Bedros Keuilian

Yes! Thank you so much for the opportunity guys. I’m very excited here to be on this podcast with you and thank you for the opportunity.

Bedros Keuilian

Yes.  That’s a really good question.

When we escaped communist Russia, specifically Armenia, my father was a member of the communist party. We decided that we weren’t going to be communist anymore and he wasn’t a communist by choice per say. He was a communist because it kind of give you that opportunity.

Bedros Keuilian

Yeah. The way he explains it is funny.

18% at the time of Soviet Union, the population were communist members. The whole country was communist but 18% actually belonged to the party. When they make this what they consider a tremendous offer and opportunity to you, you’re welcome to say, “No,” but if you say “No,” your family doesn’t see you anymore. You end up in Siberia somewhere.

Bedros Keuilian

So, like all of the people who came before him, he said, “Yes. It’d be an honor to be a member of the communist party.” Of course my dad, at that time, in the late 70’s, being a free thinker and he always thought about democracy, freedom, opportunity and effectively, being able to do what you want, when you want without the man watching you.

In 1980, he decided that we’re going to escape and myself, I was the youngest of the family, 6 years old, my 2 older brothers, my older brother and sister, and my mom and dad. We slit into Italy under the veil of we’re just taking vacation to Italy and of course from there, we entered the American consul in Italy and said, “Hey, we are political refugees. Would you take us?”

Within 2 weeks, we were in The United States legally and my father was ecstatic to give us this opportunity. Maybe he didn’t think everything all the way through because in hindsight, we could have come here with more money because all we had was $87 or $88 in his pocket, one suitcase because if you brought any more than one suitcase it was obvious we weren’t going on vacation to Italy. It’s obviously you were escaping. So one suitcase for a family of five and we didn’t speak English and we didn’t have anybody here in The States.

Until this day, I don’t know why he chose California. He did and I’m thankful for it but I grew up being poor and broke. I explained to people, broke is when you have no money. Your family has to decide whether if we’re going gas or electricity or water this month. Poor is more of a state of mind.

Bedros Keuilian

Jokingly, I was my telling my wife these days that, “I may go broke one day by making a bad business decision but I’ll never be poor like I was back then where we always run out of money before we run out of month and we look at ourselves as 2nd class citizens in this country.”

However, having growing up in that situation where you’re dealing with so much adversity, from a language barrier to financial barrier. Even being kicked out of so many apartments because we couldn’t afford to pay the rent.

I went to three different elementary schools, two junior highs, and two high schools. All those things that I thought were a disadvantage for me and was adversity, ended up being probably some of the best learning lessons in life for me. I believe those lessons have made what I am today, which is a leader amongst the fitness and the wellness industry.

Bedros Keuilian

Exactly. When the cards are stacked against you, all you could do is really hand ring and him and her about how if you’d just more opportunity had, you had the information, the right people presented themselves to you, if you had the money to go and buy the knowledge. However, in reality, I realize I had this ability to thrive and with many of my coaching clients in our Fit Body Boot Camp franchises, we have this funny little terms we use and I’d love to share one with you.

We always walk around saying that, “We are a cock weed” and in my mind, I look at who I am and what I am as a cockroach. If a cockroach made sweet love to a weed, and then, no one is able to kill. It grows in your vegetable garden. It grows out of cracks. It grows out of concrete. It grows out of telephone poles, grows out of ice.

The weed is the most resilient plant on the face of the earth yet, we always give prettier flowers the accolade.

Like the orchid. You don’t go to a grocery store when you’re going to someone’s house as a guest and you look for a pot of weed to take them. You typically will buy an orchid.

Bedros Keuilian

Depends on the kind of weed. Well said sir. It’s funny you say that.

Everyone buys an orchid and so, I decided to start studying orchids because when people are bringing orchid at our house, I’ve never seen they really last.

As it turns out, just a little bit of too much humidity and the orchid dies. If an orchid is growing next to another plant and that plant happens to share the same soil, the orchid dies. If there’s a little too much sunlight, the orchid dies. It is one of the most fragile plants on the face of the earth here. Yet, we all want to be an orchid.

Yet I realized, if you look at the cockroach and the weed, I don’t know of anything more resilient than these two things on this planet. They could survive anything. We have yet to find any kind of spray at home depot or lows that you can spray on a weed and permanently kill it. Those suckers come back and they come back with a vengeance.

I guess what I’m trying to say is I reframed everything that I had gone through as an adversity. I reframed that as an advantage by saying, “Look, you could stomp out a weed. You can pull it out. You can spray it with poison and it will come back stronger, more resilient than ever.”

Well, I’ve effectively been stomped out, pulled out, told I couldn’t do it. I’ve even been in a police helicopter chase and I wasn’t the guy in the helicopter. I was the guy in the getaway car.

