From Dysfunction and Addiction to Successful Courage Coach with Laban Ditchburn50 min read

Bryan Hyde
Welcome to the Janine Bolon show, where we share tips from around the globe. As we guide practical people with their finances using money tips, increase their incomes through side businesses, and maintain their sanity by staying in their creative zone.

Janine Bolon
Welcome to the show. This is Janine Bolon. I am so glad that you are tuning in with us today. It is always such a delight to be able to help you folks with your money, to help you with your knowledge base, your mindset, your sanity, and more importantly, your time. And you know that when I bring guests onto the show, I am always focused on what we can do to help you with money, your time, your knowledge and your sanity. We bring experts on, and it is so wonderful that we have today with us Laban Ditchburn, and you’re going to love this man, the way he talks, you’re going to love the fact that he wrote a book and that he is a light in the darkness for hundreds, hundreds of people. We are lucky he just got done with a radio program with New York City and Les Brown. So this man is like big name, and I’m like, Ooh, well, thanks for joining us here on this wonderful show. Laban thank you so much, thank you so much for being here.

Laban Ditchburn
Janine Bolon, my absolute, absolute pleasure. And you will always go down in history as the person that invited me on the very first radio show. So don’t ever let anyone ever take that away from you today.

Janine Bolon
Right. Well, no problem. It’s like, I am not shy when I see a superstar. When I see somebody that is a bolt of lightning in a lot of people’s sky. I am not shy about saying, Hey, want to come on my radio show. And I’ve been blessed that most people go, sure, let me get you my calendar. And so that’s great. Well, let’s talk about this book. The first thing is, Laban was kind enough to have me on his show, and we hit it off so well. And it was a very successful show, as we talked about spiritual growth. Now this is spiritual, not religious. Okay, there is a definite difference of what you need to do for yourself. So if you don’t mind, tell us a little bit about what inspired you to write this book. Give us a little bit about your biography, because it’s really important. It lays the foundation for why you are so good at being able to help people with their sanity.

Laban Ditchburn
Well, Janine, it really started six and a half years ago. And I found myself on a Tuesday night at midnight, with my laptop prized open gambling on a horse race in a country that I wasn’t in spending money that wasn’t mine to be spent. And at the age of 35, at the time, I had this epiphanies moment where I was like, hang on a second, this isn’t the life I imagined for myself and I had three and a half bottles of appropriately priced Pinot Noir coursing its way through my veins at the time. And I I spied a number in the bottom left hand corner of the laptop screen, a number that I had never witnessed before. And I’d been gambling on that website for months and months. And I instinctively called this number. And it was the number for the gamblers helpline in Australia where I was at the time. And this wonderful woman picked up the phone, ring, ring, ring ring click, and I’ll never know her last name, but I’ll just call her Mary Magdalene because her first name was Mary and she took me into her heart and she explained to me in very delicate terms, the horrendous amount of suicide that affects problem gamblers far higher than the other destructive behaviors, the escapism the drinking, and the drugs, and the porn and that type of thing, and it scared the pants off me at the time. And this wonderous woman put me in touch with the gamblers helpline. And for 18 solid months I got access to a free gambling psychologist. And in that very first session with Lee her name was she spoke to me about my mum and I broke down into tears and that started the release in the transformation that has taken place in that time and I’m very proud to stand before your audience today and to share that I am more than five and a half years stone cold sober from alcohol, more than six years from gambling, and lots longer with the other negative hedonistic behavior as well.

Janine Bolon
And I think that’s one of the things that I’m really proud of you about because we we talked about on our show about how yes everyone’s a superhero, but are you moving forward in that? Are you learning your skill set? Are you learning what is special about you? What is your superpower if you will? And that’s the thing that I liked was on your book that you have right on the bold as brass on the cover “Bet on You” and it’s all about how instead of turning that outwards and betting on your external environment, what are you doing to really work on yourself? And like you said it was a layering effect you didn’t do it all at once. You chiseled away at it bit by bit. So talk to us a little bit about, how did that change your daily activities? So like, how did you, you know, you knew what you were doing, then you were betting on things on a laptop. But then how did it change your daily activities? What were the things that you did that got you some momentum so that you could then chisel away at the deeper darker parts of yourself?

Laban Ditchburn
Yeah, and it’s a wonderful question. And what I must stipulate for people listening, my dysfunction was simply being a child of divorce, when I was three and a half, my mom and dad split up, they were ill equipped to esteem themselves at times, let alone their children. And they, as I came to learn, and forgive, they did the best they could with the tools they had available at the time. But for a very, very long time, I was resentful of the behavior that they exhibited towards me and my siblings. And the start of that healing journey really opened my mind up to coping mechanisms developed through traumatic experiences as a child. And I came to try and learn to how to reverse engineer what I had experienced and spin it around to use it my as my superpower. And it sounds very simple with the way I’ve described what’s happened over the last six and a half years, but it was a, it was a falling in the dark forward on many occasions, and relying heavily on my intuition and the guidance of some amazing people in my life. So that’s the overall gist of it. If that answers at least the first part of your question.

