Ever Forward in Healing and Self-Awareness | Chase Chewning

Darin: You are listening to the Darin Olien Show. I’m Darin.

 I spent the last 20 years devoted to improving health, protecting the environment and finding ways to live a more sustainable life. In this podcast. I have honest conversations with people that inspire me. I hope that through their knowledge and unique perspectives, they’ll inspire you too.

Talk about all kinds of topics from amping up your day diets and improving your wellbeing to the mind-blowing stories behind the human experience and the people that are striving to save us and our incredible planet. We also get into some of life’s fatal conveniences. You know, those things that we are told might be good for us, but totally aren’t.

So here’s to making better choices and the small tweaks in your life, that amount to big changes for you and the people around you and the planet. Let’s do this.

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Everybody! Welcome to the show. How’s it going? I’m Darin Olien. This is the Darin Olien Show. I’m stoked for this next guest, man. This was so real, so emotional, so authentic to the journey because this journey with my next guest, Chase Chewning, intertwined me on several levels about our fathers passing away, about life, throwing us hard times and transcending that.

So this one was a really powerful one for me. I did his podcast. Now he’s doing mine and we just have this kind of synergy that creates these episodes, for me, that are very real, very raw in a different kind of way. Chase is a Virginia Native. An American veteran. Thank you, Chase, for your service. And you will find out in this episode, everyone, that Chase dedicated over and above what he did in the service and, and really you’ll start to understand and see how he describes how he was running from something at the same time that he was going on mission after mission after mission. And it led to some incredibly hard, hard challenges that have changed his life and he’s used that. The emotional challenges and then the physical challenges. He’s turned that into his life of moving people forward, moving himself forward into health, fitness attitude, how you see the world move towards the world that you want, and being mindful.

Chase was medically discharged from the military with tons of injuries. Reconstructions, all this stuff. He had a lot that could have absolutely taken him down, but to our delight and to our benefit, Chase shares himself with his clients, with people that listen to his podcast and with us today. So give a warming welcome to Chase – this army veteran, this incredible aware dude that I really enjoy. 

Give him a round of silent gratitude as you now get to tune in and bare witness to a great individual who’s overcome a lot and is now sharing that with the world and in the world. Here’s Chase Chewning.

Dude. Thank you. And welcome to the fricking show. Obviously you come from, well, come from a lot, but the military side of you, which seemed to inform the physical side of you quite intensely, and want to hear about that on a journey and then kind of where you’re at now, and you have a incredible podcast and, you know, life in, what is it, Virginia.

Chase: [00:04:24] Yeah. Yeah. Well, way down south, actually, almost, almost right of the Virginia North Carolina border. And, uh, I think it’s really wild. I’m having this conversation here with you today, Darren, because someone like yourself has opened up my eyes in the last six months a year or so to the bigger picture. Of life, to the bigger picture of the world and not only what we’re doing in our small little worlds, but the ripple effect we have all over and there’s a big machine turning out there.

Right. And hopefully we can all become a little bit more aware of that. But my, my little world, my little machine kind of began in a way that I, I think you would appreciate, and that. Down to earth down to nature. Like, well, no pun intended

growing up, just in nature. Growing up in the mountains, I grew up in a very, very tight knit family where I really do credit now. Just incredible amount of nature and nurture coming together. I grew up with my tribe, my community, my family. I’m the oldest of three grandparents, parents, like everybody was there.

And then we just lived in connection with nature, playing in creeks, running up mountains, building forts gardens that were, you know, acres in size and really living off of the land in a lot of ways, eating many, many of the foods that we were growing ourselves. And as a kid growing up, I didn’t fully wrap my head around what that.

I, I didn’t realize what I had going for me. I just knew that I grew up in a loving environment. We were not well off by any means, but I didn’t realize any differently. And that was one thing that really shine through in like in your work and the people in places that, that you highlight is that success comes in many forms, but at its core, if we are connected to nature, we are connected to our community.

Then what else more is there in a way we can just thrive and be successful. He loved and give love that. That’s what I did. That’s what I experienced growing up. And that was my life. Before the military and, um, my decision to leave the nest, so to speak and to leave this small, small little town of the Southwest of Virginia called Roanoke, Virginia to go experience the big world.

And the big machine was in a way more just legacy. And, you know, I know after having you on, on my show and connecting with the unfortunate loss of your father as well, that was just so meaningful for me. Um, I didn’t know. Just a few months after I would leave to join the army. My dad was going to be diagnosed terminal.

He was going to be gone about a year, year and a half later. And so at the time I felt safe and secure following in his footsteps because of the model he had set for me and the way that he had raised me and my family and just the impact he left on my world and my immediate world. That was the big reason why I decided to.

