Clint Hatton’s 5 Step Guide to Making Courageous Decisions

[00:00:00] What is the most important takeaway you want somebody to hear from today's show? The most important takeaway that I would want anyone to have is just, you know, we, we all are going to face tough times. We're all going to have gut punches of life. And you just need to know that you do, you really do have everything in you that you need to be able to overcome any of those obstacles.

[00:00:26] I'm not saying it's gonna be easy, I'm not saying that there isn't pain involved. There is, I'm not saying that it may not, and, and Brandon even said earlier, you know, sometimes it may take years cuz this life is a journey. But you, you should have hope. You have everything it takes to be able to overcome those obstacles.

[00:00:45] And if you choose to, you can truly live the kind of life that you want to live. I sincerely believe that. I hope you do too. And I hope you choose to live your life Big, bold, and brave.

[00:01:01] Here's the million dollar question. How do men like us reach our full potential? Growing to the men we dream of being while taking care of our responsibilities, working, being good husbands, fathers, and still take care of ourselves? Well, that's the big question. In this podcast, we'll help you answer those questions and more.

[00:01:21] My name is Brent and welcome to the Fbu Man Podcast on mission. Welcome to the Fbu Man Podcast. You're home for all things, man, husband, and father. Big shout out to Fbu Nation. You guys make this possible and a warm welcome to our first time listeners. My name is Brent, and today my special guest is Clint Hatton.

[00:01:40] Clint is an author, Clint is a coach, and Clint is so much more, but we're gonna get into that. So Clint, welcome to the Fallible Man Podcast. Hey Brent. I've been so looking forward to this, right? We've, we're gonna have a great show cuz we've had so many challenges just trying to get to this space, right?

[00:01:57] And make it happen. I, I'm, I'm convinced that it's gonna be just incredible just because it's been such a pain in the butt to try and get here. It's how it usually works. Technology problems. Technology problems, technology problems. Now, Clint, I like to ask something fun and like to start the show. So what are you afraid of?

[00:02:16] If you are, lemme see. I can say this, right? Cause you know big words, right? Sy synogen. Phobic is it? What are you afraid of? Sy. Okay. B. Genetic model. Genetically modified crops. Three relatives are four snakes. I'm gonna say the crops. Okay. All right guys, now don't cheat and we're gonna, here, lemme put this word into the chat just so everybody can see how badly I put this up here cuz good lord, I know I didn't say this right.

[00:02:52] So, all right guys, here's the word. If you're on the video version, if you're not, I'm apologizing now, but, wow. Sing gin, sophic, SoFi, I, I can't even say that word, right? That's mouth awful right there, man. Alright. No cheating. Don't, don't pause it. Go to the, don't go look it up. Just make your guess. It's syringes.

[00:03:13] Genetically modified crops. Relatives are snakes. Pick your poison. We'll get back to that a little bit later. Now, Clint, I don't do really big introductions. I found, I, I used to try and like read all the accolades and stuff and it just doesn't really tell our audience who you are. In your own words, who is Clint Hatton?

[00:03:33] Yeah. In my words, I, I like to say this even on my website, and it's, and I picked a hard word too, Brent, so here we go. I am a deliriously. Happy husband and I truly mean that. I've been married, it'll be 20 years in April to my beautiful bride, Amarillo. And so just being a great husband is definitely a huge part of who I am.

[00:03:56] I, I've I've valued that for a very long time. And, and so that's number one. Number two, and it's a, it's like a one a almost is, is my place as a dad. You know, I love being a dad. My two boys who actually are on a little trip right now for spring break, Joel and Liam are the pride of my life. I love them.

[00:04:16] They're amazing boys, and I love being a boy dad. So those are the two things that stand out. And they're always the top of my list as far as who I am. But I think, you know, beyond that I'm someone who really values character and integrity. You know, at the end of the day when, uh, when my. What they call eulogy.

[00:04:37] One of my eulogy is red. Uh, you know, what I want them to say about me was he was someone who cared about people who spoke the truth, who, and meaning that, you know, I, I was honest about things and that, uh, I did what I said I was gonna do. So those are, to me, a few of the key characteristics of who I think I am today.

[00:04:57] All right, Clint, what's your favorite ice cream? Gosh, you know, I've been on keto for so long. I don't even have a favorite ice cream, but I tell you as a kid, as a kid growing up, I went nuts for mint chocolate chip. Okay. You know what? I, I can sympathize. Do you have a keto dessert? You do. You know, I have a f i, I have a couple that I've done, but I had a friend who recently made me a, um, it was like a cheesecake, a keto cheesecake, and it was pumpkin flavor.

[00:05:28] And then I actually ended up adding just a tiny bit of, uh, cinnamon to it. And Oh my gosh. I mean, it was amazing. It was like, I know some people out there, if they're familiar with keto, they'll go like, uh, yeah, right. You know, because a lot of keto treats aren't necessarily that great, but, uh, this pie was amazing.

[00:05:44] I need to con her into making me another one. I'll have to put you together The recipe. I do, uh, a it's a kinda like a, a moose kind of souffle is a little thicker. Okay. Uh, and it, it's, I use like two squares of really, really dark chocolate. And then it's butter Mars capone and heavy whipping cream. Like it's completely keto.

[00:06:09] And it, man, it, it mixes up. It's just this nice thick, come on. I, I do it. And, uh, my wife was on keto for a while. My mom does keto and it's like that. Oh, this tastes goo too. Good. I shouldn't, I I shouldn't be allowed to eat this right now. Right. Well, you had me at dark chocolate, so send me the recipe. All right, we'll work on that after the show.

[00:06:33] Clint, what are you most proud of? Hmm,

[00:06:36] man, you know, I was asked that recently and I answered it differently than I'm gonna answer it today. You know, uh, I'm, I am most proud that I have never given up. And what I mean by that is, is, you know, everybody gets bumps and bruises and the gut punches alive. So, you know, I'm not unique in that way, but, you know, but had some tough experiences over time and I've never lost my good attitude.

[00:07:03] I've never lost my desire to keep fighting and keep moving on. And, um, so I think at the end of the day, just my resiliency is probably the thing I'm most proud of. Hey, that's definitely something to be proud of. What purchase of a hundred dollars or less have you made in the last year that's had the biggest impact on your life?

[00:07:24] A hundred dollars or less. A hundred dollars or less? Man, that's a great question.

[00:07:32] You know, it's probably, um, oh gosh, now I'm trying to think of the brand you can't tell now cause I've got a lot of top hair. But I did the bald thing this last summer for like four or five months. Andis. I got a little anang, uh, an andis, I think I'm saying that right. A and d u s uh, single foil razor. And I use that to keep my head super bald.

[00:07:55] And now I do like a bald fade. Again, it doesn't help for, I'm wearing headphones right now, but man, I love that thing. And I use it to just trim right in here and I use it all the time. So that's been one of the best purchases. I mean, I think it was like 50 bucks or 60 bucks maybe. Okay. Okay. That's a different take.

[00:08:14] I haven't had that one, so that's a good one. I like that. Good. Glad James. I like new things people surprise me with. I'm just like, I've never heard that answer. Right. What's one random fact that people don't know about you? Yeah. Yeah, well, one random fact that virtually only a few people would know about me was I was in Canada.

[00:08:34] I used to work for, uh, an international ministry where we traveled and did events all over the world. And one particular trip I was in Vancouver, British Columbia, and they decided that they were gonna just continue to question me and question me. As I was trying to go through customs, they end up inviting me for a special invitation to go to a special part of their facility, to have a longer chat.

[00:08:58] And, uh, within about five hours after the beginning of that experience, I was strip searched because they thought I, I was a multiple felon. And, uh, they did end up feeding me lunch, a really nice lunch once they discovered that I was, not said felon, but that's, uh, that's one that probably not a lot of people know.

