How to Face Fear Like a Firewalk Captain (with Dave Albin)

[Dana] (00:01)
Welcome to Phoenix in Flame. I’m Dana and this is my podcast on pushing through and transforming even when you feel like a pile of ash. We have a fantastic guest with us today, and I’m really super excited because of how it kind of goes with Phoenix in Flame: who we have with us is Dave Albin, who happens to have been with Tony Robbins for almost 20 years as the Fire Walk Captain. As you all know, I’m very interested in the whole process of what a phoenix does. There’s ash, and we all know what that feels like, to sit in a pile of ash. I’d like to hear people’s stories of what their experience was like, what their trauma was like, what that was like for them when they just felt like they were a pile of ash. But then there comes a rising, and the phoenix rises, but the way it becomes ash is because there’s fire, there’s fire involved. And I also really like hearing people’s stories of what was the fire for them, what happened before they felt like they were a pile of ash. So I’m really going to be interested to talk to Dave about what that experience was like for him being the Firewalk Captain for Tony Robbins, and also what his experience of fire was personally in his life. Dave.

[Dana] (01:30)
Welcome to Phoenix in Flame. I’m really excited, I have so many questions for you, and I’m going to start by asking: how did you become the number one firewalk instructor in America? And maybe take a few moments to help some of my listeners who don’t know what a firewalk is, and kind of take us through that.

[Dave] (01:32)
Thanks, Dana, it’s really great to be here, I really appreciate it. Sure. If you look at firewalking culturally, globally, it’s been around for a thousand years: the Fijians, the Polynesians, the Hawaiians, the Indo-Europeans, the Native American Indians, the people of India, it’s been used in a lot of different ways. There’s the rite of passage, the graduation, the ceremonial, it’s a very spiritual connection within the tribe. The Indo-Europeans, for example, used it before warriors would go into battle, they always did a fire walk, and if you didn’t complete the fire walk, you weren’t allowed to go into battle, which meant you were dishonoring your family. The people of India use it in a way that is just way more than any Western culture has ever used it, only because it’s hundreds and hundreds of years old over there. Over here, it may be, what, three decades. Tony’s had it going here in America. So there’s something really magical about the entire experience. If you look on my website, I’ve got a picture of a young mother, I’m guessing she’s probably 19 or 20, from India. When we fire walk, we burn a fire and let it burn for hours, the coals burn down, they render, and then we shovel those coals on top of sod, on top of grass, that’s how we walk them here in America. Over there in India, they actually dig a pit and fill it, Dana, there’s got to be at least two to three inches of coals in that pit, and it’s kind of concave, the way it’s shaped. And the picture shows the woman dressed in these beautiful pastel colors, all the garments she’s wearing, and she’s got something in her teeth, I don’t know what it is, maybe a flower or some type of herb. And all around that pit there are people standing, I’m assuming friends and family, and they too are dressed in bright pastel silk colors, so you can tell it’s a ceremony. And one of the ways you can tell it’s a ceremony is she’s carrying three newborn babies, these children have got to be a week old maybe, and what takes you back is that if she dropped one of those babies, the baby wouldn’t survive, there’s no way you could get to it quick enough, it would have third degree burns all over it. The other thing about the mother is she can’t get out of that pit, right, if you come to one of our fire walks and you’re walking along, you can exit very quickly if you wanted to, but here, she can’t, it’s maybe a foot and a half tall. So it goes to show culturally, from a firewalk perspective, what an incredible ritual and spiritual connection it is. I’m guessing that for those children, that was a graduation for them because of their birth. But most people here in America are going to associate firewalking with Tony Robbins, because Tony’s the one who’s used it here in America, and as you said, I worked for him for almost 20 years, that was my job. The backstory is I found Tony Robbins through getting sober in June of 1988. I was grossly addicted to drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, I was a mess, a five-car collision, a plane crash, and a train wreck all rolled into one. I woke up one morning on June 8th and said, that’s it, I’m done, we’re not doing this anymore, I’m out. And I was in so much physical and emotional pain, the only answer I thought to relieve myself was to put a bullet in my head, and that’s what I set out to do that morning. And what happened is I realized I was married to a woman who had three kids, and I knew that if I pulled that trigger, I was killing them too. I was in the basement, and that’s going to leave a heck of a mess, it’s going to create PTSD, everybody in the whole town is going to know about it, and the kids are going to suffer immensely for that. And I remember thinking, you can’t do that, that’s just not fair, you’ve got to figure out another way. So I ended up calling Alcoholics Anonymous, and this beautiful woman on the phone named Madge got me on the phone and drilled me, she was in my face and she talked like she probably smoked three packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day.

