Special Guest Expert - Kellan Fluckiger: Video automatically transcribed by Sonix

Special Guest Expert - Kellan Fluckiger: this mp4 video file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Daniel Aaron:
What does it take to create a vibrant, thriving life? First, the sad news is that Thoreau was right. Most people are leading quiet lives of desperation, lacking in meaning, fulfillment, and vitality. But we choose more. We choose to create extraordinary lives and the art of vibrant living. Show entertains you with inspiration, empowerment and education to create your life into a masterpiece. It's time. Let's vibe up. Hello my friends. Welcome to the show. I am Daniel Aaron, your host. This is the Art of Vibrant Living show which is dedicated to you living your most vibrant, amazing life. And I'm super excited for today's show. Especially my guest today is a phenomenal guy. I'll tell you a little bit, but I'll give you more opportunity to hear from him directly in a moment. Remember your destiny, your possibility, your potential. And I would say your birthright, maybe even obligation, is to truly live a vibrant, amazing, thriving life and to whatever degree that's not happening now or even is happening. The question I invite you into is, how can I grow into that further? That's what this show is all about, is, yes, some entertainment more though empowering you. I ask you to please listen, watch and take at least one thing. There'll be about 486 gems here, I know it. Take one thing that you can say, yeah, I'm going to do that. I'm going to apply that in my life today. If you want any help with that, please reach out. And I would love to support you with creating an even more amazing life now. Today's guest, Helen Flickinger. Pronunciation. So? So maybe we'll find out. Amazing. Phenomenal. Phenomenal. Coach. Writer. Author, 19 books. Musician. Speaker who had a completely different life, so different from what he's created now in the last few years. And I'm not going to go into a whole lot just to say I've been blessed to meet him, become friends and be a student to learn from him. So I'm so excited for y'all to get this experience, and I'm going to leave it to him to tell more of how he came to be who he is, because it's a truly phenomenal story. Kellen, thank you so much for being with us.

Kellan Fluckiger:
Daniel. Thank you for having me. And first of all, I want to honor you doing a podcast or a show like this live stream. And I was just looking at all the places, you know, Roku, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Schmitter x. We got to change that logo, right? It's X now, you know, anyway, all those places that you've got, all that's a labor of love and it's a lot of work and it just tells me about your heart and tells me about who you are. And I want to honor you and be grateful to you for the work that you're putting into spreading the message that you just described, which I support fully. So thanks for having me.

Daniel Aaron:
Well, thank you for saying that and a pleasure. And you know, and I've it hasn't been lost on me that my, my tagline in some way is, you know, the art of vibrant living. And your website, as we see there, is your ultimate life. You know, clearly we got some viewpoints in common.

Kellan Fluckiger:
No question about that. Your ultimate life. You know, everybody has a series of interconnected dreams that they that defines their ultimate life. And I just call it a life of purpose, prosperity and joy that you create by living into the true, divine and powerful nature that you have.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah, well, no argument there, I love it, I love the way you say it. And, you know, I have the advantage here of knowing that you didn't always think that way and you didn't always live that way, and you had a fairly dramatic shift of your life. So would you be up for sharing with our audience a little bit about what happened there, how that transition occurred?

Kellan Fluckiger:
Of course. Um, I was raised in a two parent home that didn't look like, you know, broken house or poverty or whatever. I mean, it was kind of lower middle class, but we never lacked for anything. But it was very unusual in one way. And it was fanatic in the context of religion and behavior. And there was a lot of discipline that today would be felony child abuse. And I remember stories, lots of them. And one of them was like, even as late as in high school, I got dressed last in the locker room because I didn't want anyone to see that I was black and blue from the beatings. And so, you know, that kind of stuff was my whole life experience up until I left home at 17. And what it did, how it left me, was just convinced that I was not good enough and never would be. And I didn't really think maybe getting out of that would, you know, you'd turn away from both what happened to you and religion and all that, and I didn't. I kind of had the feeling that my whole life purpose was to prove to my mom, who was the principal administrator of the discipline, that I was okay and get her approval, which, of course, I never did and never will. But I'm okay with that now. That went on for 35 years, from 17 till I was 52. The consequences of living in severe depression was a lot of self-sabotage, a lot of self-loathing. I was blessed with some brains. I knew how to make money, and I believed that if I did enough of that, I would, you know, get back in the good books. So I created a lot of financial success and career success, but then I didn't believe I deserved it. So I would sabotage it and like, literally do things to get in trouble and to get sabotaged. I ended up doing that with relationships and with jobs. And by the time of the transition that you talked about, which was August of 2007, 16 years ago now, I was back at the top of my career. I was making so much money that my $3,000 a week cocaine habit didn't matter.

