💔 How to Rebuild Your Life After Loss — Weston Brandon Life After Losing His Young Bride | EP 445

Brian D. Smith (00:00:00):
close your eyes and imagine what if the things in life that causes the greatest

Brian D. Smith (00:00:05):
pain,

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the things that bring us grief,

Brian D. Smith (00:00:08):
our challenges,

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challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant

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to be.

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We feel like we've been buried.

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But what if like a seed we've been planted?

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And having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree.

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Now, open your eyes.

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Open your eyes to this way of viewing life.

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Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature.

Brian D. Smith (00:00:38):
This is grief to growth.

Brian D. Smith (00:00:40):
And I am your host, Brian Smith.

Brian D. Smith (00:00:46):
Hey there, and welcome to Grief to Growth.

Brian D. Smith (00:00:47):
I'm your host, Brian Smith.

Brian D. Smith (00:00:49):
And whether this is your first time joining us,

Brian D. Smith (00:00:50):
you've been on this journey with me for a while,

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I want to say thank you for being here today.

Brian D. Smith (00:00:55):
This show exists to help you navigate the most difficult times in life.

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Loss, uncertainty, the big questions about why we're here, where we're going.

Brian D. Smith (00:01:03):
My goal is to bring you stories,

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insights,

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and practical tools to help you transform pain into purpose.

Brian D. Smith (00:01:09):
And today's episode is one I know that's going to move you deeply and offer you

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hope if you're in the midst of your own overhaul.

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I'm joined today by Weston Brandon.

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Weston is a speaker,

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a coach,

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and a best-selling author of The Overhaul,

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Fixing Your Mindset and Driving Success.

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His story begins with an unimaginable loss.

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At just 23, he lost his wife suddenly, only days after the son was born prematurely.

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That moment shattered his world,

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but it also marked the beginning of a powerful journey through grief,

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identity,

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and ultimately purpose.

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Now, Weston is a father of three.

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He's remarried,

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and he's devoted his life to helping others navigate major life disruptions and

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personal transformation.

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In our conversation today,

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we'll dive into the story of his loss at a young age,

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what it was like to find love again and rebuild a blended family,

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and how he created his powerful drive,

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D-R-I-V-E framework,

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five pillars that helped him not just survive grief,

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but to grow from it.

Brian D. Smith (00:02:06):
If you're looking for guidance on how to find clarity through committed movement,

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how to become more magnetic to purpose and growth,

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or how to rebuild after your world is falling apart,

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this episode is for you.

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And remember, this conversation doesn't have to end when this episode does.

Brian D. Smith (00:02:20):
So head on over to grief to growth dot com slash community to join our supportive

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space where you can interact with me and other federal listeners who are walking

Brian D. Smith (00:02:28):
the path of healing and growth.

Brian D. Smith (00:02:30):
And with that, I want to welcome Weston to grief to growth.

Weston Brandon (00:02:33):
Thanks, man.

Weston Brandon (00:02:34):
Good being here.

Brian D. Smith (00:02:35):
Yeah, I'm really looking forward to having this conversation with you today.

Brian D. Smith (00:02:39):
First of all, I have to say sorry for your loss.

Brian D. Smith (00:02:44):
At the age of 23, loss is bad any time, right?

Brian D. Smith (00:02:47):
But at 23, I can only imagine how difficult that must have been to deal with.

Brian D. Smith (00:02:52):
But before we get into that, tell me about your wife.

Weston Brandon (00:02:55):
I assume you're talking about my first wife, Lauren.

Weston Brandon (00:02:59):
Yes, yes, yes.

Weston Brandon (00:03:01):
I got two, right?

Weston Brandon (00:03:03):
Yeah.

Weston Brandon (00:03:04):
So Lauren was obviously the first love of my life and she was very spontaneous is

Weston Brandon (00:03:12):
probably a good word to use to describe her.

Weston Brandon (00:03:15):
She took life as it came and she intentionally made it

Weston Brandon (00:03:20):
fun you know she she's very spontaneous did did things because she wanted to do

Weston Brandon (00:03:24):
them when she wanted to do them and it took me along for those rides you know um we

Weston Brandon (00:03:30):
got married in vegas on april fool's day in 2017 um that wasn't our original plan

Weston Brandon (00:03:36):
but uh

Weston Brandon (00:03:40):
Um, we had been dating for a while and had decided we were getting married.

Weston Brandon (00:03:42):
You know,

Weston Brandon (00:03:43):
I had proposed and everything and we were planning on doing it like later that year

Weston Brandon (00:03:48):
after the summer,

Weston Brandon (00:03:49):
probably September time.

Weston Brandon (00:03:50):
Um,

Weston Brandon (00:03:51):
cause I had committed already to go do some door to door sales for pest control out

Weston Brandon (00:03:55):
in Colorado.

Weston Brandon (00:03:56):
And, um,

Weston Brandon (00:03:58):
We were still going to be doing that,

Weston Brandon (00:04:00):
but she had a full-time job at a hospital as a pharmacy technician.

Weston Brandon (00:04:04):
She did compounding down there.

Weston Brandon (00:04:06):
And so we're thinking, well, she'll just stay in Utah.

Weston Brandon (00:04:11):
She had a seven-on, seven-off schedule.

Weston Brandon (00:04:15):
And then I'll be gone for four months and come back.

Weston Brandon (00:04:17):
And we both quickly decided that that sounded terrible and didn't want to deal with that.

Weston Brandon (00:04:23):
So we hadn't talked about getting married before,

Weston Brandon (00:04:27):
but we're kind of griping about that was going to be the situation for a minute.

Weston Brandon (00:04:31):
And then one day we just,

Weston Brandon (00:04:32):
we had went out to dinner at a burger joint and she kind of back proposed to me

Weston Brandon (00:04:37):
almost like,

Weston Brandon (00:04:38):
she was like,

Weston Brandon (00:04:38):
will you marry me this weekend?

Weston Brandon (00:04:39):
Cause we were already actually going to Vegas that weekend with, with some family members.

Weston Brandon (00:04:44):
There was a place we were going to do some self-defense training out there outside of Vegas.

Weston Brandon (00:04:49):
My dad,

Weston Brandon (00:04:49):
my cousins,

Weston Brandon (00:04:50):
we were all going there as kind of a family thing for a few days to go do this,

Weston Brandon (00:04:53):
this class.

Weston Brandon (00:04:55):
And she was coming and she says, let's just do it while we're down there.

Weston Brandon (00:05:00):
And I'm like,

Weston Brandon (00:05:01):
I grew up very religious and I'm like, these things are planned like the whole Vegas thing.

Weston Brandon (00:05:05):
I was like, my grandma's going to freak her.

Weston Brandon (00:05:07):
You know, she's going to lose it if we do this.

Weston Brandon (00:05:10):
But I was like,

Weston Brandon (00:05:11):
she's like,

Weston Brandon (00:05:11):
well,

Weston Brandon (00:05:11):
if you can think of a good reason why not to do it,

Weston Brandon (00:05:13):
then let me know.

Weston Brandon (00:05:15):
And I couldn't think of a good reason why not to do it.

Weston Brandon (00:05:18):
So I was like, all right.

Weston Brandon (00:05:19):
Yeah.

Weston Brandon (00:05:20):
I mean, I don't want it to be just us.

Weston Brandon (00:05:22):
I'd like maybe our parents to come,

Weston Brandon (00:05:24):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:05:24):
so it looks like,

Weston Brandon (00:05:26):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:05:26):
somebody supports our decision.

Weston Brandon (00:05:28):
Mm-hmm.

Weston Brandon (00:05:29):
And she's like, don't worry, I've already talked to my mom about it.

Weston Brandon (00:05:31):
I'm like, of course you have.

Weston Brandon (00:05:33):
That's just how she was.

Brian D. Smith (00:05:35):
Sounds like a force.

Weston Brandon (00:05:37):
We talked to my mom and our parents were all cool with it.

Weston Brandon (00:05:40):
So they met us, you know, my family was already coming anyway.

Weston Brandon (00:05:43):
So her parents drove down and met us there.

Weston Brandon (00:05:44):
We got married on April Fool's Day.

Weston Brandon (00:05:46):
And then the only wedding announcement that we did was we took a picture.

Weston Brandon (00:05:49):
I think we had her mom take a picture of us on her phone.

Weston Brandon (00:05:53):
And then she put... I think she put a Snapchat filter on it that said Fooled.

Weston Brandon (00:05:57):
Some type of April Fool's Day filter on the picture.

Weston Brandon (00:06:01):
And then just posted that to our Facebook and Instagram, but without any caption or anything.

Weston Brandon (00:06:06):
And it was a picture of us holding our wedding certificate, wearing wedding rings.

Weston Brandon (00:06:10):
So for...

Weston Brandon (00:06:12):
I don't know,

Weston Brandon (00:06:12):
a couple months after that,

Weston Brandon (00:06:13):
we'd randomly get texts or calls from friends or people like,

Weston Brandon (00:06:16):
did you actually get married?

Weston Brandon (00:06:17):
Because you guys are crazy enough I could see you doing that,

Weston Brandon (00:06:20):
but you're also crazy enough to pull it off as a joke and I can't decide which one

Weston Brandon (00:06:23):
it is.

Weston Brandon (00:06:25):
But that just gives you kind of a taste of like, that's how she was.

Weston Brandon (00:06:28):
She liked doing things.

Weston Brandon (00:06:30):
She ran to the beat of her own drum.

Weston Brandon (00:06:32):
She was comfortable with that,

Weston Brandon (00:06:33):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:06:34):
her,

Weston Brandon (00:06:35):
her biggest,

Weston Brandon (00:06:36):
her biggest goal in life and her dream was to be a mother.

Weston Brandon (00:06:40):
And that was something that she aspired to,

Weston Brandon (00:06:42):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:06:43):
she really looked up to her own parents and she talked about that often and

Weston Brandon (00:06:48):
After we got married,

Weston Brandon (00:06:49):
we did the whole door-to-door sales thing for a few months and then decided to

Weston Brandon (00:06:54):
switch to a different type of sales profession that took me to Texas.

Weston Brandon (00:06:57):
I actually lived just north of Dallas for a couple of years, and it was there in Texas.

Weston Brandon (00:07:02):
That's where she passed, and at the same time that she gave birth to my son.

Weston Brandon (00:07:06):
And she gave birth to him at 26 weeks.

Brian D. Smith (00:07:08):
Okay, okay.

Brian D. Smith (00:07:10):
And so how long was this after you were married?

Brian D. Smith (00:07:12):
Okay.

Weston Brandon (00:07:14):
We were married April Fool's to April 1st,

Weston Brandon (00:07:19):
2017,

Weston Brandon (00:07:19):
and then my son was born in March of 2019,

Weston Brandon (00:07:22):
and she passed away April 2019.

Weston Brandon (00:07:24):
Wow.

Brian D. Smith (00:07:25):
As I said earlier, I'm really sorry.

Brian D. Smith (00:07:30):
As a 23-year-old new father, what resources, what were your beliefs?

Brian D. Smith (00:07:39):
What was that like for you going through that experience at that young age?

Weston Brandon (00:07:44):
Yeah, I mean, it sucked.

Weston Brandon (00:07:50):
I'm sure you have lots of people listening to your podcast that are both fresh in

Weston Brandon (00:07:53):
their grief and maybe not so fresh,

Weston Brandon (00:07:56):
a few years or even decades out.

Weston Brandon (00:07:58):
Mm-hmm.

Weston Brandon (00:08:00):
my background was heavily spiritual and religious as well.

Weston Brandon (00:08:05):
Like I said,

Weston Brandon (00:08:05):
I served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,

Weston Brandon (00:08:07):
and so I dedicated two years of my life to teaching people what my beliefs of both

Weston Brandon (00:08:14):
the afterlife were,

Weston Brandon (00:08:15):
the purpose of life,

Weston Brandon (00:08:16):
you know.

Weston Brandon (00:08:16):
I had introduced a lot of people to God,

Weston Brandon (00:08:20):
and I had had some very powerful experiences in my life that I guess you could say

Weston Brandon (00:08:25):
converted me personally to Jesus Christ,

Weston Brandon (00:08:27):
and

Weston Brandon (00:08:28):
it's something that I held on very strongly to.

Weston Brandon (00:08:31):
So while I had done plenty of scripture study and read about,

Weston Brandon (00:08:36):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:08:37):
the resurrection and all these things,

Weston Brandon (00:08:39):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:08:41):
and I believed it suddenly in,

Weston Brandon (00:08:44):
at the moment that it happened.

Weston Brandon (00:08:45):
And of course,

Weston Brandon (00:08:45):
in the months that following that became,

Weston Brandon (00:08:47):
that came into question,

Weston Brandon (00:08:50):
I guess you could say like,

Weston Brandon (00:08:51):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:08:52):
it forced me to actually decide like,

Weston Brandon (00:08:53):
like I was pretty strong in my conviction,

Weston Brandon (00:08:56):
um,

Weston Brandon (00:08:58):
But am I?

Weston Brandon (00:08:59):
Like, is this?

Weston Brandon (00:09:01):
You know, you start asking those kind of questions.

Weston Brandon (00:09:03):
Absolutely.

Weston Brandon (00:09:05):
Those soul-searching questions.

Weston Brandon (00:09:07):
And I had an experience.

Weston Brandon (00:09:10):
I mean,

Weston Brandon (00:09:10):
I had multiple experiences earlier in life that I guess you could say were part of

Weston Brandon (00:09:15):
my ongoing conversion to Jesus.

Weston Brandon (00:09:18):
But one of them in particular happened the day that she passed away while I was in

Weston Brandon (00:09:24):
the ICU waiting room.

Weston Brandon (00:09:26):
Because what happened was my son was born at 26 weeks, super, super early, right?

Weston Brandon (00:09:31):
He's small enough, he can fit in my hand.

Weston Brandon (00:09:33):
Luckily,

Weston Brandon (00:09:34):
he didn't have anything wrong with him other than a couple really minor things that

Weston Brandon (00:09:37):
they kind of expected would be with such a premature baby,

Weston Brandon (00:09:40):
but nothing crazy.

