Sense of Soul - Blind Ambition

Episode Date: May 24, 2021

We had the pleasure of speaking with with the High-Impact Motivational Speaker Chad E. Foster. He joins us today to talk about his book Blind Ambition and his journey of how as a young adult in college with many dreams he went blind from an inherited retinal disease.  Although he had been robbed of his eyesight, it could not take his ambition. He overcame his challenges and went on to graduate, even making the Dean’s List with straight-A’s and was hired by a Global Fortune 500 consulting firm out of college. He created what software giant Oracle said would be impossible: Giving millions of people the ability to earn a living by becoming the first person to create customer relationship software for the visually impaired. Today he is  a successful corporate executive, at software leader Red Hat.  Chad’s story and book will inspire you to face your perceived limitations, just as he has faced his blindness. Chad pushed himself beyond any self limiting beliefs and he has choose live a like doing just that. Today he is teaching and inspiring others to thrive with change and to explore new possibilities where they once may have only seen obstacles.  https://www.chadefoster.com Order his book Blind Ambition  www.mysenseofsoul.com Please Subscribe, Rate and Review! Thank you!

Welcome to the Sense of Soul podcast. We are your hosts, Shanna and Mandy. Grab your coffee, open your mind, heart and soul. It's time to awaken. Today we have with us Chad E. Foster, a high impact motivational speaker, a successful corporate executive, international motivational speaker and the author of Blind Ambition. Chad uses his gift of going blind to teach and inspire us to thrive with change, creating a more resilient leadership culture. Chad's story is sure to inspire you to face your perceived limitations as he has faced with his blindness. Chad's story is truly inspirational of walking by faith, not by sight. It is our pleasure to have Chad with us.

What's up, Chad? How are you? I am doing very well, Shana. How are you? Good. Nice to meet you, Chad. Mandy, how are you? I'm good. I'm actually really good. I'm in sunny Florida for a week. Nice. Just enjoying the ocean. It's a great little getaway. Where do you guys go? Well, now we go to Destin, Florida because we live in Atlanta, but we would go to Southwest Florida where it's always warm and where they have the amazing Siesta Key Beach, which is just phenomenal. Love that beach. Destin is definitely my favorite. Well, I lived in Louisiana. My family lives there. So like we'd always go to

Dustin because it's only like three, four hours away. They have some good Cajun cuisine, which is nice. That always speaks to my heart. The quickest way to my heart is through my stomach. So where are you at now, Shanna? Where are you located now? You said you're from Louisiana. I am. Yeah. We're in Colorado. That might be my favorite place on earth. I was in Aspen for a guy's ski trip for a week. We got seven days of skiing, three or four days of powder. Love, love, love Colorado. I can't get enough of it.

I started skiing seven years ago, and it's just one of the most amazing feelings you can have. I just absolutely love it. That is so freaking remarkable. I watched some videos with you skiing and it's amazing. I think that people would appreciate things a lot more if they didn't have some of their senses. And I have to tell you that since I had COVID, I have learned that I have not had my taste or smell since December. Oh, wow. Really? And it sucks. Yeah. Yeah. That's rough. I don't know what I would do. I did have

COVID and it was only three or four days for me that I didn't have that. Thank God. Because you know, if you take away my sense of taste, which, you know, sense of smell does that. I'm not sure what I would do because eating for me is a hobby and a sport. I just, I love it because it's one of the few vices that I have. I'm not sure what I would do. I'm sure I would figure out how to power through it, but certainly, you know, skiing is, is unique and different, not being able to see. And maybe it would even be a little boring if I could see where I was going. Maybe it would just be, you know, a little too bland, but it definitely

is an interesting endeavor skiing down the mountain, not being able to see. And I think a lot of people, at least I thought of it initially, because, you know, I wasn't always blind. When I think of that, when I thought of something like that, you know, just going into it, not knowing the art of the possible, I was thinking, well, okay, I'll, you know, go down some bunny slope and it'll be this kumbaya moment and everybody will sort of feel good about getting a blind guy and a pair of skis. And that's really not it at all. If you've seen the videos, you know, that it is, it's not, let's take it easy and it's, it's not, let's take it easy. And it's, it's aggressive, right? We're skiing aggressively. We're skiing blacks and, you know, even some double blacks to,

to really push the limit, because I believe that if we're not pushing flirting with the edge of our comfort zones, then we're not growing, right? We're never growing and that's on the mountain and that's in life. And I just, I believe that in order to grow, we have to flirt with discomfort and we have to make sure that we're getting outside of that comfort zone and sort of living outside that comfort zone and being right there on the fringe so that we can expand the comfort zone. Yeah. And you talk a lot about that, about not having those self-limiting beliefs that prevent us from being that brave? I think a lot of people do limit themselves. And some of that's just based upon what they've observed in their own lives growing up or what they've been exposed to. But it really does, a lot of it gets down to

the stories that we tell ourselves, the narrator in our mind. You know, I was talking to a friend of mine who's president and CEO of a company in Northern Virginia, Joe Radioff, and Joe, he put it in a nice way. He's like, it's your internal marketing team, right? And that really is a big part of it. How do you choose to narrate things to yourself? There are the facts of the situation, you know, and there are the stories we tell ourselves about the situation. And, you know,

I could sit around and tell myself that, you know, I'm blind and poor me and this happened to me because I have really bad luck. And that could be true. But there's an alternative story. There are several, but one is I went blind because I'm one of the very few people who can deal with it. I can own it. I can make it look good and I can help other people with it. That could also be a correct interpretation of it. So we have to be very intentional about the stories we tell ourselves because at the end of our lives, we all become those stories. My son is cleaning his room. He's 17. Disgusting, right? Disgusting. Thank God I can't smell right now because I know what it should smell like because I'm seeing all the stuff. And he had on his lanyard that he has for school. He's on the spectrum of autism.

He had on there this charm and it said, don't diss my ability. Oh, I like that. Isn't that a good one? I like that. I do too. Don't diss my ability. But it's so funny because I think that we all have abilities and disabilities. I agree with that.