Step out into the big world and see what the military had to offer for the next six years. 

Darin: [00:07:10] That is a powerful, the matriarch, the role model and especially Manda, man. There’s something so powerful in that. And then to get that news, uh, that’s intense. Was your dad in the military? 

Chase: [00:07:26] Yeah, he was, he was in the army as well.

I enlisted into the army. Uh, my uncle was in the Marines for a few years. My grandfather was an army war, two vet, and just generation after generation. They’re basically as far back as we can tell, it was just some, someone had served kind of each generation. And so unlike a lot of my friends at the time, I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to be when I grew up.

So I just had a better example of that guy to follow. And so that’s what 

Darin: [00:07:52] I did. The man now has made his decision. He’s in the military and then your dad dies on top of it a year, year and a half later. That to me, both of those things really happening relatively soon had to be just monumental. It was, 

Chase: [00:08:11] and I think it’s something that, I mean, I’m 35 now and I’m still revisiting and unpacking and processing in a lot more healthy ways now that’s for damn sure.

Think back. I mean, how many of us at 17, 18, 19 20, that was very formidable years of becoming an adult. Maybe you leave home, maybe you join the military. Maybe you go to college. Maybe you get a job. Maybe you stay in the small town. Maybe you move across the world. I mean, who knows, but those are the most formidable years I think because of what we have going on in our heads and our hearts.

Biochemically physiologically. And just emotionally, we are just trying to, hopefully we’re taking everything that we know to be true, the good, bad, and the ugly of the upbringing of our parents. And they did the best that they could hopefully for us. And then we get curious and then we want to step out and then we’re experiencing all these things for the first time, or maybe for the first time in a long time.

And then it’s like, you have one. At home and then one foot out in the real world, and you’re still trying to wage, which one do I love the most? Which one do I trust the most? You know, which 1:00 AM I going to lean into the most as I’m creating my own identity, excuse me. No way in hell. I knew that’s what was actually happening at 19 years old when I was experiencing my first year, year and a half active duty army burying my father.

Being the oldest of three, having two younger siblings still in their young teenage years to still try to look after it’s to then look back at my home and realize that I had left it and just have honestly, a lot of regrets and pain and remorse about what my family was going through without me being there.

But then I just had to jump right back into being soldier, chase to serving my country. And luckily I was there literally his last days he was alive, but I almost didn’t have the opportunity, I think, to really grieve or to process what happened because. Two days later, three days later, I was on a plane back to base and I was just, you know, serving my country.

You know, this was at the height of OIF OEF. This is back in 2005, 2004, 2005. There was a lot going on a lot more demanding of me at the time. And, uh, just trying to process it all. And I didn’t at the time, it’s so 

Darin: [00:10:24] true with so many things in life like that. Because number one, how do you process something that.

We’re not taught that our cultures for some reason is just grades horribly in terms of right. Grief and everything else. And unfortunately, and military, obviously you have things to do that are life altering for not only yourself, but the people around you. So, yeah. Crying in a foxhole over your father is just not something that is going to work.

Right? So, so you have to stuff it somewhere. I want to get a little granular on that because I think it’s necessary. And it’s so powerful as men because I joined a men’s group maybe four years ago. And also I think I’ve had great mentors along the way, but it’s like, we have to find a way of.

Understanding feelings and yeah, and as well as these innate things that we naturally have protection and taking care of our loved ones and, and all of that stuff. And then you have this layer of protecting your team, your soldiers, your country, like layers upon layers upon layers of that. But where is it that, that healthy balance.

Is because it’s just, 

wasn’t 

Chase: [00:11:52] it wasn’t really. And to your point of, I mean, in my case, it wasn’t a case of diverticulitis, so that’s a mouthful. Um, but it was a very, very deep rooted emotional trauma that was just festering. And I’m still glad that you kind of narrowing down on, you know, Manliness, manhood, and a lot of the things that we are perhaps not taught or things that we maybe.

I’m curious about, but don’t feel like it’s appropriate or we’re allowed to experience and express as men. And I won’t say that that’s really fully where I was my father. Like he wasn’t military man, but he was always very, very forthright, very honest, very open, very emotional. And he would cut to the core of things that mattered and whether that meant, you know, saving face or not.

But it didn’t matter when it came down to serving his country or providing for his family. And that meant getting emotional. Or if that meant being, you know, a brick wall, both serve a purpose and both were needed. Yeah, I, I did not properly process that and I didn’t really think that I needed to, or that I should.

