The Power of a Durable Mind: Thriving Through Life’s Toughest Challenges

0:00 The topics and opinions express in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W four CY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want Working on Purpose. Now, here's your host, doctor Elise Cortes.

1:04 Welcome back to the Working on Purpose program, which has been brought to you with passion and pride since February of twenty fifteen. Thanks for tuning again this week. Great to have you. I'm your host, Doctor Release Cortes. If we've not met before and you don't know me, I'm an organizational psychologist and logotherapist, speaker and author. My team and I at Gusto Now help companies to enlighten and fortify their operations by building a high performance, invigorated culture and leadership activated by meeting and purpose. Our mission is to help our clients create a destination workplace where people flocked to join, are intrinsically motivated to perform at their best, can grown to the fuller potential, and are committed to stay the dynamic can deliver on a company's mission, which translates to higher profits for you. You can learn more about us and how we can work together at gusto dashnow dot com or my personal site at Lascortes dot com. Before we get in today's program, I'm really excited and thrilled to announce that registration is now open for a fabulous new conference for women for which I get to serve as the MCED.

1:58 That's why I know about it. Thrive in twenty five and is a gem packed few days in Chicago, June twenty fifth through the twenty eighth. Twenty twenty five is designed to develop women as whole seals, from bolstering your mindset to your financial acumen, to leadership, to incorporating nature and art into your life to raise consciousness and much more. You can visit Thrive dash in twenty five dot com from information so it's thrived a dash, the word ni in and then the numbers twenty five dot com Thrive dash in twenty five dot com. For more information and to register, you can use my promo code gusts Stow in all caps to gain access to free books and programs. I'll be gifting registrants when they when they register there as well. See you then, now today's program with us. Today we have Garren Store. From a young age, he was captivated by AHA and light bulb moments, those pivotal experiences, that experiences that connect passion with potential. This personal fascination evolved into a greater mission, leading him to co found Durable, where he helps athletes bridge their mental and physical performance, creating synergy between the two.

3:06 Over time, he expanded his expertise to focus on leadership, learning and development, applying his extensive skills and knowledge to elevate both individuals and teams. We'll be talking about his remarkable journey and what he's pouring himself into today. He joins his day from Saint Paul, Minnesota. Garon, Welcome to Working on Purpose. Thank you, Thank you for having me. It's so good to have you. And I want to give a shout out to Chief Danny Barton who brought us together. He's been a friend of mine for a few years and when he mentioned you and what you're up to, I was like, yep, I got to have him on. So thanks for being game. Thank you. Well, let's start with this wonderful thing that makes you really unique, Garon, and that is this fascination that you had with the aha or light bulb moments. And I love how you connect the potential that they have for passion and potential. So where did that come from and why is that so important to you?

4:00 I think for me, really early my ultimate mentors you know, my father and my parents, And I know that sounds cliche, is but I was able to really learn from them profoundly at a very early age. And it was the. Connecting dots and I found myself going, oh, that totally makes sense. And every time I had that, it was just this massive understanding, and later in life it became kind of the link of knowledge, skills and abilities to wisdom. And that just it just started at a very early age.

4:41 Well, that's amazing that you've carried that through and then really speaks to what I talk about, Gary one. I'm talking about the gift of purpose, which is that that lens that only you can see in the world, and with and through that you have the capacity to make a contribution that all of us grave that really matter and make a difference. And that's what I hear when you share that really remarkable perspective you got so early in life. Thank you. Yeah, so welcome. So since we did talk about purpose, and the show is called Working on Purpose, we have to talk about yours. So I understand your purpose is illuminating pathways that bridge individuals or groups to their potential and then yeah, to their potential. So tell us more about that. How did you when did you when did you get present that that's your that's your purpose, and how do you how do you live that?

5:32 I think I've had it early and I didn't realize it. Yeah, I think the right the acknowledgement of it came. You know, I've had some opportunity to pre and during that in my lifetime, my tenure with Lifetime and teaching leaders around the country on a monthly basis, and found that I was recognizing as a facilitator, was recognizing those moments for early leaders, people who were really wanting to get into it, making a commitment to getting into leadership, and then being in front of them and teaching. Some of the basics. For me, it's always been about that next step.