I think a life without obstacles removes opportunity for growth. And I believe that some of the biggest obstacles we have in our life present the most opportunity. I look at my own life and wonder how much could I help people if I had never faced adversity? Overcoming my blindness has unlocked possibilities that I could have never imagined back then. And now, you know, I'm convinced that I lost my vision to help other people find theirs. That's right. And so next time you have the opportunity, Tom, don't diss my ability. I like that. I am going to borrow that. I will. I will definitely give attribution because I like it. Look, I'm not, you know, there are certain places where you have to kind of acknowledge your weaknesses, right? And you know, this isn't something I really enjoy and it's not really something I'm going to be

excellent at, right? As an example, I don't think anybody's going to bring me in to be an airline pilot as a blind guy. Not yet. I don't know. You're pretty amazing. But it's having that rawness with ourselves, really knowing ourselves authentically and acknowledging our blind spots and being aware and bringing attention to our blind spots and understanding what are my talents? What are my strengths? What am I not good at? And which of these are within my sphere of influence and which are not? And the ones that are not, the things I can't control, like my blindness, I have to figure out what greatness looks like. I have to figure out how to make blind look good so that I can create a vision for myself that motivates me to change

all of the things that are inside my sphere of influence. So at first it was in college and I went blind. I had to relearn how to learn. How am I going to learn? I was a visual learner, which wasn't really all that helpful as a blind person. And then, all right, I need to graduate and ended up making straight A's in the dean's list and got a job offer from top consulting company. And one thing led to another in my career, but if we don't envision what greatness can look like, it really waters down our ability to motivate ourselves. So we have to envision what greatness is for us and for everybody. It's different. You

know, my, my vision of greatness for me was different than what it is for some people. And my vision for myself has evolved over time as one would hope that it would, right? Our goals shift, our priorities shift, and our ability to move towards those objectives improves over time with continued, I think, ambition. You know, that's the name of my book, Blind Ambition. I think it takes ambition, but it also takes a lot of effort and perspective. And, you know, you have to put in the work. It just doesn't, you know, I certainly didn't have anything fall in my lap, having to relearn how to learn and then engineer my software with my eyes closed just to be able to do my job and, you know, having success in the business world, facing all the same basket

of challenges that everyone else faces. Only the fact that, you know, I was blind in addition to that I had technology that would speak to me and a dog that literally walked me around from from room to room and walking into a conference room with a German Shepherd let me tell you the first time you do that it's a little unsettling because you go to job interviews you go go to, and at the time, university classes, not many people are walking in with a 100 pound German Shepherd, but I was. And, you know, I was uncomfortable and then all these interviews and classes and then traveling domestically, not being able to see and meeting clients and now traveling internationally all over the world, not being able to read the signage, speak the language or see where I'm going at all and doing

it with a dog in some countries where it's not really all that common to have a dog and having a real thick sheaf of paperwork to take my dog everywhere I go, but still yet pushing myself. You know what? I want to get up at 5 a.m. and get my workout in. And I'm in a hotel in China and I have no idea where the gym is, but I'm sure they have one. I'll figure it out. I'll find my way to the gym at 5 a.m. and I'll work out and I'll find the machine somehow. And all those things just, I just continued expanding my comfort zone. And it really forced me, my situation at a really early age, forced me to get comfortable with me, forced me to really love me, which I think a lot of people kind of struggle

with. I think there are a lot of people out there who have a hard time being authentically true to themselves. And I did too at first when I was going blind. I didn't really want to be blind. We ask kids all the time, what do you want to be when you grow up? None of them said they want to be a blind person, you know, none of them. But I had to figure out how to embrace that. And, you know, getting my dog, my first guide dog forced me to do that because here I was the very thing that I'd been trying to hide because I was ashamed of it for so long. All of a sudden now I'm parading around with a 100 pound German shepherd. And it's not really easy to hide a German shepherd in a conference room. So you'd better own it, right? There's no, there's no way around it. So I learned how to own it and get comfortable

with it. And at first I love myself in spite of these imperfections, but now it's because of these imperfections. I know it's made me who I am. I'm a better person because of my blindness, not in spite of it. It's taught me the importance of perspective and focus and effort and determination and how to leverage all those things to live my best life. You know, Shanna and I talk a lot about how we believe self-love and self-awareness are the foundation to finding your purpose and living your best life. In your book, you said that self-awareness was forced upon you by your blindness, but it had made you a better person and that, that you feel like this awareness is what helped you to find your purpose.

We truly believe that like, if you can just bring that awareness and that discernment into yourself and get to know you, and we are so not taught that when we're young children, how to get to know yourself and how to love yourself, that really that happiness is found within. Do you agree? A thousand percent. Most people in our society look for some external factor to make them happy. They're looking for a promotion. They're looking

for a raise, getting into a school, some event. Maybe it's a partner. Maybe it's somebody or something will make me happy. Well, I think that's garbage, personally. I think happiness comes from inside of us. And these other things, they may create moments of joy. Okay, but I don't really think that's happiness. Happiness for me is really my set point. What is my set point? Sure, there are moments where I wax and wane in the emotions. I get high and I get low.

I get a lot of joy and maybe I get sad because of something. But what's my set point of happiness? And for me, that comes from within. It comes from my perspective on life. And I learned this when I was going through this really difficult transformation for me. I was going blind, and I was really sad. I was depressed. I was angry. I was in denial. And I went to Leader Dogs for the Blind to get my first guide dog. And while I was there, I arrived on campus there in Rochester Hills, Michigan, with this very woe is me mentality. You know, I was asking, why me? And I was asking that question with a really bitter and angry tone.

Why me? You know, I was very upset about it. Everything that I'd known had been stolen from me. My life had been stolen from me. I had this self-identity growing up. I never saw myself as a disabled person. And now all of a sudden it was forced upon me and that's not how I saw myself. And it was a really difficult thing. It was literally an identity crisis that I was going through at 21, two, three years old. So can we talk about that? Like, I know that you, you liked to play soccer when you were younger. You, you know, we're just that you had a regular childhood. You could see, okay, what, what happened? You inherited a disease. That's right. Yeah. I have retinitis pigmentosa, which is more

commonly known as RP and it's an inherited condition. You know, my parents noticed where I had difficulty in really dark areas when I was three years old. And so they took me to Duke University where I was diagnosed with RP. And they were told that they should sign me up for a special school for the blind, but instead they put me in soccer. And, you know, that's a big part of my identity came from that. Had they signed me up in some special school, maybe I would have grown up seeing myself as disabled and had different expectations for myself. But my self-identity was anchored to the fact that I was playing soccer. I wrestled, I played football and basketball.

