Natalie Ledwell: Hi! I'm Natalie Ledwell and this is The Inspiration Show. Today my passion peep is someone who's overcome a harrowing experience as a child and now inspires and motivates others to search deep within themselves to create prosperous, healthy and enriching lives. Drew Canole is an author, a fitness specialist and a nutritionist. And is one of the most reputable personal coaches in Southern California. Drew is committed to the conviction that people are at their best when challenged. He pushes others to push through personal barriers and reach new heights in physical, mental and spiritual being. Now when you hear his story, you'll be shocked. And you'll totally understand why he now lives a life of passion. So, enjoy the video!

Natalie Ledwell: Hi Drew! Welcome to the show.

Drew Canole: Thank you! It's good to be here.

Natalie Ledwell: Excellent! Now we're gonna just striding through the questions.

Drew Canole: Perfect! I'm looking forward to this.

Natalie Ledwell: Awesome! Okay, the reason actually that i've asked you here today because I know that you're a person that lives his life with passion. But assuming it wasn't always that way for you, so what is your journey, what is your background up until now?

Drew Canole: That's a good question. So I was always living passionately. I had this real, you know, zest for life. And it actually happened at a young age. See for me I was brought into an experience when i was abused as a kid. Physically, emotionally, and even sexually. And, it was hard but every single lead up to this point where I was actually, you know, putting to this other house when I was adopted by the age of six. And my mother told me to pray every night. It was instilled that we would go through our prayers at night. And I was praying for, you know, the typical things a 6-year old would pray for. The dog, the cat, grandma, grandpa. And one night I actually prayed to forgive the man that had done everything against me at that young age. And that completely changed my whole entire experience from that point on. My sister at that time kind of held unto it. And you can see her life. So I was living passionately after the forgiveness. But i think the forgiveness is key in explaining that to you because a lot of people hold unto things from the past. They don't let it go and it creates this life that they don't wanna be living. So for me, I let it go at a young age. But i was still living in this vicious circle of "it's true show." I would go out and try to get people involved people in my experience. I wasn't really giving. I wasn't living in the giving zone. So i lived my entire life like this. I graduated from college. Worked 12-14 hours a day. I mean there were times that I get three-four hours of sleep and then get back to the job working for money. Working for something that i thought people wanted to see. They related me with success and money. So this is what I was trying to attract. And then, after working there for so long, I moved down to Florida. And I met this mentor. And he said, "Drew, if you do one thing, make sure you're doing something to bless others. Now this business is not about making money, it's about actually helping people." And that really stuck with me. That was like one of those things that's kinds swished in my mind. So then I started focusing on what I could give. The more that I could give obviously the more is going to be attracted into my experience, the more success there's going to be. So once I made that switch, and I was, and it wasn't like instant either, you know, we keep going back to our old routines.

Natalie Ledwell: Absolutely.

Drew Canally: It's this vicious cycle I was in. So I would go back. I met some amazing people when I used to live over in Florida. That were extremely good at what they were doing. We're go flying around in private jets. And just living them this life, traveling all over the place. But it wasn't me. I was still doing something that wasn't my passion. I was in a credit and debt niche. I was running the company called Eat My Debt and Waterfilled Credit. So I realized that if I wanted to change, if I wanted to start living in my passion, I had to change my environment. So one day, I decided to move over to San Diego, California. Just get out of the environment that I was in. And that's the day that it all changed. Because I left everything that I was comfortable with. Everything that I was used to in a day-to-day basis for something that was new. Something that I could create. It's almost like a painting, you could start putting your paint and developing your life at that. So I was in San Diego for two months, meditating, thinking about what I wanted to do. And then it hit me, I realized that I get the most joy when I can help somebody with their own personal transformation. Similar to transformation that I went through as a kid and I had that mind switch with forgiveness. That's really what does it for me, you know, seeing somebody else transform. So we started FitLive.TV. And then I was able to live within my passion.

Natalie Ledwell: Right.

Drew Canole: Make sense?

Natalie Ledwell: Because you know, often it's fine threads that take us from where we were, you know, struggling, to you know, where we want to be. So, I mean, are you saying that the move from Florida and coming here was one of those fine threads?

Drew Canole: Absolutely!