[00:09:16] Was that, uh, US customs coming back, or Canadian customs going up? It was going through Canada. And the funny thing is I have a lot of Canadian friends, but the, I, uh, I tended to have a little bit of an issue with Canadian customs. I'm not sure why. I guess I just have a look. You know, that's, that's usually the easy part of the trip.

[00:09:32] It's coming back in. That's usually harder. Yeah. Made that crossing a lot of times. It was crazy crossing. Yeah. My, my dad was that way though. My dad, like, it's hilarious. He could walk. Sorry. He could go through my mom. My mom, they're like, the guy in the booth is standing up, scanning the car, like she just looks untrustworthy.

[00:09:52] Apparently she hated going up. My dad driving. That's hilarious. Well, what was crazy about it is I traveled back then, in those days, I actually traveled a lot and I traveled to many other countries that you would've thought. If that was gonna happen, it would happen. They're not, you know, our brothers to the north.

[00:10:09] But anyway, it was, uh, it was quite an experience. We could have about a 20 minute episode just on what all happened after that. But just say, I'm not the said felon and I was released eventually. Well, that's good. That's one thing everyone should know about you before we really dig into today's topic. Hmm.

[00:10:32] Yeah. I think, you know what, what people need to know about me is what you see is what you get. You know, I'm gonna, I'll share some things today and, uh, we, we may or may not talk about the book I wrote, but regardless, I am who I am and the things that I share are life experiences. They're not like bullet points from somebody's book or some self-help thing that I read.

[00:10:56] You know, uh, some personal development coach that's famous and quotes all this stuff. And so that's where I get my, you know, information. My stuff is, is just how I live my life and the things that I've experienced.

[00:11:09] Okay. That's fair enough. Now guys, in this first section, we're just trying to spend a little time getting to know Clint because I want you to be familiar with who he is. Before we get heavy into the topic today, we're gonna roll to our first sponsor, and when we come back, we're gonna get deep with Clint on big, bold, and brave.

[00:11:28] Now, before we go any further, I wanted to share with you guys, I don't always tell you how much I love doing my podcast, like I passionately love what I'm doing and one of the things that makes my life better as a podcaster is to work with a company like Grow Your Show. Grow your show is a one-stop podcast.

[00:11:47] Do it all. Now I use Grow Your Show for my marketing, but Grow Your Show is literally a one-stop shop. You can record your episode and just drop it off with them and they take it from there. It's amazing. If you are interested in picking up podcasting, it's a hobby, or maybe you're looking to expand your business and use podcasting, that aspect, talk to my friends over Grow Your Show.

[00:12:06] Adam will take care of you. I guarantee it. I trust him. He's my friend, he's my business colleague, and I wouldn't trust anybody else with my show. Guys, welcome back. We're here with Clint Hatton and in the first part of this show, we just spent a few minutes getting to know Clint and who he is and where he's coming from, so you're familiar with him a little bit.

[00:12:25] In the next part of the show, we're going to get into living and leading as a courageous human in your family, in your own life, uh, with those around you and, and why that's important and what holds people back from that. And then later in the show, we're gonna just get into. How you can apply this to your life.

[00:12:44] Uh, some steps you can take to dig in and just live a big, bold, brave life. But Clint, right off the bat, first off, you wrote a book called Big, bold, brave Guys. Ah, we'll have links list. Look at that in the description, of course, and in the show notes. And it's already posted on my website, so you guys can always find a link on the library page by website.

[00:13:05] First. His book, Clint, what, what brought on the book, right? It's, it, it is an undertaking to write a book. So what was the motivation? Yeah. Where, where did it come from? Yeah, so there's, with that question, there's uh, two parts of the answer. There's the, there's the why, and then there's the when meaning why did I choose to write it when I did?

[00:13:28] But, uh, it was inspired by my oldest son. I have three boys, but one has already gone to heaven. His, his story is pretty remarkable. His name's Gabriel and you know, he was one of those kids from very early on that he, he was super smart. He had great communication skills, which was, uh, really fun at times.

[00:13:51] And then at other times, kind of frustrating. I'm sure other parents know what I'm talking about. You know, it's one thing, you know, when your teenager starts to get in middle school and high school, they're gonna talk to you like they know everything and, and you're dumb when it happens. And they're only like six.

[00:14:05] It's, it's, it's not, it's not right. It's just a, it's, it's not. In its time. Right? And so, but that's how he was, he was just really, really smart. And what happened was he went for a trip, uh, to Oklahoma and he went up in a little aircraft with his uncle Danny, who's a pilot and is got a couple of planes. And so they were just having some fun, but it just stuck in him, you know, like me, I've gotta have my coffee in the morning, my coffee fixed.

[00:14:33] It's like gets me amped up and ready to go. And for him it was, it was a lot like that in that his first dose of. And, I mean, he was just, this is it, this is what I want to do. And so he started telling us that, you know, I wanna become a pilot. And we're like, okay, you know, you're eight, that's fine. Next week it'll be, you know, a c e o of a company or, you know, danger league baseball player or something.

[00:14:57] But the funny thing was, Brent, he just never let go of that. It was always going to be something he was going to do. And so fast forward when he became a freshman in high school, um, some opportunities began to come to the surface and it was really what we felt like it was a a God thing. You know, he, well, first of all, for any of your listeners who have ever tried to get their license, or maybe they have, they know it's a very expensive.

[00:15:27] And most people spend shoot 10, 15 grand, some even more just to get their license. And I know we share a ministry background. You know, we, we were in ministry at that time, we were pastors at a church. And as you know, very few get into that for the eight to nine figure income, right? That, that multimillion dollar salary.

[00:15:47] And so we, we did not have the funds to be able to make that happen at that stage of our life. And, but it nothing deterred him. It's like nothing was ever, if Gabriel wanted to do something, it was a done deal. Now conversely, if he didn't wanna do something, then it was also a battle, like cleaning his room, for example.

[00:16:07] But, you know, but when he had his mind made up, he was gonna do it. So what happened was his freshman year, two things. That we really felt where God things began to happen. One was our high school here. Our high school, uh, school district has a four year aviation program, education wise, which is not typical.

[00:16:25] I think there's only a few in the country at least that I'm aware of. So he started engaging in that. And of course, that was no cost, right? Cause that was just part of, uh, that was just a path he could take. But then what happened is he also joined a club. It was called Tango 31 Arrow Club. It's a local club that was created at an airport that's like seven minutes from our house.

[00:16:47] Um, really cool story. The founder of that, his name was Kevin Lacey, and he just, he loved kids. So this club was created just for teenagers. He had really struggled early on. He had, you know, told me at one point his, his dad didn't really help him with much, and so he wanted to create an opportunity. For kids that loved aviation to be able to get exposed to it and be able to do some things, including even fly at a very low cost.

[00:17:14] Um, and I'll point out too, cuz some of your listeners may know who he is, he's pretty well known in certain circles. He actually was the star of a television program called Airplane Repo on Discovery Channel. So I don't know if you've ever saw that show, but Kevin Lacey's a part of that. So he's this salty guy that literally quite literally, uh, would repo helicopters.

[00:17:37] He would repo uh, sea planes in Alaska. He would repo Lear Jets. I mean, you name it, this guy can fly anything. His, his, his tag is a flight like you stole it. And so just a great guy and he starred this club. And so what happened was all Gabriel had to do was pay $50. Well, we could do that. And so each year it was a $50 fee.

[00:17:59] And by the time he was 16 years old, What had happened is you, you had to earn some sweat equity before he would let you start flying at 16. So he had learned how to do oil changes and maintenance and they painted planes and just did all this, you know, cool stuff. And at 16 he got to start flying with a flight instructor.

[00:18:19] As a matter of fact, Brent, before he had his driver's license, he actually soloed, which was a really bizarre experience. So he ends up doing that and studying and, and flying. And by the time he turned 17 year old, which was his goal, and as young as you can be to become a licensed pilot, he became a licensed pilot.

