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"If passion is the tool to fight antisemitism, you've got all the ammo you need." — Raymond Aaron Dr. Robert Wolf's father was a four-time escape artist. He survived Nazi Hungary, Communist Hungary, forced labor camp, and a final daring escape in 1956 — sneaking into a Soviet office the night before he fled to read his own dossier. What the Soviets wrote there gave the book its name: Not a Real Enemy. They thought he was no threat. He left the country the next day. Wolf converted his father's autobiography into a biography and has spent years taking that story — twenty miracles, a dentist hiding gold with Christian neighbors, a priest who sheltered the family and received donations from them for decades — into Holocaust museums, university campuses, and conversations exactly like this one. His method is simple: education, one person at a time, no invitation turned down. Raymond, who is Jewish and has experienced no antisemitism personally, brings his own warmth and candor to a conversation about why hatred of any group injures everyone, what it takes to change a single mind, and why passion may be the most powerful weapon available. Learn more and connect: Dr. Robert Wolf — https://www.robertjwolfmd.com; Not a Real Enemy on YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/@NotaRealEnemy Resources mentioned: Not a Real Enemy by Dr. Robert Wolf — https://www.amazon.com (search: Not a Real Enemy Robert Wolf); United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — https://www.ushmm.org; Respark Your Life Podcast — https://www.resparkyourlife.com; Raymond Aaron — https://www.aaron.com --- Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT-Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author! https://www.aaron.com ---

"You have stuff locked in there that's stopping you from being the full person you are meant to be in this lifetime." — Donna Hartley Raymond Aaron spent 60 years unable to touch his right collarbone. Chiropractors, psychiatrists, every kind of specialist — none of them could touch it. One past life regression session changed that permanently. Donna Hartley, former Miss Hawaii, international speaker, and author of the Fire Up series, arrived at the same work by a completely different path. She reads the Akashic Records directly — seeing the past life patterns quietly shaping your health, your relationships, and your sense of worth. She did five such readings in the 70 minutes before this conversation. The two compare their methods, swap stories, and find they've been working the same territory from different directions. Donna shares the medieval life she uncovered during open heart surgery that explained three cardiac procedures — and a surname she didn't decode until her fifties. They discuss soul clusters, the veil that lifts around age six, Hitler's karmic future, and what it looks like when someone finally decides to stop carrying a pattern forward into another lifetime. Learn more and connect: Donna Hartley — https://www.donnahartley.com Resources mentioned: Donna Hartley — past life sessions, videos, and the free Zip It, Pay Attention video — https://www.donnahartley.com; Chicken Soup for the Soul (Jack Canfield) — https://www.jackcanfield.com; Respark Your Life Podcast — https://www.resparkyourlife.com; Raymond Aaron — https://www.aaron.com --- Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT-Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author! https://www.aaron.com ---

"Sometimes we taste the flavor of that food and we get a reward, and then sometimes we taste that flavor and we don't — we don't get the nutrition. So this drives over-engagement and overeating on the food and more of a hyper-obsession, because our brain is simply trying to figure out: where is my nutrition coming from?" — Amber Abila There is a four-word phrase on the back of almost every packaged food in your kitchen. It sounds reassuring. It sounds natural. And according to binge eating expert Amber Abila, it may be the single most underappreciated driver of overeating in the modern food supply. Natural flavors. Not sugar, not artificial additives — the ones labeled natural. Amber explains that flavor-isolated molecules create a specific neurological trap: your brain tastes orange and predicts nutrition is coming. When none arrives, it triggers the same intermittent reinforcement loop that drives gambling addiction. The result is not weakness or lack of discipline. It is your brain doing exactly what it was designed to do — and being systematically deceived. Raymond, who lost 50 pounds by cutting sugar and salt entirely, connects deeply with Amber's central argument: the problem was never willpower. It was a decision, and then an understanding of what the food was actually doing. They also cover why Ozempic produces the same 95% weight-regain rate as traditional dieting, how taste buds recalibrate when processed flavors are removed, and Amber's simple 100-year test for deciding whether something is actually food. Amber's free guided audio — a 7-minute tool to get through a craving before it becomes a binge — is linked below. Learn more and connect: Amber Abila — Stop a Binge Before It Starts, free guided audio — https://www.theconfidenteater.org/urge; Confident Eater Program and coaching — https://www.theconfidenteater.org Resources mentioned: Amber Abila — Free Craving Audio — https://www.theconfidenteater.org/urge; Amber Abila — Coaching and Programs — https://www.theconfidenteater.org; Become a Confident Eater Podcast — search "Become a Confident Eater" on your podcast app; Respark Your Life Podcast — https://www.resparkyourlife.com; Raymond Aaron — https://www.aaron.com --- Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT-Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author! https://www.aaron.com ---

