In this enlightening episode of The Good News with Angie Austin, Angie teams up with Jim Stovall to explore the concepts of disaster and discernment. They talk about how those inner warning bells can steer us away from potential pitfalls in personal and professional life. With compelling stories about instinct, from avoiding scams to dating dangers, this episode delves into the importance of paying attention to those subtle signals we often overlook. Guest appearances by Dr. Cheryl Lentz and personal anecdotes enrich the conversation, highlighting both the humorous and serious sides of listening to your gut.
Welcome to The Good News with Angie Austin. Now, with The Good News, here’s Angie.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hello there. It’s Angie Austin and Jim Stovall with the good news. And the good news today is we’re talking about disaster and discernment, which will end up being good news, won’t it, Jim?
SPEAKER 01 :
It will indeed. You know, if you can practice one, you can avoid the other. And so that’s what we’re talking about today.
SPEAKER 06 :
Excellent. All right. Well, give us an overview of what you’re teaching in this column.
SPEAKER 01 :
All of us have experienced repeatedly throughout our lives having some kind of a setback or disaster in our personal or professional life where we’ve lost money, we’ve lost time, we’ve damaged our relationship. And then we look back at it, and we realize there were some warning bells. There were some red flags. And, you know, we’ve all had those. And, you know, in my life, I’ve always heard those things. And, you know, it’s a premonition. It’s discernment. It’s a mental, spiritual, sometimes even a physical feeling you have that you’ve got to pay attention to. There’s something weird here. Right. Or, you know, so often when something bad happens to us, we look back on it and say, you know, I knew better than that. I should have done better than that. And, you know, the sooner we can grow up and start listening to those things, the better our life’s going to be. And so often the anecdote to disaster is just a little time. Just, you know, there’s always people trying to sell you something or take advantage of you or do something or get you involved in something. And You know, there are very few things you’ve got to do right now. There’s very few things you’ve got to do today. And if you could just stop and say, hold it, this is not good. And then there are those… things that create disaster for us and kind of mask our discernment, whether it’s being tired, whether it’s hormones, whether it’s alcohol, whether it’s just poor judgment or our own pride and ego that gets in the way. But if we can just listen to that voice that we all have, and pay attention to it, you very rarely regret it. And all my team that I work with, you know, here at the office or team I work with on the movies, I give everyone the permission to just say, hey, I have a feeling about this, and I want to hear about your feeling. Now, it doesn’t mean I’m going to act on it, but, boy, you know, when you’ve got a strong feeling, you want to pay attention to it.
SPEAKER 06 :
We had a sermon yesterday, and it was about your conscience. And the pastor was talking about – he’s from South Africa, and when he and his wife were staying in Colorado at some point many years ago, there was some rule in South Africa about how much money you could take out of the bank and like – moved to another country or something of a sort, but it was 20 grand. So when he left for Colorado, his dad gave him this check for 20 grand to put in the bank for his uncle in Seattle. So he was just going to bring it, I guess, with him and deposit it. I don’t know how 20 years ago that all worked and why they had to do it like that. But the uncle said, thank you so much. I got the 20,000. I already put it in another account. Everything’s set. Well, then the pastor noticed that they only took out 2,000 from his account. So he still had 18 in there. So he just kind of figured it would get figured out and he just left it. And he and his wife just went about their business. But then when it was time to go back to South Africa, maybe six months later, he still had that money. And he said, I had some great plans for that money. So we didn’t have much money is right about the time we got. We’re getting married. And he said, you know, his banks, you know, they got plenty of money, these big corporations or whatever. And he said, but, you know, you have a conscience, but you also have a wife with a conscience, right? And what happens is when their conscience is trying to instruct your conscience, sometimes, you know, there is a disagreement, you know. So ultimately, he said, you know, they returned the money. But he was talking about the temptation to do something that, you know, is wrong, but you can talk yourself into it. You know, when it comes to the government or some mix up in a tax thing or, you know, just mix ups in general where you kind of can look the other way when, you know, you Most of us know, like, oh, well, that’s not the right thing to do. But then so many people are creative in how they can talk themselves into thinking it’s okay.