LOA Today - Your Daily Dose Of Happy

What if the key to your mental health wasn’t fixing other people, but finally accepting what you can’t control and pouring your energy into what you can?
That’s the emotional core of this powerful conversation between Walt and Joel about Stoicism in mental health and how it literally helped Joel rebuild his life from nothing.
Early in the discussion, Walt asks the central question: “Why is stoicism such an important mindset to adopt when it comes to developing your own mental health?”
Joel’s answer is both practical and deeply human. He explains that modern cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is rooted in Stoic philosophy. The core idea? “You have zero control over what happens. You have 100% control over your perspective of what happens.”
From heartbreak to addiction, from losing a job to losing a child, Joel keeps coming back to this truth: your power lies in your response, not in the event.
When Walt recalls his own breakup, he remembers how hard it was to accept Joel’s Stoic reminder: “What do you mean I’m never going to get the answers I want?”
Joel didn’t sugarcoat it. Rumination wasn’t going to fix anything. The only real path forward was acceptance and choosing a new response.
The conversation gets especially raw when Joel talks about the death of his son: “When my son passed away, it isn’t that I was unemotional about it. But when I started living again, I understood my mission was to find the areas in my control. How can I honor him?”
This is Stoicism at its most human, not cold, not detached, but heartbroken and still moving forward.
Walt notices something profound: Stoicism isn’t just about coping—it’s about reclaiming ownership of your mental health, instead of depending on a therapist, a partner, or anyone else to fix you. He highlights the irony that: “When we adopt an attitude of taking responsibility for what we can control, we influence what other people do. We can’t control them, but we influence them.”
And that influence can be life-changing. Joel shares the story of a wealthy woman desperate to fix her alcoholic son. He refuses to chase the son. Instead, he focuses on her: “You fix you, and his response to you will be different.”
When she stopped rescuing him, his recovery finally began. Not because she controlled him but because she changed herself.
Throughout the conversation, Walt presses into the deeper implications:
What happens when we cling to the illusion of controlling others?
What if our obsession with getting a specific person or outcome is exactly what keeps us stuck?
How does life change when, like Joel, we wake up asking: “What is in my control today?”
Joel’s own story is proof. Homeless, buried in debt, a convicted felon, he had every reason to give up. Instead, he chose one Stoic step at a time: “There was really only one option. Day one, my power was: go find a job.”
That one option led to another and another and eventually to a life filled with purpose, passion, and helping others heal.
In the end, Stoicism and the Law of Attraction meet in the same place: Focus your mind. Own your choices. Love the life you’re actually living—starting today.
LOA Today Episode Page: https://www.loatoday.net/stoicism
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What if the moment you realize you’re slowly killing yourself becomes the moment you’re reborn?
That’s exactly what happened for Stanley, a former 367-pound attorney and CPA who transformed his life through walking, plant-based eating, emotional healing, and uncompromising self-honesty.
In this powerful conversation on LOA Today with Walt and Anne Marie, Stanley shares how he turned decades of pain, obesity, and grief into a system he now calls The Way of Excellence.
The story starts with trauma. At just eight years old, Stanley’s mother died. He described walking home from school, suddenly knowing she was gone. He didn’t cry for days. At the funeral, he demanded the casket be opened so he could see her. The grief froze inside him and later showed up on his body: “We both literally ate ourselves to oblivion.”
Years later, at his aunt’s funeral, Stanley saw two young boys, one sobbing, one frozen and expressionless. That younger boy became a mirror: “I looked at him, and I said, That’s me.”
He walked over, introduced himself, and said, “I know exactly how you feel.” Then he hugged the boy and told him it was okay to cry and didn’t let go until he did. In that moment, Stanley didn’t just comfort a child. He held, healed, and defended his own inner child.
Walt pressed into the emotional side of this transformation, asking about responsibility and self-kindness. Stanley’s answer was radical in its simplicity: “It wasn’t my mother’s fault. It wasn’t my father’s fault. And it wasn’t my fault either. Blame is irrelevant.”
Instead of blame, Stanley chose responsibility. At 320 pounds, 54 months before his 50th birthday, he asked himself a brutal question: “Where am I going to be in five years if I keep doing what I’m doing?” The answer: “Dead.” And he did not want to be dead.
So he changed that day. He poured his last bottle of scotch down the toilet. He dumped his diet soda. He cut out red meat. Then he began walking - first a few blocks, then hours in a pool, then miles on the road. Over 17 years, he has walked about 72,000 miles, nearly three times around the Earth.
But this wasn’t just about weight. It was about identity.“I am a person who walks.” “I am 100% committed that only healthy foods can enter my mouth.”
