The Life and Times Of Mr. Tenacity With Chad Osinga
“What I’ve found in my life is that if I don’t have a defined “why”, I quit. Because eventually things get hard. You have to do the work.”
In this episode, Nick speaks with Chad Osinga, a retired Army Sniper and combat applications instructor. He has faced immense challenges, from war to special needs children and two motorcycle accidents. Despite this, Chad has found a way to overcome this by forming a superior mindset.
About Chad Osinga
Chad Osinga is a high school dropout turned college graduate, special operations sniper, and combat applications instructor for the military. Chad grew up in a drug house with a mother addicted to crack cocaine, who later died due to an overdose. Never knowing his father, he turned to the streets for the better portion of his early life.
Chad joined the US Army, becoming a sniper and eventually teaching combat applications to every branch and the FBI, US Marshalls, DEA, and SWAT teams. While stationed in Germany, his five-year-old daughter had a massive stroke caused by a rare disease. German doctors misdiagnosed her before transporting her to Hamburg, where she would undergo surgery and initial testing. During this crazy time, Chad’s pregnant wife would go into labor, complicating his family’s situation.
Chad and his wife would have a fourth child a year after his daughter’s stroke, but life would again become harder as his two youngest sons were diagnosed with Autism (ASD). After sustaining multiple injuries, Chad was medically retired in 2015.
Once he exited the Army, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder seemed to attack him as he had never experienced it. He turned to one of the drugs that destroyed his mother’s life, alcohol. What started as a nighttime remedy soon became an addiction that would almost cost him his marriage and his relationship with his four kids.
In 2015 Chad was taking a left turn when a car ran a red light and plowed through him, placing his body into a guard rail. Most thought he would not make it through this incident, but God again had different plans. It took him almost a year to get back on a motorcycle, but he was determined not to allow fear or this wreck to control his future. Shy of two years later, in 2020, he was riding with a group of friends when a van came into his lane. He was propelled into a construction zone as his motorcycle was pinned into a jersey barrier. Chad died on the way to the hospital and before his second surgery.
Though Chad’s last accident placed him in a position of hardship, it also spurred a change in him and an understanding that God had a purpose for his life that was bigger than him. He quit drinking cold turkey, quit smoking marijuana (which was an ounce-a-week addiction at one point), and began unearthing the power within himself.
Chad can relate to almost any scenario from war, special needs children, marital problems, and physical setbacks.
Now Chad uses his time to speak on podcasts such as “Good Life Great Life with Brian Highfield” and writes for publications like “Authority Magazine & The UpJourney” and as a life coach/mentor. His main initiative is to help empower people by revamping their mindset. He believes the fight for success, failure, mediocracy, or greatness is won or lost within our minds.
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Your Friends at “The Mindset & Self-Mastery Show”
Nick McGowan
Hello and welcome to the Mindset and Self Mastery Show. I’m your host Nick McGowan. And on this show my guest and I unpack the stories that shape us and the lives that we lead on our path to self-mastery. Today on the show, we have Chad Ochocinco. Chad is a retired Army sniper and the combat applications instructor. He’s faced immense challenges from war to special needs children and to motorcycle accidents.
Nick McGowan
Despite all of this, Chad has found an incredible way to overcome performing a superior mindset. Perfect for the show, right? So we get into his background, the wild story that has led him to where he is today. Let’s not wait any longer. Let the games begin.
Nick McGowan
Hey, Chad. Welcome to the show, man. How are you doing?
Chad Osinga
I am awesome. How are you?
Nick McGowan
I’m doing great. I appreciate that you reached out and that you wanted to hop on. I was looking through some of your background and my God, man, it looks like you’ve been through. I’m just to put it nicely, you’ve been through some shit. So the fact that you want to hop on and kind of talk through some of this, I really appreciate you being on.
Nick McGowan
Chad, why don’t you start off by telling us what you do for a living? And one thing that most people don’t know about you.
Chad Osinga
So I now I’m basically a motivational speaker. I also help mentor. And I write. And one thing that most people don’t know is I drink about a gallon to a gallon and a half of water a day.
Nick McGowan
Nice. You could have gone several different directions. You could have been like a vodka tequila a day. Sure. That was a different life.
Chad Osinga
It was. And I was close to that at one point in my life. So. Yeah.
Nick McGowan
Yeah. So what’s the deal with the water? You just trying to make sure that you do it? Is it part of a challenge? What is it?
Chad Osinga
You know, it started many years ago. I started training, doing jujitsu and fighting a lot. And so without me even knowing it, I started in taking just water. And I’m one of those people that don’t have to eat a whole bunch throughout the day. But I’ve always had to hydrate with something. So I was drinking water. And next thing you know, it’s really I drink water and coffee all day and that’s it.
Nick McGowan
And I’m sure your colon appreciates that.
Chad Osinga
It does. It loves me very much.