Weston Brandon (00:09:42):
And my wife delivered him through C-section and was discharged a couple of days later.

Weston Brandon (00:09:46):
And then,

Weston Brandon (00:09:47):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:09:47):
for the next couple of weeks,

Weston Brandon (00:09:48):
it was work,

Weston Brandon (00:09:49):
then go spend the evening up at the NICU and then work and,

Weston Brandon (00:09:52):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:09:53):
just doing this routine.

Weston Brandon (00:09:55):
But she suffered a pulmonary embolism as a complication from the C-section and the

Weston Brandon (00:09:59):
birth,

Weston Brandon (00:10:00):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:10:00):
all of the things.

Weston Brandon (00:10:02):
And it happened while we were at home.

Weston Brandon (00:10:04):
I had gotten approval during that time to work from home because my house was so

Weston Brandon (00:10:08):
much closer to the hospital than where the office was at.

Weston Brandon (00:10:12):
And so luckily I was home when it was happening.

Weston Brandon (00:10:15):
But she had started having these episodes of shortness of breath.

Weston Brandon (00:10:20):
And I've posted videos on TikToks that have gotten hundreds of thousands of views

Weston Brandon (00:10:24):
and mentioned something about this pulmonary embolism.

Weston Brandon (00:10:26):
So many comments of people saying they experienced the same thing,

Weston Brandon (00:10:29):
but kind of get brushed off by...

Weston Brandon (00:10:31):
by lots of medical professionals just brushing it off as anxiety and that's

Weston Brandon (00:10:34):
honestly we didn't we didn't talk to any doctors about it but lauren herself

Weston Brandon (00:10:37):
brushed it off as anxiety because she was already on anxiety medication even before

Weston Brandon (00:10:42):
she got pregnant that was one thing that she did struggle with um so then with

Weston Brandon (00:10:46):
everything happening you know the birth and all this we have a baby in the nicu

Weston Brandon (00:10:50):
like she just says that she's anxious and like sure i'm not with her you know

Weston Brandon (00:10:56):
But while we're at home,

Weston Brandon (00:10:57):
she's starting to have another one of these,

Weston Brandon (00:10:59):
what she thinks is a panic attack and having a hard time catching her breath.

Weston Brandon (00:11:02):
And I'm there holding her, trying to get her to calm down.

Weston Brandon (00:11:04):
And she was never able to catch her breath.

Weston Brandon (00:11:06):
And she passed away there in my arms.

Weston Brandon (00:11:07):
And I had to do CPR on her for a while until the EMT showed up and took her off to the hospital.

Weston Brandon (00:11:15):
You know,

Weston Brandon (00:11:15):
so we follow them there and there's a waiting room in the ICU specifically for a

Weston Brandon (00:11:20):
family who have people in the ICU.

Weston Brandon (00:11:23):
And there's a social worker that's going between,

Weston Brandon (00:11:25):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:11:26):
operating room or whatever and coming back,

Weston Brandon (00:11:28):
delivering,

Weston Brandon (00:11:29):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:11:29):
the updates.

Weston Brandon (00:11:31):
And the social worker comes back one of these other times and says,

Weston Brandon (00:11:35):
we finally have our pulse back.

Weston Brandon (00:11:37):
It's weak, but we're getting stuff out of the room.

Weston Brandon (00:11:39):
There's enough room for mom and dad.

Weston Brandon (00:11:41):
My in-laws were actually there with me.

Weston Brandon (00:11:44):
They were in the area when it happened, so we rode up to the hospital together.

Weston Brandon (00:11:48):
And so a social worker comes and says, we have room for mom and dad.

Weston Brandon (00:11:50):
We'll take them real quick.

Weston Brandon (00:11:53):
Husband, we'll come back for you in just a minute once we get more people out of the room.

Weston Brandon (00:11:58):
So they left, and I had...

Weston Brandon (00:12:01):
I had some alone time right there to have this kind of holy crap moment.

Weston Brandon (00:12:10):
Because from the time that she collapsed until all the way up there,

Weston Brandon (00:12:14):
it was just like going 100 miles an hour.

Weston Brandon (00:12:16):
So that was the first time where I'm just in this room by myself,

Weston Brandon (00:12:20):
and for all intents and purposes,

Weston Brandon (00:12:21):
it's silent.

Weston Brandon (00:12:22):
I think they had a little tiny soft music playing in a speaker somewhere.

Weston Brandon (00:12:25):
But that was when I was like, I...

Weston Brandon (00:12:30):
I need to talk to God right now.

Weston Brandon (00:12:32):
Um,

Weston Brandon (00:12:32):
there's,

Weston Brandon (00:12:32):
I have some concerns,

Weston Brandon (00:12:34):
some questions,

Weston Brandon (00:12:35):
obviously I want a miracle,

Weston Brandon (00:12:37):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:12:37):
but it had already been over 30 minutes that she,

Weston Brandon (00:12:40):
they were having to do CPR on her.

Weston Brandon (00:12:42):
So I knew that even if she did pull through, it probably wasn't going to be good.

Weston Brandon (00:12:46):
And life was about to change super drastically, but I, I was leaning towards that.

Weston Brandon (00:12:51):
I don't think she's going to make it just based on how things have been going on.

Weston Brandon (00:12:55):
So I knelt down on the couch right there.

Weston Brandon (00:12:57):
Um,

Weston Brandon (00:12:59):
Because any time that I had had a conversation where I felt God speaking to me,

Weston Brandon (00:13:04):
it had usually come through either music or through getting into the scriptures in

Weston Brandon (00:13:08):
some way.

Weston Brandon (00:13:10):
And I spent a lot of time studying both.

Weston Brandon (00:13:14):
I prefer the King James Version of the Bible myself,

Weston Brandon (00:13:16):
as well as the Book of Mormon,

Weston Brandon (00:13:17):
something we use in the LDS Church.

Weston Brandon (00:13:20):
And so I didn't really care where it came from,

Weston Brandon (00:13:22):
but I had an app on my phone that had both of them on there.

Weston Brandon (00:13:25):
So I just knelt down and prayed, and I'm like,

Weston Brandon (00:13:28):
If I ever need you to talk to me again in my whole life, this is it.

Weston Brandon (00:13:32):
This is the moment I need you to say something.

Weston Brandon (00:13:35):
So I just pulled up, opened my phone, and it had all these different religious resources there.

Weston Brandon (00:13:41):
And I didn't even really care if it opened a particular book of scripture.

Weston Brandon (00:13:44):
It could have been a magazine for all I cared.

Weston Brandon (00:13:46):
And I just started tapping.

Weston Brandon (00:13:47):
I closed my eyes and started tapping on my phone to see whatever would pop up.

Weston Brandon (00:13:51):
And it happened to open to a – actually, I've got a big old combination version right here.

Weston Brandon (00:13:57):
It opened up to a particular verse.

Weston Brandon (00:14:01):
It was in, is in the Book of Mormon.

Weston Brandon (00:14:04):
But this one particularly punched me in the face as soon as I opened it because it

Weston Brandon (00:14:09):
was,

Weston Brandon (00:14:10):
I didn't even realize that this was what I was worried about at the moment.

Weston Brandon (00:14:15):
But

Weston Brandon (00:14:17):
when I tapped open to it and I opened and it opened up to the scripture and it

Weston Brandon (00:14:20):
says,

Weston Brandon (00:14:20):
now my son,

Weston Brandon (00:14:20):
here is somewhat more I would say unto thee for I perceive that thy mind is,

Weston Brandon (00:14:24):
is worried concerning the resurrection of the dead.

Weston Brandon (00:14:28):
And I just like sat, I'm like, whoa,

Weston Brandon (00:14:32):
Yeah, yeah, it is.

Weston Brandon (00:14:33):
And then, you know, I kept reading through the rest of that chapter.

Weston Brandon (00:14:36):
And every time I would immediately have another question,

Weston Brandon (00:14:40):
that question was like answered in the moment that I had the question,

Weston Brandon (00:14:44):
you know.

Weston Brandon (00:14:44):
And then I started going through footnotes.

Weston Brandon (00:14:46):
It's got footnotes to a whole bunch of different places in the Bible.

Weston Brandon (00:14:48):
And,

Weston Brandon (00:14:48):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:14:49):
it turned into this like super high speed,

Weston Brandon (00:14:51):
like scripture study thing for me for about 10 minutes where I felt just this

Weston Brandon (00:14:56):
wealth of

Weston Brandon (00:14:58):
I don't know.

Weston Brandon (00:14:59):
I just felt this presence of God talking to me and calming me down and teaching me

Weston Brandon (00:15:02):
kind of reaffirming what I already knew,

Weston Brandon (00:15:05):
but it was,

Weston Brandon (00:15:06):
it was kind of God's way of saying like,

Weston Brandon (00:15:07):
no,

Weston Brandon (00:15:08):
you,

Weston Brandon (00:15:09):
you know how this is going.

Weston Brandon (00:15:11):
Um, and you can lean on this.

Weston Brandon (00:15:13):
You can trust me with this,

Weston Brandon (00:15:14):
but it was also kind of his way of not saying it,

Weston Brandon (00:15:17):
but saying it,

Weston Brandon (00:15:18):
that she wasn't going to make it.

Weston Brandon (00:15:19):
And after that, I knew I was like, she's probably like, I don't, she ain't making it.

Weston Brandon (00:15:23):
And I'm going to have to lean on this.

Weston Brandon (00:15:25):
So for the next week,

Weston Brandon (00:15:28):
We were in the hospital for, I don't know, 14, 15 hours, something like that.

Weston Brandon (00:15:33):
All that's going on.

Weston Brandon (00:15:35):
After that,

Weston Brandon (00:15:36):
still holding her hand and just praying for a miracle,

Weston Brandon (00:15:39):
praying for her to pull through and never did.

Weston Brandon (00:15:41):
I had to sign organ donation papers and eventually...

Weston Brandon (00:15:46):
got to see her the last time in the operating room where they're going to do the

Weston Brandon (00:15:49):
organ harvesting to facilitate the donations and had to say goodbye right there.

Weston Brandon (00:15:53):
And that was the last time I saw her before the, you know, the viewing at the funeral home.

Weston Brandon (00:15:57):
Yeah.

Weston Brandon (00:15:58):
So that particular experience was the first of many after that, um,

Weston Brandon (00:16:05):
That I had to lean on, but it didn't fix being angry.

Weston Brandon (00:16:11):
I was still just as mad, but it was more like I was mad at God for taking her.

Weston Brandon (00:16:16):
And I didn't care that supposedly there's a bigger, higher purpose for everything.

Weston Brandon (00:16:22):
I was like...

Weston Brandon (00:16:24):
I kind of felt that,

Weston Brandon (00:16:25):
well,

Weston Brandon (00:16:26):
apparently I'm not important if whatever she needs to go do is more important than

Weston Brandon (00:16:30):
me.

Weston Brandon (00:16:32):
Or my son, for that matter, who's in the NICU.

Weston Brandon (00:16:34):
And so I struggled with that for a while.

Weston Brandon (00:16:38):
But that one...

Weston Brandon (00:16:41):
That one was at least grounded me enough in my faith that I never denied him,

Weston Brandon (00:16:45):
and I never quit talking to him,

Weston Brandon (00:16:47):
even though the only things I was saying to him for a long time was pretty upset.

Weston Brandon (00:16:54):
I don't remember who told me or something I heard somewhere previously in my life

Weston Brandon (00:17:00):
somewhere that even if you're mad at God,

Weston Brandon (00:17:03):
at least keep telling him that you are,

Weston Brandon (00:17:05):
because he can take it.

Weston Brandon (00:17:06):
Don't ever shut off your communication with him.

Weston Brandon (00:17:08):
Yeah.

Weston Brandon (00:17:09):
That's all I could do.

Weston Brandon (00:17:10):
I was just mad for a while.

Brian D. Smith (00:17:15):
Certainly.

Brian D. Smith (00:17:16):
I appreciate you sharing that and being so honest about it because people...

Brian D. Smith (00:17:22):
Well,

Brian D. Smith (00:17:23):
many people say,

Brian D. Smith (00:17:24):
well,

Brian D. Smith (00:17:24):
God had a higher purpose for her or he needed another angel or something like that.

Brian D. Smith (00:17:30):
And not understanding that when you're in that person that's going through the

Brian D. Smith (00:17:33):
grief,

Brian D. Smith (00:17:34):
you're like,

Brian D. Smith (00:17:35):
I don't want to hear that.

Brian D. Smith (00:17:36):
There's no higher purpose than me, my son.

Brian D. Smith (00:17:38):
What could be a higher purpose than that?

Brian D. Smith (00:17:43):
So that's a very natural thing.

Brian D. Smith (00:17:47):
And I also appreciate you saying, you keep talking to God, God can take it, right?

Brian D. Smith (00:17:52):
It's better to keep that line of communication open.

Brian D. Smith (00:17:56):
So that's a great thing.

Brian D. Smith (00:17:58):
And you had your faith to lean on.

Brian D. Smith (00:18:01):
But being 23, I would also imagine it must have been scary.

Brian D. Smith (00:18:07):
What am I going to do?

Brian D. Smith (00:18:09):
Having a son and never having had that experience before.

Brian D. Smith (00:18:12):
So how did you navigate that?

Weston Brandon (00:18:14):
Yeah, that was...

Weston Brandon (00:18:19):
It was a time that I still remember very vividly what those feelings felt like,

Weston Brandon (00:18:23):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:18:23):
and it was petrifying.

Weston Brandon (00:18:26):
Yeah.

Weston Brandon (00:18:27):
I found times where,

Weston Brandon (00:18:29):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:18:30):
I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that sometimes I felt rather accomplished because

Weston Brandon (00:18:34):
I was able to get out of bed to go to the bathroom.

(00:18:37):
Yes.

Weston Brandon (00:18:38):
You know what I mean?

Weston Brandon (00:18:39):
Like that was my movement for the day.

Weston Brandon (00:18:40):
Yes.

Weston Brandon (00:18:42):
And because a lot of times in bed, I wake up in the morning and I remember...