[Dana] (07:06)
I’m sorry.

[Dave] (07:06)
And there she was at inner-group for AA, answering the phone and helping people find the rooms and the doors of AA. After drilling me, she sent a guy named Lauren to come pick me up, and when he got me, he took me to my first AA meeting. I actually went to four meetings that day: a 12:30, a 4:30, a 6:30, and an 8:30. And it worked, it stuck. I went to an all-men’s group, and they embraced me, they showed me love, they showed me tough love, and said, you might want to do everything we tell you to do here for a while. I did, it was total immersion. I went to my first meeting, then another, then it turned into a week, then a month. After a month I got a little chip, a medallion, said one month, then two months, three months, six months, nine months, and then I got the one-year chip for one year of continuous sobriety. This coming June, Dana, I’ll have 35 years. What happened from that is, because I had insomnia and was up late all the time, my sleep patterns were all over the place, and I was up late one night and there he was, for those who don’t know Tony Robbins, you can Google him, he’s pretty well known, probably the number one success coach in the world, if not certainly America. He had an infomercial going.

[Dana] (08:01)
Wow.

[Dave] (08:27)
And he talked, and it was funny, I didn’t like the guy, he seemed so motivated, right, and I was not motivated at all. With a smile, all smiley, all energetic, all motivated, and I’m like, get away from me, right. But he said a couple things that got me. One was, we’ll do more to avoid pain than we will to gain pleasure.

[Dana] (08:36)
With a smile. All positive!

[Dave] (08:55)
And I went, whoa, that’s pretty profound, because I’m in a lot of pain, and that’s why I drank and used drugs, either to avoid pain or try to gain pleasure, and then at one point it turned on me, it didn’t do either. And the other thing he said is, the motivating factor in our life, what drives us, is we do things out of inspiration or desperation. And I went, okay, I’m pretty desperate. So I bought his program, and just to date this, I jokingly say, when he sent me the program, a 30-day program, it came on these little white things called cassette tapes, that’s how old it was, this is back in the 1980s, like 1988. And you know what, Dana, I opened up the box, read the instructions, followed directions, and did what the man taught me to do.

[Dana] (09:35)
Hahaha! Oh, let me cry.

[Dave] (09:54)
It worked. What happened from there: I loaned it to a buddy in AA who was about a year and a half ahead of me, we were really tight, and that’s what happens in AA, the camaraderie is phenomenal. The friendships and the bonding, and the way we can relate to each other because we can talk in a language we understood. We knew pain, we knew emotional trauma, we knew what having court dates was like, what traffic accidents and DUIs looked like.

[Dave] (10:24)
So anyway, seven years later, Dana, my buddy calls me on the phone and says, hey dude, did you know Tony Robbins is coming to town? And I’m like, no, I had no idea. He goes, come on, you’re coming with me, you got me into this, you got to go with me. Okay, fine, I’ll go with you. He goes, great, I’ll call you back, I’ll make the arrangements. He calls back an hour later and says, here’s what they said to do: number one, hydrate, drink a lot of water between now and the event, then bring water so you can stay hydrated. Number two, bring a lot of snacks, because you’re going to spend a lot of time in the room, that’s an understatement. And bring a good attitude, be ready to play full out. And I go, Dan, how much was the ticket? He said $700. I said, oh don’t you worry, I’ll play full out, right, $700 in 1995 is like seven grand now. And just as I’m getting ready to hang up, Dana, he goes, oh, hey, wait, before you hang up, I want to let you know something, we’re going to be doing a fire walk. It was like time completely slowed down when he said that, it just floated out of his mouth. Fire walk. And I remember thinking, oh hell no.

[Dana] (11:34)
You’re cool. Hahaha! Oh my god.

[Dave] (11:45)
No, no, no, no, Davey Boy’s not gonna do that. I’ll go to this event, but I’m not gonna do a fire walk. And you know what’s interesting about that decision? I had no idea what a fire walk even was. So I’m saying no to something and I don’t even know what it is. Fear, that was the moment I really recognized, hey, help me, you know.

