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Against All Odds Podcast, The Less than 1% Chance with Maria Aponte
Maria highlights stories of people that have been the "less than 1% chance" and have come out of their situations thriving and seeing life as happening FOR them and not TO them! Inspiring and empowering stories that will show you that against all odds you can make it through anything!
Against All Odds Podcast, The Less than 1% Chance with Maria Aponte
Training For The Unknown with Morgan Rich
What if the moments you fear most are the ones that can set you free? Maria sits down with transformational coach and author Morgan Rich to unpack how we move from victimhood to agency, not by pretending pain isn’t real, but by training our bodies and minds to meet it with presence. From breath retention and cold-water exposure to small daily rituals that anchor integrity, we explore practical ways to calm your nervous system, speak hard truths, and show up as the person you say you are.
Maria opens up about surviving sexual assault, navigating cervical cancer at 18, and later facing recurrence as a single mom. Morgan shares the seasonal wisdom of “little deaths,” grief as a rite of passage, and the power of choosing aliveness even when it disrupts expectations. We get honest about leaving marriages that were “fine” but not life-giving, parenting without overprotection, and letting our kids earn confidence by driving on life’s snowy roads with us close enough to help but far enough to let them steer.
We also dive into Find Your Path, Morgan’s program for young adults who need space to listen before they leap. Expect grounded practices: a 10-minute daily sit, kinder self-talk that fuels progress, and embodied training through sports, dance, and nature that teaches calm under pressure. If you’ve felt stuck, anxious, or unsure which way to turn, this conversation offers repeatable tools and a compassionate lens for choosing courage over comfort.
Ready to build resilience and live with heart? Hit play, share this episode with someone who needs it, and leave a review to help others find the show. Want a first step? Grab Morgan’s free guide at morganrich.com/courage and tell us: what courageous action will you take this week?
Connect with Morgan:
Instagram: @morganrich_beyonder
Substack: morganrich.substack.com
Website: Morganrich.com
Speaker Reels: Morganrich.com/speakerreels
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Welcome back to the Against All Odds, the Less Than One Percent Chance podcast with your host, Maria Aponte, where we will hear stories of incredible people surviving against all odds. And my hope is that we can all see how life is really happening for us, even when we are the less than 1% chance.
SPEAKER_02:Hey, hey, welcome back to Against All Odds, the Less than 1% Chance podcast with your host, Maria Aponte. I am so excited for today's chat. I was reading through his information and I'm like, oh my God, this is gonna be so good. So let me introduce you to Morgan Rich. He's a transformational coach, author, and men's work leader who's built his life around one core truth, integrity, which I love. From a young age, he's faced tremendous pressure to conform, to play the game, to be who the world expected him to be. But against all odds, he chose to listen to his soul instead, which you guys, you know that that's like exactly what I live for. That choice became his life's work. Morgan is the author of The Invitation Beyond: Reclaiming Healthy Masculinity, a book that helps men and women break free from old patterns, reconnect with purpose, and live with heart, courage, and presence. Through his coaching retreats and the Find Your Path program, Morgan guides people to do what he's done, stand on the side of their soul and build life that truly matters. Oh my gosh, Morgan, thank you so much for joining us today. Give us a little bit of background. Where did you start? What against all odds story do you have? And how did you get to where you are now?
SPEAKER_00:Well, Maria, thank you for the work that you do in the world. Just thank you for putting this out there and helping people, your listeners, take on steps against all odds and step into that are meaningful. So it's definitely heart work, right? It is heartwork. And I think that the I think that at the world as it is today, that we really need heart work that we need. That we need the invitation. I say the invitation beyond, of course, the invitation beyond the nonsense, beyond the surface level, beyond the status quo, and into the place where we start to really connect with who are we and how do we bring our place to the world.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. It's like finding purpose and actually going in that direction, which is why I started this podcast. It felt so purposeful. It felt like more people need to hear this. I know that everything that I've gone through hasn't only been for me to go through it, and that's it. I feel like I'm open enough to share so that people can see themselves in my story and say, oh my gosh, she's gotten so far in who would have thought. And maybe I could too.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I I had an interesting my hope for our conversation and our exploration and for the listeners is to provide an opportunity to that they feel inspired to action, that they feel relatable to your story and to my story, and that they leave uplifted, that they leave feeling, wait a second, okay, life is full of challenges. Yeah, that we can't avoid them. It's just not possible to avoid them. So much of what I work on and have learned in my life is how do we go towards, not away from those challenges? It's a practice, yeah. It's a practice of learning. Like I can do hard things if we just think about the most meaningful moments of our lives. They come in difficulty, yeah, they come in the gritty, shadowy, dark, challenging, crappy failure moments, and we have to dig ourselves out of those. And that's so much of what I call training for the unknown is about how do we learn, and I'm you've obviously done it. How do we learn to go to be in those places and be uncomfortable?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I like to look at it, and I've done a lot of personal growth in my personal work in order for me to see things this way, but to see that life is happening for you and not to you, because you could look at it either way. You could look at it as oh, this doesn't feel great right now. However, how is this happening for me? What purpose does this have for my life? And if I can lean into that and lean in with gratitude, and because if I'm in it, it's so that I can get through it and come up better on the other side. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I think there's a common thing that happens in in our culture and with a lot of people where you fall into the victim place of life happened to me. This bad thing happened or this hard thing happened, and it created this ripple, you know, that that now I'm the victim of my circumstances. And one of my most profound teaching moments, I was just sharing that that my daughter, I just got to visit with my daughter this morning, which is always a blessing.