Weston Brandon (00:18:49):
those moments of bliss for about two seconds where I would wake up before the

Weston Brandon (00:18:55):
reality would hit again.

Weston Brandon (00:18:56):
I just wake up and I'm in my house.

Weston Brandon (00:18:58):
I'm like, Oh, another day.

Weston Brandon (00:19:00):
Oh shit.

Brian D. Smith (00:19:02):
Yeah.

Weston Brandon (00:19:03):
You know, just, just that little blissful time.

Weston Brandon (00:19:04):
And then all those thoughts, those like, what do I do now would come crashing down again.

Weston Brandon (00:19:09):
I, it kept me stuck for a minute, but I, I,

Weston Brandon (00:19:15):
I know in your show,

Weston Brandon (00:19:16):
and you talked about on some other podcasts,

Weston Brandon (00:19:18):
you talked about synchronicities and experiences of messages and dreams with your

Weston Brandon (00:19:22):
loved one through the other side.

Weston Brandon (00:19:23):
And I certainly had a few of those ones I hold very sacred, very close to me.

Weston Brandon (00:19:29):
But one of them,

Weston Brandon (00:19:30):
in a nutshell,

Weston Brandon (00:19:32):
I was informed in some way or another that Lauren either had found who was supposed

Weston Brandon (00:19:39):
to be

Weston Brandon (00:19:41):
the mother of her child on this side of the veil,

Weston Brandon (00:19:44):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:19:44):
physically here,

Weston Brandon (00:19:46):
or she was at least aware that there was,

Weston Brandon (00:19:48):
there was a plan in place maybe,

Weston Brandon (00:19:50):
or something like that.

Weston Brandon (00:19:51):
Either way,

Weston Brandon (00:19:51):
she,

Weston Brandon (00:19:52):
she knew what was,

Weston Brandon (00:19:52):
what was going to be going on and would take,

Weston Brandon (00:19:56):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:19:56):
and I don't,

Weston Brandon (00:19:57):
I don't even say that with,

Weston Brandon (00:19:58):
with the sense,

Weston Brandon (00:19:58):
like there was a very,

Weston Brandon (00:20:00):
very specific person that I had to find,

Weston Brandon (00:20:03):
but she knew that there were like,

Weston Brandon (00:20:05):
I,

Weston Brandon (00:20:05):
I could move forward with that and that she was going to help me do that.

Weston Brandon (00:20:08):
And that I,

Weston Brandon (00:20:09):
I was basically told that it was up to me to do the internal work within,

Weston Brandon (00:20:13):
within my own mind and in my own heart to make myself open to that and keep myself

Weston Brandon (00:20:19):
open to that.

Weston Brandon (00:20:20):
Should, you know, should God put someone in our life that could feel that.

Weston Brandon (00:20:25):
So admittedly that rubbed some people the wrong way at first when I did,

Weston Brandon (00:20:29):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:20:29):
start going down the dating again road because understandably people that were very

Weston Brandon (00:20:36):
attached to Lauren and

Weston Brandon (00:20:39):
I think that they, not consciously perhaps, and I'm not even talking about her parents.

Weston Brandon (00:20:44):
Her parents were actually amazing,

Weston Brandon (00:20:47):
were some of my biggest support going through this because her mother did give me

Weston Brandon (00:20:51):
permission to mention it anytime I talk about it that they had been through

Weston Brandon (00:20:55):
something similar when they were in their 20s.

Weston Brandon (00:20:58):
My father-in-law had lost his first wife and had quickly remarried my wife's mother.

Weston Brandon (00:21:04):
Mm-hmm.

Weston Brandon (00:21:05):
The only difference being that he didn't have any children with his first wife,

Weston Brandon (00:21:08):
but the ages were very similar.

Weston Brandon (00:21:10):
Like you talk,

Weston Brandon (00:21:10):
some of those synchronized,

Weston Brandon (00:21:11):
like it was odd how,

Weston Brandon (00:21:13):
how closely some of those things lined up.

Weston Brandon (00:21:14):
So they were very,

Weston Brandon (00:21:15):
very well,

Weston Brandon (00:21:17):
of course it made them nervous when I first started getting into dating because

Weston Brandon (00:21:20):
they're not sure how that's going to go.

Weston Brandon (00:21:21):
And they certainly aren't sure how this person that I'm now dating or is going to

Weston Brandon (00:21:26):
marry is going to,

Weston Brandon (00:21:27):
if they're going to feel comfortable interacting with them very much or,

Weston Brandon (00:21:30):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:21:31):
So there's some shakiness there at first,

Weston Brandon (00:21:34):
but they were very open and very encouraging to being okay and

Weston Brandon (00:21:40):
moving in that direction and uh specifically my mother-in-law had told me she says

Weston Brandon (00:21:44):
i'm not i'm never going to hold you back from doing that um as uncomfortable as it

Weston Brandon (00:21:48):
may make me at first i know that it's not my place to do that and that you need to

Weston Brandon (00:21:51):
find happiness so that you can take better care of my grandson so you know you know

Weston Brandon (00:21:55):
for all intents and purposes you'd be able to better take care of your grandson if

Weston Brandon (00:21:58):
you if you're you know making yourself whole again if that's how you want to do it

Weston Brandon (00:22:02):
then do that

Weston Brandon (00:22:03):
So as I go down this road in dating,

Weston Brandon (00:22:08):
I had that experience very,

Weston Brandon (00:22:10):
very quickly within the first couple of weeks after my wife had passed that I

Weston Brandon (00:22:14):
needed to do whatever it took in here to be okay doing that.

Weston Brandon (00:22:20):
And as I mentioned,

Weston Brandon (00:22:22):
this happened in Texas,

Weston Brandon (00:22:23):
and my son was in the NICU for a couple of months after my wife passed before he

Weston Brandon (00:22:28):
was able to come home.

Weston Brandon (00:22:29):
But once he did...

Weston Brandon (00:22:31):
I was kind of limbo there for a couple of weeks and through some prayer and some

Weston Brandon (00:22:37):
pondering,

Weston Brandon (00:22:37):
I decided that it was best for me to move back to Utah where my family was because

Weston Brandon (00:22:41):
there were so many people

Weston Brandon (00:22:43):
that wanted to help and that were capable of helping,

Weston Brandon (00:22:46):
but they were thousands of miles away,

Weston Brandon (00:22:48):
you know?

Weston Brandon (00:22:49):
And I had a really good church home in Texas.

Weston Brandon (00:22:51):
There were some amazing people there and,

Weston Brandon (00:22:54):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:22:54):
people were bringing meals over and taking care of me,

Weston Brandon (00:22:56):
but that closeness of my family support,

Weston Brandon (00:23:01):
I felt pretty strongly that I needed that again.

Weston Brandon (00:23:04):
So I moved back to Utah and moved back into my parents' basement and was living in

Weston Brandon (00:23:07):
the same bedroom that I was in when I graduated high school.

Weston Brandon (00:23:11):
So it was like,

Weston Brandon (00:23:12):
You know, starting over in every sense of the term.

Weston Brandon (00:23:17):
And it was when I got back there that I kind of felt another little nudge that I

Weston Brandon (00:23:22):
needed to do that.

Weston Brandon (00:23:24):
So I downloaded a dating app and,

Weston Brandon (00:23:27):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:23:27):
I'm like swiping through people and just no,

Weston Brandon (00:23:30):
no,

Weston Brandon (00:23:30):
no,

Weston Brandon (00:23:30):
no,

Weston Brandon (00:23:31):
no,

Weston Brandon (00:23:31):
no,

Weston Brandon (00:23:31):
no,

Weston Brandon (00:23:31):
no,

Weston Brandon (00:23:31):
no.

Weston Brandon (00:23:32):
You know, and this is a few months after my wife has passed.

Weston Brandon (00:23:34):
Yeah.

Weston Brandon (00:23:35):
And I swiped no on these dating apps to literally every single woman on there.

Weston Brandon (00:23:40):
And after doing that a couple of times,

Weston Brandon (00:23:43):
I realized that I was just saying no because it wasn't the person that I was

Weston Brandon (00:23:47):
looking for.

Weston Brandon (00:23:48):
And I was like, that's not really fair to them.

Weston Brandon (00:23:51):
So I looked into it a little bit more,

Weston Brandon (00:23:52):
and luckily they had some type of a premium version where you could pay like $20 a

Weston Brandon (00:23:56):
month or something,

Weston Brandon (00:23:57):
and you wouldn't have to swipe.

Weston Brandon (00:23:58):
It would just tell if somebody swiped on you,

Weston Brandon (00:24:00):
and you could just go through the people who had already said yes kind of thing.

Weston Brandon (00:24:03):
I was like, all right, cool.

Weston Brandon (00:24:05):
Take my money.

Weston Brandon (00:24:05):
I don't even want to look at this thing.

Weston Brandon (00:24:07):
And so I put in the,

Weston Brandon (00:24:08):
in the bio and the picture,

Weston Brandon (00:24:10):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:24:10):
as much as the,

Weston Brandon (00:24:11):
as much as room as I had that,

Weston Brandon (00:24:13):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:24:13):
here's the story,

Weston Brandon (00:24:14):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:24:14):
here's everything that happened.

Weston Brandon (00:24:15):
Here's the situation I'm in, me and my son, I had pictures of both me and my son there.

Weston Brandon (00:24:20):
So anybody that swiped in there,

Weston Brandon (00:24:22):
like the very first picture that would show up would be me with my boy.

Weston Brandon (00:24:25):
So it was like,

Weston Brandon (00:24:26):
it's impossible for somebody to swipe and not know that I've got this little guy

Weston Brandon (00:24:30):
with me,

Weston Brandon (00:24:30):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:24:30):
and they can read the situation was so.

Weston Brandon (00:24:33):
For a few days, I disabled notifications on that app.

Weston Brandon (00:24:37):
I didn't even want to look at it because it made me feel sick.

Weston Brandon (00:24:42):
Then one night, Vance wakes up.

Weston Brandon (00:24:44):
NICU has him on a pretty steady schedule of feeding.

Weston Brandon (00:24:47):
He wakes up at 2 o'clock in the morning.

Weston Brandon (00:24:50):
I'm feeding him and finally putting him down.

Weston Brandon (00:24:51):
I go to lay back down.

Weston Brandon (00:24:54):
For some reason, I feel this pull towards my phone.

Weston Brandon (00:24:56):
I look at my phone.

Weston Brandon (00:24:57):
I'm like...

Weston Brandon (00:25:00):
to look at that, you know?

Weston Brandon (00:25:02):
And I kind of feel her like, hey, you know, go check this out.

Weston Brandon (00:25:06):
And I'm like, can I have this argument with her in my own head?

Weston Brandon (00:25:09):
I'm like, no, I don't want to do that.

Weston Brandon (00:25:11):
But I finally do,

Weston Brandon (00:25:12):
and I pull it up,

Weston Brandon (00:25:13):
and I pull up on the app,

Weston Brandon (00:25:14):
and there's like four or five either absolutely crazy women or some really cool,

Weston Brandon (00:25:20):
like emotionally intelligent women.

Weston Brandon (00:25:21):
I wasn't sure which it was going to be that had swiped.

Weston Brandon (00:25:25):
And I'm like, all right.

Weston Brandon (00:25:26):
So I sent them all a message at like 2 o'clock in the morning just to start a conversation.

Weston Brandon (00:25:30):
Over the next few days, I had some really, really profound conversations with these people.

Weston Brandon (00:25:36):
And I'm like, all right, maybe –

Weston Brandon (00:25:40):
Maybe I could give it a shot and meet in person and just, you know, see what happens.

Weston Brandon (00:25:44):
This is,

Weston Brandon (00:25:45):
I'm still feeling super freaking weird about this whole thing,

Weston Brandon (00:25:48):
but I feel like I need to do it.

Weston Brandon (00:25:50):
So let's give it a shot.

Weston Brandon (00:25:51):
So I scheduled some dates and my wife, her name's Kiersley.

Weston Brandon (00:25:56):
She was the first one that I went on a date with and I canceled all the other ones

Weston Brandon (00:25:59):
after I went on that date with her.

Weston Brandon (00:26:02):
And it was a, when I went on that date, I remember praying, still angry with God.

Weston Brandon (00:26:06):
You know, I was still not, and I didn't feel like I had, I was very happy with him.

Weston Brandon (00:26:10):
but I remember praying.

Weston Brandon (00:26:11):
I'm like,

Weston Brandon (00:26:12):
whatever you've got her doing over there,

Weston Brandon (00:26:14):
I'm going to call in some PTO and I need her to go with me on this date.

Weston Brandon (00:26:18):
And cause I don't fully trust my own mental cognition here to know if this is

Weston Brandon (00:26:24):
something I should pursue,

Weston Brandon (00:26:25):
you know?

Weston Brandon (00:26:26):
So I was like, I need her to come with me and tell me if she approves of this person or not.

Weston Brandon (00:26:29):
So we go on this date and we have a great time.

Weston Brandon (00:26:32):
We go out to eat.

Weston Brandon (00:26:33):
And I, one of the, the fads going on at the time was hatchet throwing.

Weston Brandon (00:26:36):
Everybody was doing that.

Weston Brandon (00:26:37):
So,

Weston Brandon (00:26:38):
You know, we went and did that and got some ice cream after.

Weston Brandon (00:26:40):
And then as she was driving away to go back to her place,

Weston Brandon (00:26:43):
I remember saying out loud,

Weston Brandon (00:26:45):
I was like,

Weston Brandon (00:26:45):
well,

Weston Brandon (00:26:45):
babe,

Weston Brandon (00:26:45):
what do you think?

Weston Brandon (00:26:46):
Talking to Lauren.

Weston Brandon (00:26:48):
And holy cow, the feeling that hit my chest after that.

Weston Brandon (00:26:54):
And it's hard to describe when you have those, you know, spiritual experiences, what that feels.

Weston Brandon (00:26:59):
I'm sure they feel different for every person.

Weston Brandon (00:27:00):
But I knew right then, I'm like, wow, I haven't felt something that bad.