Janine Bolon
Right, so you had this daily routine that you knew was self destructive, you had daily thoughts that you knew were self destructive. And you started chatting with, you start off with Mary Magdalene, as we’d like to say, and then you started working with a professional. So what were some of the things that you noticed about yourself that you had to change, to start that daily process of reinvention, literally, of yourself?

Laban Ditchburn
One of the most obvious traits was at 35, my life was supposed to be getting more mature and improving and now starting to, you know, meet someone, and settle down and have a family, and save money, and buy a house, and all those grown up things, right, some of which are relevant, some aren’t. But I was getting into more and more strife, I was attracting more and more events in my life that involve the police, being chased by the police, you know, saying and doing things to people that I cared about that I deeply regretted in the morning, and the fun was being outweighed by the bed. And it just started to snowball, and I just went, you know what, I gotta do something about this, the life that I imagined for myself as a young man in my early 20s was not eventuating in the way that I’d thought about, and that was really the catalyst.

Janine Bolon
So when you start off as a young man at 20, a lot of us are accused of being idealists. Like, if I have that word thrown at me one more time, I just start laughing it off now, but I would be a multimillionaire, because people like to mean you’re so you’re such an idealist. That’s not how the world works, you need to face reality. And you and I both know, look, if we’re going to create the life we really want, we can’t face reality, if we stare it in the face, it’s going to cause us to go into depression. And I know that’s where a lot of people start drinking is because what they’re facing every day is so horrendous, that they’re like, you know, I got to do something to ease the pain. And so for you, what were some of the things that, you know, you were doing things that were involving the police, so, running from the police, and yada, yada. So what were some of the first steps that you took to help turn that around?

Laban Ditchburn
Asking for help, and asking for help so that I could remain strong not so that I appeared weakened. And I kept asking for help until I got it. And if that sounds familiar, that quote, that’s not my quote, that’s from Les Brown. And I’ll graciously borrow that from him because it’s exactly what I did. I also made a conscious effort, as I learned more and more about how behavior works and how we become like the five, six people we spend the most time around, started being way more selective with the people that I allowed in my life. And that in itself is a very, was a very challenging experience for me. But I think they were the two main areas. Because the most successful people on the planet, the proper adjusted functional ones will always admit that they have used so much of other people’s resources and help and it can’t all be one sided. You’ve got to go into every single interaction, I believe with a what value can I add this person’s life and sure when you’re starting out coming out the other side of the breakdown or a transformation or whatever it might be. Yeah, it might be a little bit one sided rather, but they are absolutely requirements for success, asking for help and surrounding yourself with people that are further down the line than you are.

Janine Bolon
I think that’s really the point is I don’t know where we are taught that if you ask for help, that’s a weakness like you need to figure this out yourself. But that was a message I received very early on in my life, that you just figure it out Janine, you just figure it out. Well, there were times I had absolutely no clue how to move forward. And when I finally learned to start asking for help, what was interesting is that I always had a person in my head. So I don’t know if this worked for you. But like, I needed help with XYZ problem, let’s say, and I had no idea. I was ashamed. I wasn’t happy that I couldn’t figure it out myself. But yet there would always be popped in my head, a name would come and you need to pick up the phone and dial that phone number. Did you have that sort of experience? And if you did, how did you capitalize on it?

Laban Ditchburn
I got access to a life coach in early 2017. I’d been sober for about six months at that point. And her name was Dolly, and she was based out of Mauritius. She was a friend of mines, mother in law. And how we came to connect is incredibly random, not that anything’s random anyway, but she spoke to me about goal setting. And I really hadn’t set any goals in my life at all. And that was the first time in my life that I developed some clarity of what my life was to look like. And I look back at all those years prior, I had no education around goal setting from anywhere in my family of any significance. I was wandering around directionless, so it’s no shock that I ended up totally purposeful, purposeless, and bouncing off the walls of trauma and dysfunction for years and years and years.

Janine Bolon
And that is one of the fun things is when you actually start learning goal setting, which is totally different from resolutions, this is not new year’s resolutions. These aren’t goals that you’re setting up for yourself, because somebody says you should have goals. These are things that you’re like, you know what, when I was 20, I believed in myself and I thought XYZ and I need to go after that. So I would like everybody to stick around with us. We’re gonna have Laban talk to us a little bit deeper, a little bit more specific on certain steps that you can take after the commercial break. Won’t you stick around because there are multiple principles that Laban has been able to find out because of the fact that he set those goals. He’s now been in the process of being around multiple, multiple, multi-millionaires, people that have overcome their issues. And he is going to talk to us a little bit more about that when we return from this break.

