From Jail Cell to Stage: 5 Takeaways

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00:00 Welcome back to the Body by Phil podcast. This is Phil. This is going to be a test run here with these new backgrounds that uh Riverside was so kind enough to offer when I can't be at the gym. I like to have the gym backgrounds, but sometimes I can't do them there. I have other trainers or clients or classes going on. So, you know, sometimes like now you'll hear my dog in the background. I'll try to edit her out, but look, this is live stuff. So, what are you going to do, right?

00:30 She's just a little dog, so who cares? Um, but I want to do a sound check here. I want to check out these backgrounds. I This one's kind of cool because it looks like a background, like a podcast studio. If these are too cheesy or they don't they don't look right, then, you know, I won't do it. But I'm going to uh I'm going to give it a shot. Anyway, today's um podcast episode, it's uh it's entitled from a jail cell to the bodybuilding stage. And that's literal for me. I mean, I was in jail a few times and these were mostly due to uh drunk driving and drinking related

01:01 vehicular situations. So, but from going from the jail cell to transforming my my life to becoming a natural bodybuilder and hitting the stage, these are absolute profound ends of the spectrum. These couldn't be further from opposite of one another. And how did I do that? And what was my motivation for that? and uh more importantly to the five things I learned from that journey from jail to the bodybuilding stage. Okay. Um I don't think many of you will know what it's

01:32 like to be incarcerated, but if if you are in jail, if you've ever been in jail, you know that it's a very lonely feeling. I mean, once your those bars slam shut, it it's surreal and you have nothing literally but time on your hands to reflect. And you can you take that opportunity to either wallow in self-pity. Why did this happen to me? And be very bitter and angry and blame everybody for your situation. But I did it a little differently. I was sad. I

02:04 was upset that I was away from my son. I was really disappointed in myself for the poor choices I had made that had left me to that situation. I realized that all of the wounds I was experiencing my life at that time were definitely self-inflicted. There wasn't anybody else to blame. This was all my doing. It reminded me that this is not what I wanted my future life to be. Um it took me a couple of times to get to that point, but finally at the end I just I knew that this was not where I wanted to spend my time. I was wasting

02:36 time in my life. I I wasn't there for my my son and my jail stints weren't very long, you know. Um I got my first DUI and it was just a couple of days and then uh my second DUI was a little bit longer and then I got a third one that was reduced to reckless op. But I was actually in for a couple of uh months on that one and that was the longest one. That's the and that was the last time and that was the one that really kind of did it for me. Some of the things that I took away from that, you know, when you're in jail or when you're in a bad situation that feels like it's not going

03:08 to get any better, it's really hard to look at the positive side and think, you know, I'm going to weather this. I'm going to get through this because it just doesn't feel like that's ever going to happen. I look back at my life now, the way it used to be. And now that I'm so far away from it, when I look back at at that life, it does seem like madness to me. It it seems like absolute insanity. I can't even imagine going through that now or or doing that now. You know, when I mention insanity, it kind of rings true because we've all heard of Albert Einstein's definition of

03:39 insanity. And it was exactly my life. It was repeating the same patterns over and over and over again and expecting different results. And that is Einstein's um definition of insanity. And I I agree with that 100% because that was it. You know, you do the same things. You drink, you get in trouble, you lose jobs, you lose friends, and then you repeat. It just um it snowballs into surprisingly the norm. It just became my life. And it seems so bizarre.

04:10 People who know me now, they they have a really hard time imagining this version of me. And I say all the times kind of semi- jokingly that I feel like I've lived two lives because that person that did all those ridiculous things, he's gone, you know, never to return. All right. So, the one thing that I've learned, you know, the five things I take away from from these experience, number one is our past problems or whatever current situation that you're dealing with now that you're not maybe super happy with does not have to

04:41 determine your future. We have the ability to change anything in our lives that we don't like. Don't let anybody tell you any differently because we do have that power to change things. That's our life and we can change them. We have to stop blaming other circumstances and making excuses and and take full responsibility. We can't change what we what we did or the past. You know, that is done. That's a chapter of our life we can't really reopen. But we can certainly we can certainly have control over the next decision that we make. So

05:14 we we want to um make sure that we we learn from that. Which brings me to my second takeaway. It's hard to imagine when you're in these bad states. We really are much stronger than we give ourselves credit for. We're stronger than we think. Some people are told their whole life that, you know, they're no good or they're worthless or, you know, they're a loser or they're never going to amount to anything. And other people have, you know, the opposite. They're told their whole lives, you know, that they're going to succeed, that they're meant for great things. And whatever the case may be there, we