Weston Brandon (00:27:06):
powerful that also felt so peaceful and warm at the same time.

Weston Brandon (00:27:09):
Um,

Weston Brandon (00:27:11):
since a couple of,

Weston Brandon (00:27:12):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:27:12):
these,

Weston Brandon (00:27:13):
these initial experiences I had when I kind of found Jesus,

Weston Brandon (00:27:15):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:27:16):
at a younger age and I'm like,

Weston Brandon (00:27:18):
okay,

Weston Brandon (00:27:18):
all right.

Weston Brandon (00:27:19):
So,

Weston Brandon (00:27:19):
uh,

Weston Brandon (00:27:20):
you set up another date with,

Weston Brandon (00:27:21):
with my wife and,

Weston Brandon (00:27:23):
um,

Weston Brandon (00:27:24):
and it,

Weston Brandon (00:27:25):
it took off from there and,

Weston Brandon (00:27:26):
and she,

Weston Brandon (00:27:27):
uh,

Weston Brandon (00:27:28):
she fell in love with my son's name is Vance.

Weston Brandon (00:27:31):
She fell in love with Vance so fast and she just kind of inserted herself into the

Weston Brandon (00:27:35):
whole relationship

Weston Brandon (00:27:36):
routine of of taking care of the baby of making herself kind of a part of our

Weston Brandon (00:27:40):
family and um not that she was forcing herself into it it just all just kind of

Weston Brandon (00:27:45):
just fell into it just happened so naturally everybody's like yeah this this feels

Weston Brandon (00:27:50):
so normal in the weirdest way you know like just fits so well and

Weston Brandon (00:27:57):
Not to say that,

Weston Brandon (00:27:57):
again,

Weston Brandon (00:27:58):
there weren't people that thought we were absolutely nuts and let us know about

Weston Brandon (00:28:02):
that.

Weston Brandon (00:28:02):
But for us, it was perfect.

Weston Brandon (00:28:05):
And we ended up getting married a few months later.

Brian D. Smith (00:28:08):
Wow.

Brian D. Smith (00:28:09):
So obviously, you feel like Lauren approves.

Brian D. Smith (00:28:14):
But that's one of the things that people go through when they've lost a spouse at

Brian D. Smith (00:28:19):
any age,

Brian D. Smith (00:28:19):
at any time.

Brian D. Smith (00:28:20):
It's like, how is my person on the other side going to feel about this?

Brian D. Smith (00:28:26):
Um, so I guess I really don't need to ask you that question.

Brian D. Smith (00:28:28):
I think you've answered that pretty well.

Brian D. Smith (00:28:31):
So in terms of,

Brian D. Smith (00:28:32):
uh,

Brian D. Smith (00:28:32):
Kiercely,

Brian D. Smith (00:28:33):
how does,

Brian D. Smith (00:28:34):
how would she,

Brian D. Smith (00:28:35):
how does she feel coming in after Lauren,

Brian D. Smith (00:28:38):
you know,

Brian D. Smith (00:28:39):
uh,

Brian D. Smith (00:28:39):
I don't want to say taking Lauren's place,

Brian D. Smith (00:28:41):
but raising her son,

Brian D. Smith (00:28:42):
you know,

Brian D. Smith (00:28:43):
with you,

Brian D. Smith (00:28:43):
has that been,

Brian D. Smith (00:28:44):
how has she adjusted to that?

Weston Brandon (00:28:47):
Well, yeah, there's certainly been some phases to that.

Weston Brandon (00:28:49):
You know, initially it's like a,

Weston Brandon (00:28:52):
not necessarily questioning,

Weston Brandon (00:28:53):
but it was like,

Weston Brandon (00:28:54):
this is so different than what I thought my life was going to be.

Weston Brandon (00:28:59):
And certainly maybe a little bit of trepidation and questioning there.

Weston Brandon (00:29:04):
She didn't tell me this at the time,

Weston Brandon (00:29:05):
but she had her own pretty powerful experience with prayer,

Weston Brandon (00:29:08):
feeling that this was something that she should feel okay doing and felt like that

Weston Brandon (00:29:15):
that's what she should do.

Weston Brandon (00:29:18):
She had that experience only a few days after

Weston Brandon (00:29:21):
we started dating and I had had a similar one like I just mentioned with my wife.

Weston Brandon (00:29:25):
So we both had these experiences where

Weston Brandon (00:29:28):
a spiritual experience in some way that told us to go ahead and pursue this,

Weston Brandon (00:29:31):
that this was a good thing for us.

Weston Brandon (00:29:34):
But neither of us wanted to tell the other one.

Weston Brandon (00:29:35):
We're like, how the freak is it?

Brian D. Smith (00:29:37):
Yeah.

Weston Brandon (00:29:37):
You know,

Weston Brandon (00:29:38):
so it's like this kind of,

Weston Brandon (00:29:40):
not walking on eggshells,

Weston Brandon (00:29:41):
but it's like,

Weston Brandon (00:29:41):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:29:42):
this kind of balance,

Weston Brandon (00:29:43):
almost feel like you're walking on a tightrope.

Weston Brandon (00:29:44):
Like,

Weston Brandon (00:29:44):
I don't want to screw this up and scare them away,

Weston Brandon (00:29:46):
but I also,

Weston Brandon (00:29:47):
I know that if this goes right,

Weston Brandon (00:29:49):
if I don't screw this up,

Weston Brandon (00:29:51):
this has potential to go all the way to being married and,

Weston Brandon (00:29:54):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:29:55):
to go into what we all strive for.

Weston Brandon (00:29:58):
And so when she had that experience,

Weston Brandon (00:30:02):
we ended up talking about,

Weston Brandon (00:30:03):
though,

Weston Brandon (00:30:04):
soon after that,

Weston Brandon (00:30:05):
it was a few days later,

Weston Brandon (00:30:08):
but that conversation kind of happened on accident.

Weston Brandon (00:30:11):
It was a...

Weston Brandon (00:30:14):
my wife had had some experiences before my,

Weston Brandon (00:30:17):
curiously had had past experiences in life with other relationships that had not

Weston Brandon (00:30:21):
been good,

Weston Brandon (00:30:21):
not been healthy.

Weston Brandon (00:30:22):
And she was sharing some stories about some of those.

Weston Brandon (00:30:24):
And, um, in my head, I'm like, I had, I, I loved Lauren.

Weston Brandon (00:30:29):
I had such a,

Weston Brandon (00:30:30):
I love Lauren,

Weston Brandon (00:30:31):
not,

Weston Brandon (00:30:31):
not past tense,

Weston Brandon (00:30:31):
but I had such a good,

Weston Brandon (00:30:33):
I felt like I had a really good relationship for,

Weston Brandon (00:30:37):
for only being,

Weston Brandon (00:30:38):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:30:38):
I was married from to her from 21 to 23 age.

Weston Brandon (00:30:40):
And yeah,

Weston Brandon (00:30:43):
I'm like, obviously it wasn't perfect, but we were happy.

Weston Brandon (00:30:46):
Like it was good.

Weston Brandon (00:30:47):
I can't wait to show you what a happy, good relationships feels and looks like.

Weston Brandon (00:30:52):
And that was the thought process going on in my head,

Weston Brandon (00:30:54):
but that accidentally started coming out of my mouth.

Weston Brandon (00:30:57):
So when she's sharing these, I said, I was like, I can't wait to, and I'm like,

Weston Brandon (00:31:02):
whoa what are you saying right now like pump the brakes so I bit my own tongue I

Weston Brandon (00:31:06):
was like you can't just like out of nowhere like I can't wait to show you what a

Weston Brandon (00:31:10):
good marriage looks like like what you can't say that right now um

Weston Brandon (00:31:15):
But so she stopped and she knew exactly where I was going with that comment.

Weston Brandon (00:31:19):
She's very, I don't know if observant or intuitive person.

Weston Brandon (00:31:24):
So in her own way, she's like trying to pull it out of me.

Weston Brandon (00:31:29):
She's like, what are you going to say?

Weston Brandon (00:31:29):
What are you going to say?

Weston Brandon (00:31:30):
You know, I know you're going to say something.

Weston Brandon (00:31:31):
I'm like, I don't want to talk about it.

Weston Brandon (00:31:34):
But I was like, all right, fine.

Weston Brandon (00:31:35):
I guess we're going to have this define the relationship kind of conversation.

Weston Brandon (00:31:39):
Where are we taking this?

Weston Brandon (00:31:43):
And so that's what we did.

Weston Brandon (00:31:44):
We're like, well, I mean, if this progresses, where do you see this going?

Weston Brandon (00:31:47):
We're both like,

Weston Brandon (00:31:48):
well,

Weston Brandon (00:31:49):
I mean,

Weston Brandon (00:31:49):
logically,

Weston Brandon (00:31:49):
as long as nothing else is discovered that would throw it off,

Weston Brandon (00:31:52):
if it keeps going the way that it is going,

Weston Brandon (00:31:54):
then I would assume that we eventually get married.

Weston Brandon (00:31:58):
If the projection keeps going the way that it is.

Weston Brandon (00:32:01):
And so we're like,

Weston Brandon (00:32:01):
well,

Weston Brandon (00:32:02):
I guess we need to have a conversation about anything and everything that could

Weston Brandon (00:32:06):
possibly come out of the closet that might derail that and make sure that it won't.

Weston Brandon (00:32:12):
So for the next couple hours,

Weston Brandon (00:32:13):
we had the whole vomit everything inside of your soul that you've ever done that

Weston Brandon (00:32:17):
you're ashamed of and all these things that have happened.

Weston Brandon (00:32:19):
Just get everything out and on the table.

Weston Brandon (00:32:22):
And we both did that,

Weston Brandon (00:32:23):
and we're rather emotional after that,

Weston Brandon (00:32:26):
after a few hours of some heavy conversation.

Weston Brandon (00:32:31):
But at the end of it, both of us were like, well, is any of that a deal breaker?

Weston Brandon (00:32:36):
And both of us were like,

Weston Brandon (00:32:39):
I mean,

Weston Brandon (00:32:39):
not going to lie,

Weston Brandon (00:32:39):
it's kind of heavy,

Weston Brandon (00:32:40):
some of those things,

Weston Brandon (00:32:40):
but no,

Weston Brandon (00:32:41):
none of them are deal breakers.

Weston Brandon (00:32:43):
So we're like...

Weston Brandon (00:32:44):
all right, I guess, does that mean we're going to get married?

Weston Brandon (00:32:46):
We're like, I guess so.

Weston Brandon (00:32:49):
Okay.

Weston Brandon (00:32:50):
You know,

Weston Brandon (00:32:51):
and so we,

Weston Brandon (00:32:52):
we got engaged a few weeks later and Kearsley had some,

Weston Brandon (00:32:57):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:32:59):
she would,

Weston Brandon (00:33:00):
she described it to me as maybe a little bit of jealousy there at first,

Weston Brandon (00:33:03):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:33:04):
of,

Weston Brandon (00:33:04):
of my first wife and feeling like maybe she's living in her shadow,

Weston Brandon (00:33:07):
taking care of her kid kind of thing.

Weston Brandon (00:33:08):
And,

Weston Brandon (00:33:09):
There would be so many people that knew me very well growing up in our neighborhood

Weston Brandon (00:33:13):
and stuff that knew Lauren very well.

Weston Brandon (00:33:17):
And now,

Weston Brandon (00:33:19):
kind of through social media,

Weston Brandon (00:33:20):
through talking to people,

Weston Brandon (00:33:21):
now know Kearsley fairly well,

Weston Brandon (00:33:23):
but she's never met them.

Weston Brandon (00:33:24):
So there was this period of time that was kind of awkward for her where people

Weston Brandon (00:33:28):
would come up to her and talk to her and like,

Weston Brandon (00:33:30):
you're so amazing for stepping into this,

Weston Brandon (00:33:32):
for this,

Weston Brandon (00:33:32):
that,

Weston Brandon (00:33:33):
and the other,

Weston Brandon (00:33:33):
and feeling like they know her.

Weston Brandon (00:33:34):
And Kearsley's like...

Weston Brandon (00:33:36):
It's just kind of weird.

Weston Brandon (00:33:37):
Like, I don't know you from from Adam kind of a thing.

Weston Brandon (00:33:40):
So it was it was an interesting experience for her for a while.

Weston Brandon (00:33:45):
Sure.

Weston Brandon (00:33:46):
But she she had to go through her own, you know.

Weston Brandon (00:33:51):
discovering herself in her own value separately from Lauren,

Weston Brandon (00:33:56):
but also getting to know Lauren in her own way and feeling like she was one of her

Weston Brandon (00:34:00):
friends.

Weston Brandon (00:34:01):
And I told him multiple times,

Weston Brandon (00:34:03):
knowing both of them very intimately well now,

Weston Brandon (00:34:05):
that while there are certainly differences,

Weston Brandon (00:34:08):
they would be absolute best friends.

Weston Brandon (00:34:10):
And I told him,

Weston Brandon (00:34:10):
I was like,

Weston Brandon (00:34:11):
it's a good thing that polygamy is not a thing and that I'm not married to both of

Weston Brandon (00:34:15):
you on this side of the planet at the same time because I would not be able to

Weston Brandon (00:34:19):
handle both of you together.

Weston Brandon (00:34:20):
Yeah, yeah.

Weston Brandon (00:34:22):
Too much.

Weston Brandon (00:34:23):
But I feel very, very strongly that they would get along extremely well.

Weston Brandon (00:34:29):
And she's had some of her own experiences with my first wife,

Weston Brandon (00:34:34):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:34:34):
and getting to know her in her own unique ways outside of me.

Weston Brandon (00:34:39):
Yeah.

Weston Brandon (00:34:40):
Those have been some cool conversations to have for sure.

Weston Brandon (00:34:43):
Yeah.

Brian D. Smith (00:34:44):
So, you know, I love talking about this.