And honestly, at my time, at that time in the military was because of where we were in the world. And because we were a military at war, it was like, Hey, that could be considered a weakness. That could be a flaw that could maybe get you, uh, you know, not promoted that could be looked down on. And so I kind of just took that in the back of my mind and stuff, that deeper stuff, that deeper stuff that deeper, and what I did was everything, the opposite that I thought I was supposed to do to become the best soldier that I could get promoted, set myself up for success to, to go on any and every mission that I could.

And just, and just go, go, go and be that machismo big masculine guy. But what I didn’t realize was that that trunk. The other part of being a man, I mean, sitting with your emotions and sitting with the loss of especially a father figure and it caught it with me hard, really where my story begins there.

And it is in a very, very broken place, physically, mentally, emotionally spiritual. I was so just distraught on the inside and not dealing with this and missing horribly. My father, I was doing everything I could to volunteer for deployments, to volunteer, to put myself in harm’s way, quite literally, because I didn’t care anymore.

If I woke up the next day, I didn’t care anymore. If I could continue the mission, uh, I just, I just wanted to give up, but I, I, I knew that. A way, a more masculine way, right. To go about that. And I was like, wow, what could be more honorable? What can be more manly than to, to die on the battlefield? And so I was doing everything I could to, to, to try to go on these missions to try to get on these deployments.

And, and things were looking promising. And I was in the middle of just playing war games, still stateside here. And it was at the pinnacle of my kind of depression and emotional suppression of that loss where I quite literally. Was broken. I got snapped up long story short, leading it, ambush playing war games and heard this pop felt this pop.

I thought I got shot as fast as I would leading this attack. I, I w I came crashing back down kind of blacked out for a little bit. Next thing I knew that I’m being medivaced out severe trauma to my back. My L four and L five vertebrae kind of went one way. The rest of my body, my spine went another way.

Tore my hamstring suffered trauma to my entire midsection. And then not only was just it. That was that experience that, that broke me. It became compounding became worse to the point to where not only was I removed from any possibility of my wish at the time of coming home in a coffin and just getting over all this.

But I was actually transplanted out of that unit to a completely different base to a hospital unit. And I became a patient for nearly the next year and a half. I had both of my femurs completely removed from my body reconstructed rods and either side. And I went from there. Go go, go, go, go. Trying to be this machismo, super soldier to being the most broken form of a man I have ever experienced just almost a year and a half.

Almost the same duration actually is my dad was sick of just lying in hospital beds, learning how to walk again twice, actually. And then they told me, Hey, chase, you’re no longer good enough to be a soldier. And they, they, they kicked me out. I was medically retired, in fact. So, I mean, I had to complete.

Rewrite my narrative relearn my story. Start over in every way possible. Um, at the age of like 24 man on top of still not grieving my father. So I didn’t just like being so hurt up here and in here, my head in my heart, but then quite literally being hurt everywhere else. Um, it was brutal.

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There’s a little bit of a Forrest Gump that played in my mind just a second, because it’s like, okay, you have this archetype as your, as your commander who goes paralyzed and doesn’t want to face any of ever. Right. And also has a linear of destiny that like, I am fulfilling this. God damn it. And almost screaming.

At forest as being this, you did it, but in your case, the universe is big picture stepped in and said, no, you’re not going to die this way. No, you’re not going to follow whatever the hell you think you’re going to fall. I’m going to give you another opportunity to stop. So what happened then after you kind of got hold of.

Chase: [00:19:24] So I, I signed out of base and I left my life behind as a soldier, um, with my wheelchair, strapped to the roof of my SUV and had a cane in the backseat. And I left, I was in this hospital unit in Texas and just drove home. Cause that’s all I wanted. That’s all I wanted during this time of grief and loss and separation from my family was just to go home.

So I think going home for a lot of us can be very healing, healing, healing of the soul. Physically, literally I needed to heal more. And so I went home, surrounded myself, went back to my roots, went back to my family. We went back to a support system because the one that I had for the last six years was no longer with me by uncle Sam.

The missions that I was in were shitty. It’s not gonna lie, Darren. Um, but what was so unique about where I spent almost that last year and a half of my military career was in a unit with people in the same boat as me. And definitely far worse than me, men and women coming back from theater that head to toe are completely unrecognizable wrapped in gauze.

Third degree, burns, missing arms legs, or both all four. And so while when I went through really, really sucked, I just was almost daily reminded of yeah. You have your arms, you have your legs. You’re most likely doing a heel on, get back to some kind of resemblance of your life before it’s going to look different, but look at how grateful you should be based on what could have been, you know?

And so that always stuck with me. And so I feel like that time in there. Really ingrained that in me. And honestly, as we’re talking about out loud, now it takes me back to a lot of the lessons that my father instilled in me. It was, you know, just, just be grateful, just show up, do the work. And somebody’s always got it worse than you.