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, and we knew that. One of my dear friends, Dina Martin, Dean Martin’s daughter, and I met her in Branson, Missouri. She has a show called The Rat Pack, and it features her dad and Frank Sinatra and, you know, that old group. And I had a show based on my book and movie A Christmas Snow. So she came to our show, and we went out to dinner, and we were talking, and she had a fascinating life growing up in Dean Martin’s house. And I don’t know how we’re both happily married for many, many years. So we got off talking about disastrous dates we’d had as you know, you know, and I thought I could one up her and I didn’t even come close. She was dating a guy and she said, Jim, he was a quiet guy. I’d met him at a bar. party in hollywood and he just said anyway i had a weird feeling but he i couldn’t put my finger on anything wrong with it so i dated him two or three times and then in the middle of the night the fbi knocks on my door oh boy and uh wants to know uh why i’m dating or going out with this guy charles manson oh my gosh she had been dating charles manson so i always like to tell people listen to that little voice or you’ll find yourself on a date with charles manson
SPEAKER 06 :
Or it’s like Ted Bundy. His family didn’t even know there was anything wrong. It’s amazing. But when the hair on the back of your neck or you get that tingly feeling or that feeling in your gut, you really do need to listen to it. We’ve all had weird dates of some sort or the other. I still laugh about just strange dates that… my friends had in los angeles one of my rather conservative southern gentleman friends uh had a date and that he accepted and the girl um when they got together for the date was wearing a red rubber dress which was really not his cup of tea but in l.a it really wasn’t unusual or my brother met a woman for a date i was internet dating and i when i did that i tended to stick with the really the christian sites you know with the hopes that i’d have better luck there And so anyway, to make a long story short, my brother shows up and he said she didn’t look anything like the picture. And so not only nothing like the picture, she didn’t. was probably a lady of the evening he said he was pretty sure that she was a prostitute and you know really bad teeth like you know really poor you know had not you know when someone’s teeth are really really bad that they probably didn’t grow up with any money because if they’re so bad that it’s like whoa wow oh my gosh you know when you’re just like you’re like someone would have fixed that if you had the resources to do so right so I said what did you do he goes I had dinner with her And he’s just such a nice man. Like, he goes, I had dinner with her, you know, and I mean, they didn’t go out again. But he said, I wasn’t, you know, he just didn’t have it in his heart to, you know, to make this woman feel so bad about herself and reject the date. But it obviously wasn’t the woman that she had presented. Let’s put it that way.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, and, you know, we need to listen to those voices. And they also come around really good things, something we’re getting ready to ignore, something we’re not paying attention to. And you have this feeling. And, you know, in my business career, there are several times I, hey, I don’t know why, but I got a feeling about that. Let’s look into this a little more. And it has turned out to be some really rather amazing things for us. All I’m saying is, you know, we all have those little built-in signs and signals and warnings. And the more we pay attention to them, the less pain we have to endure. And, you know, I’m a big believer that you need to get the message upstream as far as you can, you know. You know, learn it while it’s just an inkling in your mind other than at the other end you crash and burn and you’re saying, you know, I knew better than that. You know, it’s… It’s great to pay attention to those things right off the bat.