Kellan Fluckiger:
And I was single again for the third time, and I had four of my ten children living with me. Three were grown up and married and three were living with. It's embarrassing a little bit to say one of the exes, but it is true. And that was who I was. And in one night on Friday in August of 2007, I came home from work and was getting ready to go out and party for the weekend. The kids were all teenagers and had friends and took care of themselves. That's not how I should have done it, but that's who I was at the time. And when I got ready to go out, I had this feeling, this compulsion to turn on the television. Now that sounds like so nothing except I didn't watch TV. And the funny part was, I picked up the remote and I looked at it and it was like, oh, I don't know how to turn this on. I realized I never watched it and I didn't know how to turn the television on. So I asked one of my daughters, my 16 year old, and she punched some buttons and, you know, threw the remote at me dip weed. And it landed on a program that I'd never heard of. And I don't know if it's still on or not, but as a reality TV show called intervention. Which is a reality TV show about families who stage professional interventions with counselors or priests or whatever for busted loved ones. So I started watching it, and the protagonist was a high ranking executive with a cocaine problem. And I was shocked. And I watched about ten minutes of a lot of things really similar to my life and got mad, turned it off, said, I'm not going to watch this crap. So I walked around the house for a little bit and got ready to go, and then I was just compelled internally to turn it on again. And this time I knew how and the show started over. And no, I didn't have a recording device. And no, it wasn't on the schedule. And no, it can't do that. I understand, but it did, and it freaked me out.

Kellan Fluckiger:
I'm like, Holy crap, I guess I'm supposed to watch this. So I sit down and watched it. It went badly. The guy yelled at his family, swore he didn't have a problem. He stomped out of the intervention. You know, you know how that goes. But anyway, that freaked me out. It freaked me out enough that I didn't go out to party. I went to bed when I went to bed. I went to hell. And what I mean by that is quite literal. It went. It felt like I was somewhere out of body. I was in a dark room. It was kind of like a theater. And I could see, you know, a kind of a stage and stuff there. And I could hear things. And the scenes that were playing on the stage were all focused on suffering, and they were intense, and it was a suffering that had been inflicted on me all through my childhood, up through all the suffering I had inflicted on other people as a liar and a drug addict and a lousy spouse. And, you know, all the things, mistakes that I had done. And the level of suffering was intense beyond description. And it went on for what seemed like an eternity after a long time. I heard a voice and it simply said, it is enough. I woke up and was disoriented because the sun was shining in the window and the windows in my house faced west. I got up and realized that it was 5:00 Saturday afternoon. So I'd been somewhere for nearly 18 hours. I realized at that point that I had been invited to change. But I had no idea how to do anything. I'd never really sought any help. I had never really opened up and talked to anyone. I had assumed everything was my fault and I sucked. And if I just get my crap together, it'd all be fine. And so I'd use that whole rubric of self-loathing all those years. But I knew that I was done, and something had to change. So I threw away $1,000 worth of substances that I had laying around, because I always did.

Kellan Fluckiger:
And I quit cold turkey that day. Now, that first part was a miracle. It got me sober, but it didn't do anything at all about how I got there, which was the depression and the self-loathing and not good enough and all of that sort of stuff. That was part two of the Divine intervention, and that went on Monday. I went back to work, and I knew kind of I had to get out of that and start life over. But it was all kind of a lot. So when I went back to work in the position I had, I got a lot of free stuff, free tickets and two concerts and two hockey games and box seats and, you know, some pretty expensive stuff. Not bribery level, but pretty nice stuff. So one of the things I got was a pair of thousand dollar tickets to see a Yo-Yo Ma concert. Now, if you know classical music, you know who that is. And if you don't, you don't. But in the classical world, that's. Oh, that's way up there. So I thought, this is amazing. I'm going to go. But of course, I had no one to take because like I said, I was single for the third time and not even remotely interested in relationships. So I ask in the groups that I managed who who likes classical music. And somebody in one of the groups said, well, I do, and it was a woman I knew. I mean, I knew all the people that worked for me. And I asked her, well, have I ever given you anything before? And she said, no. And I said, okay, fine, see you there. Gave her the ticket. We met at the venue. The concert was spectacular. And now, as of the date of the concert, you got to know I'm now two weeks stone cold sober. Halfway through the show, which was astounding. I had this feeling come over me that I recognized from earlier, and this voice said to me, you need to marry this woman. And I freaked out because I thought, no way, no, no way. I've ruined that three times. I don't know how to do this.

Kellan Fluckiger:
Not happening. But you don't. Anyway, so later that night we were backstage because the reason they were so expensive tickets, it was backstage passes and the reception and all that stuff. So in the in the backstage. We. We're at the festivities and the voice came back and said, comma, and you need to tell her tonight. And then I really flipped out because there were two, probably more than two. But there were two really obvious problems. One, I didn't know if she was in a relationship. Like. I didn't know that until she worked for me. I mean, you know, could be she called the cops, I could be arrested for harassment or whatever. So I argued with my voice furiously. But you don't win those arguments. So I did, and it went about like you would have expected. Are you insane? And she left. We hadn't come together, so she left and. The good news is that she wasn't in a relationship which didn't know. And the second piece of good news is she didn't call the cops or HR or anything like that over the next two and a half weeks. She had her own set of experiences that wasn't part of. And about two and a half or three weeks after the concert. I resigned. The position that I was in walked away from millions of dollars of contracts. She left her entire career and we walked off into the sunset together and in about, well, next month, in December. We're going to celebrate our 16th wedding anniversary. Now, as amazing as that story is, the real. Power is that she was literally the angel with a soul contract to help me learn how to be a person, to help me learn to tell the truth, to help me learn to have a friend and to be a friend. Things that I had never. Dared to know or learn or been able to have in my whole life. And we didn't know each other very well, but we launched into that thing because of how? Confident we were that it was the right thing to do. And. The funniest thing or the most interesting thing is her name is Joy.

Kellan Fluckiger:
And you can't make this stuff up. And so that was the beginning, the invitation. To change. My life.

