Meet Joe

I’m a retired firefighter and I became a podcaster, author, and meditation/emotional fitness teacher after a very close call with suicide and a subsequent hard-fought transformation to radical wellness, unshakable happiness, and indestructible resiliency. 

You deserve to have more thrive days than just survive days. You also deserve to be happy AF and to live a kick-ass life that you thoroughly enjoy. I’d like to show you how!

I have been leading others from a very young age.  I was hired as a police officer and had checked the police academy off my bucket list just as I turned 21.  At that same time, I was mentoring newly immigrated Sudanese Refugees at the AZ Lost Boys Center. These remarkable and resilient friends thought I was teaching them, but quite the opposite was true. They were the first people who really modeled and showed me what relentless optimism, resiliency, gratitude, and true happiness despite facing extreme adversity looked like. This is where my paradigm shifted and my character began to be forged. At 25 I stepped away from law enforcement and transitioned into another academy and became a firefighter.  

As I climbed the ranks as a firefighter, I became the guy always trying to get people to talk about their feelings. I was always willing to share that some of our  calls were hard on me, or that the marriage at home was rough, or that parenting wasn’t exactly what I thought I had signed up for. It never ceased to amaze me that we were brave enough to go into house fires, but not brave enough to investigate or share our feelings. It also never ceased to amaze me that whenever I opened up, quite often the floodgates would open and my coworkers would open up and process with me. I brought yoga and meditation into my fire station too. I was leading in a whole new way just authentically  being myself.  

After 15 amazing years in public safety and right at the top of my game, a brain & spinal injury on the job forced me into a medical retirement. Shortly thereafter, my family  lost 11 loved ones and my daughter was diagnosed with a disability. I lost my career, half my income, and my whole entire house was in turmoil. In addition to all of that, I was juggling surgical options and serious chronic pain all day every day, as I tried to accept a permanent and progressive neurological condition from my brain injury.

As if that wasn’t enough, all these issues were compounded with PTSD and normal day to day challenges. I became totally lost, depressed, unsure how to continue on, cope with the pain and the struggle. This feeling was so new and foreign, honestly I was shocked because prior to my world crumbling, I was such a resilient dude who was obsessed with wellness. I had done counseling for past trauma and had been practicing Zen mindfulness and martial arts for 20 years. I was skilled and experienced at the fire department’s awesome adapt-and-overcome leadership mentality and I had a super positive mindset.

However, I was quickly driven into such a dark space and had so many emotional challenges and so much pain that I had a very near miss with suicide. This isn’t the place for the nitty gritty details (see the GG&G podcast episode #2 if you do want to hear them), but let’s just say it was a very, very near miss.

 After I survived that day, I was 100% determined to not ever get anywhere near that place again. I'm so fucking grateful that I'm alive, and that I spared my family of that tragedy and hardship. I doubled down on my pursuit of wellness. I got a new counselor. I worked tirelessly and for many hours honing in on my mental, emotional and spiritual wellness and I reached out to my incredible tribe and got the help that I needed.

I have since become exceptionally proficient at many different skills and emotional wellness practices such as expressive writing, counseling, gratitude, empathy, mindfulness, and meditation. I found that many of these things didn’t work for me when I needed them the most and I wanted to know why. What I learned was that when taught properly and utilized effectively, these are incredible tools and can give you the superpowers of being able to turn obstacles into opportunities for growth and pain into purpose so you are able to cope and handle any life’s circumstances, big or small like a total boss. But the key point here is that they must be taught properly and practiced effectively. And that's not something that everybody knows how to do.

So now I feel like the luckiest guy on the planet to be in this amazing headspace and to have had these incredible (yes incredible, despite being very painful) experiences. I’m so freaking stoked to have figured out how to maintain my personality, my edge, and my strong attributes that I love, while also integrating emotional wellness, mindfulness, meditation, effective decision-making models,critical thinking skills, healthy communication and boundaries. I want nothing more than to pass on that transformation to you!

With the proper mindset, the right guide, and some effort, you too can lean in, enjoy life, spread love, and let the awesomeness unfold.