Finding Purpose Amidst Adversity: Jeff Higgins on Overcoming Life's Greatest Challenges | EP086

Hello, everybody, my name is Shannan Mondor and I want to welcome you all to my podcast that filament in faith. Today my guest is Jeff Higgins. Jeff, how are you today?

I'm outstanding today. Shannan, how about yourself?

Oh, you know what, I actually couldn't be any better. I'm so excited. It's Monday, I've got a lot of positive and amazing things coming up in my future that I can't wait to share with everybody. But you know what, it's it's good. Life is good. But I've also made it this way as well, too. So that's very, very huge for me and for

you to put your hands on the steering wheel of your life. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Now, with you saying that you did put your hands on your steering wheel for life. So I want you to go into your story. Jeff, I want you to tell the audience where you are. And you know a little bit about yourself. And then from there, continue on and go go into your story, please.

Okay, sure. Yeah, so to give you a heads up, I always tell people for whatever reason, God has seen it fit to give me a life of extremes, extreme blessings and extreme challenges as well. But I am, I guess I could say 58 years old. I'm kind of semi re semi I am a semi retired entrepreneur. Getting to do my, my what's next, which for me is talking to people about mental health and well being. And, and yeah, enjoying my seven grandchildren. And I have three daughters. And yeah, so I am just really enjoying this space in my life. I'm blessed to be here and to be able to explore it. But so yeah, I grew up in Cincinnati, met my wife, Shelly and high school. We are high school sweethearts. And I April, the sixth 1983, spaghetti was on the lunch menu at Milford High School that day. And, you know, we, we started a family, I think neither one of us would get both got married very young, neither one of us knew what we were doing. But by God's grace, we were together and I think made for each other for that respect. But, you know, our faith was tape was always important to me, for my mom when I was young. So, you know, I made sure that our family was brought up in a faithful environment. You know, like I said, three daughters, and which, you know, I mean, as are the apple of dads I, of course, right. But they're, they're all married now to three great guys and seven grandchildren. But um, but yeah, and it all started that lunch in Milford High School, and, you know, grew from there. And eventually the opportunity came to start a business. Shelly and I have always been very much about service. And, you know, our company, we say our purpose is to serve people, right? Whether that's giving jobs or, or maybe buying products, or being a good supplier, or whatever that is, you know, we want to do the best that we can because we feel we're called to serve people. And we do that in the community, of course, as well. So much so that in 2016, I took it upon myself at the age of 50 years old to climb Mount Rainier and Seattle, Washington. And, and I decided that in order that when I was going to do that this was just kind of a, I don't know, I'd always been kind of outdoorsy. And I thought, yeah, that they could do that. Right? I was sitting there looking at it one day. And it's a lot harder than it looks, I will tell you that. But yeah, I used it as an occasion to raise $25,000 to build a school for special needs children in rural Guatemala. And I summited Mount Rainier on August the 11th 2016. It was, you know, greatest, most difficult physical accomplishment that I've ever had in my life by far. And it's just kind of a cool thing to have on the list of hey, yeah, I did that, you know, right.

And I cut in AI, how long did it take you?

So it's a two or a three day actual climb. Now there's training a couple of days of training and equipment and all checks and all that beforehand, because this really is kind of a dangerous climb. There's glaciers and crevasses and things like that. But the actual climb, you climb up to the camp mirror at 10,000 feet on the first day. You spend the night there and then the next day you go from there up to 14,410. It's about a four mile trek to get to the summit. And you come back to camp here after that, because you submit, you start climbing it like 1am, right? Because, you know, you want to get back before the sun starts making the ice and rock stars fall down when they start falling, right, it can get real dangerous out there. So you submit it and we submit it in like a quarter after 7am. And so you stay up there for maybe 20 minutes. And then you head back to camp here, grab all your stuff, and then head back to Paradise, which is the visitor center. On the second day, that second day is brutal. I may tell you going up as hard coming down will tear you up. It is it was a struggle. I'm Italian.

Well, congratulations. That is quite an accomplishment. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you

know, like I said, I've been very blessed in life, you know, you don't get to climb Mount Rainier, without, you know, putting money into spending. But you know, it was an honor to be able to help build that school and Guatemala, because it's in an area where they're not educated about special needs children. So a child with Down syndrome would be neglected, not because they're bad people, but because they only have so many resources, and they don't know what to do with that child. So it was very important from that aspect to it was more important, actually, than the greatest physical accomplishment of my life.

