What Do You Do When a DNA Test Changes Who Your Father Is?

0:00DerekWelcome back to the most thoughtful show on television thought mining today We have a very special episode and our first or not our first guest but our first guest thinker Which is the new title of our guest Nathan. What's today's show? Topic gonna be about

0:18Nathanso today we are going to explore how? acting on serendipitous moments can change the trajectory of our lives

0:29Derekand What a great example of this exact thing today We have Thad von Dreet and he's an author who has a new book coming out called 23 and F me what a cool title that is that's awesome that so

0:45DerekTell us a little bit about your book and how it came about and how it kind of fits this serendipity theme that we have Today,

0:51Thadum, I've been working on This for a very long time a number of years ago I found out through 23 and me testing that my dad who raised me was not my biological father and that sort of blew the doors off the perception of myself… and I have been in sort of an exploratory mode ever since then and if through therapy started writing down thoughts That I had collected for a very very long time But then I started to put them into into a format into a word document and writing around them and throughout that process I discovered that

1:25ThadThere may be a place in in the middle of all this to write a book is to teach other people how to do people that have Been through my situation in any way that's been through any trauma in their life That writing about thoughts and being very present and understanding why things happen the way they may have happened in your past

1:43ThadHow that affected affected my past behavior and how it affects my present behavior. That's that's that's the skinning of it

1:49DerekYeah, and you know talk about serendipity because could we talk a little bit about how you came to be?

1:57DerekAware of thought lining and then you know also serendipitous your book is coming out very soon So this is a really great time to plug it and you can buy it on Amazon.com 23 and f me. All right But also this is a bit of you know, interesting story about how we came together in this room right now. Mm-hmm What do you think Nathan? Do you want to talk about it? Yeah, so I am

2:21NathanI'm at the lake Spending a weekend there.

2:25NathanI See an email pop through on my phone

2:29NathanAnd I when I have a moment to take a peek at it I look at it and it says something like we I cited you in my book and I'm like, oh, well, that's intriguing What's that all about? So I open it up. Take a look at it It's that here saying I wrote this book 23 and f me thought mining what played a role in that and so I wanted to to credit you guys and let you know that that I'm Talking about your work and in my process and so it turns out that Thad here thought of the term thought mining as well before he even encountered our how is that possible?

3:08NathanProbably around the same time. I mean it's pretty Remarkable when something like that can happen like serendipitous moments.

3:14DerekI run some wavelength. I think yeah,

3:16Nathanso then then I Responded to his email and said hey, I'd love to learn more about your process and what you think of thought mining how you interpret it and

3:27NathanIt's led into subsequent conversations and ultimately here

3:31DerekYeah, could you tell us a little bit about how you applied these kind of concepts while putting your work together?

3:35ThadSo when I was working on it, I I had I thought I originated the term thought mining And so I was looking through my book and I thought you know I better Google that and make sure that that hasn't been used already Because I have a couple different terms that I feel like are fairly organic in the book

3:52ThadI think thought mining on my part was a bit of a misnomer I actually changed the word to memory mining going back and changing

4:01ThadTrying to find thoughts that are stuck back and you know the back end of our brain that's been there for decades that we've never thought of Until you start writing around individual thoughts from your past and so I you know I called that thought mining but I think it was erroneous because when I read about what what you guys defined as thought mining It made a lot more sense about where I am in my current journey and being very present. It's a different side It's not necessarily talked about that much in the book. I talked a lot about memory mining along with something I called mile posting There's you know, there's definite times and places like when I was in first grade I played hooky from from school for an extra day I told my mom I was sick and I lied through my teeth that happened to be the day of the first space shuttle launch And you can look back on that and that's got a date stamp and a time stamp and so that's that's the essence of mile posting but the beauty of Thought mining memory mining in between that is that when you're writing through these different memories these different mile posts and these different memories That you have and you can you can organize them

4:58ThadIn a bit of a chronological fashion all of a sudden you start to get all these organic thoughts That come out of your brain that you didn't things you didn't little details. You didn't remember for 40 years, right? Yeah, so after I realized that thought mining was actually part of more of my current spiritual process I changed the the word the words in my book from where I had been using thought mining into memory mining But I thought it was important enough to go ahead and reference your book doses of God in The middle in the middle of it because it is so much part of my life today, right?

