Baseball, Cancer, and 15 Core Beliefs That Saved My Life

What does it take to keep moving forward when life hits you with its absolute worst? Andy Campbell has endured childhood sexual abuse, lost his mother at an early age, become estranged from his father, battled stage four pancreatic cancer, and faced the devastating suicide of his youngest son. Yet somehow, he's not only survived—he's found a way to thrive.

In our conversation, Andy reveals the transformative power of his "15 core beliefs"—principles that have carried him through what would crush many of us. "No one outruns the universe," he shares, explaining how the pain we try to escape will inevitably catch up with us. Instead of running, Andy advocates facing our challenges directly, allowing us to eventually move beyond mere survival into truly living.

Andy's insights about wisdom coming through experience strike at the heart of resilience. While praying for wisdom as a young man, he didn't realize the difficult path this would take him down. "Wisdom comes from experience, and not all those experiences will be good," he reflects. Yet through each trial, Andy developed the capacity to observe, learn, and grow.

Perhaps most powerful is his understanding of life as an equation: "Equations are constant, variables are constantly changing." This perspective offers profound hope—no matter how dire our current circumstances, the variables in our lives are always shifting. "Give the universe a chance to work those variables differently," Andy encourages. "Even if they're slight, they might have an outsized positive impact on the summation of your life."

Seven years after his pancreatic cancer diagnosis, Andy shows no visible signs of disease—a medical rarity that speaks to both his approach and his message: Don't quit. For anyone facing seemingly insurmountable challenges, this conversation offers not just inspiration but practical wisdom for finding your way forward.

"Overcoming Life’s Toughest Setbacks: 15 Breakthrough Core Beliefs to Transform Challenges into Opportunities!" is your practical guide to resilience, peace of mind, and unshackling your potential.

Go to Andy's website: http://www.askandycampbell.com/ or find Andy's book on Amazon by search for Andy Campbell. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Andy Campbell's Incredible Journey
• 8:08 Seeking Wisdom Through Life's Trials
• 15:53 The Danger of Passing Pain Forward
• 27:07 Core Beliefs: Compete Only With Yourself
• 49:47 Finding Hope and Moving Forward
• 58:47 Final Thoughts and Resources

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:34

All right, hey, good morning, good day. This is Dr Danny Roberts, president and CEO of Moral Injury Support Network for Service Women Incorporated, and welcome to the Moral Injury Support Network podcast. Today we have a special guest, andy Campbell, who is a resilient survivor and inspirational author who has overcome numerous life-altering challenges A victim of childhood sexual abuse and bullying, the loss of his mother at an early age and the eventual estrangement from his father. His battle was stage four pancreatic cancer and the loss of his youngest son to suicide.

Speaker 1: 1:12

Despite enduring multiple surgeries, grueling chemotherapy treatments and the tragic loss of his youngest child, andy has demonstrated remarkable strength and perseverance. Through his experiences, he has developed a unique perspective on resilience and the power of his 15 core beliefs. Andy lives with his wife and remains actively engaged in the lives of his three remaining adult children as he continues to support his family while managing his own health challenges. His book Overcoming Life's Toughest Setbacks shares the principles that have helped him navigate life's darkest moments, offering hope and guidance to others facing adversity. So welcome to the show, andy. I'm very happy to have you today.

Speaker 2: 2:03

It's a pleasure to be here and thank you for letting me join you today.

Speaker 1: 2:08

Yeah, you're welcome. So I'm really. I mean, this is amazing stuff. That's a lot of stuff for one person to deal with. You have childhood abuse, loss of your mother, loss of your father, in essence, and then battle with cancer. I'm reading this, I'm going okay, that's enough. And then loss of your youngest son to suicide.

Speaker 1: 2:35

That is a lot of stuff for anybody to deal with in one lifetime it, it is I agree I mean, how did you so, as you're, as you're going through all this and, uh, you know it's not like it happened all at once, but it happened over a period of time. You mentioned some core beliefs, and we'll get into those in a little bit, but is there any one particular thing that really pointed you to, to that helped you really remain, like, continue through those difficult times? That helped you through them, I guess, would be the way to say it.

Speaker 2: 3:34

Yeah, I think that's a great question and I want to give that the diligence it deserves. Later in life I read a book by Viktor Frankl why a Man's Search for Meaning, right, if you're familiar with it. Yeah, absolutely One of the things I had done, really kind of inadvertently or I guess nothing's an accident but I didn't intend to come up with a meaning for life when I got married. I got married at 23. We've been together 37 years, I've been married 37 years and I was dealing poorly at that time with everything that had happened to me up until that point. And I had been raised in a Christian home and I'd been, you know I'd been in, I'd probably been to more camp meetings and revivals, and you know it was a Southern Christian home. So we were, you know it was been in. I've probably been to more camp meetings and revivals and you know it was a Southern Christian home. So we were, you know it was camp meetings, revivals and all these things.

Speaker 2: 4:43

Then Sunday, then Wednesday night and all these things, right, and some of those stories stick with you, you know, and some of those stories are about going through very difficult times and one of them stood out to me in two ways and I. So the angel comes to Solomon and says you know, your father, david, is favored. So and obviously I'm paraphrasing, but you know, what do you want? And he says well, if I I have wisdom, then I can have everything else. So I'll take wisdom right, and either either they left the next part out of the story or he just got to skip it, because david was. But when you ask for wisdom, wisdom comes from experience, and not all those experiences will be good. But I had decided, you know, I kind of hit a real low point in my life and I decided to pray for wisdom and I believe in many ways God answered that prayer.