"We don't need to get rid of anything. We just need to cultivate enough inner safety for our nervous system and our psyche for these patterns to finally realize that life's different now. We can start dissolving, and the authentic, powerful self can step forward." — Dr. Alena Candova Dr. Alena Candova is a doctor of chiropractic turned applied neuroscience practitioner, and she came to this work the way most honest practitioners do — by needing it herself. Repeated toxic relationships, a spiritual life that looked whole from the outside, and a meditation retreat that broke her open when the instruction shifted from sending loving kindness to others toward sending it to herself. That moment became the beginning of something. Her framework, the Grace Over Grit Method, is built on a deceptively simple insight: the patterns that quietly run our adult lives were not designed to hurt us. They were designed to keep us safe, built before our brains were fully formed, wired into the nervous system as protection. And you cannot willpower your way out of a protective programme — because the part of you running it thinks that's still what survival requires. Raymond brings something rare to this conversation — the story of spending sixty years as the person he became to survive his own childhood, and the specific moment at 75 when he felt that pattern leave his body. Between the two of them, the episode becomes something more than a framework for change. It becomes a quiet argument for grace. Learn more and connect: Dr. Alena Candova — https://www.sattva-integralhealth.com Resources mentioned: Grace Over Grit: The Neuroscience of Claiming Your Inner Authority — Dr. Alena Candova — https://www.sattva-integralhealth.com; Respark Your Life Podcast — https://www.resparkyourlife.com; Raymond Aaron — https://www.aaron.com --- Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT-Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author! https://www.aaron.com ---

"My dad committed suicide when I was 14. I left school and never went back. Then in my 20s, early 30s, I went bankrupt, lost everything, and got divorced the same year. I rebuilt myself again. And now at 46, I've been through a lot, and I think I'm there. I think I'm ready." — Mario Lamarre Mario Lamarre returns to Respark Your Life — one of very few guests Raymond has ever welcomed back — and the reason becomes clear within minutes. He leads with his failures, not his wins. His first business idea flopped. His early 30s brought bankruptcy and divorce in the same year. His father died when he was 14. He shares all of it without drama, because he has learned that the hard path he walked is exactly what prepared him to do what he now does well: bring ambitious people together and create conditions where real things happen. The business he has built around that gift, the Investor Edge Ecosystem, is part curated coaching directory, part intimate experiential retreat, part global business growth summit — and it grew directly from understanding what he was genuinely good at and building everything around that, rather than around what he thought he should be doing. Along the way, Raymond adds something most people have never heard: the real reason Henry Ford named his breakthrough vehicle the Model T. It is a small piece of history that reframes failure entirely. Mario also shares a three-part networking framework — network up toward mentors, tend the relationships you already have, and never stop expanding outward — that he credits as the turning point of the last four or five years of his life. Learn more and connect: Investor Edge Academy — free access — https://www.investoredgeacademy.ca Resources mentioned: Think and Grow Rich — Napoleon Hill; Investor Edge Academy (free access) — https://www.investoredgeacademy.ca; Respark Your Life Podcast — https://www.resparkyourlife.com; Raymond Aaron — https://www.aaron.com --- Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT-Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author! https://www.aaron.com ---

"You can't always control what's happening to you, but you can control how you react to it. That was the biggest lesson I learned." — Ken Kunken On Halloween 1970, twenty-year-old Cornell engineering student Ken Kunken tackled a ball carrier during a football kickoff and broke his neck. The rehabilitation pamphlet his family was handed listed one possible future for someone with his injury: selling magazine subscriptions by telephone. Ken couldn't dial a rotary phone. What happened next took five decades, three Ivy League degrees, a passed bar exam, a courtroom with doors too narrow for his wheelchair, and more than 200 mailed-out resumes before a single employer said yes. Ken Kunken became the world's first quadriplegic lawyer — and eventually a Deputy Bureau Chief supervising 25 assistant district attorneys — not because adversity left him alone, but because he learned something essential: you can't control what happens to you, only how you respond. His story is a reminder that the people who help us matter as much as the determination we bring ourselves — and that one person willing to give you a chance can change everything. Ken's book, I Dream of Things That Never Were: The Ken Kunken Story, is available in hardcover, ebook, and as an audiobook narrated by Ken himself. Learn more and connect: I Dream of Things That Never Were: The Ken Kunken Story — available in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook — https://kenkunken.com Resources mentioned: I Dream of Things That Never Were: The Ken Kunken Story — Ken Kunken; The Viscardi Center (formerly Abilities Incorporated) — https://www.viscardi.org; Rusk Rehabilitation, NYU Langone — https://www.nyulangone.org/locations/rusk-rehabilitation; Respark Your Life Podcast — https://www.resparkyourlife.com; Raymond Aaron — https://www.aaron.com --- Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT-Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author! https://www.aaron.com ---

