The Morning Upgrade Podcast with Ryan Cote

#140 - The Benefits of Firewalking with Dave Albin

April 09, 2023 Ryan Cote Episode 140
The Morning Upgrade Podcast with Ryan Cote
#140 - The Benefits of Firewalking with Dave Albin
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode of the Morning Upgrade podcast I talk with Dave Albin about his morning routine, the benefits of firewalking, drinking water, educating your kids and more. 

Announcer  

Welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast with Ryan Cote, where we feature casual conversations with entrepreneurs about personal development and growth.

Ryan 

Hey, Dave, welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast. How are you? Hey, thanks,

Dave  

Ryan. It's great to be here, man. Yeah,

Ryan  

I'm excited to keep this conversation going. We've been chatting for, like, 20 minutes now. And so I'm excited for what the next 15 holds for us. So let's get started. Why don't you tell my audience and morning upgraders who you are, and what you do for a living? I think give us something that you're grateful for right now.

Dave 

Wow. Great questions. Thank you. Those are awesome. Well, whose debut album? Well, Dave'Albumum is about a guy that came down a very painful path, was grossly addicted to drugs and alcohol at one point, and almost put a bullet in his head. And instead, I called AAA, Alcoholics Anonymous. And that led me to sobriety which I'm coming up on 35 years this year, continues, right with a. And that also led me into the personal development industry, where I met Tony Robbins, and I ended up working for Tony for almost 20 years, I traveled with him on the road. And not only in his production as part of a  major player on his production team. But I was also because I had a military and security background, I also helped take care of a lot of his celebrities. But what I was probably, you know, brought into the organization to do was his fireworks. And so I was just fire captain. And this basically what that meant, Ryan is that anytime we go somewhere in the world, where we would do a firewalk, I would come in, bring my team, we set everything up, we do all the training, Tony bring out 8000 people, we firewalk them, we clean it up, and we'd go to the next location. So back in 2014, after a long one with Him, Google called me and wanted me to come to do a gig for them. And that's when Firewalk Productions were born. And we've been going at it, creating some of the most powerful paradigm shift, life-changing experiences that are available.

Ryan

And whether they are what you're grateful for.

Dave   

What am I grateful for I mean, everything. My life has been nothing, you know, nothing but a big giant gift, I think right now, specifically, that my daughter is pregnant with my granddaughter, and Charlotte raised her name. She'll be here any minute. Like you get a phone call here in five minutes, or probably within the next two to three weeks. But you know, anytime, so right now, to be candid with you, Ryan, I am absolutely out of my mind over the top. It's even hard for me to say without busting out in tears. But knowing this little girl this, my granddaughter's coming is just beyond belief. I've got gratitude. I'm having emotional floods like you would not believe I got gratitude coming out of my ears right now.

Ryan  

Yeah, you're making me tear up. That's great. So we'd never 130 Something episodes, we never talked about firewalking. So can you give us a quick overview for my audience listening like, what it is, I know what it is, people walk over coals? But why do it I know it's pushing you out of your comfort zone. But can you give us a quick overview of what that is? And why?

