Turning Trials into Triumphs: Luke Fernandez's Journey from Adversity to Empowerment

Transcript

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And we're back with another episode of Life-Changing Challengers.

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My name is Brad Minus and I'll be your host, and today I am extremely lucky to be able to have a conversation with Mr Luke Fernandez, who is a personal development coach.

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Luke specializes in helping people who have struggled with depression or a lack of self-confidence throughout their lives.

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He's struggled with it a a lack of self-confidence throughout their lives.

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He's struggled with a little bit and he's going to tell us his story, and it's really an amazing story, so I think you're going to be happy hearing about it.

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So welcome to the podcast, luke.

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How are you doing today?

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Thanks, Brad.

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I'm doing awesome.

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I'm happy to be here and ready to make an impact.

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That's what I'm talking about and, like I always said to all my audiences, listen, you might not resonate with everybody, but most likely you're just going to find that one little nugget, just that one little nugget, and if you get something out of it, it's a win for all of us.

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So, luke, I asked this question of every single guest, so what I'm going to ask you to do is just tell us a little bit about your childhood, where you grew up, what was the complement to your family brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, all that stuff who you lived with and what was it like growing up where and when you did Perfect, born and raised in the suburbs of the St Louis Missouri area, my parents starting real young.

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My parents got divorced when I was four years old and that was very impactful on me.

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I think that's where, looking back, a lot of my mental health and self-confidence issues first started.

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Even though I was so young, it was very impressionable.

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So I ended up living with my mother in a single-family household with my sister, and then I also have a half-brother, half-sister from my dad's previous marriage and a step-sister and step half sister from my dad's previous marriage and a step sister and step mother from my dad's later marriage.

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And then the whole family's around.

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We've got a big Italian family on my mom's side and then a smaller Spanish based family on my dad's side.

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Everybody in the St Louis area.

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There's a few out of towners, which was always cool to maybe go visit them if we had the chance.

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Few out-of-towners which was always cool to maybe go visit them if we had the chance.

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And then growing up, like I said, with my mom's single family household she did everything she could to raise us pretty well.

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We had visits with our dad every other weekend or so and then that kind of lessened a little bit as we got older, by own personal choices.

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And for me, not having my dad as present, I took it a different way than I think a lot of people do Now that I'm a father.

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We'll touch base on this later, but I just became a father almost 10 months ago.

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My boy's almost 10 months old and that came after six years of trying to get pregnant.

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So we got a lot of stuff to touch base on and I'm excited to get to it with everybody.

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Oh, congratulations, that's amazing.

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Thank you, your little boy.

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Yes, little boy named.

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Franco, franco, love that Good, strong name.

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Yes, would you consider that more Italian or more Spanish?

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It is, it's right on the verge.

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But more Italian, all right, it's right on the verge.

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But more Italian.

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All right, excellent, excellent.

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Yeah, it's got a little mobbish thing.

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Yo, franco, come on over here, put that diaper down.

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You don't need it no more Anyway just kidding, that's great.

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Yeah, so that's great.

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So did you play any sports in high school?

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So not in high school.

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Well, I did bowling in high school.

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Before that I played hockey.

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I played hockey and baseball, mainly roller hockey.

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I tried ice for one season but I wasn't a great skater, so I got out of that and right back to roller hockey.

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I really enjoyed it.

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My mom was a coach of a couple of my teams and it was just.

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It was so much fun.

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And then, as I got older, the rules got more structured and I was more of a what they call the enforcer type player.

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I was also great at scoring, but I also loved hitting people and protecting my teammates, if you will and things got too strict for my liking and reality.

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What I look back on now is I just didn't like rules too much and I like to push boundaries.

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Rules too much and I like to push boundaries.

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But it was also that one of my weaknesses is I gave up when stuff got too hard, which later transitions many times in my life where I've developed a strategy to build myself up by doing hard things.

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And then in high school again, my mom she did so much for us.

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She started the bowling league at my high school because I loved bowling so much, so that was pretty awesome.

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We had four teams our first year and I think by the year I graduated we had like seven teams.

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Oh nice.

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Yeah.

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So that was really fun, Really great time.

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And then after that I wasn't in sports anymore.

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I did hacky sack and like wiffle ball and stuff with friends, but that was about it yeah, did you go to school?

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go to college I went to community college for a year and a half.

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School just wasn't my thing.

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Looking back now, like I was, I believe I'm dyslexic.