Speaker 2: 5:55

Now I don't think that's why my son took his own life and I don't think that's why I got pancreatic cancer. But I do think in those experiences I was able to look at things slightly differently in the experiences and take some things away from them. I didn't have the experiences I don't believe believe to learn from them, but I was given enough insight to pay attention to what was happening around me and so I started writing some of those things down. So I think one of the things was my faith early on sustained me, even when I didn't really believe completely in the faith and I wasn't faithful to the faith.

Speaker 2: 6:40

You know, those things stick with you and you see people who have been through a lot, my ancestors went through you know a lot. You know if you think about they didn't have time to think about trauma and how bad things were like they just you know they did their thing. They went off to war, they came back home, they raised children. You know people didn't have the basic things we had today. You know nobody had toilet paper. Women didn't have, you know, sanitary napkins or tampons. It was a different life and somehow they survived. And so I looked back at that and said, well geez, if they can survive, then I can survive. Now I wasn't surviving well, right, I still. I carried all these things. I wasn't dealing with them. Um, I thought I had, but uh, but I hadn't, and um, so I think the the way that I was able to sustain myself through the early part, even though not doing it as well as I look, you know, I look back on it and think I could have managed that a lot better, but I was able to survive and continue forward. And I remember at one point thinking about my ancestors and you know, ancestors leave you with good and bad, right, but I was focusing on the good of what they might have left. And sometime during I don't know why, the thought was with me, but it was with me for probably 90 days.

Speaker 2: 8:10

And one day I just wrote down six words and those words were honor, courage, determination, perseverance, wisdom, success. And so I tattooed on each arm up under my sleeve so only I can really see it those three words on each arm, so that when I look in the mirror every morning getting ready or every night before bed, I can see those words and they remind me that I believe what my ancestors did. As imperfect as they were, they started with honorable endeavors. They believed what they were doing was honorable. When difficult times came, doing the honorable thing gave them courage. When they exhibited courage over and over again, that became what we call determination. Courage over and over again, that became what we call determination. And when they were determined over and over again, that's kind of the definition of perseverance.

Speaker 2: 9:06

And if you persevere, then you have time to have enough experiences. And my grandfather used to say experience is what you get just after you needed it. And so you know, and so you would. If you persevered long enough, you would have experiences, and those experiences would offer you the opportunity to gain wisdom. You might not become wise, but you would gain more wisdom, and if you could gain wisdom, then you could achieve success. And so those six words kind of stuck with me success. And so those six words kind of stuck with me.

Speaker 2: 9:40

And once I'd written those down and decided to kind of remind myself of those regularly, I started to kind of look at how I was going through things and I would write down these phrases that came to me.

Speaker 2: 9:52

And those phrases ended up being you know what we'll talk about later the kind of the what for me are 15 core beliefs or 15 principles that are kind of like meta statements, yeah, um, that represent a lot more underneath than just a cliche. I'm kind of visual, so I need a cliche to kind of remember things. And that's over time, that's how I kept not living well but surviving long enough until I could live better, and so that's kind of how I got. There was step by step. It was. You know, my faith gave me a foundation from which, you know, I could hold on to again, imperfectly, but I could hold on to it Even when I was exhibiting bad behavior. There's probably not a thing in partying that you could think of. I never did heroin, but you know I dealt with those events poorly, but I survived long enough to find ways to live better.

Speaker 1: 10:57

Yeah, that's great stuff. There's a couple of things I want to. Well, one thing in particular I want to. Really that struck me as you talked. You talked about wisdom coming through experience. That was like a lightning bolt to me just now because, you know, I read the Bible frequently. In the book of James it talks about ask for wisdom and you'll get it without you know. And so I ask for wisdom all the time and I think you do get wisdom, like I think you get insights. You're working, you're doing things and you get epiphanies or insights not necessarily a lightning bolt, but you think you know what be good.

Speaker 1: 11:36

I should do.

Speaker 1: 11:37

You talked about the different words that you got like he got like that, but primarily it's through experience and that.

Speaker 1: 11:45

And one thing's about experience it lets us realize I don't really know enough, I'm not really wise enough, because I really effed this up.

Speaker 1: 11:52

You know, whatever it was, yeah, but it was, but it was a new perspective, a little bit, for me to think, hey, you, you know, you're asking for wisdom and then when you're dealing with these challenges on a regular basis, instead of feeling bad about those challenges, you can go oh, this is the Lord offering me a chance for some wisdom. You know, and that's, I think, part of resilience is just being able to take the things that you're experiencing and reinterpreting them or interpreting them in a way that is positive. A Canadian chaplain friend of mine once said that real poverty is not being able to do that, like experiencing some stress, trauma, whatever, and then not being able to see any goodness in it or turn it into goodness, or be able to interpret through the lens of okay, even if it's that really sucked, but I learned some things through it, or my faith grew stronger through, or whatever it is right, there's something to it. That's real poverty and I thought that was a useful idea.

Speaker 2: 13:07

No, it's great. It's great insight and it is, I think. I think it's true. I'm a believer that the world is broken and that bad things are going to happen. My father used to say I think you you will remember better than I. I believe it was either in it was, either in job. It might have been in job, but he used to say, andy, the rain falls on the just and the unjust right right, and so the rain just falls.

