Do you want to direct your life with purpose and meaning? Travis Belanger discusses the power of personal goals and how they can inspire you and make you passionate! In this episode, he joins Susi Vine to talk about: 

• Seeking solutions to “common” relationship issues,
• Getting pumped up on personal development, and
• Books that inspire you to think differently, do better, and be more.

Follow Travis’s coaching work and frequent live videos on his Men on Fire Facebook page, where you can also find his Ignite your Life men’s discussion group. 

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Watch the episode here:

The Power Of Personal Goals 

Travis Belanger is a coach who inspires men to ignite their life and become their best self. He was inspired to help other men when he observed so many friends and co-workers struggling with the same personal issues while working on oil fields and then running his own successful welding business in Canada. We talk about personal development, the power of books to shift your mindset, and working with groups to facilitate conversation and growth. 

I’m happy to have you with us while I share a terrific conversation that I had with Travis Belanger, a coach, as well as a welder up in Canada. He’s the Founder of Men on Fire Coaching and the host of the Ignite Your Life private Facebook group where men come together to support each other, share, be authentic and inspire each other to grow. You’re going to get a lot out of this conversation about the benefits of personal development and you might take away some books to add to your own list as Travis has got quite a list of inspirations. Sit back and enjoy the conversation. 

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I’m excited to share with you a talented man from up North, Travis Belanger from Morinville Canada. He is the Founder of Men on Fire Coaching. When he’s not busy welding projects all over the Great White North, he is also helping men get connected and inspired to find what they love and find what fulfills them. You’ll find his page on Facebook and you’ll also find there, if you’d like to join his group, Ignite Your Life Brotherhood where he’s leading meetings and you can get together, connect with men and have conversation. 

He helps men ignite their life and reclaim their passion and purpose through men’s groups coaching, speaking, workshops and corporate events. He’s spreading the message that improving the conversations we have with ourselves and others can take you to the next level in all areas of your life. Travis, I’m grateful to you for carving out a little bit of time. I know you’re busy welding before the winter sets in up in Canada. Thanks for the time. 

You’re welcome. It’s a pleasure to be here. 

I, from the Midwest, from the Heartland, come from a farming country. A lot of people I went to school with now work with Caterpillar in heavy equipment and that sort of thing. I’m acquainted with people who work with their hands and to go then into coaching is a leap. How did you decide that this is something that you want to bring out in your life work? What brought you into coaching? 

I did the typical thing. You talked about the Midwest and Finning. What we do in Alberta is go into the oil patch. Right off the farm, I moved into the big city and before long I was working on drilling rigs. My experience of drilling rigs for six years was they moved me around a lot. I would go fill in on different rigs for guys to take time off. Every 2nd or 3rd time they’d moved me, it was to take time off so a guy could take a week off to go get divorced after seventeen years of marriage and four kids.  

I was like, “Why don’t you just take the next six months or a year off, go work on your marriage because you’re going to split half of what you worked with then your wife is going to want to go to school and she’s going to take the other half. You’re going to be so pissed off and frustrated that you’re going to be a miserable person. You might as well just go take some time off now.” I saw guys that were successful in the higher-up positions that had to buy their kids every time they went back or they had to buy their partner back. It was crazy and I’m like, “This is not right.”  

I left that and I got into the welding trade and I saw the same thing where guys work, don’t work on themselves, don’t work on their relationships, don’t work on their family. It’s not uncommon for a guy in the welding industry to be divorced 2 or 3 times because they go work a pipeline but when you’re gone for six months, what do you expect to happen? What do you think is going to happen when you leave everybody behind?  

I saw a need for that and it didn’t click until a couple of years ago when I started doing personal development. I’m like, “There’s some interesting stuff here that I’m learning.” It’s stuff that guys need to talk about that we don’t talk about. It’s stuff that guys need to read because guys don’t read. We don’t. We look at car magazines. We look at other magazines that have nothing to do with personal development or humanity, in general. If they miss it, they’re missing the boat. 

