Telling Your Compelling Life Transformation Story or “How I Killed ‘Dadzilla!

The Beyond Adversity Podcast is all about affirming that every person has a God-given promised life of peace, wealth, and purpose, and that you must implement a plan with the right people to quickly overcome life’s problems in order to obtain that promised life.

Dr. Brad shares a viewpoint to offer a good word in his listeners’ life to grow through their difficulties in this episode.

He discusses his part career of being a pastor for 42 years in local churches, where he experienced some joyous occasions but also much pressure, which eventually led to depression.

Dr. Brad describes his way of recovering from depression through God, family and friends, and journaling.

The Beyond Adversity Podcast Episode 237 is a must-listen for anyone setting new goals. It may appear to be a big undertaking, but it will allow you to consider your future self and how we want them to be. The Beyond Adversity Podcast with Dr. Brad Miller is published weekly with the mission of helping people “Grow Through What They Go Through” as they navigate adversity and discover their promised life of peace, prosperity, and purpose.

Https://Dr. Bradbaader.com

Https://www.powerofoneframework.com

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/uciieqgljcy02yahbiprqkxw

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/Dr. Bradbaader/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Dr. Bradbaader/

Transcript

[00:00:00] Dr. Brad Miller: Hello, good people, and welcome to Beyond Adversity with Dr. Brad Miller. A pleasure and a privilege to have you join me today on this podcast, where we look to offer a good word to you to help you navigate adversity and achieve your life of peace, prosperity, and purpose. We come to you from the Loft Studios.

[00:00:27] Dr. Brad Miller: Just outside of Indianapolis, Indiana. It's a rainy, blurry jury day today, on the 12th of January. And we are coming to you today to offer a good word into your life, to help you grow through what you go through. And that's our purpose here, beyond adversity as we look, to be helpful to you.

[00:00:52] Dr. Brad Miller: This is episode number 237. Here in our sixth season of existence, we're doing a process where we're doing two or three episodes each week, and we take an interview where we set up the issue and speak to it in the interview that we do. Then I have some teaching about it here on our third episode of the week.

[00:01:17] Dr. Brad Miller: This week, we were privileged to have as our special guest from the podcast, whatwasthatlike.com Steve Scott Johnson, who was here with us on Number 235 and 236. And we were talking this week about storytelling, and that's what I want to talk to you about today. Scott set us up.

[00:01:40] Dr. Brad Miller: He talked about the importance of storytelling as he talks to some fascinating guests on his podcast who speak to very dramatic things that have happened and some fun and silly things that have happened. He's had people trapped on a mountain, on Mount Everest, and an earthquake came. People lost their lives from extremes like that to people who drove the Oscar Meyer Winter Mobile for a living and talk about their stories, being empathetic to their stories, listening to the stories and the power of stories to transform.

[00:02:14] Dr. Brad Miller: What I wanted to tell you is a little bit of a story about my life and how I have an important story in my life that goes to why I created the beyond Adversity Podcast and important for me in my teaching and my leadership that I hope to do with you as we go along here. I call it Killing Dad Zillow.

[00:02:40] Dr. Brad Miller: now I'm a pastor. I've been a retired pastor for 42 years in local churches, from small, tiny churches to large churches with several hundred attending. And one of the privileges i've had in my ministry career, I don't know exactly how many, but proud of the neighborhood of 200 or more weddings that i've been able to be a part of in my ministry.

[00:03:05] Dr. Brad Miller: And, often, it's a joyous occasion. Many times it's a wonderful thing, especially if I know the couple and get to know them. It's a great thing. I love it. Other times it shoots a weekend. It shoots a Friday night on a Saturday if it's something I do not feel that good about, especially if there was a bride, Zillow or a Momzilla involved, you know what I mean by that?