SPEAKER 06 :
You know, I love, though, that you bring up that it actually happens for good things as well, because I don’t ever think about that when I think of a gut feeling. I think of a gut feeling as a warning. But I have had some times where I’ve known something big was on the horizon or something great was going to be happening. And I think about your movies and working on the ninth one now, which, by the way, I was up by that Will Rogers Shrine in Colorado Springs. And I wanted to drive up there because your next movie’s got Will Rogers in it, right? I mean, it’s about Will Rogers. Yep. And I thought you used to be able to drive through the zoo to get up to the Will Rogers Roger Shrine at the Pikes Peak area up there. But. You have to get – everyone has to get a zoo ticket in order to go see Will’s Shrine now. I really believe back in the day you could just say, hey, I’m driving up to the Will Rogers Shrine. There’s a specific name for it that’s kind of cool, something of the sun or something. And but now you actually have to buy a ticket to the zoo. So I thought, well, I’m not going to buy everybody tickets for the zoo just to get up there. But I was a little disappointed we couldn’t drive up there. But anyway, with your ninth movie on Will Rogers, I think back to the time when the publisher wanted to keep the movie rights. And you said, no, I’d like the movie rights. And he kind of scoffed like, oh, yeah, sure, buddy, like you’re going to make any money off of these books and making movies. And how that little feeling you had made you millions of dollars.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, and frankly, they didn’t negotiate or see it my way. It was a throwaway to them, so they let this idiot have this, and then you never know. I will tell you, Will being a great humorist and a creative guy, he would love it that here in the 21st century, you got to buy a ticket to the zoo to go see his statue. I think he would like that.
SPEAKER 06 :
You’re right. He probably would. You literally have to buy a ticket to the zoo to drive up to see where he’s interned.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, he would feel good about that. Yeah. Yeah, he was never comfortable in Congress, but he liked animals, so that would work for him.
SPEAKER 06 :
It’s called the Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun, and then they’ve sometimes shortened it to Will Rogers Shrine. But I just thought it was interesting that it’s located on Cheyenne Mountain. Here’s the other interesting part. It was built by Spencer and Julie Penrose, and the Penroses, I believe that they built the Broadmoor, owned the Broadmoor at some point in time, and that zoo was Penrose’s personal zoo. So how funny. Think about the marketing in that. I’m going to put Will Rogers up above my zoo, and at some point, not only will people get to go see Will, but my family will get paid for a ticket to the zoo in order to go see him.
SPEAKER 01 :
like a twofer it’s a great life you know and uh no it’s it’s all wonderful and i i love learning more about will is through my book and now the movie we’re making and there are things named after him all over the world literally and he was uh one of the most unique people but uh we’ll start shooting that in the spring
SPEAKER 06 :
How exciting. All right. So also, I want to ask you when you said sometimes you have the gut feeling when it’s something good and you said, can you give me an example of one that stands out to you?
SPEAKER 01 :
Sure. We were making my very first movie, and we needed somebody to play this nine-year-old little girl. And we tried two or three people. We couldn’t get them. And we were coming down to the wire, starting to shoot. And they said, well, the casting people said they got a contact. It is one girl, Abigail Breslin, but she’s just made a movie. But it hadn’t come out yet, and they think she’s okay. And I don’t know why. I just had a feeling I should hire her. I mean, if she’s vertical and can speak, hire the kid. And, well, while we’re making our movie, her movie comes out, Little Miss Sunshine. She gets nominated for the Academy Award and turns out to be one of the most talented people I’ve ever worked with. And, and I’ll be on everybody in Hollywood thought I was a genius. I was desperate, didn’t have anybody else. And we needed a kid. And I said, let’s get this kid. And wow, was she, I mean, the first day she was on the set and I was there and heard her deliver her lines. I said, give me somebody that can type in a laptop. We’re going to, we’re going to beef this kid’s part up a little bit, you know? And, and she was just absolutely amazing. And I, you know, I’d like to take credit for it and say, Oh, I knew that would work. But, um, Now, you know, and then when I was a little kid, my mom would always have me say my prayers every night. I’m four or five years old, you know, pray for my mom and my dad and my dog and my brother and my wife and the thought that my wife’s out there. And I remember the moment I met Miss Crystal and I said, there she is right there. That’s who I’ve been waiting on. And and I was as certain then as I am 40 years later.
SPEAKER 06 :
Wow. That is so cool. And then not just with Crystal, the number one cool one, but then secondly, that when your movie that is coming out, she’s nominated for an Oscar at that time. So it looks like you got this incredible casting coup by getting this girl to do your movie. And when you didn’t even know when you put her in that she was going to be nominated. I love it. All right. Jim Stovall dot com. Thank you, friend. Thank you.