I drove a car. I, you know, rode bikes, motorcycles, and jet skis. I was really active and extremely competitive. And I think all those things were really good for me because it kind of taught me a little bit about the tough love that I would need. And my parents were certainly a big part of that, holding me to, I would say, an even higher standard than my brother who could see. And we're both part of the same family. It's a genetic condition. And so come to find out, I was tested at Emory several years later. This has been maybe 10 years ago now. And they found out the gene that I have, the genetic mutation is autosomal recessive. Translation, you have to have two bad copies to be symptomatic, which is why neither of my parents have any symptoms of RP and neither does my brother.

So both of my parents were carriers for it. And they each donated one bad copy to me. My brother, I don't know if he's, he may not be carrying any bad copies of that gene. I don't know that he's been tested, but I came out on one side of that dice roll and he came out on the other, but that's life, right? And this is the important thing. None of us are responsible for all of our circumstances in life. I didn't sign up to be born with this inherited eye disease at the dawn of the information age where so much is possible. I could have just as easily been born into a family, you know,

in medieval times where, you know, it's very harsh and I would say, you know, extremely difficult for someone with a vision problem, or I could have been born in a place with, you know, no food or water. It's just as likely, right? How many of us stop for a moment and contemplate how we ended up in the chair that we're in, it was through no fault or credit of our own. We just are. And I think people out there, they'll tend to get caught up on life's not fair. Life isn't fair. But nobody said it was going to be fair. Not going to change anything sitting around and whining about it either, right? You're just going to have to suck it up and get over it. Your conditions may not be exactly what you want, but you can say that a million other people can say the same thing. I always find little pieces of people's stories that I can relate to. So I can just kind of sit with what you've been through.

And I'll never forget when I got out. So I had a near death experience and was in a coma for like 10 days. And when I, when I got out of my coma, I couldn't even lift my arms. I couldn't feed myself. I had to use a walker. I had lost, you know, 40 pounds of muscle. I had tremors. I had no taste buds and I wanted to sit there and be like angry and have a pity party. But at the same time, you just do what you got to do, right? It's almost like you go into the survival mode and you really have to surrender. I think surrendering and acceptance were huge for me. And I don't know what kind of personality type you are, but I'm also extremely competitive and I was an athlete. So for me, it was like, I was now in competition with myself. How can I get stronger? How can I do better? How can I, you know, move through this recovery? How can I use my story to help others? But also I had found a blessing in it and as hard and difficult as it was and the trauma

that I had dealt with after the blessing I found was mindfulness. And I wanted to ask you about that because I too was forced into this mindfulness that I had never experienced before. When one of your senses is taken away, almost sometimes it felt like my other ones were heightened. So that was such a huge blessing. Did you experience that when your eyesight went? Did you find that your other senses had heightened? I mean, I'm a foodie too. I love, I love food. I, do you think maybe that's why you're a foodie because that sense is heightened? Completely. Yeah. So before I get into that, I do want to just point out, I am extremely competitive like you. And I think one of the things that helped me get through

it, that to help me power through sports and working out, I've been lifting weights since I was 14, you know, working out regularly. And I think the mental discipline that it takes to do that, because it's, you know, not everybody wants to work out every day or very few people want to do it every day. In fact, there are many days that you don't want to do it, but the discipline it takes to get up and work out when it's the last thing you want to do is an important factor when you're recovering from a situation like we faced. It gives you some of that mental edge that you need to power through those more difficult moments. So I didn't want to let that go without being said, but did my other senses pick up completely? I would say that now I'm a much better listener than I was before.

A lot of people are distracted with what I would consider to be unnecessary visual I'd say that now I'm a much better listener than I was before. A lot of people are distracted with what I would consider to be unnecessary visual information. I can listen to people and see them more deeply now than I could before. A lot of people are looking at, all right, you know, does this suit fit? Or is she having a bad hair day? Or, you know, people could be wearing a clown outfit and I would never know, right? I'm not paying attention to any of that. I'm just listening to the content of the message and the character of the person because I don't have all this visual information flooding my brain where most people, you know, most of what they consume, the information they

take in comes from their eyes. Well, when you turn that switch off, all of a sudden you freed up a lot of attention you can put in other areas. And so you've got a lot of extra capacity that you can focus on what you hear, what you feel, what you smell, what you taste. And so I would say that, you know, is it better? I don't know that they are better, but certainly my ability to be mindful of them is better. I am more mindful of the four senses I have. And so when I sit down and have a conversation with somebody, I'm really focused on what it is that they're saying. When I'm sitting down to have a meal, I'm really focused on the food that I'm eating. I tend to be more mindful because frankly, I don't have as many options, right? You know, I can't sit around and look at all the distractions surrounding me.

Like a lot of people, you know, they get on, you know, maybe it's they're watching, they're looking at their phone and I could, you know, check out my phone with the technology, but hearing that and another person, it's just not even practical. So I don't even try. I just, you know, try to stay in the moment and, and be laser on the, on the task at hand. And I think that gives me a real advantage, frankly, in dealing with people and reading a room and, you know, really trying to understand what's being said and, and what the intent of it being said is, because I think right now in particular, I think we're, we're living at a point in

our society where people are kind of talking past one another. You know, they're not really, they're not listening to what the other person's saying. They're listening, but what they're really doing is just waiting their turn to talk and say what it is that they want to say, as opposed to hearing the other person out and seeking to learn from that person and, you know, having this sort of open and curious mind so that they can build empathy with the person, you know, and instead of that, oftentimes we find what people are doing are just kind of trading messages towards one another. And so talking at one another, as opposed to really with one another, which I think frankly.