SPEAKER_03:Always a blessing.
SPEAKER_00:My kids are 22 and 25.
SPEAKER_03:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:And so they're out in the world, they're doing their thing, so it's not like those days. And one of my favorite stories is that I just I loved being a dad. Yeah, I loved being a dad. It was one of the things that I just it was like the one of the gifts of my life, and I caught during that time how much I would appreciate the different moments of lives together. We would go to the swimming pools, just go swimming, and I would jump in the water and play with them and chase them, and they would chase me. And there was so much playfulness. In fact, one of my best friends I met at the swimming pool because he was watching us play, and he just came up to me and he goes, We've never met, but whatever you bring an energy and an exuberance and a playfulness and a connection that is so beautiful. I just want to, I want to be your friend.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Oh, I love that so much.
SPEAKER_00:The thing in that, Maria, for me was a place of I somehow caught it in the moment to say, I remember standing in the locker room and changing clothes, and I was cold and I was shivering, and we'd been in the pool for hours. And I just remember this is love. Like I love these kids so much. And I also know that life is impermanent, that things happen. And that it might be that something happens to me or one of them today, tomorrow. I actually, in fact, I heard a story this week of a dad, 55-year-old dude, I'm 55, heart attack, just died, leaving three kids and a spouse. And I just thought, wow, those kids woke up one morning thinking that life was going to go a certain way, and it just whoop and you just never know. And so for me, standing in the locker room, shivering, having played with the kids in the pool, I just caught this moment of saying, I am so appreciative and just so grateful that I can love this moment.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Because I'm not promised anything else. And if it goes a sideways way, like I think I'll be able to make peace with it.
SPEAKER_03:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:Just to say, okay, I did wasn't expecting that, and it's horrible, and I'm okay.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Oh my gosh. I all the things, yes. I wanted to be a mom since I could even remember. There was this just like gravity towards kids and kids towards me. And I knew that's what I wanted. And life has its funny ways of testing those things. And so when I was when I was 16 years old, I was sexually assaulted. And that I stayed quiet. I didn't say anything. Those were those moments of feeling like life happened to me, and not there's never anything to celebrate in something like that, except for what I learned, right? What I took from it. I stayed quiet for about three years. But in in two years after that, I was 18 and I was an adult for the first time. And I went for my first Well Woman checkup and without a parent. And the doctor's like, yeah, you have cancer. And I was like, whoa, what? So he had given me HPV, the strain that causes cancer in women. And I had cervical cancer at 18 years old. And again, moment of like, I felt shook and oh my gosh, spiraled into depression, spiraled into life happening to me. And at 19, it had come back and I had another surgery. And and I finally spoke up and I finally said something. I went to a counselor and I started to talk about it and I started to get it out of my body because the moment I've heard once from a mindset coach that said, when you have dis-ease in your body, it creates disease. And so I was definitely creating a lot of disease in my body due to this. Well, with all of that, the doctor told me I couldn't have kids. And I was like, What? This is like what I've always wanted kids. What are you talking about? And I was 19 years old and newly engaged, and it was just like, what? And so I saw that moment of like, oh, is this really gonna happen? So I started at that age, I was like, okay, we're getting married real quick and we're gonna start trying to have kids real quick. And at 19, I started fertility treatment and all of this. And a year and a half later, I was pregnant with my oldest, thank God. Um, however, those were moments that I was just like, is this even happening? But I learned to appreciate every single little moment after that because when like life hits you hard and they're like, hey, wake up. And another coach that I've worked with calls it the feather, the brick, and the mac truck.
SPEAKER_00:So it's like life feather of the brick and the mac truck.
SPEAKER_02:Uh-huh. So this is life giving you that feather saying, Hey, wake up, this is happening. Like it's time to wake up, and you're like, leave me alone. And then life throws a brick in your window, and you're so busy looking at the hole in the window that you don't look at the sign on the brick that's tied up on the brick saying, Hey, life is telling you, wake up, this is happening. And then you're so distracted by all of the craziness of what's happened over here that next thing you look over and it's a Mac truck coming and hitting you. And that it was like my Mac truck moment was all of that put together. And I have come to look at moments in love and appreciate those little tiny moments in that like with you and your kids. And I've had those moments that I just look back and I'm like, let the chaos happen. Like, let it yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:A couple of things. One is that thank you for the story and sorry that the salt happened and that it went that direction. It's not okay, that kind of thing happens.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And your ability to dance with it and to make it into something meaningful is Maria's really beautiful. Like it's really, it's really beautiful. So thank you for that. The ver the version of the story that I've heard, there's an old teaching story, an old myth of one of the rites of passage that they used to that would happen would be you would an elder in the community would hold you down underwater.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And you would have to get out. And at first it was like the feather. You're like, okay, ha ha ha ha, funny. And they're like, not letting you up. And then it's like, oh no, let me up. And like the grip comes and you and and they still don't let you up. And then finally it's just like the Mac truck comes and the spirit engages, and it's like that's the thrust into life. I took one of my clients out recently, and because I was like, we gotta get his, like, we gotta get his spirit going. He's like, he's in college and he's having a hard time getting motivated and getting moving. And so we were like, okay, we're gonna break things. We're gonna go break sticks. So I'm like, here, take this stick and swing at it. And he got it, and he was like, and I'm like, okay, that could swung at it. You aren't gonna break much doing that. And it was just like this sort of passive, and through the day, he started, you know, just started finding that fire, that intensity of bringing the spirit alive.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I just feel it's so important and meaningful. And for whatever reason, I guess I'm curious for you, what do you think it was in you that had you have those experiences and allowed you to open and see them, not as falling into the victim path, but actually being able to move past that? Like to me, really an interesting like, what is it?