Right, right. Yeah. Well, sorry to cut in. But I was just like, how long did that take? So ya

know, I could talk for you know, the entire show about climate scenarios, both the the actual experience and the parallels to life and business, right. In our business. We have a climbing wall where people get a carabiner. And they clip in when they join the company. But, you know, it's, there's a lot of parallels. But I've also had a life of extreme struggles, too. I grew up in a broken family. I had an older brother and sister, they were six and eight years older than me. They were from my mom's first marriage. So I was the younger stepchild, right. And I was physically abused by them. There was mom and dad, mom was an alcoholic. Dad was often away on the on business trips, and so leaving mom, you know, to handle this situation. And of course, with her alcoholism, she wasn't very able to do that. My brother was always in trouble and violent got getting in physical fights with bad punching holes in the walls of our house and physically abusing me. When I was 11 years old mom drove drunk the wrong way on the highway. And luckily, she didn't kill anybody except for herself. When she drove her car under a semi truck. The The strange thing is, three years later, my brother died almost the exactly the same way. He was drunk when he failed to yield and went under a semi trailer. And that's back before they had the barbs on the bottom on them. So so he died now almost instantly. And I was 14 years old when he died. So by the age of, you know, 14, I had lost tragically, two of my immediate family members. And it certainly took a toll on me. And, you know, I saw this alcoholism going on and drug abuse by my brother and sister and and so Absolutely, it it. It took me a while and a Challis to recover from that. But it also gave me purpose and meaning, like, you know, I taught Senior High Sunday school class at a church for 17 years, and helped with youth groups because of my experiences as a child and knowing that there's kids out there that are having the difficult times and I know what that's like and I can help them. And so it led to a lot of meaning and purpose in my life. My sister on the other hand, you know, we talk about the choices we make, whether we choose the path that we're gonna go on, how did we start off with you know, that you know, when you have difficulties in life there, you can make eat, you know, you've probably heard it, it can make you better or it can make you better. And I, in many respects, I've tried to let it make me better because Romans 828 is so important to me. It was read at my mother's funeral. It's my life verse. My sister on the other hand, let it be a thorn in her side, I guess. She drank also, she was an alcoholic and she was oftentimes in the hospital. because of because of her alcoholism one time when I was visiting her is very sad. And I said to her, I said, Krista, I said, I've had to bury mom and I've had to bury Tim, don't make me bury you too. But unfortunately, she broke the promise that she made to me that day when I was called to the hospital one last time to make the decision to remove life support. So she died from a you you can make the argument all three of them died, three of my five family members, myself included in the head, right, that three of my former family members died from from alcohol. That was not long after I submitted Ryanair. In fact, less than a year after I suddenly didn't renew and then three months after my sister died, I had a tragic car accident. And my good friend, Father, Chris, died in that accident. And I was charged with and pled guilty to vehicular manslaughter and sentenced to diamond jail. And, you know, after jail, my own alcoholism turned into a rage that almost consumed me and of course, would have had I not stopped it. You know, maybe because I had three headstones to look at. It didn't get that far. Maybe I got to give him me enough warning that. But But yeah, it could have very easily ended up just like my sister, right. So we have that choice to make. Are we going to let these difficult times are we going to let the hard times make us better or better?

Oh, my goodness. So from that time span, how many years was that? Four to five years? You lost three members?

No, actually, I lost my my mom died when I was 11 years old. Yes. My brother died when I was 14 years old. And then my sister died when I was 5051.

Okay, okay. And

then that car accident was that same year that she died it was a couple months after she died. So there's there's a span in there. Right. So it's like, you know, and I tell people this I you know, my talk I called struggles and summits right, not struggles to summits, because life isn't that simple, right? It doesn't just go from bottom to the top. It's, you know, goes up and down like that. And we, you know, I want to try to make sure that I'm sensitive today, you know, I'm not a Pollyanna here. I had bad times in the beginning, I had a great period of time in my life. And then I had a lot of really gut wrenching soul, scorching struggles as well.

