My Journey to Reclaim My Life: First a Brain Tumor and Then Blindness

Literally, for the first time at that point had been 14 years.

For the first time in 14 years, I could see it again.

Just in a whole new way.

Welcome to Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

I'm your host, Kevin Lowe, and I'm excited to welcome you inside.

This is the kind of place where your glass will never be anything other than half full.

Because we choose to focus on the positive side of life.

Now this doesn't mean that we shy away from the real time.

No, not a chance.

As a matter of fact, we explore all aspects of life.

From the good, the bad, and the ugly.

But all of that is done with one purpose.

To inspire you to never give up on life.

Even when it may seem like life has given up on you.

Now I get it.

Life is hard.

Starting today, you've got grit, grace, and inspiration.

What's going on, and welcome back to Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

My name is Kevin Little, your host, and you're tuning in to episode 132.

Now, I understand that you may be listening to today's episode, not on the day that it is released.

It may be the next day, or who knows, it may be two years from now.

But I mentioned today's date, the date that this episode comes out, because, well, it's kind of an important aspect to the topic I'm speaking of today.

Today's date is October 28th, 2022.

For me, that means it's been 19 years since my life was saved.

Or as I like to look at it, as 19 years that I got a second chance at life.

Because 19 years ago, I was just a teenager and I was faced with my own mortality, having discovered that I had a brain tumor.

That if it was not removed, I had at most six months to live.

That tumor would be removed saving my life, but at a cost no one ever expected.

And that was me awaking from surgery to be left completely blind.

That all happened on October 28th, 2003.

It's been 19 years since that day.

And well, all I can say is this none of us ever know where life is going to take us, what tomorrow holds.

But you know what?

In a crazy beautiful way, I'm kind of glad it's like that.

It forces us to remember to focus on today, on right now, being sure that we are living this moment for everything it's worth, because we never know what tomorrow will hold.

Now, for today's episode, for this anniversary episode, I decided to mix things up a little bit because I was recently featured on another podcast where I was the guest, and it was the Discover More podcast.

The interview recently came out, and I was just really happy with the message that was portrayed through that interview.

And therefore, I thought, you know what?

Maybe I could just share that interview with you.

So instead of me telling you about my story, I thought, you know what?

Let me tell you about my story, about what happened to me, about the role that faith and family plays in my life, what I'm doing today, how I see the world, all the things through the perspective of me being the one who is interviewed.

So, with that, I'm gonna turn it over to the host of today's episode, the host of the Discover More podcast, featuring guest Kevin Lowe.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode.

As always, I hope today's episode inspires you, empowers you, and motivates you to get out and take on the day with grit, grace, and inspiration.

SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Discover More Podcast, a show for introspective thinkers with growth mindsets seeking authentic life stories.

This week's guest is Kevin Lowe.

Kevin is a podcast host and a transformational life coach.

I came to respect Kevin deeply after hearing about what he had gone through when a brain tumor removal surgery that was supposed to save his life ended up costing both of his eyesight.

Yes, Kevin is fully blind and his world was full of dark, formless objects until he learned to echo locate using the clicking technique.

Imagine the Daredevil from Marvel Universe without the expensive fight suits and jumping through rooftops.

I mean, Kevin might be jumping through rooftops too, but indeed, Kevin represents the saying, I walk by faith, not by sight, better than anyone I know.

Expect to learn about the important roles of faith and mental health in Kevin's life, the inspiring story of how Kevin came to fully embrace and accept his blindness, what grit, grace, and inspiration means to him, how to seek gratitude in seemingly hopeless situations, and much, much more.

Kevin, welcome to the show, man.

Thank you so much.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Yeah, I am very excited for this interview and I want to get straight into it if you're ready for it.

Oh, I'm totally ready.

All right.

So I think a lot of individuals and a lot of people, especially now in 2022, they depart from their faith and religion after going through some sort of a traumatic event because of how unfair these events could be.

How did you stay the course with your faith after experiencing this medical trauma of unexpectedly losing your eyesight at such a young age?

SPEAKER_01: Oh man, such a good question.

And to be honest with you, I wish I had like an answer that made me like look good.

But the truth of the matter is that it was all just meant to be.

It was part of my faith journey.

And I give God all the credit for it.

And I don't know why, to be honest with you.

I don't know why I was never angry with God.

I don't know why I didn't do what most people do and turn my back on God and say, you know, how could you allow this to happen?

And if, you know, this could happen, then you must not be real.

Instead, I kind of clung to my faith more than ever before because I feel like that's all I had.

And the one person who was there with me, and I mean I had family with me, but the person there day in and day out was Jesus.

And for myself, that was just what I clung to.

And there were times when when I did get angry at God, and I did say things to God in my prayers at night, and just out of just rage of why won't you let me just see again?

But I always came back to the same thing was at the end, I would always ask God for his forgiveness.

Because I always say, God, please, please don't leave me.

I can't do this without you.

And and that's really just been my experience with having my faith be a part of my journey, is it's been a relationship.

That's all I can answer.

You know, that question is is literally, it was God who didn't leave me and and kept me holding on to Him.

SPEAKER_00: Interesting.

Do you feel like your ability to trust people has either increased or decreased because of this full dependence that you have, at least starting up?

How has your relationship with trust, since you said trust is the foundation of love, has shifted over time?

SPEAKER_01: You know, I think for myself, it's honestly something that I think is really kind of this magical thing that came about, what happened to me.

And because of me being plunged into this world of darkness, into this world of unknown, you had to start trusting on people.

You had to start leaning on people like I never had before.

And you could say that I started trusting people more or leaning on people more, but yeah, out of necessity.

And so, for example, when I first went blind and for a long time, going into you know a public restroom when we're at the the restaurant, going into a restaurant, you know, restroom when when you're blind, that's can be like a maze that you can never find your way out of.

And so I learned I learned to not be hesitant to ask somebody for help.

So if there's a guy walking in the restroom at the same time, like, hey, can you help me get to wherever I need to go?

Help me find the sink.

And so, you know, in that little instance, I'm putting my trust in people.

And to be honest, I think to myself, what a beautiful kind of way that is with life is because it allows me to open myself up in something that I feel like all of us should do a little bit more because we live in a life where we're so guarded.

We think of everyone as out to get us, or like everybody's the bad person.

And therefore, it keeps us guarded from experiencing all the amazing people that are in this world.

And so, you know, for for me, having to trust people, having to rely on help from other people, especially like I said, in the years, you know, right after becoming blind, you know, it does to me, it's really been like this magical thing because it's opened me up to get to experience all the good in the world.

Because I can tell you, there's way more awesome people than there are bad.

SPEAKER_00: So you're saying that there's not people ready to jump out of bush every corner to attack you?

SPEAKER_01: At least not in my neighborhood.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a beautiful response.

I think the next natural question would be then, since you're talking about the power, the magical power of opening up, how do you view surrender?

Like what does surrender mean to you, Kevin?

SPEAKER_01: Surrender for me is letting yourself because I feel like for me, when I think of the word surrender, I do, I think of that of letting your guard down, of letting yourself stop thinking about the past, you're worrying about the future, and literally being present in the moment.