SPEAKER_02:I feel it was like having those moments of darkness inside, knowing that there was just there had to be something better. And it and maybe it came from this faith or or there was just this moment of I need to either wake up and learn to appreciate the things because when they tell you, hey, so you have this disease that can kill you and you haven't started living, you know what that's a moment that shakes you in to your core, to your to everything, and then you're like, no, watch me, watch me. And I had cancer had come back when I was 32 twice that year, and at that moment I was a single mom of three kids. And it was the moment of wait, what if I let this take me? What happens to my kids? And it's that moment of like again, life shaking you to the core and saying, No, I gotta do something. And that's when I started to get into personal development, I started to really work on myself, I started to work out, I started to eat right, I started to work on me in a holistic way, like from the another layer of self-care, another layer of awareness of okay, I gotta really tend to myself. Exactly. And it I learned that I always I love to travel, but I always listened at the beginning of the plane ride or whatever. They say put your oxygen mask on first and then help those around you. That is the moment that I felt that to the core of my being was oh wait, so I have to take care of myself first. So I have to because if I don't, then who's gonna stay with these kids and who's gonna raise them and who's gonna be there and be present for them? Because what life am I gonna leave them if I'm just gonna give up on whatever I'm supposed to do? And it it was those moments in about 2018. My ex-boyfriend, we were in this like long distance, like in and out relationship. But he had been in my kids' life for about six years at that point, and in my life since I was 15. So I knew him from high school and he was 35 years old and he passed away of a heart attack. And my kids felt that to the core. And so, again, moments that have shaken me to the core that I have said, nope. Watch it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, right. And the thing where I get curious, and for myself, but now for you and for others, you know, my clients and the men that I work with in my groups, and of what is it? How do we get good at moments of adversity? You've had a tremendous amount of adversity, but really to be in this culture is to be in adversity in so many, so many ways. And it's this place of we can feel at the mercy of events, of news, of all the nonsense of the fear of this, that, or we can start to have some agency.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And it seems to me like you and me have for whatever reason, but we've always had that ability to make to be in the life's interesting moments, yeah. And so I just think of like, okay, so not everyone has that, not everyone is so easily makes that deals with you've dealt with a lot of stuff in your life, yeah, over again. Just it's it's amazing. And yet you can you continue to use it as motivation, it's a beautiful thing.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:What is the essence of that? And how can listeners, how can people be in that adversity? So for me, I call it training for the unknown, right? Training for the unknown. If you think about that, it's like training to be in life's moments when your boyfriend just all of a sudden died, like you just be gone. This is gone. My dad, when I was 18, died, and it's like, okay, I I didn't expect that, and yet here it is. And so I can't be like, well, we're gonna have a do-over. Like, no, I no, you have to be in it. So to me, it's about learning to train for discomfort, to train our bodies to be in the experience of adversity, and to start to say to ourselves, hey, here I am in a hard place. There's a lot of feelings, there's a lot of emotions, there's a lot of confusion, there's a lot of pain, there's a lot of what I like to call sensation. There's a lot of experience.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And I'm okay. Like here I am right now. And I'm okay. I'm not dying. This hurts. This is big. This is this particular thing. And I just keep breathing and keep moving. And to me, the one way that I train this is through breath retention, is through holding your breath until you so you like start to get down into it and it's uncomfortable. And then just a moment of calm. Like you start to, I you start to train your nervous system to just have a moment of calm before you breathe.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Or cold water. We have this whole cold plunge thing, and I'm definitely not in the camp of if you stay in a cold plunge for 11 and a half minutes, all is gonna be. That's not what it's about. That's not like some flexing contest. What it's about is it's about being in the water, cold water, that's uncomfortable. Again, lots of sensation, lots of stimulus, and then calm. Like that, that was one of those moments for me that came through where I was where I thought, oh, being calm in this moment teaches my cells, teaches my nervous system, teaches my whole circulatory system, teaches my body and my mind that it's okay. Like here, this is uncomfortable, and I'm okay. I'm okay. Right here. And what happened for me is when I started to do that training, was I started to that moment of calm started to expand. So then I was able to be in the water for 10 seconds, for two minutes, and stay present and stay in the sensation and stay with all the adversity.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And so then what I noticed was that then I was able to be in life's interesting moments, and my nervous system had already had a way of knowing, like, okay, it's okay. It's okay. Yeah, stay calm. I'm here, I'm it's okay. Like this really hurts. Like I'm really sad. Yeah, my dad died. I just got diagnosed with cancer or other things, like just smaller things, day-to-day things. My boss yelled at me, whatever it might be, and just be able to be like, okay, so this is unfolding in my favor.