Hungry2Live
Hungry2Live
H2L E.15 Adoption, Armed Robbery and Second Chances with James Dunn
On this week’s episode Rachel talks with James Dunn. He was adopted, raised in a household with an alcoholic father, and arrested for attempted armed robbery at the age of 17. Although his youth could have shaped him to be a felon and a life full of bad choices, James didn’t let his past define him. Now a father of two and a grandfather, he shares his story in hopes of freeing people from cycles of negative self-talk and helping others create the most amazing life possible.
@therealjamesdunn
FB Community- Master Your Mindset
No, I
Speaker 2:Don't care,
Speaker 1:But they say I came here to stay
Speaker 2:Through the days the mercy wasn't lazy kid. He never gave up cuz I, God, I, God, God, the darkness lights
Speaker 3:Welcome to another episode of hungry to live. I'm Rachel Freeman. And today I am joined by James Dunn. So James reached out to me and told me a, a bit of his story. And the bit he told me I was taken aback. Um, it was heavy to save the least. And then I, I did some research and I looked into James and I was like, wow, despite everything he's been through, he has come out. He's lived this positive life after the fact. And he just loves to share about his story, his journey and how people he meets along the way. So hi James,
Speaker 4:Rachel, how are you?
Speaker 3:I'm doing well. Thank you. How are you?
Speaker 4:Fantastic.
Speaker 3:So I, I briefly said that you had this story. I would love for you to share with the listener, the story you shared with me.
Speaker 4:Yeah. It's, it's something that, um, for the longest time I used to hide it from everybody. It's one of those things that I felt, I dunno if I would say ashamed, but maybe embarrassed by or just whatever I had these feelings that's talking about. Things that had happened in my life was just not something that you did. Um, especially as a guy, but as I went on my healing journey and growth journey, I realized the more that we could share, these stories that we have in our lives, the more we can all normalize things that we've gone through. And even if we haven't gone through the exact same scenarios, we can understand and relate a little bit. And so all that building up too, the story that I have, you know, that I've gone through. So myself I was adopted, I grew up in a household with an alcoholic father. I, um, was arrested for attempted armed robbery. By the time I was 17 years old, had my first kid. By the time I was 21, um, first of my two divorces by the time I was 25. Uh, so I set myself up with a few challenges in life. I mean, obviously I didn't have any choice over the adoption list, depending on which one of my friends you talk to, we talk about how we choose our parents in life. We're not gonna go down that path, but still just a lot of challenges right out of the gates, you know, in those early formative years and even on, into my early twenties of things that really at least up to that point, you know, led me down this belief system of what I was capable of or what I was deserving of or what was going to be allowed to me, you know, through the course of life. Um, and yeah, so it was an interesting start to say, the least
Speaker 3:Definitely does sound like an interesting start. And it seems like every time that you thought you were gonna get up, you got down again.<laugh> but I'm glad that you have now found your footing. You talk about this idea of normalizing these stories and none of what you talk about is normal. Like let's just put it out there. None of it was normal. Wait,
Speaker 4:That's not normal. Everybody hang with
Speaker 3:You there. I mean, maybe that, that I'm just saying<laugh> um, so when you start talking about your stories, do you find more people relating to you and coming up to you and saying, oh, something similar happened to me or I was in the foster system or I was in the middle. I, I got caught for doing a crime and such and such happened to me. Have, have you heard similar stories along the way since you've started opening up?