Whatever that is, whether it's a difficult situation you're in, whether it's a relaxing day at home, but literally surrendering to that moment and allowing your body that opportunity, your mind, that chance to focus on whatever that is and stop worrying about what was or what will be.

SPEAKER_00: Amazing.

I'm gonna tie this into my background in mental health, where this is a general blanket statement.

There are nuances at the same time, at large, anxiety is ruminating fear about the unknown or the future, and depression is being depressed, depleted energies, and feeling down about the past.

And you're saying that surrender and the magic of life lies in the present.

And I just want to highlight that because I think that's beautiful.

I feel like nobody understands this better than you.

How did you come to understand that physical health is mental health, Kevin?

SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.

What caused me to go blind was a brain tumor.

And the brain tumor, it took more from me than just my eyesight.

It also killed off my pituitary gland.

Now, if you know anything about the pituitary gland, you know that that controls all of your body's hormones.

And so here I am, this kid, a teenager, and I wasn't growing.

I hadn't gone through puberty.

I'm 17 years old.

I'm only five foot three.

And it was because of this tumor that we didn't even know existed, was literally killing off my pituitary.

So I had the tumor removed and saving my life because the tumor had literally it was pressing against my carotid artery.

And at the time that they found it, they literally gave me six months to live.

And so we went in, we had it removed, and we weren't prepared for obvious the fact of me waking from surgery to be left completely blind.

That was not even in the equation.

We weren't expecting the fact that I would lose my sense of smell, but we really weren't expecting the toll that would be put on me for the rest of my life of having no pituitary and just the results of having this brain surgery to begin with.

And so to the outside world, they look at me and they see my disability as somebody who's blind.

The reality is that me being what they call panhypopit, so having no pituitary function is honestly a far greater disability to me than being blind.

And I say that because being blind, there's things I can do to overcome this disability.

Yet with the other, yeah, I take all these medications that replace what my body should do naturally, but in that lies the problem is that it's not natural.

And so there's days when I just don't feel good.

My body is physically just not doing well.

And I can tell you that in those times, I find even me and my positive disposition, I get down because when your body is failing you physically, it's really hard to overcome that, you know, mentally.

And so that is how I would tie the two of those together and say that they are 100% related.

And even, I mean, you know, we can even look at the physical disability of blindness.

And yeah, that could very easily, you know, wreck me emotionally and stuff.

And I mean, and there's been hard times when it has.

Luckily, I've been able to fight through that and overcome it.

But yeah, 100% I believe both of those are tied in directly with one another.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's amazing.

I appreciate your vulnerability, and I didn't even consider all these other complicated implications because of this medical trauma and surgery you went through, in addition to this blindness that literally robbed everything, the visuals that you care deeply about from you.

Can you walk us through?

Because, as you said, the day you found out about your brain tumor was like the true catalyst, even before the surgery, you woke up just at this utter, complete, absolute darkness.

So let's go all the way back.

Can you walk us through the experience when you first found out, maybe in the doctor's office, about Kevin?

You have brain tumor, and you may have only up to six months of lifespan.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So I'll take you back.

So this was the year was 2003.

I was a junior in high school, living my best life.

I was, you know, a normal kid, had my own four-wheel drive, Ford F-150, grew up riding dirt bikes, four-wheelers, and loved to just be out in the woods mudding with friends or cruising down the beach.

And so, like I said, life was amazing.

But at the same point, though, we knew that things weren't right, especially my mom and my nana.

And because of the fact of what I stated earlier, I wasn't growing, I hadn't gone through puberty.

My eyesight kept getting slightly worse.

You know, I wore glasses from the time I was just a little kid, and yet none of the doctors seemed concerned.

They all just kept saying, Oh, he's a late bloomer, everything's okay.

So we finally have a change in insurance that my mom was waiting on, and she gets me an appointment with a new doctor.

Now, this was just a normal family doctor, no specialist or anything like that.

And I went into that appointment with him.

He pulled my mom out into the hallway, and he told her that he's like, listen, he said, something's not right.

I want you to get him to a specialist immediately.

And it was in that appointment that this doctor first said the words that we never expected was brain tumor.

And at that point, I mean, brain tumor, we're like, what is he talking about?

Until unbeknownst to me, back at home, my mom and aunt and other family members are doing research online, and they're realizing, oh my gosh, Kevin is the textbook definition of having this tumor.

And so I ended up, though, they scheduled an MRI.

I had the MRI.

My mom was the one who got the phone call on a Friday evening on her way home from work.

She was actually going to meet me and my stepdad and my little stepbrother to go out on our boat.

So living here on the east coast of central Florida, we're blessed with the intercoastal waterway, beautiful river running.

We would take our boat about an hour north of us up to St.

Augustine, Florida, and spend the weekend.

It was one of my favorite places.

We'd go, we'd dock at their marina and just spend the weekend right at the base of the uh infamous Bridge of Alliance.

I didn't know anything about my mom getting the phone call from the doctor until we were up in St.

Augustine because my mom decided to wait to tell me.

And I'm sitting down in the cabin of our boat and I'm flipping through one of my dirt bike magazines when my mom came and sat down at the booth across from me, and she told me that she had got the phone call from the doctor.

He said, We got the results of the MRI.

It's worse than I thought, and I have on the other line the office for the leading pediatric neurosurgeon in the country.

I need you to get an appointment scheduled with him immediately.

All I knew though when my mom told me the story was that I had a brain tumor.

And to be honest, I don't remember anything more than that.

All I can remember at that point was to me standing up at the top of the marina with my hands kind of my arms folded against the railing, staring out over the marina with this news that I had a brain tumor.

And like you said, we thought that was the big news.

That was it.

But the doctors, though, he's like, it's not a big deal.

He's like, I do these all the time.

And so they compared it to the size of a plum.

And I can still remember the MRI image in my head of you see the black outline of my head, and then right basically in the center is this big white mass.

And that was the tumor.

And he let us know that they would go in, they would remove the tumor, and everything would be okay.

He assured us.

He's like, we will end up having you, you'll be back to school in about three weeks.

And for me, the biggest kind of upset was that he told me I wouldn't be able to ride my new four-wheeler for six months.

And um, of course, as a 17-year-old kid, that was a big deal to me.

And so that's the mindset, though, that we went into surgery with was me back at school telling all my friends, see you later, suckers.

I'm out of here for a month.

Enjoy trigonometry, you know, and stuff.

And, you know, I just had fun with it.

Me and my personality, I named my tumor.

I actually named my tumor Bob, Bob the tumor.

And we literally, me and my family, we had a going away Bob party prior to surgery.

And, you know, it was this big thing because the tumor, the removal of the tumor, awesome, we're gonna get this done.

That's why I've had migraine headaches every day of my life.

That's why I'm not growing.

We get rid of the tumor, and life can get back to normal and be even better.

And that's what we went into surgery with the mindset of.

SPEAKER_00: I guess this is a weird connection, but I want to tie it together because I see some common threadline.

You talked about you went from air quote normal to air quote this new version of Kevin that you have to deal with, brain tumor, now blindness, everything in between.

