Chad E Foster - Blind Ambition. From Victim to Visionary

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[00:01:04] Then search for Resilience Unravelled. So let's get started. Enjoy the show! Hey and welcome to Resilience Unravelled. And I'm looking forward to this one. I'm talking to Chad E Foster.

[00:01:20] And we've just had a very, very quick chat and can tell immediately that Chad is from across the pond. So first of all, hi Chad, how are you doing? I guess in where you are, it's this morning.

[00:01:32] Absolutely it is. Thanks for having me. Appreciate the opportunity to have a conversation. And where in the world are you? I live in Atlanta, Georgia on the east coast of the US. Right. Okay, I was there last year. It's an interesting sort of town, isn't it?

[00:01:49] Very, very interesting town. There's a lot going on. High of culture. That amazing Mercedes-Benz stadium is quite staggering, really, isn't it? It's a nice stadium actually. They've done quite a good job over there with the experience.

[00:02:05] I've been there a couple of times and it's pretty enjoyable. They've really up-leveled the experience over there from the stadium they had before. But it's interesting that stadium they'd had before was only there, what, 30 or so years? 35 years?

[00:02:18] And so the turnover here in the US seems to be pretty interesting. I think we have a tendency to replace buildings much more than you all do in Europe. I think you all tend to have a bit more tradition and culture as it relates to that.

[00:02:30] We just tend to tear things down and rebuild them. Well, I mean, yes, that certainly happens with your housing stock as well. But I think sometimes it's a bit like a lot of modern life, isn't it?

[00:02:40] It's built to only last a certain amount of time. It's like washing machines and white goods and computers and things. Everything is designed to have worn out in five years' time. Can't imagine why. Well, it's not that helpful for the business model if it lasts forever, right? Exactly.

[00:02:58] How do you sell things that don't need to be replaced? Now look, we're on to philosophy now. We don't need to talk about that. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Chuck, because you've got a fascinating story. Yeah, I've had a bit of a unique journey.

[00:03:14] Honestly, I went blind at 21 years old due to an inherited eye condition called retinitis pigmentosa. It was the family eye disease that no one knew about. It was hidden in my family, meaning everybody... Well, my parents were carriers obviously.

[00:03:30] But none of them... No one in my family that we know of were symptomatic. And so it was the hidden family disease. It's autosomal recessive. And so it took having two parents that both were carriers to donate their recessive copy of that gene for me.

[00:03:47] And I went blind at 21 years old and I'd always been told at some point I could lose my eyesight. They told me that when I was about three or four years old all the way up through adulthood.

[00:03:58] But you know, when you're 16 years old and you're driving a car and you're playing sports and you're doing all the things that young boys do, you sort of feel like you're invincible. And I certainly felt like that until I didn't when I was at university

[00:04:11] and everything came crashing down on me. Was it an overnight thing or did it gradually fade to your sight? I think, you know, I would consider it... It certainly didn't feel gradual at the time

[00:04:25] but it was gradual. And so in... I'll give you an example, you know, when I was a youngster as in three, five, seven, nine years old I didn't realize that I had limitations on my eyesight and so I found out the limitations of my eyesight

[00:04:41] quite literally by bumping into things and so I would be playing at night, you know, or at dusk and realize that I couldn't see that well in poorly lit areas after I bounced off of the pipe on the back of a water truck

[00:04:54] as an example, had to go to the hospital or if I bounced off of a downspout, a concrete downspout or you know, I had a lot of injuries as you can imagine. So I was there at the hospital so much

[00:05:05] the staff there actually questioned both me and my parents in separate rooms as to whether or not they were abusing me. And the truth is, you know, they weren't abusing me. I was just learning the limitations of what I could and couldn't see

[00:05:17] and then as I started to get older and around 18, 19, 20 years old it really began to accelerate the deterioration of my eyesight that is and so by the time I was 21 years old I had to get a medical withdrawal from my classes

[00:05:33] by the time I was 23 I had to get a seeing eye dog and so from there it just kind of faded to black and that's kind of where I am now. I have some light perception but nothing usable

