[00:01:13] Mark Divine: Hey everyone. This is Mark Divine, founder of Seal Fit and Unbeatable Mind. I’m super stoked to announce that. My new book, Uncommon, is due out from St. Martin’s press this summer, July 16th, and we’ve launched a pre order campaign. You can learn more about that at readuncommon. com to try to get early awareness for the book, which I hope will help a lot of people, where I go and do a deep dive on the five mountains.

[00:01:40] Mark Divine: Of personal mastery physical mental emotional intuitional and spiritual uncommon simple principles for an extraordinary life Check it out at read uncommon. com And thank you for your support and being part of the change you want to see in this world. Hooyah Divine out. It’s good to see you Colt. Thanks for joining me on the Mark Divine show 

[00:02:00] Colt Balok: Hey, Mark, I’m so excited to get to this is two twice this year that I got to read it. This is so cool. I’m not at your wonderful, beautiful beach house this time with like the most amazing view ever. But it’s like I’m in New Mexico and it’s like 29 degrees today. So is it right? A little bit. It’s funny. 

[00:02:16] Mark Divine: I never really think of it getting that cold in New Mexico, but maybe you’re up in elevation, right?

[00:02:20] Mark Divine: Where are you at? 

[00:02:21] Colt Balok: It’s Albuquerque. It’s pretty high elevation out here. It is painfully cold today. 

[00:02:26] Mark Divine: It is a sunny and warm here in San Diego. As always. As always. Yeah. We had an incredible Christmas, man. It was just gorgeous. Light breeze. You know, it’s about 70 degrees. 

[00:02:38] Colt Balok: Does the water ever get up like a different temperature out in San Diego or does it pretty much stay consistent the whole time?

[00:02:43] Mark Divine: Well, it’s consistently cold, right? So anyone who thinks that they’re going to come to San Diego and feel like they’re, you know, get that Florida water now, you know, it, it rarely gets above, you know, it’s Uh, low sixties during the summer and then it’ll get down in the mid fifties in the winter, you know, on occasion, there have been times where it got up to like 70.

[00:03:04] Mark Divine: It feels like bath water, but you don’t get the 80 degree water like you get down in Florida or Puerto Rico or out in Hawaii, you know, 

[00:03:10] Colt Balok: yeah, you’d have to have a wetsuit if you’re going to dive into San Diego. Yeah. 

[00:03:13] Mark Divine: I mean, the surfers are. Always putting the rubber on. I mean, it’s just, you know, they just expect if you’re going to be in the water for that long, you know, your body just really leeches out that heat pretty quickly.

[00:03:25] Colt Balok: Yeah. No kidding. That 

[00:03:26] Mark Divine: is cool. It’s, it’s a beautiful place to live. And so is New Mexico. Like I, I, I remember, um, when I was a SEAL team three, we did a bunch of training out near Albuquerque. There’s a couple. Like Kirkland, Isaac Kirkland Air Force Base. Yep. Yeah. Kirkland Air Force. I was there. Did a lot of close air support training out there.

[00:03:43] Mark Divine: That’s so cool. Some work with the Air Force special ops. It’s a really beautiful state. 

[00:03:47] Colt Balok: Yeah, no, New Mexico is great. I really like it. Even out to our Elk Ranch out. That’s right. 

[00:03:52] Mark Divine: And I’m just going to ask you about that. So I remember the one and only cross country train ride. I took Sandy and I, and our newborn baby, we piled into an Amtrak and kind of rumbled along up the coast. And then I can’t remember where we, I think maybe it was San Francisco. We kind of caught, you know, the East coast, East bound leg. And we rambled all the way to Gallup, New Mexico, galloping. We had all of our camping gear with us because we were going to go up, up to Durango camp. And we slip it all off the train and we’re like looking around, like, where’s the town? And then your mom was there to pick us up. It was, thank goodness. We would have been, that’s a bold and fun move.

[00:04:31] Mark Divine: I, uh, was at our cabin last weekend and I had one of my ROTC buddies come out on a train. The train. Broke down and it was supposed to be a quick little trip. And in five hours, they had to bring out a new engine, swap it out. I ended up at the train at the Amtrak. Amtrak is crazy. So, you know, it sucks up 

[00:04:51] Mark Divine: billions of dollars of taxpayers money and the thing, you know, barely moved like 20 miles an hour on most tracks and yards. Ours broke down on the way home. They had to bus us. For the final leg. Are you kidding? I kid you not.

[00:05:03] Mark Divine: Oh my gosh. So that’s awful. If you’re a train fan, I’m sorry, but Amtrak sucks. 

[00:05:09] Colt Balok: That’s so funny. 

[00:05:10] Mark Divine: Yeah. That, that was a beautiful place. I love that. Your dad was a really neat guy. Now I want to talk about what it was like growing up with him and also adoption. Cause you know, my son is adopted and I want to talk about that in this show.

[00:05:22] Mark Divine: If you’re okay going there. Yeah, absolutely. But, um, that was so cool because we got to and it’s like desert. You know what I mean? Flat. And I’m like, wow, I don’t know why anyone would want to live here. And then we drove up like, it was like 30 or 40 minutes and just kind of up into this, like this Mesa.

[00:05:42] Mark Divine: And suddenly it’s just this beautiful pine trees. And it was just stunningly gorgeous. And that’s where your dad had this elk farm. He was, um, harvesting the antlers for some medicinal purpose. I forget what it was. 

[00:05:54] Colt Balok: Elk velvet. Yeah. When the, when the elk antlers have velvet on, they have these real great, uh, medical benefits.

[00:06:00] Colt Balok: And so we would cut them off and we would ship them overseas and they would turn them into medicine. They’re very popular with people. I remember dog lovers, real dog lovers would like. Buy elk velvet pills for their dog. That was a big trendy thing. I don’t know if that’s still trendy, but a very trendy velvet pills.

[00:06:14] Mark Divine: Yeah. That’s yeah. Yeah. They’re probably, you know, in some Chinese herbal ingredient, you know, mix. 

[00:06:22] Colt Balok: Yeah, we would, we would like shipping off to China. It was like where they would go and like, yeah, you’re absolutely right. 

[00:06:26] Mark Divine: That’s amazing. So how much time did you spend up there as a kid, you know, describe that experience and how valuable, you know, having that kind of, that experience of being in nature and also being on a farm where you had real responsibilities.

[00:06:40] Mark Divine: Because I think a lot of people. You know, I miss that, you know, they just don’t have that in the city life or even the urban life that we live in these days. 

[00:06:47] Colt Balok: Yeah. You know, as growing up, you know, I feel like I’m, I’m like a little bit of the black sheep of the family. And, you know, I’ve always had this like big city boy vibe, at least growing up.