[00:18:41] And so this is all, you know, really critical to, you know, why I wrote the book and why he's an inspiration to me. Because he was someone that just attacked. There was just nothing that was gonna get in the way of him succeeding. And, you know, it didn't matter if there was some risks. He was courageous, he was ready to do what needed to be done in order to chase those dreams.

[00:19:02] And so he was the inspiration behind it. I, I was, I was gonna, you, you didn't answer the why now part, so I was waiting for that. Uh, okay. I didn't wanna keep talking so long that you didn't get a chance to jump in here. Said it was a two part answer. I was, I was waiting for the next part. Yeah, it is a two part answer and well, I'll, I'll share with your listers this is a good time.

[00:19:25] As any we will, we'll share just part of his journey that. That created the reason why he needed to be an inspiration to me, and then I'll get to the why immediately. You know, on September 23rd, 2019, he was training, doing what all pilots do at that stage when they're a new pilot. Doesn't matter how old they are, it's all about the hours.

[00:19:42] So they're just trying to fly as much as they can. And that's what he was doing. And on September, 2030, flew to Arkansas, which is several hours north of where we are here in Dallas. Dropped a friend off to school. She was attending University of Arkansas and on his return trip from Fayetteville, got about 20 minutes out from the airport there and ran into an unexpected weather system.

[00:20:07] And of course, you know, he was in a small Cessna, it doesn't have all the other instruments that you would need for something like that. And he ended up suffering from spatial disorientation. Your listeners probably are aware of what that is. They may not know the term. Kobe Bryant, who obviously very famous basketball player.

[00:20:26] And his crash was, you know, globally known. It's the same exact thing that happened to his helicopter pilot who had a million dollar aircraft. And so he, he crashed and he lost his life. And so, you know, that spurred me on to, after I got through a lot of the pain and the early grieving process to wanna figure out a way where I could honor him and kind of, you know, carry him with me and use him as an inspiration.

[00:20:53] And I'm sure we'll talk more about some of that later. But ultimately, the why and why end up writing it when I did was if anybody's paying attention to my dates here, September 23rd, 2019. That was three months before Covid hit. So only three months after he passed away, the world was rocked and the world was turned upside.

[00:21:13] And across the globe, people suffered all kinds of losses. Um, you know, some, obviously they were loved ones and in some cases people lost careers and they lost businesses and, you know, they lost their health and just, just so many forms of it, Brent. And so it took me a couple of years to feel like I had the emotional capacity to put pen to paper.

[00:21:36] But last year is when I wrote the book and I just felt like the world had enough fear. There's, there's no lack of fear mongers out there. I was just sick and tired of always seeing on social media in the news how hopeless so many people try to make this world sound. And you know, almost like if you're trying to chase your dreams and you're trying to live your life, you're wasting your time because the whole world's going to hell anyway and all that stuff.

[00:22:00] And that's just not how I believe. That's not what I think. I really believe that we all have a god-given destiny and covid didn't stop that. And no matter how much fear is out there that we need to keep living and we need to, you know, be my tagline for my website is courageous humans, inspiring lives.

[00:22:18] The reason why I call it that is because I believe everybody's courageous, and I believe everybody should not just, you know, love hearing about inspiring stories of other people. They should wanna live an inspiring life. And so that's my why and the win of when I wrote this book. Okay. Why do you think in, just in your experience, That so many people are dominated by fear in their life.

[00:22:50] Why did, why did we let it just push us around? Yeah. Well, I think, you know, there's, there's a couple of reasons. You know, one is we ingest it all day long, every day. And usually it's because I know I'm gonna reach over here. It's because we're, we're carrying one of the tools of the fear mongers in our hand 24 7, right?

[00:23:11] I mean, and I, I'm a, I have a phone, right? I use it. I'm not saying don't have a phone, but the truth is, is, you know, with social media and the news networks and all that kind of stuff, which so many people watch and listen to on a daily basis, in some cases, hours in a day, there's not a lot of great news out there.

[00:23:30] You know, you turn on any kind of a news station and your first 10, 15 minutes minimum is about who recently got killed or some other kind of tragedy. And you know, that, and that's, there's a reason for that. There's been a lot of studies done. That for whatever reason in our human nature, fear sells. It sells more than, than good stories, than positive stories for whatever reason.

[00:23:56] And so I think number one is just simply people ingest all kinds of fear all the time. And then I think the second part of that is they have yet to recognize, and this is what I, I love about the way God created us, is we have everything in us to be able to just absolutely crush fear. We, he gave us everything we needed to, I like to say, to eat fear for breakfast.

[00:24:21] And the reason I say it that way is because fear comes at us daily, right? We eat breakfast every day. Fear comes every day. But until you learn how to recognize how much you've given into it, then you tend to stay a victim. And I think what most people don't do that they need to do is they need to start having courageous conversations with other people in, in their lives.

[00:24:44] Talk about the things that they're afraid of, talk about why they're afraid of them, and then begin to look at, is that really even true? Because most fears, most fears are based on complete conjecture. They're not even real, you know? And our brains were created that way. You know, our brains were created.

[00:25:04] Most people are familiar with the fight or flight mechanism, right? So our brains were created to where, and, and I actually had this happen one time. I actually literally did run into a bear in the woods, right? So when you're in a dangerous situation, your brain goes into that fight or flight mode. Why? To save your life, right?

[00:25:21] To survive. So that's a good thing because you have to figure out which of those actions are necessary to be able to get out of that. That's where fear is good. And I call those natural fears. But most fears are unnatural fears, and I call them unnatural because they're just making stuff up. You're, you're predicting you're predicting an outcome, a, a bad outcome long before it even happens, if it's ever even going to happen.

[00:25:49] And so you have to learn how to recognize those thought patterns and you have to learn how to change them. And you can't do that. That's the awesome thing. It's funny cuz right, everybody comes with something from their perspective, right? You, you apply things from the lens and let you, which you experience the world and in your day-to-day life.

[00:26:06] And you're talking about the negativity. And I'm definitely not a huge fan of social media, so there's a lot of irony that I spend a lot of time on social media with what I do, but right as a podcaster and a YouTuber more of my YouTube channel carries my podcast cuz I'm not very good at YouTube. As a podcaster on YouTube.

[00:26:25] Right. I I I search keywords all the time and Right. See how things are gonna track. And literally it is a fact that negativity in the title of a video are a podcast. You're more likely to get a listen. Yeah. It's one of the reasons I'm a bad YouTuber. Cause I try not to do that very often cuz it, it just, yeah.

[00:26:49] It, it bothers me at a, at a personal level to have to try and slant things from a negative just to get the click. Right. But I mean, just doing the research for what I do. Right. I see that all the time. They'll, anybody who is an expert in YouTube will tell you, putting a negative spin in that title increases the likelihood of you actually clicking on that.

[00:27:11] It's like, That's just so dumb. Why are we, why are we so hard lined into, oh, negative. Negative, right. Right. Let's, so you mentioned the difference between real and unreal fears, and I, I think that's something definitely worth digging into at this moment is they, they tell us, I know statistically, I don't know exactly what the numbers are cuz it changes every time I hear somebody say it.

[00:27:37] Right. But they talk about statistically 70, 90% of the, I think is 90% of the things you're afraid of never actually transpire. Right. So how do we sort out, because I know a lot of people live in fear like disturbingly, so how do we start to sort out the difference between realistic and unrealistic fears?

[00:28:00] Like I know jumping into a tank of sharks covered. Fresh dead fish. I should realistically be afraid of that. Right? Right. That's, that's reasonable. But how do we separate in our day-to-day lives, reasonable, realistic fears versus unreasonable and unrealistic fears? Yeah. Well, you know, again, the fir, the first thing that comes to mind is, is the only fears that we should ever get in, give into are the ones that literally our life is threatened.