[Dana] (12:04)
Well, it sounded scary. That sounds scary. Firewalk.

[Dave] (12:13)
Fear had stolen so much from me at that point, right. What’s the acronym? Face everything and rise, or forget everything and run. And of course in AA we say false images appearing real. So I went, wow, okay, it was kind of a little epiphany there. I recognized there was this part of my life teaching me that the fears I don’t overcome are gonna become my limits, that’s really the bottom line.

[Dana] (12:21)
(an extended affirming sound)

[Dave] (12:43)
So anyway, you get to the event, Tony takes the stage at two o’clock in the afternoon. I’m not doing the fire walk, I’m not saying anything to anybody, I never told Dan when we were on the phone that I wasn’t gonna do it, I just said, oh yeah sure Dan, interesting, fire walk, okay, uh-uh. Hung up the phone, got there, Tony takes the stage at two o’clock. Well, the next thing I know it’s after midnight, ten hours in a room with Tony Robbins, and he’s preparing 3,500 people for this fire walk. All of a sudden it gets to midnight, and Tony goes, take off your shoes. I’m like, oh no, no, no, no, you’re not gonna trick me, pal. And then all of a sudden I think, wait a minute, if you leave your shoes on and 3,500 people are walking out there with their shoes off, they’re going to know you’re a coward. So I take my shoes off and I’ll fake it. Well, the next thing you know, before he’s got you going out there, he gets 3,500 people to start chanting, everybody’s clapping their hands going yes, yes, yes, it’s loud and intense, and you’re getting caught up in it. Well, not only that, when he takes you outside the venue, into the parking lot, he’s got African drummers.

[Dana] (13:40)
No.

[Dave] (14:06)
So not only is everybody chanting yes, it’s going dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, and you can feel this vibration going through you, and you’re like, oh my gosh, help me, what have I gotten myself into? Once you get out there, Dana, over in the corner he’s got this huge fire that’s been burning all day, probably ten hours, and they stoke it with all this wood, well it burns down and renders and makes this giant pile of coals. So what they do is take wheelbarrows and load the coals in, in these steel wheelbarrows, and then they put a wheelbarrow in between two lanes of sod, of grass, about three feet wide, probably 18 feet long, and take a shovel and sprinkle those coals onto those lanes of grass, and that’s what you walk on. As I said, I’m not doing it, so I’m just going to go hide out in the back, because nobody’s going to know, right. Well of course somebody’s going to know, I’m going to know, but I’m not toying with that, I’m not even thinking about it, I’m just going to go hide out. Well, you think that’s a good strategy, eh, not so much, because Tony wants to make sure you go through this experience if at all possible, because he knows it’s going to create a paradigm shift, he knows it’s one of the most powerful experiences on Earth, and he doesn’t want you to miss it. So what does he do? He trains people to come find you.

[Dana] (15:45)
Oh

[Dave] (15:45)
So I’m back there thinking I’m safe, and all of a sudden here comes this guy out of nowhere. Tony trains them, when you make eye contact with these people, don’t take your eyes off them. So here comes this guy, he makes eye contact with me, coming at me, and I’m thinking, oh no, no, no, no, this can’t be real. He gets probably 20, 25 feet from me and kind of leans in, looking at me with a puzzled look on his face.

[Dana] (15:50)
Ahem.

[Dave] (16:14)
And he says, hey, are you okay? And when we’re not okay, what do we say? Yep, oh, I’m all good here, man, no worries, mate, yeah, we’re all doing really good here. And he says, so here’s a stranger, right, to this day I don’t know who this guy is, and he says, well, hey, are you going to walk tonight? And I said, with a little anger in my voice, absolutely not. And he goes, oh hey man, it’s okay, it’s cool.

[Dana] (16:22)
Yep

[Dave] (16:44)
We don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do. And I went, wow, okay, I like this guy, he’s going to get me out of here. And then guess what, Dana, he asked me a question, one stranger, one question that changed my life forever, and to this day I don’t know who this guy is. He said, well, wouldn’t you at least like to watch? And I remember thinking, kind of like a smart aleck, yeah, I’d love to watch these people burn their feet off, let’s do that, that sounds fun. And he says, well listen man, you can’t see anything from back here, that’s a hundred yards from where they were walking, again you got 3,000, 3,500 people in front of you, you can’t see anything. He said, well, just get in line, and eventually you’ll be able to get up there. And he was right, so I got in line and I’m just walking along, and I’m hearing it, the drums are going, everybody’s chanting, it’s intense.