[00:06:57] Colt Balok: I did, but as I’m getting older, I look back at like, you know, my dad would make us like haul rocks. He like build these like, like waterfalls in our, like our driveways and things of that nature. And like, we would have to go haul rock. And that’s like good. High school, like as a ninth grader, the last thing I wanted to do was go all rock.

[00:07:14] Colt Balok: The term just sounds awful. But like, I am so it is, I’ve learned now it’s like the most therapeutic thing. I, I’m not, I’m not joking you. I, a few years ago was asked to take care of someone’s horse. And like that, the big, uh, area in this night, like nice home and horse, and I would have to shovel manure.

[00:07:30] Colt Balok: Shoveling the horse manure was the most therapeutic thing in the world because like, it’s so mindless. You don’t have to deal with like, These dragons you have to slay it’s just doing hard manual work now is like something I dream of like doing what like doing dishes like anything like that cleaning I am like that is my therapeutic time now and I would probably attribute that from having to like do that hard work and having to yeah, just having to do that growing up.

[00:07:54] Mark Divine: Yeah, it’s like chop chop wood carry water. 

[00:07:57] Colt Balok: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. 

[00:07:59] Mark Divine: Much of a mental training if you allow it to be. Yeah. It reminds me of a really famous, uh, not a famous, but a, a popular kind of Zen story. There was this monastery and, and, uh, this kind of, um, I guess, uh, not the most intelligent monk showed up at the monastery.

[00:08:18] Mark Divine: And so all the other monks were kind of making fun of him, right. Cause he was kind of a, a hick and, you know, Didn’t speak real well and everything. So they put him in the kitchen and they’re like, okay, we got a job for him. He’s going to be the one that just does all our dishes. And this guy just was happy.

[00:08:33] Mark Divine: He’s like, okay, yeah, I’ll do the dishes. And so he just spent every year after year, he just in the kitchen. And what he was doing was saying the rosary while he was doing the dishes, like just like kind of wax on wax. Oh, beautiful. Yeah. So, so all these other monks are all full of themselves, full of hubris thinking, well, they’re pretty special because they’re smart.

[00:08:52] Mark Divine: While this guy slowly, just quietly laboring away in the kitchen, just resetting the rosary to himself thousands and thousands of times a day. And 10 years later, he was the head of the monastery. 

[00:09:06] Colt Balok: That’s a beautiful story though. And I think so many of us get lost into, you know, we can choose happiness or we can choose despair and like, you can turn in situations like this.

[00:09:17] Colt Balok: The monk did and like turn it into like the most happiest of, and I know people who dread touching a dish, like growing up and like having the roommates and, you know, going to college. And like, it was painful for them. Like we get their fights broke out because someone didn’t want to do this. And so like, it’s, it’s, it’s, that’s a beautiful story.

[00:09:36] Colt Balok: You can 

[00:09:37] Mark Divine: choose happiness is found right where you’re at. It’s your natural state. Right. The only thing standing between you and happiness is your ego. Ego is resistance to happiness. Uh, I think that’s why that kind of, um, to drop any kind of resistance to physical labor as work. It’s, it’s a really beautiful thing because it’s a practice.

[00:10:02] Mark Divine: I was fortunate to grow up in upstate New York. The downside is my dad didn’t really make it fun. Like your dad was a very positive guy. My dad wasn’t the most positive guy. And so a lot of times the work felt a little bit like punishment, but it still learned to appreciate, you know, the solitude of mowing the lawn or, you know, hauling stuff or chopping the trees up in New York.

[00:10:24] Colt Balok: My dad knew how to use it as a punishment. That don’t, don’t, don’t be fooled. It was good though. 

[00:10:34] Mark Divine: So you grew up in New Mexico. What age were you adopted? Your mom and dad were amazing. They adopted a number of kids, didn’t they? 

[00:10:44] Colt Balok: Let’s say, yeah, that’s a good, that’s a great question. It depends on who you ask, which drives me crazy.

[00:10:48] Colt Balok: Uh, it probably adds to my woundedness as being an adoptee. , so I keep in contact with both families and so I have my, what I would refer to as my biological mom, my adopted mom. And you know, if I ask my biological mom, she’ll tell me one year. If I tell my adopted mom though, she’ll tell me a different year.

[00:11:02] Colt Balok: But funny, it sounds like funny. The, the consensus is about two years old. I started somewhere 

[00:11:07] Mark Divine: in between two. I 

[00:11:08] Colt Balok: was born in, I was born in Tijuana though. And so like I couldn’t legally get adopted until I was seven. And so like, just for whatever, like citizenship or whatever, all of that was. So illegally I was adopted at seven, but, uh, I started living with the bollocks at the age of two.

[00:11:24] Mark Divine: Okay. So you were very young. Are you a Mexican citizen then? 

[00:11:30] Colt Balok: That is a great question. I definitely have a birth certificate from Mexico. So does that make me a bit, if we ever have to flee America, I’m coming with you, man. He’s with me. That’s hilarious. I never thought that. That’s so funny. But no, so I kept in contact with both sides of the family throughout the whole, you know, I would always go, my, my biological mom now lives out in Vermont and tons of siblings out in San Diego, close to where you live, uh, yesterday was a holiday.

[00:11:57] Colt Balok: And so I sent out, I have 14 brothers and sisters total. So I sent out, it’s just like going through each one, like on both sides. 

[00:12:05] Mark Divine: Now your brother, you, you had a brother named Adam who became a seal, right? 

[00:12:10] Colt Balok: Correct. And Adam is the only sibling of mine who was a biological brother who was also adopted by Godabolic.

[00:12:17] Colt Balok: So he’s really kind of a brother on like both 

[00:12:19] Mark Divine: sides. Yeah. He’s a brother from both mothers. 

[00:12:22] Colt Balok: I’m going to send him this afterwards.

[00:12:31] Colt Balok: I heard a lot about 

[00:12:32] Mark Divine: Adam and I, you know, kind of like through cozy, your mom tracked, you know, his seal career, but I don’t think I ever met him. Interestingly enough, 

[00:12:41] Colt Balok: you’ve never met Adam. Now he’s out of the seals, 

[00:12:44] Mark Divine: right? Or is he still active? 

[00:12:46] Colt Balok: He’s out of the seals, but, uh, next time I’m out there, we’re gonna have to like do it a thing where we all get together and so that you guys can like find me.

[00:12:52] Colt Balok: But yeah, Adam’s great. Adam’s, uh, one of my closer siblings. And, uh, I always like to beat him up now that he’s getting a little older. And then I could say that I could beat up a sail. That actually makes me kind of laugh knowing you. That’s funny. That’s funny. I love it. He would make me so angry growing up.

[00:13:11] Colt Balok: I remember like being like eight years old and he would like, he would do all these like Navy SEAL techniques, like twist my arm around my back. And like, I get so angry. I got like this tennis racket and I just started like beating him so bad with it. Like I, uh, he really knew how to use the Navy SEAL techniques against me.