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I connect so much with that. I feel like I've had to learn how to breathe in those moments. And maybe it's not a cold plunge or whatever, but it's actually living those moments that I could say, all right, this is like fight or flight right here. And take that moment to breathe and calm myself internally. I've had when I remember the moment that I found out that he had that heart attack, I literally felt like my heart was breaking. There was like I literally, it's just the craziest sensation of feeling like you parts of your heart are shattered. And I remember like clasping my chest because it literally felt like that. And it's totally fine to feel all the feelings in that moment and then take that breath to center yourself because I then had to calm myself enough to be able to go to my kids, pick them up from school, and tell them each what happened and be there to support them in their grief and their heartbreak. And that's shaped them. And I don't want people to have to go through these really life-altering circumstances in order to be able to do that. But when you do train for that unknown, you put yourself in uncomfortable situations and learn how to calm that breath and be very present, like you said, just that presence.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. Yep, that's really I'm with you. My dad, my dad died when I was 18.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:My spirit engaged in that way we talked about earlier. Some things happened that I can't explain. But but I was in college, my first year of college, like you, like this huge rite of passage, this huge transition into adulthood, let's just say, and here this really transformal thing happens. And I stayed in the pain, like I didn't numb it. And I made a commitment at that point not to drink or smoke or do drugs or anything. And again, that was a spirit-engaging part of it. And it turns out it was one of the greatest gifts of my life. And that just seems so odd that my dad dying was one of the greatest gifts of my life. And I wouldn't wish it on anybody, so devastating and so painful and so meaningful.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Incredibly just having to dance with the meaning of life.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Having to dance with what is my purpose, having to dance and feel and experience. Whoa. And for me, there was a huge connection to the natural world that has started to open up in me of seeing here. We are in the fall in North America, in the United States, in the northern hemisphere, and the leaves are changing and there's death everywhere. Like the trees are this version of the tree is dying. Oh beautiful.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, it's gorgeous. But there is a death. And I like to call them little d-deaths, not big D-deaths. Little D-deaths of this moment, this time, this experience, this part of my life, this segment, this chapter, this whatever it is is now dying. This time when my dad was alive. My dad's not going to be alive in this realm again. That time has died. And as we know with forest fires, and as we know with the fall, what happens is things go dark, they go quiet. They have that moment that you were talking about where I have to feel all this and actually feel it. But under the surface, what's happening is that the trees are gathering all this nourishment, all the roots are getting deeper. They're growing their foundation, they're growing this depth, this meaning. And then in the spring, what we know happens is they pull all that energy up from the ground and blossom into this new birth of life. Just like in a forest fire. Again, like fire is so rejuvenative and devastating. And I just feel like we aren't very good in this culture. We want to avoid difficulty. We want to avoid pain. We want to avoid discomfort. It's let me soothe myself, sue myself, scroll more, scroll more, scroll more to not actually be able to feel and not actually be to hang in those places. And to me, this feels really beautiful and important. And there is something I just want to say that I don't like to get into these competitions of like, well, my dad died, and I had this and I had that. Like if you're a listener, and like maybe you've had a nice life, maybe things have gone okay. It's like you haven't had that like big devastating thing that you have to fight. Everyone can find something in their story that there's adversity because you can't escape it.
SPEAKER_02:There's it's not a competition.
SPEAKER_00:It's not a competition, and no one's pain is like we all have our own pain. We all have our own story, we all have our own experience. And so it's not about like having the right experience, it's just about being present, like you were saying, about being present with what is and noticing and starting to listen to those voices that are saying, like, hey, there's a different way, there's more meaning here in my life, and I'm gonna have the courage to step towards it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I love that so much. Wow, that just as you were talking about the roots, I was literally like in my brain picturing that the death of something beautiful. Yeah, and just like those roots getting deeper and in the spring, seeing a whole new version of yourself.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You think of the winter or the dark, or the like we're afraid of the dark, or we're afraid of the quiet, or afraid of the but that that work is so beautiful and meaningful, and there is a slower pace. There's like the winter is quieter, and yet there's so much happening under the surface. Yeah, so much the leaves fall, and the leaves then become part of the soil, like they decompose and they become a part of the soil that then nourishes, that then nourishes the system again. And so to me, so much of my work about being with people in those dark moments, in those challenging moments where you're in a relationship and you know that there's things that you have to say. There's things that are in that you gotta speak, that you gotta bring voice to, where your kids are doing something that you know in your honest moments I gotta say this, right? I like I'm dying. And something I need to step towards. So those are the moments that I like to hang out with people in. And a woman last year was she was heading down the road of being engaged, and she just knew she said, Morgan, it's just not the right thing to do. But my parents, like the train is leaving the next step, right? Like the train is leaving the station, and I was like, Okay, so this is the moment that this is gonna be hard. There are some things that you gotta bring forward, and you're gonna disappoint some people, and people are gonna be hurt. But if the further this train gets out of the station, the bigger the stakes become. Yeah, because now you're married and you don't want it, you have this sense. Now you have kids and you have this wobble.