[00:28:30] That's it. You know, one of the greatest fears statistically for most people is speaking in public. That's always in the top of the list, right? It's always somewhere in the top of the list. Right? It's number one over death and spiders actually, Spiders. I understand. To me that's more natural. Yeah. Me, I'm with you.

[00:28:51] Like spiders is number three. It's public speaking. Death and spiders. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh, I don't understand first two. I get number three for sure. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'm not afraid of daddy long legs, but anything else I'm not sure of. Yeah. No, not, not spiders, but you know, go into the speaking in public, just as one example is.

[00:29:13] Okay so why is that? Well, typically it's because they're afraid of being rejected or they're afraid of sounding like they're not very smart, or they're afraid of just people not liking them or not thinking they're funny or brought good content or whatever. And so those are all great example of non unnatural fears that you're literally stopping yourself from what could be an amazing experience just because of something that may.

[00:29:41] Me may actually happen. And so what I like to do when you start talking about those types of fears is I like to flip the script on it. And this is just what I do in my own life. And that is, is if, if my fears drive me to what if I fail? What if they don't like me? What if, you know, I, I end up sounding dumb.

[00:30:01] Well, okay, what if, what if they love it? What if you're amazing? What if you actually have great content? What if you change somebody's life? What about that? Why? Why don't we choose that? And to me, it falls down to this, and I, I know this, uh, this part of answering the question is probably a little bit deeper and I don't know, we have enough time to go all the way into it, but I really feel like, you know, when you look at, there's two prevailing emotional.

[00:30:34] Characteristics in the world, and it's gonna make sense when I say it. The highest of this hierarchy, the highest one that brings the most value to this planet is love. Very few people would argue with that. Love is the greatest characteristic. It is the greatest human emotion that has the most capacity to do the most good.

[00:31:00] And then love has many other counterparts. Love brings hope. Love brings faith. Love brings patience. Love brings kindness. So there's all of these things that love initiates or can create. If you'll allow me that, then the counterpart to love is fear, which we've been talking about. And I've even heard, you know, I've, as, as you know, I was a pastor for many years and we both share that, uh, ministry.

[00:31:27] I've heard, I, I don't know if you have, but I've heard a lot of people say over the years, well, the opposite. Of love is faith, or I'm su I'm sorry, the opposite of fear. The opposite of fear is faith. And I, I, I'm not gonna argue about that. I'm not, you know, wanting to beat up anybody who said that, but it's, that's not actually true.

[00:31:47] The, the counterpart to love is fear. That's why I believe there's a scripture that says Perfect love casts out all fear. So when we're looking at it in terms of trying to fight fear, I could, I could make a list, you know, I could just draw a simple little, you know, column list and write down under love what are all the what ifs.

[00:32:09] That could happen that are positive. I could, I could show kindness to somebody. I could change someone's life. I could help them think differently. I could bring healing to them. There's all these different things, right? Fear, what does fear benefit? Anybody try to come up with one, you won't. And fear is the source for everything that has absolutely tried to destroy our planet.

[00:32:33] You look at hate, you look at bigotry, you look at racism, you look at the gender divide, any of those things, those are all fear-based. I fear someone because I don't love them. I don't understand them. They're different. And so rather than love the difference, I choose to fear what they may be. Or maybe they wanna hurt me or maybe they're just so different that I can't get along with them.

[00:32:57] And so to me, I like to filter my fears through the lens of love and see where I land. You have to be intentional to do that. You know, it takes work. You can't just haphazardly go through life and, and not take time to think about the things that scare me. Think about the things that stop me from doing the things I want to do, you know, for writing the book, you know, you brought the book, so, dude, that was scary.

[00:33:26] That was totally scary. Thinking about writing a book. So did I, did I have fear come against me? Yeah, absolutely I did. And most of it was, I, I was afraid that nobody really wanna read it cuz who needs another book? There's plenty of people to write good books. So that was one fear I had. Another one was I was a little bit afraid to share certain parts of our story.

[00:33:48] I didn't know if it was gonna continue to cause me to filter suit and emotions that I didn't necessarily wanna feel all the time or were people gonna misread my intentions or why I wrote, I mean, I, I had plenty of potential fears. Of why not to write the book. But what I chose to do is I chose to look at, man, what if, what if this does change people's lives?

[00:34:12] What if I do bring healing to some hurting people? What if I'm actually a really good writer? You know, how will I know until I try it? Because fear wants you to just never get off the ground. Whereas love will drive you to decisions that you'll be courageous and you'll take chances and, and you'll do things that maybe somebody else isn't willing to do.

[00:34:34] So those are just a couple of things that come to mind. How do you fight fear? How do I fight fear? Yeah. Turned it on you. For me. For, for me, fear is I, I filter everything moment by moment pretty well, pretty effectively. I've spent a lot of time injured. I've, I've lived my life to the fullest, so I have a lot of major injuries that I have racked up.

[00:34:59] I've broke my spine twice now. Oh man. Back at the beginning of 2020, I went down and I snapped my c5. Wow. And trust me, there was, there was more than a few minutes of am I ever gonna walk again? Yeah. Does everything still work? Can I function? What's my life look like going from here? And so because I have lived life to the fullest and racked up a lot of injuries, I'm very good about breaking down the moment in the moment.

[00:35:27] Mm-hmm. I actually truly don't experience fear until after it's passed. It's that once everything is settled and safe, my brain, lets go enough and goes. Crap. You almost die, man. I was like, oh, wow. I did, didn't I? Right. It's, it's after the fact. Once everybody's safe my brain actually sharps sharpens in a very tense moment.

[00:35:53] I'm, I'm used to taking care of people. I'm used to having to react things. And so in the moment I actually have a shirt that says I'm great in the moment. It, it was from my first interview, I was interviewing a stunt man that trains other stunt men, and we were talking about fear actually, and it's that, that shirt came out of that interview because he was like, well, how do you do?

[00:36:14] I says, well, I'm great in the moment. He's like, you need to put that on his shirt, man. And so I did in that moment, like, everything clicks, I'm sharp. Yeah. It's after the fact that then it's like, oh, right. I realized just how close it came or just how bad something was, or, so my, my response has always been fight anyway.

[00:36:37] And it, it's the after fact. But when I'm dealing with the moment, I always, it's something I learned from John that some in was just taking one solid, really deep breath and then letting out actually will arrest your fight or flight sentence. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Like it actually at a physiological level arrest your fight or flight response.

[00:37:02] That's really good. So you can automatically grab a moment because your fight or flight response, right, it speeds up your heart. It, you start to breathe rapidly and so when you Yeah. Purposely interrupt that process and go deep fulfilling who saw kind of breath. Yeah. It actually arrests that physiological response unless you get your brain.

[00:37:29] Which to me is the most important thing is keeping a clear head in those moments. Absolutely. So that, that's how I deal with it. I don't actually experience the fear until after usually. And maybe that's, it is a weird anomaly, but after you've literally sewed yourself back together. Before, before I was an adult, I've, I've card rice myself, I have actually stitched myself back together.

[00:37:54] I've lost my sight once. I had a high powered explosive, blew off my face during the 4th of July. Geez. Close range. Couldn't see for about three days. So when you get yourself into this kind of stupid, which I was great at doing as a young man, yeah. You learned that if you fall into that fear, if you let it take your mind away, you're more likely to die.

[00:38:20] Yeah. Lose your focus. Yep. So absolutely. It, it's, I I get scared in the after fact, like when everything's safe and everybody's like, I'm like, right. My heart's stumping away. I'm like, I almost died, man. Did you see ok, now like I'm not Okay. That's what I'm freaking out. But I'm glad adjusted to that. Yeah, no, that, that's awesome.

[00:38:48] Well, what I love though, I love what you shared because that is, that is one of many really great techniques and that's why this is an important conversation, cuz the truth is most people are afraid of things that are not going to risk their lives. Right. That's, that's the real truth. Most things people are afraid of are not life or death.