Natalie Ledwell: And so, so what is, what is FitLive.TV? You know, what is, describe the life you lived now. From where you were then to where you are now.

Drew Canole: FitLive.TV is the website. It's a common nation of everything that I've learned within. Using the mind movies, the affirmation station. I'll show you guys a little bit later. And the other thoughts and ideas that contributed to my "fit life," so to speak. And a lot of people think it's all physical. They think it's this, you know, website for you to get work-out tips and exercise and all this stuff. But you know as well as I do that physical fitness starts in the mind. So once we create that, once we get the whole mind set, the mind frame worked out and people that follow us their life starts to change radically. And we've had unbelievable transformations. I hope you've seen some of my lines but, you know, Kent Clotheir, Jason Medley, some guys that were putting in a Van Handwidth, they've literally changed their entire lives. In a matter of 90 days, but they didn't start physically. That was just a sideline goal of what happened. And you can look at the pictures and it just blows me away. What you're able to do in a short amount of time. What the desire, discipline and determination to go out and get what you want. But it all starts up there.

Natalie Ledwell: Absolutely! I've used mind personally to help me reach a weight loss goal as well, any health goals. And it's been fantastic. Now, you know, in my experience I know that success is not an accident. you know, and successful people have a routine, have certain things that they do everyday to keep them on track with their goals. So what are the things that you do to keep you on track?

Drew Canole: Perfect! This is something that I've been doing for an extremely long period of time. But I call it developing rituals. You know, when people think of rituals like going to church and some funny stuff. It's not. It's like developing your ritual for what's important to you. So, as soon as I get up, I have a morning ritual that I do every single morning. You know, I lay in bed, just get extremely grateful. And some of morning when I really don't feel like being grateful. You know, you're just sitting there and you're like " what is here to be grateful today?" But as soon as you get that gratitude, you really start to feel it. And you inject it with emotion because that's really what creates it stronger. So for five or ten minutes, I'm just completely grateful for every single thing in my life. And it maybe five things, it could be a hundred things. But then I get up. And as soon as I get up, I go out to my kitchen and I do what's called a "steam rinse." I put in a little peppermint in a pan, I put a towel over my head, and I just breathe in, breathe out. I open up, this is kinda funny, but one of the things that I learned from Paul Chuck, a mentor of mine, you can open up your left and right brain hemisphere by the different ways that you breathe. So I do that every morning. Take a cold shower, which is tough. That's part of my morning ritual. And then I'm off to the gym to move. I find that moving the first thing in the morning creates that physiology and gets you excited about today. And, you know, it's something that's an absolute must every single morning in my life. When I come back, I meditate for 10, 15 minutes. Sometimes I read for 30-45 minutes. Things that I'm into personal development of mind, or fitness. That kind of thing. And after I'm done reading, then I have breakfast. Normally it's pretty some more breakfast every single morning. And then I start my day. So it's that morning ritual that I have that set up every single day. That without a doubt, wherever I am, traveling all over the place, you could still do your morning ritual. May not have to go to the gym every time, but at least you can get up and move and use things that's similar to the ritual that keep you on alignment.

Natalie Ledwell: Yup. Now, that you see now, because we have done a few of these interviews, and nearly everyone that I've spoken to, their morning rituals include some kind of exercise.

Drew Canole: Yeah.

Natalie Ledwell: And some kind of reading or learning. And I know that we bumped each other in the gym, in the mornings. And what I'm trying to do is have my audio books on my iPod. So I should listen to my books while I'm exercising so i kind of combined the two. Now, my next question, and you probably have a lot of experience with this, cause I actually get a lot of e-mails from people who say "how do I keep positive when everything seems to be working against me?" Now I'm sure that when you're working with people that are going through personal transformations, they must hit hurdles sometimes, what kind of advice you give to them to get through that?