[00:03:30] Dr. Brad Miller: Someone who was so involved with things and so uptight and so engaged and frustrated with the minutiae of the wedding that they forgot what the meaningfulness of the wedding itself was about, and sometimes they appeared in the rear. You've heard that time Bridezilla and maybe even Momzilla before, and how they, if they are too involved, can ruin the wedding, and I did my best as a pastor to conduct the weddings and have control and to try to control that kind of stuff.

[00:03:59] Dr. Brad Miller: It sometimes happened, and I remember having one bride who was totally consumed with her dress and how she looked in it that she paid no attention to anything else. And I remember another mom wanting to deal with every little minute thing and calling me all the time, and it was not much fun.

[00:04:25] Dr. Brad Miller: There was one wedding I had, one that I was a part of. That was more intense than any other wedding experience that I ever had. And that's where it involved me very personally, and it's where I had a fear myself of this whole Zillow thing. A few years ago, my daughter came to me and said, dad

[00:04:51] Dr. Brad Miller: i've been going with my fiance for a long time, and I'd like you to attend the wedding. I'd like you to have the wedding and not only that, dad, but I want you to walk me down the aisle and have my first dance at the wedding reception. Now many dads would be thrilled about that.

[00:05:11] Dr. Brad Miller: And I indeed was thrilled by my overriding sense of, a sense of that moment was doom. I felt as fearful as I have ever been in my entire life by what happened and by her asking me to perform her wedding, to have her wedding and to be involved with it. And this was, this was several months prior to the actual date of the wedding.

[00:05:39] Dr. Brad Miller: When she asked me about nine, 10 months prior to the wedding date was going to be in the summertime, and this was in the fall. And I felt, of course, agreed to it and was thrilled in one level, but I had this fear and it was unnatural based on some of my past experiences. God, I'm going to do something to screw this up.

[00:06:01] Dr. Brad Miller: You know what I'm going to be. I'm afraid I'm going to be dad Villa. I will be the dad to screw up the wedding and make it the worst day ever. And I wanted more than anything else to do my part to make that wedding day my daughter's best day ever. But there was much pressure on me.

[00:06:23] Dr. Brad Miller: At least I felt. And the pressure was that I didn't feel ready on many different levels to do this, to participate in the wedding, because it involved not only doing the vows. And also, doing the vows and helping with that and doing those vows, which is the most important thing, meant walking her down the aisle.

[00:06:46] Dr. Brad Miller: And I just had this fear that I was going to trip into a header into the front row. And there were financial considerations to consider, to think about because this was a big wedding. And, as the bride's father, I was doing my part to pay for the wedding. And that was some pressure there.

[00:07:02] with that, there's also the matter, there was some family dynamics. My daughter was from a prior marriage, and there were some family dynamics I had to consider, which I was uneasy about. And then there was also a matter of a toast of the bride speech from the father of the bride speech, which I felt like, i've got to kill that, i've got to knock that thing out of the park.

[00:07:25] Here's what scared me more than anything else. It was the dance. The father and bride dance. Now I like to dance, and I have a lot of fun with it, but we were going to do a quite involved, choreographed dance, and I was not prepared for that.

[00:07:55] Dr. Brad Miller: I was truly fearful, almost paralyzed with fear that I was going to step on her dress, fall down, or do something stupid. Basically, the whole thing I'm using is pretty cool and commonly collected about most things. Most things don't face me, but the fact of doing my daughter's wedding got to me, and I fell into a state of depression.

[00:08:17] Dr. Brad Miller: My depression led me to gain significant weight. My depression led me to a bad place spiritually. My depression led me to make some poor decisions in other aspects of my life and to be in a bad place. But here's what I knew. I knew that I did not want to be Dad Zillow. I was not going to do that.

[00:08:45] Dr. Brad Miller: And so about five months before the wedding in February of the year, before she got married in June, I just had a little talk to myself. I went to God. I had a little prayer time. I had a little come to Jesus moment and come to myself moment, and I said, okay, we've got to do this. We've got to change. We got to change now.