6:18 For them that creates those moments. I think as we as we get hire and hire, there are executive coaches that do a fantastic job working in the c suite. That's not me. For me, it's it's an earlier intervention. And really with my company Durable Minds and Athletes, that was truly apparent in starting to work with athletes set as early as early experiences were happening sooner and sooner in the athletic community, specialization was happening with athletes early. There wasn't anything that really bridged that maturity at an earlier age that they needed in.

7:03 Order to perform. So it's actually durable minds came out of of really a little bit of a frustration, right, is that frustration that fueled the purpose of doing what myself and my business partner had set out to do. Amazing. So you were talking about some of your work there at Lifetime Fitness as an organization. I happen to be a member of Lifetime Fitness. I love the organization. It's fantastic. But let's go back a little bit further here, because I do know that your you study and have a degree in sports medicine, and of course your early life was of course in fitness. Why that area? Why Why not you know architecture, art?

7:46 Why fitness? Well, it's it's funny you asked that. I have a lot of interests and when when I was determining what school. To go to, my options were. I was looking at and accepted to Norwich Military Academy in in Vermont. I get accepted at University of Maine Orno for Forestreet because. One of my options too, I'm a big nature buff. I love nature. I find my grounding in nature, and so that was a way to be. Involved in that. And then my third one was my passion for sports and athletics. Is was there a way to when push comes to shove and the time comes where I had to hang up the cleetes or the equipment, what's my option to still stay connected? And then once I visited those institutions, I really fell in love with the curriculum and the sports medicine end of things and really quickly allowed me to make my decision.

8:48 Awesome. I love it when that happens early. It was a long winding path for me, and I ignored what was whispering in me, which is really the. Fold of psychology. I found my way back to it eventually, but I admire when people just kind of get that early. Well it wasn't without question right when you get into the mix, but you know, I found my mother was instrumental in that because initially she had said, you know, if you if you open yourself up and you really look below the surface, you'll find the true nature of your calling and. What you want to do. But you have to be open to it. And when I arrived in campus at that that first time in campus, I.

9:33 Very quickly found. Eleven to twelve of my closest friends that I'm still in touch with today and we communicate on a monthly basis. And all of those combined solidified that experience. So I not I didn't once think about transferring to another institution to get a better experience. I found everything that I needed at the Keen State campus. That's amazing. Well, you've been your parents a couple of times now, your mother just in this last bed, and then of course your parents before, and I was really really interested to learn about your background. That you grew up in a home where your parents took an at risk youth, and I'm interested in learning about that. How did those experiences those years shape you? What did you learn from those experiences?

10:20 Well, it happened. It happened so early. It actually they were committed to that before my sister and I were born, and it happened really early, and so it's all we knew. To be honest with you, and different people came to our lives. When I say at risk, I needed to define that a little bit. There was addiction, there was bullying, There was individuals who were estranged from their family, and my father was doing work with them at the time, and as an ultimate really an ultimate professional, we never knew the details of it. We just simply knew that we could provide a home and it became another family member and.

11:06 Reality. And as he did that, and as we gained trust for those individuals and we got older and older, we started to understand a little bit more about those individuals who were joining our family because we were mature enough, started to become mature enough to open that up. But it was difficult. I'll give you an example. This is an extreme, but it's it's a tough one. My mother. At the time had left us and with we'll call them John to honor, to honor that confidentiality. But John lived with us, and.

11:48 We were young. I was seven, my sister was nine, she's two years older than me. And my mother went to go. Get groceries and go shopping, and John at the time was an addict and was really working hard on that. She took off. My dad, I think was at a meeting at the time, but it was early and so we were watching cartoons and little Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry and snuggling up and he was a family member and it was fantastic. Well, he had gotten up and removed himself from the couch, unbeknownst to us, he went and was getting high, and that was one of the expectations in the household that that just didn't happen, and.