[Dana] (17:23)
Hmm.

[Dave] (17:39)
Intense evening, beautiful summer night, the moon’s out, gorgeous, and the next thing I know here comes this guy, walks up to me, whispers in my ear, and goes, he knows when you’re ready, when he says go, you go, and then poof, just like that, he was gone, disappeared into the night. And I’m like, what the hell is going on here? All of a sudden I’m walking, still can’t see anything in front of me, and I look at an angle and I can see them, Dana, they’re doing it. Every walk of life, male, female, black, white, young, old, every type of person is walking. Now my brain’s freaking out because I’m watching something I’ve never seen before, I have no reference for it, and I have no idea, I’m just trying to figure it out, why are they doing it, what’s the metaphor for it. Now I’m mesmerized, staring into the abyss watching these people walk, and all of a sudden I’m walking, and the next thing I know, I’m at the front of the line, and it catches me by surprise, and I look down and the coals are on the lane on that grass, glowing bright red, there’s a wheelbarrow full of coals, I can feel the heat coming off, and I’m staring into the abyss. There’s a trainer standing there, and all of a sudden the trainer goes, eyes up.

[Dana] (18:42)
Haha Hahaha

[Dave] (19:06)
I’m like, oh jeez, he startles me, right, and now my eyes are up. Well, I’m in a room for ten hours with Tony Robbins, guess what he teaches you to do: keep your eyes up, don’t stare at what you fear, stare at the celebration at the end of the lane, that’s where the reward is. Now my eyes are up, and he goes, squeeze your fist and say yes. And I went, yes. He went, stronger. I went, yes, but I was leaving a lot on the table, I wasn’t in a complete peak state, and that trainer knew it, so he leaned into me and screamed, and now I’m ticked off, right, fight or flight kicks in, I threw my hands in the air and screamed as loud as I could, yes. He goes, go, go, go, I took off. Here’s the beauty, the first thing I learned about firewalking: when you take the first step, kind of like life, you’ll take the second, third, fourth, and fifth, right, you don’t get on that lane and stop, you don’t stop while you’re standing on those coals. Tony positions two people at the end, they lock arms and catch you, and as soon as they catch you they say, stop, wipe your feet and celebrate. So I’m wiping my feet and celebrating, and a girl reaches in, grabs me, pulls me out of the way, and says, you did it, you did it, you did it, and I’m going, I did it, I did it, I did it. And all of a sudden I go, no, no, no, wait, wait.

[Dana] (20:06)
Right.

[Dave] (20:32)
All of a sudden I realize I’ve burnt myself really bad, I can feel the pain in my feet, I’ve completely torched my feet. I lift up my right foot and look at it, it’s dirty, but there’s no burns. I think, oh, it’s my other foot, I lift up my left foot, look at it, it’s dirty, no burns. I don’t have one burn, nothing. And I’m looking back at the coals, a thousand degrees, glowing, I just walked on coals that were a thousand degrees and I did not burn myself, and I had no clue how I did it. Have you ever done something really cool and gone, hey, I don’t even know how I did that, but look at me, I did it? Immediately you get a rush, I had just done something extraordinary, I felt like I’d just climbed Mount Everest, it was exhilarating, and that exhilaration was now permeating around me with 3,000 other people, everybody screaming, yelling, jumping up and down, excited. It’s one of those experiences you have no clue what it’s like unless you’ve experienced it. But here’s where it gets really interesting, Dana, the next day. I went home, and I need to tell you, I did not take a shower, I did not clean my feet, I wanted them to stay that way. When I came into the event the next morning, I’m standing in the foyer with 3,500 people, and I’d never, ever seen anything like this in my life. People were connecting humanistically unlike anything I’d ever seen in my entire life, and I’m watching them.