[00:39:10] And yet the same physiological reactions that you just described, they, they feel those things too. Even with, you know, whether or not I can have a, a courageous conversation with my wife that I know we need to talk about this or, you know, with one of my kids or my boss or my coworker, and they go through a lot of those same physiological things.

[00:39:29] So I love that. That was a, that was a really awesome coaching tip right there cuz that's a really simple way to de-stress and, and push away fear really quickly when you need to. So that was awesome. Did you ever do you, do you watch much television? I don't watch a whole lot. Do you watch much television?

[00:39:47] We watched some, no, I wouldn't say a lot. We we've been watching the reboot and MacGyver that they did with my kids recently. I, I grew up watching the original MacGyver. Oh yeah. Richard Dean Aaronson, my dad and I would sit up and watch that and so we've been watching it with my younger daughters.

[00:40:05] They're eight and 11 and they love it. They love the fact that he makes things and, but they totally keyed in on an episode. When he was talking about the character in that particular series, he was e o D in Afghanistan. Okay. And at one point he shares, his instructor told him, your fears, your emotions are always more dangerous than the bomb at your feet.

[00:40:29] Mm-hmm. And my eight-year-old and 11 year old completely like zeroed in on that statement. Wow. Without any coaching from us. They completely honed in on this statement of, your emotions are always more dangerous than the bomb at your feet. Like, it just clicked. And it's like, oh wow. That's, that's like, you know, every now and then one of those great little things comes out in television, not very often.

[00:40:55] Right. You get that one liner and you notice like, oh wow, that was profound. And that one just, it's like, okay, you know, if my kids can walk into that. Yeah. Like your response is always more dangerous than whatever you're facing. That's really good. Yeah, I love that. And I think that's, that's the deal, right?

[00:41:17] I, there's a difference between responding and reacting. At least that's the way I like to say it, is when we take a little bit of time, and of course we're men of faith, so a lot of times when I'm talking about that, I'm talking about just taking even a moment to either, either pray or just be in a state of peace and recognize what is needed for a certain situation and allowing the spirit of God to speak to me or, or move through me that's responding to something, right?

[00:41:48] Whereas when we react normally, bad things happen, right? That's normally where things are kind of dangerous. So I think, you know, that's something when you're fighting fear, you can kind of keep that in mind too, that you need to slow things down and you need to take just, it doesn't take hours. You can take just a moment to figure out why am I freaking out?

[00:42:08] Why am I afraid of this? Let me, let me actually think about why am I afraid of blank? And then what happens is that you kind of demystify it for yourself. And most of the time people end up realizing when they actually take time to look at it and dig into it and, and think about why they're afraid of something, they end up discovering that those fears are really unwarranted.

[00:42:31] And, and so it's easier to fight, but most people, you know, don't take the time to think about it. So that's a recurring theme for your listeners here, is you've gotta slow things down and you've gotta be able to, to really think about fear, not just think that you're just gonna overcome it arbitrarily without, you know, any kind of a strategy.

[00:42:52] And guys, we've been spending some time just talking about fears and the difference between realistic and unrealistic fears and how they impact your life. We're gonna roll to our sponsor. When we come back, we're gonna get into it with Clint about exactly how we can take control of this in our lives and the techniques that he has used in his own life and how you can implement them in yours as you take control of your life and decide to live big, bold, and brave.

[00:43:19] We'll be right back with we from Clinton. How well do you sleep at night? Do you toss and turn and wake up more tired than when you went to bed? Sleep is commonly one of the critical elements people fall short on in their life. The quality of sleep you get directly affects your ability to control your weight, your ability to add muscle, your stress levels, and your everyday job and life performance.

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[00:43:57] Sleep tomorrow. Now let's go on to the show. All right guys, and we're back with Clint Hatton, and we've been having a great conversation about the ideas of how fear interacts in our lives and realistic versus unrealistic fears and how to deal with that, right? Some, just some ideas about how we both dealt with that in our lives.

[00:44:17] And this portion of the show, we're going to really dive into Clint's experience with overcoming fears and not letting it control you. If you miss the first part of the show, Clint lost his son to a tragic accident, but he has more family. He's got two other boys, and he is married, and Clint had to go down the road that every father is terrified of.

[00:44:43] Hmm, my, my daughters are eight and 11, and it may be the only thing in the world I'm truly terrified of is the thought of losing. Just, you know, as, as a father, you would stand toe to toe and punch a bear in the face if you have had to, to protect your child. My children getting sick drive me nuts because I feel powerless because like, I can't manhandle, whatever that is, that's making their life difficult.

[00:45:06] Right. So them being sick always gets to me. I think every father is truly terrified of this possibility. And you've had to live through this. Yeah. So, as we get into this client, how do you come back from that as a dad? How do, how do you live through that? Mm-hmm. Well, you, you framed it really well, you know, because you made the statement that, I have two other children.

[00:45:34] So to be, to be very sensitive to some of the listeners that maybe have experienced something similar. And that's not the case, you know? Um, I, I have not had that experience and I can't imagine how hard that would be if it was my only child. But the truth is, is I had two other sons. And so, you know, there's, there's a part of you that recognizes even though you're in tremendous pain, that you have these other two lives that you need to be able to lead out of this situation.

[00:46:01] So, you know, it's definitely, you know, I call it the club that nobody ever wants to sign up for, right? I mean, I'm in a club that I didn't ask for, but you're put in it really quickly. And I remember what happened, you know, that morning after the crash was really critical for us. And so what hap simply what happened was, is the boys, uh, Joel, Liam, who were, who were Gabriel's younger brothers, they were nine and 14 when he crashed and they had slept through the night.

[00:46:29] They had no idea what was going on. We knew Gabriel was missing at about 8:00 PM because there was no confirmation right away of, you know, what happened. All we knew is he had disappeared off the radar that his mentor was tracking him on and sore was a long, hellish night. Lots of misinformation. There's a lot of ebbs and flows to what we went through that night that we don't necessarily need to get into for this conversation.

[00:46:55] But ultimately, uh, we let the boys sleep in. We got the final news, um, that he had indeed passed away once the coroner had. Notified us, that was about three 30 in the morning. So I had about four hours before the boys woke up, they came out of their bedrooms about seven 30. And during that time, you know, we, we, we wept, you know, we cried a lot.

[00:47:21] We held each other. Um, we actually had family. My father-in-law and mother-in-law had come over already, so they were actually already there. And so we, I, I feel like I had, you know, about four hours to kind of wrap my mind around what I call the impossible conversation. You know, cuz just the thought of even telling my boys was that alone was painful.

[00:47:45] Um, then imagine, you know, having that on top of the, the actual real pain of just losing Gabriel, period. So it was, it was really scary. But ultimately I knew. That in that moment, I'm in the position that I need to do something that's going to, and I usually like to use the word, give us a compass. Just, just give us a direction, you know?

[00:48:10] And so I felt like God spoke to me just before I started talking to Joel, Liam. And what I ended up saying was, I said, listen, we have two choices. And part of this came from my experience as a pastor too for so many years. You know, did that for 17 years. So I've helped a lot of people go through crisis situations.

[00:48:29] I've seen people that have coped well, and then I've unfortunately, you know, you see, and you hear a lot of the stories where, you know, marriages don't make it after losing a child or the whole family just kind of disintegrates. And so, you know, I feel like I had a little bit of an advantage in that I had a clear understanding of what could happen too.

[00:48:47] Um, and so what I did was I said, we have two choices. We can choose to just identify with his death, just the tragedy of it. It's a plane crash. You know, he lost his life trying to trace his dreams and create this whole story about it, right? That would keep us trapped in that pain forever. And we would be just shadows of who we were created to be.

[00:49:08] So I told him, that's one thing that people do, and we're not gonna do that. There's a second choice, and that is we're gonna choose life. And what that meant was, is that I said, you know, I shared a little bit with you earlier. You know, Gabriel obviously attacked, going after his dream, and he was fearless to become a pilot, but he, he did other things too, you know, so those who will see it on video and see the guitars behind me, he taught himself how to play guitar.

