CFD 173 - Willard Barth Tells Us How To Clean Up the Total Mess We’ve Made of Our Lives to Create One We Truly Want!
Holy smokes! Once in a while we have a guest whose story is so raw, so gripping, and so full of pain and overcoming that it’s nothing less than amazing that he got through all the dark to reach the light on the other side. That’s how it is with Cash Flow Diary podcast guest Willard Barth, international business and life coach, speaker, mentor, creator of the Anatomy of Transformation and all-around life-success story. Willard went from living a life of total destruction to one that involves helping a lot of other people move through the seven stages of transformation (a.k.a., Anatomy of Transformation). The first of the seven phases are: Ignorance, Awareness, Taking Responsibility and Immersion. Willard had to go through a lot to come to this understanding. Born and raised in the central mountain region of Pennsylvania, somewhat like the Waltons, Willard Barth grew up humbly. He says he faced massive personal challenges that helped make him the person he is today. For example, he lost a leg to cancer at the age of 8, but that didn’t stop him from being very active in sports. Externally he looked like the all-American boy; inside he was a wreck. At 13 he began drinking and doing drugs to quiet his pain. From there it was a roller coaster ride. By age 20 he was sitting in a jail cell with a 5-year sentence. At first, he was fortunate enough to be sequestered with inmates who had been jailed for lesser crimes. On his last stint, because he was an amputee, he was housed in the medical section of the jail with murderers and rapists. It was a completely different experience… one he didn’t want to repeat. The sequence of events that began his transformation started when he got out of jail and wanted to be outside for a while. He no longer wanted to be a “bad ass.” Homeless, he hit the road for a while because he didn’t want to be confined. But he only stayed clean and sober for a short time. While on one hand Willard was trying to straighten out his life, joined a band and was playing gigs, on the other he was drinking and acting out. His wake-up moment was August 17, 1989. He woke up in a parking lot, drunk and not knowing how he got there. He realized that one of these days he was going to kill someone through his selfishness and stupidity. His tipping point was when he realized that he would have to live with that knowledge and wouldn’t be able to handle it. Long story short that was the last time Willard would take a drink or do drugs. He’s been clean and sober since. It was a long crawl out of the deep, dark hole of anger he’d dug for himself. It wasn’t until he was in serious rehab that he learned that he was really, really angry. Once he transformed his life, he was then able to help others transform theirs. This is one of the most unique Cash Flow Diary podcast episodes you’ve likely heard. You’ll want to brace yourself for one heck of a story that tells you that you have the strength inside you to get through anything if you put your mind to it. Learn more.