SPEAKER 03 :
We’ll be right back. All the holiday shopping at Arc Thrift, they now need your donations. As long as your items are gently used, Arc Thrift will take them and give them a new home. You may have gotten some new clothes and now you need to clear out some room in that dresser or closet. Just donate at one of Arc Thrift’s 38 locations or their 15 donations. They always need donations, so why not start out the new year with downsizing the items you no longer need? You can find any Arc Thrift store or donation center on their website at arcthrift.com.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hello there, it’s Angie Austin and Dr. Cheryl Lentz, the academic entrepreneur with The Good News. Hey, Cheryl.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hey, hey, hey. Happy New Year, everybody.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hey, I’ve got a couple – well, we’ve got a couple of things to talk about today. You actually want to talk about one of my favorite people, my mentor, Jim Stovall, and one of his books that really connected with you. And then I have a topic that will also connect with you. It’s three ways we failed our way to happiness. But the interesting thing is the first subject deals with this particular – author, being rejected from seven universities. So being rejected from what they thought they wanted, and then getting something probably that worked out even better. So I know that your career path changed drastically. So we’ll handle that next. But let’s start with Jim. What’s the book that you want to talk about today? What touched your heart so much?
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay, the book is called The Gift of a Day, 100 Doses of Winner’s Wisdom. I’m on chapter 84. But what I’m going to share with you is Chapter 7. He almost brought me to tears, as many of his books do, and the reason is because what I’m about to read you that was from Chapter 7, which describes exactly why I do what I do, and here’s what he said.
SPEAKER 06 :
And tell people what you do first. Tell people what you do.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, I’m sorry. I’m a college professor. I’ve been teaching actually 25 years, both undergrad, master’s, and doc students. It was 25 years, January 1st.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay, perfect.
SPEAKER 04 :
So here’s what he says. If we learn something, we change our world. If we teach something, we change another person’s world. But if we teach people to teach, we change the whole world.
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, read it again. That’s good.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, you loved that. You wrote to me right away. it’s amazing because it’s you know it’s kind of one of those you teach a man to fish you teach a man to fish you feed him for today you teach a man to fish or you give a man to fish you you feed him for today if you teach a man to fish he eats for a lifetime same concept
SPEAKER 06 :
You know, I was just talking to him about his Winner’s Wisdom columns because we actually discuss them every week, and sometimes I have them on more than once a week, and I’m never bored by that man. He’s just so wise to me, so I can see why he’s a good author who has written now 60-some-odd books. I think it was 40 when I first started interviewing him, and then 50, now over 60, and working on his ninth movie. And those movies take a long time, by the way.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, I think what catches me is his vulnerability because somewhere about halfway through the book, I don’t know if it was 60 or 70 or something. These are just little vignettes, right? That he kind of apologizes for going dark because he had lost his mom. And this is where some of these gifts came from. And I thought it was just so strange because Jim knows the gift of vulnerability. And yet here he was apologizing to us as his readers thinking – You know, there’s a point at which even I know that I can’t quite go there. And he goes, it took him a while before he could write about it and write about mom. And you could tell how dark he went and then how it is lightened up in his future, you know, after after she passed. But I thought that was incredibly humble for him to recognize that there is a point that until we can deal with our own grief, that there’s a line. We just have to take a step back until we’re ready, you know.
SPEAKER 06 :
You know, since then, he’s also lost his dad now. His dad had some time, you know, where they would have dinner with him every Sunday alone and he’d lost him too. But they, you know, they had very long lives and he had such a great upbringing with grandparents who were really wonderful and wise and parents who were wonderful and wise. And when he found out he was losing his sight, I believe it was as a teenager and then, you know, completely gone. in his twenties to such a support network around him.
SPEAKER 04 :
Do you remember what his mom said? And I will remember this. This was also in this book of what his mom told him. Okay.
SPEAKER 02 :
Go ahead.