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I have to read things multiple times over and over to remember them and again I gave up reading because it was hard.

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Well, now I've learned that if I actually just try to do it and do it repeatedly every day, I actually don't have to read everything 10 times over and my mind starts to comprehend it a lot quicker.

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So there's just so many lessons along my life that I learned.

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If I just can stick it out one more time, one more day, it actually turns out to be an asset for me.

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Excellent.

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So what happened after that year and a half?

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What did you do?

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I just went to work in a.

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My first job was at a grocery store while I was still at high school, and then after that I actually worked at Toys R Us, the toy store, which was actually more fun than it was probably as fun as you think it would be.

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Of course it's a toy store, exactly.

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So I unloaded trucks primarily, and while we were doing that, well, sometimes we got to test out some of the new toys, like the electric scooters when they came out and those type of things, and we were in the store by ourselves at four o'clock in the morning.

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So it was quite fun actually.

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And then I went on to a warehouse job as I got a little bit older, and did that for six years I believe, and I moved into another warehouse job after that.

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I like actually like being in the warehouse environment once.

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I embraced being more physically active and looking at the job as a workout along with work.

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So oh yeah, no, I believe me, I know I worked for.

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I worked for UPS for one summer in the middle of a college semesters and I had to do it as an unloader.

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These guys would come to work and they had the, they had weight belts on and they had these big giant boots on and sweats and the whole bit and weight gloves, and it was amazing.

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And that's exactly what they did.

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That's their workout Six hours of moving big, heavy things.

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So I get it.

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I get it Because, yeah, I lost a lot of weight and gained a lot of muscle doing it.

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I just didn't like it.

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So you're working these jobs and where did you start figuring out that you had depression or where did that diagnosis come from?

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So I believe it came on pretty early.

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So I don't know how common it is around other places in the world, but at least here in, like St Louis and my school, particularly when my parents got divorced, I was put into like a group of divorced kids with the counselor.

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Not to say that I was depressed then, but I almost think that by them putting us in the group it made us think that there was something maybe not right with us, because me, when my parents got divorced, my sister and I thought it was because of us, and I think that's actually more common than people think is kids think their parents get divorced because of them.

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I don't think that's why they did now, but back then I did.

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So they put us in this group and we're surrounded by other people who come from divorced homes and I don't really remember anything from the group.

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I just remember being in that group with a counselor.

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So after that, I think within two years from that, I started going to like therapy, counseling outside of that because I had major anger issues when I was younger, from small child up until shoot not too long ago, probably about 28, 29 years old.

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I had very bad anger issues.

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So I started going to like a therapist for that and I remember she would tell me things like just grab a pillow to scream into that if you need to, or squeeze a Nerf ball, something like that.

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That's what kind of what she would tell me to do and none of that really helped.

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And I realized like every day I just and so probably around teenager, like 13 years old I felt really down about life.

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I just didn't like it.

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I was.

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I would look towards the future and be like what is the point, what's the point of waking up, going to work, seeing as that's what my mom did, my dad and then every other adult I knew, like they go to work not necessarily fulfilled or a job they love and then they come home and they have to do all the housework and cook for us and take care of us and extracurriculars.

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And or, just back in my day, we used to just ride our bikes all over the neighborhood.

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Roller blade just hang out.

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And then we'd come home eventually sometime right around dark or a little after, and that's how it was.

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Man, I miss them days.

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Yeah, I am with you.

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I'm with you in my my.

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I can't tell you the saturdays that my mom was just like get out yeah, you need to turn the house up, yeah and when the street lights came on, you better be home.

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Yeah, that's it.

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That was it.

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No fans butts about it.

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So I get that and I miss that.

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You know what I miss seeing the kids do that, Because out here we've got kids but they're all inside playing video games and stuff.

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But yeah, I miss looking at that.

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So you got to that point.

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So let's talk about, because you've got a big story about losing weight.

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Where did you realize that you're getting a little bit overweight?

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Yeah, definitely.

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So I think I realized it when I was about in eighth grade I started putting on.

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Yeah, it was pretty early, so it was right around when I quit playing hockey and baseball, the more active sports, and so not only was I not being active, but I was also at home more, and at home I had what was convenient, which was Little Debbie was my best friend.

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I love Hostess snacks frozen pizza like fish sticks, chicken nuggets, just anything quick, easy, candy soda.

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We didn't really know any better back then, my mom didn't know any better back then, and then that's just what it was and I realized the depression.