[00:13:26] Mark Divine: That’s funny. 

[00:13:27] Colt Balok: Keep me in check. 

[00:13:29] Mark Divine: Now, you’ve been very, um, kind of open, transparent, I should say, about the challenges of adoption and, and I can, um, share that I know that my son, who we adopted at birth from Hawaii, so he’s roughly 25 percent Hawaiian. He’s got a bunch of Cheyenne, Arapaho in him and the rest Texan, uh, which is, it’s a country in itself, of course, the country of Texas at any rate, you know, you would, you would think that like when he opened his eyes and the nurse handed them to a person, it was my wife, Sandy, and then me, but he still has.

[00:14:13] Mark Divine: Abandonment issues, right? Or he’s got trauma associated with, with his adoption and, um, you know, he’s been going to therapy for years. So I really applaud him. Like, you know, his generation, now he’s 24, like it’s very different than mine. Like I had to find therapy through, you know, You know, basically kicking myself and then Jimmy so many times and then marrying a therapist who’s like, yeah, yeah, no, we’re not doing this anymore.

[00:14:41] Mark Divine: It’s like, okay, 32 years old. I’m like, okay. Well, my son had been going to therapy, you know, for like five years. So he started in his late teens and I, you know, he’s working through trying to figure out like it affects his self confidence and his. Willingness to really put himself out there, which is interesting because you, you are awesome at putting yourself out there in a big way, risking kind of the ridicule and failure that comes from being a media, you know, media person.

[00:15:08] Mark Divine: I’m curious, like, what was it like for you and what have you done to overcome some of the issues? And what are some of the strategies that an adopted person who’s listening might be like, Oh, that could be useful for me. 

[00:15:21] Colt Balok: No, absolutely. First off, I want to commend you and Sandy so much for adopting. I. It’s an extraordinary experience, by the way, I wouldn’t change anything.

[00:15:30] Colt Balok: Absolutely. Absolutely. I’m hoping to adopt one day. It’s unfortunate that adoption has to occur. It’s very heartbreaking. You know, it’s, it’s, I don’t know if this is too bold of a thing to say here, but like every child has a right to their biological mom and their biological dad. We’ve kind of stripped that away from, from children.

[00:15:52] Colt Balok: And like, There are always outliers in any situations and you know, people might be able to be like, Oh, like my friends adopted and they have no issues and like all of that. That’s, that’s fine. Like, that’s beautiful. Like, that’s, that’s amazing. But like all the studies and all the research show. That like a child’s best chance of success is when they’re brought up by their biological mom and biological dad and I didn’t have that luxury your son didn’t have that luxury and don’t and I don’t want to discredit adopting at all.

[00:16:22] Colt Balok: Like adopting is so important. The only thing it’s 

[00:16:25] Mark Divine: the only thing that could negate that is if the biological mom and dad are so dysfunctional that it would have, you know, that it would, it would be a negative influence, right? Correct. Correct. 

[00:16:36] Colt Balok: Correct. Yeah, correct. And so like my, my biological mom, she knew that I would be brought up in a better life with the bollocks than if she continued to raise me where, where she was at.

[00:16:47] Colt Balok: So she made, she made a wise move, right? Like it was just unfortunate that that had to occur. Right. But you said the word abandonment and like, I live on the word abandonment. I have like, I’m so fascinated by it. So when I find other people who are adopted or in the foster care system, without me even bringing it out of them, they’ll say the word human connection.

[00:17:07] Colt Balok: And I’m like, that’s so interesting that you said that word. Like, why did you say that? Like, most people don’t just randomly tell me that word. And it’s just, we’re, we’re so hurt. I don’t know. I don’t know. I can’t. I don’t know what it is. Like, I, I, I wish I, I, and I’m sure like there’s like good information out there of like what actually causes the adoptee to like suffer this, this internal wound.

[00:17:30] Colt Balok: What is that 

[00:17:30] Mark Divine: experience? Because I don’t have that experience. So I want to try to understand my son better. Like, what is that experience? Yeah. You want 

[00:17:39] Colt Balok: someone to want you? The way you want them and you’ve kind of concluded where you even like test people That they can’t hold up to it, right? And so like I will do things and like we I think a lot of us do a lot of like us adoptees Where it’s like we want to test how someone loves us like we were so Someone who the people who should have loved us most weren’t there for us.

[00:18:02] Colt Balok: Like, so I’m so wounded. And how do I test that? Like, you just want that you want that and you crave it so bad and you do anything for it. So you like test people, you might like obsess them or push them. And all you really want them to do is just to like hug you and love you and say, I don’t care. about what you just did.

[00:18:18] Colt Balok: I just want to be with you. And the response that we get from people tend to not be that they tend to push us even further away, they punish us, or they, they kind of hold their love back. And that is the last thing for anyone out there that’s trying to work with like adoption or foster, I always tell them, that’s the last thing that you want to do, right?

[00:18:36] Colt Balok: You want to, I have this friend who’s over at West Point, and he had this roommate who sounded like he went through some of this. These issues. And he was explaining how his roommate was like, I’m not going to live with you. I’m going to move out and live with someone else. And my friend Gabe was like, how do I respond to that?

[00:18:50] Colt Balok: And I said, you go to him and say, I don’t care if you asking me to move out. I’m living with you next year. Like that’s the response that you should give to people when us adoptees or us wounded people. When we push away, like we’re like, you know, I’m going to go, I’m going to go do my own thing. I’m going to move out or I’m going, I’m not going to see you for Christmas or whatever that is.

[00:19:10] Colt Balok: Right. Like we all tend to like push someone and then when people say, okay, well, that’s what he said. I’m going to listen to what his words said, like, no, like listen to the non verbals. I think that’s a big thing in college. I took, I studied communication and there’s an actual class called nonverbal communication.

[00:19:26] Colt Balok: And just that, like, Non verbals mean so much more than the actual, a lot of times than the actual words that come out of our mouth. You know, we always hear the like, I’m fine. And you’re like, no, you’re not fine. Like clearly you’re not fine. That’s an acronym for f 

[00:19:39] Mark Divine: ed up, insecure, neurotic, and emotionally unavailable.

[00:19:42] Colt Balok: Yes, yes. But like someone like one of my sisters, she’s always like, well, Cole said this. Well, Cole said this. And it’s like, that’s not what I’m really saying. Like what I’m really saying is like, I’m hurt. I wouldn’t, I want it to be accepted. I want to be known. I want to be loved. That’s what I really want.

[00:19:56] Colt Balok: And I want you to prove it to me. And again, I don’t think that’s healthy. I don’t think that’s healthy that we do that. But I think that’s a very common trend with adoptees and foster youth. So anyone out there that has people in their lives that are adoptees or fosters, like if they push you away, love them even more.

