The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Overcoming Life’s Toughest Challenges: 15 Breakthrough Core Beliefs to Transform Challenges into Opportunities by Andy Campbell

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

Overcoming Life's Toughest Challenges: 15 Breakthrough Core Beliefs to Transform Challenges into Opportunities by Andy Campbell https://www.amazon.com/Overcoming-Lifes-Toughest-Challenges-Opportunities/dp/B0DCL3HTJ2 Askandycampbell.com Live a life where you OVERCOME any setback, WITHSTAND any loss, TRIUMPH over any trauma, EMBRACE any challenge, and THRIVE! Your path to resilience starts here! You are brimming with potential, yet life's unfair, painful, and unforeseen storms sometimes bring you to your knees. Are you exhausted from the struggle? Are you too empty to give any more? Are you too hurt to find joy? Do you feel unfulfilled constantly seeking a sense of purpose that seems just out of reach? Does the pursuit of health, relationships, career advancement, and financial security leave you spread thin and strained? Overcoming Life's Toughest Setbacks 15 Breakthrough Core Beliefs to Transform Challenges into Opportunities is your practical guide to resilience, peace of mind, and unshackling your potential! Author Andy Campbell has faced and overcome some of life's toughest setbacks, including childhood sexual abuse, stage 4 pancreatic cancer, and the suicide of a child. Through these experiences, he has developed a deep understanding of resilience and knows firsthand what it takes to overcome monumental challenges. Access actionable insights from the 15 Core Beliefs crafted to empower you to navigate life's labyrinth. The book's insightful chapters unfold your journey from experiencing life's storms to dancing in its rain. Here's a glimpse of what's in store: Learn to redefine challenges as opportunities for growth. Adopt the power of resilience and adaptability. Remember the importance of self-care and mental health. Harness the peace of mindfulness to discard past failures or future anxieties. Navigate life-work balance to revel in personal and professional fulfillment. Discover practical financial strategies applicable to all income levels and life stages. Find the dimensions of positive psychology and spiritual growth to overcome challenges. Confidently align your profession to your values and personal mission. Setbacks, pain, and hardships will refine, not define, your life Who should read Overcoming Life's Toughest Setbacks? Individuals Facing Personal Challenges Mental Health and Wellness Seekers Cancer Trauma and Abuse Survivors and Their Families Parents Coping with Loss The Unexpectedly Unemployed Counselors and Therapists Self Help and Personal Development Enthusiasts I've tried self-help books before, and they didn't work for me: This isn't just another self-help book filled with generic advice. Overcoming Life's Toughest Setbacks offers practical, actionable steps. It's about making small, sustainable changes that lead to big results. I don't have time to read a long, complex book: Overcoming Life's Toughest Setbacks is designed for busy people. Each chapter is concise and packed with practical insights you can implement immediately. I'm unsure if these techniques will work for me: The principles in Overcoming Life's Toughest Setbacks are universal and have been proven effective across different cultures and lifestyles. Plus, they're flexible enough to adapt to your unique situation. Don't wait another day to live a more resilient, stress-free life! Join the readers who have transformed their lives with Overcoming Life's Toughest Setbacks 15 Breakthrough Core Beliefs to Transform Challenges into Opportunities. Click Add to Cart now and embark on your journey to a stronger, more resilient you!About the author Andy Campbell is a resilient survivor and inspirational author who has overcome numerous life-altering challenges. A victim of childhood sexual abuse and bullying, Andy has faced personal traumas, family illnesses, and his battle with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Despite enduring multiple surgeries,

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Cause you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster

with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi folks, it's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Beautiful. Ladies and gentlemen, they are the latest things that makes official welcome to the show. For over 16 years and 24 episodes, we bring you the most amazing minds, the most amazing stories, the most amazing journeys, and all the lessons of life and how you can

live your life better through the eyes and experience of other people. Because sometimes it's, you know, that's how we learn. That or we make our own mistakes and learn. But you know, the great thing is the people, the great authors that come on the Chris Foss show, they can share with you their stories and blueprints of life and help you get through your issues quicker. If you're just listening to me, well, I can't help you at all. That's what the guests are for, help you.

Anyway, for the show to your family, friends, and relatives, go to goodreese.com, forges Chris Foss, linkedin.com, forges Chris Foss. Chris Foss one on the Tik Tok, and facebook.com for test Chris Foss, Chris Foss one on the Tik Tok itty and Facebook.com for says Chris Foss. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests to the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today we have an amazing young man on the show. Andy Campbell joins us. He has a book that's coming out August or came out August 5th, 2024. It is called overcoming life's toughest challenges, 15 breakthrough core beliefs

to transform challenges into opportunities. And he has had quite the journey ladies and gentlemen, I was reading his bio before the show and he's done some things there, experienced some things and he, uh, if anybody can speak to resilience, I think he can, uh, Andy Campbell is a survivor and inspirational author who's overcome numerous life altering challenges, a victim of childhood sexual abuse and bullying, a survivor at ages nine and 11 of attempted murder where recovery from one

required several corrective surgeries, the loss of his mother at an early age, and eventually, estrangement from his father. His battle was stage 4 pancreatic cancer and the loss of his youngest son to suicide. Despite enduring a life of traumatic events, multiple surgeries, grueling cancer treatments, and tragic loss of his youngest child, He has demonstrated remarkable strength and perseverance. Through his experiences, he's developed a unique perspective on resilience and the power of his 15 core beliefs.

Welcome to the show, Andy, how are you? I'm good, Chris, how are you? It's a pleasure to be here, thank you. It's a pleasure to have you as well, sir. Give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? Yeah, primarily the best place to reach me, you can reach all the other avenues from askandocampbell.com.