5:28DerekAnd so Nathan actually is a writer I don't know if we've ever talked about that on this show But Nathan has a book as well and not to you know shift topics or anything like that But

5:38Nathanyeah finding doses of God noticing and interpreting divine expressions in everyday life Yes, so Chad supported me in that book He he purchased a copy and and we talked and you can purchase a copy to do with a good book.

5:53DerekYeah. Thank you I mean Nathan says that through me. I Mean that's what I have

6:00Thadto clarify that that when I read doses of God, it's it's generally what through Jungian philosophy, I guess would be called more like synchronicities That's the word that I use but I thought doses of God was very relevant Mm-hmm because through this entire process me before I was before I got into this I was I generally called myself Agnostic. Mm-hmm and because I didn't know what it was this intelligence that I now firmly believe exists out in the universe And so doses of God actually really resonated with me along with my the term that I generally use a synchronicities Mm-hmm, so I felt you know when we connected through the thought mining term You really kind of opened a door between Nathan and I and we were talking monthly for the last three four months now Awesome.

6:44NathanYeah, it's pretty fascinating. I mean to note to see we have this finding phrase sort of Serendipitously surface in the middle of the night one time I jotted down a few thoughts about it There can I connect on it a year or two later? And turns into this podcast fad here and sees thought mining as he's writing his book And then somehow we connect over doses of God and synchronicities and in yeah, it's just such a fascinating

7:12DerekThat is amazing And now that we've kind of established a little bit how thought mining and you know I mean your version of it, which is memory mining and we're we're sort of all kind of on the same page here With this I'm really interested in the story of 23 and f me so I want to kind of pivot a little bit more into that Can you say anything about how using these sort of processes was integral to you writing your book and why?

7:36ThadSo in the other part of this it's 23 and f me it's called reclaiming your past through a therapeutic memoir Sorry if I said it wrong. No, no, no, you didn't say anything wrong. Okay, but it's important to Distinguish that the book is really kind of a mix between a memoir of my working through the 23 and me process and looking back On my past behavior and things that my family did and then also looking to how do you overcome that? Mm-hmm. And so through therapy I started therapy after I found out my dad wasn't my bio It was my biological

8:05Derekfather's what age were you when you found that out 45? So I have 45 years old after your entire life of just believing your dad was your dad You find out there's this other guy that is the biological dad. Yep, and How did how did that feel?

8:20ThadIt felt really odd and it didn't happen overnight. This was like a cascading process where You know, I would open one door and I'd see three more kind of like wow There was um, so something was off and you couldn't figure out what well That's the interesting thing is that if I look back and and and I I look back at my past There were instances where I kind of had a gut feeling that something was always a little bit off Mm-hmm, and only when the revelation happened did it really come through was like, oh, that's why my mom acted that way That's why my dad acted that way.

8:51DerekDo you believe that possibly your dad didn't want you to know that?

8:54ThadSo my dad actually they had agreed to tell me when I turned 21 and my dad didn't feel like it was his Responsibility to tell me because he's not the one that did it And my mother was supposed to have told me when I was 21 but for a lot of different issues that I talk about in the book she she Didn't do that and she kept it a secret She said she didn't want to hurt me. Right which I understand but that I think you know, we come from a Very

9:22Thadwell-known political family in South Dakota the Mickelson family. Mm-hmm And we grew up right in the middle of all of that.

9:29DerekDo we do we want to cut that for? Okay, it's in there.