[00:09:04] Dr. Brad Miller: I do not want to be Godzilla God, the dad, Zillow, of this wedding. So I am determined. Kill Dad Villa and create everything I can do to make this the best day of my daughter's life. So I got to work. I got up at five o'clock in the morning. I got with a partner, and we did a workout together. That started the process of changing my diet and exercise regimen to be very disciplined.

[00:09:34] Dr. Brad Miller: And I got in shape and lost a bunch of weight before the wedding.

[00:09:39] Dr. Brad Miller: I met with some good friends and counsellors to deal with my emotional state. I met with some personal friends of mine. I shared my heart with them; they gave me some reflection, leadership, and guidance and just bucked me up a little bit.

[00:09:54] Dr. Brad Miller: That helped my emotional state. I got prepared on a spiritual state. I met with a spiritual director and a spiritual counsellor who helped me with that process a little bit. I had a lot more time in the Bible. I'm going to tell you about another story from the Bible here in just a minute. I got that going.

[00:10:10] Dr. Brad Miller: I got more serious about my prayer life. I began to journal more. I began to do this. I was taking action to kill Dad Z and lift my daughter in her. I also took dance lessons. I took ballroom dance lessons with my daughter. I had dance lessons with my daughter and dance lessons with my wife.

[00:10:40] Dr. Brad Miller: And I practiced the dance myself. This was a four-minute choreographed dance we did with a mashup of several songs, and I practiced that dance probably well over a thousand times on my own. And I had lessons; I took action. Okay, here's the thing, I became determined to change my life to kill dad Zillow and make this my daughter's best day.

[00:11:09] Dr. Brad Miller: I was not going to say, stuck at my depression, stuck at my physical state and on her when her wedding day did roll around, and it was pretty cool.

[00:11:22] Dr. Brad Miller: I lost 50 pounds in about four months. I felt I looked good and felt good physically. He had good. I walked her down the aisle, didn't trip. It was an outdoor wedding. Had a great time. It was a beautiful June day. Flowers and trees everywhere. Walked her down the aisle and saw the family members of all the family and friends who were there.

[00:11:46] Dr. Brad Miller: A lot of people there. It was pleasant. It was nice. When it came time for the vows, we exchanged them, and I wasn't humble. At all. I had a little catch in my throat, I admit, because of the moment, but I didn't fumble the lines, which I was afraid I was going to do when it came time for the fa the Toast after.

[00:12:08] Dr. Brad Miller: And that went great. We walked her out the aisle, and when it came time for the father of the bride toast and speech, I have to say i've given a lot of, i've given a lot of sermons, a lot of public speeches in my life, but that was probably one of the most important ones. And I nailed it without sounding too big, little big head.

[00:12:29] Dr. Brad Miller: I was able to have the right emotion and the right inflection, the right memories and the right things to say to her new husband and the family. And it was there. It was a great speech. And then the dance came, and the music played my daughter and. Got on the dance floor until she and I swept around that dance floor, and we glided.

[00:12:51] Dr. Brad Miller: It w was just amazing. It was great. And here is the thing, everybody, here's what I want you to get. At the end of the day, the payoff was this when my daughter said to me after the dance was over. She looked at me and said, dad, this is the greatest day of my life. And that was my payoff.

[00:13:21] Dr. Brad Miller: That was my payoff. Now I'm going to come back in a minute, everybody, to what that means to you and me, this story, because I knew at that moment, indeed, at that moment, I knew I had killed Dad Zillow, and I had. The dad who helped make my daughter's day the greatest day of her life. Now, I told you I'm a pastor, so I want to come to these teachings that I do with a little spiritual element or a teaching element.

[00:13:53] Dr. Brad Miller: And I want to lift up a biblical story that I think applies here because we're talking today about storytelling. And about the power of a transformative story. I want to call it an Exodus story, A story that caused you to move, that take a to, to move out of your place where you're imprisoned or in slavery, to a place your promised life, your exodus story, and the story about a wedding.