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And even when I had joy and happiness, I had frustration, anger, anxiety.

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I expressed my emotions with food.

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It was comforting to me.

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Some other people find comfort in the love of a family member or a dog or a book or nature.

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For me it was food.

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That's all that mattered.

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That's how I expressed everything and primarily, the sadness made me feel good.

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Give me, it was food.

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That's all that mattered.

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That's how I expressed everything and primarily, the sadness made me feel good.

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Give me that quick dopamine, that quick rush, have a little Debbie snack and I'd feel real good for a second, go play a video game or sit and watch TV, and then it just kept progressing from there.

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So, eighth grade, I knew I was putting on weight.

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I went from a kid in sixth grade where the elementary school is merged into the middle school and a bunch of girls like me, to be in an eighth grade, chunky and overweight and it didn't seem like any girls like me.

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And then, going into high school, did the bowling.

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But let's be honest, it's not very active and I knew I was overweight and I would get made fun of for it in front of my face, behind my back, and my way of dealing with that was getting in a lot of physical altercations.

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At school I had weight so I would push it around.

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Unfortunately, that led to a lot of different types of struggles and I was always defensive because I didn't feel good about myself, because I don't know how you can when I weighed 280 pounds and I'm 5'8", so that's a lot of weight to have on 5'8 frame and that continued like through high school, probably senior year, and then my first year in college, again walking around college, not doing good in the classes, not knowing what I wanted to do with my future.

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I just wanted to.

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At that point I was just like I just want to get somewhere and make money.

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I don't want to be spending money, I don't want to be sitting here at this class where I'm not learning anything.

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I'm also smoking cigarettes at that time, eating junk, my lunch usually contained a vending machine stop for a couple bags of chips, a candy bar and a Mountain Dew.

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Then on the way home I'd get a candy bar, an orange soda and a pack of cigarettes.

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And after college even though because I made it a year and a half and after that, I worked at the grocery store, I worked a warehouse, I worked a car wash before that warehouse Well, at the car washer there wasn't a lot to do, so it was just smoking and eating, yeah, and it just spiraled and it just went out of control without even realizing it.

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Like I didn't know.

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I didn't.

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I wouldn't say I didn't know, but I didn't, I wasn't cognizant that I shouldn't be doing that.

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Like it's not right to eat that stuff and to just be smoking and just be living in an endless cycle of like despair.

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Everything was just sadness and anger for me.

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I went straight to anger so quick.

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The wind blew the wrong way and I'd get so mad for whatever reason, and that continued until I was right about 1920.

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And then that's when I started my weight loss and fitness and health journey and then that's when I started my weight loss and fitness and health journey.

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So where was the what's called the aha moment that you just that, it just you turned the corner and said this has got to stop?

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Yeah, well, it's funny.

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So one of my friends at the time was dating this girl and we all hung out for a few months.

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Her, him and I and some other people Got back into street hockey and stuff.

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So it was a cool group of friends to be friends with.

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And then her and I had gotten close as friends over that time, just as we did with everybody else.

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Well, that guy decided I mean him and I weren't real good friends.

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We were like acquaintances.

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I'm going to preface with that.

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He broke up with her on Valentine's Day.

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She came to my work when I was at the car wash, crying to me, telling me he broke up with her and I knew he told me he was going to and so, okay, she comes, she's crying whatever she leaves, and then he shows up.

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That's funny.

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He didn't know she was there but he thought so.

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A couple months go by, her and I keep hanging out, Turns out I like her.

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Oh, wait, a second.

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No, I get this feeling one day.

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Her and I are at a beautiful scenic outlook, on a hike on a bluff that overlooks a river and trees and the sky.

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It's just beautiful.

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And I'm sitting back and she's on the edge of the cliff and I get this weird feeling in my stomach and I'm like what is this?

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This is strange, Okay.

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And I'm like I think I love her, Do I?

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I think I love her?

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That's strange, Okay.

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So after a few days, I'm like, okay, I love her.

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I realized that and I'm like, well, she's not going to want to be with a huge fat guy like me.

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So I need to change that.

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And it's a girl.

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Yeah, it's a girl.

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Yes, Whatever it is, if it can jumpstart, you use it.

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But for me it was that and it was just the thought we weren't an item, we weren't a pair, we weren't anything.

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She never said anything about it.

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But from that moment, like it hit me and I was like, okay, I got to lose weight and I didn't know how.