"It's hard to see the picture when you're inside of the frame. So having someone that's willing to get in the trenches of your life with you, and be present with you and be able to extract and see some of the things that have helped you to become who you are — that's a powerful process." — Dr. Ona Love Brown She went to a Come Out and Vote rally in Columbus, Ohio not knowing anything unusual was about to happen. She'd invited her mother along as a nice outing. When she mentioned the speaker's name — a former state rep, former disc jockey, now a motivational voice people were talking about everywhere — her mother went still as a ghost. And then said the words that changed everything: I know very well who he is. In fact, he is your father. That is how Dr. Ona Love Brown met Les Brown. In her twenties. At a rally. With a notepad in her hand and her whole life about to shift direction. What followed was a journey that took her from the Ohio legislature to a receptionist's desk at Les Brown Unlimited in Detroit — a pay cut she took without hesitation, because what she was gaining was worth far more than what she was giving up. Over the years that followed, Les handed her some of the toughest clients he had — attorneys, surgeons, athletes, people carrying extraordinary stories they had no idea how to tell — and walked out of the room. What Ona discovered in those sessions became her life's work: she is what her clients now call the Message Midwife, someone who helps people give birth to the unique story they were always meant to share. Raymond contributes his own extraordinary memory — the Atlanta event where Les arrived in unbearable pain, was lifted onto the stage in a wheelchair, then lit up the room so completely that when he finished, ten thousand people stood and walked out, leaving Raymond next on stage with forty. He would make the same choice again. Whether you know your story or suspect you might have one you've never said quite right, this conversation is an invitation to look more carefully at what you already carry. Learn more and connect: Mastering My Story: https://www.masteringmystory.com Resources mentioned: Mastering My Story (Dr. Ona Love Brown's coaching program): https://www.masteringmystory.com Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (the 10,000-hour mastery principle): https://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwell/dp/0316017930 Respark Your Life Podcast: https://www.resparkyourlife.com Raymond Aaron: https://www.aaron.com --- Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT-Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author! https://www.aaron.com ---

"I'm very, very encouraged because people are shaking yokes off. They don't always know what the next step is or the complete vision, but something again is propelling them towards something better and greater." — Beth Wilson Beth Wilson knew from age seven that she moved through the world differently. Books fell off shelves at the right moment. She felt guided rather than driven. By 14 she realized not everyone experienced life this way. Today she helps people reconnect with that same inner compass — the one that conditioning, religion, and ordinary life have trained most of us to ignore. Her book Escaping Crazytown weaves together childhood trauma, mystical adventure, legislative work in Washington, and decades of coaching into one of the more surprising life stories you'll hear. Raymond brings his own extraordinary story: the woman who wrote down, before they ever met, that her dream man had to be a mathematician, a real estate investor, a teacher, and the author of exactly two Chicken Soup for the Soul books. One man on Earth qualified. These are the kinds of stories that make you wonder what you might have written down — and haven't yet. Learn more and connect: Beth Wilson: https://www.bethwilsonlifecoach.com Escaping Crazytown on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Escaping-Crazytown-Spiritual-Adventure-Courage/dp/194556766X Resources mentioned: Escaping Crazytown by Beth Wilson: https://www.amazon.com/Escaping-Crazytown-Spiritual-Adventure-Courage/dp/194556766X Power vs. Force by David R. Hawkins — available at major booksellers The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels — available at major booksellers Respark Your Life Podcast: https://www.resparkyourlife.com Raymond Aaron: https://www.aaron.com --- Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT-Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author! https://www.aaron.com ---

"I hate injustice with a passion. And when it was happening to me, I thought — why is this happening? Am I doing something wrong? You start to wonder about your confidence, you start to wonder about your capabilities." — Colleen McAvoy Colleen McAvoy had a long, stable government career — until three narcissistic managers came in succession and changed everything. She started shaking. Her heart palpitated. She stopped sleeping. HR didn't help. The lawyer said it would take years. The organisation's own counselling service told her plainly: get out, this place has a bad reputation. So she left. What followed is a story about what comes after — and what you can build when you stop tolerating what's tearing you apart. Colleen's book Bullies Begone offers tools, strategies, and a genuine blueprint for anyone navigating harassment or discrimination at work, whether they choose to stay and fight or leave and rebuild. Raymond and Colleen cover the uncomfortable ground together: whether victims can unconsciously draw bullies toward them, why organisations often fail the people they're supposed to protect, and why walking away — far from giving up — can be the most powerful act of self-respect available. The workplace bullying conversation nobody wants to have. Worth every minute. Learn more and connect with Colleen McAvoy: Search "Bullies Begone by Colleen McAvoy" on Amazon to find the book. Resources mentioned: Bullies Begone: 10 Ways to Deal with Harassment and Discrimination in the Workplace by Colleen McAvoy — available on Amazon Respark Your Life Podcast: https://www.resparkyourlife.com Raymond Aaron: https://www.aaron.com --- Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT-Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author! https://www.aaron.com ---