Brian D. Smith (00:34:48):
Again,

Brian D. Smith (00:34:48):
I appreciate how open you've been because a lot of times when people have a faith

Brian D. Smith (00:34:52):
background,

Brian D. Smith (00:34:54):
you know,

Brian D. Smith (00:34:54):
we feel like,

Brian D. Smith (00:34:55):
well,

Brian D. Smith (00:34:55):
we're not allowed to be angry.

Brian D. Smith (00:34:57):
We're not allowed to feel scared, you know.

Brian D. Smith (00:35:02):
So your faith has helped you through this,

Brian D. Smith (00:35:05):
but in what ways has your faith changed or matured or developed over the time,

Brian D. Smith (00:35:11):
you know,

Brian D. Smith (00:35:12):
going through this experience?

Weston Brandon (00:35:16):
Well, my perspective of God as a loving father has certainly matured.

Weston Brandon (00:35:20):
Yeah.

Weston Brandon (00:35:24):
And I mean,

Weston Brandon (00:35:25):
it's also matured simply because I am now a father of three children and kind of

Weston Brandon (00:35:29):
get to see that perspective of my own with my own children and learn a little bit.

Weston Brandon (00:35:33):
And I think all of us as dads have a little bit of those conversations,

Weston Brandon (00:35:36):
maybe some wake up calls like,

Weston Brandon (00:35:38):
oh,

Weston Brandon (00:35:38):
this is how my dad felt.

Weston Brandon (00:35:39):
Or,

Weston Brandon (00:35:39):
oh,

Weston Brandon (00:35:40):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:35:40):
maybe we might even have some like,

Weston Brandon (00:35:41):
oh,

Weston Brandon (00:35:41):
I can,

Weston Brandon (00:35:42):
I understand a little bit,

Weston Brandon (00:35:44):
maybe more how God feels about me now,

Weston Brandon (00:35:46):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:35:47):
but in particular,

Weston Brandon (00:35:48):
going through some of those experiences,

Weston Brandon (00:35:51):
um,

Weston Brandon (00:35:53):
Yeah,

Weston Brandon (00:35:53):
I was certainly angry at him for a long time and let him know it,

Weston Brandon (00:35:57):
but then I made sure to keep myself open to communication with him and try my best

Weston Brandon (00:36:04):
to quiet my mind and quiet my soul,

Weston Brandon (00:36:08):
my anger,

Weston Brandon (00:36:09):
enough when I would talk to him to allow him to get a word in.

Weston Brandon (00:36:12):
And I think that's important that while,

Weston Brandon (00:36:13):
yes,

Weston Brandon (00:36:14):
it's okay to be angry,

Weston Brandon (00:36:15):
and it's like,

Weston Brandon (00:36:17):
if you lose your spouse and you're not angry,

Weston Brandon (00:36:19):
I'm going to call bullshit.

Weston Brandon (00:36:22):
Or you lose a child, you know, my in-laws lost their daughter.

Weston Brandon (00:36:26):
And for anybody to lose someone that close to them and to not be upset about it is

Weston Brandon (00:36:34):
ludicrous in my mind.

Weston Brandon (00:36:35):
Like that's denying your humanity, really.

Weston Brandon (00:36:38):
So...

Weston Brandon (00:36:42):
actually an experience that I even had recently within the past few months was I

Weston Brandon (00:36:45):
felt like another big level up in my own relationship with God.

Weston Brandon (00:36:51):
I felt like

Weston Brandon (00:36:54):
I felt like my perception of God was that of an abusive father,

Weston Brandon (00:37:01):
even though I didn't realize it.

Weston Brandon (00:37:03):
It was more of a drill sergeant, kind of like, this is the way that your life is going to go.

Weston Brandon (00:37:08):
This is what you're going to do.

Weston Brandon (00:37:09):
You don't have a say in it.

Weston Brandon (00:37:10):
I'll just check in once every six months and make sure you're not dead, kind of a thing.

Weston Brandon (00:37:15):
Yeah.

Weston Brandon (00:37:16):
I didn't realize that that's how I viewed our relationship.

Weston Brandon (00:37:21):
I had still had many experiences where I had felt such deep love and connection to

Weston Brandon (00:37:27):
him in these experiences and to my first wife and to my family now.

Weston Brandon (00:37:33):
But in particular,

Weston Brandon (00:37:34):
when I felt this call,

Weston Brandon (00:37:38):
I guess,

Weston Brandon (00:37:39):
for lack of a better word,

Weston Brandon (00:37:40):
to share my story publicly,

Weston Brandon (00:37:41):
to speak about it,

Weston Brandon (00:37:42):
to write a book,

Weston Brandon (00:37:43):
to do all of these things...

Weston Brandon (00:37:48):
That wasn't even a twinkle in my eye or a thought in my mind at all, even last year.

Weston Brandon (00:37:56):
This is, what are we, April?

Weston Brandon (00:37:59):
No, sorry, July now.

Weston Brandon (00:38:00):
When I say April, we're in July now.

Weston Brandon (00:38:03):
And the experience that I had feeling like I was called to do this was like late January.

Weston Brandon (00:38:11):
It was very, very recently.

Weston Brandon (00:38:13):
And I had spent a lot of time in widows and widowers groups or circles or things

Weston Brandon (00:38:21):
and had lots of conversations.

Weston Brandon (00:38:24):
But I had unfollowed them or left them entirely quite a while ago because I felt

Weston Brandon (00:38:31):
like I had found my life again.

Weston Brandon (00:38:34):
I had found myself and my purpose again.

Weston Brandon (00:38:36):
And at the time...

Weston Brandon (00:38:39):
I felt like most of the things that were going on in those groups were just

Weston Brandon (00:38:42):
dragging me down and just depressing,

Weston Brandon (00:38:45):
woe is me kind of stuff.

Weston Brandon (00:38:46):
And I was like, it's not helping me.

Weston Brandon (00:38:50):
But also at the time, I wasn't necessarily making an effort to help anybody else.

Weston Brandon (00:38:53):
I was...

Weston Brandon (00:38:54):
you know, more, what can I get out of this kind of thing?

Weston Brandon (00:38:56):
It was a, it was more of a selfish outlook there at first.

Weston Brandon (00:38:59):
Um,

Weston Brandon (00:39:00):
which I say selfish in the sense,

Weston Brandon (00:39:02):
like you have to be a little bit selfish when,

Weston Brandon (00:39:04):
especially going through grief.

Weston Brandon (00:39:05):
Like if you, if you don't take care of yourself, like good luck taking care of anybody else.

(00:39:09):
Exactly.

(00:39:09):
Yeah.

Weston Brandon (00:39:10):
Um,

Weston Brandon (00:39:11):
So at that time,

Weston Brandon (00:39:12):
once I reached a point where I felt like I was being dragged down more than I was

Weston Brandon (00:39:15):
being helped,

Weston Brandon (00:39:17):
then I was like,

Weston Brandon (00:39:17):
I'm going to get this out of my environment so it's not affecting me.

Weston Brandon (00:39:23):
But then a few years down the road,

Weston Brandon (00:39:25):
I started getting back into it because I felt like I wanted to help some people and

Weston Brandon (00:39:28):
um as i mentioned and even last year i wasn't even thinking about this because my

Weston Brandon (00:39:32):
day job right now i i fix commercial kitchen equipment mostly ice cream machines

Weston Brandon (00:39:36):
actually i work on lots of ice cream machines and commercial kitchen equipment

Weston Brandon (00:39:41):
grills and ovens and stuff like that and i had completely changed careers if you

Weston Brandon (00:39:46):
remember i said i was in sales before um when when lauren was was alive i was i did

Weston Brandon (00:39:51):
the door-to-door sales thing first and then i transitioned into a

Weston Brandon (00:39:54):
corporate more high ticket engineering software actually sold solidworks i know

Weston Brandon (00:39:58):
you're you're an engineer yourself so i don't know if you what kind of engineer

Weston Brandon (00:40:01):
what engineering do you do i've only heard you mention it briefly i was a long long

Brian D. Smith (00:40:05):
long time ago i was a chemical engineer but okay that was several decades ago sure

Weston Brandon (00:40:11):
sure so i sold mechanical engineering software and did stuff with some 3d printers

Weston Brandon (00:40:15):
so i had to dive into into that world a lot and then after

Weston Brandon (00:40:19):
Lauren had passed away and I,

Weston Brandon (00:40:21):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:40:21):
I was on FMLA and doing,

Weston Brandon (00:40:23):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:40:23):
all these things to make my ends meet and was basically just living off of death

Weston Brandon (00:40:27):
benefits just to pay my parents a little bit to let me stay with them.

Weston Brandon (00:40:31):
And when I finally decided,

Weston Brandon (00:40:32):
I was like,

Weston Brandon (00:40:32):
I need to get back into the zone of things and get back to work and try this again.

Weston Brandon (00:40:35):
I found that my mind was too broken to handle the stress of a sales quota again.

Brian D. Smith (00:40:39):
Yeah.

Weston Brandon (00:40:39):
Like it was debilitating.

Brian D. Smith (00:40:40):
That's rough.

Weston Brandon (00:40:41):
What used to be so motivating in the possibility and, you know, of sales used to,

Weston Brandon (00:40:50):
Before all that happened, it was very motivating.

Weston Brandon (00:40:52):
I was driven to achieve, you know what I mean?

Weston Brandon (00:40:56):
But then my focus shifted after that to security.

Weston Brandon (00:41:00):
I needed security.

Weston Brandon (00:41:01):
And so I changed careers to what I do now.

Weston Brandon (00:41:04):
Mm-hmm.

Weston Brandon (00:41:07):
My goal for myself was to work.

Weston Brandon (00:41:10):
I knew I could make pretty good money.

Weston Brandon (00:41:12):
I went to HVAC and refrigeration school,

Weston Brandon (00:41:14):
and there were guys in the field that had made really,

Weston Brandon (00:41:16):
really good money.

Weston Brandon (00:41:16):
If I can go and at least make as much money as I was making before I got my...

Weston Brandon (00:41:23):
my big promotion is because I only recently gotten a big promotion at the company.

Weston Brandon (00:41:27):
I was looking at that.

Weston Brandon (00:41:28):
I was working for at the time that she passed away,

Weston Brandon (00:41:31):
but for the whole time I was married to her before that,

Weston Brandon (00:41:33):
it was more of a referring sales opportunities and getting piece of the commission

Weston Brandon (00:41:36):
if they close the deals.

Weston Brandon (00:41:37):
And I averaged probably 80,000 that year that I was doing all those referrals.

Weston Brandon (00:41:43):
And I'm like, at the time, I'm like, I can, I can sustain a family off that.

Weston Brandon (00:41:47):
I'm not going to be rich and driving Lamborghinis by any means,

Weston Brandon (00:41:50):
but like,

Weston Brandon (00:41:50):
I'm not going to be worried,

Weston Brandon (00:41:52):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:41:53):
Maybe that'd be a little bit different now after COVID,

Weston Brandon (00:41:55):
but at the time I was like,

Weston Brandon (00:41:56):
it'll be all right.

Weston Brandon (00:41:58):
And so that was my goal was kind of make it back there.

Weston Brandon (00:42:01):
And I worked my freaking tail off to get there.

Weston Brandon (00:42:04):
And I climbed,

Weston Brandon (00:42:04):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:42:05):
I took on any additional training that I possibly could and worked myself up there.

Weston Brandon (00:42:09):
Once I got to that kind of same level, I was like...

Weston Brandon (00:42:12):
Okay, now I can coach the rest of my life.

Weston Brandon (00:42:14):
Now I'm, you know, I'm good.

Weston Brandon (00:42:16):
I've made it kind of a thing.

Weston Brandon (00:42:18):
And I feel like God gave me about two months to exhale and take a breather before I

Weston Brandon (00:42:23):
had another experience like,

Weston Brandon (00:42:24):
no,

Weston Brandon (00:42:25):
this is what you need to do.

Weston Brandon (00:42:27):
Now, whether it replaces this job or not, you know, I don't particularly care.

Weston Brandon (00:42:31):
But it's like,

Weston Brandon (00:42:32):
this is the new venture that you now need to put all that same tenacity that you've

Weston Brandon (00:42:36):
had your whole life.

Weston Brandon (00:42:37):
You need to, you know, not let that go to waste, but now put it into this.

Weston Brandon (00:42:41):
And so now that's, that's what I'm doing now.

Weston Brandon (00:42:44):
And I've been, I've been going around speaking about it.

Weston Brandon (00:42:46):
I'm actually putting on my own events on the 23rd of July this,

Weston Brandon (00:42:51):
this month where I've written some songs and I'm going to put on almost like a

Weston Brandon (00:42:55):
keynote concert kind of,

Weston Brandon (00:42:57):
kind of thing,

Weston Brandon (00:42:58):
sharing my story,

Weston Brandon (00:42:59):
sharing what I learned from it and inviting some other people that are big into the

Weston Brandon (00:43:04):
men's mental health space,

Weston Brandon (00:43:05):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:43:06):
um,

Weston Brandon (00:43:08):
Honestly,

Weston Brandon (00:43:08):
I don't remember what your original question was now that I've rambled for so long,

Weston Brandon (00:43:11):
but maybe that answered some of it.

Brian D. Smith (00:43:14):
Yeah, no, you answered it perfectly well.

Brian D. Smith (00:43:17):
And this kind of segues in.

Brian D. Smith (00:43:18):
So I do want to talk about what it is you're doing now.

Brian D. Smith (00:43:22):
So you said you felt this calling,

Brian D. Smith (00:43:24):
it sounds like about six months ago,

Brian D. Smith (00:43:26):
and you came up with this framework,

Brian D. Smith (00:43:29):
your drive framework.

Brian D. Smith (00:43:30):
So tell me about your drive framework.

Weston Brandon (00:43:32):
Yeah.

Weston Brandon (00:43:33):
So in a nutshell, the acronym stands for Discover, Resolve, Invest, Visualize, and Elevate.

Weston Brandon (00:43:41):
And I'm sure it probably went through a similar process of you finding your gems thing, right?

Weston Brandon (00:43:47):
Where I just looked back and like, how did I...