12:30 He kind of broke those rules. Came back and at that time a majority of the drug was heroin heroin in speed and came. Back and long story short, we snuggled back in. We thought he had gone to the bathroom and went and put his hands up on the back of the couch and took two pillows and pushed them down onto my sister and I, oh, my gosh, doesn't recall that, but it was very clear to me as we you know, were recently. We're talking about it, actually talked about it a couple of times, and during that time then it felt different than rough housing.

13:13 I remember. I still have the memory today about it. My mother came home right at the right time and walked in the door to say hi and see how we're doing, saw what was happening, and dropped her groceries. But luckily she had the hindsight to know that the situation wasn't right, so she yelled and said, you know, John, what are you doing and put the pillows back up. Fidgety and put the pillows back up and said nothing, nothing. At all, And she went in and grabbed us and pulled us out and told him to get out of the house. And at that time, as my sister and I were talking, she goes, it makes so much sense that Mom and always said during that timeframe of our life that that was about the closest that they came to set rating because of that conflict and wanting to help an individual but realizing made a CROSSSS threshold in the boundaries, and my father was adamant about not letting this opportunity go. So it caused a lot of tension, and of course they protected us from that. But as he was leaving the door and slammed the door on the way out, I remember that it just didn't feel right.

14:27 I didn't know what it was at the time, and it didn't feel right. And so what my parents. Were extremely skilled at was. Educating us at the appropriate level of our age, and that became a norm, and we had different situations and that's a really tough experience and. That didn't have a great outcome, but we. Had so many success stories of those individuals living with us that to this day are just extremely tight family members. But it intrinsically cemented this awareness for empathy and compassion that we just saw on a daily basis, and there were such great examples of that.

15:17 That's amazing. I obviously was not didn't expect you to tell the story that you told. Hands that look on my face, but thank you for sharing such a real story. These are the moments of life. These are the things that you know we greatly impress upon as something and so I really appreciate that you went there. On this note, let's go ahead and grab our first break here, Garan, it happens and it goes by so fast. I'm your host, Doctor Earle's Cortez. We were on the York Gharren Store, the co founder of Durable Minds, where they focus on leadership, learning and development to elevate both individuals and teams. We've been talking a bit about some of his earlier parts of life that influenced who he is today. After the work, we're going to get into his journey with leukemia.

16:01 Stay with us. We'll be right back. Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at Elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise ali se at at last Coortes dot com. Now back to working on purpose.

17:10 Thanksteresting with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. I am dedicated to helping create a world where people realize the potential it works being a potential. Garran are led by inspirational leaders that help them find and contribute their greatness. And we do business at Betters the World. So I keep researching and writing my own books. My latest one came out in March of twenty twenty three. It's called The Great Revitalization. How activating meaning and purpose can radically enliven your business and I wrote it to help readers understand today's workforce, what do they want and need to really give their best and state with you because a lot has changed just in the last few years, especially after the pandemic. And then I offer twenty two best protresses to help fold into your culture to create that for them. You can find my books at least cooretes dot com or on Amazon if you are just joining me now. My guest is Garren Stower, whose purpose is to eliminate pathways that individuals or groups to their potential. So I have been very intrigued and did a little bit of research on leukemia, but I want to understand your experience. I found it pretty fascinating that it was twenty nineteen, so just five years ago when you learned you had leukemia, at about the same time, of course that you lost your mom. So let's hear a little bit about what was that like for you and why did you even how did you learn that you had LUKINI what what prompted if there was a test.

18:30 Or well, I committed to not being a guy, and what I mean by that is like avoiding the doctors and the physicians and being consistent. I think in the health and fitness industry. You have to be the example, right, And so although there are times when I delayed and put it off, I got into a regiment of regularly yearly evaluations. And as I was going into my yearly, I had an amazing physician and had my blood work and everything was great and the quick conversation and got in the car and headed home, and immediately I got a call from her saying, we get blood work back and your white.