Speaker 2: 13:37

And sometimes it's on the just and the unjust right, right, and so the rain just falls, and sometimes it's on the Justin, sometimes on the unjust, and sometimes, you know, the storm falls the same way on the just and the unjust. And so things happen and I work, not always consistently, but I work to keep my mind forward, on the intent to listen to that still small voice, when the other voice is raging at me Anxiety, fear, depression. You can't do this. It's what, for what purpose? Do you continue on Like what's what's all the point? Do you continue on Like what's what's all the point of that? Those are usually like the loud voices, that loud voice. So I don't. I've learned over time not to trust the loud voice as much. It's the real soft voice that comes to you, and to do that you kind of got to get quiet a little bit so you can hear it Um, but I think in that quiet voice and in the midst of the storm that falls on everyone you know these troubles fall on everyone, not individually, but I mean trouble falls on everyone in different ways.

Speaker 2: 14:53

Absolutely, I do believe that that still small voice can give you insights to survive the experiences and allow you to get the opportunity to gain wisdom from that experience. That I think might have been going to happen anyway. But you know you're sustained through it and you observe it. In a way, like you said, you kind of change your lens. It still hurts, it sucks, it's bad, but you can get through it and there will be something that you can learn that you can take with you from it. And I think to your point about poverty. If I go through these experiences and all I have are the negative experiences, I think that's pretty poor, because then all you're left with is just broken things right, just bad situation. But if you can take something from it, to me it starts to add some value to it and then it's not all negative.

Speaker 1: 16:05

Yeah, I think you know we've been talking about the Bible some today, and the Apostle Paul talks a lot about suffering and how good it is, you know, like the benefits of it in a way. And it's that tough balance of if somebody does something to you, like you talked about sexual abuse. There's nothing good about sexual abuse. That's bad and you didn't deserve that right, and that's not punishment from God, but it happened, and that there are as a result of it, based on how we think about it, what we do with it, so on, good can come out of it. We can grow as a result of it, based on how we think about it, what we do with it, so, on, good can come out of it. We can grow as a person. There's a whole lot, and so that's tricky.

Speaker 1: 16:47

When you're working with somebody who's experienced trauma, I'm never going to say, well, hey, look on the bright side, this is good for you. Somehow that's dumb, but the person has to be able to to. But, but the idea of that there there can be something good from it, uh, is worth thinking about. Now. I, I want to get into, I want to get into the you know do you mind if I?

Speaker 2: 17:12

touch on that just one second, please, because I think sexual abuse I was abused sexually, I was raped know what one might think of as defiled against one cannot commit, one cannot consent at that age, no different than I mean a female who is raped did not consent. You know, like you have been violated, like you have been violated, and those are to me instantiations of evil in the world. Absolutely, that's just evil in the world. Yeah, absolutely. If we give it enough time that there will be something that comes out of that that will add some value to your life, not make up for that, not replace what's been taken from you. Take those experiences and speak transparently about them, which I went through a lot of things like emdr and hypnotic, but a lot of stuff. You know, um, working through the emotion code, you know, trying to get, you know, just a lot of work to be in a place where I can talk to you about these things transparently, use words that I wouldn't have been able to use before in describing it, then that sucks for me. But if I can take something from that and offer some hope to someone else who may have experienced something similar or something different but left you feeling violated and you know lesser than and unworthy, and I can share with you that those things are not true.

Speaker 2: 19:09

Then I've reframed the problem a little bit. Right, it still bothers me, it still hurts. Those things are not fair. Fairness doesn't come into life very often, honestly, right, it doesn hurts. Those things are not fair. Fairness doesn't come into life very often, honestly, it doesn't. My youngest son, who took his own life, he really struggled with fairness and he was a gentle probably too gentle a soul for this world, but he struggled with fairness. Things were black and white. Well, life is rarely black or white. There are things that are absolutely or white, there are things that are absolutely wrong and there are things that are right, but circumstances are rarely. You know, there's a lot of gray in this world and so we have an opportunity to take those very difficult times and do something with them other than stay in them. I guess is what I'm trying to say, if that makes sense, and I encourage people to do that, because you don't know what you are passing forward generationally.

Speaker 2: 20:11

My mother, who died from cancer over 11 years, taught me more about living and how to live through her death, through that process of her struggling up and down and high times and low times and then eventually her passing. And so what she did was she passed that on generationally, she passed on perseverance generationally, my son, when you know. And it gave me through stage four, you know, pancreatic cancer. It gave me a marker that I could look back and say you know what, I may not make it. She didn't eventually make it. I may not make it, you know, and, as a little dark humor, if I got to the other side, I really don't need her bitching at me about not having persevered, Like yeah, I don't need that, like that would be like a hindrance to being, you know, wanting to go to the other side.

Speaker 2: 21:05

So I worked to persevere so that when I get to the other section, go, okay, you did reasonably well, yeah, um, but my son and I would encourage anyone who is, who has had suicidal ideations, and if you're having those ideations, this may not resonate with you at all, but I would beg you to think and realize that if you were to take your life, the pain that is making you think that's a viable option does not leave with you.