That’s interesting because, personally, that’s when I made the pivot to get into holistic health when I was seeing the end result. At that point, I was working with clients in their 80s and 90s and I saw the health issues that they had. Working upstream, if we want to have better choices, we need to make different choices earlier in order to turn that ship around. That’s powerful to come from that place where you ask the questions. Sometimes it’s perplexing why everybody isn’t asking those questions.  

If everyone in the industry is running into broken families and relationships, what needs to change? In society, we’re in this rhythm, in this routine and there are these expectations that that’s just the way it is. Some things are hard. Some relationships aren’t going to last but this is what this career requires. I’m making good money but then suddenly, you’re dividing your money in 1, 2 or 3 ways because you can’t keep a family together. 

That’s a powerful perspective shift. I appreciate what you’re saying too. Looking into personal development starts making you ask questions. One of those questions a lot of the time is, “Why aren’t more of us having these conversations?” How do you start to open up that conversation? Personally, I’m on a mission to bring men into the conversation on how it doesn’t have to be complicated to live healthier, about how it’s okay to first, admit that there’s stress and second, to look for solutions to it. How do you start opening this channel of communication? 

In my welding business for the past years, I’ve never been shy of business. I’ve always had an abundance of work. There are times where the economy slows down and that’s normal but I’ve never had to look for work. It’s because I attribute it to having specific conversations where when I talked to a guy about work, the conversation is 5 minutes about work and 20 minutes about family, fishing. What do they like to do? What do they do for fun? Where have they gone that’s fun? When was the last time they did anything that was fun?  

Pointing that out to guys and having that conversation a lot of times opens up the door. “I haven’t done anything fun,” or, “We did this,” and then talking about what makes them happy. A lot of times, my question is what do you enjoy doing? What makes you happy? The next time work comes up and if it has to do with welding, I’ve had that emotional connection, I’m going to get that phone call. If something comes up in their life that they need to talk about, the next time I see that guy, that’s going to be a conversation we’re going to have. 

It happens to me quite often where I’m on a job site and a guy walks up and says, “Good morning. How’s it going? Guess what I did with my kid?” The guy opens up and starts talking. I’ll have people that call me and say, “I listened to your video. I don’t know what to do. I’m stuck.” I get that all the time. I’m the guy that gets those phone calls. “I don’t know what to do here. I don’t know what to do there. Do you know somebody?” That’s what got me to that point where I learned how to have those conversations. It’s the questions you ask. There’s something in business that they use in a network, a thing called FORM. It’s Family, Occupation, Recreation and Money. If you can apply it to your personal life, they’re great. It’s a great way to open a conversation and see where people are because you never know how people are doing. 

Any of us get into this pattern where the short easy answer is, “I’m fine. Life’s busy.” It takes that extra effort to get below the surface. It does stand out for the same reason because so few people make that effort. I find myself in conversations like that all the time. People seem surprised. They’ll have a 30 or 45-minute verbal purge and then they’ll say, “You’re easy to talk to.” It’s like, “Because I listen. I tune in, listen and I want to hear what’s going on.” There’s a severe shortage of that going around. It’s a powerful connection to be able to hold for people but also for people to feel, seen, heard and recognized, male or female. 

It’s been proven that people like to talk about themselves. If you give them the opportunity, they will tell you all kinds of things about their life, even things you don’t want to know about their life. 

We’ve been trained not to complain too much, make waves or make people uncomfortable. When you’re working with people or in more casual conversations like we’ve been talking about, how do you help people feel comfortable stepping into change? There are a lot of expectations and societal norms that don’t serve us. 

Talking about my own experience is number one and being vulnerable. That’s one thing we have this fear on so many things, we don’t want to be vulnerable. We’re like, “I’m not going to talk about that because then it makes me look bad,” “It makes me look like I don’t have money,” or, “It makes me look like I don’t have the skill.” It’s vulnerability and we’re so afraid of vulnerability. Somebody whose books I’ve read is Brené Brown, all of her books.  