SPEAKER_02:It's even yeah, it's even harder.
SPEAKER_00:Easier. Yeah, so now is the moment. Now is the moment, and so then sometimes I work with people who are also in those places, also, but it's like hanging in those places and saying, Okay, here we are. Here we are in the foundation, in the root-building stage of things, and it's okay. Again, it's okay. We're gonna be here and hang out here and just work through it. And I don't like have a system that I work with because there aren't there's it.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, I feel that.
SPEAKER_00:No, it's like, no, what I do is I listen and my heart opens and the messages come and the clarity of what someone needs to feel, seen and loved. And then we weave in like what is it that's wanting to come alive in you in the way that it wants to come alive, and then we build that we build out of there for them because that there's nowhere to further all there's nowhere to get to because it's all learning.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, no, that's so beautiful. Ah, that's so beautiful. Yeah, I feel that I got married very young, and I also felt it was rushed, and there was a purpose, right? I was told I wasn't able to have kids, so nope, you watch me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, what a huge moment that is, and just like yeah, I wanted to acknowledge that earlier and just say thank you for not listening. Yeah, catching that and just being like, okay, so that's one story, but there are others.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I'm going to forge my own path. And that's always been the case with me when I was 28. I was like, I don't have a bad relationship with my now ex-husband. Like, we're pretty okay. But that okay was not me happy. And I vowed to myself that my kids were not gonna grow up watching me be unhappy because then that would give them permission to be unhappy. And I didn't want that, I didn't want that to be. my story or theirs. And so I ended this marriage. And I it was against everything that my parents believed in. My parents were married for 50 years. They were together fifty 57. So it was not what their reality was.
SPEAKER_00:It wasn't the standard path.
SPEAKER_02:And they were like, well, I don't understand. And I'm like, I'm sorry, you don't have to understand. I choose my happiness because again, if I don't teach my children, if I don't show my children that happiness is something you strive for always, then maybe it's a harder path. Yes, it has been. I think about this all the time. What if I would have gone the different way? Where would we have been? Maybe that would have been easier for a little bit.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But then again, what is that teaching my kids that they're just going to conform to what society says it's okay, what parents want for us. And it's never like an ill intent. That's what their views were. And I can tell you that's the one thing that I feel very proud of myself for saying I know that it's going to be hard. And I know that this is going to depend on me a hell of a lot more than than if I would have stayed and I asked for hey let's talk again. Let's be friends again. I tried to do my part and then when someone doesn't want to change they don't want to change until they're ready. And I just allowed that to be our story. Unfortunately it was harder.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But it felt right and I would not be where I am today if I wouldn't have gone through all of that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah I have similar story of divorcing uh the mom of my kids and I felt like I wasn't alive in the way that I needed to be alive. And I loved being at home. I loved being in our family. There were dreams of the idyllic growing old together and all the kind of pieces that were hard to give up. Yeah to say that I was at a stage of my life where I wasn't able to have some of the hard conversations. And so I was I was if I look back there's some things I wish I had done differently most certain but at that moment I really felt like I got to go figure out how to be alive because the model that I want to give for my kids is to be fully alive because this world needs us needs that. And that's part of the spirit awakening in me is a place of let's go let's step towards the interesting places in life not away from and I think that's something as parents that is actually challenging is to say that there's a one of the epidemics that I think is in the world these days is fear. And it comes up in parenting in a place of we have to shelter our kids from difficulty. We have to shelter our kids from hard things. We have to make nice and keep them comfortable and keep them safe. And I'm just not a safety first kind of guy. Like safety first I think is a that and like don't talk to strangers are very strange things for me because I want my kids I want me to talk to strangers. I want the world to be a place where we talk to strangers where we aren't afraid of people or we aren't afraid of the world or we don't think that the boogeyman is out there and that all this bad stuff is out there. Because it's like that to me is just what you spoke to Maria was in the short term there's a safety to it. Oh you aren't going to have to deal with the difficulty or that short term thing. But keeping them safe what we're doing is saying one the world is dangerous so we're going to stay safe and then in the long term you can see what that's created.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:We have an anxiety epidemic of people who think the world is dangerous. And the anxiety academic is millions and millions of people because you look out and it's like well I can't go out there because it's not safe. Instead of what we've been talking about is to say no the world is what the world is.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And we're going to go out there and whatever shows up, we're going to deal with it because we have the resilience, we have the capability, we have the confidence, we have the belief, we have the structure, we have the practices, we have the ability to breathe and see like oh wait a second I I just need to come present here for a second because I'm in a dangerous situation or this thing is happening.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_00:So again it's a stepping towards and so I think all that to say thank you for the courage to step out for the courage to be a model of inconvenience.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So my oldest daughter struggled with mental health from very young age and one of the biggest fears right because we still have to deal with fears for me was oh my gosh when she goes out in the world is she gonna be okay so when she graduated and two days later she left my house and not to go to college. Huh? Graduated from high school graduated from high school yeah she's now 21 and so she graduated and left with a boyfriend and I was like oh my gosh what are we doing? But I was I told her one thing I said listen I left my house when I was 19 years old and I never came back and not because my parents didn't love me or anything like that but because this is the choices that I made and I'm more of a watch me I'm gonna prove you wrong kind of person in general. And I told her I was like what I wish for you is that you prove me wrong. You prove that my fear that my my fear of you leaving without a plan I hope that you prove me wrong and you don't come back not because I don't love you but because you found what you needed in yourself to say I've got this and I'm gonna write this choice that I made out and she's 21 and she hasn't been back. There's this sense of pride because I'm like yes you did it and aside from my fear and again it was probably like my parents didn't think that I should get divorced and whatever like that mindset I relate it to I didn't think she was ready for life yet and me I tried to teach her as much as I possibly could I always said good and bad choices have good and bad consequences so just be prepared for those and I didn't think she listened until I've experienced this post adult life with her and I'm like gosh it's back here.