Dave  

Sure. I mean, if we look at the premise that you know, what doesn't challenge this doesn't change us. And the fears we don't overcome become our limits. And we know this, you know, we can learn that throughout the entire personal development industry. It's there. It's even biblical, right? So it's, it's there. Tony Robbins, you know, he's used firewalking as part of his four-day event. UPW. And he does it on day one. And he gets these people to walk on fire. And that's what happened to me, right, I went to an event of his I walked on fire the first night. And it was the most transformational moment that I can remember in my entire life. Now, here's where it got interesting for me. And that's the next day. I saw 3000 People and 3500 People come together, standing in the foyer, getting ready to go back into the main room that morning. And I've never seen or witnessed anything like it. I mean, I'm talking human connection at a level that you can't even imagine. Because people you know, Ryan, they were laughing, they were crying. They were talking, they were hugging. They were associating this incredible experience the night before, and how it influenced them. And then Ii traiseditst st sr frequencies. And again, I've been around a long time, you know, I'm going to be 69 this year. And I've never been anywhere and attended anything that was like that next morning. It was just, it was awesome. It was just wonderful to be there. And be part of that. Now if we go back a few 100 years, and we take a much deeper look into firewalking, Oh my gosh. I mean, it's been used as a rite of passage, spiritual ceremony graduation for years. And you can find it it's all over go look at the Phoenicians, the people of India, The Polynesians, the Hawaiians, the Indo-Europeans, the Native American Indians, that's all around us. It's just that here in the West, we've never used it like it's being used in other cultures, right? The Indo-Europeans, for example, are warriors. So before they went to battle, which is a lot of other cultures that did this as well, they use the firewalk to get prepared mentally the night before. And then, the men went off the battle after they did the firewalk. And if a man didn't do the firewalk, they weren't allowed to go to battle, which was a wait, you know, they Dishonored themselves and their family by not doing it on my website, Man, I got some cool pictures of people doing it. But outside of the West, right, yeah, I've got lots of Tony Robbins pictures in my pictures from my own business and that kind of thing. But there's a couple in there that will blow your mind. There's a mother, and she's carrying three newborns. What they do is in India, they dig a pit. And it's concave. And in the middle is probably, you know, a foot and a half high. And where we do the firewalk, we take calls, and we lay them with a shovel on grass, right, we build a big fire burns all day. At the end of the night at renders, we load the coals, either onto the lanes from that pit, or if it's a big firewalk, we load the coals and wheelbarrows. And then again, we take a flathead shovel. We lay out a lane of sod, and grass, three feet wide, and 18 feet long. And we lay the coals on top of that grass. And that's what you walk on. Well, what I'm talking about here in India for this woman was it was a pit. So she was probably the Colts were at least two to three inches thick. And she's carrying two new newborns. And if you look around the pic, she's surrounded by friends and family. And they're all wearing these beautiful silk garments, and they're vibrant colors. And she's in there. If you look up the picture, on my website, you'll see that she's got something in her mouth. I think it's, it might be a flower, but I'm not 100%. But she's got three newborns. I mean, three of them. And she's in that tent, man, she's got nowhere to go. I would think that pits are probably 30 feet 25 to 30 feet long. So she's got to walk at least 25 to 30 feet down through that pit and up the other side.

Ryan 

I know this. I know this is such a basic question. But there's hurt. I've firewalk

Dave  

somewhere in the area that half a million people. And people ask me, so Oh, the call is hot. Yes, there are 1000 degrees, can you get burned, of course you can. Welcome to life. Now here's the thing. When you put yourself in a powerful state and a powerful mindset, you can walk across them all day long, and you won't get burned. So about 10% of the people that firewalk get a little get they get a little kiss on their foot. They get, you know, they get a minor blister. And again, all the years I've doing this, Tony and I have watched hundreds of 1000s of people, even even since I've been on my own since 2014. We've never had anybody hospitalized. No one's ever sued us. Here's what's interesting. If your kids play soccer, I got news for you. They've got 10 times more risk playing soccer or sports of getting hurt than coming to one of my fireworks. It's like, it's like going to the beach. Right? Almost every family knows how many families have taken their family to the beach, or a lake and gotten them sunburned. Right? Yeah, right. And then they do it the next day. They do it again. Right? Yes. Yeah. So that's, that's 100 times more dangerous than any firewalk they'll ever do with me. But it's a great question.

Ryan 

Excellent. The new topic is here in the morning of great podcasts. That's, it's, it's fascinating. Gonna we'll link up your website in the show notes so people can watch those videos and look at the photos. Alright, let's talk about your morning routine. How do you start your mornings,

Dave  

the first thing I do is hydrate water is one of the most important things that we put in our bodies and yet we don't pay enough attention to it. And so I'm really into water. I live in the Appalachian Mountains I live at 3500 feet above sea level in the northwestern part of the state of North Carolina in the Appalachian Mountains. And so I've got mountain water coming mountain spring water coming into my home. That's what I drink every day. So my routine in the morning is I'm, and I don't negotiate. When I get up, I get up, period. I don't play the snooze button nonsense. No, I don't negotiate with myself, and I teach this. Stop negotiating with yourself. If you say you're gonna get up and do something, do it. And so I get up. And again, the first thing I do is I will drink. I'm into ginger, turmeric, and lemon. And sometimes I'll boil it the night before and get it ready. And I do that about every other day I'll drink that as well. I do not touch my cell phone. And the first thing I do after hydrating myself is begin my meditation. With my meditation, I also include in their sound fair P, there's there are frequencies of the universe I'm really into 528 right now happens to be the frequency that I'm dialed into. And then after that, I read at least 10 pages of a good book. And I, you know, and I've got a lot of great books and so at least 10 pages, and then from there, the day begins.