[00:14:18] Dr. Brad Miller: Jesus. It was at a wedding, and this from, if you want to look it up, it's from the Gospel of John chapter two. It says that on the third day, there was a wedding in a town called Cana and Galilee, and Jesus' mother was there, and Jesus and the other disciples were there, and they'd been invited to the wedding.

[00:14:37] Dr. Brad Miller: This is a big deal. When the wine was gone, Jesus' mother said to him, Dave, number wine. And Jesus said, woman, why do you bother? My hour has not yet come. And his mother said to the servants around there, do whatever he tells you to do. And nearby, there were six stones, and Jesus said to fill up those six stones with water.

[00:15:02] Dr. Brad Miller: Cause they were used for what was called ceremonial washing. And they did that, and they were. They each held much water. 20 to 30 gallon. Of water. And Jesus said to the servants, filled the jars of the water and he said, now take the water. Now draw some water out and give it to the master of the banquet.

[00:15:20] Dr. Brad Miller: Most times, that would've, often, it would've been the bride's father, okay? And they did so, and the master of the banquet tasted of the water that he'd been turned into wine, and he did not realize where I had come from, although the servants had drawn the water, and then they called the bride groomer site and said, everyone, brings out the choice wine.

[00:15:38] Dr. Brad Miller: Then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink, but you saved the best to last. And it goes on to say here, what Jesus did here in Keenan Galley was the first of the signs of which he revealed his glory, and the disciples believed in him. Jesus had his moment too. When I guess he could have been, ruined the wedding by not changing the water to wine.

[00:16:03] Dr. Brad Miller: But what did Jesus do? He kept the party going and changed the party's direction, which saved the best for last. Now, here are a few lessons I want you to learn. When you heard Scott Johnson this week on Beyond Adversity, in episodes 235 and 236, he talked about being a good listener. And how Paris power and compelling story and how a great story when he talks to these people helps often moves them from one direction to another.

[00:16:30] Dr. Brad Miller: And I think that's the case for me. My dad Zillow's story helps me to learn that people can change in a relatively short time if they focus on the mission at hand and look forward to getting it done if they feel enough pain in what is happening to them. To change, and you can do it when you focus, and I believe, from a biblical standpoint, you can change in 40 days, about six weeks, and get yourself on a track to a new direction.

[00:17:00] Dr. Brad Miller: I believe that. But I believe often this comes when we define. Our Exodus story, our life change story, and apply that story to the things we do. For me, my dad, Zilla Killing Godzilla's story indicates power. I believe you can change if you focus and are part of the reason. Now I do.

[00:17:24] Dr. Brad Miller: The Beyond Adversity Podcast is because I believe you can get through whatever adversity you face and come up to a better place. I want to call it the place of peace and prosperity and purpose, or your promise given life like I promised my daughter, I would give her everything I could do to make that the greatest day of her.

[00:17:47] Dr. Brad Miller: Her wedding day, I was going to hold myself to that promise. Even though I was going through depression, self-doubt, body image, and emotional and spiritual stuff, I determined I would do it. So here are some of the five. Here are some of the points I think we can learn from what Scott Johnson taught us this week on what was like podcast episodes that we have from my story about dead Zillow.

[00:18:14] Dr. Brad Miller: And in the wedding at Kena and about how you can create your story in your life. The first I'm going to, these are C's things that you can, if you want to write these down, I'll put them on my, in our show notes@drbradmiller.com. The first is to consider the problem at hand. Consider what it is. What's your issue?

[00:18:32] Dr. Brad Miller: What's your issue? Consider it, think about it. Consider your issue. For me, it was the wedding of my daughter. And that was when I knew I had to step up for Jesus wedding candidate was the wedding he was at. What is it for you? Maybe it's a health issue. Maybe it's a relationship issue.

[00:18:48] Dr. Brad Miller: Maybe it's a financial issue. Maybe it's the end of life issue, any number of things that can be, but consider what the problem is. Then you've tried to form your story based on that. You don't try and form your story based on what you want to get beyond that and a great story. Your ex's story, then is compelling.