Daniel Aaron:
Well that it's it is amazing on so many levels and entertaining, surprising, miraculous. And so a couple of questions around it. One is the first part, divine intervention, part one. Right. The intervention, you know, and I can picture that as, as, as a play or a movie, of course, when when you describe the part of going to hell, the immediate association I get is, well, we're coming up to the end of the season here, A Christmas Carol, right? And The Ghosts of Christmas. Did it feel like that in some way?

Kellan Fluckiger:
I called it hell because the suffering was so intense. It was unbearable. It was intense to witness the suffering that had been inflicted on me, and then the remorse and. Horror at the suffering I had inflicted on others. Mean as a drug addict at the level that I was. And cocaine was the favorite. But there was just all kinds of stuff and all the lies and hiding and duplicity and the destruction of other people's hearts and everything that had gone with it. So hell is the only way I can describe it. I didn't see fire and brimstone or, you know, demons dancing with pitchforks. But I cannot imagine. Any hell. The intensity of. Suffering of remorse, of. Compassion for my little self and remorse is my grown up self and sadness for the people who I had, you know, harmed in all those ways. Trust and betrayal and all that stuff. So it was, I call it hell because of the intensity of the experience. Mm.

Daniel Aaron:
And I mean, I don't know if you can say this because it sounds like you were in a different dimension in a sense. But what do you think was actually going on? How did that how did that happen? I mean, you must have considered it, right?

Kellan Fluckiger:
I have I felt out of body. So I felt some like I was somewhere and it was literally almost 18 hours. And so the physical symptoms when I woke up. I was back in my bed, although not how I had laid down. I was upside down, backwards in the bed, and the bedding was so wet that you could wring it out. An impossible amount of fluid. Not to be accounted for by any bodily function. I mean, sometimes when people get drunk, they pee the bed or you sweat if you have a fever, you know, it's been all those things and there was no explaining soaking wet. So I have no idea how that happened. But those are the physical sensations. When I woke up, I felt completely exhausted from the experience, but at the same time in wonder and awe that I had witnessed such an extra dimensional activity. So I have no idea where I was. I can speculate and make up stuff, but that's the physical reality of the experience.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. Wow. Okay. So and you described it as, as an invitation, you know, which which implies like it's clearly got your attention, right. And it was extremely striking. But you didn't say it was a command. So what was it like for you? Did you did you have a moment there of saying like, well, am I going to accept this invitation? Was it obvious? What was that part of the process like for you?

Kellan Fluckiger:
I use thank you for saying that. I use the invitation because you listening, you Daniel Miquelon and you listening. You know what I'm talking about when you say when I say invitation, the nudges, the feelings that you ought to do something, but nobody's going to come and make you do it. Nobody puts your hand to the plow or the computer keyboard, or opens your mouth and says the things you know, you you somehow know you're called to do. So invitation is the word because it leaves the truth. To be discussed. But the truth that you have to go do it. So the invitation was stark. It is enough. It wasn't shouted. It wasn't anything. It is. It was a. It was a statement from the center of the universe. It is enough. And I knew. I knew in the way that you can only know things in that kind of stuff. Something has got to change. This is it. And I knew I had to do it. It wasn't going to do itself. There was no magic about the change involved. I had to go work on myself and go to counselors and start learning to tell the truth. And first couple shrinks I saw probably thought I was a nutcase. I didn't tell the truth to them either. Like I didn't even know how to have a conversation, honestly, about what had gone on in my life for the past 35 years where I hadn't gotten any help or advice or talk to anybody at all. I just sort of lived in this isolated way. So I say invitation so that I can explain that it was an invitation. And yours are too, that you feel. I assume the reason mine were so loud is because I was so deaf. You know, we have those invitations and feelings all the time, and I needed a two by 4 or 2. And what that tells me is this if there was ever a poster child for somebody that should have been abandoned at the bottom of the canyon. I was it. The battlefield behind me was. A mess and that doesn't even begin to describe it. So what I know is, if the divine, if our creator would, would, would come in that circumstance. And offer an invitation which implies there is a place to go which implies there is a path out. Then there is nowhere. Nothing that you have been through. Nothing that has was 52 when this started. So it doesn't matter what's happened before or where you are now. Those feelings, those nudges, those two by fours, whatever they are in your life. They're real. They're not taunting. They're possible. And that's the the meaning and the sort of framing around invitation.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. Beautiful. Well, one of the quotations that came to mind for me as you were speaking about it is Lazarus said, if you can, if you can hear the whispers, you don't need to hear the screams. Right. And and I've described the awakening that I experienced very different, though in its own way, as dramatic as being a two by four upside, the head divine, two by four and thinking for myself like, wow, I was so clueless and. That I needed that, that kind of whack in order to get my attention. And I, I always hold this belief that for any of us, if we well, you know, there's that it's kind of a cliche, you know, if somebody knows better, they do better, right? Which, you know, I'm sure there's a truth to that, though I think more more accurate might be if we feel the consequences more we tend to do more. There's this it's a bit silly, but a movie scene that I love from the movie powder. Right. And have you seen that movie?

Kellan Fluckiger:
I have not.

