Swell AI Transcript: Steven Crane Reboot.mp3

Jeffrey Besecker: This is The Light Inside, I'm Jeffrey Biesecker. Gratitude. When life becomes a whirlwind, it's often the glue that binds us together. And when our worlds get turned upside down, it's the strength that carries us through. We're particularly grateful this week that our immediate community members, family, friends, and loved ones are safe and healthy after what could have been a much more devastating tornado. The second, within a few mere weeks, nature has a way of deeply humbling us, an ambivalence that is always revered. As a first priority, we'd like to express our deep gratitude for no injuries or fatalities. The safe space of our homes remain intact despite significant damage to trees and minor structural damage. During the tedious task of sorting through the resulting chaos, the pervasive sense of community interaction has been much appreciated. Our hearts are filled with gratitude, respect, and honor for those who went out of their way to lend a helping hand or a kind word. It has been an honor for our team to be that rock for others as well. So while we wrap up a crazy whirlwind of a week, we're grateful to revisit this episode from November of 2021 with our cherished community member, author Stephen Crane, exploring what else how gratitude allows us to move beyond cynicism. We also appreciate you, our valued listening community. Following prolonged power outages and minor inconveniences, we'll be back up to full force next week with a new episode. My thanks goes out to you for your enduring love and support. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this reminder to embrace gratitude throughout your life. When it comes to mobile service providers, with their high-rate plans, extra fees, and hidden cost or expenses, many of the big-name networks leave a bad taste in your mouth. Mint Mobile is a new flavor of mobile network service, sharing all the same reliable features of the big name brands, yet at a fraction of the cost. I recently made the change to Mint Mobile and I can't believe the monthly savings, allowing me to put more money in my pocket for the things which truly light me up inside. Making the switch to Mint Mobile is easy. Hosted on the T-Mobile 5G network, Mint gives you premium wireless service on the nation's largest 5G network. With bulk savings on flexible plan options, Mint offers 3-, 6-, and 12-month plans, and the more months you buy, the more you save. Plus, you can also keep your current phone or upgrade to a new one, keep your current number or change to a new one as well, and all of your contacts, apps, and photos will seamlessly and effortlessly follow you to your new low-cost Mint provider. Did I mention the best part? You keep more money in your pocket. And with Mint's referral plan, you can rescue more friends from big wireless bills while earning up to $90 for each referral. Visit our Mint Mobile affiliate link at thelightinside.us forward slash sponsors for additional mobile savings or activate your plan in minutes with the Mint Mobile app. Adversity seems to have a curious way of presenting itself to us in life. Cynicism, therefore, is often the charitable friend of challenge. Research consistently demonstrates that practicing optimism and gratitude enhances psychological resilience, empowering us to effectively cope with life's challenges by fostering a positive outlook and adaptive responses. Studies indicate that when we cultivate these traits, we experience improved well-being, reduced stress levels, and greater overall satisfaction with life, even in the face of adversity. Today we chat with author Stephen Crane. His book, I Can Appreciate That, serves as a subtle reminder of the essential role replacing negative space plays when navigating the blessing of challenge. Hey, good morning. How are you? I'm well. And yourself? Fantastic. Today, you know, I'm excited to look at how our patterns in our thought, which incidentally, you know, are often negative, can be shifted into a more positive light. What do you feel from your perspective are some of those potential friction points that often can be created, blocking our ability to see things simply with gratitude?
Steven Crane: So a lot of times, so there's the whole nature versus nurture thing, right? So we are products of our environment. And from my perspective, I like you like everybody else is sort of the sum total of our experiences. And so over time, what we experience influences. how we feel and how we approach each other, how we approach situations, and the perspective that we bring to that. In my situation, I have, so I've been here for 50 years, about to celebrate my 50th birthday, and in that time I would say that I've encountered a number of small but also very large challenges, traumas, etc. to the extent that they have helped form who I become. Fast forward to not that long ago, I now have two teenage sons and one of them I was having a conversation with about a little more than a year ago, and I said something to him, he said something back to me. And I don't even remember exactly what we were talking about, but his response to me was, why do you have to be so negative about everything? And a lot of times when you're having a conversation with children, especially teenagers, sometimes your default answer is, because I said so, or because I'm the dad, or whatever, you can sort of dismiss them a little bit. But that question in particular, that like hit me straight in the heart. And I'm like, oh, my God, I don't know the answer to that question. I don't know why I always have to be so negative. But it really convicted me and it forced me to go back and think, well, what's the answer to that? Why am I so negative? So I happen to be a writer trade. I work in advertising. And so I spent the entirety of 2020 trying to answer that question. And the result of that was a book that I wrote, which is called I can appreciate that, which is an attempt for me to go back and look at those instances in my life, which I originally viewed as, oh my God, that's terrible. That's awful. I don't appreciate that suck. You know, why did that have to be like that? That was my default view of those things. When I go back and I look at those things in hindsight, you find that almost without exception in every one of those challenges, There are these amazing hidden blessings that when you just look at it from a different perspective and you realize what you got out of that challenge, out of that trauma, out of that tragedy, whatever it is, there are amazing blessings that really form this. foundation of, wow, there's so much gratitude. There's so much in that that I can appreciate. And it changes the way that you think about everything.