And so I kind of had that back in my head and I took barely a month off from being a soldier to a civilian before I was enrolled in school. And I was like, you know what, I’m refusing to accept. I like you said, I was given another chance I was woken up and I didn’t want to lose that because I also knew that’s my father.

He would not want that for me. He would not me, not want me to just go home and kind of rest on my laurels and you know, just woe is me. So I enrolled in school back in Virginia. I decided that I’m not going to accept the conditions that were given to me. I’m going to relearn the human body and. Integrate way possible.

So I begin in their exercise science program and I just studied the body, the mind, nutrition, fitness, biomechanics, exercise science, all of these things. And it helped me in a healed me, gave me a new purpose for life and a passion. I got excited to like actually pursue life again and so much so that I was like, I want to make this my next career.

And so I began to help other people and train other people and coach other people, and then just began to get into the industry. And I worked in health and fitness industry for many years before. Kind of doing what I’m doing now. And, um, I just realized that this was like, this was my next mission. So I gave myself a little bit of that kind of pity time and that downtime, but I didn’t want to lose the second chance that I’ve been given because like, unfortunately, so many of these other people that I served with, I had more opportunities.

It would have been a disgrace to waste. I had to do that in order to put me on the path that I am now. And I quite physically think that I would not be standing here literally as we’re talking, uh, if it were not for kind of just that initiative to take those next steps, 

Darin: [00:22:49] I can’t imagine the things you’ve seen.

Just the fact that that is a reality that is so distant for the civilian population that you guys have to go through and have gone through. And your friends, your fellow soldiers, literally. Lives have altered and ways that you can’t even comprehend, but I want to highlight the kudos to you. There’s two ways you can do.

You didn’t have to take the path you did. You can definitely. And there’s a lot of guys in your space that are challenged and mentally, physically, and, uh, resiliency is gone over the years. I’ve gotten to work with some wounded warriors over the years. The just sitting back and listening and aiding and helping in any way that I can.

But aiding any sort of perspective, changes all that I felt like I could try to do. But you reached back into the way you grew up. Yeah. And how you grew up in and who gave you your father, your mother, your family gave you, informed you in ways that you didn’t even know, but it saved her life too, because you could easily gone down that path of many, many friends that, you know, you have that aren’t doing well.

Right. And what do you think that. Switch was before you’re like, Hey, here’s a month went back home and then going, you know what, I’m going to go back, learn about this thing. And then it inspired you. Was there a final, low point in that month that you were just going back home? Or what was that kind of clicked of like, Hey man, I gotta, I gotta learn.

I gotta go back to school. I gotta get my shit 

Chase: [00:24:32] together. It didn’t quite happen for me in that initial downtime because I became. And give myself a little bit of grace here. I was like 24 years old. And for the last six years I had just been reactive to all right, what’s the mission. What’s the mission, you know, just give me orders, give me something to do as a target, to lock onto.

And I’ll. And I became so caught up in that. And I think to a point it can help people and maybe anybody else out there that was in the military can relate. You’re just looking for the next mission, the next mission. And without it, we can kind of almost feel lost or not valuable. So very quickly I had my new mission.

I had school. I had to succeed in that and also a paralleled well, but I had to keep my grades up because. My military benefits were, were covering it. And so I had to not only do it, but do it well. Um, and then I was learning so much, like I said about myself and healing and rehabilitating. And so it kind of had these dual missions running simultaneously, but it wasn’t in that month, like you said, but quite soon, just a couple years later because I.

On the outside was succeeding. I was rehabilitating was a real boy, you know, upright walking. I was training. I was living a life that I didn’t think would happen. Definitely not as soon as it was, but all of the other things came rushing back. The fact that I had not yet dealt with really dealt with the trauma and the grief and the loss of my father, the fact that I had not really unpacked all the things that I had seen in the, kind of the horrors that I’ve seen in that last year and a half of these other men and women who are just completely dismembered, disfigured.

Yeah. Coming right off, you know, Memorial day here, 20 21, 2 of my closest friends, like men that have impacted me in ways that I, I still am figuring out. They couldn’t handle it, the traumas and everything’s they went through and then being out on the civilian side, they wound up taking their own lives.

And so just so many of these things came swirling around that. I wasn’t fixing that. I wasn’t working on up here in my head and in my heart and it began to manifest. And in another way, I was quite literally kind of snapped up. I began to just develop horrendous panic attacks, anxiety, um, diagnosed PTSD from a lot of the stuff in the military and this kind of just horrible recollection of my father, uh, ALS he had ALS Lou Gehrig’s disease and it’s a very, very ugly, cruel disease.

It began to just consume me there. And I would literally swerve drive off a road. If I heard a song that reminded me of my father, because I was just transported back in time. I couldn’t sit in a movie theater where there was a death scene because I thought it was reliving the death of my father again.