[Dana] (21:58)
(laughter)

[Dave] (22:20)
People are laughing and crying, talking about the night before, hugging, embracing, and the realism of the humanistic side of people was so high. I don’t know how to explain it, it’s just that their mindset, their vibration had been raised to such a high level that there was this glow in the room unlike anything I’d ever witnessed. It was absolutely spectacular to be there in that moment with all those people. And that was it, they had me, I was addicted to the fire walk right there on the spot. I found out later that Tony uses about 300 volunteers for events this size, you could contact Robbins Research and they’d send you an application, which they did, I contacted them, filled it out, and if you’re lucky, they choose you. They did. So a couple months later I found myself in Fort Lauderdale, crewing for Tony Robbins, you pay your own way, you come in as a volunteer. Because I had a military background and a security background, they wanted to pull me into the security detail,

[Dave] (23:49)
which would mean helping take care of Tony’s celebrities. And because I worked on a farm and knew how to split wood and use tools, they also pulled me into the fire-building team. That would have been in late 1995, 1996, I became a subcontractor, and I worked in that position for quite some time. Then in ’97, becoming a subcontractor, they actually paid me to be there, to work. And then in 2003, Tony brought me in and offered me the fire captain’s position, meaning I was in charge of all of it. I would build the team, we’d take that team wherever in the world we were going, build the fire, do all the training, get everything ready to go, Tony would bring out five, six, seven, eight, twelve thousand people, we’d fire walk them, clean it up, and go to the next city. Tony even paid to have my family travel with me. When he first offered it, I declined because I homeschooled, and they said, well, if we pay to have your kids travel with us, would that make a difference? And I said, yeah, of course it would. So the next thing I know, here’s me and my family traveling with Tony Robbins, that started in 2003. In 2005, we set a world record in London where we did a fire walk for 12,300 people, and I say a world record, I don’t believe there’s any other fire walk that’s come anywhere close to that size. I do want to disclose, Guinness wasn’t there, they didn’t record it, but I’m pretty sure we set a world record in 2005. And it didn’t stop there.

[Dave] (25:41)
In 2014, I’m driving down the road and the next thing I know, this company, maybe you’ve heard of them, called Google, really, have you heard of those guys, they’ve heard of you too by the way.

[Dana] (25:51)
I think I’ve heard of Google, yeah. I’m sorry.

[Dave] (26:18)
Next thing I know I’m in discussions and negotiations with them. They wanted to hire me to bring me out to Mountain View, they had a class of executives, 148 of them, graduating, and wanted to create a spectacular experience, because Google gets it, they know that what doesn’t challenge you doesn’t change you. They’d been in this nine-month curriculum and wanted to end it with something spectacular. We actually ended up doing the glass walk, because the graduation was going to be during the day, and I don’t do fire walks during the day, I have to be able to see those coals for safety purposes. That’s really when the career started. I created Fire Walk Productions in 2014, retired from Tony’s organizations, and the next thing I know, I’m on the Phoenix in Flame podcast with Dana. It’s just been so organic, because from Google we went to Notre Dame, NASA, RE/MAX, Microsoft, Heineken, the EO organization, it just kept growing and growing. And here we are today, and between Tony and I and my team that started in 2014, we’ve walked hundreds of thousands of people, including my kids. My daughter was six and my son was nine years old the first time they fire walked, and I’ve walked hundreds and hundreds of kids in those age brackets, and I love that more than anything else. If you give me a kid who’s seven or eight, and we include the board-break experience as well, I teach them a martial arts move and how to break a board with their bare hand, and then they throw the board into the fire and I have them write some things on the board they want to move toward, and some things they need to stop doing, and then they throw the board in the fire and I fire walk them. It’s literally one of the most life-changing experiences, not only for an adult but for any kid who gets to experience something like that, it programs them. Because if you can walk on fire, the question is, if I can do that, what else can I do?

[Dana] (28:16)
That, as I’m listening to you talk, a couple of things are coming to my mind, because since I’m a psychotherapist, I get to hear a lot of people’s stories and walk alongside them in the dark places, and I hear a lot of fear. One of my expertise areas, things I love to do, is help people deal with anxiety, and fear is the father of anxiety, anxiety is kind of like a fear baby. And so

[Dave] (28:42)
Oh my gosh, yes, yeah, sure is.

[Dana] (28:46)
That’s what I’m hearing from you in a lot of things, but one of them is facing fear. What does it do if you don’t face it, what does your life look like if you don’t face it? For my listeners, twofold: one, who might be struggling with fear and anxiety, which is very, very prevalent, what would you say to them right where they are, in terms of how do they make that turn to face something they’re so scared to face. And the second thing is for people dealing with depression, who many times just feel enveloped in this gray fog and can’t see past it, it seems like something like a fire walk would push them to where they can see something beyond the fog. What are your words for people listening who are struggling currently with anxiety or depression and just can’t seem to get beyond it?

