. She had this little thing she did with her eye where she squint her eye, and I knew I was in trouble. I knew what I’d done or said or the way I was behaving was wrong. Right, and I would, I would, I I could cry just from a distance from her. But but she had that propensity to help me understand how good giving is and how great giving is. And so I think these people that I’ve run into in my life, these father figures, they’ve perceived the need and then they decided, okay, I can help with that need and that’s the beauty of what we can do in life. But I do think we have to be intentional and purposeful in seeking those things as we walk through life.
Speaker 2:
You know every morning.
Speaker 3:
I think about who am I going to get to help today? Right, and I’ll tell you a quick story about how magic that is, or remarkable, or whatever. So I’m about 22 years old. I own a home with my brother in Long Beach area here and I go out one. This is 1030, 1130 in the morning. I work nights then, so I was off during the day, so as my day off, I went to go get a CD. I’ll never forget this and I pulled out onto the boulevard and as I’m starting to drive down the road, I see this old lady standing on the curb and she’s got a flat tire in her car and she’s just got this look on her face like, oh my, what do I do? Right?
Speaker 2:
So I decided, you know what I’ll pull over.
Speaker 3:
I thought of my grandma. As soon as I saw her I thought, oh boy, if that was. My grandma didn’t drive, by the way. She never learned how to drive. So I pulled over and I got out of my car and I said, hi, how are you, do you need help with the flat? And she was like, oh, could you do that? I said I think I could. I don’t you know. Well, you know, I think, if you’ve got everything.
Speaker 3:
And so, anyway, I started changing her tire and she, a very nice lady, says so, where did you grow up? And I said, well, I grew up over here she goes. And where did you live? And I said, well, I lived on the street. And she said, oh, my word. And then she said something else about um, where’d you go to school? And I told her where I went to school and all of a sudden she looked at me a little funny and she said you’re not one of the matzenbacher boys, are you? And I’m telling you, man, this, this shiver went up my spine. I’m looking at this lady saying who would know that name? Number one, but how? And I said I am. And she said oh, my word, I’ve been praying for you and your family since the day your parents died and I I thought I was going to lose it there for a minute.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, no, I thought I was going to lose it because I was just liking, liking, oh, my goodness, you know. And so we ended up having a great conversation and her name was Gladys and when I got home I called my grandma. My grandma says oh, she used to bring clothes for you and your brothers. Every so often she’s the sweetest lady. Oh, I wish I could have been there. And but here’s the kicker, right, I’m all done. And she pulls $5 out. She says here.
Speaker 3:
I said no, no, I can’t take that. She goes oh, no, young man, you’re going to take that. Don’t you tell me I’m, I’m your elder and I’m like your grandmother. Right, you don’t want to upset your grandmother, do you? Because you’re going to upset me. I took, I took the $5 bill and then she got in her car and I leaned in the window and I says you’re okay. She says I’m fine. I said good, then enjoy something special from me. Now I’m going to give back to you. So when I gave her the $5 back, she was like, oh, you’re so tricky. I said no, I’m not tricky, I just I can’t take the money.
Speaker 2:
Just keep praying for me. You’re a gentleman and gentlemen, don’t take money also from women, women, but I get it. But the other thing that I always have to remind my husband and this is something he just came to realize is that he was very self-reliant because of his trauma in his early childhood and he had a real problem receiving from people and I told him, I said you’re, you’re denying my gift and it hurts my feelings because I’m a giver.
Speaker 2:
My father was my parents. Both have always been givers and that’s something that I, when I did my father’s eulogy at his celebration of life, I focused a lot of attention on his generosity and that was a value that he lived by to a D his whole life as a surgeon. We lived in South Texas and there’s a lot of Medicaid down there, a lot of people that cannot afford urological surgeries.
Speaker 2:
You know they’re really expensive and I used to work with my dad in the summers as his office manager, you know, just to earn a couple and just to understand the work ethic and to be hard working like him. I was very much his daughter and I would notice I would do the adjustments for Medicaid. And what my father was getting paid was like really nothing for what, the amount of work he was doing. And one time I went up to him and I asked him. I said, dad, why? You know the other doctors they don’t accept Medicaid, you know, and he looked at me and he goes. So I took a note.
Speaker 2:
A long time ago I took an oath and I made a promise as a medical doctor and I intend to keep it. And if I don’t see them, who will? These people need surgery and my father wasn’t the type to cut just to cut. He would always tell people like these are your options, you don’t need surgery yet you can do this first. So he would sometimes even deny doing the surgery because they didn’t need it. He wasn’t going to cut them open if they didn’t need it, which is a very rare thing nowadays.
Speaker 2:
Right, you see all the abuses and the me movement here, but he was also very generous with his wisdom. He would go once he retired from medicine because his professional life got cut short. He ended up with a meningioma because of his service in Vietnam and it was a tumor that just kept growing back, no matter how many times they removed it. And he ended up having an ischemic stroke at the peak of his career, and so it really cut his professional life short, and my father didn’t know how not to work and not to retire.
