"When you have gratitude in your heart, it's impossible to not be an optimist when you're grateful for everything you have.”- Matt DrinkhahnLISTEN TO THE PODCAST 🎧WATCH THE PODCAST 📺Matt Drinkhahn | Playing to Your Strengths, Taking Action in Life, & Becoming an Eternal Optimist 😎 GUEST BIO: Matt Drinkhahn, host of The Eternal Optimist Podcast, father of 3 daughters and husband to an amazing wife. He’s generated $130 million in career sales and coaches high-performers to ask better questions and level up their communication with themselves and their people. Matt works extensively in the entrepreneurial, financial services, and real estate spaces, and he has poured into communities such as Front Row Dads, XCHANGE, and Tribe of Investors. SHOW NOTES:Website: http://www.eternaloptimistpodcast.com/- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eternaloptimistpodcast- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theeternaloptimist4464- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eternaloptimistpodcast/ REMARKABLE LISTENER SPECIAL OFFER:- N/A CORE THEMES, KEYWORDS, & MENTIONS:God, Relocation, only child, military family, don’t quit, never quit, kidnapping, Adam Walsh, introvert, basketball, school, sports, athletics, church, religion, southern Baptist, Lutheran, Dave’s & Goliath show, surgeries, standing up for yourself, bullies, violence, empathy, emotional resilience, professional golfer, smoking pot, clearing the air, reconciliation, aortic aneurism, emotional intelligence, pride, restoring relationships, workaholic, pro Advisor coach, zip line accident, perspective changes, accepting what you can’t control, perfectionist, comebacks, hardships, on the bench of life, vision, the eternal optimist podcast, daily intentions, visualization, meditation, Bible reading, affirmations, journaling, Hal Elrod, The Miracle Morning, daily practice, gratitude, curiosity, self compassion, patience, grace, Love, Bullies, standing up for yourself, violence, being prepared, getting back up, forks in the roadMatt Drinkhahn | Playing to Your Strengths, Taking Action in Life, & Becoming an Eternal OptimistMoving 17 times in 21 years reconciling with your father and then he dies the next day almost destroying your back permanently in a zip lining accident and becoming an eternal optimist with miracle mourning. All this and more right now. Hello, my Remarkable friend. I'm David Pasqualone and welcome to this week's episode of the Remarkable People Podcast, the Matt Drink K story. When you're listening to this episode, you're going to be motivated, you're going to be excited, you're going to hear crazy stuff that's like mind blowing, and you're also going to hear stuff that touches your heart emotionally.Stick through the whole episode. You never know what's going to be said, that's going to change your life forever. But I truly believe this episode with Matt has the potential to do so. He is a businessman. He's a coach, he's an author, he's a podcast host. He is just a great human. He talks about how he had forks in the road, you know, before that he talked about moving 17 times in 21 years, and how being a military family and an only child.How that affected his journey. He talks about being bullied and overcoming it and balancing in sports and, and, and education. He talks about how once he was out of school, him and his father had a break, and they were both kind of stubborn, but thank God the mom brought 'em together. But they both had a fork in the road just like we do so many times and we can make a choice of what we're going to decide.Matt thankfully made the right choice to reconcile this father, because his dad died the next day. Okay? So we want you to live a glorious life in this world, but more importantly, an eternity to come. So listen to this episode. Do what you know you need to do from it. Repeat it each day so you, you're going to have a fantastic life in this world, but most importantly, an eternity to come.Matt's going to talk to us about his eternal optimism. He's going to talk to us about how he got there with Miracle Mornings and he's also going to share highs and lows of his life so you can have a better life faster in your world. So I'm David Pasqualone. Welcome to the Matt Drink Han story. Enjoy it. Let us know how we can help you share it with your friends.Check out R PPP Plus 'cause there may be future conversations with Matt in that paid subscription service that we just launched. But more than anything, enjoy this, apply it. Tell your friends, and I want to see you thrive. Your friends thrive and I just want to glorify God. So let's do it together. Remarkable community.Enjoy this episode with Matt right now. I.Matt Drinkhahn | Playing to Your Strengths, Taking Action in Life, & Becoming an Eternal Optimist 😎:Hey Matt, how are you today, brother? We are rocking and rolling.Couldn't be better right now. David. Thank you. Awesome. Yeah, we just had a little bit of a conversation, you and I before the camera started Rolling. It's awesome to get to know you and get to be together today for this show. Been looking forward to it for months. I just told our listeners a little bit about you, just part of your story.So whether someone's been with us for all four, all eight seasons, four years, or if someone's a first time listener, they know we're going to go through your life story from start to today. Then we're also going to go through the lows, the highs, the everything in between. And more than anything, we're not going to just talk about what you were able to overachieve or you know, what the successes you've had in life.But we're going to talk about the practical ways of how you did it so our listeners can too. But if there's a listener right now that's like, should I listen to this episode or not? At the end of this time, Matt, if there's one truth that you promise to deliver our audience one life lesson that they can start applying to their lives, what would that lesson be?It would be very simple. And thank you for that introduction, David. And I'm excited to be here. It'd be very simple, not easy, necessarily simple, is that if I can do it, you can do it too. And when you hear the story and you hear some of the