Pete Slauson So, give us the 30,000 over you, what's inside the book? David Lirve Well, the book is really my life collection of things that I believe to be true that have helped me through, that have given me aspirational targets when I've received or have been a part of difficulties, very difficult times, to recenter myself and continue to move forward. And so, over the years, I wrote down these, what amounted to eventually 15 beliefs that I kind of installed in my internal system, kind of like a piece of code, I would install these core beliefs so that when something, whether it was a personal event that happened, a family event that happened, a business event that occurred, I would have kind of these default programs that

would run when maybe my normal programming might fail me. And so, that's what the book is about, is two parts. One discusses the core beliefs and how they apply to life. And the second one, the second half is just about, you know, how to use them and the other things you need to put around them, community, faith, you know, those things that drive perseverance and finishing. Pete Now, it's billed as you've tried health, self-health books before, and there's a lot of them out there. They're on every TikTok video, I guess, these days, but they didn't work for you. And so why is your book different?

What are some of the unique aspects of it? Well, I think, look, I've been through a number of things. While I can identify with every tragedy in life, I can identify with a fair number of tragedies. And so, I think I did not set out to be an author or to really write a book. What I decided to do was to share with people along my life's journey. There have been people who have given me a little encouragement that kept me going on difficult days. And I decided that I wanted to put down on paper so that I could share with people some things that have encouraged me, some things that I believe have helped me. And I wanted to share those with people to encourage them. You know, it's kind of

been, I guess, the self-help category. But what it really is, it's just the things that I believe people can adopt that I have used, but they can adopt them and adapt them to their own personality, their own challenges, and maybe they will help them. I've never believed in prescriptive mechanisms because we're all individuals, and this is written in a way that I hope people will look at and find things that are practical. Too many, I think to me, a lot of self-help books are notional if you do these kind of very high-level things, or either they're very focused on one particular traumatic event, how to get through that.

For me, these 15 core beliefs can be applied to a variety of issues and challenges, whether, like I said, it's a, it's a physical trauma, it's an emotional trauma, or it's just a difficulty in your work life or your relationships. I think it applies across the board. It's really about having a mindset. And that mindset is so important in how you approach stuff, how you, how you view stuff as it comes at you in life, um, you know, and how you meet it and greet it, I suppose. Can you tease out a couple of the, we won't be able to buy the book, of course. You got to buy the book to find out the full list, but can you tease out maybe a couple of

your favorite of the 15 or ones that maybe have really helped you? JG You know, one of them, yeah, I will start with there are no hard decisions, there are only hard consequences. It's a lesson that I believe I learned. Well, I know I learned it during my cancer treatments and I believe it is true many times and you see this in business a lot, right? People will say, I don't know, that's just a hard decision. Right. And what I, and it's often frustrating because to everyone around that person

is actually not a hard, it's very frustrating because to everyone around that person, it's actually not a heart. It's very straightforward. It might make the decision. And I think I was going through cancer treatments and there came a point where the chemotherapy was killing me faster than it was killing the cancer cells. And I had this small voice, this still small voice. I don't know why I'd gotten quiet, but all the anxiety had gone away, the worry had gone away. Maybe I was too exhausted to be anxious about it. But I had this little

voice that said, it's time for you to stop the chemotherapy. And at the time there were no other treatments. So stopping the chemotherapy was, when you have stage four pancreatic cancer at least seven years ago, there weren't a lot of treatment options. You had a couple of types of chemotherapy, but it was basically chemotherapy. And I had done a lot of chemotherapy. And so I thought about it. And what came to my mind was every negative thing that might happen. But I thought it was certainty that it would happen. I would die a horrible death. I would leave my wife and children. My wife would take care of me through this journey. My children would see me struggle the way I saw my mother struggle before she died from

cancer. And so, I had all these negative things that happened. And without going through everything that occurred over the next six months from the day I decided to stop chemotherapy. Six months later, I was in a trial at the University of Pennsylvania and I've been in that trial for six years now and I'm coming up on my seventh year and as of today, while I will never be in remission, I'll always be a stage four pancreatic cancer patient because there's not enough people who have survived this long. But as of today, I have no visible signs of disease in my body. When I have a CT scan, if you didn't know I had pancreatic cancer, you would not know

I had pancreatic cancer. And what I learned through that was that everything that I thought was going to happen, all the consequences that I thought were going to occur, I never once thought of a positive consequence that would happen if I stopped chemotherapy. And the only things that happened to me after that, I mean, there were some difficult days, really hard days after that, but overall, it was a positive outcome.

And I realized that the decision to stop chemotherapy was not a hard decision. It was the perception of the consequences that were going to happen if I did take that action. And so then I thought, well, that's what humans do. We pick up our perceived consequences of making a decision and the difficulty of those consequences, and they may not even be real, it just may be what we think will happen. We know the right decision to make, you know, like in our deepest part of our soul, we know what the right decision to make is. And then we pick up the hard consequences and we put them

on top of the decision. And when people ask us why haven't we made a decision, we say, well, it's just a hard decision. But it turns out it's not a hard decision. You know what decision to make. It's just you have allowed the consequences that you perceive to that will occur from that decision, you pick those consequences up and put them on top of the decision. So one of the things I work to do, it's a core belief, is to separate what I believe or think the consequences will be from the decision

that I should make. I work to make the decision without the consequences, you know, being the primary factor. What is the right thing to do? What does factor. What is the right thing to do? What does my soul tell me the right thing to do is if it's in business, sometimes the right thing to do is we have to make a change in the business. We have to make some layoffs or we have to make an investment with. We have to do things.