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I just drastically cut the amount I was eating and what I was eating and started moving my body.

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Okay, so where did you start?

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What was the moving of the body first?

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Yeah, yeah.

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So it was just my mom, I don't know years ahead of time had bought me a total gym, the one that Chuck Norris is on, and actually I'm in my basement gym right now and it's right here next to me.

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I still have it.

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It's probably been 20 years that we've had it and that's what I started.

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Moving on, I went in a spare bedroom, or no, I think.

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I brought it to my bedroom, set it up and I just started using it.

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I'm like I don't know what I'm doing, but I saw Chuck do this, so I'm going to do this.

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Literally, that's what started as my exercise routine.

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Oh, very cool.

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Yeah, and then I would just go for walks around the neighborhood.

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And that's when I was working a warehouse job where I actually wore a pedometer to see how much I was walking.

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I was walking on average 15 miles a day at the job.

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And then by that time I had gotten a gym membership and I'm like well, I think to lose weight you should just do cardio.

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So I would just walk on the treadmill or on the elliptical or the bike and I would watch a movie or a hockey game and I would take it easy during the show or those hockey game and then during commercial breaks I would go hard like run or sprint on the bike or something like that.

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Yes, yes, listen.

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I've got about 15 people on my roster and they always talk to me about hey.

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I'm always telling them hey, get it.

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Here's a couple of like easy things that you can do to put extra strength and stretch whatever.

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That's exactly what I tell them too.

00:17:25.229 --> 00:17:32.587
While you're sitting down with your significant other and you're watching something, when the commercials come on, do these stretches.

00:17:32.587 --> 00:17:35.702
When it comes back off, go ahead and sit back next to your girl.

00:17:35.702 --> 00:17:36.505
You know what I mean.

00:17:36.505 --> 00:17:37.307
I do that.

00:17:37.307 --> 00:17:42.065
That's amazing that you said that that is so cool.

00:17:42.385 --> 00:17:46.054
I think what you do, what you have them do, it's easy enough.

00:17:46.054 --> 00:17:48.909
So it's not like a huge burden for them to get up and do it.

00:17:48.909 --> 00:17:52.405
But it's something and it gets the heart rate going a little bit.

00:17:52.405 --> 00:17:55.769
It keeps them a little limber, a little flexible, feel better too.

00:17:56.530 --> 00:17:57.231
Yeah, exactly.

00:17:57.231 --> 00:18:12.145
So I don't know if you read anything about me, but I have an endurance coach, so I coach people that do marathons and ultra marathons and ironmans and all that stuff, and the problem that I have is they never spend time for recovery, and that's what I tell them, that's when I use them.

00:18:12.145 --> 00:18:16.608
And then all of a sudden they're like oh, I don't make so much sense, I just put my foam roller over here.

00:18:16.608 --> 00:18:22.086
When the commercials come on, I zip back and forth, or if I'm having a conversation, I'll just do this, and I'm like, yeah, it's perfect.

00:18:22.708 --> 00:18:29.759
And yeah, but that's why I was so like it was like excited when you said that, hey, when the commercials came on, I sped it up, that's perfect.

00:18:29.759 --> 00:18:32.528
So you were doing intervals and you didn't even know it.

00:18:32.528 --> 00:18:32.949
Yeah.

00:18:33.490 --> 00:18:33.711
Yeah.

00:18:34.380 --> 00:18:35.061
And that's awesome.

00:18:35.984 --> 00:18:48.044
And so yeah, and then that like the diet part of that, like I said, it went from frozen pizzas and junk food and straight nothing but that for years and years to salad, grilled chicken, apple, veggie tray.

00:18:48.044 --> 00:18:48.765
That was it.

00:18:48.765 --> 00:18:56.936
Again, I didn't know really what I was doing, I just knew I think that stuff's healthy from what I've heard, so that's what I'm going to do.

00:18:56.936 --> 00:18:59.046
I cut out ranch dressing on my salads.

00:18:59.046 --> 00:19:02.078
I usually use an Italian dressing because I think that's better.

00:19:02.078 --> 00:19:03.603
I didn't know anything back then.

00:19:03.603 --> 00:19:08.765
I just knew I think this stuff is right from what I've heard, so this is what I'm going to do.

00:19:09.721 --> 00:19:10.765
And what kind of gym was it?

00:19:10.765 --> 00:19:11.387
I'm sorry, you're fine.