I think another most recent event that had caught a lot of people off guard, going from air quote normal to this new normal of pandemic.

Do you see any connections or similarities with your ability to deal with this pandemic going all the way back to when you first dealt with this catastrophic, life-changing, earth-shattering moments of finding out tumor with being told had less than one percent of going?

Blind with possibility to waking up, being blind, and anything comes up for you there.

SPEAKER_01: No, like I've never, I don't think, like really related the two, but it goes back to that of adapting, adapting to change.

And the fact of the matter is, is that throughout life, whether it's a brain tumor or a global pandemic, we all have change in our life.

And I feel like it's how we can adapt to it.

And you know, the pandemic, a lot of people adapted very well.

I mean, it took some getting used to, but people adapted to staying at home or working from home.

Goodness gracious, it came time to go back to work and people start complaining.

What do you mean?

I gotta put on the suit again and can't stay in my PJs, you know?

You know, and it's just this thing of adapting.

And so, you know, and and I feel like that is kind of a thing with me, with my life is a series of events that have made me either adapt or just kind of get swept up with it and have it overtake your life.

Instead, you can take the negative, you can appreciate it in the fact that you recognize it, you understand it.

Now let's figure out how to utilize it.

How can I go with the momentum rather than fighting it and ultimately just using the change to benefit us?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that reminds me of one of your mission statements on your website, Kevin.

You talked about you believe that going blind is one of the best things that happened to you, and you're deeply grateful because it almost ignited this deeper than self mission deep inside you through faith, through grace, through grit.

And of course, that's like the name of your podcast.

So, like, how did you approach your career pivot to full-time podcasting and live coaching and doing all these media appearances now in light of this world catastrophic pandemic?

SPEAKER_01: You know, at first for me, it was devastating.

You know, I had this travel agency that I'd built for the past seven years.

And in going into 2020, I was so excited.

It was gonna be my biggest year on record, including a massive trip for me and my family.

I think there was close to like 35, 40 of us going on a big cruise in October of 2020 to celebrate my anniversary of when I went blind.

Now, here's what's cool about this.

So, Kevin, as you kind of learned, I'm kind of positive and I like to celebrate stuff.

Well, coming up on the 17th anniversary, I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

I'm like, this is a big anniversary.

I'm like, because the anniversary in 2020 meant that I would now be blind for as long as I had been able to see 17 years sighted, 17 years blind, and it happens to be in the year 2020, of course, a number anonymous with vision.

And so I literally had created as a travel agent this massive group cruise experience called uh redefining vision in 2020.

And so, like I said, 2020 was set up to be amazing, and then of course, the pandemic wrecked it all for us and and you know rained on our wedding day, and so it was a big deal to watch the travel agency that I'd built literally kind of crumble to the ground within literally a week's time.

I think every trip I had on the books canceled.

Now, at first I had this mindset of, okay, wait for this to, you know, get past, you know, weather the storm.

Now, the cool thing about my life is I can see where it's kind of like these chapters of my life.

And being a travel agent, building my own luxury travel business was great for me, but deep down I knew that wasn't really what I was meant to be doing.

Because I've always had this mindset that I have believed that God had what happened to me for a reason.

And I believe a good reason at that.

For seven years, I got to build a business.

I got to prove to myself that even though you're blind, you can still have your own business.

You can research trips, you can put together people's, you know, couples' luxury honeymoons and do all of this.

Yet at the same point, though, as I said, deep down I knew that's not what I'm supposed to be doing.

It's not really pulling on my gifts.

So here it is 2020, the world shut down, we're in quarantine, my travel agency is all but, you know, as I like to say, you know, took a nosedive in the shallow end of the swimming pool.

And so what do we do?

And so my thought was well, you know what?

Maybe it's finally time to do a YouTube channel.

Because I had been wanting to do a YouTube channel for a while.

So I get on Amazon and I start ordering all the film equipment to do a YouTube channel.

And so, and I got my sister helping me out.

We're researching the stuff, ordering the different lights and all this.

And then all of a sudden, one day it just kind of hit me.

And I thought, Kevin, what have you done?

What are you doing?

You've spent all this money ordering film equipment and you're blind.

You can't do this by yourself, and your sister's not going to be able to help you every time you need to shoot a video.

Like, what are you doing?

And so, with that, I'm like, oh no, what do I do now?

Well, luckily, my sister was like, Why don't you do a podcast?

I'm like, what is a podcast?

She tells me about a podcast.

And I said, Well, that sounds like a lame alternative to a YouTube channel.

And so basically, then though, then though, I start researching podcasts and I start listening to podcasts about how to make a podcast.

And I'm like, it still seems like I'm taking a shortcut from a YouTube channel, but sure, let's give it a whirl.

And so I launched this podcast again, though, with the focus of it being all about travel, because I want it to drive traffic to back to my travel agency.

And so I launched the podcast in May of 2020 called The Lowdown on Life and Travel, and was doing that, but I started realizing though that people were really loving the content that was just about me or about the inspiring stuff.

And so all of a sudden, it was kind of this natural progression.

I'm doing the podcast and I kept getting better and better feedback about it.

Everybody's telling me, like, Kevin, you are so good at this, you're so natural at this.

This is amazing.

That's when the pivot happened.

I rebranded my show the first time to the lowdown with Kevin Lowe, loving the fact that I'm like, I am so thankful that the only vacation I have to book from here on out is for myself.

And so it was just this natural progression, and I fell in love with podcasting for this realm that I thought was a crappy alternative to YouTube.

I quickly realized, no, no, no, Kev, podcasting is your space, man.

Like you just entered the realm of audio where everybody's blind, and that's what was my gimmick for a while.

Was like, I want you to get to see people the way that I do.

And through a podcast, you get to do that by not seeing them, just like I don't.

And so that's where it's just kind of kept evolving from there.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I sense a lot of serendipity and this almost divinely intervention.

Sure, you're a positive, you like to joke around, you had this very amazing perspective of the world, but your voice wasn't that loud.

At the same time, after you lost your vision, your voice got the loudest, and people started gravitating towards your voice, which is your strength, which is your avenue, which is your main mode of communication with your blindness.

And I just want to highlight that and put it on the messaging board.

I think that's what you're talking about, right?

Often life presents us with these challenging obstacles and gifts that we cannot fathom at the time.

At the same time, through grace, through patience, through intentionalities, and amazing support that you had, you were able to not overcome, but turn the tide of going from disaster to something that's beautiful.

And I mean, I love your podcast.

You have this very amazing radio personality voice, and like your laughter is contagious, and obviously you found your calling, but the way you got your calling through grace, through God, is pretty amazing to hear, honestly.

SPEAKER_01: Oh man, well, thank you so much.

And you know, and that's how I tell people based on my own life's experience when you know that you're doing the right thing.

Because you know, we all struggle at points in life where are we going down the right path?

Did we make the right choice?

And I tell people based on my own experience, is it easy?

Do you feel like you're flowing with the river or trying to paddle against it?

If you're trying to paddle against it and you're fighting to make this what you want it, chances are that's the wrong path.

But if you can find that path where everything just comes together, it's like effortless.

It's like there's a greater force at work putting it all together, laying out the steps before you that's when you know you found your path.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that.