[00:05:43] and so yeah, it pretty much went from being able to see and participate fully to sort of living in a fog and now it's almost complete in utter darkness. I mean, I can't even begin to imagine it. I mean there's a sort of, there's a common cliché that

[00:06:03] if you lose a sense that your the full sense is strengthened. Is that something you've experienced? Yeah, I think so. I don't know if I would say that they've strengthened or that I have more awareness of them

[00:06:14] but you know the thing that I say that's a little tug and sheek it's like I've got nothing else to do but listen, so I'm a pretty good listener. You know, what I'm not distracted by what my eyes are telling me anymore

[00:06:26] so I've got nothing better to do so I may as well pay close attention to what the other person is saying and so the pace, the cadence, the tone, all the things and whether that's what someone's saying

[00:06:37] or what I'm smelling or what I'm eating or what I'm feeling obviously you pay more attention to the remaining senses that you have because if you think about it most people's brains are consumed with what their eyes are telling them

[00:06:48] that dominates a lot of what we're thinking about is what we're seeing and when you switch that off obviously you've freed up a lot of capacity to draw your attention to other things.

[00:06:58] So how did you, I'm sure there's a really tried question you've been asked this a thousand times but how do you cope with it all? Because I'm just saying if it was a slightly long period

[00:07:08] you had time to ruminate and worry and or was that time sort of used in preparation for the fact that you would lose the sight how did you begin to cope with this phenomenon that's happened to you?

[00:07:20] Not very well for a long time. I would love to tell you that I was productive and prepared and hit the ground running. Boy was I none of those things.

[00:07:31] I ruminated, I had a victim mentality, I had a really pathetic attitude to be honest with you at first and lived in that world for quite some time and then happened until I had an experience at leader dogs for the blind

[00:07:48] when I went to get my first guide dog there that completely changed my outlook on life, my trajectory and the way that I view not only my circumstances but all the challenges and obstacles that we face

[00:08:01] and see it was there when I met some people who really inspired me who showed me the meaning of perspective and the meaning of attitude and the meaning of anchoring yourself to gratitude

[00:08:14] to really frame your perspective in life and some of the folks there that I was with at this guide dog school they had mental impairments on top of being blind so they had multiple disabilities. Other people there had to go to dialysis every week

[00:08:29] because they had diabetes that had caused them to go blind and then there were these young girls there whom I'll never forget who were deaf and blind and the living courage exhibited by these brave souls

[00:08:45] really caused me to question my own victim mentality and look at myself in a different way and it honestly made me ashamed of the way that I had looked at my situation because here were these girls

[00:08:57] that people there would have to talk with an interpreter who would sign into their hands and that was literally the only way that they could communicate and despite these unimaginable challenges these brave souls were getting a guide dog so that they could travel the world independently

[00:09:18] and it's one thing when you just meet someone on the street and you hear how rough they have it but I live with these people for 26 unforgettable days and so during that time the true meaning of perspective and gratitude and appreciation just gets seared into your memory

[00:09:38] that's what happened to me I just I could not walk away being the same person as I was when I showed up it just completely changed my perception forever almost like a button I pushed a button or they pushed a button

[00:09:52] and the way that I looked at everything instantly flipped because you just you can't unknow that once you experience that you just can't unknow something so impactful and so meaningful So I mean did you have to go through a period of relearning everything?

[00:10:10] Yeah, yeah I did. I had to relearn how to learn. I was a very visual learner had a great memory could recall almost everything that I saw

[00:10:20] which obviously wasn't all that useful after I went blind and so had to relearn how to learn when I got back to college and turns out I was actually a better blind student than sighted student

[00:10:31] I developed a new learning system where my mother actually entered the scene at this point because they didn't have the quite the level of accommodations back then that they do now and so she literally read every single one of my college business books to audio cassette for me

[00:10:47] and you know the sacrifice that it takes to do that I'm sure she read those pages more carefully than a lot of my classmates and so I was inspired to not let her down and so I read the book twice

[00:11:02] I recorded the lectures with the micro cassette recorder I listened to all the lectures twice I had a note taker assigned by the university I ended up making straight A's from that point forward in my college

[00:11:14] a business major made the Dean's list for the first time and ended up going to work for a top consulting firm so honestly the way that my grades improved maybe I should have gone blind sooner Yeah well I suppose like you say it's perspective and distraction isn't it?