And just, I became unsafe. I became unfun, you know, my family member, my friends, and I was quite literally. Shaken quite literally just woken up my girlfriend at the time. My, my wife now was just so in all what I was not dealing with. And I had probably the worst panic attack in my life. We were watching a movie.

I don’t even remember what happened, but just minutes later, she was shaking me conscious. I was having like some kind of like seizure response to a PTSD induced panic attack, where we were watching a movie and someone died and they moved the sheet. Like they’re doing a lot of movies just over the body, on this hospital bed.

And I lost. And, uh, she was like, look, you would do an everything else. Right? Right. Like, look at you, like physically the strongest you’ve ever been, the leanest you’ve ever been you’re you’re you finish school. You’re in grad school. Now you got a job. You got promoted. Like, but you are not fixing yourself.

You’re not working on the one thing that not only you should, or that your body is reminding you, that you need to, but that your dad absolutely wants for you because the more and more you’re not, you’re just leaving this big empty hole. That is just like a dead weight ball. I thought I was on the next mission.

I thought I was back running the ship and, you know, externally everything was going great, but just this huge other component that I was missing in my overall wellness and damn some of my mental health reared, its ugly head. And, uh, I, I was forced to face it and that’s been about six, seven years now. And so.

Uh, I think that’s just been my, my new daily work in a way, 

Darin: [00:28:48] having a human life, you don’t get out of it, kind of get hit with it. And regardless, and number one, I just want to say I’m so deeply, sorry for your loss of your mentors and your friends and your military fathers in a way, it sounds like. Um, so I’m sorry to hear that.

Guts me to the core to hear that, that struggle. And then that, that is the result that they feel is the next choice. And that’s just gutting. And, um, it’s like you pushed down the emotional unresolved aspects of ourselves, and there’s not a chance in hell that we can really live our alive. But, but that suppression, again, we don’t have the skills necessarily, or we do because we’re not taught it per se, but I believe we do have everything necessary to adapt and go through life.

I believe everyone does, but we all need help and support without a doubt. And so the fact that you blacking out. And thank God your then girlfriend. Good honor. That’s why cereal right there. Yeah. 

Chase: [00:30:03] Yeah. I knew I had something there. That moment. It was, it was, it was a hard truth to mirror back and it was, I mean, I laugh about it now we’re laughing, but it was honestly.

It was kind of like an ultimatum. She was like, Hey, cause we were getting very, very serious and working through very serious things in our relationship and wanted to, you know, to take the next step. And we were talking marriage, but she was just so, so honest with me in a way that I couldn’t be with myself.

That forced me to get honest with myself. She was like, Hey, I love you, but you, you can’t even face this. Or if you can’t even. Agree or commit to, just to begin to work on it. Like he have problems because that is not going anywhere. 

Darin: [00:30:39] Yeah, man, that’s a, that’s an understatement. I mean, yeah. I mean, that’s destruction, that’s wiping you out.

It’s wiping anything in your path to time and it’s amazing how we feel. So. In control, right? We’re running around consciousness is right here. It’s in front of me, but the reality is over 90% of our life is being run by the subconscious patterns. Right. And if we don’t think that we’re w we’re insane. So you want to, you want to see where your life is, turn around and look at your life now, anything that’s not going right.

There’s opportunities, right? I mean, it’s beautiful because when we love someone so much, and then they’re radically honest with us, that’s a hell of an opportunity right there. And she’s waking you up from being passed out and shit. I mean, that’s, that’s a bit of a holy shit moment. Yeah. So then what did you do to start unpacking this deep, emotional unresolved side of 

Chase: [00:31:51] yourself?

You know, that was really kind of like the next big benchmark in my story, Darren, I really think. I was born, right? Like you like everybody here, uh, unless you’re an alien out there, which please hit me up, I would love to talk to you. Um, I was born and then I always used to think that the, the day that I buried my father, a part of me died as well.

But I, I can say this now, looking back after years of work, that that was kind of my second birth. My rebirth of. My calling my purpose, you know, just taking those first 19 years of my life with my father and just driving on with them moving forward, ever forward, like he used to say, and then it was this moment when I realized that if I did.

Face my fears. And if I didn’t, it was no longer good enough for me to just to fight for what I wanted in my life. It was no longer part of the mission. Right. I didn’t matter how well I performed how well I fought, how well I, you know, was a soldier or a man, what I was then about to lose, none of the other things.

That I used to work for me or clearly not work. We’re going to cut it now. And so I realized during that it wasn’t about the external self. It wasn’t about all these other things that I thought I was supposed to do. It really was a time for me to switch from looking outward, to looking at. I knew that if I didn’t do that, she told me if I didn’t do that, there was a very, very strong possibility that this person that I was infatuated with in love with my person for life was going to not be there.