Weston Brandon (00:43:51):
I got successful again,

Weston Brandon (00:43:53):
whether you look at career,

Weston Brandon (00:43:54):
whether you look at spiritual,

Weston Brandon (00:43:54):
whether you look at relationally,

Weston Brandon (00:43:55):
like all these things,

Weston Brandon (00:43:56):
I kind of,

Weston Brandon (00:43:57):
I forced myself to be successful because I put myself in do or die situations.

Weston Brandon (00:44:01):
Like I have to do it or else the alternative is something I'm not okay with.

Weston Brandon (00:44:06):
So as I cast my mind back on this,

Weston Brandon (00:44:08):
as I felt like I need to help other men who have had the rug pulled out from under

Weston Brandon (00:44:14):
them,

Weston Brandon (00:44:14):
maybe it's losing someone they love to death.

Weston Brandon (00:44:16):
Maybe it's a divorce.

Weston Brandon (00:44:17):
Maybe it's a,

Weston Brandon (00:44:18):
something else that just pulls everything out from under him right and i was like i

Weston Brandon (00:44:23):
i have been not officially but like unofficially through friends or co-workers like

Weston Brandon (00:44:27):
coaching people through their own life overhauls i'm like hey this is what i did

Weston Brandon (00:44:32):
when i did it and and you know try this do this do this do this and had some

Weston Brandon (00:44:36):
phenomenal experiences with some transformation these people i'm like

Weston Brandon (00:44:39):
Okay, let's cast my mind back on this.

Weston Brandon (00:44:41):
And how did I do that?

Weston Brandon (00:44:42):
The situation that I actually found it was a good friend of mine.

Weston Brandon (00:44:47):
I grew up in a little tiny town called Rush Valley, Utah.

Weston Brandon (00:44:50):
And there's a guy that lives there named Chad Hymas, who's a motivational speaker.

Weston Brandon (00:44:53):
He's a quadriplegic in a wheelchair.

Weston Brandon (00:44:56):
And he's extremely successful.

Weston Brandon (00:44:57):
He's in the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame.

Weston Brandon (00:45:00):
Like he's been doing it for a long, long, long time.

Weston Brandon (00:45:02):
So he's the only guy that I knew that did any type of speaking of whatever.

Weston Brandon (00:45:06):
Right.

Weston Brandon (00:45:07):
So when I have this experience that I feel like this is what I need to do, I text him.

Weston Brandon (00:45:11):
I'm like, I don't know what to do with this new feeling.

Weston Brandon (00:45:14):
I have no idea.

Weston Brandon (00:45:15):
Never been down this road.

Weston Brandon (00:45:17):
Can we chat?

Weston Brandon (00:45:17):
Cause I have no idea what the heck I'm doing.

Weston Brandon (00:45:20):
So he's like, yeah, I'll be gone for a few days, but come over to my house and we'll chat.

Weston Brandon (00:45:24):
So I sit down with him, me and my wife and tell him like, this is, what do I do?

Weston Brandon (00:45:29):
And of course he gives me, give me lots of good feedback.

Weston Brandon (00:45:31):
And one of the things that he told me to do,

Weston Brandon (00:45:33):
he says,

Weston Brandon (00:45:33):
you need to go the National Speakers Association of which he used to be a former

Weston Brandon (00:45:38):
president of for one year.

Weston Brandon (00:45:39):
He says, they have this thing called the Speakers Academy.

Weston Brandon (00:45:41):
Go hop in that.

Weston Brandon (00:45:42):
And,

Weston Brandon (00:45:42):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:45:43):
some people can help you figure out what your messaging is and then,

Weston Brandon (00:45:45):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:45:46):
maybe develop a keynote or what all these things.

Weston Brandon (00:45:48):
I'm like, okay, that's at least step one.

Weston Brandon (00:45:51):
So I go in that,

Weston Brandon (00:45:51):
and the very first meeting that I show up to,

Weston Brandon (00:45:55):
apparently this was for people that had been speaking but just wanted some help

Weston Brandon (00:45:59):
refining some stuff,

Weston Brandon (00:46:00):
and I'd never done it.

Weston Brandon (00:46:01):
So they're like,

Weston Brandon (00:46:01):
hey,

Weston Brandon (00:46:02):
for this first meeting,

Weston Brandon (00:46:03):
you're going to get up for three minutes and give us an abbreviated version of your

Weston Brandon (00:46:06):
keynote,

Weston Brandon (00:46:07):
and we're going to critique it.

Weston Brandon (00:46:08):
I'm like...

Weston Brandon (00:46:09):
What?

Weston Brandon (00:46:10):
I don't even have?

Weston Brandon (00:46:11):
What is that?

Weston Brandon (00:46:11):
So there was a friend of mine named Aaron that I became friends with named Aaron,

Weston Brandon (00:46:17):
and he introduced me to something called Chad GPT.

Weston Brandon (00:46:20):
I'm like, I've never heard of that.

Weston Brandon (00:46:23):
And he's like, well, let's take everything that you've learned.

Weston Brandon (00:46:26):
You've been teaching these things for a long time.

Weston Brandon (00:46:28):
What are all the things that you're so passionate about?

Weston Brandon (00:46:30):
So we start coming up with a big long list of all these things,

Weston Brandon (00:46:34):
these opinions that I have and the things I feel very,

Weston Brandon (00:46:37):
very passionate about.

Weston Brandon (00:46:38):
He's like, let's see if we can come up with some type of an easy system to teach.

Weston Brandon (00:46:41):
And it starts spitting out acronyms or like visual representation stuff.

Weston Brandon (00:46:45):
And I don't like any of them.

Weston Brandon (00:46:46):
So we're sitting there critiquing, like change and change and change and change.

Weston Brandon (00:46:49):
And I finally see one that's pretty close,

Weston Brandon (00:46:52):
but it wasn't drive,

Weston Brandon (00:46:52):
but it was something similar to that.

Weston Brandon (00:46:54):
And that's when like the drive idea kind of hit my mind.

Weston Brandon (00:46:56):
I'm like, what if it's

Weston Brandon (00:46:59):
like discover resolve invest visualize elevate and i wrote that down i'm like that

Weston Brandon (00:47:05):
in a nutshell is everything that i've ever felt passionate about teaching through

Weston Brandon (00:47:09):
my experience and so dive in a little bit i'm sure you want to know like what is

Weston Brandon (00:47:15):
describe the drive a little bit more than just the words right um i found for me

Weston Brandon (00:47:20):
that uh

Weston Brandon (00:47:24):
People say,

Weston Brandon (00:47:25):
well,

Weston Brandon (00:47:25):
actually,

Weston Brandon (00:47:25):
I think Simon Sinek is the one that kind of made it famous,

Weston Brandon (00:47:28):
like start with your why or find your why,

Weston Brandon (00:47:30):
you know?

Weston Brandon (00:47:31):
And so I'd heard that a bunch of times,

Weston Brandon (00:47:33):
but for me that didn't resonate very well because while my why was my son,

Weston Brandon (00:47:38):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:47:38):
I could hold him in my hands.

Weston Brandon (00:47:39):
I'm like,

Weston Brandon (00:47:39):
that's why I'm,

Weston Brandon (00:47:41):
that's why I'm not taking my own life to follow my wife is because I have this boy

Weston Brandon (00:47:44):
here,

Weston Brandon (00:47:45):
you know?

Weston Brandon (00:47:46):
And, but that still didn't help me figure out what the crap to do.

Weston Brandon (00:47:48):
They didn't give me any direction.

Weston Brandon (00:47:50):
So yeah.

Weston Brandon (00:47:51):
As I thought back at that, I'm like, how can I teach this a little bit better?

Weston Brandon (00:47:54):
And I discovered that first word,

Weston Brandon (00:47:57):
I discovered some things within myself that formed the way that I thought,

Weston Brandon (00:48:01):
formed my thought patterns,

Weston Brandon (00:48:02):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:48:03):
and I had gone through therapy for a long time.

Weston Brandon (00:48:05):
And I realized that...

Weston Brandon (00:48:07):
through training a lot of these guys,

Weston Brandon (00:48:08):
both in sales profession before that and in this more blue-collar kind of job,

Weston Brandon (00:48:14):
that for technical knowledge to stick effectively or for skills to be developed as

Weston Brandon (00:48:21):
effectively as it could be,

Weston Brandon (00:48:22):
a lot of times there was some character development that had to happen first with

Weston Brandon (00:48:26):
these people and with myself,

Weston Brandon (00:48:28):
of course.

Weston Brandon (00:48:30):
Um,

Weston Brandon (00:48:30):
understanding why you think the way that you do and putting intentional work into

Weston Brandon (00:48:34):
changing the way that you think so that it's actually constructive.

Weston Brandon (00:48:37):
Like you got to go and discover some things by yourself,

Weston Brandon (00:48:40):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:48:41):
discover your strengths,

Weston Brandon (00:48:41):
discover your weaknesses.

Weston Brandon (00:48:42):
Sure.

Weston Brandon (00:48:43):
And all that.

Weston Brandon (00:48:43):
But you have to dive into those things that like your traumas and figure out like

Weston Brandon (00:48:47):
how those shaped my perceptions of the world,

Weston Brandon (00:48:50):
how those shaped my perceptions of myself.

Weston Brandon (00:48:52):
And then when I started, I was like, we got to discover what is your why?

Weston Brandon (00:48:57):
And what I realized when I was thinking, what is my why?

Weston Brandon (00:49:00):
I was really actually trying to find the answer to the question, what hails you?

Weston Brandon (00:49:06):
So Y is like its own little acronym.

Weston Brandon (00:49:08):
They're like, what hails you?

Weston Brandon (00:49:09):
What's calling to you?

Weston Brandon (00:49:10):
And I would share an acronym or not a metaphor with these guys of like,

Weston Brandon (00:49:17):
if you do enough work inside yourself to be able to understand what your own voice

Weston Brandon (00:49:22):
sounds like,

Weston Brandon (00:49:23):
as opposed to the voice of your trauma or the voice of,

Weston Brandon (00:49:27):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:49:28):
these,

Weston Brandon (00:49:28):
these negative thought patterns that you have or these other things you don't need

Weston Brandon (00:49:31):
to keep around.

Weston Brandon (00:49:32):
If you can understand what you sound like,

Weston Brandon (00:49:34):
you can also understand only what you sound like,

Weston Brandon (00:49:36):
but what God sounds like when he talks to you.

Weston Brandon (00:49:37):
And you can understand the difference.

Weston Brandon (00:49:39):
And then if you do enough discovery work inside yourself to figure that out,

Weston Brandon (00:49:43):
and then the R is resolve.

Weston Brandon (00:49:45):
If you can resolve the negative things in there that get in the way,

Weston Brandon (00:49:47):
and you can start kind of pulling away the weeds and really get to know yourself,

Weston Brandon (00:49:51):
then you'll start to...

Weston Brandon (00:49:53):
feel like there's a trumpet calling to you in the distance somewhere.

Weston Brandon (00:49:57):
You don't really know where it is,

Weston Brandon (00:49:58):
but there's something more that I want to do,

Weston Brandon (00:50:02):
or I feel like I need to be doing something more,

Weston Brandon (00:50:04):
whatever,

Weston Brandon (00:50:05):
however you want to describe that.

Weston Brandon (00:50:08):
And you're never going to know exactly what that is.

Weston Brandon (00:50:12):
Some people get a pretty good idea,

Weston Brandon (00:50:14):
but I'd be hard-pressed to say somebody has a pretty good idea of what they wanted

Weston Brandon (00:50:19):
to do,

Weston Brandon (00:50:20):
then they start chasing it.

Weston Brandon (00:50:21):
It probably ended up being a little bit different.

Weston Brandon (00:50:23):
than what they originally thought.

Weston Brandon (00:50:24):
So I tell people,

Weston Brandon (00:50:27):
if you can do enough of the inner work with yourself to clear away the weeds so you

Weston Brandon (00:50:30):
can tell what general direction that trumpet's sounding from,

Weston Brandon (00:50:34):
you're never going to know exactly.

Weston Brandon (00:50:37):
Say like you're a high school kid graduating and you're going into college,

Weston Brandon (00:50:41):
like what major do I go into?

Weston Brandon (00:50:42):
I don't know.

Weston Brandon (00:50:44):
If you can clear away the weeds,

Weston Brandon (00:50:45):
you might be able to feel like maybe the medical field is just kind of what calls

Weston Brandon (00:50:49):
me.

Weston Brandon (00:50:49):
I don't know what specifically in there, but I want to work with people in that or whatever.

Weston Brandon (00:50:54):
For me, after my wife passed away, it was –

Weston Brandon (00:50:58):
what was calling to me was security.

Weston Brandon (00:51:01):
I wanted something that I felt confident doing that gave me the security that I was looking for.

Weston Brandon (00:51:07):
And once I got that, I kind of reached whatever that trumpet was,

Weston Brandon (00:51:11):
Once I got there, suddenly there was another trumpet even further off somewhere else.

Weston Brandon (00:51:16):
And it just keeps going.

Weston Brandon (00:51:19):
And once I got the security that I was looking for,

Weston Brandon (00:51:21):
suddenly that gave me the space to start to work even more on myself and rediscover

Weston Brandon (00:51:27):
part of who I was even before my wife passed away of why those certain things about

Weston Brandon (00:51:31):
sales called to me so much,

Weston Brandon (00:51:32):
why I enjoyed those things and rediscover some things that I lost and also discover

Weston Brandon (00:51:36):
new things.

Weston Brandon (00:51:37):
Like I mentioned, this keynote concert thing, like I had done a...

Weston Brandon (00:51:41):
plenty of singing as a young as a teenager i'd been in like show choirs and theater

Weston Brandon (00:51:45):
and stuff and had kind of left all that behind even though i still you know i'd

Weston Brandon (00:51:51):
sing rather loudly while i'm driving by myself all the time um but in in getting

Weston Brandon (00:51:57):
into the the speaking and stuff and having some of these downloads from god come it

Weston Brandon (00:52:01):
kept hitting me it's like you need to have music as part of your message and i'm

Weston Brandon (00:52:04):
like

Weston Brandon (00:52:06):
Okay,

Weston Brandon (00:52:06):
I'll put that on the back burner and not think about it,

Weston Brandon (00:52:08):
but it kept coming,

Weston Brandon (00:52:09):
kept coming,

Weston Brandon (00:52:09):
kept coming.