Nick McGowan
Yes, I bet. So what, you said that you’re a motivational speaker now and knowing what I know of your background, the little bit that I know so far. Give us a little bit of context. Like what what basically happened and led you to this point now?
Chad Osinga
It starts when I was first born, right? My entire left side wouldn’t wouldn’t work. And so my mother was a big drug addict prior to my birth. And when I was born, I don’t know if it was due to the drugs or what, but my left, the left side of my body wasn’t functioning. And so the doctor basically said, hey, you know, work, work with this kid or he’s he’s not moving it ever again.
Chad Osinga
So she took a hiatus from all the drugs, helped me, you know, get my movement back, but then went right back into it. So from like the time I was born, it seemed like I was in a constant fight. As I got a little bit older, I started realizing that my mom was really getting worse when it came to, you know, alcohol and her drugs turned much harder.
Chad Osinga
Right. She began to smoke crack cocaine. All of the money was going to that. And then she actually invited these drug dealers basically into my house. So they lived there. They sold drugs out of there. They had their ladies come there. It was really their home. Right. I was just visiting and, you know, I was selling drugs for them.
Chad Osinga
And I really thought growing up that my surroundings was all I could have. Like that was like being the top drug dealer was like the pinnacle or, you know, the top spot in life. And so for many years, that’s what I thought. But being 12 years old, you’re not like the greatest drug dealer. And, you know, the older guys always took all the stuff anyway, all the money and left me with with you know, not really much shit to bail out as far as being able to get food and things like that.
Chad Osinga
When I was about 14, the police actually raided my house and my mom went to prison. I was sent all the way to Oklahoma with family. I really didn’t know. And you know that that was a hard time of my life as well, because when I got to Oklahoma, I was anemic due to the fact that I wasn’t eating correctly.
Chad Osinga
My mom, you know, again, she was strung out. There was no, you know, dinner’s being made. And I was too young to really get a solid job. So, you know, the little bit I made off of drug dealing is what I had to go to McDonald’s and, you know, do a little bit. I could do as far as getting food and some type of substance.
Chad Osinga
But when I got there, my aunt and uncle were very religious. They worked at a church. They believe that I was a very evil child, I think. And so when I got there, they they treated me as if I was like two years old. They would put me in the corner, like in stand me there and make me eat my dinner there, do my studies there, and then go to bed.
Chad Osinga
All right. And I remember because the corner was like at the front door and the living room was right behind me. And my uncle is a bigger guy. He worked at like the oil fields and he was not the guy I was trying to get in a fight with, you know, being a scrawny 14 year old. So I listened, you know, and I but I was miserable.
Chad Osinga
And, you know, there there, quote unquote. Spankings to me were a little excessive. I would sometimes bleed and I would be like black and blue from from that. There was times where, like, he threw me down the hallway all over. Very minor, minor things, in my opinion, you know. And so I ended up running away from there. The first time I got caught, I was like, I got caught because I, I was in a I stopped at this little Exxon and they had these donuts and I was so hungry, man.
Chad Osinga
And I was like, Oh, I was like, looking at them. Like, they were like, just T-Bone steaks. And they have a curfew in the Tulsa, Oklahoma area. And I didn’t know that. But the cashier, I guess, did called the police. Came here comes my my uncle and the police. And so they brought me back to their home. And of course, they were very unhappy with that.
Chad Osinga
And it wasn’t maybe two weeks later, I finally my like while I was there, they wouldn’t allow me to talk to my mother while she was incarcerated and they wouldn’t allow me to talk to like my grandmother or anybody I really knew from Virginia, where I was from and the few times in a year and a half that I lived there, the few times that they would allow me to, you know, talk to them or read the mail, they always open it.
Chad Osinga
They always monitored the phone calls and my grandmother and said, hey, it’s okay to come home. And I have no idea why she said that. But when she did that, that’s what sparked that. I’m I’m out of here. Right. So two weeks after that first attempt, I, I got to a friend that was in one of my classes, and I was like, Hey, man, take me to the edge of this town.
Chad Osinga
I didn’t even know where I was really going to. He takes me in. There’s like this dusty payphone gas station there, like no one ever uses. And I. I think maybe two people stop there. The entire time I was there, I was probably there like 4 hours. 5 hours. Well, the second guy that stopped there actually gave me a ride to the to halfway to the airport.
Chad Osinga
All right. And paid the rest of the way for me. I did either taxi and go. And he he had talked to my grandmother on the on the on the little pay phone because I had about three quarters, you know, worth it, the phone calls back then. So but it all worked out. And I got home and then I was arrested for breaking probation.
Chad Osinga
So that next day the sheriff came to my grandmother’s house. They arrested me and sent me to detention on they gave custody to my aunt, one of my other aunts who lived in Virginia. And you know that. But the damage had really been been done at that point. I was kind of a wreck. I didn’t care much about life.
