Is There a Better Way?

The Mission

I'm a Fire Captain, not a doctor. Everything here is personal experience plus published research, never a prescription. What I offer is the truth as I've lived it, so you can decide for yourself.

Service

I was born into service. Bussing tables for my dad at eight years old. Prepping food by eleven. Running around kitchens, appreciating the organized chaos of it. I loved it. I still love to cook.

I got introduced to the fire service, and I fell in love with it. I was becoming a young father with a career to build. Twenty-seven years later, I'm still in it, currently a Fire Captain in California. I'm in my last few years on the job now. When I'm done, that same service continues, just in a different form.

"We can acquire all the things, but there's only two things in life that actually hold value: what we imagine and create, and how we can be of service to the people around us."

How the Job Trained My Mind

From day one, the fire service teaches you one thing: how to solve problems the fastest, safest, most efficient way possible. It's the nature of the job. Life is the priority. Every second counts.

I applied that same principle to my own health. Finding the fastest, safest, most efficient way possible. That instinct is what led me to reverse a pre-diabetes diagnosis in my thirties, and it's guided every decision since.

The Short Version

Over the last eleven years, I've had to overcome one problem after another. Addiction was the last one standing, and even that took time. But ninety-nine percent of those eleven years, I was addicted to something else: figuring out my own health and wellness.

That obsession is where the real value ended up. Now that the last problem is conquered, I feel obligated to share what I learned along the way. That's the mission.

Fear and Love

There are two real states: fear and love. Both exist. Both are important. What matters is how much time you spend in each.

Fear keeps you in fight or flight. Too much time there is unsustainable. You can't imagine. You can't create. You can't make good decisions.

Love is the opposite. Love is what lets you be present, present enough to think clearly, create, and actually serve the people around you. That's the state I try to live in now.

Serving is how I pay back everyone who supported me through this: family, friends, coworkers, this whole community that rallied around me. That's the debt. This is how I pay it.

This channel is dedicated to my daughter, Olivia. She loved monarch butterflies. At her celebration of life, we released them into the sky. The Monarch Effect carries her name in spirit. Paying my debt back, one person at a time, is the closest thing I have to bringing something good out of losing her.