If it's a health treatment, you know, you may be fearful of making a change, but maybe you need to make a change. So I think most times we know what the right thing to do is we're just afraid of the consequences. And it's because we're focused on the negative parts of the consequences and maybe we're ignoring the options of the positive part and maybe we need to open our aperture a bit more? I think that's certainly part of it. Another core belief is always understand the difference between thinking and knowing. So I think, I thought I knew what the consequences would be, but I didn't actually know the consequences. And so I think we have to be very ruthless

and introspective and dissect what we think the consequences will be and be honest with ourselves do we really know what the consequences will be and if and if the consequences weren't what we anticipate would it change the way we would think about the decision so I think we have to we have to work in a disciplined way to separate what we think will occur from what we know will occur. And most of the times we actually, since we can't see into the future, we know very little. And so we should lessen the amount of emphasis we put on the things that we think will happen. I mean, we should, and we should do the right thing.

I think generally human beings, when they quiet their mind in either prayer or meditation, or just stop listening to this rabbit or this gerbil that's running around the hamster wheel in our head, I guess it'd be a hamster then, if we stop listening to that, then we probably already know what the right answer is. And we should do the right thing even if we fear the consequences. If we know it's the right thing is. And we should do the right thing even if we fear the consequences. If we know it's the right thing to do, we should do that instead of being fearful of the consequences and letting the consequences change our mind. Pete Yeah. Tell us about your story in your own words. I mean, I kind of alluded to some stuff in your bio, but people like to hear from you. What was your journey through life

and some of these things and, and how did the, how did you develop, I guess, throughout the story of your life, the 15 cores and maybe they came to you in different points or different places and stuff, give us kind of rundown on what you want to discuss about that. Well, they did. They came to me in, you know, one at a time. And I would write them down. Chris, I see you hear, maybe you hear words, I hear pictures. And so when you speak, I don't actually, you know, it's like a word doesn't come to me, but a picture starts forming in my mind.

And so these phrases were things that I had observed. And as the picture formed in my mind of the circumstances I was in, how I had gotten through that circumstance, what did I observe in other people who had been through difficulties, I would kind of come to these pictures of what I believed to be something that was true, you know, like a phrase. And then I would create a phrase that basically was like a metaphphrase that would remind me of that picture so that whenever I had a difficult circumstance,

I could kind of revert back to that picture and remember how I needed to behave or what I needed to do, kind of what was the next thing I needed to do. And over time, I collected 15 of them. I've been through a number of circumstances that, you know, are certainly difficult. Whether that's, yeah, I mean, you read the bio, don't have to go back through all of them. But, you know, there is a point in life where you don't know that that's not normal. You don't know that it's not normal until you get a little older and then you realize it's not normal. And then what you don't realize is that these characteristics have the way that you survived those situations, those characteristics have then become kind of ingrained in you, the

way you manage risk, the way you control situations, the way you look at life, the way you build relationships. And so then you realize that it has permeated so much of your being, this survival mechanism, that it's affecting everything. It's not just affecting yourself or your person or the people closest to you. It's affecting your business. It's affecting your business relationships. It's affecting your outlook on life. And so, you know, one of the things that I want to convey to people is that, you know,

first of my core beliefs is no one outruns the universe. If you've had difficult things happen to you, then you're not going to get away with not confronting those difficult things and the impressions that they've left on your life. You should do the hard work to confront how you have managed your life by surviving difficulties. What have those characteristics left you with and are you causing any of your own problems now later on? It's not always somebody else's problem, Chris. Sometimes you're the problem, right?

I mean, I heard a saying a while back that said, you know, you're wondering, you know, am I having a bad day? And the day is wondering why it's having a bad view. And so, you know, I think we should, we should confront our own contributions to our situation. If we have bad relationships and we have that over and over again, there might be something we're contributing to having bad relationships and we should confront those things. So.

My only to be self accountable and self actualized, you know, what the hell? Give it a try. You know, I mean, everything else for me, everything else failed. And at some point it was like, well, maybe I'm the problem. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's, uh, you know, many times to your life, you know, I've woken up and, you know, why am I struggling with this or that? And it's like, oh, I'm the problem. Yeah. Like to me, there's three types of problems that we have, that we encounter, right? There's, there's those things that are just kind of out in

the world, you know, like the, the writer of Job said that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. So there's just universal things that happen. Someday it rains on you, some days it rains on somebody else. That just happens. Then there's the things that other people do to you. You know, you can't really control what they do to you, but you can control how you respond to it. You know, I mean, that's, they always say that in therapy, it's a lot more difficult than just saying that to actually do it. And then there's the stuff you contribute to yourself. If you weren't paying attention and you were in a car crash, you can't really get upset with the insurance company for being mad at you or the damage you have to pay for it. You weren't paying attention. Maybe you just

brought that on yourself. So own the responsibility for it. Or maybe, you know, I've certainly done it before. I've had to go back and apologize because I became too, quote unquote, passionate during a meeting at work, and I had to go back and apologize, you know, own it. Don't blame everybody else for every problem, right? Pete Slauson That's true. Pete Slauson Yeah, so. Pete Slauson That's true. Yeah, I thought it was interesting how, how you, you approach a way to get outside of the box of sometimes the ego that drives us and everything else. And, uh, who do you find the,

the book tends to help most or it's targeted to most books targeted to really to anyone who has, who has, you know, I call them setbacks. I mean, it could be a job loss. It could be, if you've had a loss, okay, if you've had a loss and you find yourself in a situation where you're kind of stuck or the loss was shocking to you and you're not sure what to do next and you find yourself a little bit adrift,

what can I do? What is the next thing? Or if you find yourself, look, if you're in a desperate situation, my youngest son took his own life. If there may be people listening to your show that are having suicidal ideations, no one would know because they put on a good face,

but underneath the covers, they're out of hope, life is desperate. I think what I hope the book does, who it speaks to, are the souls that are in desperate situations and they're not sure what to do next, right? They're not, they think tomorrow won't be better than today. They think a year from now their lives will not be better than today. And I want them to be encouraged to persevere, to use some of these core beliefs for themselves if it's helpful. But if they don't read any of this, if they don't use any of it, I would still want to be encouraging to them as someone who's been through a number of difficult circumstances to say to them, all hope is

not lost. Do not end your life in despair. Do not give up on life. Some people end their lives not by killing themselves, but they end their lives by just giving up on hope and life. They give up on joy. And so I would just want to be an encouragement to them that you can overcome these situations. Yeah. Sometimes that ego brain whips you so much, there's only one way you feel like you can quiet it, especially if you're like OCD, ADHD, things like that. It can really be abusive.