Chad Osinga
I didn’t think that I was going to have anything good in this life. Right. And I, I was my anger began driving my life. Right. Like I was under the influence of of of anger there. There’s no other way to really say that, you know, and I. I just didn’t I didn’t I didn’t know if I wanted to really live, you know, and and my grandmother, she she tried to get me to church and tried to get me into those things.
Chad Osinga
But that became an issue in and of itself because it just seemed I seemed to to get used more than help in those situations. And so I that it turned me a little more bitter. And I met this girl and we’re still married to this day. But she changed my world, man. And she is the one that got me to stop selling drugs.
Chad Osinga
She’s the one that, you know, believed in me and said, hey, you can you got to you got to do a little more, right if you want to stay with me. So let’s let’s get this thing right. And so I joined the Army and like a last ditch effort to be something, you know, to give, you know, just try to have something more than what I had up to this point.
Chad Osinga
And I was a late bloomer. I didn’t join into my early twenties. Well, which, you know, most people are joining, you know, 17 or 18 years old, right out of high school. But I joined and at first it was a rough road because I was a street kid that that didn’t have a lot of guidance and direction. And then you go into a completely different setting, right?
Chad Osinga
Like it’s night and day compared to the life I lived up to this point. And at first, you know, like I said, it was I was running into some issues, but as I continued it, it made sense to me and they taught me a lot about myself. They taught me that there was a lot more in the tank than what I thought, you know, kind of like hit an empty.
Chad Osinga
There’s still probably 30 miles left of gas in the tank. So they they showed me that that I was much more than what I thought I could achieve, a lot more than what I really had given myself credit for up in up until this point. While I was in the military, though, I ended up joining, you know, I would say an elite version of that.
Chad Osinga
And I became a sniper. I was able I was allowed to go to Special Operations Sniper School and you know that. And then, you know, the thing was, is like I was still a wreck, though, like even though I was I was beginning to achieve some really high level stuff. I was, I was still fighting a lot with internally.
Chad Osinga
Um, I began to instruct soldiers, which ended up becoming something that was offered to the FBI, DEA, U.S. Marshals. So I trained SWAT teams in all kinds of, of different entities like that. And that was it was a real cool experience, but I had a Q by this time I had accumulated a lot of injuries through deployment and just training.
Chad Osinga
I mean, your body gets really beat up when you live that type of life and so the army was like, Hey, you know, it’s about time. I was about ten years in into my career and they were like, Hey, you’re really beat up. You’ve had multiple surgeries. It’s time for you to to take an exit. And I didn’t want to go.
Chad Osinga
But, you know, there’s not much you can do in those moments, as I did. And when I exited it, I didn’t know. I thought I had been dealing with some demons. But they say and I don’t mind is the devil’s playground. And I really believe that once I got out, once I got out, I was banged up. I was mad that I was out of the army and I couldn’t stay in the army.
Chad Osinga
It was the one thing in my life that I had found success in, right? And so now that was being stripped from me. And so I got really depressed. I started drinking like a fifth of whiskey a night, smoking like an ounce of weed a week. I was spinning outrageous amount of money just on on marijuana, you know?
Chad Osinga
And so I was lost. You know, I, I didn’t know which way I was going to go and so I was I was I was definitely struggling, man. I was a wreck. I was losing my marriage, you know? And she’s my best friend, all right? Like she she is my world. But I was I was fucking up, right?
Chad Osinga
I wasn’t treating her well. I wasn’t present with my kids, you know? And so and let me actually take a step back. While I was in the military, my daughter, I have four kids all together. My my second oldest, which is my daughter, had a stroke when she was five. I was stationed in Germany and she had this really severe stroke that, you know, we didn’t know what was going on.
Chad Osinga
I was actually ramping up to go to Afghanistan and so when we get to the hospital, they misdiagnosed and they think that she’s just having seizures. Well, there’s language barriers. There’s a lot of different things going on there or at play, I guess, if you will. And so finally, a neurologist walks in that next day and he’s like, Hey, have you guys given her an MRI?
Chad Osinga
And they’re like, No, no shit, right? Like that’s probably a smart thing to do. Well, her brain was basically swollen, like super swollen, and she was going to die in the next few hours if she didn’t have emergency surgery. So they had to send her to Hamburg, Germany, and they have a specialty hospital there. They did a craniotomy where they basically cut out half the skull, release pressure.
Chad Osinga
And she lived. But they told us that she would never walk again. She would never talk on her own. She would never eat. And, you know, as a dad, that’s that’s a hard pill to swallow. A man like that. That is a rough one. You know, I remember me and my wife’s, like, crying. They gave us, like, a little room in Ronald McDonald.
Chad Osinga
I don’t know what they call it. Blew around our houses. They were attached to the hospital. They gave us a room there. And you know, it was I remember sitting there and and crying and screaming, you know, for for some type of help because I just didn’t know what to do, you know? Yeah. As a father, you. You always want to do something, right?