SPEAKER 04 :
Specific to his mom when he was losing his sight is to, take a moment to capture all the things that you can see today to remember how it makes you feel. So you’ll remember later or something to that effect.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, and I sat there and his grandmother told him, um, you know, well, you know, here’s what we’re going to do. You know, I want to see, I want to see my spring flowers. I want to go through one more spring season of seeing my flowers. And I’ve decided that I’m going to donate my eyes to you. Like she actually thought that, she could give Jim her sight and give it, but she just wanted to see her spring flowers bloom again. And then she was ready. And he explained to his grandma, you know, he’s probably 17, 18, 19 years old, that, you know, that wasn’t technology that, you know, he could take advantage of. But what an unbelievable thing to say. And then when he would come to her, to complain about whatever it may be, as he had complaints because he was planning to be a professional football player and then became an Olympic weightlifter because he’s like, well, I don’t need to see to lift weights. He would come to her with maybe some complaints or just something that wasn’t agreeable to him. And she said, look, I will listen to all your complaints, but I want you to do your golden list, the 10 things you’re thankful for, and then come on back and we’ll
SPEAKER 04 :
go through the things that you’re not thankful for and he said once he went through the golden list he really didn’t have complaints exactly isn’t perspective a wonderful thing when it’s always the comparison to others that always gets me in trouble and I’ve been trying to break that yardstick for years and it’s so much easier when we look at What we were given, not what others were given.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, I love that. Anything else that you really stood out? Because he’s got a whole bunch of these books where he’s taken the winner’s wisdom columns. I can’t remember if it’s four or five, but they’re compilations. And now the profits go towards putting kids through college through the Stolval Center for Entrepreneurship at Oral Roberts University. Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, weren’t these his culmination of these were his daily blogs and he made a book out of it? Because I did that once with my blog when I had it because people were asking about specific themes they themed together. And we put it all together to make that book. But weren’t these just a compilation of all of his blogs at one time?
SPEAKER 06 :
These are his weekly column, and they’re called Winner’s Wisdom. And every week he joins me to discuss that week’s column. And they decided fairly early on to start turning them into a book. He was surprised at how many organizations wanted to air them once he got going. And he has quite a wide distribution list for those. But then he compiles them into books when he’s done.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, and it is so sweet because they’re very short. They’re very sweet. And sometimes I can, you know, I will do two or three. Sometimes I’ll do an hour of them. And, again, I think I’m on 84, so I’ve got 16 more to go. But it’s just little things. I like the fact that there’s one thing for you to think about, and then you can read it in the morning, kind of like you do your prayers and your meditation, and then you let that be your theme for the day. And it is amazing when I have done that, or two or three of them, who pops up in my world that I need to share it with? And I’m just like, Jim, you are a master. I don’t know how you did it, but the timing was amazing that I needed exactly what I needed to be because it’s like we always remember, right, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. I think when the teacher is ready, the student appears. That is amazing because oftentimes I would be sharing this. I’m like, oh, something I can use for class later. And there was just that right person who needed to hear just that thing that day. And I’m like, wow, I get chills sometimes. It’s kind of interesting.