But there's ways through it. And that's why we have gentlemen like you on the shows, share the blueprints of success and survivorship. And you know, life is a survival's game. You know, you mentioned no one outruns the universe. I mean, it's a grand survival game when you really look at it wholly. I like one of these core beliefs you have, several of them actually, but I think some just kind of stick out of me. Maybe I'm hungry right now. Every challenge has a chewy nugget center made of opportunity. Uh, do you want to tease that out a little bit to us? Yeah. So there was a time when I really liked milk chocolate and a couple of candy

bars in particular, you know, and I think that's when I wrote this one down. I'm not a big fan of the cliche. Every dark cloud has a silver lining because to me visually, again, I'm not a big fan of the cliche every dark cloud has a silver lining Because to me visually again, I'm a visual person. So for me visually Why would I ever go in the dark cloud? I would just hang out the silver lining. Yeah Outside of it, but I don't think that's the way life is I think we all go through these you know What I think Carolyn Mays calls the dark night of the soul, right? You get into these places where you feel like there's no hope, or it's just a very difficult time. You know that you'll get through it,

but it's going to be very painful. And I think that those circumstances are not necessarily there so that we will find some bit of wisdom. But I think it's kind of like the red car theory, you know, like you buy a red car and nobody had a red car until you bought one. Now everybody's got one. Yeah. I think it's what we put our mind to, what we focus on. That's what we see. So when we have a red car, we focus on everyone else's red car and we become aware of that. And I think if you're in a challenge, it has happened to me in every situation. If, as I I persevered through the challenge, if I focus myself to pay attention for things I can learn things,

a bits of wisdom I can take with me techniques that I can use the next time, they're always present. They're there. You just have to have the will to open your, as you said, open your aperture, open your eyes, focus a little bit to look for the opportunity. I think too many times we're in the midst of a problem. Again, whether that's a business problem, whether that, you know, the whole customer deal

has gone to hell in a hand basket and it was your biggest deal of the year and now what are you gonna do? You know, look, in every situation, we can either focus on how bad things are, or we can deal with how bad things are, and we can force ourselves convince ourselves to pay attention to those opportunities that might be there, right? If you were in the middle of a bad situation, and I said today, I'll give you $50 for every

opportunity you can find that would come out of this bad situation. You'll find a couple. You'll be motivated to find a couple. So we have to motivate ourselves in the dark times to find something that will benefit us when we're not in the dark times. You know, everybody goes through a bit of dark times in their life and you've got to be able to survive. I mean, it seems like there's just, it almost seems like it's intentional, but like I said, I think it's a survivor game and it seems there's things that come to us that make us grow. What's that old saying?

I just like to say those moments that which doesn't kill me makes me stronger. At least it's supposed to I mean missing a leg But an arm, but it'll grow back You know the number one cause of death Since the beginning of humanity, okay Whether you want to say that was a million years ago three hundred thousand years ago six thousand years ago It doesn't matter the number one cause of death since the birth of humanity has been birth.

That's one cause of death. Everybody does. We finally got there. Now it's a matter of timing. You know, you can have other causes, but the number you can have other reasons, but the cause of death is birth. And so we're all going to experience it. I don't know, I actually don't know of anyone who doesn't have dark times, who doesn't have desperate times that

come into their lives. And so the objective now is how do we persevere? And to me, these core beliefs are how I persevere, because I believe the ultimate objective is to finish the race. Yeah. And so if you're going to finish, you've to finish the race. Yeah. And so if you're going to finish, you've got to persevere. Yeah. Or at least get as far as you can. I mean, some, sometimes people have a shorter run than others, but they do amazing things at that time. They do. And then some people have a long run and don't do much, but maybe, I don't know, maybe that's the contribution is the long life.

I don't know. What am I? What do I know? I like one of the other rules. It's all a guessing game, man. It's all a guessing game. Yeah. I mean, all you can do is just every day be the best person you can be and try and make

the world a better place. And that's all you can do. Because you may not be here tomorrow and you, you know, you don't really have a choice on it. So you just got to do what you got to do. I love this rule, the 38th special rule, hold on loosely, but don't let go. Boy, I remember when that was all over the radio. Right. I mean, it's, you know, I wrote that down because I mean, we grew up around that song, right? Like, yeah, like one day my daughter, my youngest, my oldest daughter was out at a field trip,

kind of a nature trip. And she was, I don't know, seven, eight years old, something like that. And they were at this pond. And, uh, and she reached down and she picked up a tadpole and she was looking at it and she was showing my wife the tadpole and she didn't want to lose it. So she held onto it very tightly. And by the time she got it back to the water, it had passed away. She had crushed it.

And I thought, you know, that's a great song. I like this song, but I actually think there's some truth in that primarily around, you know, again, the core beliefs, they're not like, I don't think they're things that haven't been said before or known before. I mean, hell, that one's got a song that was written about it, right? Everybody's heard it, but it's a reminder to me that control is an illusion and that most of the time when you work to control something, you actually end up damaging it, that you can be involved without control.