Chad Osinga
Like fix it, but you can’t. There’s nothing I was going to be able to do. This was completely out of out of my realm of of of anything. I couldn’t I couldn’t touch it. I could all I could do is sit there and watch, you know. And it was it was rough, man. So at this time, my my wife is also pregnant with our third child.
Chad Osinga
So she gives birth while while my daughter’s in ICU to she’s she all of a sudden pops and I’m like, oh, my God. So I have a kid that’s being born in one room. Right? And I have my daughter who’s fighting for her life in another with my oldest son who’s sitting there having to be a champ. You know, through all of this, I mean, if anybody’s a rock star as far as my kids, my oldest son has gone through a lot.
Chad Osinga
And so she she has the baby and they’re like, hey, we’ve only seen this like about three times in our lives. We need to send you to America. Like they would not allow my wife and my newborn to fly because he was just born. So he didn’t have a passport, didn’t have dual citizenship. And so we she had to get all of those things in order to to make the flight.
Chad Osinga
So my oldest son, my daughter and myself get put onto a medevac flight with wounded warriors from like Afghanistan and Iraq. And they sent us to Walter Reed. And this is all I want to read in Washington, DC. And once we get there, we’re there for probably the next couple months. My son had to go live with family and you know, it was me and my daughter in a hospital room for like two months.
Chad Osinga
You know, it would I made a a pact with her that she would walk again. And so every day they would they would bring these stuffed animals. And she was getting she was angry. You know, she she had started somewhat talk again and, you know, so but I wanted to put it in her mind’s eye that, hey, you’re going to walk, you know, I don’t care what these doctors are saying.
Chad Osinga
I don’t care what, you know, has happened to another patient. This is you. It’s your situation. Let’s go and we will stay. And I was standing up and she would throw stuffed animals against the wall and just trying to get strength in her legs. I would move her and try to just get her to envision what walking looked like.
Chad Osinga
Right. And so we would we would walk down the halls and, you know, of course, with me helping her. But by the time we left two months down the road, she actually walked on her own with a, you know, with me kind of just making sure she wouldn’t fall. But she walked. She was talking and she was, you know, eating on her own within that two month time frame.
Chad Osinga
And so I really when you talk about inspirations, she is my inspiration. She is my if she can do all of that, then I don’t have any excuse anywhere else in my life. Fast forward, back to where we were. I, my wife. Well, now we’ve had two more kids. We had the one that was birthed while my daughter was in ICU.
Chad Osinga
And then we’ve had about a year after that we had another one and both of them now get diagnosed with autism. And they’re both on two different spectrums, you know, or two different ends of the spectrum. I say I’m sorry. One is war screaming, crying, go crazy, and the other one isn’t talking at all. And we have my daughter who’s in therapies constantly.
Chad Osinga
So it was just it was a wild, wild experience trying to figure that out. And I hit a level of depression once I exited the military, even though, you know, my kids were starting to learn how to to overcome some of the disabilities that they had had by that point. And, you know, I just crumbled mentally. I started like I said, drinking starts smoking.
Chad Osinga
And times are just, you know, not just being like a recluse. You know, I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I didn’t want to be around anybody. So I take a riding a motorcycle and I got out of the military in 2015. This happened in 2018. The first when I was making a left turn on my motorcycle. Some 19 year old kid playing fucking Pokemon Go blows through the red light and blows through me, puts me on a guardrail and destroys the bike.
Chad Osinga
You know, I everybody thought I was going to die. Somehow I didn’t, right? Somehow I lived through that and everything was going to be everything, right? I was going to be okay. But I was super scared now of intersections of, you know, I had my own. I already had my own PTSD from my past, the military, and now I get hit by a car.
Chad Osinga
Right. So my mom was was was a wreck. And so I continued to drink, continue to smoke because I thought I needed those things to to numb my my mental state. Right. And it took me about a year and a year and a half or a year and a half maybe maybe about a year to build the courage to get back onto a motorcycle again.
Chad Osinga
But I refused to allow the fear to be I had a good friend rebuild my old motorcycle. And I said, all right, I’m, I’m, I get on it and I’m going to try it. So I think that I’m doing all the right things. I get on to this motorcycle I’m riding, I have a group with me. And in 2018, about just shy of two years after this last accident, a car we’re riding, I’m actually on my way home and I’m in the far left lane of I-95.
Chad Osinga
And this bang in the middle name doesn’t see me because there lane was slowing down. He wanted to jump in the into the fast left lane. And when he did, he ran into me at 65 miles an hour. He hit me so hard that my motorcycle never like like hit the jersey barrier, but it never fell back down.