Janine Bolon
Hey, welcome back. This is Janine Bolon, and with me today is Laban Ditchburn, and I just wanted to let you know that this guy is phenomenal. He has overcome so many things that true, yeah, a lot of people say, well, you know, he made a lot of his own choices. And he had to learn to live with them, yada, yada. But the thing that I love about comeback stories is the fact that they’re deep down in a dark pit, and they managed to find their way out. And so I wanted you to realize and understand that Laban had quite the hall that he had to walk through. He has a fabulous book called “Bet on You” where he describes that journey. And so today, what we’re going to be describing a little bit is when you’re down in the pit, whether you’re feeling suicidal, whether you are feeling like your gambling is, you’re never going to be able to see a positive in your checkbook ever again. We want to talk a little bit about Yeah, there is potential and possibility for that so Laban, thanks so much for being on the show today.

Laban Ditchburn
Thank you again, for having me Janine Bolon. It’s an absolute delight and pleasure.

Janine Bolon
I know we have such a good time together. Laban and I have been on the radio waves multiple times together. And it’s always a lot of fun. So talk to us a little bit about Alright, so I find myself in a deep dark hole, and I’ve been taught that if I asked for help, that’s weakness. And you already blew that away in the other segment. So we’re talking about okay, ask for help. How do you keep asking for help? Because you said you had to have asked for help multiple times from people. So talk to us a little bit about that.

Laban Ditchburn
Yeah, I think the art form really, at least in my own experience in my head, how it bounces around inside my skull, is that I was in a place of pain, so great, that I needed to really do anything to get out of it. And I think in order for people to take massive, bold and courageous action, a lot of us need to be in a huge amount of pain. And I knew that if I just asked enough people, you know, my background was in sales and we’re always taught for anyone that’s done any sales training, it’s like, every no is much closer to a yes. You know, just keep asking keep asking people to go door to door, you know, Mormons whoever, you know, they’ll eventually get a yes. And I think that’s a really important point for people. You’re not going to get out of this by yourself. If you’re in a deep dark hole and you’re thinking about taking your own life because you feel like you’re going to be a burden on the friends and family around you. Like this, you’re a one in 400 million sperm miracle you’re even on this damn planet. Right. So do you think it’s an accident? No it’s not. You’ve been given a gift and no matter what you’ve gone through, you can now use it as your superpower. And that’s what I came to learn about. And when I kind of had that in the back of my head, then making that decision to ask for help came a lot easier to me because it became about other people, then it wasn’t about me anymore.

Janine Bolon
And one of the things that people love is they will offer you time, they will offer you some of their resources, they will help coach you as long as you’re willing to pay it forward. And so you may feel like in this moment, oh, I don’t have anything to offer anybody, I’m in such an abyss, I am such in the pit. And just realize that once you get up on solid ground, you are going to be able to help somebody that’s lower down that ladder than what you are. So talk to us a little bit about how you got to a place where you could take that bold and courageous action, you talk that, that’s one of the things massive, bold and courageous action. What does that look like to you?

Laban Ditchburn
I think that famous quote, you know, feel the fear and do it anyway sort of comes to mind. What happens when you go through a transformation, as you are going through it, you will find people that are further behind than you lower down the ladder. And there’s a great analogy around that movie Catch Me If You Can with Frank Abagnale and Leonardo DiCaprio was the main actor in it for those who have seen it with Tom Hanks. And it’s based on a true story of Frank Abagnale who impersonated a pilot amongst other things, but he also impersonated a school teacher when he was 17. And, when he was interviewed years later, he taught a whole semester of this class. And I said, Frank, how did you do this? And he just said, I had the book. And I just stayed one lesson ahead. I stayed one lesson ahead. And that’s been what the power of this is that all you need to do is be one lesson ahead of the person that you’re sharing your advice worth or your ideas to help them. And you can change the world.

Janine Bolon
And I just want to let our listeners know that neither Laban or myself are highly trained mental professionals, we are not mental health professionals. We’re a couple of people that have been through the school of hard knocks, and had to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, so to speak, oh, but we had so many people in our community help us. So take none of this advice at face value, I want you to test it out for yourself. And the other thing is, please make sure that if you’re feeling suicidal, please call somebody. Call somebody and just talk to them. You are a valuable person on this planet. And I highly recommend that you get the suicide hotline and you make sure that you entered that into your phone, because there are people on this planet who volunteered to make sure that they talk to you. Why? Because they value you. And you may be like, well, they don’t even know me. And that’s not the point. The point is, is they think that you are a value and they don’t even know you. Okay, so that is something that we want to talk about as well as gamblers anonymous. Talk to us a little bit Laban about how you were in that situation and how you pulled yourself out with the assistance of others.

Laban Ditchburn
Well, the wonderful support program that existed in Australia, certainly that time was that the taxes garnered from gambling losses were directed towards the services. And so that’s where I got access to a fully qualified gambling psychologist, who I mentioned earlier her name was Lee. And the power about using that environment in certainly where this is being broadcast in the United States, amongst other places online, most first world countries have these structures in place. Now, a psychologist is so powerful because they can listen to you without judgment. And I think that’s something that’s really important if you can just get things off your chest without fear of judgment, certainly in the early days. Because as you tend to develop now what people think of me, Janine is none of my business. Right? And that’s still a work in progress, but I’m getting damn good at it. Sorry. You know, what people think of me, what people think of you is none of your business.