It's so guilty of that. I'm definitely, you know, I've been working on that. Like we've learned as a society to listen, to respond instead of listening to just listen. Yeah. Yeah. It's there's a lot of information out there. I think the virtual nature of, um, of our society now in particular with COVID has made it harder to connect with people. It's funny because I think, obviously, without technology, we wouldn't be able to have this conversation. So in one sense, okay, we can connect with people, but are we really connecting with people? We get out there and we see on social media, you have people who have all of these layers of abstraction between them and whomever

they're talking to. And so you get these keyboard cowboys who want to react and, you know, not really meet people where they are. They're kind of, you know, there's a sense of arrogance or self-righteousness. Instead of really trying to meet people where they are, they try and meet them where they think they should be. I think all those layers of abstraction, whether it's social media or, you know, maybe some CEOs making decisions based on spreadsheets and instead of people, the real human relationships that hopefully all of us are trying to build. It's just, it's harder to have that human connection when there are all these levels of abstraction between us and the other person sitting down with someone though and really connecting with them face to face in person there's no substitute

for that for sure and i would say that possibly the only substitute for myself would be the other senses that i felt that i have that are not in the box of the five senses offered to us. I mean, I definitely am clairvoyant. I've always had an amazing imagination being a visual learner as well. And that's kind of my question to you. I have found that a lot of people who are visual learners do have the gift of clairvoyancy in this inner seeing. Do you have inner seeing colors? Do you see anything like that?

Do you have any inner scene visions? At this point, it comes and goes. I've had some, sometimes I'll have a dream. Sometimes I'll remember what it is. Oftentimes I don't. But you see people there? Sometimes, sometimes I do. It's funny. I was complaining, my wife and daughter were talking about this about three months funny. I was complaining. My wife and daughter were talking about this about three months ago and I was complaining to them. I don't remember my dreams anymore. And I was kind of whining about it that night. I had a horrible nightmare and I remember every vivid detail from it. I was like, okay, I'm not going to do that anymore. So the past week, what I've been doing, and I've done this before, but just for whatever

reason, I started doing it again. I set my intentions to remember my dreams 10, 15 minutes before I go to sleep. It's called dream recall. If I wake up in the middle of the night, I'll just quick write a note or something, or even put it in my phone real quick. And then I'll just tell myself before I go back to sleep, you know, keep remembering, keep remembering, and then write more. And then like after this past week, the most amazing stuff I have seen and realized.

And I just I think that we all have that ability. It's just so amazing. For me, you know, I've not been able to see for over 20 years and I'll still have pictures in my mind of, you know, even today consciously of what things look like, but even subconsciously in my dreams, it still does happen. And it's been, you know, I could see for 21, 22, 23 years roughly, but now it's been over 20 years. And so a lot of that you would think would start to dissipate, but it really hasn't. So how old are you do you

mind me asking i'll tell you my age if you tell me yours oh i'm good you don't have to i'm good i have no issue with that i'm 40 i just turned 45 in january oh so you're our age mandy nice nice so i'm always thinking of my body as an energetic body right of? Of course, I always take into consideration everything else. But I think that in this world, we've forgotten or maybe never knew that we are these energetic beings, and we so focus on the physicalness. And so in the developmental stages of the chakras, you, Mandy and I, we're in our crown chakra, which is your connection to the spiritual world. Do you ever meditate? Because I'm just curious. I meditate every day and have been. Yeah. For the last probably 10 years I've been meditating. So it's mindfulness. I meditate for mindfulness. So

it's part of my morning routine and I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent on it. Some days I'm in a hurry, but it's after I work out. So I'll do my 5am workout. And the first thing I do after that is kind of calm down, unwind and get at least 10 minutes of headspace and just to sit down and, you know, bring my attention to the breath, just to calm my mind a little bit and force myself to be in the present moment. Cause you know, the, the workout moment because you know the workout itself it's physical but it's just as much mental and emotional as it is physical sure I want to stay in shape but I'm doing it for my myself too because I feel like you know they say when you get on a plane put your

mask on before you put somebody else's mask on that's for me what my morning routine is I'm putting my mask on before my day starts and I take care of myself with the workout. It makes me feel good emotionally, mentally about myself. I can kind of clear my head and then sit down and meditate for 10 to 15 minutes. I'm ready to take on the day, the day, whatever can happen at that point. I feel like I'm prepared for it. I have that stable foundation. That's awesome. Have you ever done any like astral travel or like remote viewing? I have not. I've contemplated it. I haven't really investigated it deeply. In fact, I was looking into it last year. Sitting here thinking like I get terrified

and worn down and exhausted just going through an airport here and there. I also think about your job and then the adventure, like what drives your soul to get up at five in the morning, which I can't even do and work out and do a meditation. I mean, wow. Like I feel really freaking lazy. I have goals in my life. I have a vision of what I want out of my life. And I know that the only thing standing in my way of achieving my goals is my effort and the amount of relentlessness that I'm willing to apply to my situation. So yeah, I have a lot of tenacity. I have a lot of determination, but it's driven by the fact that if I'm so fortunate, I'm going to live to be 75 years old, call it. So let's say I've got 30 years left to do everything I want to live with? Am I willing to live with the regret of either, you know, not trying hard enough or not being bold enough to chase my most ambitious dream, not knowing what was

possible because, you know, I didn't put in the effort or, you know, so there are lots of, so there's fear, I think, with all of us. We all make decisions based out of fear a lot. Ambition certainly, I think, plays a role there too. Some people are just more ambitious than others. But at the end of my life, the fear that I found that I can live with the most is the fear of failing versus not knowing if I've reached my full potential. So I just want to make sure that I've reached my full potential. And now that's, that's pivoted where it used to be, you know, very inwardly focused, reaching my full potential. Now it's, it's very outwardly focused, making sure that the lessons that I've learned on my journey, I'm, I'm passing along and connecting with people in a way that I can bring as many people along for that journey as

possible. And so that, that's really what motivates me. And I know that to put in the amount of effort, intellectual, emotional knowledge work, if you will, it's very draining for me. If I don't get the counterbalance of, of the physical and the mindfulness, I know I need the physical workout and I need the mindfulness to sustain all of the other things because I've sort of observed that to be my best self, the formula for Chad's best self starts with sweating in the morning and getting that balance, that calmness in the morning with meditation. And if I do that, I can work how many hours I need to work throughout the day. I can, you know, as long as I get seven hours of sleep, a workout in the morning and mindfulness,