Speaker 4:Yeah. So it's definitely, I've got some of the extreme end of some of the stories that I've gone through, but specifically, um, you know, like the alcoholic father, there's a lot of people that have dealt with some form of an alcoholic inside of their family, um, divorced and having early, you know, kids very early let's I was 21 and there's people, you know, had kids in their 18, 19, 20 things of that nature. So again, it's one of those where maybe they haven't had the exact same scenario, but a lot of what me sharing my story does is that vulnerability allows them to feel safe. It's like, wait a minute. Wow, holy crap. This guy just opened up and shared a lot of crazy things that have happened in his life. And he's okay with that. And so now they feel safe and it's not like from a manipulative point where I'm like, Hey, just I'm gonna share this. So you'll share with me, it's me just telling you it's okay. You can share with me who you are, what you've been through. What's happened in your life. I'm gonna hold a safe space for you because I know I've been there. I've been on the other side of that, where I felt, if I share this, I was going to be judged and people just tend to love to have that freedom, to know that they could just be who they are and this person's not going to judge them. I'm gonna say, wow. And that's, that's crazy. Um, and here's the, the part that allowed me to get to that point was going someplace where somebody else did that and their story. Not that we wanna compare traumas or, well, my story's crazier than yours, but that's almost what it was, was going to, um, personal development events where I heard other stories. I'm like, holy man, you went through that and you're doing okay again, what am I crying about? Cause my dad drank too much or came in and screamed or yelling or whatever. So seeing, or going through that experience of having somebody give me that space, I turned around and then now do that for others where I just share my story. And hopefully that allows them, you know, the freedom just to open up and be themselves. Uh, because that is one of the biggest fears, especially, you know, as we live in this Instagram and Facebook world, we're always trying to live that perfect life and nobody can see me, you know, doing anything wrong or making mistakes. We all have challenges. We all have struggles and it doesn't mean we need to go on every five minutes on Instagram or Facebook and cry and oh my gosh, I'm going through this terrible thing, but let's not, um, demonize it either. If somebody is having a bad day or see what's wrong with them. Cause they had, they had a bad day, they messed something up. Oh my gosh. That's, that's not cool.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm<affirmative> yeah. It sounds like you do a lot of validating people's feelings and people's experiences and that's so important. And that's something that in this social media world, we only are validating and showing the positive and happy sides of our, our lives, which is actually very problematic and probably also causing those who are suffering and suffering in silence to suffer even more because they feel like they have to quiet themselves down. Absolutely. Uh, so actually I have a question I'm I totally didn't think I was gonna go here, but I wanted to know. So between you, how, first of all, how old were you when you were adopted?
Speaker 4:So I would've been, well, it would've been within the first year or so. Um, I didn't find out until I was like six. I mean, I wasn't like super late in life, but it was old enough for me to what I still remember to this day, from that moment was just this shock and like this weird pit in my stomach, like, wait, wait a minute. What, you know, you're not my mom, you're not my dad, you know, that kind of feeling. Um, but it was, yeah, I think six months old, somewhere in that first year.
Speaker 3:So do you think that part of you acting out was to get some of that attention because you felt like there was still this void cuz you didn't have you weren't living with your biological parents.
Speaker 4:It's one of those where I don't know that at the time I necessarily recognize any of that. Um, I'm sure there was an undercurrent of it there somewhere because I know as I went through life and I can look back now at my stories that I created around things like that, it was this story of being unloved. Um, undeserving, like, wait a minute, these are the people who are supposed to bring me into the world and love me and take care of me, you know, my biological parents. And yet they're like get rid of this kid. Um, now I've been able to reframe that and say that it was a beautiful blessing because obviously they had things going on in their life that they weren't in a state where they could raise me. They gave me up to my adoptive parents and while my adoptive father had a lot of challenges, obviously, you know, being the alcoholic that he eventually became, he was still a good person. Just didn't understand himself how to deal with his demons. Um, but yeah, I guarantee a lot of that rebelling was just
Speaker 3:Washing
Speaker 4:Out on some level. Yeah. You know,
Speaker 3:So between like finding out at six and getting arrested for attempted arm robbery, were there other bigger or comparable times that you were getting in trouble that were to on that kind of level?
