Robert C Slayton - Grief to Joy and Inspiration

Written 7/9/2026 I’d like you to meet Leanna. We met on a dance floor. Long before I ever asked her out, I noticed something about her. She sparkled. It was as though she walked into a room with a spotlight on her while everyone else quietly faded into the background. At least, that’s how it felt to me. For several weeks, I admired her from across the dance floor but never made a move. She wore a...

The greatest glory in living lies not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall. --Nelson Mandela Think about that for a moment. Most people believe success belongs to those who never fail. But that’s not how life works. You’re going to get knocked down. A deal will fall apart. A relationship will end. Someone will disappoint you. You’ll make a mistake. You’ll have a day where nothing see...

Robert’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. I’m back! With a beard! “Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.”— Gloria Steinem Think about that for a moment. Every accomplishment begins as a picture in someone’s mind. A better career. A healthier body. A stronger marriage. A business that creates fre...

Written 6/21/2026 I have found my forever person. That sentence still feels strange to write. Not because I doubt it. Because for a long time, I wasn’t sure someone like her existed. Over the years, I’ve had countless conversations with friends going through divorce, recovering from divorce, or trying to date after divorce. Many of them describe their ideal partner. The list is usually impressive....

Robert’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Written 6/10/2026 As many of you know, I’ve found my forever partner. We spend almost every day together. Sometimes it’s a full day of adventures. Sometimes it’s dinner after work. Sometimes it’s simply falling asleep in each other’s arms. That’s the easy part...

Written June 7, 2026. Being invited to a graduation party is always nice and when my GF told me about it, I didn’t think much of it until she told me who it was for. This was her ex-husband’s family’s graduation party. He wasn’t invited and she was. Think about what that. It was his side of the family gathering at Jesse Oaks in Grayslake Illinois. A local institution that’s been around for 30 year...

. Robert’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Written 4/30/2026 I’m a little over a week into my eight week recovery from bunion surgery and a hammer toe repair (complete with a pin sticking out of the tip of my second toe). I have been avoiding it for 5 years, but when my bones started grinding every t...

Written 4/3/2026. Let’s get something straight. Ethics training for insurance agents didn’t happen because the industry suddenly cared more about doing the right thing. It happened because the system kept producing the wrong results. What actually went wrong For years, regulators saw the same patterns: * Agents overstating what policies covered * Replacing policies just to generate new commissions...

Robert’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Written 2/21/2026 Day two dawned with less on our plate. He had the obligatory stop at Waffle House for breakfast. Why? Because who doesn’t want to hang out with a bunch of questionable people and have the waitress call us “darlin.” We struck up a conversation...

Robert’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Written 2/23/2026. This is how I’d create the most awesome bookstore ever! First, you have no advertisement, no street-side signs indicating there is a book store. Like a secret speakeasy, someone had to tell you where it is. As you step up to the non-descript...

Robert’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Written 2/9/2026 It’s been awhile since I’ve written. Frankly, I’ve been on the road and distracted by several major projects happening simultaneously. If all go through as expected, it will dramatically change my personal and professional landscape. Let’s get...

Robert’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a story about firsts, fear, and what happens when there’s no way around the storm. I tried to out-plan it. I rerouted. Delayed. Adjusted. I did everything I could to avoid the thing I was afraid of. And then… there was no avoiding it. This is a story a...

Robert’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Written 1/6/2026. Over the summer, I traveled around Lake Michigan on my motorcycle. In doing so, there were many firsts. I’m going to be talking about these a week from Thursday at thepeopletree.org. They host a monthly storytelling gathering at Empire in Nap...

Robert’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Written 12/30/2025 I have been absent from regular posts for the past two months. I’m in the insurance business focused on health insurance for companies, individuals, and Medicare people. Seventy percent of business is renewed/started between October and Dece...

Robert’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Written 12/12/2025. Every Thursday I go to yoga at 7:45 pm. It’s the only time that works for my schedule. Yoga helps stretch me and keeps me from injuring myself during my regular workouts. So, I was surprised when I showed up for yoga only to find out that i...

Written 12/6/2025. Robert’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. I’ve basically been between the bed and toilet this past week. I thought it was the stomach flu that never got better. It was frustrating and came at the worst time of the year. I looked up what to do, tried to eat the BRAT diet, etc. There...

“Be humble, for the worst thing in the world is of the same stuff as you. Be confident, for the stars are of the same stuff as you.” -Nikolai Velimirovic The way I kind of think about it is that there are evil people and there are good people. They’re arrogant people. They’re humble people. We’re all made of the same stuff. The question is, how do you transform the same stuff into being that humbl...

“Until you make peace with who you are, you’ll never be content with what you have.” -Doris Mortman. This is from the book Even Eagle’s Need a Push by David McNally. Think about it. Peace with who you are. Have you made peace with who you are? Do you value what you have? Let me know. Robert’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a...

“A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.” -D. Elton Trueblood As I get older and older, my reputation is more important than my financial state because that’s passed down to my children. What are the seeds that you plant today that you know you probably never see the fruition of, but is re...

Robert’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Written 11/19/2025. Holy crap on a cracker. A lot has been going on which I haven’t been telling you about. Part of the reason is that it is my busiest time of year for what I do for a living. I handle almost 200 employer groups and hundreds of individuals on...

Robert’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Final R of November, the final piece. It’s Relax and let go. There are some things we can’t change, right? The presidential election happened (this post is from 2024). You can’t change it. So instead of holding on to it, holding on to that resentment if your c...

Okay, we’re up to E. Almost finished with November to embrace change. This is a really challenging one for a lot of people because we’re so stressed that change is fearful, right? But if you realize that change happens all the time, and that you’re really good at embracing change even if you don’t think you are. Sometimes I rail about it. I might swear a lot but ultimately, I just accept it and mo...

Robert’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. We’re on the B of November, which is Breathe deeply. If you ever look at my Substack where I post nightly (through 2024), honestly, like a nightly blog of the crap in my head spews out on the page, I’ve had three or four posts talking about breath. Breath is i...

Robert’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Okay, we’re on M of November, N-O-V-E-M, which is Make time to rest. You need to take time to actually get to sleep and have, your eight hours or however many you personally need to sleep and feel refreshed. You also need to make time to rest. I’m a big fan of...

“Let us so live that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry.” - Mark Twain. Love Mark Twain. I’m currently listening to Huckleberry Finn. If you look at what he did when he was a child, Tom Sawyer and everything, those are based on his life. What are the adventures that you’ve had in your life that people will be sorry to see you go because you’ve done some amazing things? If you h...