Daniel Aaron:
Okay, so this is a hilarious scene, very unusual spiritual character in the movie, and he's in a very cliche Midwestern scene, and he ends up going on a hunting trip with, with all these guys and the and they're very, you know, guys, guys hunting and killing. And one of the guys shoots a deer and the deer is on the ground and it's, it's, you know, twitching and dying. And, you know, for me watching it, it was, you know, heartbreaking to see this animal suffering this way. And and then one of the kids in the, in the, in the group says, well, you know, is it in pain? And the guy who was like the leader of the, of the the kids group says, no, no, it's just nerves don't feel anything. And then this unusual divine character that whose name is powder, he puts one hand on the deer and then puts one hand on the man that says, no, it's you know, it's just it's just the nerves. And suddenly the man feels everything that the deer is feeling, and it's almost like he has a seizure. And then from that moment on, his life completely changes, you know? And so, like what I think of in terms of your divine intervention, part one is that the key would have been that you felt all of that, including the suffering that you inflicted. Does that make.

Kellan Fluckiger:
Sense? It does make complete sense. And that may well be right that the intensity of the suffering was made me know I never wanted to experience that again in any way, shape or form. It made me remorseful beyond my ability to express for what I had done, and it did not make me angry for the stuff that had been inflicted on me, although that was his intense. That's interesting because I didn't feel bitter or angry or any of that in that context, but it filled me with. Uh, compassion. But the intensity of the suffering was beyond anything I have the ability to describe.

Daniel Aaron:
Wow. Okay. So let's go to this part because you said a couple times about telling the truth that you didn't have much capacity to tell the truth prior to that, and that as you started to learn how to live anew, a part of that was learning to tell the truth. What does that mean to you, and how is that relevant to your evolution?

Kellan Fluckiger:
When I was little, I lied all the time to protect myself from, you know, punishment and so forth. What I learned from that is that I could create my world. I was blessed or cursed with a really, really good memory. And so I never got like caught in lies. I was able to just go through life creating things and saying whatever I wanted, and realized at one point, a few years before that happened that I had my life bore no relationship to the truth. I mean, I had a real job, I made real money, I did real stuff and did it well and got paid well. But my inner life had no. Like did. I sometimes could hardly tell the difference between what I said and what really happened in situations, in terms of description and just all of that stuff. So I had to come to terms with this habit that I had created. And sometimes I use the term pathological liar, and I don't know what the actual definition of that is, but I lied all the time. There wouldn't be a day that goes by that I didn't tell at least 30 or 40 or 50 shades, and sometimes completely different, and didn't think anything about it. I went through life creating things as I went along, saying whatever I thought people needed to hear so that life functioned like I thought it was supposed to and I wanted. I learned to undo that, that there was safety in truth instead of danger, and that I know was no longer required to to, you know, fabricate my reality. And it's very difficult to describe the extent to which that is that that was true. And the unpeeling of those layers didn't happen all at once. It was a very laborious and just in terms of time and effort process to come to a place of telling the truth to myself, to those around me, and just living in a place of true instead of made up. And so that was a very. Stark difference and very important because, you know, in our coaching business, like you can't you can't make progress. Let's put it this way, the degree of progress that anybody can make in any area they're working on is directly proportional to the degree of truth they're willing to embrace. And that was a principle I had to learn. For myself in that in that process.

Daniel Aaron:
Powerful. What is? There's a lot we could unpack with that. I'll skip over one track, though, and stay on the same general direction. I remember in my early 20s I came across a book called what was it called? Radical Honesty. And the subtitle was something like Telling the Truth Will Change Your Life. Brad Blanton and I remember reading this book, and because I came up from a family situation, maybe a little bit like yours, certainly honesty was never part of the equation in any of our family. The law of the land was sarcasm. That was sort of the best of it. And so I read this book, and what he advocated in the book is tell the unedited truth all the time. And. If anybody else has a problem with that, that's their problem, not yours. And and so for me that was so revolutionary. Like just the idea like you could you could actually just tell the truth. And and so I just said take it on as an experiment. And for me, it was kind of like a pendulum swing because like you, I had learned to create what I wanted by lying all the time. And so the pendulum swung over here and I was like, all right, I'm going to really try this on and be honest. And. I also injured a lot of relationships with my clumsiness around that. And part of what I learned is maybe maybe that's a pendulum swing where honesty is essential. Although caring and the way one expresses honesty maybe is involved or valid. So as I say, all of that, does that relate in any way? What can you say about that?

Kellan Fluckiger:
It's 100% true. Some people think of radical honesty as when someone says, does this dress make my butt look fat? You say, yep, that's absolutely the truth. And that may be, quote, radical honesty, but there's 100 other ways to express things without lying where you're misleading. And so that's just the silly example. And I think of that one, because I used to work with a guy whose wife asked him that, and he told that story at work, and I've never been in a relationship with that question was actually asked. But it was it's, you know, it's cliche and you can tell the truth. You can tell the truth and be in truth and how you tell it. If you're in love with the person, if you're telling the truth, you don't really like something. It's not my favorite thing, or I don't want to do that. I'm not able to do that. Declining an invitation to do something or help someone or go somewhere or anything. There's 100 ways to do it, and you're not required to in any time to lie. And you're not required to organize your life around other people's needs. But you are. If you're striving to be the very best human you can, obligated if you will, or it's elevated to a place where you consider how you express and the consequences of how you express whatever it is you're thinking. And another piece that comes to mind about that is truth. Is. You know your opinion. My opinion isn't necessarily the unvarnished truth. My opinion is my opinion, and the truth of my opinion is X, but that doesn't you know, lots of things that I've learned about my opinion is my opinion. I do not possess the capacity of the creator to own truth. I don't own it. I have an opinion, I have experiences, I have what I believe and know myself. But learning to navigate that in a way that is compassionate and powerful is possible and liberating.