19:11 Blood cell count is high. But she said, I'm I don't. Know, You're like extremely healthy and you know, so forth it just let's do it again. And I'm like, okay, that's fine. So we did it the next week and the same thing showed up. I got a call on my way home and she said, no, it's where it needs to be. And she said that I would love to have you looked at by a hematologist and oncologist. We need to look a little bit. Deeper into the blood work, and I don't want it to scare you, right, she did that disclaimer in there, but she said it will give us a really good information to allow us to move forward. And it's funny because I went home, right, I went home and I just said, yeah, I'm going to get referred to hematologists oncologist.

19:56 And my wife had said, you seem. Pretty laid back about that, and I said, well, it's it's out of my control. It's it's not it's not I don't have enough information. I am an individual that tends not to react until I have information. I need to make an appropriate decision about anything, including how I'm going to react to that. And so I said, we'll see, We'll see how it goes. And a couple of weeks later I went in and met with them and had my blood work, and very. Quickly he was able to say you do you have you have CLL, which is. Chronic lymphocytic leukemia. And I said, okay, what does that mean?

20:36 And he said, it's in your blood, it's in your bones. We'll probably need to get a bone marra biopsy from your pelvis and then evaluate it further, and then from there we'll monitor and we could go a year, we could go two years, three years without doing anything, without any type of treatment, but at some point there would be intervention. So it became the waiting game. I call it. I call it the purgatory right where every single time you go in. You're waiting for some sort of direction and when it's like, oh, your white blood cells are still rising, but we don't have anything there. That purgatory is is really where I truly learned, uh that your self talk can be extremely disruptive if you're not aware of it.

21:35 Right. A narrative that you create in the purgatory will can either fuel or dismiss any anything that you have going on in your body. So my my real quick commitment was just control. I can only control what I can control, and as we get information, we'll see what is next. Uh. And they were great in terms of educating me along the way, which which was which was wonderful, but. It became a couple of years of of monitoring. The hard part was is that that week, so I got diagnosed on a Monday, my sister had called me in the week and said, Mom isn't doing well.

22:21 I know you were out here recently, but if you. I'm just telling you, if you don't come out now, you might miss your opportunity to say goodbye. And and so my wife said yet that there's not even an option like go and total support, which was amazing. I got out there on Friday and was able to be with her and had some some special moments there. But I wasn't my mother with her empathy. I didn't share with the family and I went out there. It wasn't my it wasn't a priority, and so I made a determination not to share. I didn't need my mother thinking about that as she was passing. I didn't need my sister as a caregiver, and certainly my dad being exhausted from being a caregiver as well.

23:16 And so I withheld that information for a period of time and then and then brought it back to the table with the family. Wow, I really admire your strength and just your focus, and I can appreciate that that would that would definitely not be the time to share that news. I totally appreciate that, having lost both my parents have been there for my mother's passing. I really understand that and applaud that choice. What's treatment? Like, what are you doing for treatment? You know, it's interesting, I laughed, because I have had an extremely uneventful treatment except for day one. So day one for me of treatment and was on January eighth, As we all know the dates in which this stuff begins for us, right It was a two day treatment and the first day I went in and I received an ivy small iv it's called pre medicine, a small ivy of benadru made me a little tired, and then turned right around twenty minutes later and put a small bag of steroid which woke me up immediately right after that.

24:26 And it was all preparation for obituzmab, which is a new drug infusion drug that I had taken. And then two weeks later I added a chemo medicine that I take at night, pills that I chemo pills that I take at night. But on that day one my wife was with me and I was sitting in there, and she looked at me and she said, your face is really red and I'm like, yeah, I know, it's warm. I'm a heater. You can't even lay next to me without you know, at night. It's just the way I am. And then she looked at me soon after that and said, your eyes are getting red and I'm like, really, I don't feel like they're singing at all. And the nurse had said, please let us know if there's anything different, so of course she did that, and then not thirty seconds after that I started my airway started to close and I felt it rising up and getting up into my neck and I was having trouble breathing. And then thirty seconds after that, at least I swear an archer was behind me and shot an arrow in my trap in my sacroom, just two spots in my body about the size.