00:19:11.387 --> 00:19:14.426
What kind of gym was it that there wasn't, like some other?

00:19:14.426 --> 00:19:17.153
Personal trainers or anything around.

00:19:17.380 --> 00:19:19.507
So it was a anytime fitness which.

00:19:19.968 --> 00:19:27.380
Oh, ok, yeah, so it's usually like the owners, the only person and that guy did help me.

00:19:27.380 --> 00:19:29.545
He helped me out with like the working out.

00:19:29.545 --> 00:19:32.625
He was like, hey, like you should probably start doing some resistance training.

00:19:32.625 --> 00:19:39.511
And so he had me doing like lightweight, high rep stuff in the beginning and I even asked him about once I lost all the weight.

00:19:39.511 --> 00:19:45.336
I had all the extra skin on my stomach and I was like so anything we can do to tighten this up or do about this?

00:19:45.336 --> 00:19:49.009
And he goes oh, the old smiley face, yeah, not so much.

00:19:49.009 --> 00:19:51.536
Like without surgery it's going to be pretty hard.

00:19:51.536 --> 00:19:54.541
So he did help me a little bit.

00:19:54.541 --> 00:20:02.261
But back to like the first two to three months I lost between 40 and 50 pounds, like it came off pretty quick.

00:20:02.261 --> 00:20:10.987
And then the I think eventually a year and a half was about when I had lost the total of 143 pounds.

00:20:10.987 --> 00:20:18.636
So I got down to 137 pounds, which was too small without realizing it Again.

00:20:18.676 --> 00:20:19.882
My sister pointed it out to me.

00:20:19.882 --> 00:20:22.503
She's like your neck looks pretty small, like you look sick.

00:20:22.503 --> 00:20:28.184
I'm like no, I don't Me used to being so overweight.

00:20:28.184 --> 00:20:32.946
I never looked in the mirror, literally never looked in the mirror when I was big because I didn't want to see myself.

00:20:32.946 --> 00:20:38.515
Even after losing the weight, I still didn't look in the mirror because I didn't want to see myself.

00:20:38.515 --> 00:20:47.357
Even now, this is 14 years later, I still have to remind myself you can look in the mirror, it's okay, I still have.

00:20:47.357 --> 00:20:52.701
I don't know if it's body dysmorphia or just some mental blocks going on from when I was overweight.

00:20:52.701 --> 00:21:01.960
So I say that to say I finally went and looked in the mirror and I was like, oh, she's right, I should learn how to like put on muscle and healthy weights and gain a little bit back.

00:21:01.960 --> 00:21:07.576
And so that became the next phase in my health journey, essentially.

00:21:08.558 --> 00:21:13.561
So now I'm curious those first two, three months and you started to lose weight, how was your mentality at that point?

00:21:16.195 --> 00:21:16.960
That's a good question.

00:21:16.960 --> 00:21:21.282
I think back on it, I was still an angry and frustrated and sad person.

00:21:21.282 --> 00:21:25.705
I was happy that I was seeing progress in my body.

00:21:25.705 --> 00:21:28.864
It's the only thing that I've ever stuck to.

00:21:28.864 --> 00:21:31.323
I used to quit everything that seemed hard.

00:21:31.323 --> 00:21:35.467
Losing 140 pounds is not easy, not even close At all.

00:21:35.467 --> 00:21:49.921
Dealing with overcoming food addiction is not easy, and so the mindset that really took about not until like seven years later where it got better.

00:21:49.921 --> 00:21:59.455
But I would still get so mad at the flip of a switch I would still like if my shoe came untied I'd get mad even after the weight loss the first date.

00:21:59.455 --> 00:22:03.105
So that girl who I fell in love with and lost the weight she is now my wife.

00:22:03.866 --> 00:22:04.548
Oh, fantastic.

00:22:04.997 --> 00:22:06.547
We're going on 11 years this year.

00:22:06.547 --> 00:22:08.998
Oh, congratulations, thank you so much.

00:22:08.998 --> 00:22:14.599
But our first date came a few months into my weight loss.

00:22:14.599 --> 00:22:19.596
So I had lost 50 pounds by then or so and we had gone to the St Louis Zoo.

00:22:19.596 --> 00:22:20.940
It's an awesome zoo.

00:22:20.940 --> 00:22:22.201
It's always very crowded.

00:22:23.183 --> 00:22:29.630
Here I go, getting mad that I can't find a parking spot, literally on the first date with my now wife.