[00:20:11] Colt Balok: Like, that’s kind of like, maybe like what I would encourage that push 

[00:20:14] Mark Divine: them away, pull them closer. 

[00:20:16] Colt Balok: Yes. I’m curious with, I’m curious with your son, like you said, like putting yourself out there. I don’t know where that drive has come from. You know, I always, I don’t know though. I always remember Ellen DeGeneres giving the Oscar speech and in their Oscar speech, he said something like, The most important thing in life is family, friends, love.

[00:20:33] Colt Balok: And if you don’t have any of those things, well, you probably end up in the showbiz. And like, I find that like pretty, pretty, pretty comical. Cause I think that’s very true. Like we seek, I think, you know, people like me, we seek applause. We seek approval. We seek to know that we’re good or we’re loved or whatever that is.

[00:20:49] Colt Balok: So I, I think that’s probably a drive of why I put myself out there so much. But I’m curious with your son, like, It sounds like there’s like a self worth or self, so, um, Yeah, 

[00:20:59] Mark Divine: but he’s not that at all. Like, he does not, like, he’s an incredible photographer, but he, he just simply won’t, like, put his pictures on Instagram.

[00:21:08] Mark Divine: I mean, or try to kind of grow his, any type of following. He doesn’t need that, doesn’t want that. 

[00:21:14] Colt Balok: Is he embarrassed? Is he, uh, I 

[00:21:17] Mark Divine: think he’s, um, yeah, he’s afraid of, I don’t know, it sounds trite to say afraid of failure, because everyone is, but, um, Of the criticism or not being, he doesn’t want to, again, I’m, you know, just purely guesstimating here because I’m not inside his head, but he does have a, uh, a pretty big fear of being critiqued like, uh, you know, a couple, a couple of examples or, or just, um, He’s got a strong resistance to feedback if it’s, especially if it could be negative.

[00:21:58] Colt Balok: Giving good feedback is fine. Like that’s that. Oh yeah. It’s strictly 

[00:22:02] Mark Divine: getting a couple, a couple of data points. Um, like, you know, I had, I tried everything with him. I did a lot of things with him as a father. You know, one of them of course is boy scouts. Cause that’s I did also did adventure guides.

[00:22:13] Mark Divine: Everyone can’t, we had a blast with that. But with, with adventure guides, It used to be called Indian guides. Of course, that’s now politically incorrect. So we changed it to venture guys through the YMCA. And, you know, it’s like they have father, son, camping trips and they have father, daughter, but there’s, there’s no like striving to be better than somebody else.

[00:22:30] Mark Divine: Like in the Boy Scouts, you know, you have, you could get your ranks and you become an Eagle Scout, Eagle Scout. Yeah. So there’s this like pecking order hierarchy. He is, you know, of course he’s Hawaiian. He’s like, so anti hierarchy, anti kind of pecking order. So I did try Boy Scouts and that’s when I learned like, Oh, Devin is not motivated by Meribeth.

[00:22:49] Mark Divine: Does it have that drive? You know, and we went to the, the camp out Jamboree and I think he begged me to stay and I said, well, Devin, I’ll, I’ll stay for the first night then. We’ll see how you go. We’ll see how you are tomorrow. But I think it’d be fine. He’s like, huh? You know, and he was in a separate tent in the middle of the night.

[00:23:03] Mark Divine: I hear this rattling outside and I peek outside my tent and he had dragged his chair out in front of my tent and was like, crashing his sleep bag in front of my tent. And so I went outside and, and, um, the, the troop leader who was a friend of mine had noticed what was going on. So he came up to me and we thought that was asleep.

[00:23:23] Mark Divine: He came up to me. He’s like, Mark, you know what? You know, we’ve seen this kind of thing before, just leave him and get in your car and go right now. Just go. And he’ll be fine. You know, there’ll be a little bit of an issue in the morning, but you know, once he gets swept up in the events of the day, he’ll be fine.

[00:23:39] Mark Divine: And I remember listening to that and I’m like, that just feels awful. You know what I mean? I could never do that to Devin. And I said, I smiled his mouth. I’ll think about it, Greg. And then he walked away and I walked back toward my tent and Devin goes, I heard what you were talking about. I said, Devin, let’s go.

[00:24:01] Mark Divine: Pack your up. We’re getting out of here. And as we’re driving away, he turns to me, he goes, dad, he goes, I will always trust you to have my back, to take care of me because I, because I thought you were going to leave me with Greg. The fact that you didn’t even consider it was awesome. It was huge for me.

[00:24:24] Colt Balok: Isn’t that cool? What a beautiful, that’s a beautiful moment right there for like, as like, you know, listening and putting myself into Devin’s shoes there. I’m like, I was terrified where the story was going to go. And if you were going to leave him and I was like, Oh no, dad, 

[00:24:36] Mark Divine: don’t go. Well that was one of the many times in my life where my spirit just said no, there wasn’t any kind of.

[00:24:42] Mark Divine: active consideration. There was just a solid boom. No, you know, I’ve had that a few times in my life. I just awesome. Right? Like you realize that the ego is not in charge. We mistake it for being in charge sometimes. And whenever you give it too much power, things usually go awry as it did in my life. I want to come back to my son, but since we’re on this point of, you know, what you would call intuition, but it’s, it’s your, it’s your higher self just slamming the door shut or swinging it wide open.

[00:25:10] Mark Divine: You got no choice but to go through or to stop.

[00:25:16] Mark Divine: Okay. We’re going to take a short break here from the Mark Divine show to hear a short message from one of our partners. And now, back to the show.

[00:29:53] Mark Divine: You know, I’ve told this, these two stories are really interesting. But when I was 17, I went in for, I had a popped a hernia. I’m trying to impress my dad by trying to lift this massive log onto this wood splitter. Oh, that sounds so painful. Oh, and I popped this hernia and I was like, ah. So I went to the hospital, of course.

[00:30:09] Mark Divine: About two weeks before I had this kind of growth pop out on my leg. I’m like, Oh, that doesn’t look normal. I didn’t tell anyone about it. But as I was getting the anesthesia for the hernia, I said, Hey doc, can you guys take a look at this thing when I’m under? And he’s like, Oh, okay. So a day later, I’m like chasing the nurses around the hospital, healing up from the hernia, like a champion.

[00:30:32] Mark Divine: And I get trotted into this room by the doctor and my parents. And the doctor says, you know, sit down, we got something to talk to you about. I’m like, yeah, I’m feeling pretty good. And he goes, yeah, the thing on your leg. Well, it’s, um, it’s melanoma cancer and it’s stage four. And, um, told me a little bit about what that was.

