Strength Through The Struggle

A conversation with Lex Robinson and Brandon Mancine during which we discuss the vital characteristic that is resilience - and how to go about developing it for every aspect of your life. 

Mark and Lisa, a staff member at his Martial Arts School, shares a story about a tragedy that hit Lisa two years ago.  Lisa talks about the celebration of life of her son, Leo, and how she remembered the happy times about his life.

Today's episode is about the two different but powerful meanings for Strength Through the Struggle that you can use in your life. Let's get right to it. Hello everybody! Thanks for taking the time to tune in and listen to this episode. I really appreciate your time and energy. While this episode isn't specifically about martial arts I'm going to use them as an example. When I came up with the name...

What's the opposite of "What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas? I'm here to tell you in this episode of the STTS. Let's get to it. If you live in the United States, or possibly other countries as well, you may have seen the commercials advertising a visit to the city of Las Vegas. There are dozens of commercials, all about 30 seconds long with different storylines. Each commercial, regardless of th...

My wife and I are on vacation in the Dominican Republic. This episode is not about how I live some amazing life, although it is amazing in many ways. It's not about who we live a life of luxury, traveling to exotic places and living where we want and how we want. It's about how change for the positive can happen when the environment for it exists. Six years-ago Teresa and I were at the very same r...

Have you ever had a moment of absolute anger? What about Outrage over something? A little indignation maybe? Maybe things didn't go your way in a situation. Somebody hurt you. A person close to you won't hear what you are saying. A person wronged you. Someone took advantage of you. You felt disrespected I've been there. I've lost my cool over plenty of things that were small. True misunderstanding...

When Your System in Life Isn't Working Welcome Back. What we are going to chat about today is how to overwhelm can get us off track and how to overcome that. Let's get to it. First of all, THANK YOU, to everyone who is hearing this today. I appreciate you and the fact that you took the time to listen in. These podcasts can only help if they are heard. Please share them with your friends and family...

A couple of years ago, I was having a really hard time breathing when I would try to sleep at night. As time went by it got worse. I was in Colorado to do some training with one of my martial arts instructors and it got to the point that I was afraid to fall asleep because I actually thought I would die. I ended up canceling my training after the first night of no sleep and flew back home to go to...

I once heard a story about a famous landscape architect. He was a master at what he did. He traveled the world creating amazing gardens and landscapes for prestigious locations. It is said that on days when he felt particularly challenged, he would pull out a piece of paper from his pocket, look at it, nod, fold it up and get to work creating another masterpiece. People were astounded by the brill...

An old student of mine stopped by in the middle of July. I didn't recognize him and had to ask his name. As soon as he said it I recalled his time with me. He was a student for about 5 years. Roughly age 9-13. He was being raised by a single mom. She hoped the martial arts would help him get some discipline, direction, and focus. It was a challenge getting him to do what would help him. It was a c...

Recently, I had the honor of giving my One Last Talk. If you haven't heard of OLT, the idea is to share with the world what you would most want people to know if you only had 15 minutes to do it and then you were gone from earth forever. It is the idea and program of Philip McKernan. If you've been listening to this podcast for awhile you may have heard of him here or at a conference, you may have...

First off, I want to Thank You! For listening today. It means a lot to me, that you brought your time, your energy and your attention here today. Thank you. Sometimes as I look around this world we live in, it can seem pretty confusing. There are often things going on that don't make sense to us as an individual member of the human race. People do hurtful things to others. People do harmful things...

I am a big Allman Brothers fan. I have been since I was a teenager. After Duane Allman died in a motorcycle accident, I became a fan of Gregg Allman as a solo artist. There's a song Gregg wrote titled These Days. It's really about regret. And, more specifically, the regret of a relationship that came to an end. The first time I heard the song, the last line got my attention. Let me share it with y...

There was a time in my 30's and 40's when I wanted to change my name. Not my first name. I was good with that. I considered changing my family name. Growing up I had a number of experiences that landed for me in a negative way. I was molested at the age of 6 and again at the age of 9. I experienced physical as well as mental and emotional abuse. My father was fond of telling me, "You aren't worth...

Mark reflects on the life that has revealed itself for him over the past few decades and realizes how grateful he is to have the life he has.

I discuss the new direction and structure for the podcast that I have implemented today. I have been thinking about it for a long time and I am excited for you to continue to follow me on the j9urney of Finding Strength Through The Struggle. http://www.markgoblowsky.com  

Addiction, no matter what substance or activity it is too, has the chance of taking over our lives. It's a complicated issue that has played the part in many a broken home, relationship and life. My own family had its share of addictions to various substances or activities. Addiction happens so slowly and feels so harmless in the beginning that we don't notice what is happening. We are simply enjo...

We, humans, love a pain free, difficulty-free, existence. The opioid painkiller epidemic is a great example. I know what it's like because I got hooked once. And I'm not going to blame my doctor either. I had shoulder surgery and the pain was terrible. The doctor wrote me a prescription for painkillers but they did nothing to help me ignore the pain enough to sleep. After a couple of days, I calle...

Imagine being on a plane headed to your dream vacation. Let's say it's Italy. You spent the last two years planning it. It's all been paid for. Your itinerary is planned out for each day with all of the sights you want to see most You know all the restaurants, museums and ancient ruins you will be seeing and when. All the details have been checked off and the weather is supposed to be beautiful th...

Ever feel like you know where you want to go but aren't sure how to get there? Maybe you are starting on something completely new. Maybe you have found that making a mid-course correction is necessary. Either way, getting moving in the direction you want can be difficult if you don't have a system in place to help guide you. I developed a system that has worked very well for me over the years. It...

If you could be a Superhero, who would you be? I'm not a huge comic book person so I don't even know all the different superheroes. But if I could be any superhero that I know of, I would be Super Man. Yes, he has all those cool super powers but the most important thing I see in his comic book life, he clearly knows who he is. He uses his powers for good. I imagine, with a different upbringing by...

So often we don't do things in life because we think, we don't know how to do it. Which may be right, but after you do it the first time, we do something new the first time, we have a chance to keep getting better at it. One day I was playing with my son Joshua on the floor in our living room. I don't recall exactly what it was. Could have been cars, action figures or maybe Lego's. He was about tw...

Being a parent is tough. It's just challenging try to meet the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual needs of our children. We have an idea of how to raise our kids based on how we were brought up. Then there are our friends and family who have opinions. Lastly, there is the endless list of bloggers, authors and "professionals" telling us what works and what doesn't. It's not easy to know wher...

The Face of Incarceration The movie Trading Places is a comedy that stars Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd as a homeless man and a wealthy cultured man respectively. Being a comedy there are multiple instances for laughing, however, it was thought-provoking for me the first time I saw it. The two men are unwittingly transposed into each other's lives. They in turn start to make different types of deci...

Mark speaks to Rome Za, a Brazilian Ju Jitsu Practitioner, Life Coach, and Entrepreneur. Rome speaks about his childhood, including immigrating to the US from Chechnya, not being able to speak the language, dropping out of high school, going back to school to become a doctor only to drop out again before graduating as an undergraduate.