Speaker 2: 21:29

That pain stays here and it spreads to everyone that loved you and that knew you, and even people that you didn't know, knew you. They hear the story and that pain gets transferred. And it is far better, I think, and it would have been better for my son, had he made the decision to stay and work to lessen or eventually eliminate the pain, because then his, what he passed on generationally would have been perseverance and overcoming. And so, uh, I, I, I guess I just wanted to share that a little bit, that you're right, and to me, one of the things that I came to believe was how I respond to these situations is what I will pass forward to the next and future generations, if that makes sense, and I appreciate you letting me ramble for a second.

Speaker 1: 22:23

No, it's really good. I'm glad that you did stop me and cover that, because I think you were able to articulate in a pretty good way about, you know, that sort of dichotomy or conflict or whatever between this is a bad thing, that happened, done by bad people, or whatever, but something good coming out of it. You know that. I think you you were able to work through. There's no simple and easy way to work through that, but I think you did a good job of of helping people think through that.

Speaker 1: 23:09

And then I love what you talk about suicide, because it really, you know, for anybody who's ever thought of suicide I certainly have, and I think a lot more people than are willing to admit that have yes, you know it's you're looking for for me and in essence, it's this loss of hope that somehow things can get better and the only way to make them better is to erase it, erase you, but that sort of passes on. I love what you said about it passing on the pain. That sort of passes on. I love what you said about it passing on the pain. Basically, you're just sharing it with everyone now in a way that will never leave them Right, like you're the loss of your son, that will be with you till you die.

Speaker 2: 24:04

Right, it will be with me, it will be with my wife, his mother. It will be with his siblings my other son, my first son, oldest son, who now no longer has a brother, my daughters who no longer have a brother, and they were kind of connected in many different ways, many different ways. My youngest son and my oldest daughter were kind of the, you know the, the, uh, the ones who are just like those, uh, high IQ and you know, highly intelligent people and they would spar intellectually and they would do things. And then, uh, you know, they each had a connection. You know, uh, he had a lot of similarities to my younger daughter. He had a lot of similarities and interests that were similar to my oldest son. So they had all these connections.

Speaker 2: 24:58

Those things are severed, but the pain, his pain stayed and the pain of those severed connections remains. And so now we have to spend a tremendous amount of energy working to stop that pain from moving forward generationally, and some of it will absolutely move forward, like it may take two or three generations to try to work hard, to work hard to. So I think we would have. It would have been a much more efficient use of time instead of struggling over generations to to deal with that. If he had made the decision because we had all the resources that he could want, he was in a loving place. If but he had to make that decision, and if he had made that decision to stay, deal with the pain, be transparent about it, work to lessen it, eventually, maybe get it to almost none, or even eliminate it, then his legacy, what he passed forward in the generations, would have been the polar opposite.

Speaker 2: 26:05

Right, so you're, I guess. What I would say is, if you're thinking about it, your life is extremely valuable. You may not feel it at this moment, but the universe has a way. God designed the universe in a way that things change over time. And if you give it enough time, things will change for you. And if you're thinking they'll only change for the worst, that's not true. The more probable thing is that they will change for the better if you give them time and you know you are a thread in the fabric of the universe. And if you you know, if you on your own, cut that thread, that leaves a hole in the universe. And that's not the way God designed it to be, he designed it for you to be here, so anyway.

Speaker 2: 26:58

I'm maybe getting too far off topic, you know.

Speaker 1: 27:01

No, no, no, that's really good. I mean I'm like I wish this was a three-hour podcast, but anyway, it is a good segment to go into your core beliefs, because you just spent the last couple of minutes expressing them in different ways. I could hear some like those. These are what I believe. So in the next 20 minutes or so, 25 minutes I'd like you to go through your core beliefs. You've got 15 of them and there's not a ton of time to go through them. But you also have a great book out, overcoming Life. Stuff a setbacks that we'll make sure in the show notes we put. You know how people can get in touch with her or anything, but you have a number of core beliefs. How do you?

Speaker 2: 27:51

want to go about talking through those in the next 20, 25 minutes. Most of them are interwoven to other ones, so let me just pick a couple and then maybe we can kind of weave through a few in the next few minutes.

Speaker 2: 28:02

I won't kind of go through them as a list. I'll just kind of pick, because you can kind of dart back and forth. They don't really necessarily build one on the other. Um, so, oh and uh, if, if you can't get to the show notes and you only listen to this, if you go to amazon and just search on my name, andy campbell, uh, the book will pop up, okay. So if you can't get to the link, just search on Andy Campbell.

Speaker 2: 28:39

So the first one is no one outruns the universe, and I think there's a lot. Each of these can be applied in an infinite number of ways to the situation that you find yourself in or the way that it comes to your mind to define it. For me, no one outruns the universe. As an example, I think my son worked to outrun the universe, but it doesn't because the pain stays, and so, like for another example for me is facing the hard work of dealing with the things that happen with me so I could live better, right like. I just think god designs the universe so that you can't outrun it. It will catch up with you, like it will box you in and you can fight it and you can, you know, sneak out, a side exit, but then it just kind of corners you someplace else. And I think it's easier if you just come to terms with God, loves you enough that the universe will, you know, kind of hunt you down and continue to give you opportunities, kind of like the prodigal son Right. So for me, no one outruns. The universe means, you know, approach life in humility and acceptance. Accept that you are part of a larger plan and face your challenges and the problems and the things that have happened to you. Go ahead and give in and face them, work on them so that you can live a better life. You know there are no hard decisions, only hard consequences. You can continue on that. It's not a hard decision to know that you should face the traumatic events that have happened to you and ever. How you define traumatic, because things affect people in different ways. So it doesn't have to be things like what have happened to me. It can be your particular circumstance that has left a mark on you.