She is amazing and it’s so funny because I read one of her books and then I read another book called The Mask of Masculinity. Those two books are tied together. Brené Brown, a female author, and a lot of guys are not going to look at what they call the feminine. It’s unfortunate that personal development takes a feminine trait to it but as men, we have both. The part about being vulnerable, if you don’t understand it, maybe you should read about it. That’s what I would say, “If you don’t understand something then get more information about it.” We do it all the time, guys do it when they’re fixing their hot rods. Guys do it when they’re fixing their computers. Whenever they fix anything, the information is there, the internet. Google vulnerability and stuff will come up. 

That’s a great suggestion. You talked about how much you’ve assimilated from that genre of personal development. If somebody recognizes, “The way I’m operating isn’t working for me. I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t know where to start,” where would you suggest somebody look to get started?” 

There are a few different places. I was reading a book, Bob Proctor on personal investment, that you should invest 10% to 20% of your income back into yourself in your lifetime. I stopped and I was like, “10%? I’m so far behind. I better take a year off and just go do personal development,” because I’ve made enough. My welding business has been successful, I could take a couple of years off and spend money on myself. 

When I started doing courses, and sometimes the courses are a little outside your comfort zone for spending but it’s worth it. There are little things a guy can do. One of the things that I have is I have a YouTube subscription which allows me to download onto my phone, everybody has a phone and listen to it or watch it later. We’re always on our phone so why not listen or watch something that’s productive. It’s $14 a month and it’s unlimited. You can just about find any book on there, any kind of movie, video or whatever and it’s incredible. 

I download Gary Vee’s stuff and Ed Mylett’s stuff. There are podcasts and they are free. Even Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul Sunday, I listen to that. There’s fantastic stuff on there and she has lots of great guests on there. I also have an Audible subscription which is $14 a month. You download a book, you can exchange a book if you don’t like it and then the book stays in your library. I tell people, “Don’t just listen to a book one time, listen to it multiple times.”  

Years ago, I was on a big kick with Grant Cardone. He is a successful real estate mogul. He has a book called Be Obsessed or Be Average, I listened to that book 30 times in a row. I would be jacked up in the morning listening to it. Every day, I was pumped all the time. Why not? People will take other substances to get pumped up every morning, caffeine and smoking or whatever else. It’s just wrecking your body. Whereas something like an audiobook is super good for you. The Audible subscription and YouTube, if you think about it, it’s two visits to Starbucks. That’s all it is. 

It’s endless information in the car, if you’re working where you can be listening to things, you can adjust the playback speed. Here’s something that I was excited to discover because I end up with all these Kindle books that I never have time to sit down and read. You can ask Alexa through the app on your phone to read your Kindle books so then you can make those audible too. 

That’s awesome. Does it have a robot voice on her? Does she have a nice voice? 

Unless Alexa has varieties, I think you have to listen to Alexa read it. I don’t know how she translates. 

The audiobooks are powerful. I’ve had so many audiobooks on my list and there are just many good ones out there that have changed how I see things. 

Do you have a list of some of your favorites on your Facebook page? I know that’s where you tend to share information and you’re posting videos all the time that people can check out. Do you have a little hotlist on books? 

I do. I’ll go through my list. One is called Zero to One. These are more business related. Another one is called The Mask of Masculinity with Lewis Howes. The Wealthy Barber Returns, that’s another one, that’s by David Chilton. I’ve got Thinking Big. There’s Zig Ziglar, Les Brown and Larry Iverson, they’re all good tickets. Brendon Burchard has a book called Life’s Golden Ticket, that book is outstanding. The Secret to Success by Eric Thomas is good. Awaken the Giant Within with Anthony Robbins. Crushing It! by Gary Vaynerchuk. He’s got video snippets he does every day, I listen to that a lot. 

One book I’ve read and given away probably a dozen times is How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It should be a high school book that people should read. That book is amazing. It is such a good book. Brené Brown, The Power of Vulnerability, Dare to Lead, Daring Greatly. She’s got a whole bunch of good stuff. Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. There’s one book by this guy named Aubrey Marcus, Own the Day, Own Your Life. That book was pretty crazy.  