challenges today, I don't know exactly where we're going. And I can say this, that I've overcome some real challenges, and I hope that some of this can be used to inspire action and others, because if I can do it, truly, you can do it too.So look for those lessons. Look for those practical applications of how you can take yourself, whether you're on high right now and things are going as smooth as ever, or you're in a low and you're not seeing how to move forward, either place will show how to play to your strengths and how to take action.So listen up my friends. I hope there's something of value for you today. Beautiful. I know there will be. So thank you for being here today. Matt. Let's start off basics. You know where we started. We don't want to dwell in the past, but we want to learn from it, right? That's why the Bible is two thirds Old Testament, one third New Testament.So talk about your upbringing. Where were you born? What was your home life like? Highs, lows, everything in between. Brothers, sisters, cousin, uncle, you know boarding school, whatever it was. Where did Matt's life start? Well, we'll start, I'll, I'll go from the beginning and give you some high level, then we'll dissect and go deeper into it.David. So first I was born in 1977, so I'm 46 years of age. Today I was born to, I would say, a military family. My father was in the Air Force. My mother was an English school teacher, and when they got together and had me, she became a stay-at-home mom and he continued his Air Force career. So, a defining thing in my childhood growing up is that we moved 17 times in 21 years.Wow. So we moved everywhere, all over the country. That's 13 different states. That's three different high schools in three different states in those first 21 years. So moving around every six months, every year was a very normal thing for me. Not knowing what roots are in terms of living somewhere that was, that was, that was normal.Like every, every year it felt like we would move, right? When I would start to make some friends, if I had had any friends, we would move and it became that same cycle over and over and over again. So that's one thing to start is that we moved often. Now was it brothers, sisters, or were you the only child?I am the only child now. My mother had another child before me with her first husband, and that child died. So I ne I was not alive by the time that my, my sister passed, she passed in infancy, so I never met her. So I am the only child to my father and mother. I. Okay, so that's really interesting.So what are some of the, you know, we're going to go chronologically through your story, and if you're like Dave, I'll answer that in 10 minutes. No problem. But after moving 17 times in 13 states and all these different schools, what are some of the takeaways that you learned from this that are positive that you can apply to your life today and our listeners can too?Well, I will share the first thing that comes to mind, David, is a challenging story. A takeaway of a place that was really a low for me and we've learned much from it. You remember that movie back, I think it was 1992 ish, Forrest Gump. Yes. And you remember that scene on the bus where Forrest gets on the bus for the first time and he's walking back and the kids say, you can't sit here.Seats taken. I remember. The number of times that I moved from school to school, the last five in particular, starting in the seventh grade, on the last five moves, that same scenario actually happened to me twice. On the move into seventh grade it happened. And again, it happened into eighth grade.And, and I remember those 'cause those were particularly challenging times. Those are the times where as a seventh or eighth grade boy, we're forming our identity. We're trying to fit in, we're trying to to make friends and compound that with, I'm moving every year, so I'm forced to make new friends.I remember the seventh grade I moved from Fort Worth, Texas Borough Air Force Base to upstate New York, to Rome, New York at Griffith Air Force Base. And I remember going to Staley Junior High School in Rome, New York that very first day. I remember getting on the bus, and I've come from a, maybe a strictly regimented from my father's side, being the military man.We're supposed to be at places on time. We're supposed to do things a certain way. And I remember getting late to the bus stop on the very first day of my seventh grade, second half to seventh grade year, and it's, there's snow, there's a foot and a half or two of snow everywhere, which is commonplace.Upstate New York, not so much in Fort Worth, Texas. So I'm freezing cold. I'm late for the bus, and I can see the bus pulling past the bus stop as I'm walking up to it. And I swear I am late for my very first day. This is, I don't have a, a cell phone to text a parent, Hey, can you take me to school if I don't hit the bus?I'm stuck. My parents are working. I, I don't know where to go, what to do. So I've gotta catch that bus. So I run up to the bus and I start banging on the side of the door to let me in. Let me in, let me in. It's my first day. Come to find out, David, that it wasn't pulling away from the bus stop. It was walking, it was pulling into the bus stop, and all those kids over there saw this weird new kid banging on the bus door trying to get in, and it hadn't even come to the bus stop yet.That was very embarrassing for seventh grade Matthew. And that was, that was the way that seventh grade year started. You know, and then when I got on the bus I didn't have anywhere to sit. There was actually no spot to sit, and the, the cooler kids at the back did not move over. When I walked back, I asked if I could sit there and they said no.And I didn't know how to push myself into the spot. So I ended up standing on the way to school that very first day. It compounds when you go to lunch. This is the, the part that I used to kind of fear and dread. When you go to lunch for the first time in a new school, and I know, 'cause this happened to me out of all those times, it happened to me pretty much every year.Gotta go to a new spot at lunch. So you go and get your lunch and I got the school cafeteria lunch. I pick up my tray, I look around, where do I sit? And there's normally two places I might choose to sit. An easy out for me is I can go and sit with the nerds. 