Jeffrey Besecker: What an amazing opportunity in that book to just say, what do I appreciate? How often do we take that opportunity? And then, as you mentioned, exercise that hindsight or, you know, for that matter, foresight. What was and what will be often merge, sometimes form our entire perspective. Which site do we choose to simply empower? That's brilliant. You know, I'm going to have to earmark that book and we'll share that with the audience to go out and check out the book. Let's change that up a little bit, looking at which site we're empowering. What then are some of the direct steps we can do to kind of view that? What become some of the blocks from your perspective that keep us from having any level of sight?

Steven Crane: Well, so as I mentioned, I'm a writer. And so I come to things from a perspective of sort of, I really sort of bomb onto words. And that word appreciate for me. So how would you define the word appreciate?

Jeffrey Besecker: Appreciate. Let's look at that for a second. Let me ponder it. So I'm not just going on gut reaction and patterning. Give me your gut reaction. Acceptance to appreciate something you first have to accept. You have to be available and open to it to appreciate. Perfect.

Steven Crane: All right. So as a writer, I went and I looked at that word and I was surprised, but not surprised to find that there are multiple definitions of it. There are actually four key definitions of the word appreciate, and they all sort of mean something different. And if you look at them, they're actually sort of like a tiered stepping stone process, which actually I think answers the question that you asked about how you sort of change that perspective. Right. On a very basic level on the most basic level possible to appreciate something is to just be able to see that it exists right and be able to oh, there is a coffee cup on that table. I see it. I can appreciate that. It's there that it even exists. Right? So. Then on a second level, once you see it, being able to understand it, right? I get it. Oh, so I understand what that is and I appreciate its function. Oh, there's a coffee cup there on the table. I appreciate that its function is to hold liquid. I get to have my coffee in the morning. So that's the second level. You understand, you see that it exists, you understand what its purpose is. And then the third level is actually being grateful for something. Right. Which is usually, you know, when we think about Thanksgiving and gratitude and appreciation, usually that's the definition that people come to first is, oh, I'm actually really grateful that there's that coffee cup on the table because now I get to have my coffee and it makes me feel better. It's part of my morning ritual. I'm grateful for the gift that that gives to me. Right. I have some level of appreciation for that. The fourth level is where it actually changes and where all the power is. The fourth definition of appreciate is, think about it from the financial perspective or from a real estate perspective. When something appreciates, when your portfolio appreciates, when your bank account appreciates, it grows in value, right? So to appreciate something, to fully appreciate something, is to take that thing which you have seen and understood and have been grateful for and to grow its value. That coffee cup, I'm going to make a pot of coffee for everybody in my house or for everybody in my community. I'm going to fill the cups of every person that I see and I'm going to grow the value of this thing existing. so that it's worth more than it was when I originally encountered it. So that becomes the framework of this whole book that I wrote. And so when you view all of those challenging episodes in your life through that lens of that four-step process of, oh, what happened to me? I see it. Oh, well, now that I think about it, I get it. I understand it. Now I look at it, and I understand what happened to me. And I can be grateful that those experiences happened to me. Now, what do I do with it? Now, what do I do with the fact that somebody I love died from cancer? What do I do with the fact that I was born with a birth defect? What do I do with the fact that I had this job that I that I kind of like, but wasn't going anywhere and I lost that job? Whatever it is in your life, you know, and your life is different than mine. Everybody's life is different, but we all have these common experiences. What are you going to do with that? to grow it in value, either for yourself or for somebody else.