[00:30:49] Mark Divine: And we’re going to, we’ve scheduled a, an operation in an hour to take out your lymph nodes. So it doesn’t spread. And in that instant. I had that same experience. No, this overwhelming feeling. It wasn’t a voice in my head. It was just this overwhelming feeling of no, no to what? No, that is wrong. That doctor is wrong.

[00:31:13] Mark Divine: You don’t want to accept that. Yeah, it wasn’t my ego. I knew he was wrong and so it freaked them out I said I’m not doing that surgery and I’m 17 my mom and and of course they could have forced me but my mom and Dad fortunately were like, okay, and I said no I want second third fourth opinions. I said that’s not true How do you know you don’t know anything about that?

[00:31:35] Mark Divine: I said, I know it’s not true. Yeah, so they relented on the surgery And they sent the biopsy out to a bunch of other places like Mass General and overseas and whatnot. And I had to wait for months because that was a snail mail day, you know, back in 19, whatever it was, 17, 1979 or 80 or something like that.

[00:31:57] Mark Divine: And during that time, that was the weirdest period of my life because apparently they had told my parents that with this fourth stage and without the, um, dissection of my lymph nodes, which would have stopped, you know, that I had probably less than six months to live. And so my parents in their infinite unwisdom started leaking that news, but they didn’t tell me.

[00:32:23] Mark Divine: You were the last one to find out. I found out because the stream of cars coming over to my. You know, the girls getting out, just sobbing and like hugging me. I’m like, what the hell is going on here? That’s bizarre. The main point, not about my parents. Awesome wisdom. It was about that. It was about that soul force that just said, no, that’s wrong.

[00:32:51] Mark Divine: And sure enough, when the biopsies came back. It was interesting because two, no, yeah, two said, no, definitely not one said we’re uncertain and one said they thought it was melanoma. So I was like, well, that’s, you know, that pretty much proves me right. And let’s settle the case there. I told my parents, I’m not doing anything else about it.

[00:33:09] Mark Divine: If I die, I die. And I was fine. 

[00:33:13] Colt Balok: That’s crazy. I mean, that’s that’s just so like, I mean, we just trust doctors with our lives and that like, I know I like 

[00:33:19] Mark Divine: to trust your intuition. If you have us, like if someone says you got cancer and you don’t think you have it, you better if your spirit says you don’t have it.

[00:33:29] Mark Divine: No, it’s very rare. Like I really did not have it. Like I didn’t. It was a complete mistake. Misdiagnosis. Uh, it was something that happens in, you know, teenagers when you go through a growth spurt and hormones are triggered and all sorts of stuff. And it, and it triggered a, a growth that, that had similarities to melanoma, but it wasn’t malignant and the doctors misdiagnosed it.

[00:33:52] Mark Divine: Dang. Well, another quick, so back, I want to get back to the other subject, but, um, cause trust plays a big part in this. Like right then, I just did something where I knew that it had to be done, but it wasn’t my ego. It was kind of like, I just trusted in my son and it built great trust in me. So when you trust yourself, it allows you to trust others.

[00:34:14] Mark Divine: And then it builds trust between others. And it’s kind of what you were saying. Like if someone is pushing you away, what they’re really saying is they don’t trust themselves to be close to you. And so what you can do is trust yourself to pull them closer and say, yeah, I got you regardless of what’s happening.

[00:34:31] Mark Divine: You’re okay. We got this together. You know what I mean? I think that’s what I’ve tried to be with my son. I’ve just tried to be, there’s no perfect fatherhood. All’s I can do is be perfect with him in each moment that moment said, let’s get up and leave this boy scout. Jim Marie, you know, there are other moments where I wasn’t so perfect.

[00:34:50] Mark Divine: Cause I was trying to impose my will on him. And you know, that doesn’t go so well in this one. 

[00:34:54] Colt Balok: I love what you said that there’s no perfect parent. I think like that is something that a lot of people I recognize with a lot of people I interview. And I mean, we all hold grudges towards our parents and that, that does break my heart.

[00:35:05] Colt Balok: We all expect that there’s a perfect mom and dad out there and you know, I find it interesting with my, my adoption. I had a couple of biological siblings who were, they were very jealous and angry at me that I was the one that got adopted and that they weren’t the ones that were given up for adoption.

[00:35:19] Colt Balok: The ones that were a little older than me. And, uh, so it’s just, it’s, you know, it’s crazy. How I don’t know the grass is green on the other side, but that we all just, I don’t know, we’re also angry and our parents and, you know, it makes me sad, you know, with a couple of siblings. I’m like, she’s doing the best she can, you know, nature nurture.

[00:35:36] Colt Balok: We’re all who we are. And so like, why are we so angry? Like, yes, like it’s not perfect, but like, don’t be angry, you know, love them. Of them back, 

[00:35:45] Mark Divine: you know, back, back to my comment earlier about, you know, the only thing standing between you and happiness is, is you, is your ego. It’s actually pretty normal as a stage of development to blame your parents, but you’ll never grow beyond that stage until you can forgive your parents and just accept them for who they are.

[00:36:06] Mark Divine: Some people, they never get there. Most people probably never get there, but it’s so important. If you want to truly evolve as a human being, you have to accept everything as it is and forgive everything and everyone, starting with yourself. And then once you can get there and it’s a continuous practice or process, Then you just start to remove all these ideas about the way things should be, and you’re able to be okay with just the way things are.

[00:36:35] Mark Divine: Yeah. That’s when, that’s where you find the happiness when you’re like, Oh, this is the way it is because it is. Isn’t it cool? 

[00:36:43] Colt Balok: Yeah. Yeah. My, I have a spiritual, so I, I, we, when I was out in California, I have a spiritual director. My spiritual director is in Santa Monica and he’s like kind of the, He’s a priest to a lot of people in Hollywood.

[00:36:54] Colt Balok: He uh, like Mark Wahlberg, Arnold Schwarzenegger, he married Tom Brady. He’s just like this, uh, really great guy. And he told me 

[00:37:01] Mark Divine: he married Tom Brady or he was the officiator of Tom 

[00:37:04] Colt Balok: Brady got his first marriage was at his church. It was cool. Got it. That’s cool. But, uh, he, um, he always says that suffering is a gift.

[00:37:16] Colt Balok: And I always think of that. I always, I always go back to that because when he had told me that it hit me pretty hard. It hit me pretty hard. I was like a gift. Like that’s doesn’t sound right. I can understand, like, go get through suffering, but suffering is a gift. And that’s a beautiful way of just, uh, looking at life and how any suffering we go through, we can really use that as an opportunity to become something I almost like, and then not that I’m like telling people to go out and look for it, but like the thing that I’ve been really reflecting on lately is how do you be a fun leader within my team?

[00:37:46] Colt Balok: Like, you know, as a business leader in the worst situations, and then also how can I be. The fun is cold. I can be when I’m feeling the most lonely, the most loneliness and the most abandoned, because I think that’s also really hard. And now it’s almost like a, it’s like a little game for me. I’m like, okay, okay.