I can deal with whatever life throws at me. It sounds like it's work, getting up early and working out and meditating and all of that. For me, it's actually, it's not work it's the thing that gives me the ability to do the real work which is i really enjoy the workout and the and the meditation yeah you you figured it out dude you're a freaking superhero well and you know i wanted to read chad do you mind if i read a paragraph out of your book no not at all um this part just got me. You wrote, I sank into a pit of despair in the months that followed. And this was after your eyesight had gone away. I was so run down with self-pity that I can only imagine the darkest prospects for the future. Soon I would be turning 21 without a college degree, living off of government checks and listening to audiobooks in the same room that I'd grown up in.

I was in mourning. I was grieving the death of an imagined future self. For almost three years, I'd been working hard toward a career in medicine so I could help people. Now not only was that dream gone, but I doubted whether I could even help myself. And when I read that, oh my God, I just, I wanted to cry for you. I really felt just that despair and that fear. So when, when that happened to you, I mean, here you are 20 years old on a college campus. What was it that got you up off your ass when you were in that darkness? Well, there was a moment. So just to be fair, I sat in that darkness for a while and i tried to

self-medicate you know partying and distracting myself and and i realized that you know what i'm i'm 20 years old if i live in another 50 years living in despair is a pretty shitty way to live right who wants to live the next 50 years of their life in this constant toxicity and negativity? So that was one sort of intellectual thing that was going through my mind, not at the emotional level, but just simply, you know, thinking logically about the situation. But there was a tipping point moment for me that really was the game changer for me. And it happened when I went to leader dogs for the blind to get my first guide dog.

And when I arrived there, I was very in this, I was in this dark place. I was bitter. I was angry. And I started hanging out with the other students there, and some of these students had mental impairments, and they were blind, so they had multiple disabilities. There was another group of people there who were on dialysis, because the diabetes that stole their eyesight was also destroying their kidneys, and then there were these girls there who were deaf and blind. And they, like everyone else there, were getting a service dog to be independent. Now, for these girls, we had to talk with an interpreter who would then sign into their hands. And that was the only way that they could communicate. Yet they were getting a guide dog to travel

independently. So it's one thing when you meet someone on the street and you hear how rough they have it. But it's another thing altogether when you live with someone and you see their challenges firsthand for an entire month. That moment was a real tipping point for me. It taught me that really life is about perspective and gratitude. And happiness is, a lot of people think that it's a feeling. It's not a feeling. It's not an emotion. It's a decision that each of us make every single day when we wake up.

We can either choose to deliberately frame our perceptions, or we allow the circumstances of life to determine our happiness for us. It's almost like a game of cards, right? You don't control the hand you're dealt, but you control how you play your cards. And this gets back to what we were saying earlier about life's not fair. Some people get a better starting position than other people, but you don't get a do-over, right? I mean, in this life, you have this life. So what are you going to do about it? Are you going to sit around and whine as to why the game's unfair or why the cards aren't the cards that you wanted?

It's not going to solve anything. We can all find legitimate reasons to fail. We can all find legitimate reasons to say, you know what, this isn't fair. Everybody can find that. None of us control all the circumstances in our lives, but we all control our life and our outcomes. It's my life. I have to own it.

It's your life. You have to own it. It's your life. You have to own it. Nobody else can. Can you talk about your pup? Oh, it's an incredible bond and relationship and partnership. The amount of responsibility that these dogs have is just mind boggling. So when I got to leader dogs to get my first guide dog, you know, I was pretty ignorant of what was possible. I just kind of had these ideas or notions of how the dogs work, just how smart they are and how dedicated they are. But to have the amount of trust that it takes, you know, it doesn't happen overnight, but you build that over time. And it's a team effort, right? The dog works because of the bond and the relationship

and the love. So the stronger the bond and the relationship, the better the work, the more eagerness the dog is to do a great job. And obviously that strengthens over time. When I say partnership, just to give listeners a bit of a sense of how the partnership works, dogs work on point-to-point navigation. So I live in Atlanta, and so I can't just hop out of the Uber at Hartsville-Jackson Airport and go, all right, Sarge, we're going to gate B17, and he knows where to go. That's not how it works. I've got to give him point-to-point direction so I'm like all right left inside door and the dog knows to look to the left and find a door that takes us inside we get inside and then it's I direct the dog to where I think the gate is and then we get through the gate I have him take me through security we get out and I tell him all right depending on where I

enter security I know that all right I need to go up make a left and then on the right there's an escalator so I have this map in my head of where I'm going so I'll say all right Sarge forward and then left and then when it's time I'll say right escalator and he'll go to the right and he'll look for the escalator and we do that all the way and he'll look for the escalator. And we do that all the way to the gate of destination. So you'll see point to point, the dog is great at making the next maneuver, but stitching together the entire map of where we need to go. Dogs don't do that. Dogs really, that's asking too much because they just, they can't put all that together. So when I know the area, I've been there before and I, you know, like I know, for example, Hey, when I go to Hartsville

Jackson airport, I like door S2. As I tell the driver door S2 is where I want to go. And I have a map of the pretty much the whole airport in my head because I travel so much, but when I'm at a new airport, it's a bit more of an adventure, right? You just have to embrace it. Look, I don't know where I'm at. I don't know where I'm going. I've learned to sort of be humble and ask people as I'm deplaning, hey, do you know where baggage claim is or transportation? And, you know, most of the time that works. And if it doesn't, I just, I kind of wing it and figure it out. And like I said, I've gotten really comfortable with being uncomfortable. It doesn't like none of that phases me anymore. Your dog, Sarge, is that his name? Yeah, that's my current guide.