05:46 definitely are more stronger than we we give ourselves credit for. I'm looking at these pages. I didn't want to forget these notes, so I don't normally write things down, but I had to here. And because I'm not wearing my glasses, it's difficult to see my writing. Great. Number three is a really hard one for a lot of people. It's sharing your struggles with other people. you know, you leave yourself kind of vulnerable when when you put yourself out there and you share what you went through because I guarantee you somebody out there is going through something that you're went

06:17 through or survived that will resonate with them and give them that little bit of hope that hey, this person did it, maybe so can I. So, I think that there's there's real power and real value in sharing these stories. As hard as it may be to re recall when I wrote my book recently, The Black Sword, I had to recall a lot of these really awful times in my life that you kind of try to forget and and suppress. But I was reminded, you know, my wife reminds me all the time that these stories make you

06:48 real and make you relatable. And it helps so many people. And I have so many people come up to me and tell me, "Thank you, you know, for sharing your your story with me because it helped change my life and it helped give me some inspiration, some hope." This is exactly why I'm doing these podcasts, just for that reason, to help other people. Okay, so number four, making mistakes, okay? Learning from them. You know, we look at mistakes and we think of them as being a negative. And you know, here's when they're a negative. They're a negative when we repeat that pattern. And like I

07:18 said earlier, we keep perfecting the madness. We just keep repeating the same mistakes, expecting the same or you know a different result, but yet the same same mistakes are going on. So that is just not going to work. If there's something going on in your life that you're not happy with and you've made mistakes in your life, okay, fine. Who hasn't? But what didn't come out of that mistake that was a positive? All right, learn from it. do the best you can to not repeat it or minimize it. So mistakes are good powerful tools when

07:51 when we use them for education when we're say okay you know what I tried this I tried this maybe multiple times but it didn't work so I'm not going to keep doing the same stupid things that are going to keep getting me sick or getting me in trouble or causing problems in a relationship or the law or you know legal problems so health problems right so yeah when you make the mistake chalk it up as a learning experience and move on move past it don't live in the mistake We're stronger than we think. Go back to rule number two and get yourself out of it. The

08:21 fifth thing, the fifth takeaway here, this is a good one, too. It's a hard one, but reach out to help. Reach out for help to people who are qualified to help you. You know, reach out for for help. Don't reach out to help from people who aren't going to be serious about helping you. Okay? For example, say you are trying you are struggling with alcohol. Well, you don't want to talk to your buddy at a bar who's, you know, on his fifth tequila. He's not going to get it. So, same thing if if you have if you want to lose weight and,

08:53 you know, your friend is needs to lose 300 lb and they have no desire on changing. These aren't somebody we want to share some of our problems with when we want to try to get better. You want to reach out to qualified people. You want to reach out to people who have had success or whatever it is that you're trying to deal with. And there are many sources to reach from. reach out to me. I mean, I've uh I've with um addiction and I've dealt with obesity and I've dealt with challenges and in motivation to keep the push going when you're

09:23 trying to reach your goal. So, reach out to people for help. And it's it's really hard to do that because, you know, you have to take an ego check and you have to actually before you could reach out and ask for help, you have to say, hm, you know, maybe, you know, I really wasn't strong enough or I'm not strong enough to do this on my own. That was really hard for me. I came up old school in an Italian family and being the oldest male, first male. Asking for help was often looked at as a sign of weakness. So, I completely get the apprehension there. But it's worth the risk. I mean, this is your life we're

09:54 talking about. And regardless of where you are in your life or how you got there, we do have the power to improve it and and make these positive good changes. You just need to believe in yourself. Believe in your ability. believe you're stronger than you think you may be. And don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. People will help you. I'll help you. Reach out to me. Leave me message messages. Don't forget, subscribe to this channel. Leave me messages. And um you know, this is

10:24 what these podcasts are all about. I don't want people to feel like they're their troubles and their struggles are unique to them, that they're they're alone. When you feel that way, it's a very dark and scary, lonely place. And uh I felt that way for 20 years. Help is out there. Believe in you and keep pushing. Keep the faith. Keep the faith. Keep watching for these uh Body by Phil podcast. I'm going to keep up putting all kinds of neat stuff on here. Thanks for watching. Stay strong and believe in