Jeffrey Besecker: To me, that all starts with that process. I can see it, as you mentioned, that's simply bringing things into our awareness with that openness. Looking at it and beginning then to make an understanding and create that value happens based on what we embrace as a significant meaning in it. And then just simply accepting it and appreciating it and moving into that gratefulness. That's brilliant. You know, it can be that simple for each of us if we're willing to just lean in and let it flow.

Steven Crane: It can be simple. It also can be the hardest thing in the world because those things, you know, that's like I said, that's wisdom that came to me from my 15 year old child. It sounds very simple, but when you try to apply that stuff and you actually. change the way that you think.

Jeffrey Besecker: It's a simple concept. I listened to a great episode of The Hidden Brain, another wonderful podcast I enjoy, and they discussed this concept of friction and fuel. What are you creating as friction or what becomes friction that's holding you back and which has the greater momentum? So often we look at that effort a force of pushing through as creating greater momentum. But when we look at it from a scientific basis, it takes a far greater force to overcome that effort than it does to understand the friction point that's simply holding it back. We deduce that friction point and remove it or change it or enable it to empower it often becomes an easier point. Yet that very point, we're constantly creating resistance and fight against. Now, let's look at this instance. In this case, you mentioned your son, your offspring pointing out. Why do you always have to be negative? I know in our pre-talks you shared a lot about how you viewed that from your perspective being rooted in cynicism and pessimism from your perspective. Let's look at that angle a little bit if we might. Share with us a little bit how you started to perceive that based on some of those interactions.

Steven Crane: So that's probably something that I've always been readily willing to accept or admit about myself, that I'm negative, that I'm cynical, that I'm a half empty glass kind of guy. It's one thing to know that about yourself. And it's another thing to have that pointed out to you by other people. And who those people are makes a huge difference too, right? There are people that carry very different amounts of weight in your world. And so at a certain age, if you flip that dynamic, if that's me saying that to him, or my parents saying that to me, coming from a parent to a child a lot of times that gets disregarded and it's oh I don't have I don't have enough life experience to see that or you don't know me or you know whatever that's like teenage brain isn't willing to accept that. when you get to a certain age and you've had a life full of experiences, you're a little bit more divorced from your ego at a certain age through growth and whatever. And somebody who you value, whose opinion you value intrinsically, whether it's your wife or your own children or your mentors, whatever, somebody of that ashe says that to you, does stop you. And it does force you to reconcile that and to really look, oh, is this person correct? Yes. Are they saying that to me out of love? Yes. Do I need to really take a look at this? Yes. Do I need to make a change? Yes. And so all of those things have to sort of be in play for you to to get it and accept it and be willing to do something with it, right?

Jeffrey Besecker: I want to point out something. A number of times today, you've mentioned a simple phrase, intrinsically, inward. So often, we look for those answers outwardly. So often it can be the case where one places that awareness somewhere else. Sometimes it's that blame somewhere else. Until we shift that perspective, that motivation, intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation, finding something outside of us or getting that stimulation outside of us, we get caught in that. We're not taking any ownership and authorship in that. I had that slated in our outline today. I'm glad that that's just kind of serendipitously found its way into this conversation, because to me, that often is the shifting point. Where are we starting to take that ownership and authorship to start to create some of our own momentum and take our own awareness of it? Once we start to form our own awareness, we start to see it for what it is. Looking at that from your perspective, let's find the nugget in this sense of cynicism and find some intrinsic value in how we view cynicism. Shift that maybe a little bit to become a more positive asset and a more positive view. How do you feel? You know, we can start to dissect some of that from your point of view.