I was shocked at what I learned from that book and I was like, “I have the audio. Now, I need the hardcopy so I can take notes and write stuff down.,” because I got to stop all the time and take notes down. The Alchemist is another good book. The audiobook is especially good because of the way it was read, it’s a lady who’s Mexican. It’s from way back in the day. It’s an older book but The Alchemist is one of those books that a person should read. It’s an incredible book.  

That would be a great gift for teenagers. To plant that seed. That’s a beautiful book. There are many great ones on that list. 

It’s funny because I read them all. I probably listened to them each twenty times. They are such good books. People think you learn something once and you never have to revisit it again. They don’t realize that their experience wherever they are in their life, you’ll read the book and you’ll find something in that book that will relate to that moment in time of where they are. Many people I hear are like, “I wish it was like it was back then,” but you never can have that. It’s always going to be something different. By reading books, you can change that and the narrative that you use all the time. 

It’s powerful to get that information, know that other people are absorbing the same thing. We’re still operating within our same community, our same circle of friends, our same life situation and we start to make changes but it gets a little uncomfortable. Our friends aren’t listening to the same things that we are. They’re wondering where this is coming from and why we don’t just sit back and fit in, make it easy the way that we used to. How do you help people keep moving in a better direction once they’ve decided, “These are some great ideas, I want to see how this works for me?” 

Continuing to read the books is important. Some people don’t want to talk about business stuff. Some people want to talk about personal stuff. A lot of times, I find more so people come to talk to me about their personal stuff. They call me because they’re having trouble in their marriage. It’s about setting habits and being intentional. When I refer to my fiancé, Michelle, a lot of times I referred to her as my Queen or my Goddess. I’ll use those terms when I’m talking to people because we’re so used to guys that call their wife their old lady. 

I know some women want to punch their guys in the face when they hear that. It’s like calling me my old man. I’m far from old, I’m just as agile as I ever have been. It’s changing the language that you use and staying consistent. You’ve got to build that habit. I’ve always been fairly fit. Once you get in your 40s things change and you need to exercise and be diligent about it. If you talk to anybody who’s successful, they will say, “Exercise daily. Gratitude daily. Journal daily. Read daily.” If you’re not reading, listen to something daily. We forget about these things. We forget about these behaviors and then we wonder at the end of our life, “Why am I depressed? Why am I overweight? Why am I unhealthy?” You’ve got to create those habits to get to where you want to go. 

Even though it’s hard. I heard 45% of what we do is habitual. It’s not easy to shift those habits. We’ve got bad habits. We want to create better habits. Even negative self-talk is a habit that you can start to break apart, remove and replace. It takes effort. It’s uncomfortable to make those changes because no matter where we are, even if this place might not be working for us but it’s safer because it’s what we know. Getting out of that, getting uncomfortable and staying in that place of growth is hard to do initially. 

It doesn’t have to be something big. Brené Brown talks about that as well in her book, she says it doesn’t have to be a big change. Do one minute a day. She said when she was learning meditation, you can’t sit down and do it the first time for twenty minutes. There’s no way. Try it for five. She has a hard time shutting her brain off. That’s me. I’m always go, go, go. I’ve learned how to just sit, be and relax. Listen to myself breathe. I know so many guys that I don’t even think they know what that is. It’s important. We need to learn how to do those things. 

That’s a powerful reminder. I try to remind people as much as possible. Meditation is definitely a practice that I have to keep coming back to. I’m not sitting still. I’m not good at making that mental space. It starts with 1 minute or 2 minutes. It doesn’t have to be I meditate because I do a 40-minute practice on a special cushion with a special altar in front of me. Check-in with your breath for 1 minute or 2 minutes and see how powerful that is of bringing you back to center. 

We do it at different points in our life. If you live in a big city, you drive out in the countryside and you stop your car, you get out, you look at the stars and you’re like, “You can see the stars out here.” You then sit and you just look. A lot of times, when you sit in front of fire, you don’t think about anything. You watch the fire. It’s not hard to do, people do it. If you can sit in front of a TV and watch a movie for three hours, why can’t you sit and think about your day? I know people talk about manifesting as being hoofy–foofy but you do set goals. At work, if you work for somebody, you’re setting goals. Hopefully, your boss is saying, “What’s your goal for this month?” You’ve got to do it for yourself as well. What’s your goal for this month? What are you working on? That keeps you moving forward. 