Are you swimming against the current or are you swimming with the current?

And that creates a pretty seamless transition into today's sponsor, actually.

So I want to mention today's sponsor real quick.

And this episode and the next two episodes will be sponsored by this brain booster drink called Magic Mind, M-A-G-I-C, M-I-N-D.co.

It's a brand that partnered up recently.

It's the best brain booster drink out there with four simple and wholesome ingredients of just matcha, which boosts your energy, adaptogens, which help you relax, neotropics, which keep you focused, and honey for just some heavy vibes.

And I've been drinking this for the past about a week now.

And the reason why I love this, as you said, Kevin, we have all different supports.

Some of us are being pushed and elevated by our family, some of us are being elevated and supported by our faith, and some of us don't have a lot of the toolkits that we do.

And I think why not take a supplement that has four simple, wholesome ingredients, and it has been documented by evidence and medical advisory board that they have to boost your mental health well-being, boost your functionalities, and just make you a more optimal being so that we can show up better for those we love.

And I'm going to take a drink of this.

It tastes like a pretty healthy green shot, but honey does make it taste pretty bearable.

And it gives you all the benefits of coffee without the crash.

And if you've been a longtime watcher or listener of the podcast, you know I drink espresso throughout the interviews, just so I'm on my A game.

But now I'm switching that to this magic mind booster shot.

So if you want to try this out and support your favorite podcast and also contribute to the mission of saving Amazon Rainforest, please check it out, the product, and purchase any one-time purchase for 20% off using my code Discover14.

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And speaking of feeling optimal, I think this is about halfway through the podcast.

So I'm gonna take a sip of this and write this waiver on.

Wow.

Oh, it gives you a little jitter at the end.

But um, yeah, like I said, I I really uh resonate with what you said in terms of we always have a choice of how we want to respond to things that's happening to us.

I have a personal curiosity, it may not land anywhere.

If it doesn't, I take full ownership.

Did you ever deal with any some sort of a mixed emotions?

Like maybe some resentment, some anger, some bitterness when you're operating at this high-level luxury traveling agency.

Booking travels for all the other people who have the eyesight, who can soak in the full experience of traveling.

Not that you can't, you still love food.

There are a lot more to traveling than just seeing sights.

At the same time, give your conditions, any mixed emotions you used to deal with, because emotions are complex.

SPEAKER_01: Matter of fact, I actually spin that right around.

And the big thing when I was booking travel was helping people to fully immerse themselves in a destination by not focusing on just what they see.

And and that was what my big thing was with the travel that I would book.

And for anybody traveling, is I would encourage people that it's so easy with our eyes to ride in the car and just look out the window at the sights, or to be in the hotel and just look out and oh, yeah, that looks pretty over there.

Well, instead, get out and experience it.

And that's where with the travel agency, I would literally use my life as this way of teaching them to get out there and experience the destination.

Don't just do this.

I want you to talk to the local people.

I want you to taste the local food.

I want you to try something that's maybe a little bit out of your comfort zone.

Because when we try new stuff, we meet new people, that's when we get to grow.

And that's what ends up creating the most amazing vacation that we remember forever.

SPEAKER_00: Man, I will love some of your DNA that allows you to see the positive.

I mean, that's cause right.

I mean, I think for a lot of people, they would deal with this resentment, this bitterness, these mixed emotions that I alluded to.

Yet you were able to flip its sable completely.

I mean, that's pretty amazing, honestly.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I'll be honest when I say that it took time to get there.

Because at first, after becoming blind, I was trapped in a world that I didn't want to be in.

I was trapped in a world that I lost dimension, I lost shape, I lost color.

And so for you know, a long time it was hard because I didn't want to learn how to see this world in a new way.

I wanted the world back that I had, I didn't want this new world, and it wasn't until I was able to kind of heal on my own time and finally kind of realize how beautiful this world is without my eyesight, too.

And be able to now, using my other senses, paint the picture of this world.

And like I said, in many ways, I believe today I see more of this world than people with eyesight because you sighted people get so stuck on your little eyes that you miss out on the experience of stuff.

I'm like, guys, I'm like, stop looking around and start talking to people, tasting stuff, you know, feeling stuff, and using your other senses to kind of help to further emphasize life.

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: That's uh I think we can just wrap up our interview right there.

I think that's a micron moment, but I have way more questions to ask.

So here we go.

So on that same breath, do you feel like, as you said, people with eyesight, the privilege of eyesight, we do get stuck or fixated on certain parts, the visuals, the social media, the phone, the incessant need to capture the moment rather than being in the moment?

On that same token, I think now everyone has some sort of a charade.

Everyone has some sort of a mask and facade they put on in different settings.

And it's not to diss that because the way you act around your spouse is not the same as you act around your boss.

So boundaries and context matter at the same time.

Do you think your blindness allows you to see past the mask, see past the facade and truly see what people are about, especially given your heightened and cultivated auditory receptions and everything in between?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, I do.

And I feel like it goes back to what I said earlier on, is when we were talking about trust, and when I talked about having to trust people to ask for help from people.

And I feel as though that ties in with this is not only having that sense of maybe needing to open yourself up to be vulnerable, which in turn I find helps other people to do the same, you know, and and at the same point, also just having a natural curiosity for people and wanting to know about people.

And I'm a big person of, you know, at times it can get a little bit frustrating for me when people can look at somebody and they form an opinion about them, whether they do it on purpose or subconsciously, but they immediately form an opinion about that person, about their life, about who they are.

Are they nice?

Are they mean?

Yet they've never even talked to them.

They've not asked them a single question.

Yeah, maybe that person just cut you off in the car.

Well, did you find out though what's going on in their day?

What have they just been through?

Before you get angry and paint them as some type of horrible person, open your mind and think, wow, maybe they've just been through some bad stuff.

And maybe I need to show them a little bit of grace.

Maybe I need to say a prayer for them.

And I believe that is the biggest thing of being vulnerable, being curious, and just understanding that beyond what we all look like, we're all just people.

And each of us deserve to be heard, we deserve to be known.

And deep down, we're all just the same.

We're all just people trying to make it in this crazy thing they call life.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, man.

I mean, the name of this podcast is called Discover More.

So curiosity is embedded in the ethos of this brand.

And I subscribe to the healing property and the healing nature of curiosity more than anything.

Because when you're curious about your mental health, you seek help, you seek healing.

When you're curious about your friends or the people you meet, you create new connections, new network, new love.

When you're being curious about anything, doors open up and magic awaits on the other side.

Could you share anything on top of your head that comes up from your life, either pre-blindness or post-blindness, where when you chose to lean into your curiosity, despite and in spite of the circumstances, what happened on the other side, Kevin?

SPEAKER_01: Oh wow.

So so this is a pretty big one.

So when I was in the hospital, when I had my brain surgery, there was another boy in the same hospital, the same age, with the same tumor.

His name was John.

And here you have these two young boys who they even said that the two of us even looked alike.

John did not get to come home from the hospital that day.

John would end up passing away.

I got to come home.

My mom got to keep her son.

John's mom did not.