Chad Osinga
It was like into the jersey barrier. And what they told me was he continued to drive a little bit with the bikes on the vehicle. Like, like he still didn’t realize fully that he had whacked me. They were expanding I-95 at the time. And so I got my body, got into a construction zone. I died on the way to the hospital.
Chad Osinga
And then after my first surgery, they realized that the damages were so bad that they needed to go in and do a second surgery right before that, the medications or something mixed wrong. And I don’t know if you ever had surgeries, but they they put you on the gurney in like you’re right across from wherever you’re going to get surgery at right.
Chad Osinga
It’s like a little pre-op area and they check your vitals. Well, next thing, I’m slurring my words. They thought I was having a stroke. They didn’t know what was going on. Next thing you know, I flatlined again. They have to rush me. And I stayed in ICU for about seven days after that. So and the story gets even even funnier because while I’m in ICU, this COVID, so no one can see me.
Chad Osinga
Right. I still haven’t seen my family since I got back. I don’t have a cell phone to really communicate. I had a little messed up phone that’s on the side of the bed and I have reruns. That’s it. So I had that for seven long days and now I can’t move. I can’t get up out of my bed.
Chad Osinga
I can’t, you know, I can’t do anything right. It really it really put you know, what’s crazy is I think what was meant to be a very negative piece in my life actually turned very positive for me that those seven days, like I’ve been telling a lot of people open my eyes because I had to face me, right?
Chad Osinga
Like there was nothing that was going to, you know, ICU would do to you. You’re just having to visit a lot of different things throughout my life, and there was no turning away from it. There was no numbing it. There was there was nothing. It was just facing it and dealing with it and moving on. So I think when I did that, I realized that I had a perfect right that that was so much bigger than just myself or just my family, God, the universe, whatever we want to call it, him or her, whatever is very real and and definitely had a plan right.
Chad Osinga
Because most people don’t survive one motorcycle accident, much less two. And so yeah. And so, you know, I left the hospital and I still had a long ways to go, you know what I mean? With my my mental state. You know, when I got back to that in my house, you know, I was I was bedridden. You know, I had to relearn how to walk.
Chad Osinga
I had to, you know, I had to. And I still had more surgeries. Like, that was another thing. Like, I still had more surgeries to get. You probably can’t see, but my hand, there’s like a zipper scar all the way up right here. And that was a mess, you know, because in my only my pinky and this finger work and I had to somehow work my way through all of that.
Chad Osinga
Right? And it was definitely a journey. It was I began to to read a lot. I began to really pursue, like, mindset stuff. Right. And and devoting devoting myself to being a better me. Somehow, someway I quit drinking. I quit smoking. You know, and it didn’t happen right right away. But it definitely, you know, this last wreck, it changed me for the to the best.
Chad Osinga
I think I because I think because of that the purpose part of it. Right. Like I knew without a shadow of a doubt, I was here for a reason and I just had to figure out how to get out of my current situation. Right. Because I just there was a many points where I didn’t know if I was going to walk again.
Chad Osinga
So, you know, I didn’t know what my tomorrow was necessarily going to look like, you know? So yeah, I started to really dig into the writing and started digging into putting myself in a different surroundings as far as is people write entrepreneurs and people that thought differently than than the average bear and as I began to do that, I began to really excel, you know, just in every area of my life, my marriage, you know, it began to flourish again and my kids began to like me again.
Chad Osinga
So, you know, everything started coming full circle for me, you know. And I was I was very grateful not not to get hit, but I’m thankful that I was able to refind myself. Right. My purpose in life and and know that that, you know, it is I think that this world that we have this belief system, right. That we develop and, you know, there’s a lot of different people that talk about this, how we associate situations to us.
Chad Osinga
Right? Just like we associate green with go and red with stuff. We associate specific things to us and a lot of that is just really, really false. Like my thinking that all I could be sorry my dog.
Nick McGowan
Know is.
Chad Osinga
My, my association with my past I thought was all I could have all I could be all right and, you know, it took it took me to be around a certain mindset for me to really break free and know that, man, there’s more. I’m capable of more I, you know, I this is this is it was just a moment and there’s a lot of good information to extract from the bad things in our life.
Chad Osinga
And that’s what I think that, you know, Kobe said that losing is exciting to him. Right, because he can find, you know, those weaknesses or chinks in his armor. There’s that. And now he can begin to work on those things and become that much stronger of a player or a person. Right. And so once I began to realize that all that bad stuff, all the those hardships, there were a lot of positives to take away from that.
Chad Osinga
A lot a lot of things that I could apply to to my armor, fill in some holes and and move forward and really be able to help other people that were in similar or worse situations than I was. And that’s what I’ve been trying to do, whether it be speaking or writing or, you know, mentoring people, just, you know, a lot of this, like I love working with kids as well.
Chad Osinga
So, you know, anything I can do with with the youth, I do that. And, you know, it’s definitely it’s been a blessing, to say the least.