Daniel Aaron:
Make sense? I think there's a saying I learned many years ago that if you want the truth, just let go of your opinion and somehow think that the sentiment of that is especially important these days where we got so much polarization going on. You know, and I think you pointed to something in the way you said that, which is well, it kind of comes down to what do you want? Right. What do you want to create in your life? How do you want your life to be? So what else then would you share about this process? Because I love that you, you know, you had this like, stark invitation. You knew you had to change, you went cold turkey, but you also didn't know how to live the life that you were offered. Right. And so what were some of the keys for you in learning? Telling the truth, obviously, was one. What else?

Kellan Fluckiger:
Well, Joy and I didn't know each other very well. And so when we started, we both knew that this was crazy. We both knew we didn't know each other very well. I was honest with her ahead of time about, you know, the extent of my addictions and things, but that is just one little facet of life. So we had to learn who we were and to get along and all the things that you have to learn. And that took us, you know, two or 3 or 4 years. Um. But what we did because it was so crazy is we just made a deal. And we said, okay, this is crazy. We both understand that it's crazy. And if we're going to do this, then this is ride or die. Because I said, I'm not doing this again. So I'm all in, period. No matter what. And we agreed that was how we were going to approach this. That commitment. Was. Powerful to say the least. It was the foundation. So when things were not as they should be, and there were difficulties and were arguments and conflicts of opinion and and the process of me learning like 3 or 4 years, it took me seeing I had to begin seeing counselors and find people. And like I said, I ruined the first couple counselors because I didn't. How to tell the truth to them either. And by ruin, I don't mean I ruined them, but there was no possibility of of growth there. And finally I, I began to learn what to do and how to just be vulnerable. And I'm I have this going on, you know, here it is. Instead of trying to have the answers. Also, because part of my brokenness was thinking everything was my fault and I was supposed to fix it. So I approached Stephen counseling sessions with, yeah, this, this and this, and here's the answers. And I'm sure that, you know, the shrinks and people thought I was nuts. And the truth is, I didn't even know how to get help. So there was a process of of professional help. There was a process of trying to ask myself, what am I going to do now?

Kellan Fluckiger:
I lived my whole life at the script of what success meant, who to be in the context of trying to get approval in the prescribed way from my mom all those years. And, you know, I had to experiment with what? What is it even going to be? And gradually, you know, in the first 3 or 4 years, I finally figured out. That the transformation that is happening and you know, the invitation, the transformation, the changes, the choices. Were a valuable thing. And that's when I was drawn to, you know, the coaching, the idea of becoming a coach or getting into self-help or personal development business and all the rest, because I began to see really clearly, okay, this process has been really hard. And required a lot of work, a lot of change in how I view myself and God and spirituality and relationships and everything. And so gradually dawned on me after about four years, probably starting in 2011, that I wanted to do this work. And so I began to do that and use it as a. As two things. One is a development process for myself and then to offer. Clumsily at first, but to offer assistance to others who were making. Changes in their own lives, having come to a place of dissatisfaction, a yearning to get up to the next podium. You can describe it a lot of ways in sports. Let's get to a championship in music. Let's get to the next concert stage or go to the next level up. It's whatever it is. But the process that I went through brought me gradually, as I learned to get rid of old stories and things that I used to hold as true. Uh, get rid of those things and then adopt. Uh, better, more functional points of view and views about people and everything else. So it was a it was a growth process. And truth I picked was one of the big ones. Another huge one was learning to love myself. People ask all the time when you go to any kind of rehab or, you know, a recovery facility, what's your drug of choice? And I used to, you know, although everything was handy and fine, it was cocaine was a big one.

Kellan Fluckiger:
I finally realized that my drug of choice was self loathing. I needed to hate myself. And so every time I created big success, which I did over and over again, I needed to wreck it because I didn't deserve to be here. That was conscious thinking, but that's how I behaved. And so I finally realized the drug of choice had nothing to do with the substance. Whatever substance was handy. Yeah, cocaine was the big one, and $3,000 a week is a lot. But it wasn't the substance. It was the need to prove that I sucked as bad as I believed I did.

Daniel Aaron:
Well, and there's a lot of talk in in the worlds we inhabit about self-sabotage or undermining beliefs and believing I sucked, not loving myself, self-sabotage. It's something I don't actually hear very often. I don't hear people speak about it in that way, though I think it's probably a lot more common than than we might realize. So, you know, and I appreciate the way you said that and as as you did, I reflected for myself, like, yeah, there's a lot of my life where I really, even though I didn't see it and probably wouldn't have admitted it, was really disliking myself. And I've had confrontations with that for myself even recently. So I guess two questions then what what how did that change for you and for anybody that's that's watching with us that goes, oh shit, maybe, maybe I'm doing that. What what's what would you advise?