Drew Canole: I am, I have a tool that I used. It's called The Affirmation Station. I made a video in FitLife about it. But I basically take my cellphone, and I program different affirmations. So, similar to the mind movies, if you can program your subconscious mind to constantly be running in the sadder level, then there's gonna be fewer times were you're actually going back to it. So, you just take the alarm, and instead of a label, you can do this to any smartphone, you just write out whatever you're working with. 'Cause there's gonna be times when you're working with things, you may not be having the best day, but realize that even for a moment, and I can't stress how powerful this is, that your thought gets lost, and you start really thinking bad about the way the day is and how "what was me" in your life. That's totally killing all goodness that's about to come into your experience. So the faster you can correct that, the much more successful you are going to be at creating the life that you want. But it all starts with recognizing your own thoughts. Hearing them for what they are. And becoming a ninja and breaking them down immediately when things are not coming from you. You see, and that's one thing that I've worked with, a lot, is recognizing that there's a lot of world beliefs out there. And it creates almost this energetic field that can contaminate your experience. And you can call it animal magnetism, whatever you want to call it. But when I start to get that, that's when I can make that switch and realize that it's not part of my experience. And then I can create different affirmations or thoughts that can lead me back down to the path of what I'm creating, what I want other people to experience when they meet me, different things like that.

Natalie Ledwell: Yeah. So the alarm is kind of reminding you that, okay, it's like a bit of a patterning drop.

Drew Canole: Yeah.

Natalie Ledwell: You might be in that footbridge and then you have that alarm then you "oh, that's right. What am I thinking, let's go back to thinking positive."

Drew Canole: Yeah. And you mention the abundance as well. Like a lot of people struggle with the whole money concept. The alarm works perfect. And I'll give you an example, just real quick. I have an alarm that says "money is coming to me like a tidal wave." And when it flashes up, my screensaver actually is a wave. So I get a visual of this thing happening too. So when I see this, I really feel what it feels like, I look at the wave, I, and you can do see-hear-feel. So what is it look like. What is it feel like. What is it sound like. So I hear this wave coming in and then I really feel it like kidding me and coming into my experience. And I can't tell you how many times sadly. And when I look at the phone and I'm like "let's test this out, let's test the universe." You know, and it's really not a, it's kinda funny. But I looked at my e-mail, and sure enough, even this morning I looked down, and money just came in. As soon as I hit refresh in my inbox, there was money sitting right there because of this tool.

Natalie Ledwell: Yeah.

Drew Canole: Staying so aware all the time. It's, you know, standing portal at the door of thought. I think it's the biggest thing.

Natalie Ledwell: Yes. It's the same my iPod works. You got the music, you got the information, you got the FedEx, the whole thing.

Drew Canole: Everything.

Natalie Ledwell: So, awesome. Now, I have one more question for you. It maybe difficult to narrow this one to one thing, but if there's one actionable step that people that are listening today can implement right now to make a change in their life, what would that step be?

Drew Canole: I believe the biggest step would be to, you know for me, and I can use this as my experience similar to the story that i've told in the beginning, but it's letting go of everything. It's letting go of the past. You know if somebody has done something wrong by, you letting go of And I actually, you know, this kind of tied in the past story. I was speaking to one of my mentors, and I said "Drew, you forgave your dad at the age of 6 right?" And I did that. And I go, "but you didn't let it go." That's what my mentor said. And I said "what do you mean?" She goes "you should write a letter to your dad and thank him for bringing you into this experience. And I thought, at first, you know, egos are up above everything else, "should I really be thanking this man that abused me?" you know, there was a time if I can't tie my shoes fast enough, this man will put a cigarette out on my head. So to forgive those type of actions, I thought was enough. But to really thanks him? So gaining grateful for that impacted my life. Letting go of everything and then recognizing that whatever your hang up is, it doesn't have to be that, it could be something much worse. And there's always somebody in a worse situation that you are, but getting to an authentic point in your life, is only gonna bring more endearing experience. Were you're not living through patterns self-creative stuff that happened in the past that you had no control over and then recognizing that you have control.

Natalie Ledwell: Yup. And that's the thing because forgiveness and thanking is not about them, it's about you.

Drew Canole: Yes! Exactly!

Natalie Ledwell: It's about letting go of that so you can progress and live your life of passion. Absolutely!

Drew Canole: So that would definitely it, letting go.

Natalie Ledwell: Wonderful. So Drew, thank you so much for being with us here today.

Drew Canole: Thank you for having me.

Natalie Ledwell: Very insightful answers. I'm glad to hear it. So guys, until next time. Remember to live large, choose courageously, and love without limits. We'll see you soon.