Speaker 2: 30:32

Um, I think that still small voice is probably telling you that you need to deal with this so you can live a better life. The consequences of that might be hard, you know. It might have you know, like for me, when I went through a process called the mdr and the therapist you know told me up front kind of what it was going to be like and I said I want to do that, I don't want to have to go back and remember any of these things. I want to deal with that. Less total time than the hours in one day, confronting these things and working to give yourself different neural pathways to remember them so that they don't affect you at the emotional level that they do today and they will contribute less to you making bad decisions and they'll contribute more to making better decisions. Decisions or they can continue to affect every part of your life decision-making, relationships, everything, every moment of every day for the rest of your life. So less than 24 hours every day for the rest of your life. And so I looked at that and the hard consequence of that was having to relive those things to deal with them.

Speaker 2: 31:48

The decision was easy I didn't want to live that way anymore. I knew what the right thing was and I think I think people, I think humans, are kind of we look at consequences and we only think bad consequences. Like I could not envision in myself the better consequence of living better. I could only envision the bad consequence of reliving the experience. But so first, the consequences that you imagine might not or probably won't be as hard as you think, but I think people take what is a straightforward decision and they take the difficulty of the potential consequences and they take that word hard and they put it over on decision and they'll say I don't know, that's just a really hard decision. You know it was a hard decision to make. It wasn't a hard decision to make. You knew what the right decision was. It was the consequences you didn't like. And sometimes you just gotta face the consequences and make the right decision. I think that's usually the way it works. I've had a few circumstances in life where the easy decision was the better decision, but not a lot. Most of them the better decision brought some difficult consequences and if you're dealing with these, things always fall forward To me. Again, I'm a very visual person, so if you're hit, you know your gut punch just hit so hard by a circumstance that you're not down to me.

Speaker 2: 33:22

The objective is turn yourself, turn your mind back toward the goal right, turn your mind in the direction of what you believe success is what the better thing, what the honorable thing is.

Speaker 2: 33:35

Turn your mind in that direction and understand that it is. You may not, that may be. The most you can do that day is get your mind away from the tragedy, the you know that feel that hopelessness, that you know what's it all for, and then give yourself time to start working and eventually you'll crawl. You know you may, you may, you may claw your way forward for a while, and then you may be able to get on your knees and hands and crawl, and you may never run again. I don't really think I'll run again, but I can certainly walk a lot better today, and so I think that starts with. Even though the situation is terrible, you do have to put some effort into keeping your mind on the prize while you're going through the really bad stuff. Otherwise the bad stuff will just suck you in and then you'll take out the prize and there'll be no goal. You know, yeah.

Speaker 1: 34:39

So we could go ahead no go ahead, please, yeah, so I think there's so much to all that I, you know, as you're talking about keeping your eye on the goal, I'm thinking I'm wearing a New York Yankees jersey right now and it just reminded me of the game of baseball 162 games they play almost every single day, and I love baseball, I love watching baseball, I love the Yankees, but if you think about the players, it's a pretty boring game most of the time. They're mostly standing around, you know, unless you're the pitcher or the catcher or something right, and so it's a grind, you know. And it's also a game where you fail a lot more often than anything else. I mean, aaron Judge is the greatest hitter in the world. Right now. He's batting 420 or something like that. He's still failing almost 60% of the time.

Speaker 2: 35:35

And he's having-. That is one of my number one takeaways from baseball.

Speaker 1: 35:39

Yeah, yes, he's having a record-setting year and most of the time's still failing and the average hitter batting 230. You know, so it's. But why did they do it? You know people think, well, it's just because they're making all this money.

Speaker 1: 35:58

I don't think there's a documentary about the Red Sox from last year where they followed the Red Sox players one of these reality shows and one of the Red Sox players who's considered a leader on the team, right, jaron Duran, thought about killing himself at one time. He admitted on video he was he. He actually put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger and it was loaded and it went click and he realized that that was God telling him. It's giving him a second chance, whatever. Right, here's the guy making millions of dollars. He plays the greatest game. He gets paid millions of dollars to play a kid's game. But because of his failure, because he's not batting the way he wanted to, because he's experiencing failure in the game, he's ready to commit himself and all the pressure from the fans and whatever fans can be really bad and all this. And so it's because all that to say like they have to keep their eye on something. There's playoffs they're working for, there's goals that they have.

Speaker 1: 37:02

Without that, you know, you just like strike out, this sucks. You can easily get sucked into it. And that's if you're running a business, if you're trying to get promoted at work, if you're trying to make your marriage better, whatever it is, in this life, you're going to experience a lot more challenges than success. That's the way this crap works. You know, it's not until the next life that it gets better, in my, my belief. So, so it's a great point to say hey, you, you have to have something, that you're shooting for, something. You believe that somehow something can get better. Your marriage, your business, your work, your mental attitude, you're just like.

Speaker 1: 37:47

You mentioned the ability to just say hey, today, like I often tell myself, each day is like today, there's going to be little blessings. Today, lots of good is going to happen. I don't care what else good is going to happen, because God is in this universe and God cares about me, and so there might be lots of, and God cares about me, and so there might be lots of shit that happens that day. Right, it makes me feel like shit. But if I'm looking for the good, if I'm looking for how, is this making me better, how things move forward.