Steven Crane: I mentioned sort of earlier in our conversation the idea of why Things that were frustrating me, the things that I ended up writing about in this book, one of them was, why couldn't I just be born normal? And by that, I mean, when I was born, I had, well, I have still a condition called spina bifida. And I don't know if you or your audience would be familiar with that, but it's basically a birth defect that where you're when you're born, you have an opening at the base of your spine. And so on day one of your life, you have to have a surgery to close that. And the inevitable result of that is that you have some degree of nerve damage below the waist. And so I'm fortunate that I have a fairly mild case of that. Most people who have spina bifida oftentimes end up in wheelchairs, they're not able to have children, their ability to have a quote-unquote normal life is significantly hindered. Again, I'm fortunate that I have a mild case of that. I've got two wonderful children, I'm sort of mobile, you know, I'm not the degree that everybody else is, but I'm quote unquote normal. But growing up as a child, I didn't see that at all. I was the kid who was in a wheelchair. I was the kid who was on crutches. I was the kid who was in and out of hospitals. I was the kid that got made fun of because other kids don't understand. You know, they don't get it. And so they make up their own narrative about why you are the way you are. And that becomes who you are. And so when you go to school with the same kids from kindergarten through high school graduation, becomes sort of cemented and you become who you are, and you get sort of locked into believing that what other people think you are is what you think you are. So this idea of being normal was something that I really struggled with. Why couldn't I just be born normal and things would be different? When you ask what is the foundation of cynicism, There it is, sort of, you know, if your experience is that from day one.

Jeffrey Besecker: Very real implications and your own set of circumstances that can create a sense of pain, that can create some very real challenges and struggles.

Steven Crane: Absolutely. Well, so the blessing and all of that and the epiphany and all of that 50 years later is, you know, as I go through the process of unpacking all of that baggage that belongs to those circumstances and those challenges, what I realize is nobody's normal. That thing that you want to be, that why can't I just be normal? Why can't I be just like everybody else? Guess what? Spoiler alert. You are just like everybody else because nobody's normal, which means everybody's normal. It means there is no such thing as normal. And so when you get to that idea that, yeah, you have your challenges, you have whatever it is that you have, Yes, think about it. Think about how lucky you are that you don't have a more severe case of that. Or think about how lucky you are that you don't have cancer or that you don't have whatever, or that you're not homeless or that you're not hungry or whatever. Think about all the blessings that you have. Instead of thinking about this thing, which you are focused on, the negative, the challenge, whatever, that makes you feel like you're not normal, realize that every single person is struggling with something that they feel makes them not normal. So one of the beauties in this experience of writing this book and sharing it out with the world, as people start to read it and they start to react to it, almost without exception, people are coming back to me and the conversations are like, well, the thing that happened to you, that didn't happen to me, but let me tell you what happened to me. And let me tell you why I'm not normal. And let me tell you how this thing that you explained to me helps me feel better about the struggle that I was having because I felt like I was all alone, right? You get into that process where you feel like I'm the only person in this whole world that can understand what I'm going through. Nobody else has lost what I lost. Nobody else has gone through what I've gone through. Nobody else has seen what I've seen, done what I've done, whatever. Nobody understands. Guess what? Everybody feels like that. And so when you have the ability to share those things with other people and the response is, yeah, guess what? Me too. And let me tell you about that. That's an amazing gift, a gift of healing for everybody involved in that whole process.

