“What do you really want?”

That was the question Marc’s therapist asked him on a beautiful, sunny Atlanta day when, inside, he felt like there was “one cloud raining on just me.” Mark’s answer was simple and heartbreaking: “I just want to be normal.”

In this deeply honest conversation on LOA Today, host Walt and co-host Jodie Lynn talk with Marc - certified personal trainer, nutritionist, strength and conditioning coach, mental health advocate, and podcast host about what happens when therapy feels like it’s failing you, but you refuse to fail yourself.

Mark describes walking into therapy feeling broken and abnormal. His therapist gently pushed back: “There’s nothing abnormal about you, this is your normal. Normal is relative.”

Those words eventually became the seed for his podcast, Relatively Normal, a platform where Marc speaks with therapists, psychologists, and everyday people about postpartum struggles, imposter syndrome, and the crushing loneliness of mental health challenges. His mission: “I just want to make sure people don’t feel isolated and alone.”

Walt relates to his own story - starting LOA Today after a total business “crash and burn” in 2008 and admitting that, at first, he didn’t even think about listeners: “I was doing the podcast because I needed the help. When the first listener email came in, my reaction was, ‘Oh shit, what have I been saying?’”

Marc shares a powerful turning point: he had lost weight, checked all the “life boxes” - marriage, house, better body and still felt empty. He called his therapist on the verge of tears: “I feel like I’ve checked all the boxes. Why am I not happy?”

The therapist’s answer cut to the core: “Did you think losing all the weight would make you feel better mentally?

You have to be intentional with both.”

Marc realized he’d been treating physical health as a cure-all for mental pain. That’s when he decided to treat fitness like therapy, even hiring a trainer as his “therapist for physical health.” He stopped using workouts to escape stress and started leaning into his stress at the gym, coming back with “three or four different resolution strategies” after a hard session.

Today, Marc’s niche is training young people. Before every session, he asks: “Zero to ten - where are you mentally right now?”

If a teenager says they’re at a three or four, he adapts the session. For an eight or nine, he pushes harder. Why? Because: “No one ever asks them where they are mentally.”

He refuses to be the harsh coach parents sometimes request: “I don’t want them to hate coming to work with me. My job is sometimes to motivate, sometimes to inspire, and to help them find things in themselves they wouldn’t find without me.”

Jodie Lynn beautifully ties the conversation together, pointing out how much of our identity gets trapped in roles - athlete, worker, partner, and how Marc is giving kids permission to ask: Do I actually love this? Or am I just good at it?

Marc tells his own daughters, “The first time you tell me, ‘I don’t love this anymore,’ we’re done after the season. I won’t force your childhood to be full of things you hate.”

Ultimately, this conversation is a reminder that:

• Normal is relative.
• Happy is relative.
• And you’re allowed to rewrite both.

You don’t have to choose between therapy and training, between mental health and physical health, between passion and discipline. You can choose all of it, and you can choose yourself.

LOA Today Episode Page: https://www.loatoday.net/marc-paisant

Marc Paisant's Website: https://www.marcpaisant.com/

Follow the LOA Today podcast: https://www.loatoday.net/follow

#lawofattraction
#manifesting
#vibration
#podcast
#deliberatecreators
#Q&A
#waltthiessen
#jodielynncraven
#loatodayapp
#YourDailyDoseOfHappy

#MentalHealthMatters #RelativelyNormal #FitnessAndMentalHealth #YouthMentalHealth #ParentingWithCompassion #FollowYourJoy #SelfDiscovery #EmotionalWellbeing #NormalIsRelative #HappinessIsRelative

When Walt opened the show by admitting he saw “preparation” and “where are we going?” as almost the same topic, he expected agreement. Instead, Joel gently pushed back.

For Joel, those two ideas live in very different emotional universes. “Where are you going matches the concept for me that there is no destination. There’s a journey. Your journey is where you’re going. There is no destination.”

That single idea reframed everything that followed.

Both Walt and Joel grew up with the same cultural script: work hard, prepare for retirement, and one day you’ll “get there.”

But Joel’s life blew that script apart. He talked about chasing wealth, preparing obsessively for a future that never arrived, then losing everything through addiction, homelessness, and jail. “I dug myself an incredibly deep hole, and the process of digging myself out of the hole is what made me successful.”

At one point, he believed his life was permanently ruined. Yet looking back, he now calls that period the catalyst for everything good that came later. Walt still remembers resisting that idea the first time he heard it: “I remember distinctly when you were telling me that, I thought you were nuts.”

The “worst thing that ever happened” became the doorway to meaning, purpose, and connection with his son.

Walt raised a painful question many of us ask silently:

How do you prepare when you don’t even know what you’re preparing for or if the preparation advice you’ve been given is totally wrong?

Joel’s answer wasn’t a checklist. It was a mindset.

He described coaching a young man who kept postponing applying for a job. Instead of building a big, complex plan, Joel gave him one clear mental anchor: “When you get to the parking lot, apply for the job.”

