Ben Newman

that in the darkness of what I had to go through, there's beauty in how I honor my mom every day, which is what I call my burn, but there's also a darkness that fuels me.

The times that my dad verbally abused me and told me that I would never achieve anything and you'll never be good enough, you'll never amount to shit, and when I was successful, he'd try to do things to manipulate me mentally to pull me back so that I couldn't grow.

That's a hard thing when you've already lost your mom at seven years old and parents were divorced at six months old.

I've now learned to harness this darkness that lies inside of me.

And I don't really talk about it often, but there's a fuel.

And when I step into that darkness, Sean, there's a place that I go to.

People always feel the big, fun-loving Ben.

They never feel...

anger or nastiness from me.

But there's a fuel that I've been able to find in my darkness.

And when an individual understands how to pull strength from their darkness, it's amazing what they can achieve.

Wow.

Thanks for sharing that.

So I ask you, the darkness for you being that 10-year-old and probably feeling split and pulled and carried in different areas, have you ever tried to harness that side to find more power and strength?

So can I share an opportunity?

Yeah.

So, um, I now write in the back of my, so I have what I call a burn journal.

So our, our podcast is called the burn and we had, you know, seven years of it and we help people stay connected to this burn, which is really that underlying fire that ignites wine.

And I have a burn journal that I write, I write down the same thing every day for years.

And I got stacks of these, these journals.