Jeffrey Besecker: To me, that's a simple shift in that process. When it's focused differently, one can see and shift its value. To me, that's a fine line of difference. between judgment and discernment. So often we exercise that judgment out of expectation. When we go astray sometimes is when we sit in judgment, which happens as one assumes a right to judge in a critical manner. We've picked things apart. We start to form these divisions. We start to separate it. We start to become that critical being in our nature. as I discern it and then leaning into my own use of this, I feel it might warrant a full episode to explore that and pick it apart. If we're going to start to form that discernment, perhaps this difference is closely related to the energy behind it. Something to consider for me. What's the energy? How am I feeling? And is this accurate? Am I projecting my own sense of ego? Often is a very valid and genuine and authentic question to ask. There's a gap in what stands to gain. The only thing keeping us back, the only thing holding anything back is that friction point we create in the perception of. That's a fine line in bridging that gap. Fine line then sometimes becomes escaping chasm. We leave a feeling behind that needs to be blasted across. We have to use considerable force in our mind then to bridge that chasm. You know, that chasm so often is created by this rumination we do of going in circles with what we're thinking about that situation. Or it can simply be released and freed from holding that view. What do you think? We're going to sit in discernment rather than sit in judgment of it.

Steven Crane: I think that's very well stated. I was fixated on the word discernment there. Strangely enough, our pastor this past week was talking about wisdom and discernment, and he defined discernment. A lot of times people think that discernment is knowing right versus wrong, right? And he qualified that and said, actually, discernment is being able to tell the difference, not between wrong and right, but between right and almost right. which is like this interesting thing that I had never really heard before. You know, it's a great point to make, right? So the difference between right and wrong is that chasm is very, it's often very black and white, very easy to go. Yeah, that's just objectively wrong. When you're looking at the difference between right and almost right, where you get that ego play in there and you get people's, you know, what's in my self interest versus the greater good. what's in, what do I want out of this, what can I get away with, where's the boundary, you know, how can I blur that line and still be okay with myself, you know, from a moral perspective, legal perspective. Yeah, the idea of discernment is interesting.

Jeffrey Besecker: We look at many of our words, many of the things we try to form understanding with throughout life and like every word nearly has multiple descriptions if you go to different sources of what that core meaning is. When you look at the core meaning of judgment and discernment, the process isn't any different from my perspective when you look at it. The only difference that becomes that fine line is am I sitting in my judgment? Am I holding something back? Am I putting more effort into finding that critical manner of doing it? and simply saying it's right. You know, it's my right, a right to do that. You know, we all have the ability to ascertain things. We will add another word in the mix. It's just all a matter of that perspective. And is it allowing things to flow?

Steven Crane: Well, the idea of judgment is interesting, too, right? So as as I was going through the process of thinking through what the stories I would tell in this book and how those, you know, what chapters would be and sort of thinking about it, you know, OK, well, now I'm going to talk about this. And you think about the struggle and the challenge. And a lot of times you do. If you're negative, you're a pessimistic person. A lot of times you do come to that from the idea of Who can I blame? So that went wrong for me. That didn't give me what I wanted. I don't appreciate that that happened. Whose fault is it? Is that my fault? Is that the elementary school bully's fault? Is that Is that my ex-girlfriend's fault? Is that God's fault? Whose fault is that? Because it's not my fault. Those things happen to me. It's not my fault. When you flip that and you look at it and you realize, well, maybe none of this is anybody's actual fault. Maybe these are just things that happened and how you look at it determines whether you're judging the situation or you're appreciating the situation, right? If you sit in judgment of that, you are looking for somebody to blame. You are looking for a reason why it happened and you get stuck in that. And the process of going through and writing about very difficult things, man, that's super therapeutic. When you get all the way through the end of that stuff and you've laughed a little bit and you've cried a little bit and it's sort of broken you down and you've unpacked all that, you feel so much lighter and you've actually set that stuff down. At one point, I think actually subtitles in the book is, this is heavy, I'm putting it down. And it's literally All right, man, I feel so much better for having said something that I've felt and held on to for decades that now, guess what? I'm just going to put it out there and now I'm done with it because I've put it down. And if you want to pick it up, have at it, but I'm done with it and I'm putting it down. I'm not sitting in judgment of that anymore or anybody else who might have been involved in that. I'm going to move on. And man, your life gets a lot lighter when you can live like that.