So it's a reminder, it's an aspirational goal to check myself and to have, you know, a lot of this is about personal responsibility, Chris, when it comes right down to it. Like a lot of it is you have to not blame other people, but start looking at your own self for what you can both, what you have contributed positive and negatively and what you can contribute positive or negatively to your life and those around you. And one of the ways you do that is take responsibility of your own actions. And one of those actions is don't think that you control outcomes because you actually don't control outcomes. You can contribute to them, but you don't control them.

Yeah. Especially when dealing with other people because they have their own minds, their own agendas and everything else. It's hard to control other people. Pete Well, I had to deal with that when my son, you know, took his own life, right? I mean, I thought it only dawned on me afterwards, I thought that I had been, my wife and I had been keeping him alive. We had known, he told us he wanted to end his life when he was nine years old. He was highly intelligent, he was very logical to his detriment,

and he said, look, I don't understand what this life is for. You're born, you suffer, you die. Why not just cut out the middle part? Like, why would I wanna go through all that suffering? So I think you can't, what I realized after his passing was that I had never actually been keeping him alive. I thought I was controlling the situation. I was doing, I was keeping him from taking his life. But what I realized was I had never been keeping him from taking his life. He had been making a decision every day not to

end his life until the one day he decided to end his life. And I think it was just a reminder to me of that particular rule. I could be involved, but the truth is I couldn't control anything. I had no control. And I think it's an illusion. I think we think we can control things, but Chris, we don't actually control anything. I mean, hopefully we, you know, I mean, for as long as we possibly can, we'd like to control, you know, our bowels,

that'd be good. That'd be good. I mean, I'm fine. But you know, you know, there's, there's times when you can't do that. So Yeah. After Taco Bell buffet night. A hundred percent. Yeah. So tell us about some of the offerings you do on your website. You do coaching, consulting, I see you do speaking engagements here. Tell us about some of the resources you offer there. Pete Slauson Yeah. You know, again, it's all built around

sharing not really, I don't really have an optimistic story. I believe I have a realistic story that there will be challenges in your life and that you can persevere and overcome a lot of them. Some of them, you know, death is one that you're not going to overcome, but you don't have to join in. You don't have to help it along. You can't, you can resist that urge. And so anything that I do with other folks, whether it's speaking to groups or speaking with individuals or sharing the information on the website for the things I've done in my struggle against cancer

that they can look at, investigate and adopt themselves. It's really all geared around sharing a story. I don't know if you call it a story of hope, but it's certainly a story of being able to persevere. I think we can encourage people to persevere, right? The story of the Good Samaritan is really just a story of perseverance. I mean, what he really did was he helped, you know, the traveler. Yeah, he bandaged him, he did, but he helped him persevere through that difficult time. So I think that's kind of what I would like people to take away from their engagements with me,

their conversations with me, is that the truth is life is hard. Bad things will happen. You don't know when they're going to occur. They're happening to someone right now. They're not happening to you and I at this moment, as far as we know, but they're absolutely happening to other people are finding out at this moment that they have cancer. Other people are finding out that a loved one is left. The bad things are going to happen. However, we can survive those and we can make it through to the other side of those terrible losses. Yeah. this is the thing that we love about the show, what we share with people, the blueprints of survivorship, the blueprints of getting through stuff, you know. Everyone goes through sometimes different things in life.

Sometimes they're kind of similar, overlaid in how you can overcome them. But you know, having those resources and you know and the great thing is with what you've done is you've shared your story and a lot of people, I talk sometimes about throughout my life where I was afraid or I thought sharing the story is kind of selfish, like who cares? So my dog died, who cares? How I got through it, yada, yada, yada, who cares. But people care. And I've held back sharing stories and finally shared a story and then just been shocked

at how many people are impacted, how many people it helps. I mean, there are stories that I've shared of survivorship that I shared in 2013, 2014, and people still come up to me and they'll remember that more than anything about me and they'll tell me how I helped them. And so it's really wonderful how we can share each other's stories, we can share each other's blueprints of survivorship with each other, and we can help lift and inspire and it's just amazing how much that reach goes out to where we, you know, we touch people that we maybe never see or hear from, you know, that's the great thing about books is they can go out to people and, you know, if you're lucky every now and then some comes to you and goes, hey, man,

what you told me, help me. But it's so great that we have these things and you've shared them in your book because you've gone through some stuff in your life, my friend. You definitely have. You're a survivor of survivors there. Well, what you just talked about is super important to me. I've had people come up to me. I've told that when I talk about the loss of a child to suicide, I know that someone who not get better. They believe that everyone else will be better if they're not here, or they believe that people will get over it and they'll move on. And I know that for most people in that situation, what I'm about to say might not resonate with

them. But I have heard that at least for one person, it did resonate with them. But I have heard that at least for one person it did resonate with them and that makes it worth saying again that all of those things are untrue. When someone takes their life, the pain does not go away. People are not better off that you're not here. They will never get over your loss. The only thing that happens is you

leave. The pain stays and then it spreads like a cancer to everyone that loved you, everyone that knew you, and even people who don't know you when they hear your story. And so it's the worst possible outcome, it's the worst possible way to attempt to solve a problem is to take your own life because all this happened is you have left everyone's left with the loss of you not being here and the pain that you thought you were taking with you or you thought was going to be gone and maybe you don't even care maybe you just want to get away from the pain but that pain will stay and the better thing to do is to stay here and

confront the pain and work to lessen or maybe even eventually remove completely that pain and leave for those who come in contact with you and those who hear your story, leave for them a story of perseverance. Leave for them a story that when they're in a dark place, they too can survive it. They don't have to take their own life. And I've had a person or two say that when they heard that perspective on it, it made a difference. It changed their mind about taking their life. And if that's the case, then sharing the story of my son's passing and what I believe I've learned from that passing is worth being transparent about it. Living life, helping people, trying to be positive.