"When you get to the age of 100 and 110 and still have that signal that's strong like we're at 20, we'll reach those older ages at an active state." — Dr. Tommy Rhee Here is a genuinely new idea, explained clearly by someone who has lived at the intersection of elite sport and cutting-edge medicine for decades. Dr. Tommy Rhee — chiropractor, former practitioner for UCLA Athletics and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — has developed a topical cream that delivers the active signals of stem cell therapy directly through the skin. No needles. No clinic visit. Just the molecules your body needs to tell its own tissue to wake up and repair itself. The science, as Dr. Rhee explains it, comes down to signalling. Stem cells don't become new tissue — they secrete tiny molecules that carry the message to regenerate. As we age, that signal weakens. What Dr. Rhee has done is capture the signal without the live cell, making a molecule small enough to penetrate all three layers of skin and reach the target tissue directly. Thirty days of use, morning and evening, he says, produces results comparable to an injection — at a fraction of the cost, and available without a clinic visit. Raymond and Dr. Rhee also look ahead to where this is going: plant-based versions of the same signalling technology that could bring the price down further and put the product directly in the hands of anyone who wants it. Learn more and connect: https://www.rheegen.com Resources mentioned: The Future of Regenerative Medicine by Dr. Tommy Rhee — available on Amazon Rheegen (Dr. Tommy Rhee's regenerative medicine product): https://www.rheegen.com Respark Your Life Podcast: https://www.resparkyourlife.com Raymond Aaron: https://www.aaron.com Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT-Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author! https://www.aaron.com

"Changing your mind is one of the best ways of discovering whether you still have one or not." Raymond Aaron has known Dr. Stephen Bezruchka since the first day of university — two students of mathematics and physics who went on to build entirely different lives, stayed close across sixty years and three time zones, and still have things to teach each other. This conversation is one of those moments. Bezruchka spent over thirty years as an emergency physician before devoting himself to a question that practice couldn't answer: why do some populations live long, healthy lives while others don't, regardless of what individuals do? What he found upended almost everything the standard health conversation assumes. The United States ranks 42nd in life expectancy by the most recent UN data — behind Cuba, Costa Rica, Chile, and dozens of others — while spending roughly as much on healthcare as every other country on earth combined. Bezruchka's research points to three factors that explain far more than diet, exercise, or medical access: the size of the gap between rich and poor, the strength of social bonds within a community, and what happens to a child in the first thousand days of life. His most recent book is Born Sick in the USA, published by Cambridge University Press. His previous book, Inequality Kills Us All, is available as a free download. Learn more and connect: https://www.stephenbezruchka.com Resources mentioned: Born Sick in the USA by Dr. Stephen Bezruchka — https://www.bookfinder.com Inequality Kills Us All by Dr. Stephen Bezruchka (free download) — https://www.stephenbezruchka.com Respark Your Life Podcast — https://www.resparkyourlife.com Raymond Aaron — https://www.aaron.com Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT-Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author! https://www.aaron.com

"The world is one big giant oyster, and there's so many different ways to make a dollar, and if you're motivated, it can be made out of just about anything." — Kira Hartley Klinger Kira Hartley Klinger was 40 years old, newly divorced, with a teenager at home, no college degree, and a patchwork of side hustles behind her: cleaning houses, writing resumes, running a paper route with her boys. What she did have was five years of experience selling on eBay, a willingness to buy what nobody else wanted, and an instinct for finding treasure in the boxes at the back of auction lots. She fell into vintage fabric entirely by accident — buying it cheap because it was there, then discovering customers in Japan and Australia who kept coming back for more. She taught herself to date a piece of fabric by its width and fiber content. She opened an Etsy shop. She started writing little essays on her listing pages about the characters she met at auctions, and customers began writing back: you need to write the book. So she did. Twice. And those books led to speaking at quilting guilds, podcast guesting, and a California TV producer who signed her because she believed in the story. At 55, Kira became debt-free for the first time in her adult life. Raymond Aaron talks with her about the wiggly path — the one you can only see clearly by looking backward — and what it means to follow what the world is quietly offering you. Learn more and connect: Kira Hartley Klinger on Etsy: https://www.etsy.com (search "Fabric Wars" or Kira Hartley Klinger) Fabric Wars on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com (search "Fabric Wars Kira Hartley Klinger") Resources mentioned: Fabric Wars by Kira Hartley Klinger — https://www.amazon.com (search title) Fabric Wars and More by Kira Hartley Klinger — https://www.amazon.com (search title) eBay — https://www.ebay.com Etsy — https://www.etsy.com Respark Your Life Podcast — https://www.resparkyourlife.com Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT-Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author! https://www.aaron.com