9:32ThadI used I used Mickelson in okay, okay

9:36ThadBut then and then of course we're talking about a small towns happens to be Selby, South Dakota Uh-huh, which is a small town with a hotbed of gossip and my grandfather was a was a prominent businessman

9:47ThadSelling LP gas all around the countryside And and I I think there was a lot of things that got seeded in her in her youth where she didn't want to Disappoint and she you know, she was afraid of her of her parents wrath

10:01DerekThey say you have to fit a certain mold in a smaller town like that in order to

10:06ThadI feel like she kept it a secret Because she didn't want to have to face the music with her with her parents Mm-hmm, cuz that would have been to have a have a call myself a bastard so I can say it here You know to have a bastard child As one of their grandkids they wouldn't have wouldn't that none of the repercussions would have necessarily come back on me But she she surely would have been in the light.

10:26DerekMm-hmm

10:28DerekYeah, so as you're going through this discovery, did you feel or have a sense of feeling betrayed?

10:36ThadSomewhat yeah I really didn't appreciate the fact that my family because I'm the youngest of seven grandkids and I'm the third I'm the youngest by far But I have two older brothers and I was always you know I was played the role of the mascot and the clown and then eventually the scapegoat and I felt like I Was reacting to a to a world that had been mocked up that I didn't know I no longer felt Comfortable in right so I needed to basically go and find my new identity and find my own truth And that's the basis of the book But I mean yeah I did I there was a lot of resentment that I had to I had to work through over over the these different therapeutic Processes and whatnot and the book really helped you know the process that I I lay out in the book really helped me to Overcome those

11:17Derekcan I ask you a question? Maybe I'm skipping to the end here It just really interests me as you process those emotions Have you come to a place now of acceptance and you know forgiveness and all that or so?

11:33ThadI did get to meet my bio dad… I Threw the here's what these doors that open up right and this was a couple years after I had found out the secret through 23 me… He was a basically a hermit that lived in Omaha It was an old broken-down Vietnam vet that was at the end of his life And I was just grateful to have been able to meet him and his family and I had a whole bunch of new cousins No new brothers or sisters. That's what I was really looking for was what I really wanted to find out if I had a sister Mm-hmm because I have two daughters, and you know I there's just something magic about about having

12:03Dereka sister Yeah, no be amazing to discover a sister that you know,

12:06Thadbut it didn't play out that way and so He was still basically in love with my mother and so there was a lot of tension there He would ask questions about her and you know you need to just forgive and forget and I'm sitting here going How do you forgive and forget a secret like this that's impacted so literally every day of your life?

12:25DerekWell you mentioned that he had a family was that an extant family when this happened it or is this a family that he started Later meaning did he kind of betray his family to do this as well.

12:36ThadNo they all knew… So when I actually reached out through a connection on 23 and me I found a cousin a random cousin in South in South Omaha, Nebraska Mm-hmm, and I hit him up it turned out He was in the same boat that I was that one of my bio dad's brothers was his father But he was estranged oh man, and so he said well, there's a lady named

13:05DerekThat's okay, we'll call her Carla Carla in

13:08ThadOmaha I got I got a hold of her and… She ended up in she sent a letter to her brother and said your son's looking for you Mm-hmm, and so I the phone rang one day after my my ex-wife my wife at the time she was having a… roses and shard and a birthday party or something and the house was packed with people and the phone rings and it's a it's a Omaha, Nebraska area code and I was like oh my god here we go I picked up the phone into our bedroom closed the door and started talking to my bio dad and one thing led to another and so

13:43DerekWhat do you think and this is one thing I think is really fascinating is as you kind of interacted with this man Did you see yourself or things like that? Can you talk a little bit about a little bit?