Years later, and and while in the hospital, for the the few weeks that I was in there, I don't remember any of the time in the hospital after going into the operating room.

But during that time, you know, my family they looked out for John's mom because she didn't have a whole big family there.

It was pretty much just her.

Where I had just a huge family that took over the waiting room.

But they looked out for her.

They made sure that nobody messed with her, you know, they made sure that nobody messed with her stuff and and they looked out for her.

And my mom, you know, of course, built this, you know, bond between the two of them.

Well, anyways, years went by and and I heard about John and I heard about his mom.

And it always upset me because I always would ask, why would God choose me?

Why would God choose me to get to live and John to not?

Why did my mom get to keep me, but John's mom didn't?

And that curiosity and that weighing heavy on my mind finally, I don't remember what anniversary.

It was.

I finally got my mom to try and locate John's mom.

And we did through the power of Facebook and social media.

And I wasn't sure if she would want to meet me or not.

But she agreed.

And me and my mom, we met her for lunch.

And I got to meet her, John's mom.

And for myself, that right there is the biggest thing that's happened to me of being curious, of wanting to know people, of wanting to show compassion to let her know that I wish her son had got to live.

And I don't understand why God made it where I was the one who got to live.

And I wanted her to know that.

And I wanted to get to know her because I felt this deep connection considering these similar situations, two boys with these rare tumors in the hospital at the same time.

And so I got to meet her that day.

And because of the fact that I care about people, I want to get to know people.

And it led to that opportunity for me.

Locate John's mom.

And we did through the power of Facebook and social media.

And I wasn't sure if she would want to meet me or not.

But she agreed.

And me and my mom, we met her for lunch.

And I got to meet her, John's mom.

And for myself, that right there is the biggest thing that's happened to me of being curious, of wanting to know people, of wanting to show compassion to let her know that I wish her son had got to live.

And I don't understand why God made it where I was the one who got to live.

And because of the fact that I care about people, I want to get to know people.

SPEAKER_00: I think, you know, I see another connection with podcasting and this relational component that you have through curiosity.

As you know, half the podcasting is outreach, guest booking, connecting with people, with strangers across the world or the country, and you have a very finite amount of time to build rapport and create this genuine connections.

Because when that genuine connection isn't there, the contents or the episodes also aren't that solid.

People could tell the chemistry, even virtually or through their little microphones, right?

Anything comes up for you there in terms of that realm?

SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, I agree 100%.

You know, and I think the biggest thing is where I feel like the mistake can happen in terms of forming these connections and having these talks, you know, over a podcast is so many people come into a podcast and they they're ready for an interview.

And I always tried my best to set the stage because I always tell them, listen, you're not being booked for the today show.

This is a conversation, you know, and it because that's what some of them they're ready for a QA session.

They're ready for us to sit down and me be, you know, the interviewer.

And I'm like, no, I'm like, it's literally me and you sitting down at the local coffee shop, me curious to learn about your life.

And and I feel like that's the thing of whether it's podcasters talking with your guests or just people talking with new people is if you show people your genuine curiosity and you are genuinely curious to know more, it just makes the segue uh for just a beautiful conversation.

Uh-huh.

And like I said, I mean, that to me is the secret that's missing in the world today is people wanting to know about other people.

We live in a world where most of us don't know our neighbors, we don't know their name, much less who they are.

Yet what an incredible world it would be if we all knew each other, we understood each other, and and through podcasting, you know, it's just one way of doing that.

And, you know, I just think it's really awesome.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's funny you say that because the joke that I say on my show when I booked a guest is I was like, hey, I call it the interview because it's just an easier label, but then there is no job offer at the end.

Right?

It's not a job offer.

It's yeah, it's like conversational, like to say it's not the today's show, it's not a job offer at the end.

And like then that's why I love the nuances, because nuances are in the gray.

And the gray, I think that's where life and the essence of life and a lot of people's stories reside within.

It's in the gray.

And I think podcasting is just one of the many great avenues that we have to talk about the nuances, to talk about the gray.

Because, like you, when a lot of people just perceive you or put you in a box of, oh, Kevin is blind, then they're going to inevitably overlook a lot of amazing things you have to contribute, a lot of things that you bring in with you to whatever space you enter.

It's only when we let go of the boxes and burn down all the labels, I think that's when we can see the person sitting across from us, whether through camera or in person, for truly what they are.

And that's like the wholesomeness that I think we're talking about here.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Oh, I agree 100% is getting rid of the titles or is as I always like to use the example of the little children, we give them coloring books, and we give them pictures that they gotta color, and and it's coloring inside the lines.

Well, the reality is the picture is more beautiful when we stop being restrained to the lines, color outside of the lines, forming our own art.

That's when it's the most beautiful picture of all.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's like the modality of creative art or expressive art therapy.

That's like the whole ethos of just let go of the structure, let go of what your art teachers used to teach you in third grade, and just let your creativity run wild.

And that's very therapeutic and healing.

And that's a segue into this next question where during our qualitative process for the booking, you talked about one of your pet peeves and biggest qualms is well-intended people giving you their entitled opinions without truly understanding the context.

Can you share that story about when your family brought you on a cruise and everyone was like, Oh my gosh, Kevin, it's so great that your family brought you on a cruise.

And I know you talked about insert a big dose of sarcasm there, but we'd love for you to um bring us to that story because, as you said, some people and some events can make us stronger, faster, and bigger and more healed.

And at the same time, sometimes well-intended people can unknowingly cause more harm in some situations.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, of course, of course.

So the truth is, is it wasn't one situation, it's every situation.

So I've not been on a cruise in quite a while now, but back, you know, after I went blind, there was a series of times that we were going on cruises quite a bit.

And on every single cruise I ever went on, at least once during that cruise, just as you said, there would be somebody, some sweet person who would come up never to me, because I'm blind, so they can't talk to me.

They have to talk to whoever I'm with.

And so that's that's my mom, that's my sister, that's whoever, whatever family member I'm with.

And they have to tell them, oh my gosh, it's so wonderful that you guys bring him on a cruise.

And, you know, and I, of course, always I don't say this, but my immediate reaction that I want to say is, oh, I know, I just love it when they let me out of the cage to come play with the rest of the family.

And and uh, you know, and so it's really quite funny.

And so that's the one response we get, as if I'm locked in a cage and they let me out to come on vacation.

The other response, though, is people who come up and they ask, and this is the question that gifts me the most.

Why would you bring him on a cruise?

Why would he come on a cruise?

And those people, well, what do you mean?

Well, I mean he can't see anything, and that's where it comes back to that aspect I talked about earlier with travel is people get so locked up in their head that without the sights, what is there?

And so that's where I come back to that.

But most of the time, 99.9% of the people, you know, they're just curious.

You know what I say?

They don't know what they don't know.

And so the people when we're walking through a restaurant, that's generally what it happens.

I'm with whoever I'm with, say a family member, my mom, my sister, my dad, a friend, whoever it is, we'll be walking through the restaurant.

Well, people stare.

And my mom or whoever it was, my mom is the one who was really funny about this.

She used to, if she caught somebody staring, she'd stare back out of them, give them like the you know, mom a death stare, like, you better turn the, you better, you better look back at your plate, you know.