[00:38:03] Colt Balok: That’s great. Like, I’m going to, yeah, I love that game. I haven’t, I haven’t perfected it yet. We call it, you know, 

[00:38:08] Mark Divine: feed the courage wolf, whatever the circumstances, the more. The harder it is to maintain a positive relationship with it, which is what you’re saying you’re, you create this little game to have a positive relationship with what’s going on and so that you can show up as a positive leader and all people benefit, including yourself.

[00:38:30] Mark Divine: So for us, we call that feeding the courage. Well, if the two wolves, you know, the wolf of fear lives in your head and the wolf of courage lives in your heart. And if you feed the guy in the head, he’s going to get stronger. No, he’s going to keep getting stronger. And what feeds the wolf in the head? Fear and thoughts of can’t or shouldn’t or couldn’t write all those lack based thoughts.

[00:38:53] Mark Divine: And these things get conditioned into us at a very young age. And then we reinforce them because we keep feeding that fear wolf until. The fear wolf wins, right? And that’s from the Native American story with the elders telling the kids about these two wolves that are vying for attention, the fear wolf in the head and the courage wolf in the heart.

[00:39:15] Mark Divine: One of the kids says, well, these wolves are like fighting, like which one wins? And the elder says, ah, that’s a good question. The one you feed the most. Yeah. So, so in order to stop feeding the fear wolf, you literally just have to ignore it, right? You can’t fight it because it’ll bite you. If you try to fight the fear in your head.

[00:39:39] Mark Divine: You exacerbate it because that’s, you know, that which you put attention to will grow and the more attention, the more it’ll grow, even if it’s that what you don’t want. So we say in order to feed the courage, well, first you starve the fear wealth by just turning your back on it. And then you find opportunities to feed courage and courage literally means heart.

[00:40:01] Mark Divine: And so acts of service, you know, selfless acts of kindness and gratitude and keeping a gratitude journal and, and then learning to quite literally. In simplest form, talk to yourself kindly. And so we come up with all these mantras that are really fun and kind of silly, you know, like what the mantra that got me through seal training, it’s feeling good.

[00:40:21] Mark Divine: I’m looking good. It ought to be in Hollywood. That was a way for me to feed the courage wolf. 

[00:40:25] Colt Balok: I love that. I’m, I’m really curious on this real quick. So for me, I feel like I’ve done pretty well with like, Fear, just my own personal fear with like me being able to do things. Like I can speak in front of 3000 people.

[00:40:38] Colt Balok: Like I’d like doing those types of things. I’m like, cool. I got it. I got it. I got it. What I fear, or I feel like where fear comes in is like when you’re doing something great or building a team, like you have to have others, you have to have other people. And my fear is them not performing, not so me not performing.

[00:40:59] Colt Balok: And I wonder if, like, you feel that. Maybe, like, maybe it’s, like, with your son. Like, maybe it’s, like, I have a fear that he will never love me the way that I love him. It’s, like, a fear of the other person, but, like, is that really our own? Like, how does that work when it’s, like, it feels like it’s not so much, like, like, you’re the I feel like the fear master, right?

[00:41:18] Colt Balok: Like, I feel like you don’t have fear that you can do X, Y, Z with your son. Like if you had an X, X, like you knew the exact answer to what to do to, to motivate your son or have your son, um, have more self worth, you would do it. You have no fear of doing it with him. If it’s hugging him, if it’s, if it’s telling him a certain, I love you, whatever that is, you don’t, you, you have that, but it’s like, I think you might have a fear that he won’t Receive it or he won’t.

[00:41:45] Colt Balok: And so what do you do in that situation where the fear is like another person, 

[00:41:50] Mark Divine: first of all, Navy SEALs, right? Like we’re, we work a lot with fear and courage. And what I’ve learned is it’s very easy to get stuck in the language, right? Cause language then becomes real. Even though it’s not real language, words only point to.

[00:42:08] Mark Divine: An experience. And so when you say fear, when I say fear, they’re pointing to different experiences and you have a different relationship to fear than I have. And so it doesn’t mean the same thing. So I’d like to not use words like fear. Like, I don’t fear that my son is going to be this way or that way, or, or I won’t love me the way I love him.

[00:42:32] Mark Divine: I don’t believe in that word in that way. So, what I can say is that I have a vision for my son that I’m optimistic that he will fulfill someday, that he will find his purpose, that he’ll courageously go out in the world and fulfill it and overcome resistance and grow through overcoming that resistance on his own hero’s journey.

[00:42:57] Mark Divine: Like I am optimistic and I hold that, I visualize him doing that. And I pray that he’ll do that and I hold the space for him to do that. And I try to remove all obstacles so they can do that, but I can’t force him to do that. I can’t tell him what to do. I’m not going to kick him out of the house. Say, go, you’re on your own until you, you know, blah, blah, blah.

[00:43:14] Mark Divine: Yeah. I just don’t believe in all that. I think that, um, those are old, those are stories that may have worked at one point for some people or for culture, but you know, they certainly aren’t going to work for my son. Norm, my wife and I, seals have to redefine their relationship with fear. And so, you know, standing on the edge of a parachute jump, I’ve used this example before, most people are terrified.

[00:43:39] Mark Divine: And in the first time I did it, actually the fourth time I did it, I was terrified. The first three times I was like, but then, and then the third, my third freefall jump, we were at it out in the California desert. And this SBS plane had just come in from the East coast from Dover and they, you know, they’re jumping in and they’re going to do their training out there because it’s the best place in the world to do pre fall training.

[00:44:02] Mark Divine: And a guy had a streamer, a malfunction, a streamer, and he burned in. Right. And so we’re, you know, we’re sitting there, we’re just finished our third jump. We watched this poor British guy burn in, bless his soul. And we wait for a little Holtville ambulance comes in and pulls him out. And the instructors say, okay, back in the plane.

[00:44:19] Mark Divine: You got one more jump for the day. And we’re like, so, so that was fear, right? I felt fear there, but then, you know, we had another 50 jumps to do over the next two weeks. And over time with that repetition and realizing that Everything’s going to be okay. You know, I’ve got tons of training, tons of opportunities to clear malfunctions.

[00:44:41] Mark Divine: You know, the, the statistical likelihood of that happening to me is very, very low. And if it does, it’s my time to go anyway. So, so then standing on the edge of that jump or that ramp, What used to be experiences fear like butterflies in my stomach and my heart racing and you know, I’m like that intense like focus became Anticipation.

[00:45:06] Mark Divine: Yeah, right. It became Professional focus like this jump is necessary for me to improve my skills as a Navy SEAL So I’m looking forward to it, you know the same sensation Just different relationship to it. That’s how seals overcome fear. You need same thing with the, like the reason our training is so incredibly realistic and intense.