That’s such a great point because we do. Other goals are placed upon us at work or that sort of thing but we don’t think about how we can set personal goals. Unless you’re already in this personal development space and you’re absorbing all of this and getting inspired. It’s a new habit to think about what would I like more of? What do I want to bring in? How do I want to feel when I start my day? How do I want to feel when I end my day? The gratitude practice is so powerful because it trains our brain to look for the better parts of the day. Our brain is trained to hold on to the bad stuff, the hard lessons. That’s how we learn, from stress. When we can train our brain to value those better exchanges and those benefits, that’s powerful then we start to feel happier because we’re seeing more of that. 

You’re investing in yourself. You’re making it into an emotional thing for yourself, an emotional decision.  

Tell me a little bit about the group that you have some meetings online where people can come together and be in conversation. We can now transcend distance and join in from anywhere. How does that look? 

it looks good. I’ve got people in Washington that listen to my stuff. I’ve got people in BC, in the province next to me. The Ignite Your Life Brotherhood, we have some in-person meetings as well but the online part of it where people can come, talk and they can either listen. I will talk about something specific. I can almost say 90% of the time, I’m reading a book or listening to something that you’re not listening to. I will definitely have a different perspective.  

Sometimes, it’s about being there and listening and then asking questions afterward. It’s the place where you can ask questions. It’s a safe container where guys can have a conversation. They can say, “I did this the other day. This is what’s going on with me and my wife,” my girlfriend or my whatever at work. “I don’t know how to figure this out. What does anybody have to say about that?” Some guys open up with personal stuff. It’s a great place to do that because you can get some constructive feedback with no judgment. 

Which is priceless. 

When we see how we’ve helped that person, we can go, “I know somebody else that’s going through that same situation,” and then we know what works and what doesn’t work. 

I can’t tell you how many times I’m talking with someone, I might be sharing an insight or something that I’ve read or advice. As the words are coming out of my mouth, I realize that’s exactly what I need to hear. This situation, this conversation is serving me as much as I’m trying to support this other person that I’m in conversation with. That’s what I love about group conversations like that because you might show up and think, “I don’t have anything to talk about. Let’s just see what’s going on,” or, “I want to feel and community for a bit. I’ll drop in and offer some support.” 

The topics that come up are so in line with what you have going on, where you’re at, what you’re thinking about. Do they spark questions that you didn’t realize? What kind of brewing? That’s the beautiful power of group conversation. There’s always something to serve you even if you don’t know what that’s going to be going in. I’m glad you’re making that available. That’s tremendous. I’m excited to share this with everybody. If it calls to them, they can check that out through the Facebook page and then you can ask to join the private group, The Ignite Your Life Brotherhood and drop in on these meetings which is tremendous. 

There is other stuff that I share on my Facebook page too. If my men’s group is not one that resonates with you, there are a lot of other men’s groups that are online. I’m a part of six of them where we share each other’s information. Usually, I try to do a daily video or a daily post. I’ll share a link from one of those places or a link to a Gary Vaynerchuk post, video or something where a guy can have an opportunity to gain some knowledge or figure something out. 

Those are such great tools. Thanks for putting that all together and curating that. 

I enjoy it. 

One thing that I wanted to make sure to come back to is priceless and something to consider. Guys don’t typically look at themselves as something worth investing in or developing. How would you plant the seed that guys can look towards more? 

It’s more through example. When I talk to a lot of guys, I’ll talk about my successes but also talk about my challenges and my struggles. You can’t talk about success all the time because people have a hard time relating to that especially now. Everybody’s going through so much crazy stuff that if all I talk about is how great my work is, how much work I have and how great I’m doing, they’re going to be like, “I can’t relate to that.” It’s not relatable.  