I’ll never forget like the first few things that I did. The in fact, the very first thing I did was I walked out of my apartment. I walked right up the street to this, like it’s was like Walgreens or CVS or something. I bought just this cheap note. It’s like a $3 $5 Mead notebook. And I began to just brain dump because a part of me was still kind of.

I can’t get professional help or I’m not supposed to, or I don’t know what to do. And I’ve been in and out of therapists and mental health work, but, you know, in the past, but I was just, I wasn’t quite ready. So I’ll say before I ever consider getting professional help again, let me at first get comfortable and try to understand my story and try to understand my soul and see what’s, you know, what’s stirring up what’s down there, then I’m choosing to try to keep down.

It keeps rearing its ugly head. And so I just brain dumped, man. I just, I wrote and I wrote and I wrote, and I made it just this daily practice of just. I don’t even know if you could call it journaling. It was just thoughts, memories, emotions, you know, happy things, angry things, just, everything came pouring out.

And then I realized, wow, I don’t even need to think about what I want to think about. Right. You know, the subconscious was just pouring out. It finally was getting the training, the outlet that it needed, like the training, the outlet that I’ve been giving every other form of my life, my health, my wellness, my professions, my relationships.

I was finally giving it to myself. And there was so much that just came pouring out and. It got uglier before it got better kind of thing. And I was just, just me, myself and I with my words. And so many just moments with my dad and my head. Also talking out loud of just realizing what I had going on that I needed to just work through.

And it became so clear to me that it wasn’t, these aren’t bad things. These aren’t things that need to be pushed down, but actually the more and more they came out, the more and more. They helped everything else in my life. I began to just, I became a better communicator. I began to think more clearly speak more, clearly, talk more clear that I began to just view the world, view the people in my life view everything with a much higher level of appreciation and gratitude, and really could see where, you know, my self was stepping into much and where the ego was playing.

And so it, it. All areas of my life, but also it just, it improved it, the relationship with myself the most, because I realized that I didn’t have one and I was so dependent on so many other people and so many other things for, for happiness. Um, that I became finally okay. With myself. I became finally okay.

With just being by myself and revisiting these thoughts and just making them part of my daily routine and behavior. And health and wellness goals and all these other things like everything else I’ve been doing. Um, and then of course, like everybody else in their self-help journey, right? What do we do?

We find podcasts, we dive into the books and all of these things, and those kinds of came secondary tertiary and so on. But what I did was just, I inserted a little breather tube, you know, an outlet for everything that was inside of me just to get out. And it was just brain dump after brain dump, man.

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Darin: I’ve been doing that stream of consciousness writing every week. It is literally the first therapy, which is given all of that stuff, a voice, or at least an opportunity to come out. And dare I say that just by the acknowledgement of it. Is some of the biggest therapy ever. It just needs a fricking voice because it’s been built up and not acknowledged and pushed down.

What do you think’s going to happen? We have pain. That’s unresolved. It has to just be acknowledged and that’s so anyone listening, it doesn’t matter. It literally doesn’t matter. The magnitude of it. These unresolved spiritual challenges, emotional challenges, mental. It doesn’t matter. Like I have to do that.

Just being around people just be in life. You know what I mean? Just because we’re just taking in all of this crap. All I need to done. Everything. 

Chase: [00:39:27] Yeah, it’s all coming in, right. Life is, is happening to us. It is all around us. It is, you know, we’re just these life sponges and you you’d be a fool to think that you’re not absorbing levels, if not all of it.

And so where’s it going to go? You gotta ring yourself out every once in a while. Hopefully more than every once in a while, but yeah, it comes in. It’s got to go 

Darin: [00:39:48] out, right, for sure. I think we can’t underestimate that little action, which is massive. Yeah. You know, again, it doesn’t require anybody else. You just have to decide and start doing it on a consistent basis.

And then you resonate to other things. So you’re like, I’m going to read this book. I’m going to hang out with this person. I’m gonna try this. I’m gonna try that because now. Morphogenic field, like the field of your connection has changed because now you’re not this suppressed and shut down person that 

Chase: [00:40:23] the whole energy changes.

I mean, your, your interest change your, your, the lens through which you look at the world changes. And it’s just through this tiniest little bit of awareness. It will, it will radically change your life. The resonance is real and it’s the first one. Shows you the second. And then the second shows you the third and so on and so forth.

And it’s, it just, it has to start with our choice. It has to, it has to start with us deciding that I don’t like this anymore. I don’t want this anymore. Or even just questioning. If you think you think you were one of those human beings that has it all figured out and you have nothing to work on. Just challenge yourself, ask the question.