Speaker 1: 38:18

Sometimes it's hard to see, but it is there and those little kind of things can make a huge difference, I think, in just the way you feel on a day and over time, like it begins to build. If you can make this and I was talking to one person recently about some mental health counseling and one of the things I said it's going to take discipline, like getting better mentally is just like getting better physically you have to establish these daily routines and really stick with them Because little by little you begin to change your mind and feel better and better and like the percentage one actually chaplain friend of mine said I love that. He said life's a shit sandwich. You're just hoping for more bread than spread sometimes is the way it feels like right 100% 100%.

Speaker 1: 39:15

So, like even a day that feels like just a lot of spread, very little bread, you can still begin to find like over time it can be more bread, you know, more bread and less flat spread, if you will, as you begin to just change your mind and see these same circumstances in a different way. I guess I don't mean to preach, but I know, listen, I think you're talking about.

Speaker 2: 39:39

I think, I think first of all, I love the game of baseball. I think baseball somehow encompasses so much, so many lessons in life, and there's two in particular. One helped me in business and it gave me fortitude in sales, because you know, sales isn't always like you know, like you're out there struggling, fighting.

Speaker 2: 40:05

you know competing, and one gave me a different perspective on life. So I'll start with the life, which is the batting average. I read someplace one time that said if you can fail as a hitter, about 70% of the time you'll go to the hall of fame.

Speaker 2: 40:30

Yeah, Like, if you look at the opposite, they're like well, a 300, a lifetime 300 batting average, but it might you know that's that'll probably get you to the hall of fame lifetime. Yeah, the other way to look at it is if you can, if you can fail, only 70% of the time you go to the hall of fame.

Speaker 2: 40:48

Right and I thought that I was like you know, jeez, that's to me that was just like something I could put into numbers and be like so I can fail, like, if I don't fail 80 of the time, if I just fail 70 of the time, like I could go to the hall of fame. And it's just, you know, I think it goes to what you're talking about. It's like you know, life is full of that 70% setback. It just is. And when you talk about this player well, let me take the second point was I read this book one time that said now, this was before the Braves broke the record and then subsequent teams broke the record, subsequent teams broke the record, but there was a time up until into the 90s I think it was the 1964 Mets and Yankees.

Speaker 2: 41:42

It was in the early 60s. The Yankees had the most wins of any team up to that point and subsequently until the 90s, late 90s, when I think the Braves won more games than the Yankees did that year, but it was basically out of 164 games, they won 66% of their games. That same year, the Mets lost 66% of their games.

Speaker 2: 42:04

Yeah, and the lesson that the author was teaching was, if you to set records, focus on the 33 in the middle, because that's what separated. You know it was the difference between 33 and 66. That's what separated uh, the you know, kind of the, in his terms, kind of the winners and the losers, but the successful from the unsuccessful and that, so you didn't have to worry about getting to 66%.

Speaker 1: 42:31

You could pretty much just really suck and get 33%.

Speaker 2: 42:35

And so if you just put the effort on the 33% in the middle, life might get a lot better for you. And so I took that with me and when things would get tough in sales, I would remind myself. You know, the difference between the really bad salespeople and the really good salespeople are 33% in the middle. Get better at that 33%, because you just breathe and you're going to win 33%. You know you're going to get that much done. Yeah, so I love the lessons of baseball because I do think, because it's such a statistical game, I think for me, uh, I think it offers insight.

Speaker 2: 43:12

I, I was drawn to finance, majored in finance and, uh, in university and, and one of the things that I learned there and it's and it's one of my principles. I didn't connect the dots until much later, but they make you learn all these formulas right, like all these formulas net present value, you know, return on assets, return on capital, return on they make you All these formulas and at some point I realized that I think the universe kind of works. I think God kind of created the universe to work similarly. In this sense, equations are constant, variables are constantly changing, so the equation is going to sum to something. It's stationary, but that's not your life, that's just the process of living. It will work a certain way.

Speaker 2: 44:08

There are variables in there. That's what you do, that's what other people do, that's what you know just kind of the world does. There's what all these things can happen. Those variables, though, will not stay the same, so don't give up, because you are where you are today in that equation of life, and you think it's going to sum to something really bad. Don't give up, because those variables are constantly changing. There's things that you're going to do differently. There's things other people are going to do differently. There's things people you don't know are going to do differently. You know nations are going to do things differently. God's going to do something different. You know like.

Speaker 2: 44:44

There's all these things, so give the universe a chance to work those variables differently, even though the equation sums out. That summation is constantly changing because the variables change in the equation. And so just give yourself time, give, give God time, give the universe time to make changes in those variables and even if they're slight, they're small, they might have an outsized positive impact on the summation of your life. So don't. My message there is don't quit In the midst of when you don't want to be patient. Be patient. And I don't say that because I have patience. I say that because I don't have patience and I have to work on that all day. So, but it is. It has been proven to me time and time again and it was reinforced to me.