Kept telling them.

I'm like, the thing is though, I said they're not staring out of meanness or rudeness.

I said, they're staring because they're just curious.

It's something that catches their eye.

And I said, plus, I may very well be the biggest, best looking blind guy they have ever seen in their life, and their eyes are just glued to me, you know?

I mean, who's to say, you know?

You know, but that's where I go back to the thing of people ask me some stupid questions.

They say stupid stuff that, again, like I say, you cited people are so tied to your seeing eyes that you feel like there's no way you can do anything else without it.

Because I go and I talk to some schools and I go to middle school and elementary school.

Elementary school, the funnest kids to talk to are the little ones, the kindergartners and first graders, because all they want to do are ask me questions.

And those kids, I build myself up to be the next blind superhero.

So by the time I'm leaving, they're like chanting my name, asking, telling.

I the last time I had a kid going, I want to go blind, you know, and stuff.

And I'm like, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Win, win, win, Kev.

But what the funny thing is, is that the silly questions that the little kids ask me are the same questions that adults ask me.

I'm like, there's literally no gap between a kindergartner, what they want to know, and what an adult wants to know.

Like, well, I don't understand how do you get know that you've got all the shampoo out of your hair in the shower.

I say, well, do you look at your hair in the shower to see that you got all the shampoo out?

You know, you know, it's so, and so, so like I said, you know, if lesson learned, I think the public service announcement is maybe to avoid yourself looking like an idiot more so than offending somebody, just maybe think what the answer could be of your question before you ask it, and have yourself kind of embarrassed later on.

SPEAKER_00: So I know in classrooms and like colleges, professors and everyone always says, Oh, ask away, there's no stupid questions.

I mean, let's be honest, some there are some stupid questions.

I mean, it's not it's not possible that all questions are great.

That's just not realistic.

But I mean, that felt um, yeah, that's the hardest I've laughed in a while on an interview.

So I appreciate that um dose of uh comedy.

I think I this is an appropriate segue to do some more psychoeducation or just educations about the spectrums of blindness.

As you chatted offline when we first came across each other, I share with you that one of my favorite humans and my dear mentor, uh Will Pham, if you're listening, shout out Will.

He's also fully blind, and he's the first person that helped me break away from a lot of the stigma, a lot of the misdemeanors and misconceptions of what it means of being blind.

So I credit a lot of my knowledge and my exposure to him.

And the caveat I want to provide is a lot of people, yes, we're joking about you know, some people are just being stupid, or some questions aren't the brightest.

At the same time, there's not a lot of information out there about a lot of disabilities.

What does it mean to be deaf?

What does it mean to be blind?

Is it a spectrum?

Because I think people are allergic to the word of spectrum, even though spectrum by definition means it's a wide range.

So uh I want to go into about like echolocating and like what does that entail since we talked about you're like the Daredevil from the Marvel Universe without the expensive five suit and jumping across the rooftops.

So, can you walk us through the very deeply meaningful training you went through in LA, which gifted you this ability to echo locate through this echo locating techniques that a lot of bats and a lot of animals utilize?

And finally, what that was able to allow you to air quote see some shapes and forms uh without the color per se, and everything in between, so that people know what it is and people can equip themselves with a little bit more knowledge and exposure to the realm of blindness.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

So, after going blind, I'll kind of give you a segue up to the exciting part.

And after I went blind, you know, I got introduced to a whole new world of learning how to read braille, how to use a talking computer, how to get around with a mobility cane.

And so I took all these classes, you know, with the mobility cane, and and that's the the infamous white cane that blind people use.

Although I like to go against the grain, and I thought white was boring, so I actually have a really cool blue cane, and because I figure, what the heck, anyways.

Fast forward up until the year 2017, and I have a friend at the time, you know, I was still a travel agent, and I had a fellow travel agent tell me about this YouTube video she saw of this guy who is completely blind, yet he's riding bicycles and he's skateboarding and he can do all this cool stuff.

And so she sent me the YouTube video and I watched it, and as exciting as it was, I was so confused and yet at the same point really kind of depressed, and thought, well, God, why can't you let me be able to do that too?

You know, if if he could do it, why won't you let me?

Well, with a little bit more research, I realized that this guy, his name's Brian Bushway, at the time was an instructor with an organization called World Access for the Blind.

And this was an organization that was going around the world teaching blind people how to use echolocation, something that I had only heard of one time before and thought it was just some unique thing to that person, and ultimately ended up booking to go train with this guy, Brian Bushway, in Los Angeles, California.

And we went out there and I was to train with him for a week.

Now, it's not in any type of high, you know, technological building with all these tools and stuff.

No, literally, my mom was to just drop me off at his house each morning, and me and him would work around his house, around his neighborhood, and ultimately just start traversing Los Angeles.

So this is the exciting part.

The skill of echolocation is exactly as you said, it's like what dolphins use or what bats use.

And the thing is, though, is that we as humans can learn to echolocate by literally what happens is we retrain the visual cortex of our brain to see through sound.

And so before I went out there, I remember asking Brian, well, like, how long do you think it's gonna take for me to really be able to do it?

And he said, generally speaking, it's on the third day that it finally clicks together.

Now, days one and two were so frustrating because I'm trying to learn how to make this clicking noise, which is just a sharp little click with your tongue against the roof of your mouth, just a little snapping noise.

And you're making that click, and you're supposed to learn how to make the click for one thing, now supposedly use that sound to bounce off of objects around you that then come back and you hear and your brain interpret into an image.

I wasn't seeing nothing, I was seeing nothing, and I was frustrated.

Well, day three of training telling me about this one corner of the apartment, and he has me clicking at it, and then I click away from it.

I click at it, click away from it, until all of a sudden he kept having me back up further and further, and all of a sudden, it was like somebody turned on the light switch.

All of a sudden, that wall of the apartment it lit up in front of me.

It became this fuzzy gray color, and I literally could walk up to the wall and see this fuzzy gray, not touch it, not using my cane, and walk alongside the wall, seeing the fuzzy gray wall, and then all of a sudden, pitch black, like this deep, dark, deep black, opened up, and that was the doorway into the kitchen.

Literally, for the first time at that point, have been 14 years, for the first time in 14 years, I could see again, just in a whole new way.

And I can remember being so excited when my mom and sister got home that afternoon to tell them about what happened.

And I remember telling them, and I am just elated with excitement that here it was the third day, just like Brian said, and I could see the walls of the apartment, I could see the doorway into the kitchen.

And I remember my mom's reaction was what was priceless was my mom was starting to cry.

And she was telling Brian, my instructor, she said, You have no idea what it means to me to hear my son say that he can see again after 14 years.

And that day would truly change my life forever.

Because now no longer is this world two-dimensional.

No longer do I only see what the tip of my cane touches.

Now, with echolocation, I can walk out my front door with a couple of clicks.

I can see the car, the shapes of the cars in the parking lot.

I can see where the garbage can is to walk over and grab it.

Used to, I'd have to just walk out and use my cane, kind of swinging it around until it hit the garbage can.

No, now I do a couple of clicks and I see its shape and I walk over and I grab it.