13:54ThadSo he would share things, you know, we started really talking on the phone every Tuesday The… first and third Tuesday of every month for an hour like to the minute And he was he was sharing stories of some different things So he had served in Vietnam and Army Corps of Engineers I served in the in the Navy Reserves in the Seabees, which is a construction wing of the Navy So we had kind of that weird part in common He didn't even talked about he said can you play instruments or can you do it? I said I can dance like a son of a gun like I could do that But I can't play any instruments and then he made up some reference that some weird reference about being able to climb things Like he was on a dare climb climb to telephone pole in somebody's front yard once and I on a dare Climb to 200 radio foot radio tower south of so I was like, okay, that's a little bit weird but yeah, when you when you finally see your bio dad, you know you you your mind wants to Pretend like you look like your parents, right? Right. So I always thought I kind of looked like my dad my dad dad not my bio dad and then when you walk into a You know a mocked up family reunion and you look around the room everybody you're like everybody's got my eyebrows

15:05ThadThat I am definitely related to these people Yeah, he's got the head the size of a medicine ball and I've got a pretty big Admiral Akbar ish kind of head myself So, you know like yeah we there was a there was a lot of Commonality and he be him being a little bit of a hermit kind of resonated with me too because I live by myself up in The mountains are two cats. Right? I'm my wife and I got divorced a few years ago and I am very comfortable in my own skin. Mm-hmm up there by myself in the mountains riding reading Watching trains, you know, so I did see that was probably the biggest part of him that I saw in myself

15:39DerekWhen and he's still alive right? He has passed on three years ago.

15:43ThadOh, I'm actually passed away earlier this year So

15:45DerekI'm sorry to hear that too. Yeah, that's so it was just kind of like a brief relationship You guys got to have just long enough. Mm-hmm. Yep, when you say long enough, was there any maybe Disappointments as well.

15:57ThadThere wasn't a lot of fuel left in the tank We kind of ran out of things to talk about and he kept pressing me about my mom Okay, and it was this weird feeling of like my biological parents are somehow like coming together to try and Tell me what to do You know and he like criticized the fact that I wasn't taking my divorce serious enough and I tried to play High ball with my ex-wife. I have never missed a child support payment. I she was the love of my life What

16:25Derekhe said when he said not taking it serious was he imparting his own regrets toward you that could very well be Yeah, so was he divorced as well? He was never married. Oh, he was never married, but he had some children. He had me Okay. Yeah, so he's he's probably looking at that thinking what are you getting divorced for bro? I I always wanted to be married Yeah to your mom and that's gotta be a well

16:49ThadThe weird thing is that he brought up the fact that he thought that I wasn't Like protecting my own interests well enough and I kind of thought how dare you you don't you know, okay So he's like you

16:59Derekdeserve more King.

17:00ThadYes. I had yeah, you shouldn't be getting to have the house I should be mad at my ex-wife basically as well I'm saying and I'm like I we're gonna get out of this and I'm gonna be a man about it You know, I may have failed in marriage, but I'm not gonna fail in you know

17:13DerekSo he was giving you some kind of let's say fatherly advice that maybe was From… a perspective that you're not used to right fairly hypocritical. Yeah Yeah, and also like as you grew up with your mom and dad and it sounds like your dad's like a really good guy You know, he wouldn't give you that kind of advice So that must have been probably a little jarring

17:33ThadIt was a little jarring and it kind of we didn't actually end on great terms And then he he he was exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam Okay, and so he had he died of acute leukemia It was almost like poisoning like it came on very quickly He went to the VA and he was only there for like a week and a half before he finally passed on So it was really sudden very sudden so was my mother's death earlier this year, too

17:55DerekSo how do you feel about the I guess the serendipity of being able to meet him? Cuz I mean if you'd found out just a couple years later, it would have been too late. Yeah, it'd have been a moot point Yeah, so in in the grand scheme of things… Would you rather have not known oh

18:12Thadno, I absolutely am grateful. I felt like it was a divine gift really.