Speaker 4:Yeah. I mean it, it definitely, there was a, there was a buildup. It wasn't like just one day, I'm like this nice, happy go lucky kid. And the next day I'm, you know, attempting around robbery. There was a gradual buildup, really. It started, um, I started drinking by the time I was 14 years old. So grew up in a very small country, community, 8,000 people. Um, and it's a great place on a certain level because it's a very tight knit community. You know, you have people that, you know, your entire life, but there, it was such a small, I mean, there wasn't really any opportunity there there's nothing, you know, to grow or to dream about or feel like you're going to, I don't wanna say escape, but it's not like you have these grand visions. There was no any of that. It was, I always hate to say this, but this is how I felt growing up inside this town was people that grow up there and live there. They just feel like they're born to die. You know, they would grow up, you get the college degree, you go get this job. You work for 40 years. If you're lucky in, you know, a Y college job, but 99% of the people there would work in some kind of like a factory or coal mining. That was a big industry. Both factories was another industry that was there. Um, and so it was just, they were born to die and that was not the life that I wanted to live. And so I felt this struggle, like I know there was something more, but I don't know what it is. And so got into drinking, you starts drinking. Well, then you start doing some vandalism. You're like, oh, let's just go knock this fence over or whatever and start doing things like that. And then you start shoplifting and then you start breaking into houses and then one thing leads to another and you're like, well, let's just go wrap somebody with his gun. You know, it just, it's one of those where it never happens overnight. It's just this gradual, you feel like you have to have this bigger and bigger rush that you're going for. It's like, well, I didn't get in trouble. I didn't get enough attention. And that might be part of it too, is looking back, looking for that attention. You know, I wasn't feeling the love, especially as my dad, as he started get into drinking more and more and more and showing me less and less attention, I'm like, oh, well wait me, didn't breaking into a house or getting arrested for underage drinking. Didn't get your attention. Well, let me pull a gun on somebody. So if that gets your attention, um, just a lot of things that we don't realize that we're doing for attention or whatever, you know, to support some idea, some belief system that we've started building, we just do the craziest craziest things. It's not until hopefully at some point you can look back and see that. But unfortunately, usually it's many years later, some big event has to happen. Uh, before we really shift get out of that mindset and get out of that pattern. That's driven us down that road. Uh, and for me, it just happened to be getting a part-time job that I didn't have any expectation of turning into anything major, but I really loved the industry that I was in. I got a management position, they started teaching me about smart goals. They started introducing me to books like seven habits of highly effective people by Steven Covey, um, who moved my cheese. I can't remember his Spencer, what the, um, what the author's name was, but just these type of books that started showing about, Hey, there's this other possibility that you could have in life? You could go down this other path. I'm like, oh, wait, oh, well, here is this opportunity. Or these, um, dream, you know, possibilities that I always had hoped for or wanted, or maybe thought were out there. I just didn't know how to get them. And so that was what started shifting me this other direction, given me that new outlets, like, well, wait a minute, maybe I don't need to pull a gun on somebody to get some attention. Maybe I can go over here and do this.
Speaker 3:Okay. So it seems like you had, there were like two complete ends of the spectrum that you just jumped from. There was the armed robbery<laugh> yeah. And then there's this getting a job and learning all of these positive habits of being successful. Yeah. So within that time, what was that like big breaking point or aha moment that was like, besides obviously landing a part-time job. Like, was there something else that came about in order to kind of tie these two ends together?
Speaker 4:Nah, well, the one thing that kind of shifted me a little bit was after I had my first child, my cat's kind of decided he wants to come in here and was my daughter's cat. I don't claim it at all. But anyway, um, so the one thing that shifted me a little bit was after having my first child, my ex and I, we were both drinking pretty heavily at the time she was into drugs and a bunch of other things. And so when he came into the picture, I was like, well, one of us has to be the sober one. And so that kind of started me looking for something different. I was like, we can't both be drinking all the time, doing these crazy things. Um, we've got this child here and even though she and I were only divorced or married for a little over a year, we'd had a, you know, long on again, off again, relationship prior to that, we're only married for a year, but we were going to be co-parents and I'm like, I want to be a good dad. And while I wasn't the greatest, I wasn't the most present father because I was still too young. Didn't understand it, but I at least wanted to try. I didn't want to be the just completely drunk in a gutter, you know, kind of guy that's at the bar every night didn't wanna be that. So that was the starting point. That shifted me a little bit into a different direction. Uh, and it was when the management job came into play. That's when it really like, okay, now I'm seeing the path before it was, I know there's something different. I don't know what it is. I've gotta keep looking for it. And it was a few years down the road before that management position came into play. Um, but that was a starting point, I guess I would say.
Speaker 3:All right. So between you having your first child and the management position, were you able to start having more of a positive relationship with your father?
Speaker 4:No. No. He, he was, uh, and he ended up dying, passing away when I was 27. So my son was only five years old when my dad passed away. Um, and it just never really got there. It's one of those. I wish there had been some better reconciliation while he was still alive. It's something that I've made my own peace with it after the fact, again, being able to look back now and he was, uh, well just a couple years, obvious old as he was when he passed away. And so I can just kinda look back at where he was at in his life. Some of the things he can go, he had gone through and I can understand while I don't necessarily approve of it. You know, we all still make our own choices, but I can at least understand, um, that he had deems. He, he didn't understand how to deal with, you know, he didn't have any, he was never exposed to the things that I eventually was exposed to. So it's one of those you don't know what you don't know. And so, uh, I can't blame him, you know, it's not like he did it intentionally. He was doing this was the other thing I've learned through the years is everybody's doing the absolute best that they can. So when you see somebody who's struggling and they're making what we deem as poor choices based on their history, based on their experiences and based on how they have interpreted the things they've gone through, they're doing the absolute best they can. They're looking at this scenario and making these actions and these choices based on this is the absolutely best thing for me. This is the best thing I can do. This is the best thing for my life. Even though we, from a different perspective can look at it and say, that's not so good, dude. You, you could probably make a different choice and you work out a whole lot better, but we all have to go down our own path.