[Dave] (29:49)
Fear is a liar, number one, as you said. So if we start with that, the fears we don’t face become our limits. Fear is there to keep us alive, what we don’t want is for it to become our jailer, that’s the main distinction. Again, back to the acronym: you can create one or the other, either face everything and rise, or forget everything and run. And it really boils down to that. At the fire walk, what’s the worst that can happen, burn your feet off and die? No, it’s not going to happen. People tell me all the time, well Dave, it’s really dangerous, no, it’s not, that’s not true, again that’s fear telling you something you have no reference for. It was just like me when I first got introduced, my buddy calls me on the phone, hey, we’re going to be doing a fire walk, I’m like, no, no, we’re not doing that, because fear took over. The bottom line is there are so many more things out there that are more dangerous. If you’ve got kids, take them to soccer or football or wrestling or baseball, that’s ten times, maybe higher, more dangerous than any fire walk. Because with a fire walk, what’s the worst-case scenario, you get a little blister on your foot. I’ve walked hundreds of thousands of people, no one’s ever been hospitalized, we’ve never been sued. So it sounds really dangerous, I get that, of course it does, and I agree with that, however, once you’ve done it, you go, wow, what an amazing experience, because again, what we don’t know is the fear of the unknown. Who said that, Eisenhower or Roosevelt, one of them said the greatest fear in our life is the fear of the unknown, the greatest fear is fear itself, and that’s true, so the beauty is

[Dave] (31:45)
it’s just so opening to you once you step through a fear like that and you do it, you go, wow, okay, I needed that, I needed to be able to step through that, because now where can my life take me. And I’ve seen so many people do that. Tony and I were in Tampa Bay many years ago, I think right around ’99, and there was a collegiate athlete, this high school kid, unbelievable athlete, football, baseball, all of it, and he got hit by a drunk driver and lost both legs. So you can imagine what was going on in his head, the limiting beliefs coming in, what he was telling himself, that he’d never amount to anything, could never have a family, no woman would ever love him, he’d never be able to jump and play baseball again, all these things just going crazy in his head. So he was contemplating suicide. One of his buddies said, listen man, before you do that, I know you watch Tony Robbins, Tony’s coming to town, why don’t you go see him before you take your own life. So next thing I know, I’m out at the fire walk, it’s midnight, here we go, Tony’s bringing out 6,000 people to us, and I would always shovel Tony’s lanes for him. All of a sudden Tony looks behind me and gives me this really weird look, and I went, what’s going on, right, I knew something was about to happen. All of a sudden, because it’s dark I couldn’t really see, and the next thing I know there’s this kid in his wheelchair, this turbo kind of wheelchair, he can lift it up and move it side to side, because he had a lot of upper body strength still, arms and shoulders and chest. All of a sudden he gets to the fire lane, and Tony bends down to talk to him,

[Dave] (33:39)
and this kid pushes him away like, no, go away, I got this. And the next thing we know, he maneuvers that wheelchair up to the fire lane, moves his torso, and just flips himself forward, like a gymnast, lands on his hands, and walks across the fire on his hands. That moment in my life was one of the most profound things I’d ever seen, and I remember thinking, okay, I get it, now I know why I’m here, because I believe the two most important times in anyone’s life are the moment you were born and the moment you figure out why, there’s always a greater purpose to things. For me, I was getting ready to blow my brains out and got to AA, and I realized there’s a lot more to life, this God, the universe, source, however you reference that in your life, AA teaches you there’s a power greater than you, and I accepted that. And with the 12 steps, it allows you to put your life back together, shows you how to use the program, how to make amends, deal with your character defects and shortcomings, and then you have the maintenance steps: you continue to help others achieve sobriety. The 12 traditions are designed to keep the group and all the members together, because nobody’s in charge, we’re just trusted service. But in the middle, Dana, there’s a preamble, and it says: when anyone anywhere reaches out, I want the hand of AA to be there, and for that I am responsible. And the moment I saw that kid walk on his hands, I knew I was responsible. The moment I knew that when somebody walks in the doors of AA, their life’s on the line. This ain’t the Lions Club, this ain’t the Kiwanis Club, this ain’t the Chamber of Commerce, this is Alcoholics Anonymous, and if we don’t do what we’re supposed to do, that person will lose their life. So for that, I’m responsible. It was kind of a mixture of all these things, coming to realize there is a divine purpose for all of us. They say the chances of being born are one in 400 trillion, that’s pretty much off the chart, and taking your own life is, well, one of the things I talk about a lot in my seminars is going back 12 generations. If you and I go back in Dana’s

[Dana] (36:09)
Wow.