Speaker 2:
He didn’t understand the concept of retirement and so he would. He was a voracious reader, always learning about finances and stocks and all that. I always told him. I was like, if you hadn’t become a doctor, you would have been awesome as a financial analyst or something you know, and he would go and share all of his wisdom with his colleagues to help them with their retirement funds. And he didn’t charge anybody anything, he just did it out of the goodness of his heart. Some people thought that he loved to listen to himself speak and that’s why he was doing it.
Speaker 2:
I was like, no, my father I mean, yes, he had an ego, there’s no question, doctors have egos. I’m fine, I’ll like, I’ll agree to that. But my father, when you looked closer, he was a very giving person and he taught me at a very young age. We would go to charity events together. In my 20s I worked a lot with the american heart association. I was their gala chair for a long time and my father would come to these gala events and would bid on these items and I would look at him. I was like why are you bidding on that? He goes I’m bidding on it to raise the, the prices on it so that the charity gets as much money as they need. He’d end up with this charity thing like these items that then he would give away to people as gifts, okay, and so he was like that, right, and I, I became a giver and in 2024, as he was dying, um, my husband and I made a commitment to what we were receiving from Christ.
Speaker 2:
We were giving back. We were giving back to charities that benefited children, specifically foster kids. It was one where we just started to donate our money, donate our time. This year we made a commitment to not just tithe 10% of our money. We had been doing that for more than 10 years now at the church. But I told him I want to tithe our gifts, our skill sets, and so my husband’s an electrical engineer. So he went and talked to the pastor and said, hey, we want to give back, but not just money. We want to give our time and our talent, want to give back, but not just money. We want to give our time and our talent. And I can help you guys set up like anything electrical. You know, because I’m an engineer.
Speaker 2:
And they were like, oh yes, we’ll use you. And then they looked at me and I said, well, I’m a life coach and I’d love to be able to be part of the healing team. And so now I do one onon-one coaching on Sundays with the HEAL team and this is like a topic that’s very important for people to listen that from the abundance that we receive from Christ, is what we give back Absolutely.
Speaker 3:
Because it’s not ours to keep.
Speaker 2:
It really isn’t, and I loved how you talked about nature and how it never takes from themselves. You know we’re the ones that take our. Our role with nature is to protect it. Correct, we sometimes don’t. We’re so used to just take, take, take and not give back that I think this message really needs to be heard loud and clear, because we’re going to run out of wonderful things on earth if we don’t take care of it and it it’s not about politics anymore, it’s about the reality of our world.
Speaker 2:
It’s like we got to look at our world and say, okay, how am I contributing to the solution? And how am I contributing to the problem? And let let me fix that, let me change my habits around that, and I really think that’s an important topic. Is this your purpose now To go on podcast interviews and talk about legacy?
Speaker 3:
Well, I did publish a book. It’s called Searching for Father. I can’t say because I wasn’t sure when I would get the book done, but I do want to do something on my grandma. Grandma’s pearls are wisdom, or something like that. You know one of her favorite?
Speaker 3:
Well, she had two things that just kind of always made my head spin as a kid. Right, mark, your attitude stinks. And she was right. Right, attitude is everything. 90% of life is attitude, it’s you know.
Speaker 3:
So thinking is neither you know good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Right, life is exactly what I want it to be. Every day Doesn’t make any difference. What comes my way. I can look at things and say, oh, that just totally upsets me. Or oh, that was a gift I didn’t expect. Right, and I’m not naive and I’m not unresponsive and I don’t try and placate things and I don’t try and shirk responsibility. I know when I’ve not performed well.
Speaker 3:
My kids know the five Ps. My daughter painted it when she was in college and the five Ps are prior planning prevents poor performance, right? So you get your hat wrapped around life and you know if you want to get an A in a class, you’ll get an A in a class and I got one daughter she’s not the one that painted it, but she had straight A’s from grade school all the way through college. Never got less than an A, which just innerviated my other three children, right, you know? Because you’d say you say I know you can get an A, don’t bring her up. I didn’t bring her up, I just said I know you can get an A if you want to get an A.
Speaker 2:
You were trying to empower them the way that you had been empowered as a child.
Speaker 2:
There’s nothing wrong with that there was a quote that came to me when you were speaking and it came from Dr JP Moreland. He’s in California somewhere I don’t remember where he’s at, but he came to our church many years ago and he was talking about generalized anxiety disorder because he himself had suffered two very severe bouts of that, and on the second bout God came to him and said this is going to be the last time you’re going to have this. You are a university professor, you have the skill sets to do research. I’ve equipped you with that. You’re going to have this. You are a university professor, you have the skill sets to do research. I’ve equipped you with that. You’re going to do research on generalized anxiety disorder and help other people and write a book. And his book is called Finding Quiet by Dr JP Moreland, and one of the lines in there really caught my attention Practice makes permanent attention. Practice makes permanent.