Nick McGowan
Sure, man, what a story. Just to be able to think through all of that stuff when you’re sitting there in bed for seven days and you cannot move, you can’t do a fucking thing. Besides, just think for you to have that transitional period that literally moved you from a fixed to a growth mindset to start to say, Okay, well, things have to change.
Nick McGowan
It’s wild how I think that things have to happen to us or happen for us in a way to go. Oh, okay. Got it. I think of those as little God nods. Were gods up there like, Hey, here’s a curveball. And you’re like, Oh shit, that almost took my head off. Yeah. Do you got the point? You’re like.
Chad Osinga
Yeah.
Nick McGowan
I think I get the point, man. You’ve gone through so much from a child on up, even through your own kids, where I’m sure you could pick out different people in life where you’re like, Yeah, you would have jumped off the train. You would have jumped off the train. Most people would have. So in that space of the seven days when you’re lying there and you’re thinking, I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me, I got a lot of stuff, but there’s positives that are happening.
Nick McGowan
How did you manage your mindset in that space and not go fucking bonkers?
Chad Osinga
I think a few times I did.
Nick McGowan
Sure. Maybe you need to, you know.
Chad Osinga
You know, I just I think that I leverage the fact that that I was alive. I leverage the fact that if for whatever reason, if there was nothing more to this this life, that I was living, why would I still be here right after all the things that I’ve been through? I mean, I, you know, I skim through my life a little bit.
Chad Osinga
There’s a lot of stories I could tell you and a lot of things that were where I probably shouldn’t be here. Right? I not probably I know I shouldn’t be here in a lot of a lot of that I really believe is is that purpose and overall purpose. It took me a very long time to figure this out because I’m hardheaded.
Chad Osinga
But I also think my hard headedness was what kept me alive. Right. But in those moments, I began to leverage that and then that desire for wanting more. I said, okay, I have a chance, a six chance at this thing. I don’t want to waste it this time, you know. So I got to start looking. I have to start looking inward.
Chad Osinga
Right. And then I started saying, okay, but I’ve done a lot of bad things along the way. And so if I’ve done those things right, then that means this thought process isn’t real. It’s not true, right? It’s not accurate. It was a it was a moment in my life. Right. And it definitely, you know, helped define me and make me who I am.
Chad Osinga
But it doesn’t it doesn’t define who I’m going to be tomorrow or the next day or anything else. It’s just a, you know, an accent in the overall picture. Right. And I think that that’s what I tried to leverage in those moments and would help me get through all of that. All right. When you’ve faced death so many times and sooner or later, you just you’re like, okay, God, I got it.
Chad Osinga
I know I’m supposed to be here and let me stop trying to sabotage my own existence and, you know. Yeah, do something with it. So I think that was the key for me.
Nick McGowan
And that’s a good point about sabotaging your own existence. Yeah, it’s it’s almost like you just get in your own fucking way sometimes. And then when you think about it and it hits you, you’re like, Oh, silly me, I’m the asshole in the group here. I’m the one who keeps getting in the way. So if you think about what you know now and what you’re going through and the stuff that you went through as a child, if you could look back and have conversations with that kid and maybe you’ve gone through and you’ve dealt with some childhood trauma and maybe you’ve even sat down with your past self to talk through that stuff, what sort
Nick McGowan
of advice would you give to that kid that was going through that shit.
Chad Osinga
That everything that I could have ever needed was already within me right? We we look for a lot of extra stuff in whether it be, you know, the world that we live in or are introduced to on a daily basis commercials, TV, rap songs. It’s always fill your life, fill the void with this. You’re going through this, have this you know, this is just all you deserve.
Chad Osinga
Now, everything that you’ve ever needed is within you. And you have we all have the North Star, right? Something that’s pulling us to the have something great. Right. And listen to that pool. Don’t listen to everyone else. Listen to us on the inside of you and go for it. All right. You’re not going to get any younger. So just do it like a Nike commercial and and stay committed to it and trust the process.
Nick McGowan
Yeah, I think a lot of people have a hard time with being okay with that fear where if you’re facing fear even as a sniper, you’ve I would assume you’ve got fear going through you like I’m about to take this person out or what have you. And then the other fears of the things you’ve gone through where kind of had that fear muscle stretched in the sense like, all right, well, what else are you going to throw at me?
Nick McGowan
There’s certain people in this world that maybe they weren’t spoon fed, but maybe they’ve had some tough things and then just broke and they’re like, I can’t get past it. So how do you how would you help them actually switch from fixed to a growth mindset?
Chad Osinga
You know, it it so hesitation is the magnifier of all fear, right? It will make something small look ginormous in your mind’s eye. So when I said Just do it, that is the best advice I can give anybody start. Look, if even if you failed in the past, right, the next time you get up and you’re not starting from scratch anymore, you have feedback every mistake.