[00:19:07] Dr. Brad Miller: So that's the second. So first, C is considered the story. The second C is compelling. What is compelling about the story to draw you? To draw you in From my story. It's about getting Godzilla and all the things I had to do that this or this terrible feeling I had, that I wanted to kill Godzilla and didn't want to be the guy who ruined my daughter's wedding for the Jesus of the wedding.

[00:19:30] Dr. Brad Miller: There was this big wedding feast in Cana. Jesus' mother was their family. Everybody knew it must have been a big deal, and at weddings in the Holyland, times went on for days at a time, to say the story. This was the third day of the wedding, which means the party had been going on for a while, so be considered a problem.

[00:19:50] Dr. Brad Miller: Have a compelling story to tell. The third thing is to be compassionate. What is the emotional element? What draws you in? What is the empathy and sympathy of the moment? My story was about the empathy of not wanting a dad to ruin his daughter's wedding, and a daughter who wanted a great wedding, and he wanted her dad involved.

[00:20:08] Dr. Brad Miller: That's part of it. Wedding at Kena, you have this. The situation, this wedding that's going on, and the mom, Jesus' mother gets involved and tells him, do something, son, do something. I think some compelling, compassionate moments about the story there are important. The next thing is being composed.

[00:20:25] Dr. Brad Miller: Your story should be well thought out. My mother's English teacher taught me about being composed. And when you write and do something, have a plan, think out, and have a beginning, a middle, and an end to your story. Don't let it drag on. One of the things I've learned from years of preaching is, you know, when the horse is dead, dismount.

[00:20:43] that is to have a story in a form, composed story, situation, beginning, middle, and end. And so, in this case, what was my problem before the wedding? My emotional state in the middle was what I did about it. The actions I took, the preparation, and the actual wedding were the story's end.

[00:21:02] Dr. Brad Miller: And my daughter at the Cana's wedding, you had the problem. You had the water. The wine was running out of the crisis, the actions that were taken changed, the fell water jugs up and then at the end of the story, the master said, this is a great wine. Thanks for bringing the bring out the best for our last.

[00:21:21] Dr. Brad Miller: And then there's the content. What are the next sea is the content. I think every story should teach you something. It's one thing to have kind of bullet points. Boom, boom. And that's. Believe in that kind of teaching from time to time. But bullet points, which are a part of a story, are also important.

[00:21:38] Dr. Brad Miller: So what kind of bullet points? One to three, maybe as five points, but usually, three is a magic number. What are the points you want to get across? For me, it was about the points I wanted people to consider: the acts plan, the A C T S plan. Taking action is the A, the C, to connect with a higher power.

[00:21:56] Dr. Brad Miller: The T is to think with discipline, and the S is to serve others with love. And I did that in the process of my story than what I did to change myself. And what I believe I can teach you as well. For Jesus, it was, what's the timing issue? What is the timing issue? When should Jesus be revealed? What obedience?

[00:22:16] Dr. Brad Miller: The mother, the mom, said to the servant, be obedient to Jesus. And then there is saving the best for last. There are these three points in what Jesus talked and taught about. Then there is the last sea of what I want to share with you today: connect to action. This is your call to action or your connection to action.

[00:22:37] Dr. Brad Miller: That's the sea there. What are you going to do to transform your life? Now, my transformation took place in those two or three months before the wedding when I got focused and got it done and sent my life into a new, For Jesus in his story. What does it say? It says that this changed the water into wine, saving the best for last.

[00:23:01] Dr. Brad Miller: And it goes on to say that this was the first of signs through which Jesus's glory was revealed. So I share these things with you to give you a little teaching moment here to understand that you can also do some cool things in your life. I know that you. I know you can do that, and I'm here to help you at the Beyond Adversity Podcast.

[00:23:25] Dr. Brad Miller: I'm all about helping teach you to have these exodus moments, these moments when you have a place in time to take some action in your life. At dr brad miller.com, I have over 230 episodes of this podcast, what you're all about, helping to teach you how. Develop a plan and a process by learning from other people's experiences as they have overcome some adversity in their life.