My current buddy. How many have you had? A lot of them. How many have you had? Well, I've had three long term. Like man's best friend, like for real, right? Oh, it's off the chart. It's it's it's hard to put into words because we travel every

day, you know, together to and from work, every meeting, every conference at night, you know, in the hotel room, we're together 100% of the time. And it's such, I mean, it's, it's a game. So the, the reason the dogs work, yes, they have a sense of purpose. They want to contribute like humans, right? They want a purpose and crave a sense of purpose. The game of guiding is it's exciting for the dog because they have the purpose, but also because it has to be fun. And so that's our job as handlers to make the job fun. If it's stressful or anything like that, the dog's not going to want to do it.

So whereas a lot of people get stressed with travel, you know, that's not really great as a dog handler. You're going to stress your dog out and the dog's not really going to want to travel. So you have to learn. And I've sort of, you know, travel doesn't bother me at all. I can be running late for my flight and all of that. And it doesn't really matter. I just don't get stressed about it because I know, even if I do get stressed about it, all it's going to do is harm the situation. And it's going to

pass down from me through the harness to my dog. And if I'm stressed, then the dog's stressed. And if we're both stressed, good stuff will not happen. It won't be a good experience. The dog won't love going traveling anymore. And Sarge's favorite place to be other than probably, you know, home on his bed is on an escalator. He absolutely loves escalators. I hate escalators. Well, see, I want Sarge to find lots of escalators for me because that's generally what you need in a foreign airport or hotel or whatever. Those are really important. So I would always throw a party. Anytime he finds me an escalator, I throw a huge party for the dog. Like, yeah, you're a rock star, man. That's amazing. There's a new show out on Netflix called Dogs, and it's all about relationships with dogs. Like this one little girl who has seizures and she goes to get

her dog. And it really, the whole thing is about her relationship with this dog and how the dog knows if she's going to have a seizure. They're just such smart, amazing animals. You know, Chad, I watched the video of you holding, I believe it was your daughter. How many children do you have? Two. Two. Yeah. And it was very touching to me to think that you've never seen your wife, you've never seen your children, but you probably know every crease of that baby's body and skin. And you probably see them in a more beautiful way because you have to feel them and feel their energy and bring that calmness to them too, just like you do with your dog. Yeah, I would, I would agree with that. And that's true. I haven't seen with my eyes,

any of my, my family members, right. My wife, my daughter, or my son. And, um, but, but I do think I have seen them more deeply in many ways because of what you just said, right? Not really having that distraction, getting back to what we were saying earlier about the distractions of what your eyes are telling you and really seeing the content of the person, which I think is huge. Not getting distracted by these superficial things or the surface level, really seeing them for who they truly are. I'm watching with my heart. I love that so much. You know, my dad passed away. I didn't think there'd be anything for him to donate, to be honest with you, because he just was a mess. But the only thing that he was able to donate were his eyes. They had sent me that one of his eyes had went to, or maybe it

was his cornea. One of them had went to a little girl that was three and one had went to a man in Germany. I thought that was so amazing. Is there hope for you to see in the future with different medical advances that they might find or technology even? There's always hope in the age that we live in. I wouldn't want to hazard to guess what the probabilities are of me seeing again in my lifetime, but I would say that they're pretty good. There are procedures like CRISPR, which has been proven to be effective. It really gets down to the, there's the genetic side and then there's the, and this is where my knowledge gets a little fuzzier with the rods and cones in my retina, where the damage is already done. I think had this been caught before I went blind and there was an experimental drug and I signed up for a clinical trial and then it was put on hold. There was actually one round of it and this was at Johns Hopkins University in

Baltimore. So I flew to Baltimore, met with the doctor. It was put on hold. I'm not entirely sure what the holdup was on it, but it was a compound that you would take. It was put on hold. I'm not entirely sure what the holdup was on it, but it was a compound that you would take. It wasn't a procedure, certainly not invasive. You would just take a pill. It's not necessarily all vision, but it restored vision, some vision to 40% of patients with my genetic mutation. So that was, again, that was five years ago. And so that was pretty encouraging at that time. And I think it's inevitable before we solve it. Is it going to be in the next 20 years?

I don't know. My parents, all well-intended, my dad would continue to say, someday they're going to fix this. And I understand why he looked at it that way as a parent, because if it were my children, it would destroy me too. But sitting in my situation, the seat that I have, I don't live on that. I've made peace with my situation. I'm cool with it. And if I get my eyesight back, it's icing on the cake, but I am completely happy now. Would I love to be able to see my children's faces? Of course. Of course, I would love to be able to see my children's faces? Of course.

Of course, I would love to be able to see my wife. I'm not pretentious enough to sit here and tell you no, right? Of course, I would love to be able to see that. But I'm not going to predicate my entire happiness or existence on something that may or may not happen. Again, that's having a very externally oriented locus of control and looking externally for happiness and fulfillment. And I just refuse to live that way. I draw my peace and my stability, my happiness from inside of me. And if something, if I get a little extra icing on the cake, that's great. I'll take it. I also have grasped that humor plays a big part in

your life. And I'm not going to lie. When I read those first few chapters of your book, I was cracking up at the interview that you went into and you, you told them, uh, yeah, this is all easy to me. I can do it with my eyes shut. You do. So you talk a little bit about that and how humor has played a part in your life. Yeah. I'll give you a little humor before we got on. Should we go topless? Absolutely. Oh, we are beautiful. I love it. I love it. It does play a big part. I think for me, it's a couple of dynamics to it. When I'm working with other people, whether I'm giving a keynote presentation, because I give motivational presentations all over the world and in our conference rooms and all the time and work with teams, and maybe I'm doing a resilience workshop with a corporate leadership team, I know that I've got some pretty heavy

topics to talk about. And the concepts are, I don't get in there and talk, you know, it's not like I'm doing corporate slides. I'm talking about some really weighty topics about self-perception and identity and stories that we tell ourselves and reimagining our goals for ourselves. And it's pretty deep. And I know that the way that I can get people's attention and get their guards down, really disarm them is to use jokes and to let them know up front, hey, look, I don't take my situation too seriously. Yeah, I'm a blind dude. I'm the first person to drop a blind joke because I want people to be comfortable. So I try to disarm the'm a blind dude. I'm the first person to drop a blind joke because I want people to be comfortable. So I try to disarm the tension in the room. I know that when I walk