So, all those things, as a young man that I had so much rage and anger towards, I realized that was all of the adversity that gave me the advantage because I just simply reframed it as, “I’m a weed. I can survive and thrive over any other adversity that’s given to me.”

When you reframe a negative and think that things happen because of it, then, you’re able to move on the hurt and the pain rather than holding on to it and using it as an anchor to weigh you down.

Bedros Keuilian

Yes.

You know it’s funny. I was 6 years old. My brother was 19 years old when we came to The United States. Until this day and in fact, we’re going to go visit my parents tonight, my wife and I and our kids in Anaheim. They’re about 30 minutes away from us and my brother and his family will be there.

Until this day, my brother carries a chip on his shoulder and if you just ask one or two questions about, “So, you’re from another country?” “Yes” “And you are an immigrant? How was life when you first got here?” Within the first sentence or two, he will tell you that people were yelling at us and telling us to go back to our own Effin country.

Now, he’s held on to that and that’s become the narrative of his journey over the last 34 years that we’ve been in this country.

Bedros Keuilian

I was the youngest in this family so when we were being yelled at and people were chasing our family down. You could imagine the early 80’s, they weren’t too friendly. California wasn’t quite the melting pot that it is today. Let’s just say that.

I cried. I was afraid as a kid but as I grew up, I realized that by overcoming that I’m a stronger more resilient person. My brother took that same event and held on to it and it’s a chip on his shoulder. It’s his reason why things haven’t worked out for him in his life and that crushes me to say that. He’s my brother. He’s my own blood but is a great example of reframing an adversity.

Let’s say this is why I’m going to do better in life just like a dumbbell against the muscle. The heavier that dumbbell is and the more you curl it, the stronger that muscle gets.

Bedros Keuilian

However, you have to be willing to reframe it that way for dealing with adversity. If you don’t, you’re forever stuck with that as an anchor.

Bedros Keuilian

That’s a really good question.

How do we move from adversity? What are some tips on dealing with adversity?

Whether the adversity is financial, emotional, passing of a family member, or a divorce that you didn’t necessarily want and you were shot by when you were serve divorce papers. Whatever the adversity is, how do we get to the other side of it to use it as an advantage?

There are various tips on dealing with adversity. The first thing we have to do is we have to break the pattern. In NLP, there’s a program and they call that, “The pattern interrupt”.

Do you guys have kids? Let me start there.

Bedros Keuilian

Regardless, if you don’t have a kid, certainly, we’ve all been kids at some point and remember when stabbed our toe or we stabbed our finger, immediately, we’re crying. We’re raising holy hell and it’s a big dramatic scene but often times, I remember my parents doing this to me and I did it with my kids.

Simply doing something to get their attention elsewhere, “Look at the little bird outside,” or “Oh my gosh! Look what our dog did,” and they immediately stop crying and they turn their attention to that other thing. We’re breaking the pattern. That’s a pattern interrupt.

Let’s say we’re in a state of depression. The longer we stay in that actual pattern, we go deeper and deeper into it. What happens if you just break that pattern for dealing with adversity?

What happens if you decide that, “I’m going to get my car? I’m going to drive to the beach. I have no plans on driving to the beach but I woke up and I’m a little dark. I’m a little depressed today.” “I’m upset about the fact that my spouse had cancer and she’s passed away.”

Bedros Keuilian

Let’s say that had happened and I’m human and I wake up on the wrong side of the bed. I could either sulk on that. I could go deeper into that level of depression or I can get on my car and drive to the beach and go do something for someone else. This is where we have to understand those two things. If we can understand thing one, which is break the pattern, do something drastic.

If we can understand the need to break the pattern for dealing with adversity, do something drastic.

I’m not saying go get a tattoo or go shave your head but break the current pattern that you’re in that’s causing this thing. It might be that you’re sitting there in the dark, curtains drawn, thinking about the bad thing that happened to you. Keep doing that and you’re soon going to consider purposely eating a bullet. Or, you get in your car, you get on your bike and you go put on your hiking boots and you just go and you go and you go until your body‘s chemistry has changed.

Tony Robbins calls that, “A state change”. When you change your state, you literally change your physiology, your body’s chemistry changes. This is one of the best tips on dealing with adversity.

So, the second part of that is, if we can create an instant pattern interrupt by just getting in our car and putting on our hiking shoes going, the second thing is go out and do something good for others.

The human mind is a very selfish weapon and is designed to be selfish for a reason. It’s always looking for self-preservation.

We have to be selfish so that we have to, “I want to live, I want to live, I want to live.” That’s what our brain wants us to do. However, when we are selfish and we are in a state of depression or funk or adversity, the best thing we can do is go out and do something good for others because that releases the happy hormones. It releases the endorphins that helps you dealing with adversity.