Sometimes it's kind of one of your other methods kind of speaks to what you just said. Let me see if we can find it really quick. I think it was to keep going through your thing. Always fall forward. Keep moving towards your goals even when you fall. Yeah. Yeah. That's it.

That's a kind of a, you know, visually, when I see that, uh, I think, you know, for those, for almost anyone who played sports or you've had something, you've been hit so hard, you fell backwards. And the fastest way to get back up and get in the game is to roll over, get on your knees and hands, and then slowly as fast as you can get back up and start running back toward the direction that you needed to go. And that one is just, it's an aspirational goal that I've kind of, I've installed it as a default program so that when I'm hit with something and I

don't know what to think, I don't know what to do next, I don't think the long journey at that point, I don't think how am I going to get back from this setback. I just think in that moment mentally, maybe physically, but certainly mentally, get your mind back in the direction you need to go to achieve your goal. Whatever that goal is, maybe the goal is changed. Maybe in the case of the cancer diagnosis, it was just survival. It wasn't like the goal is changed, maybe in the case of the cancer diagnosis, it was just survival. It wasn't like, you know, the goal get back to, but the idea is to remind

myself to get my mind back into a place. So the very first thing I want to do is reset my mindset and focus on a goal. And that's the first thing. Then I'll take the next step when I'm ready to take the next step. But that keeps me from getting kind of wandering around in the desert. And I think after you've had a very difficult circumstance, it's easy to wander around in the desert, right? Uncertain of what the next thing to do is. And so for me, that's kind of the default program.

What's the next thing you do? You fall forward Get your mind back on the goal get yourself straightened out. Yeah, I find Two things help me in moments of crisis Stopping and getting quiet and having gratitude like looking around and going. Okay. What are my assets? What do I still have because you know, sometimes it's a loss. You lose a business or you lose money or you lose something. And so a lot of times what I'll do is I'll start with gratitude and I'll sit down and go, okay, something was taken from me that was never mine, really,

when it comes down to it. Memento Mori, recently, last year I lost my dog and adopting Stoicism's Memento More really helped me because one of the things I really felt that really hurt me with my first couple of dogs that I lost was I thought something had been taken from me, that it was mine. And that's not how the universe works. And my dog was on her journey. It wasn't my journey, it was her journey. She was the one that had to live her life. She was the one who developed leukemia.

She was the one who had to go through it as she wound down. That was her journey. And me being selfish and being like, well, I wish she could stay a few more years, you know, it's not how it was all going to work out on that plane, you know? And so I had to kind of realize and be grateful that I got time with her and that she passed through my life. And that was good. That was fine. That was what I was allotted from the universe. And so coming out the other side, I had to be grateful for the time that I had. And then I had to move forward, like you say. side, I had to be grateful for the time that I had. And then I had to move forward, like you say.

And sometimes, you know, I always, I always kind of imagine it as this dark tunnel, you know, that light at the end of the tunnel. And you just got to keep plotting, you got to keep moving, you got to keep trying to find your sea legs. And that's, that's really what a lot of people do, as long as that light at the end of the tunnels at a freight train coming your way. Yeah, well, you know, you hope. But I think what you just described is, you know, look, people have asked me like, where do these Corbelli sit in? Like are they long-term? But they were almost all forged in that space that you've described as that tunnel between that event and the time when you're kind of able to walk back out into the light. Those times when you're not sure what direction to go,

you can't really see anything. You're uncertain about how things are going to work out. You're in grief. You're sad. You've lost a companion that's meant a tremendous amount to you. And now that's gone. That's really what these core beliefs are about. It's like, no, they apply more broadly in life and in business. But when you're in that tunnel, when you're in that dark night of the soul, you need something to kind of carry you forward when you don't know what to do. You need some kind of some guidepost. That's what they're for.

And I think I've certainly had to think along the same lines that you just described. Look, sometimes it's not about what's taken from you. It was just that it was what was given to you for a season of life. And that season of life would have been a lot less had I not had this gift that was given to me. I've been blessed to have really good dogs and real companions. I know one in particular he ended up with like this lung disease and he wasn't even a smoker, wasn't a smoker but he ended up with this lung disease and he was struggling to breathe at the end but and it was painful to watch him go you know I held him when he had to be

put down and you know cried like a baby. But I look back on the times that I spent with him and man, my life would have been so different without him. He brought joy to me. I think he had a hole in his love tank. It was constantly empty. We're on the verge of being empty. So he constantly had to have affection. So you couldn't really have a bad day because if you were having a bad day, he needed attention. Like you just, I don't know, it was just like this thing. He would just suck all the bad day out of you. You know, like his being would just kind of take it away from you. And I'm very grateful for the time. I miss him. But I think you do have a choice to think about, you know, he was taken from me or he was gifted to me

for a period of time. And in a lot of ways, I have to think about my son that way. You know, I had him for a period of time. It wasn't mine. I didn't get to make the decision. I would have made a different decision for him. But I'm grateful for the time that I did have him. I'm grateful for the time that he was in my life. Yeah. It's, it's a, it's a, it's a challenging thing to go through. And if anybody's out there in an emotional state where they're, you know, they're thinking about taking their own life or they're just, they

need some emotional support, reach out and talk to a friend, reach out and talk to people what's going on. You know, the worst thing you could do is bottle that up and keep it all inside. Cause it's just poison. I remember seeing a, uh, the after show of leaving Neverland, the movie about Michael Jackson and the two boys and Oprah did an after show on it. And this guy got up who'd been molested by a police officer as a child and how it had affected him through his life and the self-destruction he'd been doing through his life because he hadn't dealt with the