[Dave] (36:29)
heritage, right, we go back 12 generations, how many people is that, because you’ve got to start with your parents, then your grandparents, then your great-great-grandparents, and if you go out 12 generations that covers four hundred years. How many people is that, 4,094 people. And a hundred years ago you had to get up and go kill the rabbit, you didn’t go down and buy it at the grocery store, life was hard, life was much harder 100 years ago, 400 years ago, it was unbelievable. So 4,094 people, everything they did was for me to be here with you right now, Dana, and I respect that, I honor that. I think it was, who said it, one of the gurus, I read personal development every day, I keep myself in that positive flow if I can, I think it was Grant Cardone who said that in every family tree like that, where you have 4,094 people who all sacrificed everything so we can be on this planet right now, every so often one of those people rises up, like the Phoenix and the flame, and takes that family in a completely different direction. And I say to this day: do the things that are hard and your life will become easier, do the things that are easy and life is going to get really hard.

[Dana] (38:16)
Dave, you are so passionate about everything you’ve gone through, and it comes across, and I feel like I could sit here and just listen to you talk for hours, and you would never say the same thing twice and it would all matter. For people who know me, they know I get bored very easily,

[Dave] (38:28)
Thank you.

[Dana] (38:38)
and you have kept me riveted this entire time. I feel like you could keep talking and I would still be here, because I’m also thinking not only from my own ear but the ears of the people listening, where they might be in their life, and I’m always thinking about whether what my guest is saying is going to be helpful to my listeners. Oh my gosh, this has just been absolutely amazing. Now, let me ask you, where do my listeners need to go to access more of you, more of Dave Albin, to find out more about you, what’s out there?

[Dave] (39:16)
Sure, well, the most simplistic way to get a hold of me is to go to our website, which is www.firewalkadventures.com, all one word. When you get there, all my contact information is there. I do an Academy once a year, Dana, it’s called the Dave Albin Firewalk Academy. What this experience is about: let’s say there’s a company out there that wants to send somebody to me to have me train them and get them ready, and then send them back into their own company or corporation to facilitate the experience they’d hire me to do. That Academy is held every October, and we limit it to about 10 people per event, and again that’s on my website, the Firewalk Academy. Everything else, the firewalk experience, the glass walk, the board break, the arrow break, the rebar bending, everything else we do, is on the website as well. I also have a group of affiliates I work closely with who offer incredible products or services, and those companies are also on our website. So, www.firewalkadventures.com.

[Dana] (40:42)
Dave Albin, thank you so much for inspiring my listeners, for helping them think about ways to face fear and move beyond it, that fear does not have to be their jailer, like you said earlier, they don’t have to be in a cage of fear, there’s something on the other side of it, they’re not stuck, whether it’s depression or feeling like this is all they have. You have shared so much today that would help my listeners realize, let’s go beyond, I’m not stuck here, I can face these things, I’m strong, I have strength I didn’t realize I had. Thank you so much. All right, for you listeners out there, I know this podcast episode has been mind-blowing and inspirational and passionate and amazing. Please share it, we want to grow our Phoenix and Flame community, we can reach out to one another in a way

[Dave] (41:18)
That’s right, absolutely, it’s my pleasure.

[Dana] (41:36)
that we know we’re not alone. There are other people out there struggling with things like what we’re struggling with, and how do other people make it, how do they pull themselves out of the ashes, how do they rise to become the phoenix. So take the link, copy and paste it in a text, copy and paste it in an email, put it on your favorite social media sites, let’s get the episode out there, let’s share it. Maybe you know a friend or family member or coworker you’re thinking, oh my gosh, I know the exact person who needs to hear Dave talk about the firewalk and his experience, what his life was like, and how he pushed beyond that, and what’s available if they want to go check that out. So thank you for doing that. I hope you’re having a wonderful day. This is Dana on Phoenix in Flame.