There’s never been a time when someone says, “Thank you,” the person that’s getting thanked hasn’t felt good about that.

Bedros Keuilian

If we can break the pattern, interrupt the pattern and we can go do something good for someone else or our society or for our city or for the homeless in our community. We can temporarily get out of that state of funk and we do that often enough, then, we start creating a new pattern and this how we overcome that bridge. It’s how we bridge the gap and get to the other side of whatever darkness or adversity that people are dealing with.

If you can interrupt the pattern and do something good for someone else, we can temporarily get out of that state of funk. Doing that often will lead you to the other side of adversity.

Bedros Keuilian

My friend Craig Ballantyne always says, “It’s not simple but it’s easy.”

I’ll use your analogy. When you are curled up in bed and you’re in a bit of a funk, if you just break that pattern, if you just get up, open the curtains, go and pet your dog, do something other than the thing you’re doing that’s causing or that’s kind of got you in this funk, you might break that pattern. It’s simple but it’s not easy because we just simply want to stay in that position. But man, if we can just get up and do that thing, holy cow, what a difference.

Bedros Keuilian

That’s a good question.I didn’t realize I was studying or have been using NLP on myself when dealing with adversity. I did it out of sheer desire to survive and I’ll be very transparent with you guys.

The two years before we came to The United States, between the ages of 4 and 6, I was sexually molested for 2 years straight by 2 older boys in our complex there in Armenia and it’s a Soviet Union.

You imagine as you get to an age where you’re a young man and testosterones pumping through your blood and your veins and you feel more confident about yourself, there’s a sense of rage and guilt and shame.

What an interesting combination to put rage, guilt, and shame together in a jar. Shake it up and see what happens. You end up in many fights and you end up in a police helicopter chase. That happened between the time of 4 and 6 but it manifested itself and me going into a complete self-destructive pattern in my late teens and early 20’s.

I realized this very quickly when a cop has their boot on the back of your neck that, “Ah, okay. This strategy didn’t work. What else can I do?” So, I realized there’s always someone bigger and stronger than you.

Bedros Keuilian

I might go out and cause trouble not even realizing what was causing me my trouble. Dealing with adversity is quite challenging sometimes. I didn’t realize that there was guilt and shame and rage that I was held bottled up within. It took a lot of self-work and working with professionals to get that uncovered and work through that.

I quickly realized that I can go and start problems but there are always people bigger and stronger than you. Even if they show up in multiple squad cars and a helicopter, they may be just bigger than you because they show up in numbers and I’m a pretty big guy. I’m 6 foot, 230 pounds, and I’m not ashamed to say that the time that all these happened, I was also using a lot of steroids and so, I was fiercely strong and I had a lot of anger.

Again, going back to that ego, “Okay, this didn’t work,” cops are chasing me, I’ve got a boot on my neck, and I’m likely going to jail. What do I need to do now? So, you really literally hit a fork in the road. I don’t know what got my brain to think this way that I’m in a fork in a road. Do I take the part where I continue to self-destruct and unable to be dealing with adversity or do I take the path of how do I make things right?

I don’t know where that comes from, that thing inside, but I choose to make things right and I choose to start looking within. I’ve gone through so much while dealing with adversity. I’ve gone through so much as a kid when we came to this country. I had my hair washed with gasoline because we couldn’t afford Lice Rid when I got lice. I was eating out of dumpsters.

Bedros Keuilian

If I survived that and I always have a running joke with my family. I go, “Listen, food could be as bad as you want it to be. I can eat it and just got a little indigestion.” Everybody else has diarrhea and they’re vomiting because I’ve eaten food that’s gone so bad. As a kid, I’ve developed this immunity and so, I look at that as my superhero power. Nothing impressive, right?

I said, “If I did that as a kid, if I was able to eat bad food and get used to it, overcame that adversity, why can’t I overcome this adversity of either going to jail or turning my life around?” That’s what I chose to do when dealing with adversity. All of that of course, was a by-product of pattern interrupts, was a by-product of reframing things, and was also a by-product of choosing who my circle of influences.

As I made those conscious choices to be able to be dealing with adversity and stacked my guns, I want to hang-out with my friends who were causing trouble but I knew that I could very likely end up in another police helicopter chase.

Did I study NLP? No. I was using NLP by accident to save myself. I never knew dealing with adversity using NLP. Later I learned as a therapist told me, “Oh, what you’ve been doing is called reframing.” I’m like, “What the hell is that?” “That’s neuro-linguistic programming.” I’m like, “That’s all Asian Chinese to me and I don’t get it.”

Bedros Keuilian

Thank you.