00:22:29.630 --> 00:22:31.876
She's crazy for sticking with me after this.

00:22:31.876 --> 00:22:33.381
I'm getting mad.

00:22:33.381 --> 00:22:38.380
I'm like wrenching the steering wheel, I'm punching the roof, I'm yelling, I'm cussing.

00:22:38.380 --> 00:22:39.963
We're both smoking cigarettes.

00:22:39.963 --> 00:22:44.696
She's like chain smoking, thinking, oh, do I need to call my brother to get me away from this dude?

00:22:44.696 --> 00:22:47.077
Of course I didn't know all that then.

00:22:47.077 --> 00:22:49.699
So, eventually we find a parking spot, we go to the zoo.

00:22:49.699 --> 00:22:51.319
No, we didn't.

00:22:51.319 --> 00:22:54.561
We actually went somewhere to go eat and we didn't go to the zoo that day.

00:22:54.561 --> 00:22:55.041
That's right.

00:22:55.862 --> 00:23:04.346
So the mindset was still not great and, like I said, that came like seven years later, once I started listening to podcasts.

00:23:04.346 --> 00:23:13.632
And, yeah, I came across a financial podcast and then got into like business and then mindset.

00:23:13.632 --> 00:23:16.853
One of the first ones was probably something with Tony Robbins.

00:23:16.853 --> 00:23:24.876
He's, of course, the biggest guy in the industry and then so I listened to a bunch of his stuff and then some other guys and I was like, well, this is weird.

00:23:24.876 --> 00:23:32.256
I can like not feel like this, like I can choose not to wake up and be negative and angry and look for the problem.

00:23:32.256 --> 00:23:37.847
I said I used to like physical altercations, like I used to look for it.

00:23:37.847 --> 00:23:40.019
It wasn't around but I would find it.

00:23:40.019 --> 00:23:48.686
So I was like, oh, I can think differently, I can choose to think in a different way, I can choose to try to be positive, I can choose not to be mad.

00:23:48.686 --> 00:23:54.984
I realized I had a choice in everything, and everything in my life comes down to the choices I make.

00:23:54.984 --> 00:24:04.257
Even if it seems like it was totally out of my control, I still had the ability have the ability to choose how I react to the situation.

00:24:06.121 --> 00:24:07.663
That is so true it's.

00:24:07.663 --> 00:24:14.479
And you can go all the way back to when you said that you decided you were putting ranch dressing on your salad.

00:24:14.479 --> 00:24:22.797
Now people sit there and there's some times when I'll go through some sort of challenge, some diet experiment or something, and they'll be like, oh well, you can't have that.

00:24:22.797 --> 00:24:27.367
And I'm like, no, it's not that I can't, it's that I choose not to.

00:24:27.367 --> 00:24:31.097
And it's like, oh, you can't have that.

00:24:31.097 --> 00:24:31.640
What's not that I can't.

00:24:31.640 --> 00:24:32.162
I can have it all I want.

00:24:32.162 --> 00:24:33.948
I'm a free American human being.

00:24:33.948 --> 00:24:35.333
I can have whatever I want.

00:24:35.333 --> 00:24:36.517
I just choose not to.

00:24:37.057 --> 00:24:45.438
So that's a that is a perfect example of that that you decide that you had come up with that realization that, no, I can choose not to be angry.

00:24:45.438 --> 00:24:47.599
I can choose not to wake up depressed.

00:24:47.599 --> 00:24:51.403
That's great, that is exactly what we need, and you did it on your own.

00:24:51.403 --> 00:24:53.404
You didn't have some therapist telling you.

00:24:53.404 --> 00:24:55.026
It was through your research.

00:24:55.026 --> 00:24:56.886
So that's fantastic.

00:24:56.886 --> 00:25:02.771
Where did you decide that, hey, you know what I can take, what I've gotten, and I can help other people.

00:25:02.771 --> 00:25:03.673
Where did that come in?

00:25:10.555 --> 00:25:11.436
I mean, this is still years down the road.

00:25:11.436 --> 00:25:12.800
Like it took me years, like I knew I could make the choice.

00:25:12.800 --> 00:25:16.698
But obviously when you do something for 20 plus years you can't just turn it around in 20 plus days.

00:25:16.698 --> 00:25:19.465
So it still took years and it still does.