That wasn’t just preparing a résumé; it was preparing a mind that actually takes the next step.

Joel lives this daily. He writes five things he’s grateful for every single morning and has done it for decades, including on the day his son died.

“I wasn’t able to be sincerely grateful and depressed at the same time.”

For him, gratitude isn’t a cute slogan. It’s survival. It’s preparation for whatever the journey brings next.

Walt shared a powerful technique: learning to appreciate what you don’t like—not by pretending to love it, but by inching it from -100 to -80 in your emotional “score.” That tiny shift is still an appreciation, because it increases value.

“You don’t have to like it in order to appreciate it.”

Joel calls this “reframing.” He used it to transform eating from a dumpster from a lifelong trauma into a necessary piece of the story that ultimately helped him connect with his son.

As the conversation turned to money, entitlement, and work, Joel said the real lottery isn’t a financial windfall. It’s this: “The ultimate lottery in life is finding a way to make a good living doing what you’re passionate about and love.”

That’s the kind of preparation that actually matters: preparing your mind and heart to live the journey fully, instead of waiting for some mythical finish line that never comes.

LOA Today Episode Page: https://www.loatoday.net/preparation

Follow the LOA Today podcast: https://www.loatoday.net/follow

#loatoday
#lawofattraction
#manifesting
#vibration
#podcast
#deliberatecreators
#Q&A
#waltthiessen
#joelelston

#MindsetShift #GratitudePractice #EmotionalResilience #PersonalGrowth #SelfDiscovery #JourneyNotDestination #MentalHealth #AddictionRecovery #LifeCoaching #Purpose #Ikigai #Motivation

What happens when a musician is told he has two years to live and decides not just to survive, but to finally live on his own terms?

That’s the story Kevin shared in this powerful conversation with Walt and Jodie Lynn, a story that weaves together music, mortality, and a radical redefinition of success.

From the very beginning, Kevin framed music as destiny, not just a career. As a teenager, he discovered the mountain dulcimer and “just knew it was [his] destiny.” By 16, he was signed to a major folk label, recording alongside legends like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie.

He went on to sing the theme for the PBS hit Shining Time Station, and in his words, he got “a little rich, a little famous, a book deal, a record deal, all that stuff.”

But the dream came with a price.

The stress, pressure, and misalignment of success led to a brutal wake-up call: melanoma. Four oncologists told Kevin it would return within two years, and he’d be dead. He calls it what it was: a death sentence.

And yet something in him refused to accept that story.

Kevin describes himself as “somewhat psychic,” deeply spiritually attuned, and both musical and spiritual “from birth.” When he heard the diagnosis, he recalls walking through his apartment, speaking out loud to his dog, and saying: “Don’t worry, buddy, we’ll get through this.”

Then came the realization: “I discovered there were two of me, the conscious warrior and the knower.” That inner knowing told him he wasn’t going to die. He followed that guidance, turned inward spiritually, found teachings from Yogananda and Ramana Maharshi, and radically simplified his life.

He left the Midwest with “my dog and my dulcimer,” moved into a small apartment in San Diego, and embraced minimalism. He lost most of his money and discovered freedom. No house. No lawn. No status to maintain. Just health, music, and what truly mattered.

When Walt asked what music really means to him, Kevin’s answer was simple and profound: “It was very healing.” He went on to describe Dulcie meditation using dulcimer instrumentals as a vehicle for accessing the subconscious and receiving quiet inner guidance. He realized he’d been doing it his whole life.

That insight became the seed of a new calling. At someone’s suggestion, Kevin began life coaching, helping others apply the same principles he used to heal and rebuild.

His first question to clients isn’t “What do you want?” It’s: “What don’t you want in your life anymore?” From there, he asks:

• What do you want?
• Why is that truly important?
• What are you going to do about it?

Again and again, he returns to a central truth: health and self-love are the real wealth. “Your greatest asset is your health,” he says. “Forget about everybody else. Love yourself.”

Now, through his upcoming Dulcie Meditations project on YouTube and Substack and one-on-one coaching via KevinRoth.org, Kevin is quietly redefining what it means to succeed: not by being everywhere, but by being deeply present with the few people he’s meant to help.

His journey poses a question that lingers long after the conversation ends: If you were given a death sentence, what would you finally permit yourself to let go of, and what would you finally allow yourself to live for?

LOA Today Episode Page: https://www.loatoday.net/kevin-roth

Kevin Roth's Website: https://kevinroth.org/

Follow the LOA Today podcast: https://www.loatoday.net/follow

#lawofattraction
#manifesting
#vibration
#podcast
#deliberatecreators
#Q&A
#waltthiessen
#jodielynncraven
#loatodayapp
#YourDailyDoseOfHappy

#DulcieMeditation #HealingThroughMusic #FacingDeath #ChoosingLife #SpiritualAwakening #LifeCoaching #SelfLove #Minimalism #ConsciousLiving #MusicIsMedicine