Right, right. Now, when you had met Shelly high school sweetheart, yeah, you know, and then from there on from your high school and your high school years up until you know, you're 50 years old, when you know the tragedy happened with your sister. That would have been a real growth period for you happy times, all of that. But when you look back at what happened with your mom and your brother, and all these different things, that would have been such a huge learning curve as well for you. There are so many listeners out there that are going through the exact same thing that you've gone through. And can you tell the audience members, what it is that you really learned? through that whole process for you? What was your big takeaway? Yeah, there's going to be so many, but there's always that one pivotal one that really stands out. And that's where the biggest shift really comes in.

Oh, goodness, if I had to pick one, I'm not sure I could do it.

That's how I was too because there was just and it's just yeah.

You know, I do boil it down to a couple of very basic things that you know, no matter how broken we hire, I tell people I said, there's never a broken two broken, right, unless, unless you give up all right, but there are some key things that you know, you can work on very practical things like you know, forgiveness, all right, you and I and everybody else can work on forgiveness. You don't need to go to his therapist, you don't need to look anything up online. You can practice this in your everyday life. And it will do wonders for your mental health and well being especially, you know, after you've been through difficult things like this in life, right. So forgiveness is important finding purpose and meaning and I help people you know, like climbing a mountain. I help people find meaning in their life because that is so important. There's also connection. Connection is more associated with our health than exercise or drinking. And people don't understand this. And it's so important because they think that they're getting it from that little box, it's in their hand and they're not and that is really important. So, connection and then What did I do faith, purpose, connection, and gratitude. Gratitude is so important to I call it the pathway to peace. You know, when we are grateful for what you have, because we spend so much time see you the problem is I think you as human nature, in my opinion, and this isn't knocking human nature, it's just the way we're built. Okay, is to go to the negative,

right? Absolutely. Yeah, I tell people that all the time. Yeah, that's

your that's your, you know, default mode. That's my default mode. If we don't do anything in our minds, now, we can do something about that, right, that we talked about this early, putting your hands on the steering wheel your life, because instead of running the tape over in our head over and over 1000 times about who wronged us, we could be thinking forgiveness thoughts, and we can replace some of those 60,000 thoughts, 80% of which are negative, and most of them are about ourselves that we have every day. It's you know, but you got to take that control. And that's, you know, I think that not enough people are doing that, in my opinion.

You have to feel that. Yeah, yeah. I just feel that there's a really big misconception of forgiveness as well to that brought up because you forgive somebody, you should be letting them back in your life, that that is so far from the truth. No, no, no, no, no reason that you need to forgive somebody is for yourself, for your own peace for your own well being. Has nothing to do with that. And that's where there's such a huge misconception. It's scientific

evidence shows. And this is alright. Let's talk about scientific evidence, because a lot of people will tell you that there's scientific evidence that that little pill full of dehydrated fruit is going to help you live to 125. But there's evidence to prove anything, all right, when I'm talking about as double blind, placebo controlled peer reviewed studies, right? Good scientific research that shows how important forgiveness is to our health, our mental health and our well being our sense of happiness. And not enough people I think are practicing it, because we like to hold grudges. And everybody these days is so ready to get wound around the axle about the silliest little things I got. Can I tell you a story, Shane,