[00:11:32] I guess there's a lot of things you cannot do now so you can focus your attention into other places It's true, it's true. Yeah I think in college before I went blind I really enjoyed playing some video games once upon a time

[00:11:48] and obviously I'm not quite as good at the video games anymore as I used to be so that freed up some time So you were telling me that you were sporty and so how does that continue?

[00:12:01] Because I know there are blind sports and blind sports people aren't there? Yeah there are and so I will, there are a few things that I really enjoy doing

[00:12:09] I'm a gym rat so I like to go to the gym and work out I've been lifting weights since I was 14 years old but recently what I found because I used to play all kinds of sports basketball football American football

[00:12:23] all the things but you know wrestled in high school but now those a lot of those really aren't options so what I found is it's do still work out I go to the gym and I exercise three or four times a week

[00:12:34] but I also train in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu which is the martial art of grappling So I do that you know six, seven days a week it's all hands on doesn't involve any striking which is good for the blind guy because I would just end up being the punching bag

[00:12:47] So it's all choke holds and joint locks so it's self defense through these choke holds and joint locks so it is all hands on fully accessible and then the other thing that I really enjoy doing that's a bit more seasonal in nature is downhill skiing

[00:13:03] So we'll go skiing at least two or three weeks out of the year and I started that I started Jiu-Jitsu about I don't know two and a half years ago started skiing about ten years ago so in both cases I was totally blind

[00:13:15] pretty you know pretty far along in the years 38 years old when I started skiing totally blind and started Jiu-Jitsu at almost 46 years old decided for whatever reason hey it'd be good to get on a mat and have a 250 pound man try and chuck me out

[00:13:31] So how does downhill skiing work? I mean do you have a I mean please don't take this the wrong way I'm trying to imagine the dog in a ski in front of you but do you have a guide? I mean sorry Yeah no that's a funny picture

[00:13:46] No I love my dog so I don't want him out there on the mountain because he gets hit by a skier he's a goner. Someone skis behind me and so my ski guide will ski behind me and we're both wearing helmets that have Bluetooth earpieces and microphones

[00:14:01] and so the guide will call out whether we need to go left or right based on the terrain, based on the downhill traffic based on whatever's going on and obviously sometimes you want to turn sharper than others and there's not a lot of time for conversation

[00:14:20] when you're on the mountain and going 50, 60 miles per hour you can't really have a long conversation it has to be really crisp really succinct communication straight to the point to make sure that everybody stays safe and out of harm's way

[00:14:35] I mean that must need a fantastic amount of trust Yeah, how does that build? How do you build that level of trust in someone? I think with repetitions honestly I think that's the only way you can do it

[00:14:52] is just getting that experience with the guide and that is one of the things I usually, I rarely ski with new guides now because of that the communication is so important the trust is so important and so I've built a rapport with a handful of guides

[00:15:12] in different locations that we go and ski and it's just communication, I can't think of a more mission critical application of communication when you're going down the mountain at such a high rate of speed with nothing around you other than a helmet that you're wearing

[00:15:29] it is obviously crucially important to make sure that you trust, but I mean different words mean different people excuse me, different words mean different things to different people and the way that they're said, the tone being used the texture, there's a big difference between

[00:15:49] left turn and left turn and you start to learn the tone and the texture and how urgent and important the situation is based on your work with that guide and that guide learns my tendencies as well have a tendency to ski a certain way or accommodate

[00:16:08] terrain changes a certain way and they can help sort of manage the situation so yeah, tremendous amount of trust takes really good communication Fascinating, I know I've often watched rally drivers at work I don't know if you've seen rally drivers driving cars and they have a co-driver

[00:16:24] and what's interesting about that is the co-drivers read in the instructions for the turn after next so they'll be executing a long left turn and he's already telling them the next three or four turns because of the nature of where it goes

[00:16:40] is that similar to you that in a sense the guide is in front of you because they have to be able to ski themselves and to be in front of you to be able to tell you the stuff in the appropriate amount of time