Speaker 2: 45:41

I was talking to this lady just a while back and she said she wanted to. When she was like 16 or 17, early teens, early mid-teens, she decided she was going to kill herself, like it was. Just. It was a bad situation, she was going to kill herself, and then, at some point, somehow she came to the realization that by the time she was 19, life would not be this way, she would not be in that situation, she would have opportunities to change, and so she decided not to kill herself to see what would happen at 19. And at 19, things did get better, they did change and you know she was like I'm really glad I waited until I was 19. So you know, metaphorically, wait until you're 19. You know, don't quit right now because in the whole scheme of life you still might be kind of in your early teenage years. Metaphorically, right, give it a little time.

Speaker 1: 46:37

Yeah, no, that's great stuff and let's uh, let's hit a couple more. Uh, what are, what are a couple of major core beliefs? I mean they're all really important, that's why they're major core beliefs. I mean they're all really important, that's why they're called core beliefs. But we want people to get the book and we'd go through them all if we had time. But do we have just a few more minutes? I think we can get into a couple of them that you want to highlight. Okay.

Speaker 2: 47:05

I'll do two and I'll work to be brief. One is compete only with yourself, whatever you're going through. Ok, so companies compete with each other. Businesses compete with each other, but humans are not businesses. As I learned through therapy, I kind of thought that life you know the way I did things in business would work and my relationships in life that was one of the things I wasn't living very well. But businesses compete and they compete. They have standards and you know units in the military compete. They have standards. You know they work, but those are not individuals.

Speaker 2: 47:43

And when you're working on yourself, when you're in the situation you're in, when you're making progress and effort, don't look at someone else and say they had a similar loss and they're doing much better than I am. I'm not going fast enough. I'm not making the progress I should. How other people get through things is absolutely irrelevant to how you work your way through it. It took me 55 years. Some people get it in the first 15, right, not a competition. I'm competing with myself every day. Am I doing the things that helped me get better today? Not what someone else is doing?

Speaker 2: 48:26

You know, people that have lost their parents, that have lost their child to suicide. Some, if you looked at it this way, you could say some are ahead of me in the journey, some are further behind in the journey. It's irrelevant to me. I'm just working for my world to get better, just a little bit each day, and so the competition for me is well, and it goes to another kind of belief, which is history doesn't repeat itself. Humans repeat history, and so it's like am I repeating history from yesterday or am I changing history today? Am I doing just a little bit better today? I'm making a little bit of a different step today than I made yesterday, and I've had to teach myself. It doesn't matter where everybody else is. This is a competition with me. The other one, I would say, is because we've talked about our faith.

Speaker 2: 49:21

To me it's important to be religious only about religion? I like sports. We have a local hockey team. I like the NHL, I have my favorite teams and I have to remind myself that that's a sport, that's a team.

Speaker 2: 49:40

Right, it's not religion. Okay, in my relationships I have to remember that you know whether my wife made what I consider to be the right decision. Do I want to approach that interaction with the same dogma that I would hope I would have for my religious convictions if I were persecuted, and I don't want to know anything about that? But if I were, would I say that that's a, that's a. It's not the same thing, right? What I say, that that's a, that's a, it's not the same thing, right? I mean arguing with my wife for how I deal with my children or people at work, is it's not the same thing? We can, we can kind of come to terms on those things. You know you negotiate a contract. You work out the terms and conditions. If you get religious about it now, there may be minimum things that you'll live with about it Now, there may be minimum things that you'll live with.

Speaker 2: 50:32

I'm not saying you just accept everything and everybody, but make sure you're arguing and that you are pursuing things, you know, in a way that lets you be insatiably curious. It lets you stay open-minded enough. I had to do that with my cancer treatment, right? Some people get dogmatic that they're going to do chemo there. That's what they're going to do. I did a lot of things. If you look at my website, you'll see a host of things I still do every day, being insatiably curious and finding answers. You know, when I found EMDR it was from being curious about what I could do, what we could do as a family, to get through the situation we were in. I wouldn't have been able to be open minded to those things if I had been religious, about things other than my religion. So those are a couple that you know I would kind of close out with. Yeah, no that's great.

Speaker 1: 51:30

I want to bounce off a couple of those and we'll go into uh, some closing uh items I wanted I. I was reading when you talk about comparing yourself. I I read somebody said um, when you compare yourself with others, you're comparing your weaknesses against their strengths, and that's why it's always terrible, because you don't know what their weaknesses are, because people don't walk around with a sign with their weaknesses, right, you only see their strengths. You only see them getting the promotion, getting the award, getting the whatever it is, accolades, whatever, and and you're even if you don't think you want that, if you're experiencing some jealousy, there's something there, right, you're wanting that. You're wanting that success forever and you're struggling and it's because you don't know, like, if you really knew their weaknesses, you might go. I don't want that. I'll take mine. You have yours, a hundred percent A hundred percent right.

Speaker 2: 52:30

You have to be careful. I remember I heard Dennis Prager one day. I don't listen to him hardly ever, but he was on the radio. Not that I'm against listening to Dennis Prager, I'm just saying it's not like something. I don't know his show that well, but I listened. He was on the radio and happened to be flipping past it. My wife and I were in the car and he was talking about thinking.

Speaker 2: 52:58

And I think social media does this. People, because you always see happy pictures on social media, right, you never see anything but happy pictures always. And you see people taking selfies and they get that smile and then the phone goes down and they're just as pissed off as they were before they took the selfie, right, like, and you're just like, how do you fake that? How do you do that? Um, but that's what everybody puts out, so that's what you see. And uh, and I don't think she meant this in the most literal sense, but I what I took from her was this she said Dennis was complaining to her about how other people were happy, and I think this has gone through our family.

