GTFU Podcast Episode 1

Episode 1 is an introduction to the GTFU Mentality. This weeks message is about Starting over. You may ask yourself, "How many times do I need to start over?" I discuss how I have and hope you are encouraged to keep going.

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It is said that every journey begins with a single step. But first, you have to get the fuck up. Hello, my name is Alan Castillo, and I would like to introduce you to GTFU. GTFU is a mentality that we sometimes need to get the fuck up. When we go through some of the most challenging times of our lives, we must sometimes be aggressive with those challenges. I will agree that the F-word can be a bad word, but I'll tell you some other bad words. Depression, anxiety, addiction. These are also bad words. So with that said, words are just words until we give them meaning. So let me ask you, how do you define these words? See, they all have their definition, but we give them our own meaning. This is where the GTFU mentality comes in. GTFU is that internal aggression. We need to battle some of these things to fight and to keep them from being bad words. So as a disclaimer here, I'd like to say that I am not a professional mental health expert by any means, and I will not discredit anyone's professional opinion or faith. All I can do is help encourage anyone that maybe experience some of these things. As a matter of fact, I am using this platform to bring together as many of us to help support and encourage each other. I welcome your opinions, questions, and professional knowledge. Now my intention here is to give a voice to those who may think they don't have a voice. You're not alone in your struggles, I promise you that. Especially in this day of social media and opinion. It's a little crazy right now. It's okay to be different, have your own voice, and have your own thoughts. But it all starts with making the decision to GTFU. Now I will give an honest account of my own struggles and how I manage to move forward. But some discretion is advised. It gets pretty intense. I will be sharing a weekly message of encouragement in hopes that at least one person can be encouraged. I also encourage everyone listening to share comments, ideas, or suggestions for future topics. Now let me tell you about my background a little bit. I was a correctional officer for 18 years in Northern California. I retired about three years ago. And that was an amazing experience. I was part of the CERT team. I was a cert operator. CERT stands for Correctional Emergency Response Team. They're basically like SWAT for the jail. You know, we responded to a lot of high security, high-risk situations and incidents within the jail. It was pretty cool, I'll tell you. I learned about leadership and I learned about training. I was able to instruct and teach on cell extractions and all kinds of cool stuff unique to the jail environment. The other part of that job, that career that was pretty awesome was I was able to do Battle of the Badges. It's a charity boxing in Northern California. And I had seven fights, I think seven fights, six or seven fights. I don't know. I don't remember now. Got hit a lot. But at 52 years old, I became the uh A Masters champion at the Super Cruiserweight. And at 54 years old, I went back and defended that title. And that was an amazing, amazing fight. What's cool about these the boxing was that I learned what struggle really was, physical struggle. See, when you're on a stage this high, and thousands of people are looking at you with cameras and video, you better show up in shape, and it will show if you're not. And I don't want to embarrass myself, and I did once. Um, but it was an amazing, amazing experience to be able to serve my community for 18 years and do Battle of the Badges. It's pretty cool. My fights are actually on YouTube if uh if you're interested in watching me get hit in the face. But it was fun. Um it was amazing, and even now at 56 years old, I keep thinking, uh, maybe I got one more. We'll see. But uh that was an amazing part of my life. I um I'm divorced twice, and I have two sons of my own, uh 31 and 23 years old. Amazing kids. They also trained with me uh as little guys. As a matter of fact, my youngest uh helped me get ready a couple years ago by sparring with me. He got to hit me. That was pretty cool. So today's message is something we can all relate to. Starting over. It gets frustrating. I've had my I've asked myself many times, how many times do I gotta keep starting over? It's so frustrating. And the answer is every time. Every single time. See, as life evolves, we have to evolve as well. What we learn is what we teach, all because of how we evolve when we're pressed and challenged. For example, do you remember when you learned to walk as a baby? Probably not. But I tell you this, you learned to walk on your own, didn't you? How many times did you fall and get up and fall and get up? It's like you had no choice, right? You tried and tried and tried again, and then all of a sudden you're running. We choose not to quit as babies. I'll give you an example. When my son was born, actually I watched both of them be born. Uh it was amazing, a little traumatic at first, but it's such a miracle. So my son, my oldest was born, my first kid, and I uh, ooh, man, a little traumatic thinking about it. So I was there, we we went to the hospital and she's ready to pop, and and I'm like, I'm nervous, I'm gonna meet my kid finally. I've seen all the belly movement and everything. So we get there and go through all this stuff. He ends up being born, and I watched the miracle of this happening. He's minutes old when he's given to his mother, and right away he's looking for something to eat. You know what I mean? He's looking for the breast, he knows where the food is. How does he know this? He finds it and he knows exactly what to do. I didn't have to teach him anything. He came out of the womb wanting to survive. He was already an achiever, and that's how we're all born. We're all born that way. So when did we start quitting on ourselves? Maybe when we had the choice. We just want to keep getting up, learning to walk, learning to run, learning to talk. I think, and if Queen, this is just my opinion. I think when we learn to be social, we start having opinions, we start having life experiences, ups and downs, and other challenges, when we start wondering what we're about. Our experience determines how we handle these changes. But don't forget, we were born to achieve. We learn to crawl, walk, run. My life experience had purpose the day I saw my son come into this world. Finally, had my purpose, and that was to raise my son. And then I had another one, and uh, they're amazing kids. At this point, oh, check this out. I got a book. I wrote a book. It's called uh GTFU, A Journey of Faith. What it's about, it's on Amazon by the way, it's about me, it's a memoir. I speak a little bit about my childhood and my parents and