[00:16:53] it's a heck of a skill isn't it? It is not for the faint of heart the job is not for the faint of heart so they're skiing behind me about, I don't know, 30 to 50 feet behind me which is, what is that, about 15 meters behind me, something like that

[00:17:11] and we're moving at a pretty high rate of speed and they have to not only watch the terrain what's in front of us they have to look out for traffic and then I don't know how it is there where you are

[00:17:27] but we get a lot of snowboarders here snowboarders don't always look behind them they have a blind side inherently when they're boarding down the mountain so they're not always watching where they're going and so you have to look uphill for traffic you're trying to forecast where

[00:17:46] the blind skier, the sided skiers, the snowboarders all of the terrain, the trees, the kids, the straightliners all of this will converge and you're trying to predict that in a split second what micro-adjustments need to be made in order to avoid collision and impact

[00:18:06] and doing so on some pretty aggressive terrain we're skiing some pretty aggressive terrain ourselves and so yeah it takes I think an extraordinary amount of not only skill in terms of skiing and communication but just managing multiple seemingly competing interests at once and staying calm and cool

[00:18:30] under some pretty high pressure situations Interesting, so how have you taken this approach these skills, this ability to communicate in a different way, the trust building such like how do you take that into the commercial world because I know you've worked in the commercial world for many years

[00:18:51] Yeah, I think it's in terms of trust and team building I think we're all finding particularly now with what COVID did how hard it is to build trust in a virtual environment and it's those micro interactions that we all experienced the water cooler talk, right

[00:19:10] the meeting before the meeting, the meeting after the meeting being able to really learn more about the person beyond the transactional nature of work really caring about the people that we work with and going above and beyond just getting work done

[00:19:25] and that was easier to do before COVID I think and with COVID and everybody's on zoom calls and everything it's just it's harder to have those interactions it takes more intentionality to build that trust to have those micro interactions

[00:19:41] and to demonstrate the caring beyond the transactional nature of work and I think we're kind of gravitating back towards that now we're in the post COVID world but I think I think we all kind of thought hey this is great

[00:19:53] we can work remotely and get more stuff done and I think that might be fine if you're working with the same team that you built relationships with before you went virtual but if you started on a new team and you're virtual

[00:20:07] it's really hard to feel like you're part of the team if you're not connecting with them on a very personal level and I think we're starting to see some of that now people are having to be more intentional about creating those micro interactions

[00:20:19] the before the meeting meeting and the after the meeting meeting because you can't get on a zoom call with 50 people and have a one-on-one conversation like you could in the hall beforehand well in fact what's fascinating now is the

[00:20:31] I mean I've just come off a zoom call before our meeting sort of a conference type thing and it's fascinating to see people multi-tasking which means they're not doing anything well and I think it's that diffusion of focus which is now really quite interesting

[00:20:47] which is what's interesting talking to you because of course you don't have that opportunity so much and I'm guessing there's also some software that allows you to do what you need to do but it's interesting not being in the room

[00:21:00] is actually a person of blessing at the same time sometimes isn't it? It is, it absolutely is So in your corporate career then you've done all sorts of quite interesting things but you've also got this as a truest and IT person Yeah I've done

[00:21:20] I started off in technology with Anderson Consulting now known as Accenture so I was on the technology side out of college was a business major in college I was in pre-med in college, went blind had to pivot and move into business I went into the business area, graduated

[00:21:41] went to work for Anderson Consulting and it's a technology consulting company where I had to write code for enterprise software and then taught myself how to write code to engineer my own software that I used to interact with a computer

[00:21:57] and so ended up doing that to help myself do my job more effectively and then I ended up pivoting from technology consulting into the business of technology and so helping companies sell commercial outsourcing deals for large technology transactions so think, you know, I don't know

[00:22:17] Zurich Financial Services or Textron or any large organization that wants to outsource all of its technology infrastructure and or applications to a technology services provider and so I did that, I started off doing the market intelligence for that and then pivoted into the pricing for those deals

[00:22:39] and as you can imagine to price a multi-billion dollar commercial transaction using, you know, keeping track of all the costs and all the capital that needs to be depreciated and all the cash flow and all the unit prices

[00:22:54] and all the things it takes a very robust financial modeling system and so I was able to do that and in fact to do that had to write code to connect my software with the spreadsheet application at a library level