trauma and he made a really interesting comment. He goes, the problem with this sort of stuff is it's poison and if you keep it trapped inside you, it festers just like a rattlesnake bite and you've got to get it out of your system. it festers just like a rattlesnake bite and you've got to get it out of your system and the only way you can do that is to talk to people, to reach out, ask for help and to see people like yourself who have a blueprint that say, hey, I survived some of this, here's the blueprint and how I did it, might work for you and that's really important but you have to reach out, you have to say something and if you ever feel yourself in that position, talk to people, or there's

a number nine, eight, eight that you can take and call to suicide hotline, emotional, uh, driven emotional complications. You need some support, some help, some guidance, check that out, but please talk to somebody, get outside of yourself. Cause sometimes your ego brain is just, it's just whipping you to death. I know what that feels like. And you think sometimes the only way to get it to leave you alone is to quiet it permanently. And it's a weird fucking place to be. And it's not right. There's ways out of it. And someday you look back and go, God, I'm glad to ask for help. So that's my message is as we go out, give us your final pitch out people

to buy the book, reach out to you for help, et cetera, et cetera. Look, go to the website, ask Andy Campbell.com. If you find it, if you're motivated to do it, buy a book. But what I would, what I think is most important that I want to leave with you with your audience, Chris is do not give up, do not quit. Tomorrow, just like it is not guaranteed, a bad tomorrow is not guaranteed either. We can survive these things that have happened to us. We can even find a way to have some happiness in a day and give. Somebody asked me one time, what am I most proud of having

survived that long list of stuff that you read off? And I said, the one thing that I am most proud of is that I never took away from the creator, the opportunity to move the universe in my favor. And I think that's what I would leave. Don't take away from the creator, the opportunity to move the universe in your favor. You had a setback, but there are more tomorrows. Yeah. I mean, we all have rainy days. You just got to get through them. Sometimes you just, I don't know, go,

go in the bed, curl it a little ball and wait for tomorrow. That's okay, man. I mean, that's okay. That's the days where I wake up and just every single thing is just off the rails. Like just going wrong. You're just like everything, you know, spilling stuff, you're spilling the coffee, you know, just every, and, and yeah, it doesn't really happen very often to me, but every now and then I'm just like, you know what? Fuck this. I'm going to go back to bed, back to bed and reset.

And we're going to try this again tomorrow. I look, I had a day the other day where it just came to, I was like, so many things happened in a row. I actually started laughing at it. I was like, so it's going to be that day. It's going to be, it's going to be that day. So we're just going to do it then. We're just going to go it. I was like, so it's going to be that day. It's going to be that day. It's going to be that day. So we're just going to do it then.

We're just going to go through it. This is the way it's going to be. You know, the, the, the goal is don't stay in bed. You know, some days when you're having to pick, people get depressed. I've been depressed and. You know, you got to stack together some little pieces of courage. And sometimes it's, it's just the little things that are wins. And sometimes just getting out of bed is a win

Yeah, but yeah, some days you just got to crawl back in and reset you got it You know as a friend of mine used to say when he mixed metaphors He said some days you just got to drop back ten and reboot. Yeah Yeah, reboot. I mean, that's what that's kind of a great sports analogy, too There's a lot of people that had to do that You know you look at Tom Brady's a couple of years ago that run that were in the Super Bowl He was they were down to a point that no other team in history and record. Yeah, Chris. I was I was an Atlanta fan I'm familiar with the game. Oh, you don't really have to sorry more than that. All right, all righters fan They took my Super Bowl from there

Yeah, but you know, it would have been nice to win it and then lose it. We didn't even get that. We just we just we just won half time. And then, yeah, we we just won it. And then some asshole came up with the tuck rule in 19. Yeah. Yeah. Who was that? Who was that? Found that guy. Yeah.

Find that guy. I'm still hunting for him, actually. No, I'm just kidding. Don't do that, folks. But no, that I'm still sore about that. Find that guy. Yeah. Find that guy. Uh, I'm still hunting for him actually. No, I'm just kidding. Don't do that folks, but no, that, uh, I, I'm still sore about that. I mean, Tom Brady is a great player, but probably the goat of all time, but, uh, still sore. He could have been a great player without that call. I'll be exactly. His career was not based on that call. He would have been just fine without it. Just fine. But you know, there, there are those moments you just got to persevere through them. I use that sometimes.

I, you know, I don't want to go to the gym. I just, I just don't want to go. I don't feel like it. Sometimes I feel like shit. I feel like I'm populated, like my body's, you know, two or three different pieces taped together and, uh, which is probably true at this 57. And so what I'll do is I'll just convince myself, okay, we're going to drive to the gym and we're just going to go. And if you don't like it, then we'll go home, but we're

driving to the gym. And, uh, so then I'll force myself to go to the gym and, and I, there's those, uh, recovery chairs. And so I'm like, I'm going to sit in their recovery chair and it'll help loosen me up. I'll get the muscles going, the blood flow going, and at least I'll feel better. You know, cause I feel like shit right now. So we'll just go do that and then maybe we'll go do one thing. And, and, and so I just, I just get in the car and I go, and we're not, we're not arguing about this.

We're going to the gym and, uh, we'll just work it out how it goes. And a lot of times I go and just having that muscle memory of a habit kicks in, you know, I smell the jam, I walk in, my body starts going, Oh, let's, uh, let's get after some stuff that are sometimes I'll just sit. And if I'm really hurting or feeling discombobulated, I'll sit and I'll be like, okay, well let's do one machine. And like you said, you know, fall back 10. Sometimes I'll just take the machine down 10 pounds, you know, fall back 10, sometimes I'll just take the machine down 10 pounds, you know, or 20 pounds back from what I normally push. And I'll just be like, let's just,

let's just do a couple things here. If you, if that, you don't want to do that, then we'll go home, but we're going to do a set of reps or one set of reps. And then usually kicks in on the gear and I'm back to normal and we're back to pushing weights and kicking ass and taking names, but I have to start eating the elephant one bite at a time. So you brought that up. I was actually going to use that old cliche, but yeah, what, you know, what happens is when you back the weight off. Okay.