Jeffrey Besecker: Finding that fault is the critical manner and therefore that's why it matters. When we search for that fault, we take that fine line and rip it very quite literally and energetically into that gaping chasm that we so often fall into. It becomes that hole that we feel is so hard to climb out of. That's a good one to sit on today, you know, and sit in a manner that keeps that fine line integrated and connected rather than creating that divide. What was your essential takeaway you gathered from this experience with you?

Steven Crane: Well, so I guess probably to to reiterate, I think on the side, which direction I want to take that because there's a couple of different answers to that question possibly. Right. My, my original instinct was to consider other people have asked me, well, so are, now that you've spent 14 months thinking about and marinating your brain and gratitude and whatever, and writing all this stuff down and, you know, I'm sure you feel better, but are you a different person? And the answer to that question is, yes and no, right? So my now 16 year old son would probably say that I'm no less cynical, no less sarcastic, and probably not even any less negative. And so it sort of becomes a question of, you know, at what point are you, are you ever set, you know, is your mold ever set to the point where it can't be flexible and can't be, you know, can you actually change who you are? And maybe you can and in some degree, maybe you are sort of molded. I wouldn't say that I'm a completely different person, but I would say that I have. completely different understanding of how I got to be who I am and what I can do moving forward to either be less like that or to get much more out of situations, out of relationships. The power of relationship is the other place I was going to go with this. When you recognize how many of those blessings that come from challenge are actually rooted in the power of relationship, And when you can understand how much there is to appreciate in the relationships that you have had, or that you currently have, that is life changing. So when you recognize what makes a good relationship, when you look at When you look at your own parents and you realize, oh, well, so these are the role models that I've had. You look at the other role models in your life and you see where sometimes there are dysfunctional relationships there that sort of form your experience and your understanding of how to be in a relationship. When you look at your relationship between you and God, whatever your spiritual perspective is that you bring to this, everyone has a relationship with something larger than themselves, and there's lots of different names for that.

Jeffrey Besecker: I don't feel from my perspective it's any larger than any of us. We make that notion that it might be larger, and that's just a perspective.

Steven Crane: Right. But you're, yeah, so your relationship with, with one other person, your relationship with your community, your relationship with groups that you belong to your, you know, how you deal with people that are subordinate to you in a professional relationship, how you deal with people who are your bosses, how you, you know, relationships have ramifications in every single aspect of our lives. And when you start looking at the power in those and the different dynamics there. I've always been aware of that, but going through the process of looking at these situations in my life and seeing how my relationship with different people in those situations formed the outcome of that situation and how much I have to be grateful for the other people. In my life, who have been foundational, you know, whether it's my brother in law, who married my sister, even though she was terminally ill with cancer and went through that whole process of her passing long before I was ever married that example. indelibly informs who I am as a man, as a husband, my now wife, as an empathetic person to people in general. As I said, my parents inform my relationship with my own children and with foster children that my wife and I have an opportunity to serve. It also forms my relationship with the children I've had a blessing to coach in baseball. Relationships on top of relationships on top of relationships. That's one of the huge takeaways that comes from this whole experience for me is the power and value in those relationships.

Jeffrey Besecker: And that has to start looking like acceptance and appreciation for those situations. Simple gratitude that has to be so free to just decide to let go of your judgment of it and just be grateful. Now, to me, that's an excellent point to make today. And it's an outstanding point you've brought to this conversation. So I'm grateful for that. What were the results for you personally and do you feel was your gain in exercising these actions in your life?