[00:49:34] He, uh, actually was a self-taught photographer until he had done it for a few years, and then he started working with a couple of professionals and became an amazing photographer. I mean, the kid just again, was ferocious to attack life. So I told the boys, listen, this is how. We're gonna live this thing out, we're gonna honor him.

[00:49:54] And by the only way I think we can. And that is because we're gonna choose to live like, just like him. Now, that was just part of it. You have to also be really realistic with the real pain that's happening. And so the second part of that was I told him, you know, we don't know what it's gonna look like from day to day emotionally right?

[00:50:17] And really in those early days, from hour to hour for that matter, um, you could be angry one moment, and then you're just sad and crying the next. And you can even be laughing because you remember something funny that he did, or, you know, a memory or something. It's just, it's all the above. It's not one or the other.

[00:50:34] And so I just told him what we're gonna do as a family, and this was not just for that morning, this is just, this is how we're gonna live, is we're going to allow ourselves to feel whatever we need to feel in the moment. And we're gonna do it openly. So I told the boys, this isn't about, you know, you guys sharing if you're feeling sad or if you need to cry.

[00:50:57] And then I'm just gonna be this man who always shows himself strong. And if I need to cry, I'm gonna find a sneaky way to find a back room or somewhere where nobody knows where I am. Then I'll cry there. But then when I'll come out, I'm gonna be this tough guy again, you know, who never feels anything and never gives into anything.

[00:51:15] And I just, I've, I've seen where when people hold onto or suppress their emotions, it does real damage. And there's, there's actually a lot of neuroscience and brain data now that when you suppress your emotions for a long period of time, especially really painful experiences, it causes all kinds of physiological issues and emotional issues that can be long term.

[00:51:36] I just told her, we're gonna do this together and. What we've done. And so there's been many times where, you know, I've, I've felt like I needed to cry. And so I've cried in front of the boys and I've told them what I'm feeling and what I'm experiencing. Same thing if, you know, sometimes it's joy.

[00:51:54] You know, he was a character. He did a lot of really funny things. And so, you know, we'll, we'll talk about those stories and we laugh and it's okay to laugh too. And so, you know, you do, you do have to learn. I like to say it this way, Brent. You have to learn how to tell your emotions where to go. Cuz our emotions are very real.

[00:52:15] It's the way we were created. You, you can't go long-term and just ignore emotions, but you can learn to tell them where their place is. So, for example, there are times to get angry, right? There's nothing wrong with anger. Now, the way we express that anger towards another human being, that's where we can definitely get into trouble.

[00:52:41] But there's nothing wrong with feeling anger. There are situations, especially as a parent, you see someone that's maybe hurting your child or, or you know, verbally abusing them or something like that. It's gonna make you angry, and that's very appropriate. But you also know that you're not supposed to go punch someone in the mouth.

[00:52:59] Right. And so we have to learn it. Yeah. So we have to learn how to feel through that emotion and then exchange it for the appropriate motion for whatever action needs to be. So you can be angry about something, but you can't allow that anger to overtake you. And now you wanna kill somebody. Right. You have to exchange that for maybe, An emotion of peace or, or just calm, where you are able to think things through and respond accordingly and, and do what needs to be done in the situation.

[00:53:29] But, um, for me those were things that we knew we had to do very early on. And there was something about it, even though they were young, Brett, the, I think a lot like you described earlier with your daughters watching that television show and hearing this really profound statement, I think sometimes we, and, and it's not intentional.

[00:53:49] It's not like we don't think our kids are smart, but I think sometimes we downplay just how intelligent and even at times, emotionally intelligent that our kids are actually capable of being when we just give them the truth of a situation and give them some guidance and give them some things to think about, you know?

[00:54:10] So that was kind of the beginning of the journey and we've continued to do that. And I think that's been a, um, It's just a critical part of us living boldly and courageously. Cause I know we're gonna talk a little bit more about that now, guys. I, I wanna hone in on that last statement he made, still living the way they're still living.

[00:54:36] Okay? He lost his son at the end of 2019. The world was then plunged into two and a half years of chaos, and we're still coming outta that, right? We are not suggesting that this is something that changes overnight or that is easy. Nope. Or that there's a quick fix or that you stop feeling and just get over it.

[00:55:02] Yeah, that's, that's the last thing we want to convey. That's not accurate or appropriate. It's still a process loss, grief. It's a process that continues for years and years. In a lifetime. You don't ever necessarily move past it, you just learn to live with it. So that's exactly right. To ignore your feelings or what your feeling is not real.

[00:55:31] We're not telling you need to get over something. We're telling you that you can continue to live your life in a vibrant way. And we're gonna switch gears more into that direction as we go on with this conversation now, Clint, thank you for sharing. Cause I, I, I know that is a difficult conversation to have, but there's so much value to that you have survived and I, I love that your boys were part of that motivation, living through something that every dad is terrified of.

[00:56:03] Mm-hmm. Now that's a real fear and for a lot of us, that's an unfounded fear. Right? I don't have to be as sure insecure about my daughters. As I know I am, cuz I am, I'm hyper overprotective. I, I'm, I'm, I'm that dad that's like, did you look in the direction of my child? I will just kill all of you. Right.

[00:56:24] Hyper overprotective. I had a, a colleague lying come up to me. He had a little boy, but I got to work one day and he looked almost sick, right? His little boy was about two. And I was like, yo, man, what's up? He's like, my, my wife's pregnant. I was like, congratulations man. That's that's awesome news. That's great.

[00:56:43] And like, he's looking pale. I was like, is that okay? Is that a good Yeah, right. More to this story. He said, how do you do it? I said, oh, we're gonna have to be a little more specific, man. What's going on? He's like, it's a girl. I said, oh, okay. That explains it all. He's like, right, how do you even sleep? I said, I know a little girl changes everything.

[00:57:08] Right? Because you immediately start, everybody in the world becomes a villain. The minute you realize you're having another little girl right there. There are no good men anymore. Everybody is a villain. Everybody's out to get them. Everybody is scum. That's right. He's like, you know when my son is just like, I'm like, we're cool.

[00:57:25] It's fun. And he's like, she's barely pregnant. And right now I am just like looking at the world going, it's a S Paul. Yeah. Yeah. It's cracked me up so much. So I, I'm definitely a hyper protective dad and you know, thank God most dads aren't gonna outlaw their kids. But you literally went through something no, dad, that every dad is terrified of.

[00:57:48] So how do we translate that experience? And I know this is part of what you do with your coaching. How do we translate and learn from your experience that we can, you know, start to apply this to other fears in our lives? Where do we move to be big, bold, and brave? Yeah. I wanna, I want to touch on something that you touched on that's gonna lead us right into that.

[00:58:10] And that is, and I'm so glad you brought it up. You know what, what I was just describing as far as our strategy of moving forward, I love the way you said that cuz no one ever moves on from losing a child. There's, there's, that's not even a thing, but you do have to move on with your life. And so I wanna distinguish the difference between that and feeling pain.

[00:58:32] Nothing we have done, none of our strategies. Everything that has been successful for us in terms of moving forward with our life have done nothing to diminish the pain. Pain is real and, and we're gonna experience a measure of pain for the rest of our lives. See, I don't, I don't look at that as a negative thing at all.

[00:58:55] And the reason why I say that is because in this case, with losing my son, what that pain represents is that great love that we share for one, had for one another, and that I have for him and I miss him. So getting rid of pain in our lives is not the goal, and that has not been a part of our process at all.

[00:59:15] Um, but you do have to. Pain. You do have to learn how to work with your emotions to do what's appropriate in a situation. And I'll give you an example and then we'll get into a really clear strategy on how you can make courageous decisions and, and live big, bold and brave. That is, I had a situation where at 4th of July, this last year, we were down in Florida.