[00:23:11] and so I wrote code to build that bridge between my technology and the spreadsheet system that we were using wrote over 13,000 lines of code so I was able to do that and excel at learning and managing that system and even got so good at it

[00:23:27] when Microsoft did not include a formula that I needed in my spreadsheet, I would just write my own formula using visual basic code and even went on to automate a lot of what we were doing on our global team so I think a lot of people were surprised

[00:23:43] like the blind guy who literally cannot even see his computer screen was automating the spreadsheet systems that the whole team used that saved everybody a bunch of time and money. That's an M. It just shows the nature of how people who experience a disability

[00:24:02] what they can actually achieve and yet so often people in wheelchairs or with blindness or deafness or whatever the condition might be they're often just written off aren't they because I don't know sometimes we don't have to deal with it

[00:24:15] don't have to cope them, don't know how to accommodate them what's your view on that? There seems to be a huge amount of wasted potential in that community. There is, I think what a lot of people don't understand is that these differences that we have

[00:24:31] actually give us gifts in certain ways certainly had I not gone blind I would not have been as technical of a user of my personal computer and or the ability to write the software I never would have had that the ability to understand the types of deals

[00:24:54] that I was constructing more effectively because my blindness forced me to be a technologist I had to become a technologist just in order to use my software the screen reading software and so my blindness actually gave me an advantage because it forced me to see the technology

[00:25:13] that we were both using to do our jobs and that we were pricing as part of our business it forced me to see all that technology more deeply and I think that's true for every person with a disability, I think their disability

[00:25:28] their difference and it doesn't have to be confined to people with disabilities every difference that we have gives us a gift if we look at it through the right lens and I think there's a rush to judgment certainly people have but they don't really pause and think

[00:25:45] somebody who's facing an extraordinary obstacle will have to come up with an unusually creative solution to deal with that and so some of the most innovative people I know are people who are dealing with extraordinary obstacles like a disability yeah, I think that's the thing isn't it

[00:26:04] you have to accommodate you have to be able to work around to let that person show their potential and I know you've written a book called Blind Ambition and you talk a lot about resilience in it and obviously this is the resilience podcast and obviously you've demonstrated resilience

[00:26:21] all the way through today but what's your view on resilience in the modern world do you think it's something that we need is it increasing, declining what are your thoughts? Well I think the pace of change in the world is unlike anything people have seen in generations before

[00:26:40] just technology alone is accelerating the pace of change that requires a level of resilience that is more than what people needed before and I think we've always needed resilience but I can't imagine a time where things were changing more quickly than what we find

[00:26:59] in today's modern digital world that we find ourselves in companies that were traditionally transportation companies are now becoming technology and information companies and so data and technology is upending industries all over the world and changing business models and I think it's you know now we have AI

[00:27:19] on the horizon and what will that do to the way work gets done so I think resilience is crucial I don't think we hear a lot quite frankly though in my view I hear a lot of speakers because I speak professionally

[00:27:31] and I hear a lot of thought leaders out there talk about resilience but a lot of it I don't really hear people talking about what it takes to be more resilient I hear people talk about trying harder and not giving up the need to push through

[00:27:48] and those things are true but they're not all that helpful when you're in the middle of the change curve so what I like to do when I speak to audiences is unpack the anatomy of resilience so that I can empower people to not be victims of change

[00:28:02] and not be victims of their circumstances so they can learn how to think more resiliently and the motivation, the persistence, the determination all of that naturally bubbles up from the inside because we shift our mindset and how we look at a given situation and you give an example

[00:28:18] about how you unpack that thing yeah so I think resilience boils down to five fundamental pillars there are five pillars of resilience and when I speak I organize all of my storytelling around these five pillars so pillar number one is you have to choose your response

[00:28:37] nobody gets to choose the cards that they're dealt in life the situations that they deal with but everybody gets to choose how they play each card so you have to learn, you have to start with number one, I have to realize

[00:28:53] that I have a choice on how to respond pillar number two is you have to tell yourself the right stories now for me when I went blind I could have sat around just telling myself that I went blind because I've got incredibly bad luck