Yeah, what am I not allowing myself to feel? What am I not allowing myself to think? You know, what, if this, what if that it just has to be this introspective choice of questioning things and seeing what needs to come out for me, it was not only all the things that I wasn’t working on, but it just became so clear to me that instead of avoiding my past, and instead of avoiding these things, I chose to just get, you know, crazy, uh, and like, well, what if, what if I just ran towards it?

One of the things that I think are breaking me. What if the things that I think ruined my life or gave me all of these traumas or gave me and it, you know, yes. There are traumatic experiences, but instead of they happen to me, what if they have informed me? And it’s a very hard thing to ask. What if it’s a good thing?

My dad died? What if it’s a good thing that I became physically broken and how my career ended? What if, what if all these bad things were good things, and they’re going to put me on the path to everything I’m doing here now. And it, and it gave me hope and it gave me new purpose and allow me to look back at.

Experiences that I was keeping down and it came to a point to where I was like, why, why am I keeping this for myself? Why am I keeping this from the world? There is so much healing and education and value and experiences that are not only helping me so much, but I know I’m not alone. And so I, I, I, instead of running from the loss of my father, which was the biggest, what was me and my life, I ran straight to.

And I embodied it and I embraced it and I just completely grab hold of this mantra and this way of living that my father said before me, and just made it my own, my whole mantra. Now my whole theme ever forward. It’s everything that I do. It’s my belief system. That’s my tattoo. It has been my license plate since I was 18.

I think there’s something to be said for such a great power to be had. And if we choose. To run towards the thing that we think is breaking us. You’ll find I’ve found at least that it is making me strong in the broken places. It is a level of connection and healing and purpose that people just, they just don’t know that they have.

And it’s because we’re, we’re, we’re choosing to not face them. We’re choosing to not give it an outlet. Like we’ve been talking about there’s an 

Darin: [00:43:19] instinct. When a run from any sort of pain, any sort of sense. Right. And so, oh my God, you know, this happened, run away from it, but the human nature doesn’t work that way.

We’re not running from anything we’re running from ourselves. And I love that ever four because it’s kind of like it’s on the one hand you’re trying to run from it. But it’s impossible. You have to turn into it. It’s me. And 

Chase: [00:43:49] how can I, how can I run from myself? 

Darin: [00:43:50] Yeah, exactly. And, and take in, because like you said, like, I believe that I said that a million times when I lost my house, Once you go through that grief and loss of every limb.

That was the second biggest thing. My father was the first and losing everything was the second. And my father gave me a gift in the grief either even because just allow it to happen and be there when it happens and be with the sadness and the anger and the frustration. And so when the house stuff happened, I just turned right into it.

And just, boom. I said immediately let it happen. Let it all happen. No, no restrictions and no whatever. And then, and then just like you said, it wasn’t great moves and everything, right. It wasn’t, it wasn’t like, this is a good thing, but through the journey of it all, I wouldn’t change a bit. I wouldn’t have changed anything.

So the point is the gifts like that you’re sitting in now is from your father. Right. It’s it’s from those gifts. Like there’s none. And my father too. So it’s like we’re sitting in the gifts of what our fathers really want for us to be men, to be open, to be kind, to be generous, to be resilient, to ever forward in our life, to we’re going to get hit.

Adversity is going to happen. We’re going to get hit with unwanted things, but ever forward. And, you know, I know that your father is. Shining and smiling right now, as, as I know that me too, man. And so man, I didn’t even see it. And it just, it brings up also those resonances, obviously that both you and I have, and it’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.

There, there is so much power in loss. I think it’s a super power to understanding ourselves and understanding the world at large. And to understand, and to double down on who we are, what we are, what we want to create in our, our lives. And there’s nothing more clear to me from this conversation, that those things are the things that really matter.

Chase: [00:46:10] It’s really man, truly, truly, truly, and not only for regaining or gaining for the first time perspective of our world. And again, this is why, you know, I love so much of the work that you do and your concepts and themes are like, look like change happens with us. We can create a life of art design for damn shirt, but there is also a much bigger world out there that when we are in alignment with the work we’re here to do, when we finally wake up and pay attention to the gifts and.

Every day that not only changes our world, but it then changes the world. And there are so much more going on out there that is bigger than us. And so just get on board, get on board it, change your life. Make these choices to look for the gift in everything. The good, the bad, the ugly. And, and I promise you, you will realize you will wake up one day, like now 16, 17 years later, after losing my father after having the veterans Memorial, how having these soldiers play taps, having this coffin wrapped in a flag and lowered six feet into the ground and dropping that final flour on my father’s coffin that I can now even talk about without completely breaking down and just being grateful.