Speaker 3:Well, I appreciate you sharing that. I mean, it could, I, I could only imagine how difficult it is while you've made your piece to still share that with a, a complete stranger and the stranger who's listening to the show. So I very much appreciate you sharing that. So as a father, yourself, and having dealt with your demons and this idea that the self fulfilling prophecy could in fact be real at some point in your life, what advice would you give your kids if they were struggling to kind of, if they came to you and they were like, Hey dad, I'm having trouble with X, Y, and Z. Like what would, what would be some good fatherly advice you would give that you maybe never received from your own father?
Speaker 4:Um, well, I've, I've done a really good job. So as I mentioned a little before with my son, I wasn't the best dad, you know, again, I wanted to try and be in hindsight, I can see there were a lot of things I could have done differently that would have, you know, benefited him a lot. Um, but with my daughter, I have two kids. There was a 15 year gap between the two. So with my daughter, she's just not 13 years old. My son's 28. Yeah. Which is crazy to think. Um, but having that time between the two, I've got a fresh perspective on how to parent. And so what I've done with my daughter now is just be very open, very honest, have a lot of conversations with her, share with her that we're all gonna go through struggles. We're all gonna have challenges. It's okay to fail. It's okay. To, um, not know something. It's okay to ask questions. You know, a perfect example of one of the things that I've tried to share with her is she and I were just watching. What was it last week, week before last there's a great documentary on Netflix called return to space. And it's about Elon Musk and his formation of SpaceX and them developing the reusable rockets, which are now the key to space travel and a beautiful lesson that they shared in the development of that whole technology was Elon understood from the get go. They were gonna blow up a bunch of rockets. It was just not gonna happen like overnight. They were gonna have to send these things up and they were gonna just mess it up. It was not gonna work, but they just went into this with the attitude. We're gonna do this over and over. And every time it's gonna happen, we're gonna learn from her. We're not gonna look at it from this negative perspective. We're not gonna say, oh, we suck. We're terrible. We don't know what we're doing. It's like, okay, what can we learn from that? How can we improve the next one? So we'll shoot the next one off. And we're gonna learn from that. And I actually paused it after they kind of shared that in the documentary. And I, I asked my daughter, I was like, did you catch what they just said there? And she said, yeah. And I said, well, I don't want, I didn't want it to be one of these where the kids was like, yeah, dad, I, I heard it. Yeah, sure. Whatever. And so I said, well, now tell me in your words, what you heard. And she actually came back and said that we're gonna make mistakes. And, but we learned from'em, we tried over and over, and that's the best way to get to where you want to be. It's not waiting for perfection. It's not cuz they actually talked about NASA. How that's kind of, what they do is they will look at a project and they'll go through the thousand different scenarios that could possibly go wrong before they do anything. And SpaceX just says, we're gonna try and see what happens and if it blows up, okay, we'll figure it out. You know, safety of course. But we're just gonna keep trying to try and try. We're gonna figure it out along the way. And so she, you know, pretty much shared that lesson back with me. And I was just one of those, like, yes, she gets it. She heard it, you know? Um, so that's really, the big thing is just understanding that we're all imperfect beings and to try and hide that, uh, is just insane. You know, just put it out there, be yourself, learn from it, grow from it. Don't have that fear around looking silly. I just did a guest coaching session in a mastermind a few minutes ago and we were talking about identity and that was a big piece of, it was the identity. Like we build these identities in our minds and one of them that I asked the group, I said, if you say you're smart, is that an empowering identity? Or is that, um, a defeating identity? Everybody, you know, was like empowering. I'm like be very careful because if you choose this, um, this identity that I am smart, what it's going to do, it's gonna limit you when somebody asks you a question or, um, is talking about something, not ask you a question, but if somebody's talking about something and you don't understand it, but you've got this identity that I am smart. You're gonna be afraid to ask questions because you don't want people to think you're dumb. The smartest person in the room is the guy that's asking all the questions that looks like the idiot. He's the one that's like, Hey, I don't understand this. Can you explain this to me? Like I'm a five year old. So drop that facade, drop that whole idea that I have to look perfect. And I have to feel like I know everything. Um, and just put yourself out there, learn from your mistakes, grow from it, ask questions.