I'd love for you to tell me a story. Absolutely. Because this

one is near and dear to my heart. I you know, I had decided I knew when my when I decided when I was in jail. That if I was when I decided to live, I should say, all right, because I had that decision to make I decided I'm guilty. Okay, so what are you need to do? Jack's? Number one, one of the top things was the forgiveness, right? I had to forgive myself because I can't forgive. He can't forgive anybody else. Do you forgive yourself? Right? So you have to forgive yourself first, you know, my family, God, institutions, any number whatever it is. But for me, forgiveness is like you said, it's not about you know, reconciliation, even. There's people that I forgive, but I don't want anything to do with that. I don't, I don't want to be near them their trouble, or they hurt me or whatever, you know. And so it's nothing other than what I am doing in my heart. You know, what is going on between my ears, right? And forgiveness. There was a tell story about this guy's name is Gary. Right. And Gary was a friend of father Chris. And what? After the accident, I didn't know this guy. I knew it didn't know him from Adam. I didn't find anybody else that did. But he we used to be a bailiff at the court too. So he knew everybody and he got around and he started causing trouble because he thought that I was getting off easy and then I needed to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. He talked to the prosecutor, he talked to the press. This was all over the press. It was it was a nightmare. And he talked to Chris's family even and and created a lot of bitterness and it's probably one of the main reasons that I went to jail. So two years after I got out of jail, and this is all kind of behind us I'm still on probation and all that fun stuff but Gary reaches out to me and he sends me that I in fact I've got right here I've got this letter. This is a one of the letters he sent me I'm also got the voicemail he left me he desperately was seeking to try and get in touch with me but people were shielding me from it. And finally I got wind of this and I decided to reach out to home and Gary was looking for my forgiveness. That's what he asked for. He said, You know, I crucified you I had no right to do that. Please forgive me for that. And I think it was you know, kind of both ways. Him forgiving me and me forgiving him and I I was happy to give that to him Shannan, you know, I felt an honor to be able to give Gary the forgiveness that he was seeking. What I didn't know, though, was that Gary was dying. And this was part of Gary's process for getting ready to die, was to make peace and seek forgiveness for things in his life. Now, this isn't an unusual story. People oftentimes seek reconciliation, when they find out they've got a diagnosis, and they've only got so much time happens all the time. But what I asked people, this is Shannan, if that's what we do, because we want to die in peace, if we seek reconciliation and forgiveness until we can die in peace, then why don't we do it to live in peace? I know, you know, that doesn't it stand to reason that we can live more in peace? If we practice more forgiveness and reconciliation, and and I know enough, people are doing it, I forgive everything every day, man, like I'm a forgiving machine. Somebody cuts me off, I forgive you, you know, whatever it is, you know, because that stuff builds up in you. And it is toxic. And you know, a lot of times we just again, well, you don't have our hands on the steering wheel. Let the thoughts come in, and we entertain them.

You you saying that? You know, why can't we forgive people, you know, for us to live to be in peace. And that's one thing that I've really seen throughout my journey is, it wasn't until I actually truly knew that I loved myself was when I it was it was that was when I was willing to forgive other people and literally just let it go. Right? As hurt people hurt people. Yeah, I wanted to blame others. I want to hurt them. I wanted them to be just as miserable as I am. Where I am in life. All I want is peace. Yeah, yeah. It's so much easier to forgive people now that I love myself. It's like, hey, you know what? That's okay. Because I know now nobody can hurt me. Nobody can touch me. Because I'm the one that's got control of it. And I love me and I'm not going to allow that. Yes. Yeah. See, that's that's what the big differences, right?

Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely important. We

need to teach people to love themselves. Love, I couldn't

agree with you more, you know, and that is key. That's, that's not one of the points. I really talk about a whole lot. But it is key that we like ourselves. So we love ourselves. Because yeah, you can't like or love anybody else. Any more than that. And, you know, of course, I had a lot of self loathing going on for a while. Yeah, yeah. And I was not a very good person to be around. You know, I, I was not a good person to be around. And if you have a lot of self loathing, you're probably the same way.

Yeah. And the huge thing, too, is taken ownership for all of your actions. Now, thing that really, a lot of people forget to do, and they don't realize that that is one of the steps in the process of finding your greatness and being the best version of yourself.

Oh, yeah. You gotta, you gotta take responsibility. You know, it's kind of funny because I talk about purpose. And people talk about their purpose being their family and their, their their job, and I'm like, No, No way, man, we have a timeout. That's your responsibility. That is not your purpose. You know, and that's, that's great. Don't get me wrong. But, but it's got to be about something bigger than yourself.

Totally. Absolutely. And see, and that's the one thing that I do tell my clients too, is like, your life purpose is always going to be found within your trauma. And I never really have a hard time understanding that. And I said, I

got a book for you. I got a book for you. It's called finding meaning and purpose to the sixth stage of grief. All right, you've heard of the five stages of grief, absolutely. denial, anger, bargaining, or noise, that acceptance and, and the work that they had done together, Elisabeth Kubler Ross and David, David Kessler, after she passed away, he published some of this with the foundation's blessing about the sixth stage of grief, which is finding meaning and purpose that very often times, you know, in life, people find their meaning and purpose in their most difficult moments. Certainly certainly true for me, for me,

and I think, anybody that I've interviewed or whatever that's literally found their life purpose, teaching others and all of that that's where they have all found it to me that people could just shift and see that there's a reason why that happened there. There was a higher power that came into play, you know, whether or not you want to believe it or not,