00:25:19.465 --> 00:25:32.049
Like I have to be vigilant and proactive in the way that I approach each day to get my mental health and my frequency to a higher state, a higher level.

00:25:32.049 --> 00:25:35.462
So each morning, like I have a routine quote, unquote.

00:25:35.462 --> 00:25:38.877
I don't call it a morning routine, but it sets me up.

00:25:38.877 --> 00:25:51.909
When I miss one of my routine steps, I can tell I'm a little more edgy that day, I'm a little more quick, quick minded to jump to a conclusion or what have you, or a little less patient.

00:25:51.909 --> 00:25:56.019
And so it's over time.

00:25:57.182 --> 00:26:02.996
And then my brother, half-brother, very successful in the real estate world.

00:26:02.996 --> 00:26:05.883
He's always been concentrated on his health and fitness.

00:26:05.883 --> 00:26:07.467
I've always looked up to him.

00:26:07.467 --> 00:26:10.622
He's 11 years older than me, so he's quite a bit different.

00:26:10.622 --> 00:26:21.816
We've never been super close up until about five or six years ago when I started getting into the self-development space, reached out to him and he kept saying you got to share your story.

00:26:21.816 --> 00:26:22.881
You got to share your story.

00:26:22.881 --> 00:26:29.723
Like people can be inspired by your weight loss, your mental health improvement, your successful marriage all that stuff.

00:26:30.465 --> 00:26:33.741
And I'm like no, like I don't want to do that, like nobody can learn from me.

00:26:33.781 --> 00:26:39.565
It's all the self-doubt that I still carry with me from when I was younger, that a lot of us carry with us.

00:26:39.565 --> 00:26:57.324
We don't think that somebody can benefit from what we have to say, but, as we talked about before, if one person hears one thing and they can apply it to their life which is what I did with Tony Robbins, trent Shelton there's a bunch of guys that I would listen to and they just say one thing and that's all it's got to be, and you apply it to your life.

00:26:57.324 --> 00:27:03.210
And so finally, I took action about two years ago when my brother kept saying scary stories.

00:27:03.210 --> 00:27:16.058
So I just started sharing some stuff on social media and it's funny, going through the weight loss and then putting on some muscle, and I've been up and down and I still get called fat, I still get called skinny, it's like whatever.

00:27:16.058 --> 00:27:17.823
Like this stuff doesn't bother me anymore.

00:27:17.823 --> 00:27:22.806
Where back in the day I would have gotten pissed and probably broke my computer or my cell phone or something when I saw it.

00:27:23.134 --> 00:27:28.663
And then so I just started putting stuff out there, and then I'd get the message or the comment from somebody who knew me a long time ago.

00:27:28.663 --> 00:27:31.808
They're like man, the way you turn your life around is really inspiring.

00:27:31.808 --> 00:27:32.569
It's awesome.

00:27:32.569 --> 00:27:34.442
It's motivating me to try to get better.

00:27:34.442 --> 00:27:35.661
I'm going to start working out.

00:27:35.661 --> 00:27:39.926
Or I have people that reach out to me now and they want to stop drinking.

00:27:39.926 --> 00:27:56.971
So they're asking about ways that they can do that, or they want to stop doing like hard drugs, and so I'm like, ok, give me a million hateful comments, I don't care, because that one message right there means more to me than all of that.

00:27:56.971 --> 00:27:57.974
It carries more weight than all of that.

00:27:57.974 --> 00:28:07.597
And so I started, like I said, two years ago, but the mental health and depression, it's an ongoing thing.

00:28:07.597 --> 00:28:08.740
It's an ongoing battle.

00:28:08.740 --> 00:28:19.336
So I faded away, came back, faded away, and then last year I started back up again, like in January, when I knew we were expecting our son.

00:28:19.336 --> 00:28:29.171
And then so my son was born six weeks premature in June of last year.

00:28:29.171 --> 00:28:31.840
Thank God he was okay.

00:28:31.840 --> 00:28:33.280
He came out completely fine.

00:28:33.280 --> 00:28:40.461
We'd spent some time in the NICU, dealt with all that, but a month and a half previous to him being born.

00:28:40.501 --> 00:28:44.528
So sometime in like April, I got really down, really bad.

00:28:44.528 --> 00:28:47.201
I had just left the gym.

00:28:47.201 --> 00:28:48.474
I go to the gym in the morning.

00:28:48.474 --> 00:28:49.496
That's how I like to start my day.