And the coolest thing is on the sinks, like uh the faucet of the sink that's like a shiny metal, those shiny metal surfaces.

I describe the echo that comes off of those.

The image that I get is kind of like a commercial for like some fancy like wine glasses.

And so it shows that spark coming off of it, like the little ping.

It's so shiny, it's got that.

That's how it happens.

When I do a click walking up to a faucet, right off of the metal surface of the faucet, I get that little ping, and I can reach out and touch the faucet.

It's literally been the most life-changing thing in the world.

And for myself, though, I thought this is ridiculous.

Why didn't I learn this before?

Why, you know, I spent 14 years, 14 years could have been spent learning and improving this.

Why'd I have to wait so long?

Well, the fact is that the blind community is wrapped up in this idea that they want to protect what was as if this echolocation is some type of new alternative medicine and that it's not real.

Well, baby, let me tell you, it is so real.

And it doesn't replace it doesn't replace using a cane.

No, I still use a cane, I still go sided guide, which means holding onto the arm of somebody.

But what it does is it opens up the world where now I can preview my environment, and no longer am I just only able to see what I can touch.

Finally, one day I just sat there and I smiled and I thought, God, you're so awesome because you let me see.

Again, just in a whole new way.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there is a lot there, and I think often we don't necessarily get to a point of appreciating something unless we have experienced a loss of something.

And in a way, you were extra grateful, in addition to you're just being a grateful person overall and a very positive thinker.

I think you really treasure the rareness and this amazing ability to see not the colors, not the colorways, not the landscapes as we do as sighted folks, but nonetheless, seeing shapes.

And it's crazy that different textures of surface have different images that surface.

I mean, that's I mean, I feel like we can spend another two hours just on echolocation specifically.

At the same time, we're just the vehicles for resources and information.

And I encourage whoever is listening just to tune in and discover more on your own about the world of blindness.

Maybe you know some blind folks in your lives and the possibility of what echolocation could be for them if you want to pass this along.

And I tie this into mental health in a way that I think in America, the or we are so big on A or B, therapy or medications, therapy or mindfulness, meditation or X, Y, and Z.

It's and you can do therapy and meditations, therapy and medication if that's needed, mindfulness, meditation, journaling, showering, exercise, rest, good diet, good nutritions, and therapy.

Whatever that healing may look like for you, it's all different.

And I pray and I hope that the blindness community one day can take that leap of faith and accept that, oh, we can do both.

Kane and echolocate, because it's all about bettering and improving the quality of a life, whatever that avenue may look like, right?

SPEAKER_01: Exactly.

It's all just as I say and I explain it to people, is the echolocation, it's just another tool that I now have to help make living in this world of darkness a little bit easier.

That's how I view it.

That's how I view it.

Is they're all just tools that we have to help us with the adversity that we're facing.

SPEAKER_00: With a lot of the amazing folks you interview that are on your show and the amazing folks you work with on and offline, could you curate like a quick short handbook for folks and write down some of the important universal truth that you've learned in the avenue of podcasting and coaching, and also from your own interpersonal experiences.

What are some of the bullet points or important universal truth that will be on the handbook?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Oh wow, I love this.

So the first thing that I'm gonna tell you to do in this handbook is something that I'm gonna take it from something that I've spoken about before, and I actually did a podcast episode about it long, long time ago.

Is is I believe that all of us need an equation to live by.

So back when I became blind, I don't know why I created a motto for myself.

I don't know why I created a motto that is the form of an equation.

I guess middle school algebra paid off somehow.

And um, and in the fact that I created an equation, and the equation is faith plus family equals a life worth living.

And I encourage everybody to have an equation that equals a life worth living for you.

And so I always, you know, form it up, you know, you have your variables, mine, you know, the faith and family.

Replace those with whatever it is.

Figure out what that is, which I call that's your base.

When you're at the lowest of lows and you have nothing else to look forward to, you have no other reason to get out of bed in the morning.

To be honest, you're just over it.

You're done.

Well, what is that base?

What is it that's gonna give you the fire inside to keep fighting the fight?

And so I would encourage you to create that equation, that life's equation of X plus Y equals a life worth living.

So that's the biggest thing.

The other thing that I get from my guests is the reminder that in this life, one thing is for certain, and that is the fact that bad things are gonna happen.

We're all gonna go through some stuff, but it doesn't matter what happens to us.

What matters is how we react to it.

It's the mindset that we have.

There was a woman who I interviewed on my podcast, she was living her best life.

She's living in the Bahamas, enjoying life, was a day trader, making money, enjoying just partying all day until she took a dive off of the dock and hit her head in the sand and became a C6 quadrupagent.

That woman has more life to her than anyone I've ever met in my life.

And when I interviewed her and she told this story, and she told the story about being transported to the nearby hospital in Miami, Florida, and the doctor coming in and telling her, you know, that she was paralyzed.

She said, I laughed and said, Well, yeah, no duh.

Tell me something I don't know.

And at first, I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, back it up.

I'm like, for real?

She's like, yeah.

Well, the more I talk to Allie, the more I realized, yep, that's Allie.

She would be the person who does that.

And so I think that's the biggest thing is realizing life, it's gonna get in the way.

Bad things are gonna happen, but just focus on the way that you react to it.

Tied in with that, the third item I would tell you is don't get so focused, though, on worrying about something happening.

Because if we worry ourselves about the what if, the what could be, you're gonna lose the opportunity to live for today.

And that's what this life is all about.

I thought to myself before, maybe I wished I had known what was gonna happen to me when I became 17.

You know, if I could have known, would it have made things different?

And yeah, I think it would have, in a very negative way.

Because I would have lived every day with a time clock ticking by on my life, on my sighted life.

Instead, we have to be focused on living this life for everything it's worth at this very moment.

And I think the last thing that I would say as part of this guidebook is that you are capable of so much more than you give yourself credit for.

So many people they hear my story and they tell me there's no way I could do it.

And I say, Oh, yeah, you could.

Because if you had asked me on October 27th, 2003, if I could handle it, I'd have said no.

But that's why God doesn't let us know what's gonna happen.

That's why we don't get a say.

And the fact is, is that you are strong, you are capable of doing amazing things in your life, even when faced with adversity.

And I feel like if you can remember that, then it kind of takes away the worry of the what if.

Because you realize at some point in time, the what if is going to happen.

But hey, that's alright.

I'll just evolve and I'm capable of moving past it, becoming a bigger, better person because of it, and that's alright.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, not much to add there.

Beautifully beautiful said, Kevin.

Just a quick side note that I would want to add on to that is similarly for us to best enjoy the fruitful, restful period of the weekend is if we earned the Saturdays by working hard, diligently, showing up during the week.

If you're on vacations or if you don't have a lot of work or whatever engagements or requirements during the week, the weekend isn't as enjoyable.

And that is a fact.

A lot of people are like, Oh, I want to live a life of freedom.

I do what I want with absolute freedom, no limitations.

Talk to folks who have tried that way.

It's actually a lot more depressing because when you feel like you can do everything, you can't do anything because it's like this the idea of limit constraint, freedom is better than absolute freedom.

Uh, and that's very meta like that.