SPEAKER_00:Again it's beautiful and there's a real power in feeling trusted yeah and in trusting and there's a power in as parents we can teach we I want to teach my kids all the things that when they go out there they're gonna be okay ready and the way that you learn how to navigate life is by navigating life. And so we learned to drive in snow. Yeah and so when my kids got old enough I said we got to go drive in snow because the only way you're gonna get good at driving in snow is by driving in snow. Like we can't sit here and talk about it. Yeah like okay when you start to skid turn turn the wheel this way like you actually have to go and experience it experience it. And when you experience it there's some danger and there's some inexperience and it's not necessarily all safe and it's not necessarily all good. But yeah so letting our kids go out into the world like they have to get into trouble of their lives. Yeah yes that's where they're gonna learn and grow and be out there and as parents that's one of those moments of loving them and for me at least it's providing a place of I love you and I trust you. Yeah and please know that you have a place when you fall down and when you really need something you have a place here there's a warm meal there's a clean bed there's a lot of love here and there's not a whole dish of I told you so yeah you aren't going to get I told you so here. What you're gonna get is you're gonna get loved and encouraged and acknowledged for being out there taking the risks because because a lot of kids and my partner like they struggle like they're caught in that like being in the basement playing video game thing. And that's not being out there taking risks in the world. So when they're out there taking risks and falling down and getting in trouble it's like way to go like yeah and as we talked about the whole thing is like the darkness and the challenge is where you is where you learn. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah so my oldest is 21 my son is 20 and my youngest is 17 now and such a fun age. So she got in trouble in school with like her friend's vape or something like that. Yeah right and this was like the week of homecoming and they told her well you're not gonna be able to go to homecoming and I was like I didn't even have to take that away that the school gave all on their own their teaching moment. And I told her obviously she had her consequences for me and so forth. But I sat with her the other day and I was like I've told you guys over and over again good and bad choices have good and bad consequences. And she's like mom but you have to let me live I'm like girl you made your choices I have let you live I am now letting you know that this is a controlled area right this is a controlled experience right now life is going to give you those consequences and they're not always going to be fun. And right now you're I'm just teaching you that when you make bad choices there's going to be bad consequences so will I let you make your own mistakes absolutely go for it because that's how I learned and that's why I'm where I'm at today however just know that this is still very controlled. This is still in a safe space so that you can learn that when you're out there, when you make bad decisions there's gonna be consequences to that. When you make good decisions there's gonna be great consequences to that. So understand that I'm allowing you to make the mistakes you made that choice.
SPEAKER_00:And I love that and that's one reason why the discomfort training that we talked about earlier is so interesting and important because it's starting to learn the skills it's starting to train the body yeah when the consequences aren't as high. Yeah if you mess up the cold plunge it's not like the god of cold plunges is going to come down and kill you or whatever like you stay for two minutes versus one minute. It's not like nothing happens. There's no big deal. Yeah you start to learn how to turn the volume up so that then when you do get out there and I take the thing that I do is I take that training I play ice hockey and I do a lot of ecstatic dancing which is just like free dancing really fun dancing and I'll take challenging moments for myself into those places. So learning how to be calm while playing hockey learning how to play calm when somebody's coming at me and trying to get the puck from me learning how to play in these aversive places these challenging places and again training and training so that then when I do step out that it's easier and I can start to then expand that into my relationships and my connections with friends and people and my partner and those places. And I have a program here called Find Your Path which is really it's about training this stuff is it's a program for seniors in high school and people headed out into the world who are in that place of not really being sure about what do I want to do? Who am I exactly? And maybe they don't have the same kind of training to say to have the foundation to be able to make decisions about going out. So they're still gaining confidence they're still gaining clarity. They're connected to this place in them that's like that says there's something wanting to come alive in me. I don't know exactly what it is but I know that if I just go to college or I just apply to this thing, I don't know why I'm going and I'm not ready and clear about that step. And so they're taking the courageous place of saying let's hit pause and so find your path it's a combination residential program. So we have people here in our home building community connections learning how to cook learning how to take care of each other learning how to take care of their own stuff and the community stuff in these community places how to build the foundational skills of stepping into the world and starting to really hone and listen to inner guidance. So we do daily meditation we do that connection those practices that help each day connect us into the listening that you were talking about earlier. Those are practices yeah some of us do it more naturally but they are actually practices