18:16DerekYes… what about your… your… I Guess what would I call him stepfather or your father that raised you? Was he a little like did he have any trepidation about you visiting this guy and kind of things like that

18:30ThadI haven't gotten sideways with my with my dad dad

18:34ThadRick Von Breit for over hardly anything throughout my life I mean I respected him was he was my father right and only when we started talking about my bio dad Did things kind of start to get a little weird? He didn't believe he had served in Vietnam He didn't believe he had ever served in the military at all He looked at me. So this guy and my dad worked together. My dad was in

18:58ThadAirconditioning and heating uh-huh and this was his assistant Then we drove around with him for like five or six years Before this all went down and I was like you you you and he didn't even know his real name He called him Jeff and his name was actually Chet. Oh, it was like way off I we got sideways and he was questioning things and it's always the guy

19:19Derekthat you're not worried about. Yeah

19:23DerekSorry,

19:23Thadno, you can make all the jokes you want in the middle of… Never

19:27Derekdo something like that.

19:29ThadYeah, he knew Jeff would and did do it and… The story goes after he found out that he literally went out in his truck got a gun and a bat and went over to His house and beat the living tar on it.

19:41DerekOh my gosh, so and that was their final break That

19:45Thadwas a side to an inch a slash Jeff quit Sears the next day and that was it They never say I think they saw each other they ran into each other in a bar in the 80s in Omaha And they were you know

19:56Derekbeginning around, you know it really occurred to me is like the thought-mining aspect of the extraction and Just like in the serendipity aspect of what we're talking about, you know, this dysfunctional kind of thing happened But the serendipity is you right you came out of that and you get to have all these experiences And honestly that guy probably wasn't a very good role model So it was probably how serendipitous that you had your dad as a role model, even though maybe he was the you know… Genetic let's say base base of it or whatever and so maybe you know, you even came out with some… Some strengths that your dad might not possess even and that are more genetically gifted and then but then you get to have him As a role model, you know, I mean there's a certain serendipity in that

20:42ThadI talk a lot about nature versus nurture in the book

20:45Derekuh-huh

20:46Derekand what do you think your takeaway is in terms of like so, you know, because

20:53DerekThere are other people that are experiencing this right with 23 a lot and maybe not as much now because I think they are They're having trouble with 23 and me, but there's also a hair the other DNA one stuff ancestry Yeah, exactly. And so this has got to be an experience that a lot of people have been experiencing I

21:08Thadfrom what I've heard it was it was part of the driving part of the driving factor of me wanting to get the book out is

21:13Derekright exactly because you know, not everybody's gonna have all the tools that you had to Process this and other people might react differently They might feel even more betrayed or not be able to kind of come to peace with it and come away with some takeaways Like this just it almost being a lucky even though it's like a series of unfortunate events kind of thing But it but those create luck at the end right or create this like ultimately good result So I mean if I if I'm someone who is experiencing something similar and I'm not getting all those nice extractions Because I may be feeling very betrayed. What kind of message would you maybe have for someone dealing with that?

21:56Thad… Hang in there. Yeah, there's help like there's a lot more people that have gone through this I don't know how many people have tackled it like I have I took it on wholeheartedly Right. I wanted to know more about myself. I don't know more about my bio dad It was really important to understand that he had been exposed to Agent Orange because that can pass through multiple Successive generations

22:17ThadI

22:19ThadThere's not a lot of therapists out there that work with people that have gone through what I refer to instead of Kleinberg bastards I call it's an NPE, which is a non parental event is what it's technically termed as So if you've experienced an NPE and you have a surprise in your family about Generally who your father is some I mean sometimes mothers are adopted kids go through this where they they find out at 21 or 40 that they were adopted and they never even knew that right and so to work through that kind of trauma it really is important to be able to think about where you are in your life and Your your conscious awareness of what you're doing with yourself But also that can be a large reflection of past events as well So who you were and why people why you why you acted a particular way was based upon generally a set of circumstances You were formed from this clay that was your supposed family Mm-hmm, and once you find out that there's some big secret All you can do is really hand It's it's all on you to go as far as you want some people close that door and don't want to look past it I opened every door that that I could open because I wanted to find out as much as I possibly could and it really helped to put… My frame of mind where I was in all the way from grade school the college the military I've served in Peace Corps and you know all of those actions and why I acted particularly really why I was so angry I was just I know I have a dark side and I've worked in therapy to try and overcome that and I think going through this process has really helped with that because it's Put a lot of things into perspective about how I was treated by my family knowing every and they all knew it wasn't just my parents But my brothers knew since I was since I was 18. I just I just found that out earlier this year That's in the epilogue because I didn't even know it until