It’s like when you listen to Bill Gates doing a talk, I can’t relate to Bill Gates. That guy’s a multi-billionaire. He doesn’t have the need or want for anything. He has no struggles. He has struggles but they’re just different than what we’re having. I try to be relatable to people that it allows them to be able to stay connected. If you become unrelatable and you’re not talking about stuff that’s pertinent, it’s not going to work. If you can attract those people to you by talking about things that they’re going through, they can understand or maybe that they want more information on, that’s what’s going to keep people coming around. 

That’s an important point because it’s easy to find numbers saying that the more time people spend on social media, the higher levels of depression or social isolation come up. Because we’re only seeing these polished views of how people’s lives are. We hold ourselves to these impossible standards because it’s not true. It’s like people saying that life-work balance is impossible. I don’t think it has to be impossible. Holding your vision of balance to someone else’s picture of balance is impossible. You get to choose what that looks like for you. 

We put so much emphasis on what other people think, doing what the Joneses are doing and I’m like, “I’ve never been that guy. I don’t care what anybody thinks. Why would I care? They’re not putting food in my mouth. They’re not putting money in my bank account. They’re not sending me on a holiday. They’re not doing any of that stuff for me. It’s up to me to make that stuff happen. It’s up to me to decide what goes in here and how healthy I am. It’s up to me to decide that. I don’t need anybody to tell me that.” I’ll take somebody’s advice if I’m looking for it or maybe they’ll share something with me that will help me but it’s up to me. If it’s going to be, it’s up to me. That’s a pertinent saying that applies to everybody. We’ve got to realize that who we surround ourselves with is so important. Don’t have people that don’t elevate you in your life. It’s great to be a tag-along. Why be a tag-along? Why not elevate yourself?  

Not to say that you have to separate yourself from your entire social circle but you can expand beyond that group that doesn’t understand what you’re working on or that you feel is keeping you from being the person that you want to be. 

That’s where I’ve come from. There’s nobody in my circle that I grew up with that is remotely doing what I’m doing, not even close. I’m good with that. 

Because the people who are going to get some insights and ideas that are going to take that inspiration or leadership, they’ll benefit in the end. Everybody’s going to make their own path and hopefully be happy with it. Some of us are driven to look for a little bit more. I love how you’re making this available and sharing your own insights and experience to people who may be where you are, maybe younger and just starting out. Maybe in a more traditional trade occupation and not recognize that there are people having this conversation. I love how this is opening up channels and bringing folks together. I don’t want to take more of your busy workday. Is there anything else that you’d like to share in this conversation? I would love to follow-up with you again and have you back to continue another time. For this installment, is there anything else front of mind for you? 

You’re in control of what you think. You’re in control of how your day can go. Set some goals and journal. Have gratitude. I’m so grateful that we connected. It’s been an awesome experience doing this show with you. I want to give you some gratitude for that. Thank you so much. 

Thank you. Thanks for doing your good work up North. Hopefully sometime, our paths will cross. Maybe my Canadian husband and I will come up and we’ll do snowmobiling. 

You have to experience that. 

I’m up for that adventure. He’s brought me up on my adventure rating scales. I’ll work on that. Thanks so much, Travis. Wishing you well. Stay healthy and hope to talk to you soon. 

You’re welcome. 

Take care. 

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Thank you for tuning in. To learn more about living life with less stress and more flow, visit HappifiedLive.com. If you found value in this episode, make sure you subscribe to catch the next one. Leave a review to help fellow pod surfers find Happified. Until next time, keep on shining. 

Important Links: 

• Men on Fire Coaching
• Ignite Your Life
• The Mask of Masculinity
• Be Obsessed or Be Average
• Zero to One
• The Wealthy Barber Returns
• Thinking Big
  
• Life’s Golden Ticket
• The Secret to Success
• Awaken the Giant Within
• Crushing It!
• How to Win Friends & Influence People
• The Power of Vulnerability
• Dare to Lead
• Daring Greatly
• Big Magic
• Own the Day, Own Your Life
• The Alchemist