and Romans 828, Romans 828, right, feel it. Right. Yeah, Romans 828, I've got a great story for you by Romans eight. Because it's, it's my life verse, right? That God can't even, not surprisingly, it's a life verse And when my mom dies, and I'm 11 years old, I'm grasping onto something, you know, I want to know that things are going to be okay. And it says that God can make all things work for good for those who love him and are called according to His purpose. And I was determined, that's a big part of why I did what I did with the youth groups and by raising money for the for the school and Guatemala. That's because, you know, I wanted to make meaning out of my, my difficulty, I wanted to make purpose. I wanted it to be worth something good. Right.

And I don't

know what you're gonna think about this story, but it blows my mind. You know, when I after I my accident. All right. So mom died when I was 1140 years later, I have my car accidents. And and I'm in jail are I'm getting processed into the jail. And my attorney told me to wear khakis and a golf shirt, right. So I'm not dressed like the three other young black men that are in that. So with me. They got hoodies and crispy kicks, and they're talking about the shootings they've been involved in. These are gang bangers, right. And one of them says that he starts talking about why he's there. He said he had a car accident. And his son, who was 11 years old died. And I looked up at him and I said, Man, I get you. I know what you're talking about it I got up and his name is Adria. Ellis his name. And I got up and I hugged Adrian and we cried. And I said to him, I said, you know, God can make even things like this work for good. And he got very excited when I said that. And I didn't understand why until he explained that he doesn't go to church, and he doesn't know anything that's in the Bible, except for Romans 828, that God can make all things work for good for those who and he recites it perfectly. So, you know, I'm trying to encourage this young man in jail with Romans 828, when you know, I'm, I'm laying on my back. And he does the same for me.

Right? That was, wow. And so

Romans, Romans 828, is, as you can understand, very important part of why I do what I do.

Speaking of why you do what you do, yes, ma'am. It's members that are listening out there, what advice would you give to them

get more focused on finding purpose in your life. I don't think ended up for loss or don't win that

you're in, don't get hung up on, you

know, you're finding your purpose in life, alright, I'm not talking about your life purpose, just finding purpose in the things that you're doing, like, you know, climbing a mountain, and that was certainly wasn't my life purpose, right. But I raised the money for, for a school in Guatemala, you know. So add purpose to things that you do. We used to have a Super Bowl party every year, and we'd ask people to bring donations for the local food bank, you know, things like that, I think are so important. And people just, you know, they're they're hung up on trying to find my purpose in life, but you don't need to do that. And if you'd find little purposes, and the things that you do in your life, that you will, it will very oftentimes lead you to your purpose in life too. And

you will also find purpose through doing service for others. Yes, absolutely. And you can do that you can do something simple every single day. And

then I would say also, Shannan, do the hard things in life. Because it prepares you for the hard things in life that choose you. And I think that very much my difficulties as a child prepared me for some of the tragedies that happened when I was older as well. And I and you know, for anybody out there who thinks that they've sunk into Jeff Higgins is here to tell you that there's never a broken to broken unless you give up don't give up.

Beautiful, beautiful. Where are you now Jeff and life?

Yeah, you know,

what are your final words? Let us know where are you in life?

I'm great. It blows my mind how far down I have come from, to be in mentally and in a great place. People want to know, you know, how did you keep from becoming the fourth headstone in your family? Right? I'm a walking miracle. You know that I've been able to rebuild my life and I am living it as best I can and try and best I can do to serve with to live my latter years, my whatever you call it fourth quarter with with meaning and purpose.

Oh, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. And enjoying

the grandchildren too. Yeah,

you got seven of them. So that's, that's pretty exciting. So no congrat Congratulations, congratulations. I gotta say, I loved listening to you talk today, I loved your stories. And I want to thank you for coming on my podcast because I know that anybody's listening is definitely going to resonate with you in some level or another. And you've taught them something. And by them listening, that's going to help them you know, make proper decisions out there for whatever they're going through right at this point in time in their life. So I want to thank you for you sharing your story on my podcast. So thank you so much for being here, Jeff.

It's been a blessing for me, Shannan and honor. Thank you very much. Okay.

Have a wonderful, wonderful day.