[00:29:09] and that could technically be a true story but a better story would be that I went blind because I'm one of the few people who has the strength and toughness to overcome that and I could use it to help other people now technically both of these stories

[00:29:26] can be true, the good story and the first story but one of those stories instead of painting me as a victim it reframes my disability into my strength it takes my disability and says hey I went blind

[00:29:42] because I'm one of the few people who can deal with it and use it to help other people and by doing that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and not only am I mentally stronger but I can deal with my blindness but I'm also telling myself a story

[00:29:56] that I have an unusual amount of mental toughness which prepares me to deal with all of the other curveballs in life so this is a little Jedi mind trick that I like to use and you look it up in the clinical dictionary whatever it's called cognitive reframing

[00:30:12] but it really is the stories that we choose to tell ourselves about ourselves and about our circumstances pillar number three is we have to visualize greatness in our circumstances and sometimes this is even in unfavorable circumstances the bottom line

[00:30:30] for me is I had to figure out how to make blind look good and if I could never figure out how to make blind look good for me how could I ever move towards acceptance or thriving in my new conditions so it's important that we take a pause

[00:30:46] and step back that's anchor to our reality our factual reality but it's bold enough to inspire us to take action and do the hard work that we have to do to move forward which leads me to the fourth pillar which is where mindset meets action

[00:31:04] this is you have to get comfortable with discomfort because if you're never getting outside of your comfort zone then you're not growing it's where life begins life begins outside of our comfort zones and so I do this through lots of different things

[00:31:20] I mean I think the one that comes to mind immediately for me is jujitsu because I can't think of something that makes you more uncomfortable more often than getting on the mat and fighting and it's just you get to put yourself in so many uncomfortable situations

[00:31:34] but the funny thing is the more you move towards the discomfort the more you notice your comfort zone expanding and you learn to instead of being terrified instead of having your adrenaline take over and start breathing heavily and all the things you learn

[00:31:52] to just settle into the terror you learn to relax in the terror and start thinking more clearly and looking for a way out and that's because the more you move towards discomfort the more your comfort zone expands so growth always happens on the other side of fear

[00:32:10] and discomfort and then the fifth and final pillar that I talk about is take advantage of your disadvantages and that's because every perceived disadvantage in our lives offers us some advantage if we just use it in the right context I like that

[00:32:28] I like that leaning into the fear one I think that's quite interesting I mean clearly that's what you've had to do in a way isn't it so that makes a heck of a lot of sense but if you're someone who's not someone who's I don't know

[00:32:42] confident there's something along those lines frightened to go out agoraphil big or something along those lines how do you really lead into the fear because the fearsome time is what is your narrative and it's who you are if you're not careful isn't it

[00:32:58] can be but I think you just have to start small right you start small where so the first time I went skiing as an example I didn't go on a black diamond the first time I went skiing

[00:33:10] I didn't get my skis on let me get on and off the chair left let me get down the bunny slope you have to start where consequences are not too intimidating but at the same time you do have to move and it will be uncomfortable but what happens

[00:33:26] over time is that no matter how small you start that first action you take outside of your comfort zone starts to teach you that it's not nearly as bad as you thought it was going to be and that you're capable of more than you were

[00:33:44] giving yourself credit for and what happens over time is you start to stack up these small victories and these small victories lead to confidence and they lead to belief and they make it easier to tell yourself better stories about your circumstances they make it easier

[00:34:00] to have a bold vision of greatness that inspires you to take action and give you the motivation to do the hard work to get even further out of your comfort zone so it becomes a virtuous cycle where the small things that you do

[00:34:14] add up over time and give you that energy, the confidence, the drive to dream bigger and to go for more because what's ultimately happening is you're expanding and you're expanding your capabilities because you keep edging outside of your comfort

[00:34:32] zone but all of them are linked to one another and they become a virtuous cycle So you've read the book called Blind Admission as I mentioned earlier who did you write it for? That's a great question I think I wrote it I mean anybody who's

[00:34:55] facing a situation that they think is too much is daunting and you know I wrote it I don't want to say for everybody because if it's for everybody for nobody but it was one of those books if nothing else I think I wanted corporate leaders