in, you know, people see the dog and they're like, whoa, okay, this guy's got a German shepherd. What can I say? What can I not say? So the first thing that I'll do is ease some tension in the room. You can feel people looking at you and you can kind of sense the tension. So I'll use a joke or I'll use some humor and I'll get on a crowded elevator, right? I'll give you an example. I get on a crowded elevator and it's crowded and I have a hundred pound German shepherd and I can just feel everybody looking at me. And I look over and I say, don't worry. He hasn't bitten anyone in weeks, right? What, what do you mean weeks? Right? Just it's that delayed response, but it puts people at ease, right? It lets them know that, yeah, I've got a situation, but relax. Okay. You can, I can relate with you. You can relate with me. And when people are

relaxed, we can talk and whether it's the business at hand in a boardroom or just having a casual conversation out with somebody, you want to talk about this? We can talk about this. I don't mind, but we don't have to. We can talk about anything. I don't take life so seriously that I can't have a little fun along the way. Look, we're all going to die, right? We're all going to kick the can. And if we cannot have a little fun along the way, what's the point of being here? Right. It kind of goes hand in hand with self-love. I mean, when you really love yourself and you know yourself so well, you don't mind cracking jokes on yourself. I mean, I'm like that all the time. It's a hundred percent with my past and my addiction and the struggles I've been

through. I, I joke about it sometimes, which might be weird to people, but it's just because I, I love myself and I have no shame around it. And it is who I am. I completely agree with that. It does show a lot of one's comfort with their own situation. And I just love the way you said it, self-love for yourself. I think when people get upset, it tends to be a sign of what people are insecure about, right? Yeah. Those of us who've kind of been there, Mandy, and we've been there and back, and we've got the scar tissue to prove it.

It's going to take a whole lot more than something like that to shake us, right? Yeah. You want to know what else I loved about your book is how much support you got from your family. I mean, your mom in college had to start reading you all of your books and your assignments and your brother came out to visit you. How much of your family support played into you being who you are today? It was a huge part. My dad, you know, pushed me and held me to a high standard and showed me a lot of tough love because he knew the world was going to be harder for me.

Life was going to be harder for me. And my mom, you know, she gave me the support you mentioned. She read every single one of my business books. She should have got her degree too, huh? Well, she should have. And she did get honored with an Honorary Accomplished Alumni Award by the university. I called and kind of pushed on that. But she read more than I'm sure many of my fellow classmates.

So with that kind of sacrifice from everybody, it really makes it hard to be half-hearted with your effort. So I read every single one of my text assignments in college twice. And I recorded the lectures and listened to those twice and had a note taker from the university and went over my notes. And I ended up making straight A's in my business school classes and made the Dean's list. And it's kind of shocking. I was a better blind student than I was sighted student, which is a bit counterintuitive. But, you know, I didn't want to let them down. And I was forced to, instead of just memorizing stuff, I was forced to actually read and understand and consume it.

You had mentioned earlier when you go into these conferences or when you're going to speak in front of these crowds, you can feel people staring at you. You can feel people's energy. Can you talk about that? I've never really stopped and thought about it in the way that I think the two of you are thinking about it, but I'll tell you what I have noticed, you know, just something as simple as this call, right? And I'll use this virtual call as an example. Let's say that we had video switched on and we could see one another. It's not the same, right? It's not the same for me. And I can't see either way. The feeling that I get, the connective tissue that I get from being next to you is totally different. And that cannot be explained through any other way other than the energy, because it's just like, you, you may sound the same and you look the same to me.

You certainly look the same topless or not. You look the same, but you know, in person, there's just something. And I, I haven't really explored it deeply like I think the two of you have but I've certainly observed in person there's just something about being next to another person it's different you ever felt like you could feel danger like maybe someone negative was around you I have you could feel the tension if somebody's like raising their voice or whatever. And all of a sudden you, you get that sensation. Like that frequency. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So like one of the things that I taught my, my son, who's autistic, um, I teach my students

this, but I felt that I needed to teach him this because he hates crowds, you know, and I taught him to protect his aura. But before I taught him to protect his aura, I wanted him to feel it. Now, what's interesting about him is that he really doesn't have an ego to say, Oh, that ain't really gonna work. That's a bunch of voodoo stuff. So he just trusts, you know, what he's experiencing, he's all about experience. And so, you know, I have him put his hand out and just walk towards me very slowly and tell me when he can feel something. And there he goes, he's like, yeah, it feels, it feels warm or it feels cold, or he feels like a resistance. And we kept playing with that. And then I was like, now I want you to walk towards me and I'm going to put protection around myself. I imagined myself in a unfuckable bubble, you know, as he comes towards me, sure enough,

like he doesn't doubt, you know, because he's just going with experience. He can feel my unfuckable bubble. And really, truly, I said, you know, you do this when you're in the hallway. And it was so powerful for him. And I just, I think that we're so dependent on our regular senses, right, the five senses. And I'm just for energetic beings. So I'm always, you know, exploring that, that part of myself. And I'll tell you what I just said yesterday I'm like listen I feel like my eyesight is bad and the older I get the worse it is that this whoosh whoosh whoosh in my ear I can't smell or taste I'm like shit the only thing I'm gonna have left to me is my freaking clairvoyancy that's the one thing I know for myself like that's eternal too so no matter what happens to the shelf life of my five senses

i know that everything that i see with my soul is forever wow if you do lose your sight i know a guy um i can i can put you in touch with him you want to know it though on a serious note chad at the end of our episode we usually ask people to do what's called break that shit down, but I'm going to switch it up today, but I'm going to dedicate it. My friend's son, Cameron is losing his eyesight. He's a junior in college and he has a very, very rare eye disease. It's been just so hard on him.