[00:23:51] Dr. Brad Miller: The adversity that people call the five Ds of adversity. And people have almost all of these. The five Ds are depression, mental health-related things, divorce related to relationships, and disease related to health-related. Debt, financial-related matters and death, end of life issues are grief.

[00:24:10] Dr. Brad Miller: Those types of things. Loss of a loved one, dramatic, profound stories almost always have some element of those things going on, but people get stuck. I almost got stuck and reacted badly by being a dad villa because I'd seen it before. I've seen Bridezillas and Momzillas at weddings before, and I did not want to go there.

[00:24:32] Dr. Brad Miller: I wasn't going to go. But it can happen. So I'm committed to helping you get through things. In fact, through our years of ministry, I was able to be helped by many people, and many people helped me. And then, I also went and got a doctoral degree. My, I have a doctor of ministry in transformational leadership.

[00:24:51] Dr. Brad Miller: That also helps me to know the academics and the parts of this, the content parts. And the processes, because that's what I'm really about creating a doable process for you. That's why I have the Acts plan. And you can always go to dr brad miller.com and find the starter guide to the Acts.

[00:25:09] Dr. Brad Miller: Plan the G to take action. The sea of the word acts is to connect with a higher power that your spiritual life. The T in the word action is to think with discipline. What's your process itself? And the S is to serve others with love. That's what I'm seeking to do here, friends, to show my love for you by offering you this process.

[00:25:29] Dr. Brad Miller: So I hope that you'll be with me, stick with me every week as we go through teaching and leadership and guidance. Be helpful to you, and we're going to tell great, compelling, compassionate stories with a good composition and content that is worth listening to and can call you to action.

[00:25:47] Dr. Brad Miller: So your action today is this, and here is what I want you to do. I want you to think about your compelling exodus. , what is the thing that you need to overcome? What is the adversity that you are facing that you need to overcome? And if you have a story that you've dealt with, great. If you're living the story right now, get on with it.

[00:26:13] Dr. Brad Miller: Okay? But the idea of having your story is to find that compelling thing you want to conquer, get through, define it, and complete your story and do this part of what I'm talking about here. To have your story to consider the problem, to have a compassionate connection. The emotional piece, what's the composed piece?

[00:26:36] Dr. Brad Miller: How do you put it together, and what's the content? What do people need to learn from you, and what can you do? The Bible talks about, the children of Israel, or in slavery In Egypt, Moses saw the burning bush. That was his moment. Then they went on to the promised land through the Exodus, their.

[00:26:55] Dr. Brad Miller: Okay. And I believe they went to the promised land, and you can have your promised life, okay? Your promised life, which is your life of peace and prosperity. And purpose. That's your aha moment. That's your moment. Like when I had with my daughter when she said, dad, this is the greatest day of my life.

[00:27:13] Dr. Brad Miller: My heart's soared. Like it's almost never soared before. It's like when Jesus turned the water into wine, and the master said, you saved the best for last. Let's work on this together. It's going to be much fun. You can always do the dr brad miller.com for more information on what I'm all about. If you've got a story to share with me, I'd love to.

[00:27:34] Dr. Brad Miller: Let me know. You can email me at drbradmiller.com or contact me through dr brad miller.com. It has been great to be with you, my good people. We'll come back to you next week with another great interview. Cliff Rakas. Cliff Ravenscraft will be with us on our next series of interviews to talk about a mindset and your mindset for transformation, and I'll also be telling more stories.

[00:28:00] Dr. Brad Miller: And we're all. Helping you grow through what you go through and transform your life to help you achieve peace, prosperity, and purpose. I'm here to be helpful to you. I love you, and I'll see you on The Beyond Adversity Podcast next time. Until next time, good people. This is Dr.

[00:28:21] Dr. Brad Miller: Brad Miller, encouraging you always to do all the good you can.