25:48 Of a quarter. There was excruciating pain, and when I say that, you're talking to an individual who's been hit by a car before. Like it was really hard to sit still. And usually I can work through discomfort. I worked through pain. I don't have to suffer, right, so I can breathe. But I couldn't breathe, so I got a little bit anxious, still under control, and the team came in really quickly, put a little shot into my IV line, and within five minutes I was back to normal. But to tell you the impact of that, when I went in for my first treatment, my white blood cell count A normal count is forty five hundred to ten thousand. My count was one hundred and thirty five thousand, which was the reason I was starting treatment.

26:38 The next day. And by the way I could just share this quickly, I was at a twenty five milli liter drip, which is like drip, go home, have dinner, come back drip. There's just so much time in between. It's a slow process, but I'm super glad they did it that slowly. But then they said, we'll see you in sixteen hours. And then we'll start you at fifty mill leader drip and go to four hundred. And I said, I just turned into Jackjack from The Incredibles, and you're telling me you're going to jump to a four hundred millileter. So I was a little bit anxious in that situation. Message to me was the body learned, the body learned, so trust us, which I did. The next morning, I went in and did blood work before my treatment, and I had gone from one hundred and thirty five thousand down to twelve hundred.

27:30 Wow, so amazing. It eradicated every abnormal cell that I had at that time, which a majority of was in my spleen. My spleen had gone from eleven centimeters to twenty, which is the reason we started treatment. All of this without symptoms. And so the next day I went in a little bit anxious and then got into treatment. In the next six hours, I was doing work I was on my computer nothing and since then I haven't had anything. And I'm gonna be honest with you. That was difficult. The physical was difficult, right, But the hardest part for me was I started to develop this survivor's guilt.

28:15 So I was going into the clinic and. People are covered in blankets with sockats on, trying to stay warm, trying to sleep as they're hitting treatment. I have another one and then behind another curtain who is burning from the inside out. Everybody's experience is so different. And here I. Come hugging my nurses and how are you great? And I said to them, I. Said, I'm struggling with this because I'm not having the same experience as they are. And she said, she's great. She goes, you are what they need to see, right, and so don't.

29:00 Not bring your energy and your your lights and all of that. And she goes, that's what they need to see because that's what they're that's what they'll become, that's what they're working towards. Is just you know, you've. Had a different experience and allowed you to get there sooner. And that really helped me through that. Then then it became I come to the clinic with purpose. Is just a treatment, so amazing story. Now I want to just make sure I understand. So if I didn't follow in my g I'm guessing that my listeners and viewers didn't either. I didn't quite understand the pain that you were talking about. What what? What was behind that? It was? It was it was the treatment. They were either spots in my body that were compromised somehow.

29:41 Oh okay, it. Was on my sacred or a trap and that's where I felt. The pain those areas. Okay, okay, it was a part of the medicine. Got it, Okay, got it. Well, Now of course I have to really understand just given the work that I do, and then who I am. I want to understand what living with leukemia talking about life and it's meaning. Yeah, so I appreciate that. For me, it's as simple as this. When you every decision that. You make can either put you in durability or in drama.

30:23 And and. I do not care to feed the beast. So for me, you know, I would meet every couple of weeks with my brother in law and we would meet at a micro brewer and catch up on times and have a beer. I went in and as soon as I found that my platelets had dropped a little bit, I'm like, okay, what does that mean? What's involved in that? And like it could be alcohol and I'm like, well, I don't drink that much, but that's done. And he's like, I'm not saying you have to stop, and I'm like, no, no, no, I'm not going to feed the beast. So decisions like that were really helpful, trying to reduce the amount of sugar all of those things is they're not necessary and and so we're limiting the amount of things that are necessary. Not that I don't indulge here in air, but it becomes a very conscious decision as well.