[00:45:28] Mark Divine: And we, we lose more people in training than generally speaking we do in operating. I can’t say that for, you know, full on war. Cause war was, you know, tricky, right? We did some casualties in war that were probably unnecessary, you know, but came because of accidents and deception. You know what I mean?

[00:45:46] Mark Divine: Anyways, we don’t have to get on that rabbit hole. The training is relentless and Repetitive and realistic, the three R’s right? Relentless, repetitive and realistic. I just made that up so that by the time, by the time you, you get to combat, it’s like you’ve been there before you’ve had this relentless, realistic and repetitive training.

[00:46:08] Mark Divine: That is like no different. The only thing that’s different in combat is that the. enemy is really trying to kill you this time. Whereas in training, you know, they’re not really trying to kill you, but they’re still real. And so the relationship with fear of combat goes away too. And you, and you just become this utter professional.

[00:46:28] Mark Divine: And, and then the, you know, you, that’s when you layer on the tools that we call in bill mine, which you now teach the seal students of the box, the breath control, tactical breathing, box breathing, uh, Feeding the courage wolf. Yeah. And maintaining the image of what victory looks like and keeping radically focused on the, on the smallest tasks that you can.

[00:46:48] Mark Divine: Daisy chained in that link toward the mission success. Those are what we call the big four skills. You bring those in and you put them on top of all the tactical training that we do as a team. And that’s why seals are unstoppable. 

[00:47:02] Colt Balok: When was the last time you’ve experienced fear? What caused it? 

[00:47:06] Mark Divine: You mean like fear of, I think it’s less and less, like I used to experience fear Over loss of my body, which you would call death, right?

[00:47:19] Mark Divine: Like aging? No. Like, like, uh, maybe when I was 30, I was, uh, hiking up white face mountain, the Adirondacks and we were going up off trail. So we went up this scar, it’s called white face because it has this big scar that runs down where the, all the land or the trees and soil got stripped off. And so my friend, when, and I were, were kind of like scampering up this and we came to this like sheer.

[00:47:45] Mark Divine: Cliff that we couldn’t go around. It was so thick. We didn’t think we’d go around and there was a little ledge We couldn’t get around one side, but on the other side we saw a spot That’s what it was a little ledge. And so, um, Wynn was an experienced rock climber So he kind of like scurried across that ledge and it’s my turn So I go on that ledge and I’m like and I’m like my heart is racing.

[00:48:06] Mark Divine: I felt that Same kind of energy as I did during that fourth parachute jump, but I was fine. Right. I was fine. I was like, Oh, I got this, you know, I’m breathing. But then I get toward the end and I just feel myself starting to float away from the wall. Like I had lost that three points of contact that you meant you need to maintain.

[00:48:25] Mark Divine: Like, I’m like, Oh, and right there, I’m like, I am falling. And I was still, still calm enough. I look over to win. I said, win? When and he looked at me and he saw my hands had left the rock and he just grabbed my hand and pushed it back To the rock and there I was I found my balance again, and I scurried off.

[00:48:47] Mark Divine: That’s terrifying in that in that moment I felt fear because I it was like I’m gonna die, right? There’s nothing that’s gonna save me I felt hearing that there’s win Oh my God, I think that’s the last time I’m, and I can’t tell you how many times in the seals where things were just not going my way, but I know I didn’t feel that kind of fear, right?

[00:49:15] Mark Divine: Because I always felt like there was someone there and there was like, when was there for me? Like consciousness was there to save me in that situation in the seals. I had other situations that were, you know, it was, it was, yeah. Either a spirit guide or a guardian or just my higher self that saved my ass.

[00:49:31] Mark Divine: And, and you’ll hear a lot of special operators talk like that. Like there’s no reason that you should be alive, but you were, you are, and you knew that you were going to survive because something just said, this is not your time to die. You know, I had a parachute accident like that. I had a situation on the rain where I was going to shoot on the range and I felt as if someone put a hand on my shoulder and said, and I just stopped in my tracks and right behind me, one of my teammates had an accidental discharge and the bullet just went, Oh my God, right by my right ear.

[00:50:07] Mark Divine: If I had taken that next step, we’re going to right in the back of my head. I’ve said this before in this podcast, but those situations, when they happen, you can blow them off. And be like, Oh, that’s, you know, curious. Or you can be like, Oh yeah, thank you. Because it helps you see that there’s more to this life than meets the eye.

[00:50:27] Colt Balok: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. You know, I think a lot of us discredit just a lot of those situations in our lives. Like that’s crazy. Like the hand touch your shoulder and like you felt someone say, stop. Like that is a reMarkable experience. 

[00:50:43] Mark Divine: It’s very similar that in fact, that was the other story I was going to tell earlier, similar to the, that no, that I got when the doctor said, you know, you’re going to go get surgery to take out your lymph nodes.

[00:50:53] Mark Divine: If I had done that, I’d never would have been an AV seal. I never would have, you know, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. 

[00:51:00] Colt Balok: That’s 

[00:51:00] Mark Divine: good. 

[00:51:01] Colt Balok: Intuit. That’s, that’s impressive. Yeah. Yeah. It’s real intuition that you heard there. Someone like me would have just been like, doctor. I 

[00:51:08] Mark Divine: trust you, but there’s got to be times in your life where you’ve had that kind of real strong.

[00:51:14] Mark Divine: Like it’s a, it’s such a hell. Yes. You can’t even think of anything, any other action. 

[00:51:20] Colt Balok: I probably could say that happens a lot of times with like dealing with people and like how to respond maybe intuitively and like the books say to do this. And I’m like, yeah. I’m really sure that I should do this right now and not see what all the what the books say.

[00:51:33] Colt Balok: That’s probably as close as I get. I don’t have any life or death stories of that, but maybe one day. I don’t know. I don’t know if I want that. Oh, well, you got, I’ll trust you. 

[00:51:44] Mark Divine: You’ve got some pretty big ambitions with the cult. They like show. So you’re, you know, the bigger you put yourself out there, usually the bigger you get kicked in the Jimmy standby.

[00:51:56] Colt Balok: I’ll keep you 

[00:51:56] Mark Divine: posted. Let me know when you want me to want some help feeding the courage wolf 

[00:52:04] Colt Balok: Mark thank you so much for taking the time. It’s so good to chat with 

[00:52:06] Mark Divine: you. Yeah, it’s been amazing I tell us tell us before we leave tell us about your show and about where you want where you’re going with it 

[00:52:13] Colt Balok: Yeah, absolutely We’re going really strong into 2024.

[00:52:16] Colt Balok: We’re really excited about it. With a few of the segments that we’re doing, anyone listening that wants to kind of follow us along, we have a newsletter that we do called the three Q’s for weekly success that I love it. My writers created, uh, ended up being one of the biggest hits we’ve gotten more feedback and more growth in that than anything that it’s one of the most exciting things that we do.