[00:59:41] My father-in-law has a boat. So we were out on this really nice boat. It was on this island. It's a sunny day. I mean, it's a party man. It's just beautiful. I mean, it was perfect. And I haven't mentioned this yet. My wife is Puerto Rican now. That wasn't relevant until I started telling this story. Now it's relevant because her family down there is Puerto Rican and so they hang out with a bunch of Puerto Ricans.

[01:00:04] And if you've ever been out partying with Puerto Ricans, you know one thing, they love music and they know how to have a great time, right? So we're out there and we're having a great time. What ends up happening, Brent, is we're, so we're on this island and most people are doing one or two things. They're either in a little floating device and they've got whatever, some people are got their beverage of choice, other people are drinking coke, whatever.

[01:00:28] But they're, they're just bobbing. And then others were like me, I was just like waist deep on the shore and just kind of, you know, moving with the waves with the people there. And what ended up happening was, I don't know what the trigger was, you don't need one when, when you've lost a child. They, they come on their own.

[01:00:48] But I just started thinking about Gabriel and, and I began to feel sadness began to take over my joy and the party. Now, here's the thing. You, you can choose to do one or two things with that you could suppress it. But I knew that I needed to feel what I was feeling. So what I did was, I literally, and this was easy to do because I mean, the music's going, they're all dancing.

[01:01:11] They could care less if I moved 20 feet away anyway, nobody's even paying attention to me. I literally just kind of bobbed in the water about 20 feet away. And I just began to think about, my son, began to think about how much I missed him. I began to think about some of the things, gosh, I wonder what he would be doing now.

[01:01:27] You know, he'd be almost 21 years old at that time. And, and, and tears just streamed down my face during this time. But I wasn't interrupting anything else cuz nobody else even knew what was going on. And then that, that went on for about 30, 40 minutes. And then I just, ah, okay. And I had that experience and then I just literally, Bob Mo went back in the water, back over to the boat, rejoined the party.

[01:01:55] It had a great day and had a great time. And so part of living courageously, part of living big, bold and brave is being really real and honest with yourself and what you're feeling and not trying to push out every negative thing that you think is going through your head. And so it was very healthy for me.

[01:02:16] And later on I told my kids, I told my wife what happened. I mean, I was very honest about it. What does that do? Well, one thing it does is it gives them permission to be real. It gives them permission that it's okay if thoughts or something come against them and they need to be able to work through it a little bit.

[01:02:32] So that was one really simple example of what this is like, especially when you're talking about grieving and loss, because pain is real. It's going to come. Just whatever you do, don't ignore it and find your way of being able to deal with it in a healthy way so that you can begin to move forward. Now ultimately what I decide to do is, cuz I get asked this question a lot, you know, well, how do you, how do you make courageous decisions?

[01:03:01] How do you, how do you actually just overcome these fears and, you know, what does that look like? And so I began to think about, all right, well what is the process exactly? What do I do when I do that? And so what I want to give your listeners, and we can put this in the show notes later, if you wanna do it's a free tool, so I don't mind sharing it with whoever wants it.

[01:03:19] But I've created a five step guide to Making Courageous Decisions. And what I wanna do is I want to tell a story as I give that to your listeners, because I think it's just gonna make it much easier for them to apply. Okay? Okay. So the first step is always, What courageous decision needs to be made.

[01:03:39] You've gotta know where has fear creeped in and is keeping you from making a courageous decision that would lead you to something that really you want to do, or you're called to do, or you think would be fun to do. And so that sounds pretty elementary, but it's the first step. And so, for example, when I had thought about writing a book, I had thought about writing a book for a long time.

[01:04:01] Well, I ended up on a phone call with the gentleman, his name is Howard Behar and he's the, uh, gentleman who wrote the Ford for my book. And Howard is known for, he's the former presidents of, of, uh, Starbucks International. He's the guy who, Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, brought on early on when they were like, it was like 28 stores and built them into the gigantic, they became of over 15,000 stores worldwide.

[01:04:27] This guy's amazing. And I'm on a call with him and he asked me, he goes, I told him a little bit of my story and he, and he goes, did you write the book? So immediately, that feeling of fear, right? Creeped in, I'm like, oh God, he's gonna, he's gonna go there, you know, he's gonna ask me to write a book and I don't wanna write a book.

[01:04:49] And so he, he began to tell me some of his reasons why he felt like I shit. And, you know, I, I realized in that moment, that night, this is like a, it was a Thursday night. It was a Thursday night. I began to realize that all he was doing was revealing to me a courageous decision that I had yet to be willing to make.

[01:05:11] So I literally said, before we hung up, Howard, I'm gonna write the book. So then what happened next would lead me to what is step. Because step two is you have to recognize what action is necessary, right? In order to execute whatever courageous decision you need to make. So I did that while also incorporating number three, which is you also or I'm sorry, I'm, I'll come back.

[01:05:39] That one, I'm gonna come back that one. So, number two, I knew that I needed to take action immediately. So I actually went into the other room, which is where my wife was, and I immediately told her what I'd committed to. I said, I'm gonna write the book. And then her response was, we have a friend who is a publisher.

[01:06:00] Do you want me to see if she's willing to have coffee with you to talk to you about writing a book? So immediately I'm like, okay, there's another action. I'm so, yes, I've gotta do that. So let's do that. So, sure enough, she texted her and what I, what I didn't expect was she texted me back only 20 minutes later and actually said, Hey, I'm more than willing to have coffee with you.

[01:06:20] But I'm actually doing a two day workshop, like all day, nine to five, two days, uh, the next two days on how to write a book and how to publish a book and all that kind of stuff. Would you like to come be my guest? So again, I'm still at number two. I, that was an action item that became very immediately obvious.

[01:06:39] So I said yes and decided to do that. So the, the third thing is, is you have to de, you have to establish a definitive timeline. So in my case, this example that I'm giving you, they all came very quickly. It's not always necessarily gonna come quite so fast, but that timeline to execute that decision came up immediately.

[01:07:00] So I knew I needed to clear my calendar, which I did, and I needed to be in that conference, in that workshop at nine o'clock the next morning. So I did that. That was number three. Establishing a definitive timeline to execute the decision. Now, here's what I would say about that. You may not be able to immediately execute on a courageous decision because it requires maybe having a conversation with someone else the next day, or maybe you need to plan a trip because your courageous decision is going on that trip you've always wanted to go on.

[01:07:34] The point is you do it as fast as you absolutely can, and in my case, it literally happened within 20 minutes and I, and I did it now the fourth one, which I actually incorporate at the same time, not intentionally, it just worked out that way, was getting someone trustworthy to be accountable to. So in this case, writing the book, my wife was already someone that was trustworthy to me.

[01:07:59] I became accountable to her that I said, I'm gonna do this and. Hold me to of it. That's really critical. If you're gonna overcome fear, if you're gonna make some really courageous decisions in your life, right, which means you're gonna have to get outta your comfort zone, you probably aren't going to be able to do it alone.

[01:08:20] And that's okay. So you need to pull people into your life. You know, I'm very fortunate. I have a marriage and a and a bride that is great for that. You know, you may be single, you may not have that find a friend. You know, may, maybe you're really friendly with a coworker who you trust. Maybe it's a mentor that you have.

[01:08:40] Maybe it's a pastor that you have. Maybe you have a coach, a life coach of some kind. But you need to bring someone else into it that's gonna help hold you accountable to following through on that courageous decision. And then the last one that I have found to be incredibly helpful and, and I call this stacking, is once you make one courageous decision, I recommend people write down five more courageous decisions as fast as they can think of 'em to execute on.

[01:09:12] And it's just really simple. The way we are, the way we're created, when we actually overcome fear and we take action and we make that courageous decision, it does something to you. It brings an inner confidence in you. You tend to be much more ready to take on something equally challenging or maybe even more challenging.