31:19 As I have a number of friends that have their own health challenges, and my conversation to them is I'm available for unconditional support, but I have to tell you I can't take. On the emotion of your disease, but I will be there however, I can be there for you. So setting boundaries and conversations along those lines are really, I think critical, and it really, you know, helped me move my blood marker. All my blood chemistry is in the green now, my spleen is back to normal. I still have chemo pills that I'll take until the end of January, but for all intents and purposes, it's there.

32:01 But I know it's a chronic disease. So you had commented to me on my Facebook post and how I made it a kind of a story around competition and being competitive. And one of the things is that I know it's coming back to play for another season, right but what I know from playing it this last season is I know that I will be an extremely educated competitor when it decides to show itself again. So much to learn from you and be inspired by you, Garin, I'm really really happy to know you and cross paths and list let our listeners and viewers just kind of think about what you shared there while we take our next break. I'm Alice Cortez with It on the air with Karen Stower. He's the co founder of Durable Minds, where they focus on leadership, learning and development to elevate both individuals and teams. For this part of the show, we've been hearing about his experience with leukemia. After the break, we're going to hear more about the work he's doing at Durble Minds.

33:03 We'll be right back. Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at Elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to a lease a l I se at a lascortes dot com.

34:03 Now back to working on purpose. Thanksteresting with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Relie Cortes. I mentioned in allows break that my latest book came out in March tw twenty three, called a Great Revitalization. What I did for you is I created a three page assessment that you can pull off my website to determine the extent to which your culture is meeting the needs of today's discerning workforce. It's at gustodashnow dot com. It's it's the assessment. You'll find it there on most of the pages if you are just now joining us. My guest is Garren Stower, whose purpose is to illuminate pathways that bridge individuals or groups to their potential.

34:45 So before we get. Into what you're doing at Gurbal Minds, I did find it pretty interesting and wanted to get you to speak on the George Floyd murder was a very important experience for you in your life. How so. You know being in Saint Paul kind of ground zero for that was Minneapolis, and. We we live right in between the two. And so when when that event happened, a lot of the aftermath or that a lot of the incident flowed into Saint Paul, and we were were actually just a couple blocks from the ground zero of where it entered into Saint Paul.

35:31 It was a target that was right next to a police precinct. And at that time when we were seeing what was going on, I had a scanner on my on my phone and uh, it was it was important to me to understand kind of what was going on as it was continuing to migrate throughout the Twin Cities, and uh, what I was hearing on the other end is just down the road there was a pharmacy that had been set ablaze walking distance from us from our home, and there was a report of one hundred and fifty to two hundred individuals gathering and starting to throw rocks at the fire department as they're trying to put out the blaze.

36:17 And it had gotten to the point where we put together a bug out back. Right at the end of the day, is my safety for my family was number one out of anything. Although I very much liked to support community, that became my priority and just to be on the safe side. Well, sure enough, I get other scanning and it's a police scanner. Other scannings of an Amazon truck that was getting pulled over by a car with individuals in it with AR fifteen's and they were looting the Amazon truck and so the driver had gotten out and had fleed and just left the truck and there as.

36:59 Well, and that was very close. That was we were getting close to. Home, and I said, you know what, let's get our bags, let's go to the cabin, let's get out of town. For twenty four hours and and let's just stay tuned and see where it goes. And we did. We went to my sister in laws first and then ended up going to the to the cabin after that, and when we came back, things had eventually settled down and. It was all It was all in the COVID. Time as well, so there was a lot going on, and we had made the decision to as rinks were shut down and hockey was not happening anymore, and things along those lines, I had put together.

37:48 We called it the COVID Camps. They were weekly themes that I did with my daughter and my nephew to keep them engaged and to have fun with them, and a cardboard camp building sculpture. But one of them was an awareness around the George Floyd incident and really looking at the bigger picture and having appropriate conversations as my parents had had. With my sister and I when we were younger. It was my opportunity to bridge that and to have that conversation, you know, with our daughter at that time, who who out of my four children, she was the one that was still at home and my nephew and we put together and had them do canvases and paintings of how they felt about it. And then we went and we were able to show them the unfortunately the massive destruction from that event, and went to the square, the ground zero square, and left their canvases on the sidewalks along with other memorial that was set up from other people there to acknowledge it and to really say here's what I understand about it, and then now we can set it down and now we can move forward.