And just saying, thank you, dad. Thank you world. Thank you universe. Imagine how empowered of a person that is. Imagine how grateful of a person that is. And then you take that with you everywhere you go in the day you take that with you in every decision that you make, or at least it gives you perspective when you’re looking back at the day, but just like you can change your world.

And then you can change the world. It really, maybe it’s the LA and me, I’ve been here like three years now and I’m tapping into the womb, but I believe it, there is, I believe it I’m here for it. And you know, I’m so grateful for guys like yourself. 

Darin: [00:47:55] Thanks man. And that dare, I say, it’s more truthful than all this other stuff.

So it isn’t woo at all. I think that it’s the realest thing. I know the realest thing I know as well. And, uh, I just want to say, I want everyone. To tap in right now, obviously if you’re driving or doing anything, don’t, don’t close your eyes or do any of that stuff. But just right now, all the loss that anyone has had parents, children, God forbid, uh, grandparents, anyone that they lost, if there’s any sense, friends, soldiers, suicides, God, it’s just whatever the loss is.

Just take that moment right now. And if you have unresolved issues, if you have unresolved pain, anger, resentment, fear, sadness, take Chase’s advice. And give yourself a moment where you can let that subconscious out, write about it, get help, talk to someone you trust and love, do something so that this doesn’t derail your life.

Those deaths were not meant to derail your life. Those deaths are brilliantly stated. Like chase said, they are be grateful. Hmm, for those beings for those people and use that as a step ever forward in your life. Okay. So I just want to acknowledge that because it’s it’s necessary. So dude, give me a sense of in the last few minutes.

The flower that you have now watered and what you’re doing now, and maybe your deeper 

Chase: [00:49:44] sense of purpose. Um, so what I’m doing now is just taking that with me every day. Everything we’ve been talking about has not only just become a belief system. It is not just something that I am latching onto to get me through the day.

It is. My greatest why my greatest purpose and what I have woven into who I am as a, as a husband, as a man, as a friend, as a brother, as an entrepreneur. Um, so I just pour these concepts into everything that I create now and predominantly through. What has helped me the most and through communication or relationship building and being able to carry on that torch that my father passed on onto me through what we’re doing here now, man, I run ever forward radio, and it’s where I have these very conscious conversations around your, your health, your wellness, your mindset, all forms of, of healing and wellness, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, to help us find the gift in the hurricane to help us turn.

It gives adversities into our greatest advantages and to, to live a life of a Ford. Um, and so that’s what I try to do every damn day. And, um, my purpose I realized is to. Go deeper and to just create meaningful relationships in the world. Because when I think back to the people that have impacted my life the most, or just when I think back to what, what is the catalyst for change?

Why am I here? Why am I here? You know, living this life that I am. And it’s because of the people in my life that. Their heart, their soul, their passion, and to me, and I feel it is now my duty, my obligation, my new mission to do the same. And it’s the greatest form of therapy for me. So if anybody resonates with what we’ve been talking about and want to come over and hear more ever forward radio is, is what I’m doing the most these days and just creating conscious content like that.

Man, people 

Darin: [00:51:35] listening to this don’t flood and find you now. There Amman over the waters more they’re they’re unconscious wake up, come on. People 

Chase: [00:51:44] conversations like yourself, man. Uh, it was, it was so good to sit down with you just a couple months ago and have you on the show. And so I, again, thank you for that time with me, 

Darin: [00:51:53] dude.

You’re more than welcome. Thank you for being vulnerable today. Thank you for sharing your heart and your soul and your past with us. That’s informing this incredible future that you’re trading now and, and the steps that you’re taking to nurture and nourish other people’s lives. And, um, that’s a great message.

Chase: [00:52:16] I appreciate it. I thank you again for having me here. And, uh, it’s really is the greatest form of continued work in therapy on myself. So the more and more that I have these opportunities to, to share my story, um, I learned more about myself and I would encourage other people to do the same. So revisit the pain, revisit the pain, revisit the pain.

I promise you will walk away, 

Darin: [00:52:35] stronger mic drop on that. Take that, take that in everyone. And, uh, it literally is a superpower. Don’t let him control you. If you didn’t understand the amount of pain that this guy has gone through, then rewind and listen to it again. So if he can do it, you can do it. Um, all right, brother.

Love you, man. And stay connected again. Yeah, man. We’ll talk soon, brother. Thanks bro. What a fantastic episode. So tell me, what is one thing you got out of today’s conversation? If this episode struck a chord with you and you want to dive a little deeper into my other conversations with incredible guests, you can head over to my website, Darren olean.com for more episodes and in-depth articles.

Keep diving my friends, keep dying.