Kellan Fluckiger:
I would advise to take the stigma out of it. I can tell you you are doing it because if you really loved yourself like God loves you and you're a divine being, think about this. You have genealogy. You have your parents, your mom, dad, grandma, grandpa. The genealogy of your spirit can be written on a single line. So since that's true, you're the actual creation of a divine, all powerful being who loves, who is love, the total. All that then. Loving ourselves is a is a divine right, and it is an obligation, because it's only in that state that we can begin to accomplish what we what we can. And to love ourselves is a is a holy thing. It is a blessed thing. I'm not talking about self indulgence. Talking about honoring and loving yourself. And that's true even if you've been where I've been or worse. And all of the things that come with that and that sort of story drives us to hate ourselves. Well, I did this and I did this, and I did this. Therefore I'm unworthy and therefore I suck. And if anybody really knew, whatever it is that you're afraid that they know, then they would hate me. You know, okay, there isn't even a conversation there. Maybe they would. Maybe they wouldn't. You have no idea. But the truth is, what you were doesn't matter. There's a line in Shakespeare in the play as you Like It. There's a brother and another brother, and the older brother hates the younger brother and in fact hates him so much he kept trying to kill him because the younger brother was more successful and more liked. So his older brother kept trying to kill him and one day the older brother got in trouble. Something happened and I don't know the whole story, but the younger brother came to his rescue and saved his life, even though his older brother had been trying to kill him. And later in the play, there were ladies, a couple of ladies talking to the older brother saying, ah! And so the older brother completely changed, you know, no more of this and that. He completely changed who he was being.

Kellan Fluckiger:
And there were some ladies talking to him and said, aren't you the guy that was trying to kill your brother, blah, blah, blah? And he said, here's the immortal line, twas I, tis not I. And that is the heart of change. So it doesn't matter where you start. What matters is your direction. And your trajectory. So if you're you can start today. Today you can start and move in a new direction. And that is a choice we all get to make. And we need whatever help we need. We can't do this alone. We're not designed to do it alone. So that choice is what I had to make. And I had to come to the book called Love Yourself. Like your life depends on it. And it's came out of a Ted talk. It talks about an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley that was so depressed he was going to kill himself. And the only thing he did is start saying, I love myself, I love myself. And the story is kind of funny. And the Ted talk was so moving and powerful that everybody insisted he write a book. And the first one's really thin, and it has a picture of a silhouette on the front with a guy with what looks like a gun to his head. There's now a second edition that's got more commentary, and it's thicker. And I have both of them. But it is. It is a simple act of allowing the truth of who you are to begin to manifest. That doesn't mean you pretend any mistakes away. That doesn't mean we shouldn't fix what we can. That doesn't mean any of that. What it means is you start today and you move in a new direction. It also means that you choose to be compassionate to yourself when you make mistakes. And that at least brought me to where part of my. Saying that I live in is I am forgiveness. I hold no judgment, anger, or loathing toward anyone for anything, including myself. And that guiding, you know, aspiration. I'm not pretending to be perfect, but that guiding aspiration informs every conversation, no matter what anybody has said or done or not said or not done.

Kellan Fluckiger:
They are where they are. And I choose because I can, to love them anyway. And to not carry the weight of either anger toward them or loathing toward myself. Any at all, ever. Zero. And the interesting thing about that is then it's so light. Life is so light and energized and free, and there is so much to do when I'm not carrying the rocks of self-loathing or retribution. L don't even know if that's a word, but retribution, anger toward somebody that did thus and such. I don't need it. I can't fix it anyway. I've done everything I can to clean up the mess from the past. I don't know if other people have cleaned up their mess, but justice is not in my hands. There's the legal system. Maybe that works, maybe it doesn't. I know there's a bigger system. And you know what? Don't pull those levers either. And it's not in my backpack. Yay!

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah, I'm with you. That's beautiful. What? A couple of things that come to mind, as you say that. I remember when I was 29 years old, and it was shortly after I had that divine whack upside the head. And I realized, also like, Holy moly, I do not know how to live what I saw, what I experienced. So there's nothing more important than figuring that out. And that's what I got. Obsessed with personal and spiritual development. Few years into that process, and I was doing all kinds of work in this realm, and I remember my mother writing me a long letter, handwritten letter with a conclusion like, when are you going to get a real job? Right? And I could have any job in the world. She would totally support me as long as it was a doctor or a lawyer. Right. So but, you know, in whatever my version of being a coach was at that time did not square with that. But I remember so clearly feeling like there's nothing more important than figuring this out, you know, whether it's learning to tell the truth. Love myself. And I'm still learning all of those things. Um, so I want to talk in a minute about what you're up to now, because I know you're the lightness that you just described. Part of what that's created in you is a creative freedom and a proliferation of value and love into the world. And I think, and you tell me, if this is accurate. Part of what's facilitated that is your own personal truth and commitment document, manifesto, whatever we call it. And we've talked about that in other ways. I know you've talked about it. I've talked about it before. I have my own version of that. But what is that for you? Because some people may not be conversant with even the concept.