the way I grew up. And um it was it was interesting to write. Uh most of it is about what happened uh in October of 2019. In October of 2019, my daughter was killed. After she died, had three friends die. My brother died, and it was the end of a 20-year marriage. All of that happened within 16 months. And it was pretty traumatic. And um the book chronicles all of this. So writing the book was very therapeutic. It was very therapeutic, and it's uh been an amazing experience. I don't have any regrets about anything. So you're probably wondering, how do you go through all of this and still be here? I've had people tell me I would never know that you went through all these things because of the way you are. I'm friendly, and I I love talking to people. And I always answer them with, I am the way I am because of what I went through. I experienced life a different way. Everything I was afraid of happening happened, and I didn't have any choice. But there was one thing, one thing that got me through, and that was my faith. I'm a Christian man, I fear God, and I don't fear that he is going to strike me down, but I fear that if I don't trust him, things will be bad. And it was like that for a long time. Uh, I had to come to him. So, again, I'm not gonna preach to you. This is just my experience. And my faith is what got me through. What I found out about faith was that faith is hard. Faith is hard. See, when we're going through hard times and and internal pain, our heart's broken, we have a breakup, or someone dies, we uh we want immediate relief. When my daughter Krista was killed, I had my issues with God, no doubt. I like, I thought to myself, why? Why would you take her? She's so beautiful, so young, so much to offer. And that was the first time and the only time I questioned God, because I found out that she was going to save four or five lives with her organ donation. And I thought, okay, all right, God, I don't like it, but I get it. And my faith was restored because I don't know God's plan for those five lives. So faith played a huge part in me being here today. Like I said, faith is difficult. We want immediate relief, and we don't know what the plan is. So, with that said, it uh it's again, I keep saying it over and over, but it's been an amazing life. It's been an amazing experience to where I am today, and I am blessed. I'll tell you about a conversation I had with one of my sisters. We talked about karma. I asked her, what's worse, karma or God's will? And after talking for a while, determined that, well, we all know what karma is. Energy given is the energy returned, and vice versa, you know, who we hang out with, you know, who's encouraging, who's not, which is true. It's true. But I think God's will is much more brutal. And I say that because God doesn't give us what we want, He gives us what we need. And again, we want immediate relief, but sometimes the obstacle is the path. Sometimes we have to be humbled, sometimes we have to go through these things. So faith played a huge role in who I am today, and I am proud to say that I am a good man. The second thing I did was focus on my physical health. I was unhealthy. At the time I drank a lot, I didn't smoke, but I did drink a lot, and I didn't realize I drank a lot. That's the funny part about it. You know, I'd um get off work on the weekends, it's my Friday, go down to the local brewery, and that's how I dealt with things. So I had to work on my physical health. Once all of these things happened to me, I went back to the gym. Now, the GTFU part about that is not the gym, it's not the workout. See, exercise, and again, it's exercise is not a bad word. It's an investment in yourself. Now you can go hiking, walking, walk through the park, walking your dog, canoeing, pickleball. Although I never played pickleball. It looks like tennis. But tennis, I mean anything physical, weightlifting for me was boxing and weightlifting, running. All of these things are vital in recuperating from some of these bad things. You have to focus on yourself and you have to invest in yourself. And there's no better way to invest in yourself than physical exertion. Because every step you take, every rep is an investment in yourself. That's the ultimate. So, with that said, in the new future, I'm gonna start coaching again. One of the best things I've learned about coaching was to see somebody become better. And I fed off of that. That's kind of like the karma part of this. Um, but it was so encouraging to see somebody working and becoming better. So I'm gonna get into coaching again, and I um what I do is uh basically self-defense. It's um boxing, cardio, agility, some strength training, sandbags, running, a little bit of everything. And uh the best part about this kind of training is it's good for any age and any fitness level. Matter of fact, when I was training for my boxing, my sons used to train with me. They were 10 years old, six years old, something like that, 12 years old. And we were all doing the same workout, and it was pretty amazing to watch them evolve. And I believe it helped them all a lot too. See, when I was six years old, I uh I was I was in boxing. My mother put me in boxing, I was kind of a pain in the butt. It's actually in it's actually in here. Uh my mother was a huge influence on me. So the things I learned in boxing, and I remember one thing specifically. I don't remember ever being afraid when I sparred or when I fought, but I did the work. I remember doing all the neck rolls, the running. And all of that work instilled a work ethic in me that thrives in me today. It's very hard for me to quit. It's very difficult for me not to do a good job. So I encourage you to reach out to me. Um, in the near future, I'll I'll be having some plans. It's going to be one-on-one training and group training as well. There'll be a little bit of self-awareness, agility, striking. And and it all boils down to that first step. That first step to GTFU. You have to make that decision. And I've been helping people make that first step for a long time. And it's amazing. And it's time to get back to it. So feel free to reach out to me at uh gtfuservices at gmail.com if you have any questions or comments on this video. Um, I plan to do a weekly video uh of encouragement, maybe talk to some people. We'll see what happens, you know. But I have faith. I have faith that um we're gonna help some people. If you're interested in any of the shirts or or the hats, again, email me at gtfuservices at gmail.com. Um feel free to ask me anything. In uh conclusion here, I want to say thank you if you're still here. Um please be encouraged. Have a great week. It's gonna be an amazing life. It really is. Whatever you're going through right now isn't who you are. What we're going through now is a building block. It's building us to be who we're supposed to be. So have faith in the process. Okay, I'm gonna cut it right here. Thank you so much for joining me and have a great week. Take care.