[00:52:36] Colt Balok: If anyone listening, please go check out our, our newsletter. We, we do a quite a. A quote, we’re pondering a qualm that we’re going through and then kind of a question to leave you with. And then, uh, Facebook is where you can really kind of follow us as well. It’s what we’re currently the fastest growing talk show on Facebook.

[00:52:52] Colt Balok: That’s a big milestone for us. And we’re just taking it day by day. I think right now my webmaster actually told me this and I’ve been kind of really living by it. Uh, I just find it brilliant. I asked him like, Hey, do you, do you plan on being like a CEO one day? Cause I just find you absolutely just Brit, like just reMarkable.

[00:53:07] Colt Balok: And he said, And like to what your dream job is, he’s like, I don’t have a dream job. He’s like, I just know that if I say yes, God’s going to put me in a leadership role. I don’t know where that’s going to be. I just know that’s going to happen. And, uh, it’s really about just saying yes and letting go. And I think that’s kind of where I’m at right now, where it’s like, I’ve, you know, I’ve always had this God’s placed this on my heart to go to the entertainment industry and to do something in entertainment.

[00:53:27] Colt Balok: And so I’m just saying yes. And seeing where God takes it. And, uh, right now it just, there’s a lot of fun things in the work. This is the funnest. Part of my life right now. That’s a little bit about our show and what we’re doing. 

[00:53:39] Mark Divine: That’s cool. I love your, your interview style is great because you’re just very present.

[00:53:44] Mark Divine: Like even this conversation, it’s great. People say that about me. It’s like, I’m not in my head. I don’t have like lengthy notes. I don’t have a strategy. I don’t have preplanned questions. Yeah. I don’t like to do that. I’m not to say there isn’t some preparation, you know, it’s useful to know, but I already knew you.

[00:54:01] Mark Divine: So this is easy. Right. But you’re like that, like you’re very present and spontaneous. And, um, I don’t feel. Like any separation between us and I know that spiritually there is not, but you know, even oftentimes like I’m interviewing the latest author and the author is pretty in love with his or her, you know, concepts and so they’re, they’re going to make sure those concepts get heard and so that it tends to be like one directional interviewing and I don’t like that.

[00:54:30] Mark Divine: And I’m going to start doing less and less of those and more just conversations like this where we get to share together. Or I’ll do solo cast too. Do you ever do any like solo type things for your show? Uh, always have interviewed 

[00:54:44] Colt Balok: as far as video goes. I mean, I think our, our, our newsletter we sent out is probably as solo as it gets.

[00:54:49] Colt Balok: That’s true. I just am so fascinated by other people. You know, you’re, you’re one. Just good presence here. But like, I, I just, I don’t know if it’s like you see God in every person or whatever it is that I’ve adopted. And it’s just like, you can’t be bored with the other person while you’re talking. I’m just like, you know, looking at your, your face, your mannerism, your smile, you know, then I’m hearing the words that are coming out of your mouth.

[00:55:12] Colt Balok: And I’m like, like this guy, like has had so much experience. And like, it’s like, how do you not, how are you not fascinated by someone when you like are hearing all the things coming out? And so like, I just, then at that point, I just had such genuine curiosity that I’m like, when is the last time you experienced a fear?

[00:55:27] Colt Balok: And like, oh my gosh, like what, you know, like you just want to know the person because you just are, I don’t know. I just, I don’t know. Thank you. I appreciate your compliment. Um, but you make it very easy. That’s 

[00:55:37] Mark Divine: great. That’s a great quality. I love that. 

[00:55:39] Colt Balok: I, you know, I’m really big on that. There’s not a single boring person in the world.

[00:55:42] Colt Balok: Like you’re, you’re a boring person. If you think there’s a boring person in the world. Um, and so like that, that’s kind of like a motto that I think I live by. 

[00:55:50] Mark Divine: You’ve got a statement here that I wrote down and says, you want everybody to become somebody that makes everybody feel like somebody. 

[00:55:57] Colt Balok: That’s a goal of mine.

[00:55:58] Colt Balok: I literally like, well, like in my daily prayers will be like, please let me be someone. That makes, I love that expression, that makes everyone feel like they’re somebody. And I don’t know if that goes back to my adoption and my woundedness, but I will tell you, you will become the most popular person in the room if any listener out there adopts that.

[00:56:12] Colt Balok: And the other caveat that I’ll add to that is everyone needs you no matter how confident they see you. Everyone needs you no matter how confident they may seem. 

[00:56:25] Mark Divine: I hope ColtBalok.com Colt Balok show. Yes, it’s great to, great to connect with you and do this. Thanks so much, Mark. Thank you so 

[00:56:32] Colt Balok: much for having me on.

[00:56:33] Colt Balok: And again, next time I’m out there, I’m totally gonna, uh, we totally need to get together and I’m excited just to learn more from you and, uh, and thank you for being so supportive and, and everything that you’ve done for my life. That’s, uh, I literally say it takes an army to, to get me to where I need to go and like, People like are genuinely making it happen.

[00:56:52] Colt Balok: So thank you from the bottom of my heart.

[00:56:56] Mark Divine: Yeah, that was a fantastic conversation. Just two guys chatting it up. Colt, what a great interview. Thank you so much for your time today. Check ’em out at Colt Balok, BALO k.com. Once again, thank you and thank you for doing the work that you’re doing. Show notes are up on Mark Divine.com. YouTube is on the YouTube channel.

[00:57:14] Mark Divine: You can find us on X at Mark Divine or on Instagram and Facebook at Real, Mark Divine. Hit me up and let me know what you’d like to hear the type of guest you’d like to see me interview and if there are any topics you’d like me to, um, do a solo cast on, let me know. A quick plug for our newsletter, Divine Inspiration, which comes out every Tuesday where I’ve got my blog and show notes from the week’s podcast, a book I’m reading, a practice, and other really cool stuff that I find interesting and positive.

[00:57:41] Mark Divine: So check it out. I think you’ll like it. Go to Markdivine.com to subscribe and share it with your friends. And thanks to Catherine divine and Jason Sanderson who bring. Guests like Colt to you every week and produce this newsletter. Couldn’t do it without you guys. Hooyah. Ratings and reviews are very helpful.

[00:57:58] Mark Divine: If you haven’t done so, please consider rating and reviewing wherever you listen. Helps keep us relevant and helps others find us. Thanks so much for being the change you want to see in your world. Together, we can do that at scale. And, uh, just chip away at the negativity and violence and create a world, a more beautiful world that our hearts knows is possible.

[00:58:19] Mark Divine: One day, one life at a time. Hooyah. Until next time, this is Mark Divine.