Chad Osinga
Every mistake is feedback, right? It’s not the end of the world. It’s not you know, it’s not that you aren’t good enough. You just didn’t know when. Now you know, right? You know that that doesn’t work or that does work or or you need to do it just a little bit different to make it work. Right. But now you have that feedback.
Chad Osinga
So instead of quitting and turning it back with your tail between your legs, take that feedback, take that information, and apply it to the next time. Just keep no small steps, right? And eventually you’re going to look back and say, Wow, look how far I’ve come. But you have to just start making those steps and taking the feedback as it comes and applying it.
Nick McGowan
Yeah. You remember when we were growing up, we didn’t have social media, so you would just hear things or see stuff on TV and see celebrities or you’d read something in a magazine or what have you. But we as kids didn’t really have all of that shit coming at us like people do now. I even find myself at times where I’ll be thumbing through Instagram or Facebook and just feel your anxiety coming up or like, Oh shit, this person posted something.
Nick McGowan
I should probably post ten things. I’m like, What is wrong with you? Calm down and people now kind of go through all that stuff. So even taking those little steps, I think sometimes we as people look at, well, other people are doing greater things, but they forget that you don’t see a lot of the bullshit little steps and the little failures underneath of it before that post came out.
Nick McGowan
So how do you manage kind of through that on the daily right now knowing you still got those battles and those traumas behind you?
Chad Osinga
Yeah, well, one, you know, the only person competing with is me. All right. So when I see someone else do X, Y and Z, good for them. I clap for them. All right. That’s not my journey. Right? I’m. I’m 40 years old. Just starting to figure out that, you know, I’m better than what I thought I was, right.
Chad Osinga
So, you know, I’m not the 30 year old that that claims to have it all figured out. But you’re right. Like, you know, behind everything, there’s a lot of things that have to happen before it actually comes to fruition. Right. And we we tend to forget that, right. That you know, you look at I’ll because I’ll stay with Kobe.
Chad Osinga
Kobe Bryant. Right. He makes this amazing last second shot in the finals. But to him, it’s just another shot that he’s taken a zillion times before. I think that if you want success in this life, it’s all about preparation, you know? And when you prepare for it and you put the work in, good things are going to happen.
Chad Osinga
So don’t worry about what somebody else is doing. Don’t worry about what social media is saying. You stay you stay focused on your purpose, stay going through the steps. Right. And if you’re going to find greatness just in your own time.
Nick McGowan
Yeah. How do you suggest dealing with the triggers of things that come up? Because those triggers are of emotional awareness factors for us and say, hey, there’s this thing for you to look at or this thing for you to do, but some people will just shut off. They go, Oh fuck, trigger. And they just they’re done. But how do you how would you suggest somebody deal with those?
Chad Osinga
So I think in the beginning it’s a few things, right? I think meditation is is a really good place to really start looking back on, on things that maybe you’ve done the day before, depending on when you do it. Journaling, I know it sounds kind of scary, but writing helped me so much, right? Like, you know, feeling one, we I think that these triggers are misunderstood, right?
Chad Osinga
Like you said, they’re there to help us, right? They’re there for a reason. Right? It’s like your body giving you a warning signal. All right, so it’s relevant. You just we blow it out before, right? So it’s good to understand what these things are there for and what our system is trying to tell us. All right. So being able to write those things down, you know, how did I act?
Chad Osinga
How did I respond? How should I have responded? And then also putting in, you know, the the things you’ve done right that day, constantly filling your memory bank with positivity that way. The next time these things happened, you react with more of a positive manner than a negative one. I think is really helped me. I still struggle. I’m not going to sit here and lie, but that’s that’s what I do.
Chad Osinga
I meditate, I journal, and I try to fill my mind full of positivity, right? So that’s what comes out when those, those negative feelings start arising. Right. And I also and I’ll say this, I also like to trace kind of like a root, you know, or a wire. I like to trace the origin of why do I feel that way?
Chad Osinga
What what? I talked about associations, right? There’s probably something in your past that has you associating that feeling to whatever negative thing that you’re thinking right? Whether it’s, you know, when you were young as a kid or sometimes multiple things. Like for me, I have I have anger things, right. And in our man, sometimes my anger would would just be on level a zillion.
Chad Osinga
And I had to really say, okay, why? Why is this happening, man? Like, what is going on? And it wasn’t just one thing, it was multiple things. So keep an open mind when you’re tracing it back. I don’t be afraid to keep down the rabbit hole a little bit to find out what’s going on. Just don’t stay there.
Nick McGowan
Itself, man. So, yeah, taking that action, doing journaling and meditating. I mean, you’re preaching to the choir with that one. I do that daily and I, I thought that for the longest time, like, I don’t want to journal my handwriting’s atrocious, blah, blah, blah. And it’s not as much about going back and rereading. It may be for some people, but it’s about the act of actually getting it out and allowing the brain to start working through and getting into a better space.