Kellan Fluckiger:
So here's the idea. The idea is we are raised to have certain values and certain path through life, you know? And in my youth it was grow up, get a job, go to work for a company, work there 30 or 40 years, get married, have a family, you know, do good, be a decent person, get old and croak. And, you know, that's kind of a good life. And then there are a few outliers that did little variations of that, and then a few weird ones that did whatever. But that was sort of what you do. And. If you deviate from that, you're not okay. Well, so if you adopt those things that are given to you, then what you've done is you've sold your soul, for better or worse, for that truth. What occurred to me after the divine interventions and the complete radical shift in my life. I mean, I walked away from everything I'd done for 30 years. That wasn't a trivial thing. I'd been in that career for 30 years, and I started all over again, and I started thinking, okay, if that can change at that radical level, what who am I? Who am I? Like, I'm not going to define myself in terms of job consultant, accountant, lawyer. I'm not going to do that. Who am I? And at the basic level, a document is like a personal manifesto, a personal constitution. For me, it's a contract between me and God. I declare who I am, and some of the statements in there are factual. Like I am a Son of God. There's nothing I can do to change that. That's it. And but having it in my statement reminds me. So when I read my statement, which I do every day and I have it memorized, I am that it changes how I look at everybody and how I look at myself and the choices I make and the things I do with my time and things I say yes to and no to. Some of the statements are aspirational. So one of them is, for example, I am my word. I speak only truth. I do what I say, I am who I seem with no camouflage, duplicity or guile.

Kellan Fluckiger:
And guile is an old word that means phoniness. So that is aspirational because I'm not perfect. So some of the statements are factual and some are aspirational, but I put them together in a string, in a document that is now several pages long and describes different facets. But it is mine. I don't share it with anybody except in this last book I wrote, living with Purpose and Power. I did put them in there just as ideas, because that's what the book's about. But they're just a contract between me and the divine. And when someone says why that you're not that, how can you say that? The answer is really simple because I said so. Like, I don't need anyone's permission. I don't need anyone's agreement, and neither do you. This is a declaration of yours, of who you are in the world, who you, how you walk through the world, how you show up. You know. And so. And my word, I tell the truth, I am who I see am I do what I say. Those are things that simply represent who I have declared myself to be. So that is a living document. That I use, I memorize, I say it, I breathe it, it is my personal constitution. And because I wrote it and I chose every single word in there, I'm committed because I said so. And don't didn't put anything in there that wasn't, like, resonant to my soul. So that is the document and the companion thing with it, because lots of people go to some seminar and they write, I'm a wonderful, compassionate, kind, caring person, husband, wife, father, da. And then they don't do anything with it. It just goes in the shelf or the computer and you know, it isn't anything. It felt really good at the time, but it doesn't have power in their lives. So the companion activity is something I call a morning routine or morning ritual that involves a lot of parts, but one of them is to to recite. In full power, and sometimes in a dramatic reading the words of that document. To light the fire of my determination and commitment on purpose every day.

Kellan Fluckiger:
And if things need to be tweaked or changed so that it lights the fire of commitment, then I do that. But I want to use every minute of my life. To do the things that I choose to do instead of represented in the document. And then my daily morning creation process is like a warmup for a sport at the Olympics. It's what I do every morning so that I am at. Peak performance and inflow all day. Why? Because I choose it. Because I said so.

Daniel Aaron:
Beautiful. Now, this is, I think, a ridiculous question in a way. I still want to hear your response, though. Um, so get yourself into peak performance every day so that you can create what you want. Use every minute. How does how does it make you feel? What's the difference for you in terms of if you do it or don't do it?

Kellan Fluckiger:
You know, when I first started all this stuff, I used to have the same trouble I had getting up. Oh, I hit the snooze button. Don't want to get up. Don't want to face the day I can wake up tired just like anybody else. So. And you know, I didn't have time for the morning routine. I don't have time to fit it in, blah blah, blah blah. All of that stuff is normal and natural. What's happened over time is I have gotten used to it and committed to it. I never skip it ever, ever, ever for any reason. Not because I'm a nutcase or because I'm some kind of a fanatic weirdo. Because I love how it feels. I love how I feel when I'm working with a client to create their own, with their words and their true passions and stuff. What I tell them is, when you read the document, looking in the mirror in your own eyes with power, if it doesn't make you weep, then write it again. Because it is intended to be the ultimate expression. Of the truth of yourself and your relationship to the universe and the divine as you understand it right now. That will develop and stuff over time. That's fine, but the purpose of it is to take control of your life and the way you described it. I want to make clear it isn't so that I have to be frantically busy and freak out and work real hard. There's times when I don't do any of that. The times that I am in meditation and contemplation, or I'm doing something with joy, with the gentlest, tenderest heart I can manage at my own stage of development. All of that is embodied in because some of the statements are about joy is I love joy with everything that I am. Joy is the love of my life and eternity. I love the grace, beauty and brilliance that is joy with all my being. Joy is my song, my balance and the light in my heart. So for those things to be true that informs, instructs, and helps me in every way that I think about, talk about, and live with her. So it isn't about frantic busyness. It's not about outperforming anyone. It is a comprehensive contract of who I want to be because what we make out of ourselves. That's all we have to take home. We came with nothing, and the only thing we're going to go back with is what we have made of ourselves.

Daniel Aaron:
Beautiful. Thank you. So, so many places we could go. And the time is just ticking, ticking, ticking. I've got a big final question for you coming up before we finish soon. So at this point, what have I not asked you that I should have or what? What else is there that you really would like to share with with our people?