Speaker 2:
Practice makes permanent not practice makes perfect, because the perfection nothing’s perfect except God.
Speaker 3:
That’s right. God is good, that’s perfection.
Speaker 2:
We’re flawed, we’re human. So I always say practice makes permanent.
Speaker 2:
And I love that because it teaches us that the more we practice something and he was talking about meditation and how meditation can create new neural pathways for those that suffer from anxiety. And I suffer from anxiety, OCD and ADD, and I have all three and both of my kids have that as well. And I have all three and both of my kids have that as well. So we have been someone that has practiced mindset shifts for a long time, Because that’s why I believe God led me to become a life coach was to heal myself and heal my kids and help them set good habits from the moment they’re like little, little little. Yeah, Because that’s when you develop these. Bad habits, too is when you’re little.
Speaker 2:
And so I tell my daughter I was like you know, you walked into my older son from my first marriage. When we walked into his college dorm room she was like I can’t, it’s so dirty in there, I just can’t be in this room. And she was little and so I remind her of that. I said do you remember your face when you walked into Andres’s room? And she’s like yes, do you remember the feeling inside that you got I go, that’s the feeling I’m getting walking into your room right now? And she looked at me and I said don’t think you’re not becoming like that. Yes, because you’re not doing the things that are going to keep your mind organized.
Speaker 2:
When you suffer from depression, anxiety, ADD.
Speaker 2:
A lot of it has to do with the jumbling of your mind, and so when you start to get organized and I don’t mean like organized to where you’re obsessive about it, I mean just organized, disciplined you actually help that aspect out in your mind a great deal, and all these psychologists all agree in all their books and all the research is the more disciplined you are and the more good habits you have, the less rumination is going to happen up here, because a lot of it is is um the to-do list in our head, especially if you’re female, and I don’t mean that as a disrespect to the men, the men have single focus.
Speaker 2:
So you guys have a very beautiful biological ability to focus on one thing very well.
Speaker 2:
That’s why you guys listen so well and we don’t as women just see it, and but from the female perspective, we have a lot of open tabs in our mind and so when you add ADD or OCD to that, you can imagine what that does to you. And so it could be like a cycle, like a never ending cycle. And so good habits are great and practice does make permanent Any last minute comments you want to make to the listeners of Released Out Reveal Purpose Mark.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I just think that you do need to be intentional and purposeful in your life, and that starts every morning. So you know, there was an adage for a couple of decades at the end of the day in the business world, everybody was at the end of the day, at the end of the day, at the end of the day. And I was really resistant to that, to the point that I got up in a staff meeting and I said you know what I don’t want anybody say at the end of the day anymore, please, because at the end of the day it doesn’t make any difference. We’re Monday morning quarterbacks, right? It’s at the beginning of every day.
Speaker 3:
Set your mind on what you want to accomplish today, be prepared for what may come your way, but it’s at the beginning of the day. If you wait till the end of the day, most of us are going to be a little bit disappointed that we didn’t become or do what we should have done. But if you start the beginning of the day with I know what I want to do, I know how I want to help, I know who I want to give, I know where I’ve got to go, I know if you got all those things lined out, you get a much better outcome and at the end of the day, you can smile and you can rest and you can be at peace because it’s not fragmented, it’s not distracting.
Speaker 2:
And.
Speaker 3:
I do respect women. I have married to the same woman for 45 years. God gave women a place in life to be a helper, and that’s much more complex than anything a man has to do. I’ll just tell you that now.
Speaker 2:
No, I’m to the fact that we have to remind y’all to take out the trash.
Speaker 3:
That’s really sad helper, it’s, you’re a helper, you’re a helper, and it’s multitasking.
Speaker 2:
You have one task here and I have everything else, everything else.
Speaker 3:
So yeah, no, I get it I appreciate your time, Mark.
Speaker 2:
You’ve had such beautiful things to share with us about your grandmother and I do encourage you I want to encourage you to write a book on your grandmother, because I think her pearls of wisdom really need to be read out loud and really allowed to seep in, because she was a wonderful lady and deserves to be mentioned and deserves to leave a legacy in in in a book form.
Speaker 2:
So I really appreciate your time today and for the listeners of released out, reveal purpose. Remember Matthew five, 14, be the light. Have a wonderful week, stay safe.
Speaker 3:
Thank you. Thank you Be blessed, take care.
Speaker 1:
So that’s it for today’s episode of release doubt reveal purpose. Head on over iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on iTunes We’ll win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a $25,000 private VIP day with Sylvia Worsham herself. Be sure to head on over to sylviaworsham.com and pick up a free copy of Sylvia’s gift and join us on the next episode