[00:35:17] to be able to benefit from it I wanted my kids to be able to read it and benefit from it honestly I was thinking about that when I wrote it there were some drafts that we had I wanted to make it age appropriate

[00:35:31] for teenagers too because I wanted my kids to be able to read it and so it is a memoir and we talk about some things in there and I keep it at a level that I think kids can still read it and benefit from it, high schoolers

[00:35:43] and even middle schoolers but I really wrote it for the business leader and the person who's facing something that seems insurmountable and they're not really sure if it's possible for them to get out of the situation that they're stuck in how do they get to that next level

[00:36:01] so that was really who I was writing it for initially And what are the sort of key takeaways that people will get from buying this thing? I think it will show you how your perceptions often limit your potential and that the mindset shifts

[00:36:23] that you can use, some of which I've talked about here others are in the book and some of them are at the back of the book the self reflection exercises and I think it's important to have a sense of what you're doing

[00:36:37] and what you're doing with these exercises it really illustrates how we become well we are the byproducts of our thought patterns and by simply shifting our thought patterns in the way that we look at a given situation not only can we change our happiness

[00:36:59] we can change our success we can change our outcomes in life and things that we cannot imagine in the future are possible certainly I couldn't imagine being where I'm at today when I first went blind there's no way I could have imagined being where I'm at today

[00:37:17] I was too far stuck in that victim mentality the poor me space ruminating as I talked about earlier in the call and there's no way that I could have imagined having done what I've done to date when I was in the middle of that change curve

[00:37:33] I was on the other side of the fence on top of one another as I talked about edging out of my comfort zone it sort of pieces things together and I think the same thing is true for your listeners everybody can do more than they think is possible

[00:37:49] and I think this provides a roadmap for that, a guide for that and a proof point for that so that people don't have to be limited by their current situation by their current thinking patterns they can shift their mindset and they can achieve more

[00:38:07] than they ever thought possible Brilliant, well look obviously books hold blind ambition I'm guessing you can buy it in all good bookstops and I've just seen it on Amazon bought and sell copies so that's one sale you've got from this if people want to

[00:38:23] get in touch with you, find out more about your work give you some sort of speaking gigs where should they they can visit my website and it's ChadEFoster.com forward slash resilience or even just ChadEFoster.com even easier very good superb Chad

[00:38:44] it's been an absolute delight to talk to you it's been absolutely fascinating and it's been I've been taking notes and sitting here in some sort of slight wonder how you've managed to achieve what you've achieved you're an inspiration I'm sure people have said that before

[00:39:02] and they're going to say it to you again that's that thing about perspective isn't it it's that thing about saying the people you saw at the beginning of a fair losing your sight it's that looking at people who've got different disadvantages

[00:39:16] but how you turn them into something that's usable in life Yeah, certainly I'm not sure I'm still used to people telling me that I'm not trying to do anything inspirational I'm just trying to get what I want out of my life just like you are and

[00:39:30] just like your listeners are but it's interesting how other people's experiences and our perspectives when they coalesce we can really draw that inspiration from the basket of challenges that people face and how they do it with such grace and optimism it's really quite remarkable

[00:39:46] so I appreciate you sharing that and I feel fortunate to be able to have the conversation and hopefully help other people see that whatever they're facing there is a path forward I think it wouldn't be as inspirational if you were trying to be inspirational

[00:40:00] I think that's the point of these things isn't it Yeah, brilliant Thank you for spending time with us today it's been absolutely fantastic thoroughly appreciate your time and rush out and buy Blind Ambition by Chad E Foster it's worth it thank you so much Chad

[00:40:18] I really do appreciate your time and you take care thank you, it's been my pleasure Hi, thanks for listening hopefully that was a useful and interesting episode as I said earlier you can support our work by leaving a review which does drive enhanced exposure

[00:40:34] or you can donate on our site which is at QEDOD.com you can purchase our series of books all about unravelling resilience leadership, management and anxiety at QEDOD.com forward slash extras with some other free resources available on the site we've also got a Patreon page

[00:40:56] and you of course can send us questions, ideas thoughts, conversations and fresh subjects at info at QEDOD.com hopefully there's something there for you catch you next time round