[01:09:33] And so I recommend stacking them. You just, you immediately write down five more courageous decisions that you know you need to make, and then you just go back to step. And at this point, you've already done step one, which is deciding the decisions. You just start going through it again. What action do I need to take?

[01:09:49] How fast can I take action on this? Let me pull somebody into this decision that I can be accountable to. And you just repeat that process. Over and over. And when you do that, what you find is, is you're someone who is able to begin to overcome fear much quicker. It's not that you're not gonna face it.

[01:10:09] Everybody faces fear. Everybody does. I have fearful thoughts all the time, but I use these strategies to defeat that enemy as fast as I can. And I've found these to be very helpful and I've had a lot of clients have been really helped by that five step process. I appreciate you sharing that with us. Now, here's the big question.

[01:10:32] You, you've read the wrote the book, right? You've got your coaching. What's next for Clint Hatton? Yeah. Well, one of the things that I'm really excited about, and I've got some things in the works right now, is I want to be able to go into environments that I never really had access to before. You know, I was, I was inside the church for a better part of, well, 17 years as a pastor, I was actually in full-time ministry for almost 22 years total.

[01:11:01] Just not as, as a pastor, I was in a support role for those first five years. And so I, for me, I, I really want to be able to get out there and I wanna be able to help people who maybe don't share my faith. I wanna be able to, um, you know, expose my story and I wanna be able to, Just make a connection with them that has the ability to be able to change some things in their life.

[01:11:28] And then for me, you know, as a man of faith, my hope is, and I've already seen it begin to happen, that somewhere in there I've made a strong enough connection with them and they admire my story enough to where they wanna know more, they wanna know the secret sauce of my life. And I've actually had that begin to happen.

[01:11:44] So the answer is, I'm, I'm working on right now, I won't say who they are, but I've got two companies, very large global companies that I'm in, like the second or third month of, um, working out an opportunity for me to come and speak in front of a couple of very large groups with both those companies. And so that's one thing that I'm very excited about.

[01:12:08] That's one thing. That's next. Another thing is I do plan on having my own podcast. It'll be called Courageous Conversations. And so we'll do a lot of like what you and I are doing, you know, I'll bring people on that again, have shown courage, have done something really amazing. But more than that, there's someone who really doesn't wanna just be the inspiration.

[01:12:27] They want to help other people become an inspiration. So that's, that's my plan with, uh, that as well. And eventually I'm going to have some certified coaches as well that are big bull, brave coaches that can, you know, help a lot of people as well. So those are a few of the things that are, that are on my radar.

[01:12:44] Nice. Nice. I like it. It's a good plan. Lots of opportunity. I like that. I like the opportunity to help more people. That's always a good direction to go. Yeah. Come on. Clinton, where's the, I keep wanting to call you Clinton. Is that your full name? It's not, but you know what? You'd be one of about 1 billion people on the planet Earth in the last 57 years that have done.

[01:13:05] I thought I was gonna get through the whole episode without screwing that up. No, you did Good, man. Once, it's nothing u usually I tank someone's name pretty bad the first couple times I say it and then I get it right by the end of the show. And the other way around. Clint, where can people find you? Best place to find out, you know, about all the different things that I'm doing is go to Big Bull brave.us.

[01:13:28] Um, I know that's us, but I very intentionally picked that domain, uh, quite seriously. So Big Bull, brave.us. I believe everything that we're gonna do on this planet that's significant requires collaboration. So you can go there, you can find out about my speaking. You can find out about the coaching. You can, uh, find the book there.

[01:13:46] Uh, you can sign up for my newsletter. I actually was working on that just before we got on this call. I'm sending out a newsletter once every Friday and guys, just in case you're like me, I hate clutter. So it's only one. I promise you, uh, you're not gonna sign up. And the next thing you know, man, Clint said he was gonna send me one email.

[01:14:03] I'm getting like five a day. No, it ain't gonna happen. It's just one and I'm giving away at least one free coaching tip every single time. Just something that I love that I wanna share and just updates on Big Bowl Braves are real simple, but that's non, uh, one-stop shopping, Brent. That's the best place. I do wanna say real quick though, shipping on this plant has gone crazy.

[01:14:24] So we might have some listeners that don't live in the US so if you live in the US you can buy my book on my website and that's no problem at all. If you live outside of it, you're gonna wanna go to Amazon or some other online retailer cuz it's available everywhere books are sold and the shipping's gonna just be a lot better.

[01:14:42] I, I found that with a few of my guests. Now they're like, oh my goodness. I, I ship, uh, I do shirts and some merchandise and stuff, and shipping prices just keep climbing. It's like, oh my goodness. I'm, people are like paying almost as much for the shipping as they are for the shirt in some places. Oh, that's no exaggeration.

[01:15:01] I literally, I had my, one of my first interviews with someone in Canada. Mm-hmm. And he's like, man, can you, can you send me your book? I'm like, yeah, I'll send you the book. And we finish and I grab my book and I put it in a bag and I go up to u first one was u p s, that'll be $68. One book. One book. I end up getting it dirt cheap for only $30 at U S P S, so I don't ship books to Canada anymore.

[01:15:26] I, I had a, as you know, I have my guest send me a copy of their book so I can read it ahead of time. I had one guest, he's like, I'm supposed you make an exception. Cuz right now they're not letting me send anything out of the uk like, I guess somehow customs is really messed up right now. Like they're not even letting can send international packages.

[01:15:47] Yeah, I could see that actually. That's why, and this is something that they may be able to do. I have a digital version of mine. Mm-hmm. And so that's what I've started doing with International Host. That way if they do want it and, and they need to, they need to read it quickly. They can go ahead and I can just send 'em that.

[01:16:02] But yeah, no doubt. It's crazy. Now guys, if you remember from the beginning of the show, the question is what are you afraid of? If you're afraid of geno phobic, send Gene Soph phobic. We'll say that. It's xenophobic. Syngen phobic. I don't know if that's right, but I had to try it. That is a really big word.

[01:16:25] That's my wife will tell me how to say it when we get off here. I'm pretty sure the options were, are you afraid of syringes? General genetically modified crops, relatives are snakes. And your guess was genetically modified crops? The answer is relatives. Really? Wow. Genic is being afraid of your relatives, apparently.

[01:16:52] Who would have known? That's quite a mouthful, man. I've never known what to call it, but I've suffered from that a couple of times in my life. Was was that relatives or in-laws or both? You know what, you know, I got, I gotta say this right up. I am very lucky in the realm of, in-laws, so I, I'm not the typical guy that will joke about his in-laws.

[01:17:15] I have awesome in-laws. I, I have been blessed as well, so I, yeah, I, I tease them because I love them, but so I tease 'em every now and then. But I actually am very blessed. I, I've known some other people's in-laws since like I scored. I did good. So, absolutely. Now, Clint, before we wrap this all out, what is the most important takeaway you want somebody to hear from today's show?

[01:17:39] The most important takeaway that I would want anyone to have is just, you know, we, we all are going to face tough times. We're all going to have gut punches of life. And you just need to know that you do, you really do have everything in you that you need to be able to overcome any of those obstacles.

[01:18:00] I'm not saying it's gonna be easy, I'm not saying that there isn't pain involved. There is, I'm not saying that it may not, and Andre even said earlier, you know, sometimes it may take years cuz this life is a journey. But you, you should have hope. You have everything it takes to be able to overcome those obstacles.

[01:18:19] And if you choose to, you can truly live the kind of life that you want to live. I sincerely believe that. I hope you do too, and I hope you choose to live your life big, bold, and brave. Guys, you heard it here. You've got everything you need. Thank you, Clint, for hanging out today. Guys, be better tomorrow because what you do today, and we'll see you on the next one.

[01:18:42] This has been the Fallible Man Podcast. Your home for everything, man, husband, and father. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a show. Head over to www.thefallibleman.com for more content and get your own Fallible Man gear.