Janine Bolon
It’s not my headspace, right? That’s not, what is it? Not my monkey, not my circus, right. That’s one of my favorite sayings because what somebody thinks of me that’s in their head. I’m not supposed to be in their head, right? That’s not my job. My job is to make sure that my head is on track and that I’m headed toward goals. Now you were talking about with your background and training, you were never taught about goal setting. So when somebody mentioned setting goals, it wasn’t like you were tarnished. You were like, come again? Do you mind sharing with us, what you started, what kind of goals you set for yourself?

Laban Ditchburn
You know, this is such a wonderful story Janine, and one that I think our audience will really appreciate. I found a photograph that I took of my five year plan that was written in August 2017. So it’s due to kick on August of 2022 this year, and the number one goal that I had written back then, now bear in mind I just given up the drink. I had no clue about the life that I wanted to live. I had no clue about my purpose about becoming the world’s most positively influential speaker about being known as the world’s best courage coach, and the number one thing I wrote was to write a, an auto biography. Now, the book “Bet on You” is a memoir, self help book, but it’s written with my story. So it could almost be within that realm. And I just thought, What a great, a great example of goal setting that is, I had no clue back then about what I wanted to achieve in life. And look what’s happened. And then, you know, they were very basic goals, they were to be in a loving relationship with the person of my dreams, well, ding, ding, ding, tick, tick, tick, right. You know, there’s a couple of things on there that I needed to adjust because it involved my girlfriend at the time. But the principles were all in place. And there’s nothing more encouraging to yourself or rewarding than stumbling across some old random goals that you set that are coming to fruition.

Janine Bolon
For me, that is actually a vision board. So I take pictures of my vision boards, because I know there’s a lot of people out there, they’re like, oh, vision boards, they don’t work. And I’m like, okay, maybe they don’t work for your life, but they are the Rosetta Stone for my life. Just like everything that I do comes from my vision board that I build in January of each year. And I ran across an old one. I ran across my five year plan that I had built out in 2015. And I was ahead of schedule, like my last thing I was supposed to do was in 2020, and I was going to be taking my online university on the road. Well, that didn’t happen. However, everybody joined my party. Up until that point, my first lecture of every class I had from my university was how to use Zoom. All right, now I’m sitting here and I feel like everybody’s joined my party. So yeah, like you say, you can get there ahead of time. So talk to us a little bit about, you finally learned to ask for help. And after you’ve learned how to ask for help, what was kind of the next step for you to pull yourself out of those behaviors that were just so destructive to you?

Laban Ditchburn
Well, I think this is a really important point. I don’t know many people, I hope there’s a lot more of us out there. But I was blessed. I didn’t have to go through an official 12 Step program. I was able to reverse engineer this and figure this out for myself. And I also feel like I’ve killed any desire to want to escape. So giving up the addiction, for me, has been almost criminally easy. And I don’t want to diminish anyone else in your experience. But for me, it became really simplified. But the difference is I took a very holistic approach to healing. And you know, you ask the question, what happened? Well, I started taking care of myself, I started to treat myself like someone I really cared about. And I was able to put an incurable autoimmune disease into full remission. Now, I had gastrointestinal reflux disorder. So I was on medication for heartburn for 17 years, and I was told as incurable and I fixed it by cutting bread, and pasta, and pastries, and refined carbohydrates out for a period of time, right. And then when that happened, when my guts started to heal, my mental health started to improve when you understand that the gap creates upwards of 90% of dopamine and serotonin, oxytocin. No wonder I started to feel better. And that drive, I started to want to move. So I started inadvertently running I became an ultra distance runner, virtually overnight. And as I’ve moved more and more towards this health center thing, I started to look and feel better. And I started to love who I was. And it finally got to a point in 2018, like in July, where I was like, I love the man that I become. And then hey, presto, two months later, I bumped into the woman of my dreams, of which I wrote and a very explicit goal list of what I wanted to meet a month earlier, hey, presto.

Janine Bolon
Now there is something to that now a lot of people who bash on us and all that but you and I are very similar in that. In order for us to be successful in our life, we have to write it down. We have to put it down either in pictures or words and I have my list I have my list of the type of people I want to meet. So tell us a little bit about how you came to that process. What started you writing lists out of these are the type of people I want to meet? This is what I want to have in my life?

Laban Ditchburn
Well, let me ask you this question Janine. Why do you like eating chocolate?

Janine Bolon
It’s a calmative it saves lives.

Laban Ditchburn
In addition to that, with decent quality, it tastes good, right? Every time you put a piece of chocolate in your mouth, you know that it’s gonna taste good. Yeah, you’re gonna get like a dopamine reward but it’s that positive feedback loop and if the on the rare chance you accidentally put 100% cocoa in there. Yeah. And it’s better as all hell. Like, that’s no bueno right? But what was happening is always getting that positive feedback loop from the goal setting.