24:06Derekright so then Here's the thing that you said that really stuck out. You said it's all on you, right? but Only at that moment when that entire weight is dumped on you Is it all on you because before it was all kept from you, right? So you're not even so now it's like boom. We've all been keeping this from you and now hey, it's all on you Yeah, you know, I mean, it's just kind of like a quick and easy handoff. So it's like here's a thousand pounds carry it so, you know, I mean like that's a really just interesting way to you know, I guess just experience it as you're saying this and Man, I feel like I had something else good to say How

24:49Nathanif you think back to your pre and PE

24:54NathanTo where you are now How would you compare your sense of overall well-being?

25:00ThadOh, I'm I'm much much more centered and healthy and having a… Relationship with a higher power has come because it come out of this and I mean that that is so huge for somebody in their Life to be able to carry on literally moment to moment in your day Understanding that you're you've kind of got a wingman with you or you're the wingman of it or whatever However, you want to want to put it but I was really angry for a long time and I you know Self-assessment and being honest about your your past behaviors. I was I you know, I was I was a bully I was a prick like I mean, I and I always had really I always had issues with relationships with women romantic relationships platonic relationships were always a pretty okay, but Romantic relationships always got pretty heavy pretty fast and a lot of that was because of the way I was acting in those relationships

25:48Derekbut I mean, I think the perspective now is like you had a whole family that was essentially kind of like Undercutting your whole identity and then you know, I think about two is like you were angry but

26:01DerekWould how would you met this information if you got it when you were much younger 21?

26:07ThadYeah I look back, you know, and I was I was a sophomore in college And if my mom had told me that I think one thing I would have gotten an opportunity to have met my bio dad When he was much younger, mm-hmm And I I don't know that would have been formed into sort of a more of a parental type relationship Mm-hmm where I would have accepted him more as a father figure than I did I mean the way that it came out. He was just he was basically my sperm donor He was just right. Yeah, I ended up knowing but if I had met him when I was 21 Cuz I was living in Nebraska. I was going to University of Nebraska and he was he was an Omaha So he'd have been right next door. Mm-hmm It would have I wouldn't have been as ready as I was at 21 versus 45 To go out and tackle this the way that I could right there was no 23 in me when I was 21 Yeah So had they told me in a part of this was was looking at my my results that came back from the 23 in me website and they were just Like bonkers it was like not in alignment with what I had what I had perceived I was good

27:07DerekIt's really got to be one of the worst ways to find out or the potentially worst way The worst

27:12Thadthing to find out in the middle of all of it was just that you were being lied to through at least through Omission for so long that they that your family didn't have enough wherewithal to trust you enough to sit all of them Maybe sit down at the table with you and say hey, we got something we need to share. We love you… We're proud of who you are. But you need to you need to know this This is a big big secret that we've been holding you for a long time That never happened and I think that was probably where a lot of my resentment came

27:38Derekfrom yeah, to me the most frustrating thing is like that your siblings knew and like they said you have to lie to your brother about this and Put them put that on them Like I don't know man,

27:52Thadyou know when I found out that they that they knew here not that long ago It was like a Tetris board dropped. It was like it was like, okay Alright, they knew everybody knew I'm on my own I am I am NOT wrong in writing this book and telling people about my life and about this process… It actually gave me it was a sort of an odd sort of vindication of like This is okay to talk about this is your journey you can tell people about this This is this is your story. This is your truth, right?