So for today's episode, I'm going to ask you to give some words to Cameron during this time that he's going through. And now it's time for break that shit down. It's tough. You know, I've been there. It's not an easy path. There are two things, and I'll break down my response for everybody into two streams. There's the technical stream, which is, all right, what skills do I need? The hard skills, whether it's using a computer, using a screen reader, using a magnifier, figuring out the art of the possible, smartphones, all this stuff that is technical in nature. It's a hard skill. And then there's the soft skill, which is the more foundational, more important element of it. And it's really making sure that you've got the right perspective and the right foundation. And it really boils down to the stories that we tell ourselves about our situation, and if we can find meaning to attach to our circumstances that powers us forward instead of holds us back, then we've got a shot. Because ultimately, a victim will stay trapped, but a visionary will bounce back. And if something's going to happen and you can't control whether or not it happens, you can control the meaning you attach to it the stories that you

tell yourself about that and those stories can either limit you or propel you forward so you have to get control very quickly you know take the steering wheel on the narrator in your mind and get control of that as quickly as you can otherwise you you risk spinning out of control and ruminating. And some people do that forever. And they do this poor me victim mentality forever. And I don't say it to understate how large of a challenge it is. It is a very large challenge. I've been there. I've done it. It sucks. And you have to stay in the suck for a little while. Cameron's going to have to figure out how long do I let this situation own me? Because that's what's going to happen. The situation is going to own Cameron and it owned

me for a little while. And that's natural. But what's not helpful is letting it stick around as long as it wants to stick around. Cameron has to decide, when am I going to invite this thing to leave just as it rolled in? I need to invite it to leave just as it invited itself into my life. That is a decision. For everybody, it's a little bit different, but you can't ruminate forever because it doesn't solve anything. Now, there's the natural emotion, and mindfulness teaches us that emotions wax and wane like the waves in an ocean. They roll in and they roll out, but the ways that we choose to receive these emotions, the events of our life, not the facts, but the stories we tell ourselves about the facts, those we can have more intention around. We can put more of a structure around and

journaling can help. Writing that down can help. Journaling the emotions and doing some written exercises about how we internalize things and the meaning we attach to them can help. But I'm happy to contact directly or have Cameron contact me directly, I'm happy to have a conversation because it's not easy, but it is a road that can be navigated successfully, especially now. And then the last thing I'll say is this is a really good time to go blind, right? People don't have to worry. I'm not recruiting or anything. I'm not taking applications at the back of the room, but it really is a good time to go blind with the technology we have in a services-based economy and the internet. And there's lots of opportunity for professional

fulfillment and running a household and hobbies and all of those things. So all that's possible now. It may not be ideal. I get it. it wasn't ideal for me either. But sometimes you just can't change the circumstances, but you can change the stories. Wow, what you said can like, go for anyone situation. You are a true, true inspiration. Thank you. And also very impressed that are you still an executive for Red Hat? And you came up with like some amazing program. You learned how to code and do all these things that people said was impossible, even if you had your site, am I right?

Yeah, I'm still at Red Hat right now. I work in cross industry sales development. I was the VP for corporate and P&T finance, ran a team there with 200 people on it. Before that, I ran our global deal desk. We were bought by IBM last year for $34 billion. And so I've had a lot of success in the business world, won over $45 billion in contracts, was the first blind executive to graduate the Harvard Business School

leadership program that I attended. And yes, I built software that Oracle didn't think could be built to make customer relationship management software work for people who couldn't see. So it really does boil down to how badly you want something. If you want something badly enough, you'll figure out a way. If you're comfortable enough sleeping in and watching your favorite show, and instead of putting in the hard work that it takes to get from point A to point B, then you probably won't get what you want. But if you're willing to work relentlessly and drive yourself to be your best self in pursuit of whatever your goal is, then that's what you'll have. Walk by faith, not by sight. That's it. That is it. And the faith, you've got to start

with believing in you and believing that things happen to you for a reason. And you've got to change the tone. You can ask why me, but don't ask it with the tone of a victim. Ask it with the tone of someone who's very curious and genuinely wants to know why. What good can come out of this? How can I make this situation look good? And soon enough, the answer will come to you. I love that. So just curious, did you meet your wife on a blind date? I did not. My buddy was actually hitting on her

at a bar, believe it or not. We were at American Pie. It was Labor Day weekend and it was early, like five. We got there around 7 p.m later on maybe it was 10 11 o'clock you know he was uh he was talking to her and he stepped off and and then uh next thing next thing you know we started talking and she was one of the i think the only woman in the last like five years who didn't start hitting on me because of the dog it was always the layup and i didn't mind it for a while. I didn't have to buy my drinks, which was a good thing, but it got a little predictable, if you know what I mean. Well, Chad, we appreciate everything about you, your humor, your willingness

to come on Sense the Soul. Where can our listeners find your book? Where else can they find out more about your story? Yeah, they can go to my website, chadefoster.com. And there's information there. There's speaking videos, information about my programs, my book, they can go directly to the book site, which is blindambitionbook.com. So it's at every major retailer, but you can go on to my website and learn more exactly where to buy it. It'll send you directly there. Congratulations just for being a success. Aside of all the amazing success that you had with Red Hat, you're just truly a good soul wanting to help other people. You get it. Thank you very much for sharing that with the world. Yeah. My hope is that people will be motivated to be more comfortable being authentic to themselves. And it's scary

being vulnerable, right? And I was really scared when I got vulnerable for the first time. And in the book, I went deeper than I thought I would and really stepped out of my comfort zone in hopes to connect with people. And so I got really raw, but I was scared going in. But I found that it's not as scary after the fact as I thought it would be going in. So hopefully people can take some solace in that and have some of that conviction too, to share a little bit more about themselves. Again, I couldn't say it enough. You're a true inspiration. Keep doing what you're doing. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. I've enjoyed the conversation and now I'm inspired to look a little bit more into the energy that I sense from people,

because I'm not going to pretend to be knowledgeable about that, but maybe I should be. Well, if you ever want to have a conversation, the door is open. Sounds good. I'll take you up on that. It's been my pleasure. I appreciate the conversation. Thank you, ladies. You have to check out our new item, the Soulful Intuitive Box. Together, Mandy and I

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The value of the items in your box will be at least that or more of the regular cost. So jump on mysenseofsoul.com and order yours today. Thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week. If you like what you hear, don't forget to rate, like, and subscribe. Thank you. We rise to lift you up. Thanks for listening.