Weston Brandon (00:52:10):
You know,

Weston Brandon (00:52:10):
and as I did more work on myself,

Weston Brandon (00:52:12):
feeling like what is inside of me that I want to share so much music,

Weston Brandon (00:52:15):
very apparently became part of that.

Weston Brandon (00:52:19):
So the I of drive is invest, specifically invest in yourself.

Weston Brandon (00:52:24):
So if you've gotten to the point where now I know which general direction this

Weston Brandon (00:52:28):
trumpet's coming from,

Weston Brandon (00:52:29):
I've discovered some things,

Weston Brandon (00:52:30):
I've resolved some things.

Weston Brandon (00:52:32):
Not that you never do that again.

Weston Brandon (00:52:33):
It's a whole system.

Weston Brandon (00:52:34):
You continually do that, of course.

Weston Brandon (00:52:36):
But now that I've done enough that I can kind of hear where that's coming from-ish,

Weston Brandon (00:52:40):
Now it's time to invest in myself as heavily as I can in that direction.

Weston Brandon (00:52:44):
You never need to know exactly where it is, but you have to start moving.

Weston Brandon (00:52:46):
That's where the clarity comes through committed movement.

Weston Brandon (00:52:49):
You might have an idea of where you want to go,

Weston Brandon (00:52:51):
but how you're going to get there is never going to be clear until you actually

Weston Brandon (00:52:54):
start moving.

Weston Brandon (00:52:57):
In my profession, I have to do a lot with electrical and electrical controls.

Weston Brandon (00:53:03):
Magnets are a big part of that.

Weston Brandon (00:53:04):
Learn how motors work and all sorts of things.

Weston Brandon (00:53:07):
I use a lot of those analogies in my book.

Weston Brandon (00:53:09):
Where we know that a magnetic field is not produced unless a charged particle is in motion.

Weston Brandon (00:53:18):
So if an electron's moving or a charged atom is moving,

Weston Brandon (00:53:20):
then an electromagnetic field is produced and it starts attracting or repelling

Weston Brandon (00:53:24):
things.

Weston Brandon (00:53:26):
So using that as a metaphor for ourselves,

Weston Brandon (00:53:28):
if we want to attract to ourselves the things that we need to accomplish what we

Weston Brandon (00:53:31):
want to accomplish,

Weston Brandon (00:53:32):
if we're sitting on our hands not doing anything,

Weston Brandon (00:53:34):
we're not going to attract anything to ourselves at all.

Weston Brandon (00:53:36):
You got to be an option towards it,

Weston Brandon (00:53:37):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:53:38):
and investing heavily in yourself for that is how you do that.

Weston Brandon (00:53:42):
And that's one of the things I'm putting that principle into play,

Weston Brandon (00:53:47):
as well as the next one,

Weston Brandon (00:53:48):
the V is visualize.

Weston Brandon (00:53:52):
It does no good to invest in yourself if you don't have a solid idea of where you

Weston Brandon (00:53:56):
want to go with it.

Weston Brandon (00:53:58):
That's the whole trumpet thing.

Weston Brandon (00:53:59):
Where is that coming from?

Weston Brandon (00:54:01):
Visualize that as vividly as you possibly can,

Weston Brandon (00:54:04):
even though it might end up looking a little bit different.

Weston Brandon (00:54:07):
Once you get there, oftentimes it's at least pretty close.

Weston Brandon (00:54:11):
Once you get there and you visualize, once I get there, who am I?

Weston Brandon (00:54:17):
After I've gone through everything,

Weston Brandon (00:54:19):
whatever it is that I have to go through to get to that point,

Weston Brandon (00:54:22):
whatever I have to accomplish to get there,

Weston Brandon (00:54:24):
how do I think differently?

Weston Brandon (00:54:25):
How do I behave differently?

Weston Brandon (00:54:26):
What beliefs do I have?

Weston Brandon (00:54:28):
And make that who I am now, right?

Weston Brandon (00:54:30):
And I could talk for a freaking hour more on the visualize thing, but the next one is elevate.

Weston Brandon (00:54:36):
This is where a lot of my faith comes in,

Weston Brandon (00:54:38):
that I believe that if you ask God what you should do with your life,

Weston Brandon (00:54:45):
A lot of times you won't get an answer because I don't think our entire life is

Weston Brandon (00:54:49):
scripted myself.

Weston Brandon (00:54:51):
I don't think that,

Weston Brandon (00:54:52):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:54:52):
we signed a contract to do absolutely every decision that we're going to make while

Weston Brandon (00:54:56):
we're here.

Weston Brandon (00:54:57):
But I believe that God's work and glory is to bring to pass the immortality and

Weston Brandon (00:55:01):
eternal life of man and get us together back home with him as families and

Weston Brandon (00:55:05):
And whatever that looks like.

Weston Brandon (00:55:07):
So if we come up with a plan of something that we want to accomplish,

Weston Brandon (00:55:10):
and it helps God accomplish that purpose with the rest of his children,

Weston Brandon (00:55:13):
I think he's on board,

Weston Brandon (00:55:14):
personally.

Weston Brandon (00:55:15):
And I think that if we just check with him, like, hey, this is what I want to do.

Weston Brandon (00:55:19):
This is what I feel like my heart's pulling me to do.

Weston Brandon (00:55:23):
This is kind of the plan.

Weston Brandon (00:55:24):
This is the direction I'm going to start going.

Weston Brandon (00:55:26):
This is my idea.

Weston Brandon (00:55:27):
And I'm going to do that unless you tell me not to.

Weston Brandon (00:55:32):
I'd appreciate a confirmation just to make me feel better.

Weston Brandon (00:55:34):
But even if I don't get one, I'm going to go this way and just correct me if I'm wrong.

Weston Brandon (00:55:39):
I've, I've changed the way that I pray to, to, to go with that instead of being like,

Weston Brandon (00:55:45):
what do I do?

Weston Brandon (00:55:46):
What do I need to do?

Weston Brandon (00:55:47):
How do I get through this kind of a thing?

Weston Brandon (00:55:49):
I found a lot of times I didn't,

Weston Brandon (00:55:51):
I would get some answers sometimes when I had prayers like that and real moments of

Weston Brandon (00:55:54):
desperation,

Weston Brandon (00:55:55):
but a lot of times God left it up to me because I feel like our purpose here on

Weston Brandon (00:55:59):
earth is to co-create with him,

Weston Brandon (00:56:01):
not just to listen to him the whole time,

Weston Brandon (00:56:03):
to make our lives the way that we want them to be.

Weston Brandon (00:56:05):
And that if what I come up with is a pretty good way to accomplish in general,

Weston Brandon (00:56:10):
what I want to accomplish,

Weston Brandon (00:56:11):
and it's a good way to get to the end goal,

Weston Brandon (00:56:13):
then he'll be totally willing to help us to do that in whatever way that looks like.

Weston Brandon (00:56:17):
So that's the elevate thing is just elevate other people along the path with you.

Weston Brandon (00:56:22):
You know, just like you're doing with your podcast.

Weston Brandon (00:56:23):
Like you turn Shana's passing into something that's helped,

Weston Brandon (00:56:27):
I don't know how many people now listen to your podcast,

Weston Brandon (00:56:30):
you know.

Weston Brandon (00:56:30):
I only recently found it just a couple of months ago as I was,

Weston Brandon (00:56:33):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:56:34):
I've been kind of on this hiatus of not listening to anything in the grief space

Weston Brandon (00:56:37):
for like four years because I was like...

Weston Brandon (00:56:41):
At the time I needed it and then I kind of got out of it.

Weston Brandon (00:56:43):
I'm like, I'm focusing on my job now.

Weston Brandon (00:56:45):
So I'm listening to like personal development podcast more than anything.

Weston Brandon (00:56:49):
And then I get back into this.

Weston Brandon (00:56:51):
I'm like,

Weston Brandon (00:56:52):
oh,

Weston Brandon (00:56:52):
there's this,

Weston Brandon (00:56:53):
I don't know why I had never seen Brian's grief to growth podcast,

Weston Brandon (00:56:57):
but I'm like,

Weston Brandon (00:56:57):
dude,

Weston Brandon (00:56:57):
if I was going to do a podcast,

Weston Brandon (00:56:59):
that's probably what I do.

Weston Brandon (00:57:00):
So I'll just talk to him.

Brian D. Smith (00:57:03):
I appreciate that.

Brian D. Smith (00:57:03):
And I love the talking about, you know, people always talk about phases of grief and level.

Brian D. Smith (00:57:08):
And it's like, I don't know that there are there are not five, five stages of grief.

Brian D. Smith (00:57:12):
First of all, there's not that.

Brian D. Smith (00:57:14):
But I understand what you're saying you're talking about,

Brian D. Smith (00:57:16):
like,

Brian D. Smith (00:57:16):
for me,

Brian D. Smith (00:57:17):
as you talked about going into grief groups,

Brian D. Smith (00:57:19):
and then kind of moving out of it and moving back into it from a different

Brian D. Smith (00:57:22):
perspective.

Brian D. Smith (00:57:23):
It reminds me of when I was growing up and going to church.

Brian D. Smith (00:57:25):
I went to church for a long time for certain reasons,

Brian D. Smith (00:57:28):
and then I felt like I wasn't getting as much out of it as I wanted to,

Brian D. Smith (00:57:32):
and I left.

Brian D. Smith (00:57:32):
And then I came back more to help other people.

Brian D. Smith (00:57:35):
And I've seen the same thing in the grief space.

Brian D. Smith (00:57:38):
Some people get in the grief thing, and they just get stuck with that identity.

Brian D. Smith (00:57:43):
And as you said, as a widower,

Brian D. Smith (00:57:47):
Yeah, that's a part of who you are, but that's not all of who you are.

Brian D. Smith (00:57:51):
And so you don't need that going back and regurgitating and going over it again,

Brian D. Smith (00:57:56):
except maybe as it helps other people.

Brian D. Smith (00:57:58):
So you're coming back to the same thing with a different perspective, with a different purpose.

Weston Brandon (00:58:05):
That was exactly my biggest gripe with why I felt like I was being dragged down

Weston Brandon (00:58:13):
after a certain point.

Weston Brandon (00:58:15):
At first, people sharing all these negative things they're feeling was...

Weston Brandon (00:58:20):
I don't know the right word for it, but maybe a little therapeutic because I'm not alone.

Weston Brandon (00:58:23):
And you need that.

Weston Brandon (00:58:25):
You need to know that you're not the only person on the planet dealing with this.

Weston Brandon (00:58:28):
And there's some support that you can kind of lean on each other and cry on each

Weston Brandon (00:58:30):
other's shoulder.

Weston Brandon (00:58:31):
And that's certainly helpful.

Weston Brandon (00:58:34):
But at a certain point,

Weston Brandon (00:58:36):
The crying about it for eight hours a day isn't productive anymore.

Weston Brandon (00:58:41):
And I'm not getting anything out of that.

Weston Brandon (00:58:43):
So I need to start doing some things to purposely develop myself.

Weston Brandon (00:58:46):
And at the time, this probably was just a perspective thing on my part.

Weston Brandon (00:58:50):
I didn't feel like there was a whole lot of that being shared in the posts that I

Weston Brandon (00:58:53):
was seeing in those groups.

Weston Brandon (00:58:55):
As I go back now,

Weston Brandon (00:58:55):
I'm like,

Weston Brandon (00:58:56):
I want to be a voice of light of obviously acknowledging the pain that people are

Weston Brandon (00:59:00):
in because I still feel that.

Weston Brandon (00:59:02):
You know,

Weston Brandon (00:59:03):
as I'm going around speaking about this and to anybody listening to this podcast,

Weston Brandon (00:59:06):
just because of just because Brian and I are talking about this and that,

Weston Brandon (00:59:10):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:59:10):
we've both written books and thing doesn't mean that we don't have,

Weston Brandon (00:59:14):
you know,

Weston Brandon (00:59:15):
that the grief never goes away because we're still physically separated from this

Weston Brandon (00:59:19):
person that we still love.

Weston Brandon (00:59:20):
Like Lauren is still in my heart.

Brian D. Smith (00:59:22):
Sure.

Weston Brandon (00:59:23):
You know, she's in her own conversation.

Weston Brandon (00:59:25):
Little corner, sealed up nice and tight, and that has never shrunk.

Weston Brandon (00:59:29):
But what has happened is my heart has grown to let other people in.

Weston Brandon (00:59:33):
So proportionally as to a percentage of my heart,

Weston Brandon (00:59:36):
yeah,

Weston Brandon (00:59:36):
Lauren's a smaller piece of it because now there's more people in there.

Weston Brandon (00:59:39):
And maybe I feel a little bit of that,

Weston Brandon (00:59:40):
but I still love her just as much as the day she passed away.

Weston Brandon (00:59:43):
And probably, I would argue I love her more now because I've had continued experience with her.

Weston Brandon (00:59:48):
She's not dead in the sense of completely gone to me.

Weston Brandon (00:59:51):
It's more...

Weston Brandon (00:59:53):
the way that I feel like about it is like,

Weston Brandon (00:59:57):
during World War II or something,

Weston Brandon (00:59:59):
people would go off to the other side of the world and fight,

Weston Brandon (01:00:02):
but they didn't have cell phones.

Weston Brandon (01:00:04):
You couldn't talk to them.

Weston Brandon (01:00:05):
You just had to hope that they're okay and pray for them.

Weston Brandon (01:00:07):
I hope I see them again kind of thing.

Weston Brandon (01:00:08):
Maybe send a freaking letter every once every couple months.

Weston Brandon (01:00:11):
That's kind of how I feel about it now.

Weston Brandon (01:00:14):
She's still here.

Weston Brandon (01:00:15):
That's something we believe as Latter-day Saints is the spirit world is here on this planet.

Weston Brandon (01:00:20):
We just can't see it because of the things going on there.