Kellan Fluckiger:
Ha! You know, I said earlier, it's never too late. There's no place that you've been. No mistakes you've made. No such thing. And so I reiterate that. But there is a lot more to tell. You know, 11 years after the first divine intervention, I got sick and died. And that's a whole nother story happened in 2018, and I was in a coma for 17 days and lost to all the weight and looked like a concentration camp survivor. And that's a whole incredible story. Not fill up a whole hour all by itself. But what I want to assure you. Listening. There's nothing interesting or special about Kellen. Despite the miraculous things and invitations and dramatic stuff that's happened. You. Every one of you listening. You're a divine, capable being. Just as important, just as powerful, just as precious. As I am. And I know that. And so the only purpose for sharing all this is not about me. It's an invitation for you. To look at yourself with love, compassion, forgiveness, determination. Joy. New eyes. Recommitment. So that you can decide on purpose. Who you want to be and then live into that.

Daniel Aaron:
Awesome. Thank you. Well, yes, I'm 100% with you on that. It's a it's a powerful invitation. And I, I know that at least one person will have heard that and said, ah, that's exactly what I needed to hear. And that can be the invitation. That can be the substitute for the two by fours that we got. You know, not everybody needs to get those two by fours. Um, so before we get to the big final question, you kindly brought along a gift for our audience. Um, you would you be up for saying a word about what that is?

Kellan Fluckiger:
You bet. I have a kind of an interesting sense of humor. So I have a course called Master Your Monsters. And I'm playing off of the monsters that we have as kids, you know, under the bed in the closet that are, you know, going to scare us and so forth. I mean, they made a whole movie about that monsters Inc, right? And so we have those as kids, and then we grow up and realize there's nobody under the bed or in the closet. But as adults, we have our own monsters. The procrastination monster, the I have no time monster, the I'm not good enough monster, the it's not my fault monster. The if they would only you know, all of those kinds of sayings that are just as big and even more powerful than the monsters that we had as kids, and they show up and eat your lunch from time to time, or maybe all the time. So I created a course called Master Your Monsters. It's an audio course with 12 parts. That, and the parts address different ones of those monsters like I talked about, and give you ideas and things that I've learned about how to eliminate those monsters from your life. To end procrastination, to get out of living in fear, to get out of blaming others, to figure out how to prioritize and manage time so that you're doing the things you truly believe are important, and several others. So that's available. Master your monsters.com and I would invite you to go there and grab it. It's free and it's good.

Daniel Aaron:
That's beautiful. You know, sometimes I think 99% of what I do as a coach is I hear people speak and and I hear one of those monsters come through their voice. And for so many of us, it's just it's the soup that that we grew up in. And it doesn't never occurs to us that there's an option, a choice. It's just we think we have to live with them forever.

Kellan Fluckiger:
That was part of the two by four, and the two by four was not only a wake up call that I could change, but that there was another option. There is another way. You know, the whole story and soup that I've been living in wasn't the only item on the menu.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. That's awesome. So y'all watching? Listening. Master your monsters.com. It's free. It's good if you take it. If you apply it, guaranteed, your life will uplift and it's spelled just like you'd think. So with that said, Kellen, you've shared so much. I'm going to ask you one final question. If that's okay. It's it's an impossible question because it's so big, there's no way you could ever answer it. Would that be all right?

Kellan Fluckiger:
I'd welcome it. Let's do it.

Daniel Aaron:
All right. Now, you've you've shared so much with us and you've had such an amazing journey thus far. If you were to do the impossible thing and boil it down all the way to one thing, one piece of advice, one suggestion that would help our audience to live a more vibrant life. What is that one thing.

Kellan Fluckiger:
You know you're going to live with? Stories. Stories of defeat, of not good enough, of excuses about why everybody else is at fault, all that stuff you're going to have. If I give you one thing. One thing right now is drop the drama. Get started now. You matter. So go out and do this because you know where the other road goes. The road of excuses. The road of blaming others. The road of quitting over and over again. Just love yourself. Be compassionate, but get in the game.

Daniel Aaron:
Get in the game I love it. All right. And then last question Kevin. Thank you. That's beautiful what you said. What's the best way for people to reach you to get more connected with you?

Kellan Fluckiger:
So Kellan Fluckiger is really weird name. There's one other in the world and it's my son. And if you look him up, he did some MMA fighting and stuff in his younger days. He was an All American heavyweight wrestler and he looks you might see the family resemblance, but anyway, other than that I'm really easy to find. So Kellan fluckiger.com I'm on many of the social media. Please connect with me. There's my Facebook link if you'd like to connect. If I can help you in some way, reach out. Like you could say, well, I don't know. Well, okay then I won't be able to help you. But remember, my goal is 250 million people. And if you're one of them, let's talk.

Daniel Aaron:
Awesome. Beautiful. Well, Kellum, I am so grateful to you for being connected as we are so grateful to you for agreeing to be here and sharing so much with our audience. Thanks for being on the show.

Kellan Fluckiger:
You're just welcome. And again, I want to acknowledge and honor you for the work you put into creating these. Thank you Daniel.

Daniel Aaron:
Thank you I appreciate that. And y'all, beloved audience, thank you. Because your interest in a vibrant life, in living up to your potential, in growing into more thriving, not only is that important and gives me something to do, it makes a difference in the world. It really, really does. So it's powerful and I honor and appreciate you for having that dedication, and I appreciate that you shared this time with us. So thanks for tuning in. We will be back soon for another show. And until then, please, please, please make your life a masterpiece. Mahalo for tuning in to the Art of Vibrant Living show y'all! I'm Daniel Aaron and may you live with great vibrancy.

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