So then it's like you do that and you're like, well, I just do this and you know, I'll move and then I'll move on. But then you do that when you're like, what are you? What's your real? That was so bad. And walk away with like, yeah, but you're that when you're like, what are you? What's your real? It wasn't so bad. I'm going to walk away with like, yeah, but you're just going to get up and walk away with that, like you can do more than that, you know, so you end up talking yourself into it and I saw a thing one time about, because I, you know, we've

heard this, we've all heard this cliche forever, like, you know, how do you get the elephant one bite at a time? One, but they didn't tell me it was, I watched a YouTube video a few years ago. And it was a bunch of hyenas, a pack of hyenas had come upon this big bull elephant. And so it's like dinner, like he had just died of like old age or something. So he's laying there in the savanna, wherever it was at in this. And so this pack of hyenas come up.

And Chris, you know, so they literally have to eat the elephant one bite at a time. Okay? It's not like a metaphor. It's physically eat the elephant one bite at a time. This is what nobody ever told me. And then that cliche made so much sense after I saw this video. Do you know where they start? The elephant's hide is so tough. Do you know where hyenas start when they find an elephant? Do you know what part of the elephant they start with? I want to say the belly, but i'm afraid to know what the other answer is. They start with the asshole man They start oh shitty. They start with the shittiest place in the elephant and because that's the softest thing on the elephant It's his ass and I was thinking why didn't somebody tell me that about eat the elephant one bite at a time No wonder because every time I do that, you're always starting at the shittiest place. Now it's like, that's the way the universe is

designed. If you want to get to the good stuff, you got to go through the bad stuff. You got to eat some shit. Yeah. And so, I mean, it's just like, you know, accept it. That's the way it is. It's true. And we all eat shit in this life. I mean, I think my hardest problem in life was people used to tell me, what was the hardest thing I used to have a hard time with? I don't even know if I wrote about this in my book, but I used to have a hard time when people would tell me it's about the journey, Chris, and not the destination. And I always wanted that perfect arc, that

perfect run to the exit, the perfect, you know, I want to do things perfectly right. So there's no errors. And there's just, perfection is just mental insanity. And realizing that there's going to be issues, there's going to be problems in life. And your job is to overcome those problems to survive them is the better way to tackle it. Because everyone, you know, some people look at people's lives like movie stars and stuff. They're like, Oh, they just live the perfect life and everything fell in their lap. And it's like, no, you know, it's too bad we don't see some of these things that the sweat, bloods and tears that people go through to survive these things and, uh, come out the other side. Well, it's always, what is it slowly at first and all of a sudden, and all we ever see is

the all of a sudden part. We didn't see it 20 years before, you know, I mean, Hey, you know, yeah, she's a great actress now, but you weren't the one with on Harvey Weinstein's couch, right? So, I mean, you know, like everybody pays the price, you know, like you weren't there for those 10 years, were you? No, you know, so just a laundry room with Harvey Weinstein. I've, I've had days like that, that feel like that.

Yeah. You know, life sometimes, sometimes those are the kind of days you're just going to have, you know, sometimes life is basically Chris. It is a series of difficulties. I wish somebody had told me this when I got married, right? Cause they always say, I've been married 37 years this year and somebody will say, or in the marriage vows, it says for better or worse. Nobody said that like a lot of life is the worst part. You know, like I don't need a wife for the good parts.

You know, like I could have, you know, it's like for the better parts, I'm good. What you need is you need a companion for the worst parts. And I think, you know, life because there are a lot of worse parts in life Yeah, and so I just don't have the same expectations I once had I now see life as a series of difficulties for which I am grateful when something goes, right? I'm grateful for a good day, you know My one of my purposes in life just daily one of my goals is not, I don't want to be the one that's causing. I don't want the day to have a bad me.

Uh huh. Like that's, that's kind of it. I don't want the day to have a bad me. Yeah. That's an interesting way to look at it. Uh, so give us your.com as we go out and find all thoughts on the show. Ask Andy Campbell.com that's the site. And I would just encourage your listeners, no matter what difficulty you're going through. on the show. You can survive, do not quit. And no matter how small the steps you take, uh, moving forward, you're

still moving forward person. Persevere folks, one step in front of the other, eat the elephant one by the time, even though it's the worst part to start with. And yeah, you're right. I mean, once you start eating the elephant, you kind of get into a vibe, if you will, or a jive and, and, uh, you know, it starts to move a little bit quicker and, you know, maybe it's cause you're not in the asshole anymore and you're getting into the meat. Yeah.

That's the only way to, that's the only way to get to the heart and lungs, man. I mean, if everybody wants the good stuff, it's just that sometimes you've got to go through the bad stuff to get to it. Yeah. I'm after the ribs for the barbecue. Anyway, I must be hungry, nougat and and ribs and we got all that going on the show. So, thank you very much for your uplifting message and sharing it, Andy. We certainly appreciate it, man.

Andy Boudreau I have the gratitude all mine. Thank you for having me, Chris. Pete Slauson Thank you. And thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss, LinkedIn.comcom fortress, Chris Foss, Facebook.com. Ford says Chris Foss or up his book where refined books are sold overcoming life's toughest challenges. 15 breakthrough core beliefs to transform challenges into opportunities. Buy it for yourself and get some for your friends and pass them out. Uh, cause we, you know, there isn't anybody, there's nobody who gets a, I

get a perfect ride in a free pass to your life. I'm pretty sure of that. It could be wrong. There's a lot of people on the earth, a billion, but, uh, most people go through stuff, so thanks so much for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.

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