Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hey everyone. Welcome to the episode so Ask a Ram flips the script one step beyond podcast. Guests and listeners submit their questions and Ask a Ram anything. Questions can be music, life stories, business, leadership, advice, how to make the best vegan omelet, you name it. A Ram will unpack your questions and leave you with info you can apply way before we get to it. Please rate, review and subscribe.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: My name is Janine. I am the guardian and founder of the Alice Sanctuary. What would you say would be your one moment, your pivotal moment, where you believed like, this was going to be the course that would help me change the world around me and the world for others and start to inspire other people?
[00:00:47] Speaker C: Thanks, Janine. It's a good question. It's got me thinking a lot. What changed everything for me? What was the moment? It was the moment where I realized that I'm quite good at just being with people and listening to them and being able to really be with someone as they're experiencing something, or they're unpacking something, or they're sharing something. I was in my twenty s and I'd started doing some volunteer work at an addiction a rehab center, and I was just super comfortable with listening to people talk about ultra challenging things. It didn't shake me, it didn't make me feel like I had to solve all their problems. It didn't create any anxiety in me, it didn't depress me.
I could just be in someone's story with them as someone who walked along with it. And I didn't really know that about me because I just grown up. As anyone who would grow up, you go through tough things, your friends go through tough things, but there was something about being in that service position and I was again just there as a volunteer, but that people would just naturally start telling me stuff and it was just like, boom, I could just do it. It was no problem. And when I realized that I had something that a lot of people have, I was just fortunate to have that ability and really switch on like that.
I realized that I could do something that would really make a difference for people easily. Like in that moment, someone could download something to me, they could just take a little bit of weight off. When I realized it's like, damn, this is easy. All I need to do is just listen, ask questions, be present. Great, I can do this. It took the idea of that, the enormity of creating change, like you got to fight the system, you got to do this, you got to do that. All of that felt really big for just some nerd from Alberta. I felt like, I don't know how I can change the world. But when I realized changing things fundamentally in the world can be just as much as really listening and being with someone, I was a huge game changer. There's this idea, it's like, everybody suffers, I suffer, you suffer. But when we suffer and someone listens to us and someone spends time with us, someone really is patient with us and walks along that path and they're not just trying to give us a bunch of advice and shut us up, but they're really just with us. When someone does that for us, when we're suffering, we see we can ease other people's suffering just by listening. And again when I realized I had some kind of, like, natural ability about that, that I was able to then to hone over time with skills by going to school and getting a lot of work experience. It's a huge game changer, and it's what I've built my career on. And it's the favorite part of my job, is being there to help people and listen. For the second part of how I want to approach this is the game changer moment for me around animals specifically, is I never grew up with a pet. And so the first real pet that I had really felt invested in was this dog named Josh. It was my partner at the time's dog. I had never really spent time around a dog before, like I met dogs, but I mean really spent time. This dog was so smart and so had such a huge personality and really demonstrated love to people and had preferences and he had all these toys and he had specific toys that he would like and he'd like to do things in a specific order and you just felt like you were dialoguing with this creature. And up until that point, I'd spent long periods of my life as being a vegetarian, a little bit of time of being a vegan, and then I'd gone back to eating meat for a number of years. When I was touring a lot and I was one of those kind of ex vegetarians who was like I would always be like, oh, I feel so guilty eating meat as I'm eating meat. And I get it, no judgment or maybe a little bit of judgment, but that was me too. But when I realized the thing that moved me away from all the excuses was having this relationship with this dog and it was like, oh, you clearly have preferences.
You care about things and you love things and you're afraid of things. You have a little soul in there. And that just, boom, changed everything for me. And I could never eat an animal again, and I never have. And I've been vegan now for a long time and it's because of that dog for sure. And once you understand one thing has a soul, you realize everything that is walking around and living and breathing has a soul. And yeah, it just changed everything. And when I say soul, I don't mean from some religious perspective, I just mean they have a life that matters to them and they shouldn't have to lose it for my convenience.
[00:05:29] Speaker D: Hey, everyone, I'm Adam. I own Rubble Rock and Gym, Vancouver. I got two questions.
First one is, are you happiest at what you're doing with your life? And honestly answer it, imagine no one else is listening and tell me the real answer.
Second question, it's not really a question, it's more of a dare. I dare you to do a day or more barefoot and then tell me how it went. But you got to go out in public and everything, everything you do. You got to leave your shoes at home.
[00:06:04] Speaker C: Hey, Adam. First, dude, thank you so much for being on the show. Yes, I am very, very happy with what I do from an honest perspective, and I'm going to give you two reasons why. The first is, I've always loved helping people. I get to help people professionally all day, every day. Well, all day, every day, professionally. It is a super cool thing. And it could be something as simple as helping people become more effective in their communication, which is a huge place where people struggle and they suffer a lot because they can't make themselves clear, they have something they care about, they can't be understood. So it's great. Something as simple as, here's how you answer a question effectively, or here's how you project appropriate physical presence, or here's how you ask good questions. It's awesome to be able to help people do that and to see it kind of click and see people get it, it's awesome. But the second is building a business with people that I really love and care about. The people at Cadence are great. Most of them are people that I've known for many years. Some of them I've effectively grown up with, and then some of them are people that are relatively new in my life and they've only come through through the company. But we've built this great relationship and it's kind of like growing up listening to a band that you love and then getting to join that band or getting to start a band that's as cool as that band where you're like, damn. I get to be a part of something that if I wasn't a part of it, I'd want to be a part of it. And it's cool. So, yeah, I'm feeling really psyched. For your second question or your challenge? Sorry, man, I cannot do it. My feet are like, sensitive little tootsies I can't do, like, literally every single day. Monica has to hear me complain about how sore my dogs are. I can't take it on, man. But I respect you. I respect your hustle and your foot hustle. So good for you.
[00:07:52] Speaker A: We want to hear from you, our audience. To submit your questions, send us a message, drop us a DM or a comment on our social channels.