Anne Marie, a vegetarian herself, resonated deeply with the journey of changing how you eat, but she also highlighted the emotional wisdom in Stanley’s story: “Mistakes are proof that you’re trying.” “Embrace your good enoughness. You don’t have to be perfect.”
Stanley’s core message is disarmingly human: you are more powerful than you ever imagined, and that power grows when you stop chasing perfection and start committing to better than yesterday.
His parting challenge is simple and profound: “Your goal is simple: beat yesterday. And sometimes, just not falling apart is beating yesterday.”
In a world that sells quick fixes and punishes imperfection, this conversation is a reminder that permanent transformation is built on willingness, kindness to self, long-term thinking and small daily acts of courage.
You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be willing.
LOA Today Episode Page: https://www.loatoday.net/stanley-bronstein
Stanley Bronstein's Website: https://stanleybronstein.com/
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What if the worst things that ever happened to you turned out to be the doorway to everything you were really looking for?
That’s the thread that runs through this powerful conversation between Justin, Walt, and Anne-Marie on LOA Today -  a conversation about addiction, spiritual awakening, comedy, toxic masculinity, and the quiet power of following your heart.
Early in the episode, Justin shares how he grew up in an emotionally suppressive household, with parents who “didn’t understand the concept of love.” They loved him, but couldn’t express it. His mom often retreated into her room; he retreated into his and into television and comedy.
“The TV wasn’t my babysitter, it was a full-blown parent,” Justin says. Comedy became his pain escape: staying up late to watch Saturday Night Live, absorbing the brilliance of David Spade, Chris Farley, Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, Norm Macdonald, Jim Carrey, The Simpsons, and Eddie Murphy. That escape later morphed into something darker: alcohol, harder drugs, homelessness, rehabs, and nights in jail.
Walt asks the question that so many crash-and-burn survivors recognize: “People go through these crash and burn moments and they come out the other side saying, ‘I never want to go through it again, but it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.’ Is that true for you as well?”
Justin’s answer is a resounding yes. He describes losing his mother, his sister, a childhood friend, and the devastating loss of access to his young son and yet, he still says he wouldn’t change any of it: “Good things will still come out of crap, the rose grows from the pot of dirt.”
The turning point came when Justin left the “mansion” of rigid religion - his metaphor for a beautiful but fear-built belief system and started working with a shaman. Meditation, shadow work, and questioning old beliefs cracked everything open. Then came what he calls a “bliss attack”: “It was like a panic attack if you replace panic with love,three hours on my bed and my near life experience.”
In that state, he felt immersed in source energy, the “water the fish swim in,” the unified field behind everything. That experience became the blueprint for his book Sorcery 101 — “sorcery” with a u, about source, not spells.
Anne-Marie locks in on one of the most practical takeaways: intuition. Justin explains the difference between instinct (fear-based, survival mode) and intuition (heart-based guidance), and gives a simple practice: slow breathing, hand on heart, ask yes/no questions, and learn how your yes and no feel. “The mind thinks, but the heart knows.”
The conversation then dives into toxic masculinity and the war on the feminine. Justin calls out the influencers “full of ego and hate,” and says plainly that embracing your feminine side does not erase your masculinity: “You lose those toxic traits that are holding guys back.”
Walt adds a crucial observation: many men silently agree, but are afraid to speak up until someone like Justin does. Then the “silent majority” starts finding its voice.
Through it all, Justin weaves humor, spiritual insight, and raw honesty into a single message: You do have power. You are not your crash and burn. Your heart already knows the way out.
All that’s left is to listen.
LOA Today Episode Page: https://www.loatoday.net/justin-shaw
Justin Shaw's Amazon Link
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What if the moment you were planning to end your life became the moment you finally realized you had a choice?
That’s exactly what happened to Tara, an energy coach from Minnesota, in this powerful, heart-opening conversation on LOA Today with Walt and Jodielynn.
From the very beginning, Tara’s story hits deep. She describes growing up as the “black sheep” of her family - brown hair and brown eyes in a sea of blondes and blue eyes, feeling different in every possible way. At eight years old, during a birthday/Easter family gathering, her aunt casually mentioned seeing her “dad Bruce.” Tara didn’t have a dad named Bruce or so she thought.
The innocent question she ran inside to ask, “Is that my dad?” - was met with stone-cold silence and anger. In that moment, everything shifted. She began to see all the ways she didn’t belong. Only years later, at 12, when she finally met Bruce and saw a “replica” of herself - same laugh, same likes, same energy did she feel, for the first time, “Okay, I belong.”
Then, at 15, Bruce died of cancer. “I felt abandoned by him all over again,” Tara shares. That pain pushed her into a relationship with food that became her emotional lifeline: “Food became my best friend, it never disappointed me.” The result: 338 pounds, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and complete self-loathing as a mother of three who felt she was “a disappointment” to her kids and to herself.