And we're definitely coming towards the end of the podcast, and I think it's a beautiful way to hit you with this question before the signature hallmark discover more questions, and then I'll roll out the red carpet for you with your new, most recently rebranding effort going from down low with Kevin Lowe with grit, grace, and inspiration, which is a current name of your podcast.

I love it.

What does grit, grace, and inspiration mean to you, Kevin, today and every single day?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so for me, grit is is kind of goes to the topic we were just talking about.

Is life is challenging, it's hard, but with the grit, uh we can get through it.

Sometimes we gotta get down and dirty, we gotta dig deep, we gotta find parts of ourselves that we never even knew existed before.

But we get it grace for myself, Grace is giving yourself the grace to realize that you are going through hard stuff, that life is tough and it's okay.

You don't always have to be the top of your game, you don't always have to be the shining, you know, example of the ideal person in life.

You know, you can wake up and have a bad day, and that's okay.

Give yourself that grace, that understanding.

And then, of course, the inspiration is the fact that I believe we should all always be striving to inspire others and looking for people to inspire us.

And, you know, and that's where just inspiration comes into play is if we can inspire people, if I can inspire somebody by just sharing about my story, well then man, isn't that awesome?

And that's where I've always said that, you know, I came to a point in my journey where I said, you know, if by me going through what I've been through, becoming blind, if I can now use that to be a benefit to somebody else by inspiring them, well, then I have to believe that all that I've been through has been worth it.

SPEAKER_00: Amen.

Mike Draman indeed.

Beautiful, beautifully said.

Yeah.

So with that, I want to enter the signature, discover more questions.

Since the question is twofold.

Fold one is what are some of the areas or topics or domains in your life, Kevin, that you're excited to discover more about after this very, very meaningfully insightful conversations.

And the second fold is what is an area in both of our respective listeners' lives that you want to encourage or even challenge them to discover more about after finishing this episode with you.

SPEAKER_01: You know, the conversation for myself has just kind of opened a light to just this avenue of wanting to just be sure that I am continuing to do what I'm on this mission to do.

And that, you know, that my life's equation continues to be my north star.

And and to be sure that every day I practice what I preach.

And I think that's something for all of us to strive to, you know, because it's easy to say it, it's another thing to do it.

And so for myself, that, you know, out of this conversation today is just been just kind of that light to kind of light me up and remind me that, you know what?

Yeah, you've been through some stuff, you've had some hard times, but Kevin, you've done it, you're doing it.

So just keep digging deep now and don't give up.

You know, I would encourage you after you finish this episode to just get out there and see how much of this world you've been living in where you've only been focusing on what you can see.

And the biggest part of that that I would encourage you with is the people that you do life with.

I'm not even saying that you got to go out there and talk to strangers, but I'm wanting you to talk to your own family, your own friends.

And instead of answer and then you guys go on about the day.

Actually, really ask them how was your day and listen to what they have to say and ask them again.

Oh, okay, well, you know, why do you feel like that happened?

Or, you know, well, did were you happy about that?

Get into this mindset of conversation, of opening your mind and wanting to know the people that you already do life with, because the fact is we can live with people and then basically be strangers because we get caught up in life.

And instead, let us just give each other the time that they need.

Give them the grace to share about their life.

In return, you do the same.

And I feel like that's the small little piece that can play a role in making just life in the world better for all of us, is if we can start engaging people in conversations, meaningful conversations, and truly caring about what they have to say.

SPEAKER_00: Amen to that.

Once again, I'm going to take that challenge myself and really recognize and to see what other aspects of life I could care more about or emphasize more about rather than the things that we just see, the plain sights that we've been talking a lot about throughout.

SPEAKER_01: If you also want something a little bit more lighthearted and to try checking out Kevin's world, the next meal you eat, close your eyes and see how that works for you.

Because from my experience, um, I've done some uh and you all eat a dinner and the lights are completely off, it's completely black.

People have come out of there, my own family patting me on the back saying, Kevin, I have no idea how you have been able to get the fork to your mouth each and every time.

SPEAKER_00: So yeah, the um that's amazing.

The uh add-on to that is in New York City they have a lot of restaurants of dining in the dark for like romantic first dates.

And I think that's something it's like a cool experience, like a novel experience where it's not just for the novelty, but it's exposure into the unknown and a new experience that a lot of us sight of folks don't have the opportunity to.

So I might take today's lunch with my eyes closed so I can model that uh challenge myself.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I'll I'll text you to see how that goes after the fact.

So this is the red carpet moment.

I very much enjoyed these conversations.

Your humor, your graciousness, your grit, the inspirations behind your experiences through the avenue of storytelling really, really spills through the screen.

And I'm honored to be sharing this two hours with you today.

So let me roll out the red carpet for you where can people check out more about you, the projects you have going on, the amazing content and toolkits you have to offer from your website, coaching to podcasting and everything in between.

SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.

And you can go to the cast episode, uh, comes out twice a week, every Tuesday and Friday.

And uh and then also, you know, right there, if hop on over to the coaching page there on the same website, and you know, reach out to me.

I would love to you know set up a time for us to chat.

I would be glad to you know offer you, you know, a free, you know, 30-minute coaching call, fill out the contact information, send me an email.

All the amazing.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, check out.

I strongly recommend checking out his website.

He has an amazing team with the web design, a lot of seamless features so you can navigate from the podcast page to the service page to the coaching page and everything in between.

And uh, this is where I encourage all the listeners to uh check out the YouTube channel with Discover More Podcasts on YouTube.

All the video contents are released every Wednesday and Sunday, and the audio episodes are released on the following Monday.

And if you can really subscribe, like, and share this episode with one person if you derived any benefits and values from this episode, and that's the best way to encourage me to continue to seek out these amazing, amazing, and inspiring guests who are all about authentic life stories because authenticity is really rare now in 2022 more than ever.

And I I myself derived a lot of toolkits and amazing motivations and perspective from this episode.

So if you want to subscribe to my YouTube channel or tune in and share this on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your dose of podcasts on a weekly basis.

With that being said, I will include all the show notes in the episode below as always.

And immense gratitude to everyone who chooses to tune in week after week.

And we're approaching our three-year journey on the podcast.

So your attention and your ability to choose curiosity every single day means more to me than you will ever know.

And I appreciate your time, space, and as always, hope to discover more with you next time.

Thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_01: Hey, real quick before you go, I have one last thought to leave you with.

I wish I could overcome my own challenges and do the great things that they are doing, but I just can't.

Well, friend, that's where you're wrong.

unknown: You're wrong.

SPEAKER_01: You are capable.

You are able.

And you darn sure are deserving of having all that you can imagine in this life.

There's nothing special about me or any guests I have on this podcast.

We are all just normal people trying to make it in this life.

And so I encourage you to take a look at yourself in the mirror and remind yourself that you know what?

I can do it too.

Now, of course, if you would like help along that way, reach out to me, whether that's as a listener of this podcast, a brand, or if you'd like to work with me as a code.

My contact information is inside of every episode of show notes, just like this one.

So go down, check out my contact information, and reach out to me today.

With that said, I encourage you to take on the day every day.

And then for it.