00:28:49.496 --> 00:28:49.976
I had just left the gym.

00:28:49.976 --> 00:28:50.616
I go to the gym in the morning.

00:28:50.616 --> 00:28:51.317
That's how I like to start my day.

00:28:51.317 --> 00:29:05.609
I literally walked out of the gym from a great workout and, like as soon as I opened the door, just a wave of darkness came over me and there was a bunch of fear, worry, doubt, anxiety, like oh no, my son's coming After all this time.

00:29:05.650 --> 00:29:11.596
We tried to get pregnant for six years, so there was a lot of stuff with that.

00:29:11.596 --> 00:29:13.422
Everything was racing through my head, my dad not being there.

00:29:13.422 --> 00:29:14.987
I don't know how to be a good dad.

00:29:14.987 --> 00:29:16.298
I want to be present.

00:29:16.298 --> 00:29:17.039
How do I do that?

00:29:17.039 --> 00:29:17.781
How do I love him?

00:29:17.781 --> 00:29:23.943
How do I show him how a man should be strong but also open-hearted and caring and kind?

00:29:23.943 --> 00:29:25.848
Just all that stuff went through my head.

00:29:25.894 --> 00:29:32.976
I'm sure a lot of future fathers experienced that, but it hit me really hard.

00:29:32.976 --> 00:29:47.469
I don't know if I shared this with you, actually, brad, before, but so I'm supposed to go to work that day and I get in my car and I'm like I just I don't think I can do this.

00:29:47.469 --> 00:29:53.404
I'm like I don't think I can do this, I don't think I can be a dad and I don't think I can live anymore.

00:29:53.404 --> 00:30:04.377
So I was going to drive to a park that has a boat ramp and make sure I had my seatbelt on still, so it would just be harder for me to get out, and I was going to drive into the river.

00:30:06.202 --> 00:30:07.866
Oh wow, what stopped you?

00:30:08.535 --> 00:30:10.096
There was some divine intervention.

00:30:10.096 --> 00:30:12.278
I believe it was God.

00:30:12.278 --> 00:30:15.359
I've always had an on and off relationship.

00:30:15.359 --> 00:30:21.164
If I believe, if I don't, I think what I believe in as God is a little different than what a lot of people do.

00:30:21.164 --> 00:30:23.807
But I was on my way to the river.

00:30:23.807 --> 00:30:27.430
I was on my way literally praying God.

00:30:27.430 --> 00:30:28.651
I'm sorry I can't do this.

00:30:28.651 --> 00:30:37.185
I'm sorry I'm doing this to you, to my family.

00:30:37.185 --> 00:30:38.170
Please let them know I love them.

00:30:38.170 --> 00:30:39.394
Please take care of them.

00:30:39.394 --> 00:30:42.520
There's one entrance to the park I was going to and there was construction being done.

00:30:42.520 --> 00:30:44.205
It was completely blocked off with barricades and orange barrels.

00:30:44.205 --> 00:30:44.887
I couldn't get in.

00:30:44.887 --> 00:30:48.803
I couldn't get in, so I went to work.

00:30:53.394 --> 00:30:56.086
The next morning I talked to a guy at the gym who I've seen in there a bunch, who I knew a little bit from.

00:30:56.086 --> 00:30:57.432
He was a friend of my brother's.

00:30:57.432 --> 00:31:01.042
We never talked before and I was like I'm going to go talk to this guy.

00:31:01.042 --> 00:31:04.258
I feel not great about life, so I'm going to talk to him.

00:31:04.258 --> 00:31:04.759
It was weird.

00:31:05.442 --> 00:31:17.903
God again, maybe, showed up and I told him the situation from the previous morning and he said so you're telling me you were going to end your life and on your way to do that you prayed to God to take care of your family.

00:31:18.244 --> 00:31:25.327
I said, yeah, and he said and he made sure that you were still here to take care of your family.

00:31:25.327 --> 00:31:34.021
And it didn't hit me until he said that Of course I'm in the gym and I like break down, I hide my face crying in the gym.

00:31:34.021 --> 00:31:38.720
And it was basically from that moment.

00:31:38.720 --> 00:31:44.890
I was like, ok, I'm the one that has to take care of my family in every aspect.

00:31:44.890 --> 00:31:47.022
I have to be a better example for my son.

00:31:47.022 --> 00:31:56.450

Turning Trials into Triumphs: Luke Fernandez's Journey from Adversity to Empowerment

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