SPEAKER 06 :
I love that. I love that. I wanted to talk to you, too, about this article that it’s on that website, Mark and Angel, that I like. It’s three ways we failed our way to happiness. So Mark talks about happiness. And they’ve written a lot of books, too, like Getting Back to Happy, A Thousand Little Habits of Happy, Successful Relationships. They write about a lot of positive things in your good morning journal. And so he talks about how… He was rejected from seven universities. When I was 18, he says I wanted to be a computer scientist, so I applied to seven universities known for computer science, MIT, Cal Berkeley, Georgia Tech, et cetera, but I got rejected by all of them. And soon thereafter, a high school guidance counselor told me to apply to the University of Central Florida in Orlando, which had a really fast-growing, rapidly-growing computer science and engineering program. And he said out of desperation, he did since he’d been rejected so many places. He was accepted and he got a scholarship. And he said that that move actually changed his life because he met Angel there. And he met a professor who convinced him to switch from the School of Computer Science to the School of Computer Engineering with a strong focus in web design and technical writing there. two skills that he uses today to run the blog, Mark and Angel, which is very successful. And their books have been as well. And they have a lot of people that subscribe to their, you know, blogs as well. And they, I just find their website to be very inspirational, but I thought that’d be a great topic for you because he said he hadn’t been rejected. If he hadn’t been rejected by the seven universities, um, his life wouldn’t have really been the same. It would have been dramatically different. So tell everybody about your failing to success.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, my goodness. My infamous TED talk. Yes, I was at the university as a sophomore student and I had been accepted provisionally and I was in the only undergrad and a graduate program. And my professor came to my practice room one day and said I was done and walked out. And that was that. And I had no warning. I had no inkling this was about to happen. And as a musician, when you’re in a program like this, you are supposed to take your jury juries, which is simply a proficiency exam, a recital, if you will, to be able to move up to be an upperclassman. I was never even allowed to make my case. I wasn’t allowed to perform. I wasn’t allowed to take my jury. That day was just the day it ended. And it was such a. I remember sitting there in shock. And even to this day, 40 years later, I can still hear the click behind the door because it was such a profound moment. And it was hard for me initially. And then eventually I got angry. And then I went and did something about it, which was go to my counselor to find out how I could still graduate in four and a half years. And that’s what it took is about four and a half years, a couple of summer schools so I could readjust my major so I could still graduate because I had been playing since I was five years old. There was no plan B. I never thought I needed one, right? But that forced pivots. was something that had I not been able to do that, or had I been not been forced to do that, that I could have been just another out of broke musician who was nowhere near I mean, he was training Olympians, and he has a grad students that are probably playing around the world, like, you know, the consistency of the Royal Albert Hall or, or Notre Dame or Holy Name Cathedral, any of those big dogs, and they’re in I would have been just the weekend church organist, which is still adequate, but certainly not what he was interested in. But my career took off into ways I could not even imagine. And now I teach failure, which I think is kind of ironic as well as he did. So you have to listen. The universe often puts me where we are needed, not necessarily where we’re wanted to be. And so you bloom where you’re planted and let God do the rest.
SPEAKER 06 :
Boy, I knew that would resonate with you, what they said. And I use Mark and Angel’s articles a lot. And he talked about how this all started for them because they’ve been on the Today Show. They’re bestselling authors. I mean, they’ve really had a lot of success. with this particular website and what they do as life coaches. So number two for him, your writing is not good enough. While in school, I started enjoying my technical writing classes so much, I decided to take a few creative writing electives too, says Mark. I absolutely fell in love with writing inspiring stories and expressing myself. So I applied for a part-time editorial position at the school newspaper. I sent them five articles I had written along with my application. Two days later, I received an email which cordially explained that my writing was not good enough. That afternoon, I went home with a bruised ego and told Angel what had happened. She hugged me and said, regardless of what anyone says, if writing makes you happy, you should keep writing because that’s what happy writers do. They write. And after a bit more discussion, she added, I like writing too. We should start our own little writing club and write together. A few minutes later, Angel and I turned on my computer and registered the domain name markandangel.com and our blogging days began. In other words, if my five articles hadn’t been rejected by the school newspaper, the article you’re reading now would never have been written in all of their books and articles All of their, I mean, they do so much. They’ve become so successful. I mean, to get interviewed on the Today Show for their work is really quite something. So we’ve got about 45 seconds, but I’m going to keep you over and we’ll keep discussing this article. But go ahead. We’ve got about 30 seconds.
SPEAKER 04 :
The realization to understand the gift that failure gives you is something that I applaud their effort because a lot of folks don’t think it’s stuck there. And I think this is important to discuss.
SPEAKER 06 :
Dr. Cheryl Lentz.com.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s her website. Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.
In this enlightening episode of The Good News with Angie Austin, Angie teams up with Jim Stovall to explore the concepts of disaster and discernment. They talk about how those inner warning bells can steer us away from potential pitfalls in personal and professional life. With compelling stories about instinct, from avoiding scams to dating dangers, this episode delves into the importance of paying attention to those subtle signals we often overlook. Guest appearances by Dr. Cheryl Lentz and personal anecdotes enrich the conversation, highlighting both the humorous and serious sides of listening to your gut.