of sitting for 10 minutes a day mindfully listening to the trees watching the trees change noticing how they're different from last week noticing the different birds that are here today noticing different sounds that are here because there's clouds and the sunshine just you're starting to bring presence in and there's a piece for me which I call connecting to the man I know myself to be so I know how I want to be in the world I know that I want to be someone who doesn't fall into the victimhood who is courageous in the moments of life who is ready for the unexpected and the unknown who does that but I sometimes forget yeah absolutely which is just so odd to me. But yeah like sometimes you forget so by every day in my practice coming in and going like okay there I am there I am there I am there I am there I am and I imagine my guy like sitting by a creek enjoying the sounds and the feeling and the creek and the water and the and I go find him the man I know myself to be and just say okay here's what it feels like to be you here's what it feels like to be me and then I live my day in that expression. You know so in our find your path program we start to learn that skill and in my groups we actually learn that skill of really starting to train some of the stuff that we've been talking about like how do you know against all odds how do you show up in life against all odds for some people it's more natural but we can all do it but it takes attention and it takes focus and it's not like we do not learn it in school. No no sadly sadly yes like to me the education reform is to say like let's learn how to be connected to each other in the more than human world. Yeah learn how to be resilient and how to be confident how to listen with the ears of our heart and be in connection like that to me is what I want education to be.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah and and I feel like in general like just how to be good kind human beings totally and I feel like that's what we're lacking so much right now. And I tell my kids all the time I'm like listen I the mistakes that we make as we're growing as adults as whatever it is what it is. When you go into life into your everyday and just be kind human beings that have empathy and compassion for others and and treat others how you want to be treated it is so simple. Like I grew up in a very Hispanic Catholic household and again I had a great life great childhood love my parents I had amazing parents have a amazing mom had dad um however I have found myself to be more spiritual now and connected within myself and show up as a positive light in this world no matter what I have a lady at work that calls me the purple energy girl um because I bring purple energy to the atmosphere and I love that that's what I want to bring I bring a smile I have compassion and empathy and love for others. I don't care that I don't know you I have love for you because listen I don't know what you've gone through but you're here and you're showing up and I want people to treat me with that love and respect and kindness. And I tried to instill that in my kids and and it's so important to me the work that you're doing is amazing. And I I really feel like right now especially that age group leaving high school I feel like there's very minimal amount of young adults that don't know what path to take and my kids are not one my youngest is probably like I want to do like hair and makeup and all that stuff. She's probably the one that has like the most vision for her future right but my son my oldest no and I'm like listen I'm not one to make you go to college if that's not something that calls to you I am not making you go into debt or paying for something that's not going to go anywhere. I'm here for you to live life and I'll be here and I will support you and be there for you and be that light for you. But what I want is for you to go into the world as kind human beings that have compassion love and empathy for others because I feel like that's what we need more than anything in the world.
SPEAKER_00:And that when I say like I connect to the man I know myself to be like that kindness, that connection that desire to be in the world if you look at all the wisdom traditions just all the wisdom traditions the bottom line the punchline of all of them is very very simple. Be present. Yes like be right in this beautiful emergent moment and allow whatever happens to happen and bring love and connection into this moment. Yeah that's it. Now the practice like the nuance of that gets to be complicated but the idea of it is really quite simple. And so there's that which I just think is beautiful of like let's just keep being present have integrity. That's the integrity piece that like I know what it feels like to be me in the world in a way I want to be me. So now I find the courage to do it as much as I possibly can and I fall down all the time and then I get up and I think that's what we want that's what I want from my kids is you know when they graduate when they finish it that some know their path some people know their path others don't but one piece is that there's not an like there's not an option to not engage. Yeah college great that works for some people not college great that works for some people but like sitting at home playing video games that's not an option because that's not getting us where we want to go that's checking out of the world it's about engaging it's about stepping into and learning and growing and uncovering and the way that you find like I almost promise that your youngest daughter starting out with wanting to do hair and makeup and beauty like will find a different start and then find something else because that's what happens is when we step into something we start to learn something you're like oh there's this piece of this that I like oh and there's this piece of this that I like and there's this piece and I really don't like that at all. So I'm gonna do this and you and the way that you start to learn that is by banging into the world. Yeah not learn that sitting in your basement playing video games.