Janine Bolon
And we will have more from Laban after the break as soon as we have this commercial message. See you on the other side.

Janine Bolon
Hey, welcome back, we were in the middle of story with Laban Ditchburn, the author of “Bet on You” absolute amazing world class coach on bold and courageous action. He’s known as the world’s best courageous coach, we highly recommend you definitely take a look at his website at www.LabanDitchburn.com. So yeah, we’re in the middle of the story. Talk to us about chocolate, talk to us about chocolate.

Laban Ditchburn
The wonderful feedback loop of eating good quality chocolate is the same as goal setting. When you start writing goal, albeit very, very small to begin with, and they start coming to fruition you go Oh, hang on a second, this is pretty good. So then you create some slightly more outrageous goals, and then they come to fruition, and then you go, Well, hang on, I can create the life of my dreams here and you start writing ridiculous goals that aren’t even ridiculous anymore. And then all of a sudden, you’re highfalutin, with some of the most amazing people on the planet, right? And, and your sort of hit is spinning. And you wondering, How did that even happen? Then you go Oh, that’s right, the goal setting.

Janine Bolon
It really is the beginning. A lot of people they always cracked me up, I help people with debt. So I’m like, I write a lot of books. And it’s like, ditch your debt on your current income, yada, yada, yada. Okay. So one of the things I find funny though, is they’ll say, Okay, I want 10 million dollars. And I always go, why, you know, you’ve got to have a really strong why, why do you want ten million dollars? Well, ten million dollars, will buy me, and I’m like, there, that’s what you want. Put that on your vision board. You know that money is a tool, so if you just throw out some outrageous number, like 10 million and 20 million, whatever. It’s like, what is your why? So talk to us about what was your why you were saying you wanted to start treating yourself better. That was what started your why but what shifted for you after that?

Laban Ditchburn
Well, at the start of 2019 Anna, my darling fiance and I had gone through a very challenging period, we’d been together for three or four months. And Anna got pregnant pretty soon after we met. And the first pregnancy resulted in an ectopic pregnancy that nearly killed her. She hemorrhaged and nearly bled to death. So we came out the other side of that, and I had just made the decision to go out on my own business wise and 2019 was, and I’ll use this for effect only, was a complete and utter financial disaster. Right. But the blessing was, it allowed me to figure out my purpose. And my purpose was simply this, to become known as the world’s most positively influential speaker. And, when I came to that realization, Janine, it was a really powerful moment for me because it started to give me the why. And it gave me the what when the why became clear, the how part became a lot easier. And then when I really dialed it down, and this has only happened in late 2021, when I came up with this, the world’s best courage coach. And I want people to understand this has nothing to do with ego. This is the question that I asked myself every morning, get out of bed, how would the world’s best courage coach conduct himself, and I think it’s a really important, powerful statement you can make to the universe, and it’s really bought everything into alignment. So when people talk about me, or they want to introduce me, they say, Hey, I want you to meet Laban Ditchburn, the world’s best courage coach. And now I’ll encourage everyone out there to think about what am I the world’s best in, in my chosen niche, or my niche depending on what part of the world you are right? There could be room for everyone to be the world’s best courage coach. But I think the way that the universe distributes all these responsibilities, you’ll have something miraculous that you can share with people and people love being around the world’s best, they love it. They love being around Olympic athletes and movie stars and that type of thing. Because why they’re doing extraordinary things. And I think it’s all in each of us to do something extraordinary and to create such a massive impact. And that’s why I think the self love is really developed, and it’s allowed me to have the self belief, the confidence, but fundamentally the humility to action and do this really well.

Janine Bolon
And I think that’s one of the things when you call yourself the world’s best whatever I like to share with people, look, that can be my worldview, I’m not asking anybody else to call me that. I’m just saying, this is my internal mechanism that I’m using that I am the world’s best teacher, I’m the best world’s homeschooling mom, or whatever it is that you happen to have for yourself. And so I’ve never really called myself the world’s best anything. But I do know that for myself, there are certain things that I look at, and I’m still in awe at how easy it comes to me. And it’s difficult for other people. So I teach what comes easily to me so that I can help make the lives of other people just a little bit better. Now you were talking to me about that when we were in the greenroom before the show started. We’re talking about how you really had this impetus to help others. So talk to us about where that came from.

Laban Ditchburn
I understand now and have done for I don’t know how long exactly that it’s no longer about me, Janine, it’s about my opportunity to impact the world by sharing the knowledge that I’ve acquired by going through this incredibly challenging period of my life and I’m 41 years of age and 42 later this year, and I’ve gone through a lot and for people that want help, and that’s a very important distinction, people must want help. It’s really helpful. And it’s in the same way that people that have gone through what I want to go through, can share knowledge with me. You, personally have been so unbelievably supportive and helpful. In previous conversations when I’ve had moments of absolute despair and being totally lost about the direction my life and you just, you’re able to bring that clarity because guess what you’ve been through it all. And so we’ve got this obligation to share this with the world. And I think learning how to communicate that in an effective way, not diminishing our greatness is a really important part of this whole journey that we’re on.