Ryan 

What are you reading right now?

Dave   

I'm reading money grows on Trees by Jeremy Newsome. So, yeah, money grows on trees. And so basically what Jeremy has done is he's, he's honed in on all the limiting beliefs and all the nonsense we're told growing up about money. Money doesn't grow on trees, you want to bet you'll look at an avocado tree. Look at an apple tree. I live in the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina, right? And I live in a place called Ash County. And we grow more Christmas trees here, Ryan, than anywhere else in the world. So we know money grows on trees, because that's our industry up here, right? But you know, the other ones that we get told, I'm not made out of money. Money is the root of all evil. Money is bad. So you know, reframing all that where you love money, you trust money, and you look at money as to what you can do with it. Even biblically, right? How do you feed widows and orphans without money? Well, you don't. So his book is really about reprogramming people's brains based on all the lies and, you know, false statements about money. It's a great book, man,

Ryan 

not to go on the ramp not to go to ramp it sounds like that's something they should teach in schools like middle school, high school, that kind of,

Dave  

don't even get me started. This is why I homeschool. They don't teach you how to how to become an entrepreneur. They don't teach you how to invest. They don't teach you how to save. They don't teach you what a mortgage is. They don't teach you how to fill out a credit app. They don't even teach you how to balance a checkbook in some cases. Now, I know some schools may. But they don't go into any of that. I wonder why. I don't want to cloud your show-up with that. Because we could talk about that for a week. I'm just saying, Yeah, I taught my kids differently. One of the first books I had my son read when he got to a certain reading level was Thinking to Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

Ryan 

Great book. I'm trying to get my daughters to read certain books as well, like personal development, personal growth books, and even fables that are easier for them to digest. Sure. I think it's important. They're not going to pick the book up themselves, of course, I think it's important trying to guide their attention towards content that will help them.

Dave 

Yeah, and you're right, eventually, you know, depends on how they process too. We're creatures that process information either visually, auditorily, or kinesthetically. So it's important to know how our kids process I spent a lot of time in high auditory, a little visual. So you can tell by people's language patterns, how they process like, you know, oh, hey, I hear you. Yeah, sure. That sounds great to me. So they'll let you know how they process information. So you start talking in their language? I don't see that happening. Right. So they're visual. So anyway, it's just kind of a way to tell your friends and family, how they process information. Sometimes audiobooks help out as well.

Ryan  

I want to pull something from your morning routine that you said, it's I don't think we've spoken about that yet. It definitely, yeah, I don't think we've spoken about that yet in the show. sound therapy? So is that a frequency that a sound that's playing at a certain frequency that's in the background while you meditate?

Dave  

Yeah, exactly. So basically, what they do is they tune everything, using different types of instruments to influence. And so again, if you look at these frequencies, there's a, there's a book called Project 360 369. And I won't go into the book here, because it's way, way too deep. But in the book, they talk about the frequencies and the different ones, and what they'll do for you to build confidence, to build stability to help deal with past anything in your pasts,t or reboot your DNA. And so it's in the book. And so you can go to Spotify, and download any of those frequencies. And once you get into it, it's, it's, it's fun, they're beautiful to listen to, and, man, do they work? works.

Ryan 

Excellent. I'm gonna try that feed that into my morning routine. I like to meditate too. So it's the perfect it is that plane while you meditate. Absolutely. Let's talk about habits. Dave, you got so much energy, so much passion. What are your self-care habits? How do you feed that? What does that look like for you?