Nick McGowan
It also sounds like you’ve set yourself up for positive default, where at the fall I’ve got some positivity. Where were you? How you grew up? The default was fuck everything. Everyone should die. Yes, yes.
Chad Osinga
Yes, yes, yes.
Nick McGowan
Yes, man. Oh, dude, I am so glad that you’re on the show today. I appreciate you being here. I appreciate being open. I appreciate you sharing what you’ve gone through and the fact that you’re still here and doing what you’re doing today.
Chad Osinga
Man Well, I appreciate you having me. It was a blast. And, you know, I don’t mind if if it helps even one person and I’m a happy camper.
Nick McGowan
So yeah, I think about that too. It doesn’t matter if there’s hundreds of millions of people listen to this, as long as there’s one person that goes I think can help me, that’s what this is all about. So on that note, think you tell us one piece of advice that you’d give somebody that’s on their path towards self-mastery.
Chad Osinga
So know your way. Okay. So once you find your purpose and okay, that’s the thing that’s pulling me. I want to do that. Why? Why do you want to do it? What I’ve found in my life is that if I don’t have a defined why I quit. Right? Because eventually things get hard. You have to do the work, right?
Chad Osinga
The work’s the hard part. So why are you going to get up at 5:00 in the morning. All right, why are you going to journal? Why are you going to follow those wires and go down the rabbit hole? Why what is the the reason that’s going to motivate you to do those things on a daily basis when no one’s watching, when there’s no gratification, when you don’t see the big wins.
Chad Osinga
Right. What what is going to drive you to do that? You know, and and so I would really encourage you guys to find out your why.
Nick McGowan
I love that. You know, we’ve all been told, you know, find your why or figure out the why. And I think for the most part, some people just brush it off like it’s just old hat. Like, I get it, I should do it. My way is and they kind of think a little bit about it. But I think back to what you said about tracing back, because if you start to look and go, Well, why do I like this thing?
Nick McGowan
Why is it sports that I like or music or why is it this you can go back and back and back and back? No, you can’t really see it on the shelf here because I actually change out the books. But behind that mindset book is a book called QB. Q The question behind the question, that’s something that has always stood out to me is like, Well, why do you like ice cream more?
Nick McGowan
I like it because of this well, why? Because of that? They might go all the way back to my grandfather took me to Dairy Queen when I was five and we got ice cream and you’re like, Oh my God, that ties to this thing. So, man, I appreciate you being on and talking about all this stuff. Before I let you go, please tell us where people can connect with you.
Chad Osinga
Yeah. So my website is Mr. Tinashe that being dot com, you can also email me at Mr. Tenacity 40 at gmail.com and channel singer on Facebook. If you message me on there, I have a Facebook group and I’ll add you good stuff.
Nick McGowan
Tab. Well, again, thank you so much for being on the show. Appreciate your time.
Chad Osinga
Thanks for having me.
Nick McGowan
Another great conversation on today’s episode of The Mindset and Self-mastery show. So wow, what a friggin store? Now be honest with me here and be honest with yourself. While listening to everything Chad went through, how many times do you think. And that’s when I’d snap. Yep. Right there. That that was that moment. That’s when I would have lost my shit.
Nick McGowan
I would have been off the train. That’s it. Whether your childhood and upbringing looked similar to Chad’s or the complete opposite, let’s remember that tenacity looks different in different situations. So what can you take from the conversation today to be more tenacious in your daily life? What did you think of today’s episode? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topics we got into, and if you enjoyed the episode, please jump over to iTunes.
Nick McGowan
Subscribe. Great. Leave a five star review. If this episode opened your eyes made you think or smile at all, then I’m sure it’ll do the same for your friends and family. If you really enjoyed the show, go ahead and share it with somebody specific. We covered a lot and went through some really tough, traumatic times with Chad and I’m sure really resonate with a lot of people.
Nick McGowan
Check out the show notes for more information and contact info for Chad. Check out other episodes on the Mindset and Self-mastery show icon as well as our YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube and search the Mindset and self-mastery show and you’ll see it all right there. Thanks again, Chad, for being real, for being honest, vulnerable with us, as well as sharing some strategies that you’re using and that you’re sharing with others to get through tough, traumatic times.
Nick McGowan
And I’d like to thank our sponsors, the Manly club and the powerhouse men, brotherhood men. Do you consider yourself to be a powerhouse man? The criteria for becoming one is simple. Live with virtue and do good work. You see, a powerhouse man builds his life. He doesn’t settle for it. He attacks mediocrity at the root. And that’s exactly what we do in the powerhouse Men Brotherhood.
Nick McGowan
Visit the Manly Club icon for details. And thank you to you. Yes, you for hanging out with us today. Your support means more than you know. Thank you. And with that, remember, your mindset matters. And so do you.