Janine Bolon
And that’s one of the things I love is here you are talking about those moments of despair, where you really didn’t know what to do next. You and I were able to have a conversation, you got some clarity. And the next thing I know, I’m hearing you’re on a show with Les Brown, and I’m like, I got my cheerleading pom poms and I’m like, Go Laban, Go! Go! Go! You know, because I want nothing more than for you to get your message out there. And that’s true for anybody who happens to be listening. What is it that you have going on in your worldview right now, where you have something that you know, that you could share with someone else? Trust me, there are people out there who want to hear it. So, definitely share with us Laban, you decided to write a book, you’ve never written a book before in your life. So what were some of the steps that you used to get to that place where you could share your message? Yeah.

Laban Ditchburn
So I never finished high school. In fact, I repeated one year, and got identical marks in the same curriculum in science and economics. And I think I was smoking marijuana back in the mid 90s. But I never went to college. I never took creative writing course. But Les Brown, who if you haven’t heard of him is one of, is regarded as one of the greatest ever living, or dead motivational speakers. A powerful, powerful man in his mid 70s now, he came on as a guest to the podcast, I had 10 subscribers. And he inspired me to write this book, he really gave me the blueprint of this book. So I needed a spark. And when he gave me that spark I knew spiritually and energetically fourth, fifth and sixth dimensionally, that I had an obligation to fulfill this gift that I’ve been given. And so I wrote 30,000 words in six weeks during the lockdown of 2020, back in Australia, and transformed my life in the process, very cathartic experience. And then I enlisted the services in 2021, of a small publishing company that was able to help me clean it up and get that message so that it was a 10 out of 10 in my head to be received as a 10 out of 10, in the world a hit as well.

Janine Bolon
And so now you run around the world through podcasts and radio shows, television shows, sharing with people that they too can do things. So what is some of the, what are some of the stumbling blocks? What are some of the speed bumps? Maybe they’re not stumbling blocks so much, it’s just what are some of the speed bumps that you can help people over as they get ready to move forward in their life?

Laban Ditchburn
This is the fun part of the conversation, I believe, at least. My life is a daily miracle. It really is. But I still go through extraordinarily challenging challenges. And people need to understand that it’s all part of this necessary process. We can’t be given this gift of impacting literally millions of people until we are ready to do that. And I think that’s an important distinction. You’re gonna collapse, you’re going to fumble, you’re going to get knocked around, you know, Anna and I now had consecutively 15 miscarriages, for goodness sake, like, can you imagine we’ve been together three and a half years. Can you imagine what kind of impact that has when my business was growing? And we were in the middle of a lockdown. And because I’ve been self employed, leading up to the pandemic, I wasn’t making any money. So we were destitute. So I’ve pulled this together on the smell of an oily rag, as they say, and it’s forged this iron clad steel resolve. And it’s made me even more than determined to make it work. And that’s the fun part. It doesn’t seem like it at the time. But my Gideon, it’s really, really powerful. So embrace the suck, as they say.

Janine Bolon
Yeah, the military definitely knows how to get their troops rolling on stuff like that. But actually it is, when we talk about speed bumps and what have you. It can feel like it’s a brick wall and you have no idea. There’s no way to dig under it. There’s no way to go over it. And literally you have to find that workaround. So what are some workarounds that you found for yourself?

Laban Ditchburn
This is a really good one, and one of my favorites and I would encourage you all to adopt the negative self talk jar. Jack Canfield, who was a guest on my show last year spoke about implementing a swear jar in your home. But every time you say negative self talk, you put $1 in there. I have made a really concerted effort to remove all negative self talk out of my life. And what it forces me to do is to reframe how I speak about myself, treat yourself like someone you really care about. If you spoke to your friends, the same way that you speak about yourself sometimes, how would they react? And what happens is, not only do you get super dialed into how well you should speak about yourself, but you start picking up on how other people around you are speaking. And you’ll find that if people are bringing you down, and we talked a bit, talk about it in the first segment about surrounding yourself with people that can lift you up, make a conscious decision to cut those people out of your life. Even if they are family. keep them at arm’s length, you don’t need to get them whacked or you know, delete their phone or whatever, make a way to get them out of your life while you are in the process of up leveling yourself. Very important distinction. And a great example, I played in my first game of tennis in two and a half years the other day. Now, for anyone that’s ever played tennis, how often do you give yourself a bit of grief if you hit a bad shot, right? So I was catching myself biting my tongue? Oh, yeah. Well, you could of played that one better. That’s hilarious.