39:11 And it was a crafting activity that allowed to put some closure and start working on, you know, revitalization, whatever that meant for our family, right. I kept going back to early intervention for my sister and I was so significant to us, and now here we're facing it. With our with my wife and our own children. So we needed to take an opportunity to make that a productive, productive event or an opportunity. I appreciate you sharing that incredibly tragic, horrendous event very much so. And I hope, I hope that we as a nation learned a lot from that experience, from that loss.

40:00 I don't know if we have, but I the optimism, the optimist in me says that I hope that we have and are. But thank you for sharing what you did around that. That was just I don't know what what I had no idea what you were going to say about that experience, and that was incredibly refreshing. So thank you. So let's let's know that and. Go on to what you're doing at Durable Minds one. I love the name of your organization, your company, Durable Minds, Right. Names are so so important, and clearly you know mindset is a big part of what you do, but you know this whole notion of helping athletes link their mental game to their physical game is part of what you do there. So can you just kind of start telling us a little bit about what you do there? How do you find the people that you work with and how do you help them?

40:43 Yeah, so. The business was. My brother in law and I had met on it and again at one of our times together, and you have been thinking about similar things at the same time. He has a son who's a goalie. And in hockey, and when you win three to two, you still let two in. So there's an emotional tax, right that comes with some of these positions. And what if game like there isn't anything available like our coaches are dealing with, So much behavioral things either on a field or on.

41:23 A pitch, or on an ice rink, and an ice rink. That it's taking away from the effectiveness sometimes of working on strategy and skills and so forth and so on. So we had put together a curriculum that allows us to empower the athlete to take some of that responsibility away from the coach and put the oneness back on the athlete and actually have them build an accountability team around them to help hold them accountable to their own behaviors. And what the intention is is to take some of that stress away from the coach and away from the parents and onto the athlete to be the best version of a competitor that they can be.

42:12 And it's really we really felt like. Again a lot of colleges and universities have resources available to them, but the high schools they don't. Yet we're seeing these behaviors. Earlier and earlier in the athletic careers and with specialization coming earlier, and so. Again it became what are we going to do about it? And we decided that we would work on that and put together a business that address that. Amazing, absolutely amazing, and of course, you know, I appreciate as well that you know you, how you situate this idea of you know, this elevated perspective that I think you have here on linking mental health with physical games, I think is very especially given your own experience competing with leukemia, as you like to say, just very interesting to me how there is a really interesting thread that goes through your whole life when it comes to fitness, mental, mental acuity, how you manage your own mindset. It's quite fascinating to me how that's all woven together for you.

43:23 Thank you. Yeah, I've been. Lucky to continue to follow what it is that I love to do, and the health and fitness was just the beginning of them for me, and I have put a premium on surrounding myself with such as yourself, with people that have an elevated experience even over myself, to really link these opportunities of knowledge and skills abilities to hopefully have wisdom moments that can work people. I love that wisdom moments. I'd like a few of those please. I thought it was also quite interesting that you situate that creativity and resourcefulness are two areas that you were especially especially lean on in your consultative practice with leaders and organizations.

44:11 Why and how so? Well, I think one of the things that I found is that I think systemically, and I say this in society as well as business and so forth, is there is more than enough information out there. And as an organization, what I found sometimes is that a lot of the information that's available to its their employees or. Their athletes. Is not filtered in an intuitive architecture. Right, So it's oh, we have that, Oh we have that. And when you do a significant discovery session, which by the way, thank you for that that last session that you had in that area.