Steven Crane: Well, so that's another interesting question in terms of the different meanings of words, right? A lot of people will ask me, you know, how's your book doing? You know, is it successful? And then you have to look at the definition of success, right? Well, what do you mean by that? Am I retiring off of sales? Hell no. Am I going to end up on a seller list somewhere? Almost certainly not. Is somebody making a movie out of that? I bet you they're not. Right. So. Is it commercially successful? No, not really. I've sold less copies of this book than people I know personally. So, you know, hopefully that maybe that changes at some point, but yeah, so it's not about the money. It's not about commercial success from a perspective of having the experience of learning all that about myself being reintroduced to myself as a person. That is a giant success. And in all those experiences I was mentioning before, where people would come to me and say, wow, I didn't realize that the experience that I was having, everybody else was having too, in a certain way. That I didn't realize that I wasn't alone. I didn't realize what you went through, and I didn't realize how that could inform how I feel about what I've gone through. That's success. unmeasurable right that's you know that is literally someone saying you might have changed my life you probably changed the way that I think about this and what you've created what you've given might have impacted or might have changed my life it doesn't get much more successful than that because that That's really what we're all trying to do in the time in life that we're given, right? Is to have some sort of impact on the world around us and on other people. And sharing what we've learned, if that can help other people have a better life, have a better experience, that doesn't get more successful than that.

Jeffrey Besecker: That becomes such a positive, optimistic view of how each of us builds those relationships, which create meaning for us by showing that gratitude simply for what truly matters to each of us, to us personally. Where can our community go to connect with you and form this relationship, Steve?

Steven Crane: Perfect. So unity is a great word. So we actually have what we call a community of gratitude around this book. So the book is called I can appreciate that. And it has Facebook and Instagram accounts. You can go on Facebook and search. I can appreciate that Instagram saying just that I can appreciate that. So you can go there and you can connect with other people who are sharing their stories around having experiences with appreciation and gratitude. The book is available everywhere. You get your e-books on all those platforms and it's available on Amazon.com. If you just search, I can appreciate that. The other thing that I would mention there in terms of actually appreciating something when we're talking about growing the value of it. One of the stories that I tell in the book is around a young man who was actually a contemporary of my youngest son in the baseball league. that I was coaching. His name is Lake Bosman, and he unfortunately also passed cancer at a very early age, nine, 10 years old. And he had this profound impact on me that would be a whole nother episode for me to explain that relationship and the gift of that relationship in the short time that we had together on this earth. But that relationship is so profound and extends to his family to this day that after I wrote this book, it was obvious that needed to appreciate something in value. So a portion of all the proceeds for this book will always go to a fund in his name that is continuing to fund research around curing childhood cancer. We just came off of Childhood Cancer Month recently in October. We donated all the proceeds in that month to Childhood Cancer. But moving forward, a portion will always be dedicated there as well. So there's value in it for you individually, and there's value in it for the world at large. I can appreciate that on Amazon.com.

Jeffrey Besecker: And I can appreciate that sentiment of supporting that cause of cancer. Having lost several, several loved ones of my own, several acquaintances, we've all, you know, one of those things where we so often can say we've all been touched by that in some way. I can also appreciate all of this amazing insight you've shared with us today. And I'm so, so truly grateful for that. Thanks for the opportunity. Oh, it's been my pleasure, and I hope we can do it again soon. I would love that. I'd also appreciate if our listeners reach out to you, Stephen, and connect. Just love and nurture that ability in each other. Thank you so much for bringing that to us today. Thanks for having me. It's my pleasure. Well, we'll do it again soon. Thank you. Namaste. The light in me acknowledges that light that's shining so bright in you, Stephen. Thank you. Namaste. It's often said what separates privilege from entitlement is gratitude, and living in a state of gratitude is the gateway to grace. May all the adversity we face in life, all the troubles, strengthen us throughout our days and carry us through the darkest of nights. Let gratitude be the lamp that lights us up and sets our soul on fire. So to you, our cherished community members, and to those who have reached out this week with love and support, I cannot thank you enough. Words cannot express how much you mean to me and to our entire team here at The Light Inside. We hope you've found value and meaning in this episode. If so, please share it with a friend or loved one. We truly appreciate the love and light you share with the world. This has been The Light Inside. I'm Jeffrey Biesecker.