Janine Bolon
It is because tennis is 98% not returning the ball. Right? Even professionals struggle to return the ball. I’ve watched pro games, I’ve watched amateur games. And the pros have just learned how to move to the next point quicker. And that’s really the key. You know, it’s not that they return it any more frequently. A volley is you know, if you get a volley going, that’s awesome. So tennis is definitely something I can talk to and talk about because of my background. But yeah, that’s one of those things I learned very quickly. The more you bash on yourself, the less tennis you’re going to play, because you won’t be volleying you’re too busy, you know, beating yourself over that missing point. So, when we come back, Laban, is going to talk to us about some of the things that you can do regarding gamblers anonymous, and the suicide hotline as well as how to handle that negative self talk jar. We’re going to discuss a little bit more about if you have people in your life that are toxic, and they are family, how you can go about setting up you know, people talk about boundaries, but I always like to say how on earth are we going to be doing that? Well, we will chat about that with you after the break.

Janine Bolon
Hey, welcome back to the Janine Bolon show. I have with me today Laban Ditchburn, author of “Bet on You” amazing story of success and recovery that has with us and we were talking before we came on today we were describing how negative self talk is really something that needs to be watched. And we’ve mentioned it a couple of times, if folks want to write this down, the suicide hotline is 1-800-273-8255. We’ll mention it again 800-273-8255 and Laban and I want to state that we are not professional psychologist, psychiatrist, we are not mental health professionals. If you are feeling like you were at a low, we would like you to be able to call this 800 number and get some help. That is of the professional variety. And we also mentioned the gamblers and gamblers addictions and that sort of thing. And in America, you can reach out to gamblers anonymous hotline at 1-800-522-4700 gamblers anonymous 1-800-522-4700. And whatever country you’re in, go ahead and look it up and get those numbers put into your phone. So that when that negative self talk tries to beat you up, you have resources to beat it down and get it out of your head. So talk to us a little bit Laban, if you don’t mind about how you were able to get that self talk out of your head using that jar. That is a brilliant, brilliant metaphor.

Laban Ditchburn
Well, I realized that what I was saying about myself was not funny, and my whole life I’d been a validation seeker, which is a dysfunction again, from what I had experienced growing up. And in New Zealand, Australia, in the UK, self deprecating humor is lauded and a common style of comedy. And as I learned more I’ve read nearly 500 books in the last four and a half years and all of them have been on self development nonfiction, you know die and all this kind of stuff. So you you start to get a good feel about what works for successful people and when you learn that it doesn’t serve you well, when I need to do things that are going to serve me well. So that was really, really important. Also people that are self developed that are ascending that are living the life of purpose and dreams, they don’t want to hear about all the negativity. In fact, I write about this in the book, you know, 90% of people don’t care when you’re sharing your problems with them. And 10% is glad it’s happening to you. And I think as humorous as that is, it’s pretty funny like, but it’s real. And people want to be around uplifting, positive people for the majority of the time. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be there to support people that desperately need help. But really important catalyst, a catalyst for success, at least in my own humble opinion.

Janine Bolon
And when it comes to that sort of philosophy, you were talking before the break about how you started to monitor your thoughts, and that you were really making sure that you kept your thoughts from beating you up, talk to us a little bit more about what your method was for that?

Laban Ditchburn
Well, I spoke about when the why becomes clear, the habit comes easy. And knowing that I had to move towards this direction to achieve what I wanted to achieve. That really made me hypersensitive of all of the potential opportunities to self sabotage, which, again, was a huge feature of what I used to be like. And I think a lot of people identify with self sabotage. I don’t understand exactly where it comes from. But Les Brown talks about fear of success, you know, not even about fear of failure, fear of success, what happens if I lose all that? Right? What happens if I give up gambling and can’t be around all my friends who do love to gamble? What if I give up alcohol and can’t drink around them? These are all things that I went through. And you just find better friends, you just deal with it, you just move on. And hey, presto, your life starts getting better and better and better. And then you start attracting high quality human beings that want to lift you up and be there to help you and you to help them.

Janine Bolon
I definitely watch that happen around you over the last couple of years that you and I have known each other and I have watched how the caliber of people that are having you on their shows and are definitely moving up. It’s just, it’s fascinating to watch that with somebody. So I know it’s true. And I’ve seen it also in my own life. So something you and I talked about, and we both experienced was what do you do when you have seriously toxic relationships? Oh, and by the way, they’re your blood. They’re your kin. They’re your family. And we are lauded, especially in the United States. We are lauded that, you know family is everything. Families, the nucleolus. You know, well, what if mine is busted? Yo, what if mine is like broken to crap, and I don’t want to deal with them because they’re nowhere near what I am trying to do or accomplish. So how did you handle that sort of situation in your own life?