SPEAKER_02:Agreed a hundred percent agreed I went to school for cosmetology and I don't do anything with cosmetology I enjoy doing my own makeup and somewhat my hair and that's about it. I like doing my hair too I know you got it all easy I love that so you talk about hanging in the difficulty the real growth comes from meeting the intensity of life rather than avoiding it. How can people begin to practice that themselves?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah yeah yeah I went away to boarding school when I was 15 to play ice hockey and baseball professionally and the dream died pretty fast and I was okay now what how do I deal with that I'm 18 my dad dies and so it's like life brought these initiations so sometimes those happen and and you know you got to learn how to hang in there. And remember like we do you do I do is that there's a lot of learning in those in that darkness. Yeah but what I again teach coach work on practice live work on in my groups like what we're doing is we're showing up week after week these beautiful men sensitive men who are in relationship men who are dads men who are looking for partners men who are just this these gorgeous I always say like I want the world to know these guys yeah we go and we cry and we scream and we talk about sex and we talk about our relationships and we talk about our lives and we get we get in there and do it. And the foundation again is coming to that place of learning to step towards not away from learning to train that discomfort muscle that adversity muscle of if you don't feel good at it that's really okay. Yeah start to take steps and so there's that I already talked about the cold water and all those kind of things but another really important component of that that takes a huge amount of creativity and courage is to learn how to tell our story with a huge amount of generosity and nourishment and kindness so if you don't feel competent or you don't feel good at being uncomfortable then you take a step towards it. So you know you're like well I can't do cold water because it's too uncomfortable but you try one day instead of being like God I really suck at this you can be you can go wait a second I really care enough to try this thing and I'm not very good at it yet but I'm getting better and I actually have the willingness and the desire even to step towards a bigger expression of my life right I'm shifting the way that I'm telling the story. If you've if you're in a relationship and you aren't saying the thing that you need to say you can say like God I just like I suck. I'm just like not good at this I'm failing I'm not saying the thing I should say what a bad human being I am instead you can start to be like okay here it is like I really care about this. I know that it matters to me. I'm actually noticing the place in myself that knows that I have to say something or have a conversation. And so here I am in the wrestling and the uncomfortable like wrestling trying to figure out how am I actually going to say this because I know it's gonna have really big impacts for my myself and my partner and whoever it might be. And so I'm gonna be in the beautiful uncovering of how this is going. Right. And so we tend to say this this constant noise in our head the self-talk it's like I'm not enough I'm not good at this. I should be more I should have started sooner they're better at this than I am here I am listening to this podcast and they all have these big stories to tell and I don't have any big stories and I don't know how to tell them and I all I do is I just I'm playing victim and I'm doing this. I'm doing and like we're just like barfing on ourselves.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So learning how to and again creativity and courage have to really start to learn how to talk about my story in a way that is kind and says here I am being wildly imperfect and I don't even really know where I'm going but I'm willing to sit here and be in the discomfort and take a small step forward and hope that something uncovers and then I trust that just by sitting here and feeling that and saying this that something will be different. And then you do the same thing tomorrow and then you do the same thing the next day and then you do the same thing the next day and eventually it just starts to expand just like that cold water moment for myself.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It started out as just a moment and then it started to expand where now I can hang out in a waterfall which I love doing lay in the waterfall and just feel the water and I can be there for a long time.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Present totally present love that so you talk about training for the unknown about building presence like a muscle which is what we just talked about. What daily practices or rituals actually help you do that for yourself.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah yeah yeah so what I find is again a 10 minute meditation every morning at least and what really happens is with all my practices there's some reluctance to do them even in cold water. Like I'm really good at being in cold water and even so I'm just like oh God am I gonna get in the water okay and I just make a commitment to myself to like okay I'm gonna have five minutes. Yeah so I I devote 10 minutes a day and I sit and listen and it deepens and in that side I go find the man I know myself to be I connect with the natural world and sometimes that 10 minutes is torture where I'm just in my own whatever for whatever reason it just it's not feeling in your own head not feeling it today. And I get done with the 10 minutes and I'm like okay wow that was really challenging and I did it. And it doesn't have to be perfect. And then the next day I come back and I sit and like two hours later I'm still sitting there. Yeah and it's this expansive beautiful connected to all the energies of the cosmos kind of moment and then just trust that if I keep showing up if I keep showing up and doing the practice and again nourishing self-talk that what happens is that I start to I start to notice what it like I just start to notice myself. I start to get connected to inner guidance. I start to notice like oh here's the part of me that really wants to be alive. Yeah here's the parts of me that don't want to be alive and I and the contrast the opposite of you're like oh I don't really like that I don't want to do that there's gold in those moments because if you know what you want if you're like oh I don't like that means somewhere in there is that you do know what you want.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Right? Because if you can't say I don't want that unless you have some sense of what you want of what you want. But that voice is usually pretty quiet. So in the morning meditation I often sit and I start to listen into that and it grows. And so those really are the practices that that that are the place to start. And I have for your listeners if you go to morganrich.com slash courage there's there's a download there for you about your next courageous step about how to and it outlines some of the stuff we've talked about how to take your next courageous step which might be a conversation which might be starting meditation which might be doing a cold plunge which might be leaving your job which might be going and traveling whatever doesn't like it can be small or big it doesn't really matter and you can also sign up for a 15 minute conversation with me if you'd like to do that.
SPEAKER_02:And there's then some also resources for find your path the program I was talking about for my coaching for the men's groups and yeah all things all and your book I'll I'll put all the links in there it's all in there I'll put all the things all the links all the everything in the show notes so our listeners can definitely connect with you. I am this has been so amazing thank you so much Morgan wow what powerful conversation I feel like so thank you so much for joining us today.
SPEAKER_00:You're welcome and really Maria thank you for bringing what you bring and just the against all odds you really have had quite a journey and to be as positive as to turn those into the beautiful moments of learning and deepening for your kids for the world like that is an energy that I like to say it's like putting a ripple out into the world and like not keep sending these ripples out to a world that is really really hungry for that aliveness for that connection for that kindness and all that in there. So honored to be here thank you and thank you for all that you put into the world it makes a difference.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you so much listeners I hope that you got as much from today's conversation as I did. This was amazing I again we'll put all of Morgan's information in the show notes and please go check him out thank you so much for listening today peace out guys love your life bye
