When it comes to this concept of love, it’s really important to recognize that love is one of the most cliché words, overused and frankly, underestimated. I don’t say that because I don’t believe that you or I don’t love people, it’s that I believe that we have been living through a lens where love has been marginalized, and has been minimized, and has been made to be more of a routine versus the concept that love is the single most powerful and authentic aspect of all of humanity.

 

Whenever I say love and appreciate you all at the end of my emails, and posts, I can’t tell you how much I mean that, in the fullest capacity.  I’m gonna tell you a little bit of the story as to why.

 

I left home when I was 17 And instead of playing in the main draw of the Southern California tennis Association sectionals, I was down low, crawling through the mud at West Point Cadet Basic Training as a new cadet. I remember being 15 and getting accepted into West Point and I said to my mom “I could go to WAR”.  At the time Bill Clinton was president, and the military was actually downsizing and many of the cadets and West Point graduates were being let out of the military before their commitment.

 

I verbalized that to my mom and her response was what most parents might give when they really want their kids to do something. She assured me that “I would be fine”, that maybe I could come home early, and those were some famous “last words”. Little did I know that it would be 11 years from that moment that I might ever have the chance to come back home. 

 

Little did I know that the concept of “home” would NEVER be the same. 

 

 

I did five years of active duty service and one of those I served in combat in Iraq back in 2003. I was 24 and I remember distinctly having 17 and 18 year old new soldiers deploying as their first duty station. It’s one thing to serve, it’s a whole other thing to deploy; it’s a completely different experience altogether, to look your soldiers in the eye and promise them you will do anything to bring them home safely.

 

But I had many nights thinking of those short sighted words of my mom “you’re going to be fine”. She had no idea. It’s very obvious to me that there is very little that she could’ve truly known about what it is that I was actually embarking on. 

 

I am the only family member of my generation to serve in the military, and I am only one of two who know what it’s like to serve in combat. My grandfather was a World War II veteran and he was honestly one of my idols growing up. He was not a tall man, but he was larger than life to  me. To the day he died, he loved this country and he loved freedom. I remember the copies of American Legion Magazine he would give me whenever I would come to visit. 

 

He had a loyalty to the American Legion that I never knew about until after he passed away in 2002 and we were ramping up for deployment. The American Legion as an organization was very influential in ending the Chinese Exclusionary act post WWII.

 

I say this all because, while my mother didn’t know anything about what I might be embarking on back then, she did know the legacy that my grandfather left. She understood that America was a dream for our family. They chose to flee tyrannical totalitarian China and emigrate to a country that discriminated against our ancestors. 

 

She understood the training ground at the military is for important skills and experiences that require radical leadership, commitment, and loyalty.

 

I bring this up because it took a lot of work for me to get to where I am today and I’m not saying that because of my career. I’m saying that through the lens of healing. By the time I was in my mid 20s and out, processing the military, I had four diagnosable chronic conditions that military medicine never tried to identify or address.

 

I did a lot of work on myself. I did a lot of work to resolve a lot of traumatic patterns, limiting belief systems, and to create an infrastructure in my mind for empowered thinking and authentic self-leadership. 

 

Chiropractic was a foundation for me to restore my nervous system’s ability to self-regulate. The lifestyle I began to implement back in 2005 has now essentially been a 20 year journey of transformation that literally continues today.

 

Yoga, meditation, grounding, functional fitness, affirmation, gratitude journals, nature, nutrition, detoxification, were among many other health habits that really began to be my “new normal”.

 

Today that has really expanded to cold plunge, breathwork, and infrared sauna.

 

All of which frankly doesn’t work as well without Chiropractic. Without a healthy neurospinal system, all of those other health interventions have a hard time processing through a confused nervous system.

 

I didn’t go to Chiropractic school until 2007. I was honestly addicted to radical self healing. And it was incredibly important for me to do a lot of this before I moved home. Because I was going to live in my parents home as I went to Chiropractic school and I tell you all of this because most of us have generational trauma that is unresolved.

 

Most of us have generational trauma that impacts our ability to truly feel and give LOVE as deeply, and profoundly as we were designed to.

 

I believe the love that is promoted around the world is one-sided. But we all know that love is not always rainbows and puppy dogs. That for many of us parents, love is coupled with a form of fear, worry, and doubt that our kids will be OK, or that very real feeling of “mommy guilt” (daddy’s have this too to some degree) is deeply grounded in LOVE. 

 

As we find ourselves at the beginning of 2024, what looks like another dramatic election year in the making, themed with an undertow of more weirdness from the World Economic Forum, I am inviting you to remember to “love thy neighbor”.

 

Yes, bring warmth, community, deep trust, and reliability, and maybe a nourishing meal to a family with a new baby 🙂

 

I invite you to love your FAMILY. Commit to date night with your wife, date days with your kids, leave them both LOVE notes, and remember to connect with each other multiple times daily.

 

I Invite you to explore the whole picture of love. That beyond the rainbows and puppy dogs, beyond the warm hugs and snuggles with your kids, is a type of love that often looks like telling the stronger truth, a statement that inspires change or elevates a new powerful belief. 

 

Or maybe it is to start a new chapter in their lives, as many of you have with a journey of optimal health. Maybe it is inviting them to a new version of self-love through nervous system focused Chiropractic care. 

 

What’s fun about our promotion this month is, we are putting our money where our mouth is and we are raffling off a date night for you and your family (preferably your spouse and away from your kids). As parents, we all know how much we need more connection and TLC.

 

And I say this, because it is literally how my mind has worked since I was 17. The year I realized that my life was changed forever. The year I realized that I would never know a purposeless life. 

 

The year that would become the training ground that would largely fuel Future Generations into existence and into a leadership role in a time when the world needs the truth more than ever.

 

The deepest truth I know is that we are all made from an infinite wellspring of Eternal Love that is often forgotten amongst the noise and chaos of a post-2020 world. 

 

Which brings me to the single, most powerful and transformative practice that my family includes multiple times on a daily basis, that invites into our hearts and home the infinity of Eternal Love. 

 

Every day we pray for each other.

Every day we pray for our team.

Every day we pray for you. 

 

That you may know love of self, others, and our world. 

That you may know there is no opting out of this love. 

And that if you do, there is no amount of tyranny, darkness,

or evil that can hold a candle to you because you are loved.

 

I’m grateful for my family. 

 

I’m grateful for my ancestors who chose an impossible path to emigrate to this beautiful country because they knew a love for the idea and potential of me and my wife, and our kids, and their kids. 

 

I’m grateful for my mom because she somehow knew the type of leadership that would be required for a time such as this. 

 

Love and appreciate you all ♥️ (now you know how much I mean it)

 

S