28:23DerekAnd what a way to Own it and get and gain control of the story And then by writing your own book about and then

28:31Thadwriting unto itself is therapeutic. Exactly

28:34DerekYeah, so anyway, this is a very interesting discussion. We've had today you guys… I didn't mean to hog the conversation. Oh, no I it

28:44Derekwas great. It was wonderful. Um, so 23 and F me this is a book by Thad von Brie. It's available on amazon.com and Also finding doses of God is also available on amazon.com Thanks a lot for joining us today for this awesome discussion. I wasn't timing it. So I hope it's 30 minutes I just assumed he do you have any takeaways like extract? Oh, yeah, we got to get to the extractions I mean for me the extraction like what I really was thinking about

29:16DerekYou know, like I mentioned that like

29:19DerekIn in ways it's better that you found out that it was later in ways It was better that you maybe had your your your Dad instead of your bio dad be your role model, right? And a lot of these things Were the exact serendipity we're talking about but also they were just a huge

29:42DerekDump truck of shit on you at the same time, right? So like there's something where you know I mean sometimes you don't know when something's a blessing or when something's the opposite or you know I mean and by you processing it like this I think you're able to find how it actually is a blessing and these things aren't necessarily

30:04DerekThe worst things that could have happened I mean if they had not met or if this, you know unfortunate Assistant and you know betrayed your father

30:13DerekYou may not be here today. Yeah, I mean and so, you know, I mean it's like from pain comes good in a lot of ways In this especially in this story. So that would be

30:24Thadmy work We're in German Russian territory up here. Aren't we in North Dakota?

30:28DerekWe're German Russian and but very much Norwegian in this area. So Bismarck more German no more Norwegian up in the northern

30:37Thad… There's an old saying even though this is no longer part of my DNA makeup the German from Russia that's what went away

30:44ThadIronically of anything but they used to say the Bible's great But give me shit and they'd say that because they could fertilize the land with it and go out and be better farmers Right and so like that's the way I look at it too is the bus sounds great. Give me shit.

30:56DerekGive me Shisa… Give me Shisa… That's much now

31:02ThadWhat are your parting

31:05Nathanthoughts well, I it's similar to Derek I think I feel like it's an inspirational story of how you had these Chance encounters they seemed like at the moment just things that happened to you that probably shook you up quite a bit And you went through a lot of struggle and trauma, but it's led you to a really good place Yes, it is where the serendipity sort of comes into

31:27Derekit was almost like a forced growth experience, right? You're like life's like bam You got to grow now and there's nothing you can do about it And if you refuse to grow then you probably would have just like shrink into like anger and things like that So it was like you had you sort of faced You know a fork in the road and that one and you had to take you know I think you took the high the high road and that That's you know, I mean

31:50Thadyou asked how people should potentially react to the to an NPE and I just think it's a it's It's… a it's just nothing but an avenue for just exponential potential a personal growth. Mmm It's it's it's such a there's so many beautiful things that came out of this along with all the bad like it in trying to find out more about who you really are at your core in who you are who you would talk to In the mirror who you talk to at night when you go to sleep and there's nobody else around… There's nothing more powerful and empowering than being comfortable with your own self, right?

32:23DerekAnd sometimes you have to have someone pull the rug out from under you to find out who that self

32:27Thadis I needed to have the rug pulled out from under me quite honestly I'm a much better person now and I'm much better father and my daughters than I ever would have been if I if this hadn't Happened.

32:36DerekWell, that's great. I mean, that's a great takeaway in a great extraction extraction from your thought mining process to ours You know your memory mining and thought mining and you know Go ahead and feel free to continue to use the term. We don't we didn't copyright it or anything. It's in the book. So Okay

32:52DerekBut anyway, thank you so much for appearing on the show with that. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it I heard thanks. I can tune into the next episode of thought mining coming up in another week or so. Goodbye

33:04DerekYeah, great work was that about a half hour, I don't know I just thought maybe it was I didn't mean

33:08Nathanto monopolize the conversation Yeah,

33:14Dereksorry if you felt left out at all, Nathan I was just asking questions and stuff but You're the doctor in the room. Yeah, exactly But yeah, I think that was really it might be one of our best