'cause I got these big glasses, I got big teeth, I got braces on 'em.I have braces for five and a half years, from fifth to 10th grade. So I'm in the middle of braces time right now. Probably have some rubber bands of multicolor in there too, right? Yeah. I got giant bottleneck glasses. So I, I can go easily sit with the smart kids and the nerds because I identified as that.I also, because I was in this big growth spurt, right? I also go sit with the basketball players because I was a star basketball player and no one knew me yet though, right. I look like a big nerd. I'm really great at basketball, so I go and make my play to go sit with the basketball kids. I remember going over to that table and seeing them.David, I don't, I didn't meet this person at that moment. I didn't know his name at the time. Turns out there was a guy named Steve sitting right there and there was an empty spot, and I went to put my, my tray down to sit there and just like a scene out of Forrest Gump, he said, can't sit here. And literally, I, I was shocked and I was really embarrassed.That was the second major embarrassment of the day, and I didn't, I didn't lose it all right there in front of everyone. That was the only time in my life I actually went and I had lunch in the bathroom, in a bathroom stall. I was so embarrassed and I was, man, I, I, I, I'm getting kind of choked up right now thinking about it.That poor me at that time, feeling so desperate for someone to reach out and say, Hey, you can sit with us. It was a very painful day. And here's the, the bright side to the story. And I wish my father were alive today and we'll get to that later in the story. Yeah. To hear me share this, this story of the impact he had on me that day.So I got home that day, David and my dad asked me what was wrong, 'cause something was obviously bothering me. I was upset and kind of kept to myself and I told him the whole story and he said, okay, and now what are you going to do about it? Like, what, what do you mean? Well, you have a couple of choices and you can let that happen.You can go and figure out a way to try it again tomorrow. It's your choice. You can choose from here how you're going to respond to that. And I don't think I really that as a seventh grader. And at the same time, I decided to get back up and try it again the next day. And it worked out well. 'cause I, I made my group the next day.I met a couple friends and had some friends for the second half that seventh grade year. So it was the lowest of lows that first day. And it came back and my dad gave me some great advice that night and it, it inspired me to go back and try again the next day. And it worked well the next day. So that's the, the first thing that comes to mind when we talk about the school experience.Yeah. And I thank you for, I thank you for answering that. I didn't mean to jump seven years in your life, but you answered it perfectly and that's great advice. When you went in that second day, did you change your mindset? Did you have anything in action that you did differently? What was the, the change to share from the perspective of a seventh grader?To the degree I could remember, I remember that going in that second day, my dad said, you've got to go in there and give it your best shot. So I took a big, deep breath here. Go again. We can do this. And that whole mindset of you can do this, you can do this, and saying that over and over again, that was something that I learned and I did.And I remember hearing something, I think it was around this time, this is, the timeframe is around 13 years of age. This is around 19 89, 19 90. And I remember Tony Robinson was already kind of starting to come on the scene in the eighties around that time. And he had this tape out, this cassette tape, and I heard the tape, unlimited power.And one of the things he talks about in the cassette tape was being able to affirm to yourself and say it out loud, I have unstoppable. And he would literally used to walk around and say to himself, I'm unstoppable. And he actually had some more colorful language in that. But he would say, I'm unstoppable.I'm unstoppable. So I learned to repeat to myself, you can do this. Get back up. Try it again. You can do this. Get back up, try it again. And that mindset was what I had going into that day. It was what I had going onto the bus, which itself was a win just to get on the bus and have a seat. The second day was a win to go to lunch and be able to sit with somebody, sit with some group.And I remember the, the group that I sat with that second day, I remember 'cause of, we had this these little piece of bubble gum called Fortune Bubble, these little orange sticks of gum. This is the same year that The Simpsons came out. I remember pretty clearly the Cowabunga of Bart Simpson t-shirts were popular at the time.So I go there to lunch that second day and I remember sitting with a young lady and another gentleman, her name was Stephanie. Stephanie Ludwig was her name, and the gentleman's name was Eric. And I could picture him clearly. I don't remember his last name. But I sat with Eric and Skylar Tout, I think his name was Skylar tt. And Stephanie Ludwig and Eric. I sat with them that second day. That became my friends, that group became my friends for that second half of second grade. It was all started with the idea that my dad planted the seed in my head. You can do it, get back up and try it again. You can do this. Get back up and try it again.That's what I'm saying. Yeah. That's biblically based. A just man fall seven times and rises up again, right? That's right. So we just keep getting back up and doing, not just thinking. So that's awesome that your dad could instill that in you. I definitely want to go back kind of 'cause of me jumped seven years of your life, right?We went from birth to that story, or actually 14 years. But let me ask you a quick question, Matt, between your birth and this story, What other significant things that you had to overcome or things you achieved or things that really shaped you into the man you are. Did we miss anything?