Her breaking point became her awakening. Tara describes the day she locked her bedroom door, ready to end her life—until the door somehow unlocked and her middle son walked in and asked: “Are you going to die, Mama?”
That question shattered everything. “I realized - I can choose,” she says. Up to that moment, she believed life just happened to you. That day, she saw the truth: “I have a choice.” From there, she began learning to love herself, eventually losing 220 pounds and taking her life back.
Later, losing her sister to cancer led her into what she calls a “dark night of the soul” and her first successful meditation. Guided by a healer named Trisha, she met her higher self, who told her: “Tara, I’ve waited a very long time for you to show up. You’re a healer. You’ve always been a healer. The world needs you now more than ever.”
That moment anchored her purpose. Walt asks the question many listeners are silently wondering: “What are the modalities you hang your hat on, the ones you and your clients can count on every time?”
Tara’s answer is clear and grounded:
Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Mental Emotional Release to clear limiting beliefs and negative emotions at the subconscious level.
Integrated Energy Therapy, similar to Reiki but highly hands-on and intuitive, works with the organs and energy bodies to release stored anger, sadness, fear, doubt, and more, then integrating positive energy back in so nothing “empty” attracts more pain.
Throughout the conversation, Tara, Walt, and Jodi Lynn keep returning to a central theme: We trap ourselves with limiting beliefs, old programming, and stories about not being enough, yet healing is always possible, and it begins with awareness and choice.
JodieLynn beautifully sums up one of the biggest takeaways: in any moment, you can gain awareness and choose differently, and that choice can change not just your life, but the lives of everyone around you.
This episode is a reminder that your worst moments can become the very soil your new self grows through - if you let yourself break through.
LOA Today Episode Page: https://www.loatoday.net/tara-wiskow
Tara Wiskow's Website: https://tara-wiskow.com/
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What if the very thing you call “security” is quietly draining the life out of you?
In this powerful conversation, Walt and Joel dive deep into self-responsibility, comfort zones, trauma, mindset, and the wild magic of living at the edge of your growth. What emerges is a brutally honest, emotionally charged message: your life only truly begins when you take responsibility and step beyond what feels safe.
Early in the discussion, Walt shares a striking contrast between two people at a breakfast gathering: a retired woman thrilled to “do nothing” and Walt himself, lit up by his AI project and hungry for what’s next. “She wants to stay exactly in retirement, I’m doing everything I can to get out of the comfort zone.”
That contrast sets up the core question behind the entire conversation: Are you choosing comfort, or are you choosing growth?
Joel explains that the comfort zone isn’t just emotional - it’s biological. The brain is wired for homeostasis, to keep you “safe in the cave.” “Stepping away from that comfort zone is like, man, that’s just where all the magic is. Nothing occurs inside the comfort zone except the same old redundant thing.”
Walt reframes the comfort zone in a way that hits hard: “A comfort zone is where we maintain the same behaviors; it’s the same thing as being blocked.”
So when we say, “I’m blocked,” what we often mean is: “I’m repeating the same patterns and refusing to leave my comfort zone.”
From there, the conversation shifts into self responsibility. Joel doesn’t sugarcoat it: “Most people’s trauma is not their fault but they are 100% responsible for fixing their trauma.”
It’s a statement that, as Joel admits, “pisses people off,” but he follows it with the only question that actually changes lives: What are you willing to do differently?
They share story after story:
A man who built a $500 million company driven by a father who refused to pay for his college.
Twin brothers who both had an alcoholic father—one saying, “I’m an alcoholic because my dad’s an alcoholic,” the other saying, “I’m not an alcoholic because my dad’s an alcoholic.”
Same facts. Different mindset. Radically different lives.
Walt reveals a deeply personal breakthrough: learning to treat himself with kindness instead of constant self-criticism. That inner shift led a woman he was dating to tell him: “You’re the kindest man I’ve ever met.”
He never set out to earn that label. It emerged as a ripple effect of being kinder to himself while taking responsibility for his own resistance and patterns.
Joel distills one of the most powerful tools of all: “If I am up against something I’m having trouble with, I need to walk away and change my mindset.”
Walt calls it a mic-drop moment because it is. That’s the turning point: Not “How do I force this to work?” but “How can I see this differently?”
By the end, they circle back to the world we’re living in now - chaotic, magical, AI-driven, and full of possibility. “If you really want to live life to your absolute fullest, keep living life.”
The real question is: Will you keep choosing the cave or will you finally step into the magic outside your comfort zone?
LOA Today Episode Page: https://www.loatoday.net/self-responsibilty
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