Laban Ditchburn
Janine, I’m so happy that you asked me this question. Because I have a wonderful example that I can share with everyone today. My mother, who is someone who I love dearly. She gave me many, many gifts. And it took me until I was a bit older to figure out that there was more gifts than there was to making stuff. And in fact, they’re all gifts. But she had a very codependent relationship with my older brother. And I wrote about this in the book. It’s very public. It’s all out in the public domain. And it got to a point that I realized that I couldn’t have my mother in my life, because every time we would, we would connect, there was never any focus on Hey, Laban, How you going? What you know, How are you succeeding in life? Congratulations on giving up all the drinking, and drugs, and gambling, unflattering stuff. It was like, Oh, your brother’s doing this. And he’s doing that. And I realized I needed to just cut that out of my life. And so I said to her, I said, Mom, I love you, but I cannot have this in my life until you are ready to have a normal, functional relationship with me. I just don’t want to deal with you. And that’s my mom. That’s my full blooded mother. Right? And what’s happened, Janine is wonderful. My mother has recognized that clear boundary. And now she wants to play the game. And her and I are the closest we’ve ever been, ever been. She came to the book launch, she sent me a message telling me that she’s so proud of me and what I’m achieving and the wonderful impact that I’m having on the world. Now, if you knew my mother, that is a wondrous, wondrous statement. So I think that is so powerful. If you love something, set it free baby and if it’s supposed to come back then it will, and it absolutely will for the right people. Some family members haven’t come back just yet. Some friends have, some haven’t. Time is a heck of a drug.

Janine Bolon
And I also want to share with you my own personal story, which is there are certain family members that never came back. They ended up dying before that transformation could occur. But the thing that was so helpful was I had said my piece I had asked for forgiveness of either misunderstanding or my own negativity because you know, I was a work in progress as well. And I would do that olive branch, I would take that step. And I didn’t know anything about the 12 step program, I’m sorry, I had no education in any of that I was just doing what intuitively felt right at the time. And I had family members that to this day, still don’t chat with me. But at the same time, I’m at peace with it, because I did what I was supposed to do to not protect myself, but to remove myself from the poison that was spewing constantly from these individuals. And when they decide to change, I’m here. But until they make those choices, I’m not going to be here. And so what is also good is that I had several friends and several family members that have come back around and said, Janine, you inspired me. So Laban, I’m sure you’re able to say the same thing that, hey, we were inspired by you talk to us a little bit about that, how you’re not even trying, you’re inspiring. I mean, you’re not even trying to?

Laban Ditchburn
Well, the further I go through my journey, and thank you for sharing that Janine, because that helps reinforce to me that I’m on the right path as well. We rely heavily on our intuition. And that’s another thing that gets a lot better as you start to heal. Right. Your intuition just fires up and it works. But you know what, it’s so important. You know, there was three other family members, one I hadn’t spoken to for three years, one for 18 months, and another one for three years that I all reached out to before my book launched, and I said, I’m sorry, for whatever I said, that might have caused the rift between us, I just want you to know that, you know, life’s too short. I’ve just written this book, I’d love you to join in on something really unusual and rare in our family, you know, not even, I think one other person’s maybe gone to college in the whole, you know, two, three generations of people. And, what was interesting though, Janine is, all three of them responded, none of them apologized back. And then I realized something, Anna my darling fiance brought something to my attention. She said, Laban if you’re expecting an apology, in return, you sent those messages of forgiveness conditionally. So I had to send another message to them saying, I sent that with conditions around it. I’m really sorry. If you don’t want to apologize, it’s okay. But I was able to absolve myself of the terror of tyranny, and a wonderful man, Dr. Fred Luskin, who wrote a book called “Forgive for Good”, founded the Stanford Forgiveness Project. It’s a wonderful book, I’d encourage you to get out there and read it talks about the importance of forgiveness, in terms of freeing us from the tyranny in the tether of dysfunction, which is exactly what you were talking about.

Janine Bolon
We have about a minute and a half. So let’s talk about this tether of tyranny, because it is what keeps us held down. I know exactly what you’re talking about it is a weight, it is something that we think we have to rely on someone else to cut the bonds of it, when in actuality, we’re the only ones that can do that. And some people call it forgiveness. To me, there’s too much emotional baggage around forgiveness. So I want to talk about that chord of tyranny, which requires us to be in control of someone else’s behavior, and we will not change unless that behavior happens. So talk to us a little bit about how that worked for you.

Laban Ditchburn
The beautiful thing about being able to forgive is that you relieve your brain of the tyranny of having to think about those relationships. When you free someone by forgiving them and apologizing. You don’t waste any brain power, we need our brains to work for us and to hit towards their outlandish goals in our amazing lives. And if you think about it, someone that you’re holding a grudge to and whatever they’ve done to you, right, you will be investing a lot of brainpower. Use that brainpower for productive, constructive things, forgive them, let them go, don’t absolve them of whatever they did. You know, if you’ve been abused by someone that doesn’t, they’re a different thing. But forgiveness is very, very, very powerful. And something that I would highly, highly recommend that people get really good at.

Janine Bolon
And that is Laban Ditchburn, and you can go to his website, it’s in the show notes with us www.LabanDitchburn.com, I highly recommend you go and get this book “Bet on You,” meaning bet on yourself, you are worth the investment. Thank you so much for your time today Laban.

Laban Ditchburn
Janine Bolon, so great to be on the show, and if you haven’t subscribed to this show, get on, leave a review and share it with someone you really care about, and help get this amazing message and this amazing woman out to the world as well.

Janine Bolon
And with that, we’ll say, have a great day and we’ll see you guys next Sunday.

Bryan Hyde
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