Dave   

You know, I mentioned earlier how important water is water is everything. I try to drink at least close to a gallon a day. And then you know food is really important, and when it comes to food, though I kind of Ying Ying Yang, I jokingly say Sometimes when I'm out, and I'm eating something, people are looking at me like, wow, Dave, I'd never thought you'd eat something like that. I'm going well, I gotta get my pancreas something to do. I'm really into that I love live foods, I eat a lot of organic eat a lot of Whole Foods. I do a shake every morning. And my shakes got bananas and blueberries and strawberries and pomegranate juice and coconut water. And then sometimes I'll put some other things in it. And then there's a company that makes a nutritional shake. And I love them I've been using their products since 2015. And I drink one every single morning. Most of my regimen when I'm on the road comes in packets, so I take shakers, and I can take good water and shake it up. I like to do them here because I can put them in my NutriBullet and mix it all up. So food is important exercise is important, grounding is important, I try to take my shoes off every day and stick them stick it on, you know, on the planet, either on the grass on dirt, or where I like to go is I've got a creek not too far from me, I live also very close to the New River, but creeks very close to me. And I can go down there and stick my feet in the mud and ground myself as well. So I'm constantly got a mindset of you know, how can I take care of myself today and enjoy the process? Yeah, it's just like, and those have come over the years. I think peer group is very important, we become who we spend time with. And so my peer group is a lot like that. I'm rubbing off on them, being that I've been sober now. This will be my 35th year, it's rubbing off on them. They talk to me about it, you know, because they're there. They're uplifting their game, they're taking their lives to the next level, and alcohol will come up. And I'm like, Look, man, you can tell yourself whatever you want. But if you research it, alcohol is poison. 100% You can't change that. I don't care how you trying to code it. I don't care how you know, well, a guy can have a beer. I don't care what you tell yourself. Again, I don't negotiate with myself there. That's non-negotiable. Because again, if I want to live my best life, then I want to walk my talk there. And I don't drink under any circumstances. I haven't had a drink since June 8 of 19. Ada. And again, if you're going to ask me sometimes, I'll even say, Alright, do you want to know? Are you just asking? Because I'm going to tell you the truth. And so I've got a buddy of mine has been he hasn't had a drink since January one. And he now he's telling me, oh my god, I had no idea how much it was doing in my body?

Ryan 

I don't know if he's a business owner president or has his business improved.

Dave 

Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's, he's an amazing guy. He figured out how to do something for people that's off the chart, Michael lushes. And he's got a company called replace your university. I'm a player on his team. And I help with motivation, and we do fireworks and glass walks. And you know, we do all kinds of stuff. And he hired me to do it. He's now showing people how they can pay off their homes in five to seven years without changing their lifestyle and without spending any more money. So when I first met Michael, and, you know, I learned what he did, he hired me to come in and do an event for 12 of his senior people. And after they graduated, they took me out to dinner and said, Hey, do you know what we do? And I go, you know, I've read your stuff, but I don't know exactly. And the next thing I know, I got enlightened. What an incredible, incredible, brilliant, very smart, yet, you have to do things differently. You have to understand what the banks have done and what they're doing. And then once you get that figured out, you once you know that that's not in your best interest, and you see another way, it becomes pretty clear. But in people's defense, they you know, they don't know what they don't know.

Ryan 

Dave, I feel like we could talk for hours. I feel like we could literally talk for hours. But I do have one last question for you. You're in an interesting spot right now. You're, you've had a successful career. I know you're, you're phasing into retirement soon, and you've got family grandkids coming in. So right now, through your lens and experiences thus far, what is the meaning of life

Dave  

comes down to the story that you create about your life, because you're the architect, you have your finger on the on and off switch, and you have your hand on the volume control and everything that happens in our lives. I don't care what is right and good or bad. We create a story about it. And we either tell a good story that empowers us, or sometimes we embellish, or sometimes we make it up so that we can act out a certain way. And being in Tony's world for so long. I was around a lot of really, really successful people at different levels. And here's what I saw that many of them achieved at a very high level. But here's where it wasn't matched. It wasn't matched with fulfillment. They didn't feel fulfilled. They neglected their Family, I speak a lot to the entrepreneurs, organizations, and  EO, and I did five gigs last year. And one of the things I tell them is, look, guys, I'm an entrepreneur, I get it. And here's what I want to warn you about. You're not going to wake up Sunday and get to the end of your life and go, Oh, man, I screwed up, I should have spent more time making money in less time with my family. No. So what I believe is, is there's an art and a science to achievement and fulfillment. And my encouragement to anybody is to make sure you're dialed in with both of those. And your life will be spectacular. And I'll close by saying this if you help enough people get what they want in life, you'll always get what you want in life. And I learned that in aaa, aaa said something to me a long time ago, and I've never forgotten, and I live by this creed. And it said, when anyone anywhere reaches out, I want the hand of AAA to be there. And for that, I am responsible. So I took that to, you know, that's how we do it. And so it's helped. It's turned my life into a life that's magnificent, and spectacular.

Ryan  

So much wisdom in these 22 minutes. I appreciate you, Dave. If someone wants to learn more about you, that firewalking, cetera, where should we send them?

Dave 

Just go to my website, you can get everything there. It's firewalk adventures.com. Again, that's fire walk adventures, all one word.com Excellent. Thank you, Dale. Thanks. Appreciate it, man.

Announcing 

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