Weston Brandon (01:00:23):
And she's just on the other side of this veil doing other things.

Weston Brandon (01:00:26):
And I think she's also a huge piece of her being my wife and a mother to my

Weston Brandon (01:00:33):
children,

Weston Brandon (01:00:34):
including my other children,

Weston Brandon (01:00:36):
is that she has a unique ability to influence the world for our benefit,

Weston Brandon (01:00:42):
being where she is,

Weston Brandon (01:00:44):
than she ever would have been able to do on this side of the veil.

Weston Brandon (01:00:47):
So I feel extremely lucky, extremely blessed.

Weston Brandon (01:00:49):
Yeah.

Weston Brandon (01:00:50):
And that I have two,

Weston Brandon (01:00:53):
the most amazing women to ever walk the planet,

Weston Brandon (01:00:57):
the face of this planet,

Weston Brandon (01:00:58):
in my own humble opinion,

Weston Brandon (01:01:00):
I'm probably biased,

Weston Brandon (01:01:02):
but that I have one on both sides,

Weston Brandon (01:01:04):
you know,

Weston Brandon (01:01:05):
that can do so much work for me.

Weston Brandon (01:01:06):
And it's taken me a long time to reach that level.

Weston Brandon (01:01:11):
I don't know if you call it understanding or acceptance or, or, or whatever, um,

Weston Brandon (01:01:16):
But I love your gems framework.

Weston Brandon (01:01:19):
The first one is gratitude.

Weston Brandon (01:01:21):
You know, I don't think that we can do anything without gratitude.

Weston Brandon (01:01:27):
In my book,

Weston Brandon (01:01:28):
I actually talk a lot about gratitude when I'm talking about the analogies of being

Weston Brandon (01:01:31):
a human magnet for what we need to succeed.

Weston Brandon (01:01:33):
Yeah.

Weston Brandon (01:01:36):
there were some studies done by heart math Institute and some other places that

Weston Brandon (01:01:39):
were measuring frequencies coming off your heart and your mind.

Weston Brandon (01:01:43):
And that the frequencies,

Weston Brandon (01:01:45):
the electromagnetic frequencies coming off your heart were like thousands of times

Weston Brandon (01:01:48):
stronger than,

Weston Brandon (01:01:49):
than the ones off your mind and discovered that when those frequencies were strong,

Weston Brandon (01:01:53):
cohesive and stable is when you're feeling authenticity and then closely behind

Weston Brandon (01:01:56):
that gratitude.

Weston Brandon (01:01:57):
And I imagine you could put those two together, you know what I mean?

Weston Brandon (01:01:59):
And then,

Weston Brandon (01:02:00):
If this whole world I learned in school,

Weston Brandon (01:02:03):
we had to study thermodynamics and how heat energy transfers,

Weston Brandon (01:02:06):
or just in general how energy transfers.

Weston Brandon (01:02:08):
And guess what?

Weston Brandon (01:02:09):
It's through vibration and frequency,

Weston Brandon (01:02:10):
molecules moving around,

Weston Brandon (01:02:12):
and they only like to hang out with other things operating at the same frequency.

Weston Brandon (01:02:15):
So if your heart and your mind is putting out a frequency, why not make that...

Weston Brandon (01:02:19):
cohesive with the things that you want and there's certain things you can do to

Weston Brandon (01:02:22):
accomplish that and the gratitude is a huge huge piece of it if you're if you're

Weston Brandon (01:02:27):
feeling just angry and bitter and doubtful and fearful all the time like that's

Weston Brandon (01:02:33):
that's what you're going to get is is is those kinds of things you're going to

Weston Brandon (01:02:36):
attract those kinds of people you're going to attract those kind of situations you

Weston Brandon (01:02:39):
know that that's literally what you're putting out into the universe and that's

Weston Brandon (01:02:42):
what the universe is going to give you it's just law it's not that anything is like

Weston Brandon (01:02:46):
biased against you it's just what you're creating

Weston Brandon (01:02:48):
You know, and it's up to you to create something different.

Weston Brandon (01:02:51):
And I'm very, very, very passionate about that.

Brian D. Smith (01:02:54):
Well, you've obviously created a very good path for yourself.

Brian D. Smith (01:03:00):
And I really, really enjoyed our conversation.

Brian D. Smith (01:03:03):
We're coming to the end.

Brian D. Smith (01:03:04):
But before we I want to talk about your book and what you offer and everything.

Brian D. Smith (01:03:08):
Tell us about your family.

Brian D. Smith (01:03:09):
We talked about you.

Brian D. Smith (01:03:10):
We talked about your wife.

Brian D. Smith (01:03:11):
Tell us about your kids.

Brian D. Smith (01:03:12):
Right.

Weston Brandon (01:03:13):
Yeah.

Weston Brandon (01:03:14):
So I have, like I said, I have three kids now.

Weston Brandon (01:03:17):
Vance, he's my oldest.

Weston Brandon (01:03:18):
He's six.

Weston Brandon (01:03:19):
Rowan, I had my first child with my second wife was a little girl.

Weston Brandon (01:03:23):
And she's a spitfire.

Weston Brandon (01:03:25):
I don't know if you heard any background noise at any point during this podcast,

Weston Brandon (01:03:29):
but one of those was my daughter and the other one was my youngest son.

Weston Brandon (01:03:32):
His name's Ripken.

Weston Brandon (01:03:33):
He's about 20, 18 or 20 months now.

Weston Brandon (01:03:36):
And, you know, they're, they're the light of my life.

Weston Brandon (01:03:38):
And, and, and my wife Kearsley, I don't know if I can like turn this a little bit, but right.

Weston Brandon (01:03:45):
Right.

Weston Brandon (01:03:47):
Right here.

Weston Brandon (01:03:48):
So this picture of Jesus was Lauren's favorite painting by far.

Weston Brandon (01:03:52):
We didn't have it when she was married,

Weston Brandon (01:03:53):
but I got a little life insurance money,

Weston Brandon (01:03:55):
so I splurged and spent a couple grand on a nice painting that she liked.

Weston Brandon (01:03:58):
That's her picture way over there.

Weston Brandon (01:04:00):
That's Lauren with her organ donor badge and a little statue that I was gifted

Weston Brandon (01:04:04):
after she passed of a husband and wife holding a baby.

Weston Brandon (01:04:07):
That's a picture of me as a missionary.

Weston Brandon (01:04:09):
That's a picture of Kearsley as a missionary.

Weston Brandon (01:04:11):
And so there's a little sketch of Ohio right there.

Weston Brandon (01:04:14):
You can't really see that, but that's the shape of the state of Ohio where she served.

Weston Brandon (01:04:18):
And then in this credenza down below is just all of our photo albums and things

Weston Brandon (01:04:24):
that have to do with our family.

Weston Brandon (01:04:25):
So there's a photo album there developed, not developed, dedicated to Lauren and her childhood.

Weston Brandon (01:04:30):
And she played college softball at Yavapai College in Arizona.

Weston Brandon (01:04:35):
And so there's,

Weston Brandon (01:04:36):
She's got some softballs in there that are all autographed by who her teammates were.

Weston Brandon (01:04:41):
We had like a memorial service with all these softball girls after she passed away.

Brian D. Smith (01:04:46):
Wow.

Weston Brandon (01:04:46):
All of our family stuff is in there now.

Weston Brandon (01:04:48):
And so Lauren is a very active part of our family.

Weston Brandon (01:04:52):
It's not something that,

Weston Brandon (01:04:53):
you know,

Weston Brandon (01:04:54):
we'll tell my son when he turns 18 and drop this bomb on him kind of a thing.

Weston Brandon (01:04:57):
Right.

Weston Brandon (01:04:58):
It's...

Weston Brandon (01:04:59):
All of my kids know Mommy Lauren.

Weston Brandon (01:05:02):
That's how they refer to her as Mommy Lauren.

Weston Brandon (01:05:04):
And it's not just Vance's mommy.

Weston Brandon (01:05:07):
It's Lauren's Mommy Lauren and Ripken's Mommy Lauren as well.

Weston Brandon (01:05:12):
I have to admit,

Weston Brandon (01:05:13):
maybe you shouldn't have done this,

Weston Brandon (01:05:14):
but a couple of times getting really mad at bedtime,

Weston Brandon (01:05:16):
I told him,

Weston Brandon (01:05:16):
I was like,

Weston Brandon (01:05:16):
you don't straighten up.

Weston Brandon (01:05:17):
Freaking mommy Lawrence is going to kick your butt.

Weston Brandon (01:05:20):
You know, I may have pulled a card like that at a time or two.

Weston Brandon (01:05:26):
But also on the opposite end of that,

Weston Brandon (01:05:27):
a couple of times,

Weston Brandon (01:05:28):
my kids have woken up from nightmares,

Weston Brandon (01:05:30):
you know,

Weston Brandon (01:05:31):
having a hard time at night.

Weston Brandon (01:05:33):
And we teach them they can pray, ask Jesus to help them to feel better.

Weston Brandon (01:05:37):
But also I was like, you can pray, you can talk to Mommy Lauren too.

Weston Brandon (01:05:42):
She's still here.

Weston Brandon (01:05:43):
You can't see her.

Weston Brandon (01:05:46):
She's doing some other stuff,

Weston Brandon (01:05:47):
but she can see you and you can have your own experiences with her and ask her to

Weston Brandon (01:05:52):
come sleep with you or something like that.

Weston Brandon (01:05:54):
and not in some like creepy ghost hunting kind of way,

Weston Brandon (01:05:58):
but as a,

Weston Brandon (01:05:59):
you know,

Weston Brandon (01:05:59):
like,

Weston Brandon (01:05:59):
yeah,

Weston Brandon (01:06:00):
I love kids know that they have extra,

Weston Brandon (01:06:02):
extra help,

Weston Brandon (01:06:04):
spiritual help outside of even just God,

Weston Brandon (01:06:06):
but they,

Weston Brandon (01:06:06):
they have another mommy on the other side.

Weston Brandon (01:06:08):
That's that her job is to make sure they're taken care of.

Brian D. Smith (01:06:11):
Man.

Brian D. Smith (01:06:11):
I love that.

Brian D. Smith (01:06:12):
Thank you so much for sharing.

Brian D. Smith (01:06:13):
I've got goosebumps all over.

Brian D. Smith (01:06:15):
So let's tell me,

Brian D. Smith (01:06:16):
tell people,

Brian D. Smith (01:06:17):
remind people the name of your book and where they can reach you,

Brian D. Smith (01:06:20):
Weston.

Weston Brandon (01:06:21):
Yeah, so I should have a copy.

Weston Brandon (01:06:27):
I keep giving my books away.

Weston Brandon (01:06:28):
I don't have a copy with it in hand right at the moment.

Weston Brandon (01:06:31):
But the name of the book is The Overhaul, Fixing Your Mindset, and Driving Success.

Weston Brandon (01:06:35):
And in the preface of the book, I kind of share my story.

Weston Brandon (01:06:38):
Like, this is the context of what happened.

Weston Brandon (01:06:40):
But then the rest of the book is, like, this is how I climbed out of it.

Weston Brandon (01:06:44):
This is what I learned from the experience.

Weston Brandon (01:06:47):
And this is how I forced myself to be successful again.

Weston Brandon (01:06:49):
And I'm...

Weston Brandon (01:06:50):
The same framework that I teach,

Weston Brandon (01:06:52):
like I'm using that right now to now develop the speaking and the coaching and

Weston Brandon (01:06:57):
thing,

Weston Brandon (01:06:57):
you know,

Weston Brandon (01:06:57):
so it's not just this is what I did.

Weston Brandon (01:06:59):
And it's only for people whose life has fallen apart and needs to do it like,

Weston Brandon (01:07:02):
no,

Weston Brandon (01:07:02):
this is like everybody can use this.

Weston Brandon (01:07:05):
And I still use it every day myself.

Weston Brandon (01:07:07):
And my website is just my name, WestonBrandon.com.

Weston Brandon (01:07:12):
Facebook, the same thing.

Weston Brandon (01:07:14):
On any of the other social handles like Instagram or TikTok, it's at Weston Brandon Speaker.

Weston Brandon (01:07:18):
And yeah, that's the books on Amazon.

Weston Brandon (01:07:22):
I'm working on right now doing a separate bookstore on my website to buy it just

Weston Brandon (01:07:26):
directly off my website.

Weston Brandon (01:07:27):
But yeah, that's the thing.

Weston Brandon (01:07:30):
And I'm pushing really hard to get out there speaking more.

Weston Brandon (01:07:34):
Like I said, I'm hosting my own event.

Weston Brandon (01:07:35):
So there's hopefully going to be some footage from some of those with some of the

Weston Brandon (01:07:38):
songs I've written,

Weston Brandon (01:07:39):
performing those as part of the thing.

Weston Brandon (01:07:40):
And

Brian D. Smith (01:07:42):
Sounds great.

Brian D. Smith (01:07:44):
I really appreciate what you're doing.

Brian D. Smith (01:07:46):
I know it's going to be inspiring or is inspiring to a lot of people.

Brian D. Smith (01:07:50):
I know it's really interesting.

Brian D. Smith (01:07:52):
I go through these different waves of people that I speak with.

Brian D. Smith (01:07:55):
I'm speaking with a lot of widows and widowers right now.

Brian D. Smith (01:08:00):
So having you come across at this time is just perfect timing.

Brian D. Smith (01:08:04):
So I'm thinking of a lot of people that this episode in particular is going to help.

Brian D. Smith (01:08:08):
So thanks for doing this today.

Weston Brandon (01:08:10):
Good.

Weston Brandon (01:08:11):
Hey, thanks for having me, Brian.

Weston Brandon (01:08:12):
It's been a pleasure.

Weston Brandon (01:08:13):
And I've enjoyed getting into your podcast a little bit and starting to listen to it more.

Weston Brandon (01:08:17):
It's cool.

Brian D. Smith (01:08:18):
And enjoy your afternoon.

Weston Brandon (01:08:19):
Okay.

Weston Brandon (01:08:21):
Thanks, Brian.

Weston Brandon (01:08:21):
Have a good one.