Storytelling "I want to use today up. I mean, I want to honor them, the people who didn't receive the gift. I want to honor the day, and I want to honor myself by making the most of it." — Ray Hartjen Ray Hartjen was 55 when he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma — an incurable but treatable blood cancer. His first instinct was to attack it physically: train harder, eat cleaner, beat the transplant timeline. Ten days in, sitting exhausted at a restaurant with his family, he realized he had pushed one instrument all the way up and let the rest of the band go quiet. The physical was everything; the mental, emotional, and spiritual had been left behind. What followed was a simple exercise: draw a line, mark your birth on the left, your death on the right, and place an honest tick mark where you actually are. For Ray, that moment cracked open a new way of seeing time, people, and purpose. In the seven years since, he has published six books, built a global community around multiple myeloma, and rebuilt his life around what matters most — family, friends, fun, fitness, education, and challenge. He also makes a warm, practical case that you are a better storyteller than you believe — and that your story is worth telling. Learn more and connect: https://www.rayhartjen.com [email protected] Ray Hartjen on all major social media platforms — search Ray Hartjen Resources mentioned: Me, Myself, and My Multiple Myeloma by Ray Hartjen — available at https://www.rayhartjen.com and wherever books are sold; writer proceeds benefit the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation: https://www.themmrf.org Respark Your Life Podcast: https://www.resparkyourlife.com Raymond Aaron: https://www.aaron.com --- Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT-Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author! https://www.aaron.com

"We don't grow spiritually when everything's going good. When we're blind and we're wondering what the future is gonna — that's when we're in that pain, that emotional pain and anxiety. It's when we grow spiritually." Rand Timmerman grew up in poverty, survived Vietnam, built a 40-year legal career, fought alcoholism into his 60s, and got sober through AA. At 72, four years into his sobriety, he set out to hike the Appalachian Trail — 2,200 miles, 600 mountains, half a million feet of elevation change — alongside his grieving younger brother. What happened on that trail changed his understanding of God, of suffering, and of what it actually means to be grateful. He describes standing alone on a mountain above the Hudson River at daybreak, raptors circling, New York City just visible on the horizon, not a single sign of human life — and feeling, for the first time, that his higher power was as large as the universe itself. That expansion stayed with him. The following year, he went blind on Christmas Eve. He was alone in a home with alcohol in it for two months. He never once thought about a drink. Raymond presses Rand on the question most listeners will be asking: why does it seem to take so much pain to get there? Rand's answer is honest and oddly comforting. The hard times are not in the way. They are the way. Learn more and connect: A Spiritual Passage by Rand Timmerman — available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com Resources mentioned: A Spiritual Passage by Rand Timmerman — memoir of the Appalachian Trail hike, grief, sobriety, and faith Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) 12-step program — https://www.aa.org The Appalachian Trail Conservancy — https://www.appalachiantrail.org Respark Your Life Podcast — https://www.resparkyourlife.com Raymond Aaron — https://www.aaron.com Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT-Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author! https://www.aaron.com

"Once you cut, you can't uncut. So you should do everything you possibly can prior." If you have ever felt that getting healthy after 50 means an all-or-nothing overhaul, this conversation will ease your mind. Dr. Michael Guadagnino, a chiropractor of more than thirty years and author of Fitness Over 50, 60, 70, and Beyond, sits down with Raymond to lay out a genuinely doable path to aging well — built on a nonjudgmental mindset, small steps you can start tonight, and clean food. They get into why walking is one of the most powerful things you can do for your body and your mind, why healthy fats belong back in your diet, and why your daily environment shapes your health even more than your genes. Raymond, 81 and still an athlete, has his own habits checked along the way. It is warm, practical, and easy to act on. Learn more and connect: Book: Fitness Over 50, 60, 70, and Beyond https://a.co/d/0aUnv3Yb YouTube: @dr.michaelguadagnino6874 Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT‐Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author! https://www.Aaron.com