44:53 When you have a significant, significant. Either strategy session or discovery session, you find out that the effectiveness of all that material, even though it's available. It may not be hunting. Right. So, giving an. Example, as I worked with a swim company that was looking to educate their instructors when. They came on and it was a gentleman who. I had worked with, who was the CEO, who called me in to work with that company and say, hey, we have information, we have a training that we do for employees, but in my opinion, it's not where it needs to be. And so doing the discovery session I found out that there was if you were to lay all of the collateral out on the table, you wouldn't know where to begin. And so I worked to build an architecture around that. So from the time that somebody says yes to employment, they're onboarding become seamless, their training becomes seamless, and then the experience to the member is a experience that then can get publicized in the appropriate way.

46:00 So those outcomes. So I built a frontline certification that went from a net promoter score of seven to a net promoter score of seventy three. Wow. And I had measured all employees beforehand, and I had measured all employees over a period of time after the new certification had. Been launched, and it was a significant difference. And so my belief is is that in that situation, we had to deconstruct in order to then top of that, let's figure out a way to do it creatively in today's world so that more of it becomes sticky. Right, That's the at the end of the day, That's what we're asking is that we can get a percentage of attention to the content over a period of time far more significant than we might have when we first started.

46:55 That is really impressive. Seven to seventy three for a net promoter score. That is phenomenal results. Thank you, Yeah, very proud of them. Yeah, yeah, that is terrific. I was going to ask you if you had a case study, and that pretty much qualifies for that listener as anything else who wanted to share That just kind of also illuminates for our listeners and viewers. Just say in about thirty seconds maybe kind of how it is you work with people. Yeah, so I've been in the learning and development. Process I've always used, you know, in the company I work for, is called the five d's in designing even durable minds, it's the Addy process, right, the learning We assess and design, developed, implement, and evaluate.

47:40 But the question becomes is how are you doing each one of those? It's different because some companies resources are limited if they're a startup company, and others have extensive software that you can use, and so I go back to the discovery process of like all of that is illuminated in a really really great discovery presence, and so it's no different For myself, it was no different when we started building durable Minds. Wonderful and amazing, So Crisp. So here we already got at the end of the show. You know, this show is listened by people around the world, Garren who are interested in either elevating their own experience of work, learning more as to how to become more more of an effective or inspiratual leader, or are wanting to architect our culture that is what I call a destination workplace.

48:29 What would you like to leave them with? Well, I think the work starts with you as an individual, and. I think at the end of the day, one of the most significant exercises that I go back to constantly, multiple times per week is this exercise around what is it that I'm wanting to attain and then out of those experiences that I'm having along the way, what's in my control and what's out of my control or excuse me, what's out of my control? And then what's in my control? And I create a significant link to the things that are in my control and how it will positively influence. A thing that are out of your control, because it. Can go south as well, right if we're if we don't have what we call green zone.

49:14 Behavior, behavior that's productive. And so when we link that, it allows us to stay out of the drama and. Really either move to or stay in the durability. What a fantastic quitty close. Garin so happy to know you and share with my listeners and viewers around the world. Thank you for coming on, working on purpose and sharing your heart and soul. Oh, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Listeners and viewers, you're going to want to learn more about Garren Store and the work he does at Durable Minds, So just head on out to durableminds dot net. That's his website, durableminds dot net. Last week, if you missed the live show, you can always get to be recorded a podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. We are on Karen Goldenbiddle, the author of The Untapped Power of Discovery, How to Create Change that Inspires a Better Future. She gave us some provocative insight on how to create a culture of discovery and organizations and shared several inspiring stories showcase and the results of people and organizations who embrace the discovery process and.

50:14 From her book. Next, we will be on the air with Ben Lytel talking about his powerful book The Potentialist to the Pursuit of wisdom. His book is packed with so many novel insights on human potential, and we'll showcase as many as we can in our conversation there next week. See there, Remember that work is. One of the best adventures and means of realizing our potential, making the impact we crave. So let's work on Purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortes, each week on W four C. Why. Together, We'll create a world where business operates conscientiously, leadership inspires and passion performance and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose they crave. See you there, Let's work on Purpose.