Speaker 2: 53:38

We've had this conversation in our family before. They'll say, well, that family is doing so much better. They didn't have any of these problems. They didn't have those things happen to them. And Dennis Prager's mother said to dennis uh, son, the only happy people I know are the people I don't know well, yeah and no, not to mean that the people didn't experience happiness, but that thing, that facade, like you said, that they put on. The only people that I believe that facade are the people I don't know. Well, yeah, because the people you know well you know they've got problems.

Speaker 2: 54:14

You know they've had challenges. That's right. And if you don't know that they have challenges, then you don't know them as well as you think you do.

Speaker 1: 54:21

Yeah, that's right, that's right. And then on the other piece about being religious, only about religion. I think it's really good. There's a book I read recently called the Subtle Art of Not Giving Up.

Speaker 1: 54:32

Yes, I have read that yes, and it's a great book, it's fun. But he makes a great point, which is you can only care about one, two, three, maybe three things. Really deeply care about the rest of the other stuff, who gets it, you know, just like. So I care about somebody's friendship more than I care about being right politically with them right, uh.

Speaker 1: 54:55

So I'd rather hey you, you think totally political, you know, and you want to talk politics, I'll just sit there and go. Oh yeah, I can see what you mean. I'll agree with you in any way I can, because it's true, no matter what you say about a politician, there's probably some element of truth, especially if it's garbage, you know.

Speaker 2: 55:11

So, yeah, so like if you want to, but you also want to be able to go to the ballgame with them and talk baseball with them and they have a similar interest in you, and I don't want that thing, to ruin this thing, yeah exactly, especially about stuff.

Speaker 1: 55:23

You know that I can't change anyway, right, can't change anyway, right. But but I've seen people to. I've seen people that can they walk around big chip on their shoulder, angry, frustrated, bitter, all this about like seemingly everything, um, and it's like you're ruining your life, man, because you're not finding joy or any opportunities for you're just focusing on these things, that and you talk what are you pissed off about? And and sometimes like what happened to me, but the kind of people I'm talking about is I was watching tv and dang trump or dang biden or dang this dude, like you can't do anything about that and I worry about that. Meanwhile, you have a beautiful wife and kids and you have this or you have whatever. You know, I don't say all that, yeah, just like I don't want to spend my life doing that because I can't give a F about everything.

Speaker 2: 56:20

Well, and some things you can be religious about let's say it is politics. You can be that way personally. I will hold to these beliefs personally, but I'm not going to ruin my relationships or potential relationships over saying you must believe exactly as I do or we cannot be friends, because, honestly, I don't think we're friends at that point. We're just kind of compatriots, we're not actually friends, and I think you know I mean, my wife has very different views on things than I do, and you know there's a few of them that we both hold very deep beliefs about. Deep beliefs about and so those things. Okay, we can apply some religious dogma to that. We can say that we're going to be, we're going to have this position, but a lot of other stuff. My suggestion is, and my suggestion is if you find yourself being the person that you just described, that's the universe, the way God designed it, that's the universe telling you you can't outrun me, you need to deal with this, you need to come and confront that right.

Speaker 1: 57:35

Yeah, oh, I could talk to you for a long time, andy. I appreciate you being on the show. As we wrap up, real quick, tell the folks what your book is, where to get it, how to get in touch with you, your website, that kind of stuff. For people that are listening and may not be looking at the show notes, give them the easiest way to get in touch with you, get your book, etc.

Speaker 2: 58:02

Yeah, so my website is askingindycampbellcom. It's going under a little revision right now, but because I originally designed it to deal with what I was going through in cancer and people would ask me you know, how are you still alive? Cause I'm seven years in with no visible sign of disease, and that's not a common occurrence with this type of cancer, and so, but you can contact me there, there's a way to message me on the website. Um, you can find the book on Amazon and, like I said, if, uh, instead of searching for the name, if you just search for Andy Campbell, the book will pop up and, um, yeah, I just, I really appreciate the opportunity to to spend some time with you and have a conversation.

Speaker 2: 58:48

It feels like we could go on for a long time and, uh, you know, but I, I would just, I guess, close it out by saying thank you and I hope our conversation is helpful to someone that is thinking about, um, you know, that has lost hope, or that they are uncertain how they're going to move forward. You know, my final thought that I leave with people is just, don't quit, okay, give the equation time to change and you know, hang on to your core beliefs and continue, just continue.

Speaker 2: 59:29

Don't quit. That would be my closing thought.

Speaker 1: 59:33

Thanks very much. This has been inspiring for me too. As I listen to you talk, I'm like, yeah, Dan, listen to what he's telling you.

Speaker 2: 59:42

I have to remind myself every day to listen to what I say.

Speaker 1: 59:48

It really is. So it's been really good hearing from you. I am definitely going to get your book myself because I think it's got great stuff in it. I love your mixture of faith with also some universal concepts and some pragmatic concepts, and baseball and all. I love the mixture of all those things, so I'm looking forward to reading it. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. If you did, definitely. You know, tell your friends about it, share it with your friends. But it's been a pleasure having you on, andy, and hopefully you know we can do this again sometime. So, all right, everybody have a great day Until the next time. Bye. Hopefully, you know we can do this again sometime. So, all right, everybody have a great day and until the next time, bye.