Speaker 3:I like how you have this growth mindset and these teachable moments that are happening daily that you are building on. And even having those conversations with your daughter, it's so important. Especially at this age that she's at at 13, like you have your hands full. That's all I'm gonna say.<laugh>
Speaker 4:<laugh>.
Speaker 3:So you alluded to, uh, being a coach, where do you see yourself in where the James Dunn started to where he is now and where he wants to go?
Speaker 4:I am light years ahead of where I was at and I've got millions of miles to go. It's one of those. I, I truly don't believe that I will ever fully get to my true capacity, you know, of, um, learning before I die. And even for that's 50 years from now, I think we all have something we can learn and grow from every single day. Um, whether that's appreciating what we have more, whether that's just a different, you know, viewpoint, understanding people more. I think the minute that we think we know it all, then you have just put yourself into a very negative place because then you stop learning, you stop growing. Um, and it's just not, that's not where I ever want to be because to me it's all about growth. It's all about learning. Uh, and while it may not be a situation where like over the past five, 10 years, you know, 15 years, whatever happens to be, um, that it's been like this big, massive growth, you know, kind of thing. It may level out where it's only more of like a 1% each year versus 15, 20, 30% each year. I still want to always be growing just that little bit because that's what, you know, gets me excited. That's what hopefully gets everybody excited is getting up every single day and wanting to do just a little better. Again, it doesn't have to be massive improvements, but just every single day, I'm just doing a little better than the day before. Cause if you're not, then what are you doing? You know, what's what are we here for?<laugh>
Speaker 3:So you, you talked about coaching. What, how can people find you? What kind of coaching do you do?
Speaker 4:Mm-hmm<affirmative> so the easiest place to find me Instagram, we're all on Instagram. Aren't we Instagram, Facebook, um, I've got LinkedIn profile and I've got a TikTok. Those I'm, I'm getting a little more active on TikTok, but, uh, Instagram is a place that I generally start. My social media part of my day is they're at the real James done. My coaching is all around mindset, performance. It's letting go of the limiting beliefs. Um, looking at the stories that you've had in the past and how can we reframe them from, you know, these limiting beliefs to empowering beliefs and just really, uh, tapping into the potential that you have. Because every single thing that we limit ourselves on beyond, you know, the one, my daughter, this is one she always gets me on. I'm always, you know, trying to preach this to her and share this stuff to her or with her. And I said, you can do anything you wanna do. And she's like, can I fly? I'm like kid, you're killing me here someday. Maybe, maybe we'll figure that one out, but no, you can't fly. So if there's the physical limitation of the flights or, you know, maybe we just haven't figured it out yet, but there's so many things that if you look back to Roger banister, you know, he was the first man to break the four minute mile. And for the longest time we thought it was completely impossible. They literally thought a person's heart would explode if they ran that fast. And so in all of human history, nobody had ever run the four minute mile. But the crazy thing about it is he ran it. And then with, you know, again, nobody had ever done it before, but after he ran it within a year, I think it was like three or four other people did the same thing. They ran the four minute mile the year after that, it bumped up like five, 10. And now there's literally even thousands of people, you know, if not tens of thousands of people that run the four minute mile, but while as a society, we all thought it was completely impossible. Nobody did it. But then once that one guy said, you know what, I'm going to do it. And he did it. And then like, oh wait, now it's possible. Now don't wanna say it's the norm, but it's not that uncommon anymore. So, well
Speaker 3:Let's bring it full circle. He normalized it. Yes. Like you like to normalize things.<laugh>
Speaker 4:Exactly. Yes. Perfect. Every way to go there.
Speaker 3:<laugh> well, I think on that note,<laugh>, I'm gonna ask you this question that I ask all my guests. So as you know, this show is called hungry to live. And for anyone who wants to follow me, you can find me on instagram@hungarydotthenumbertwo.live or hungry, the number two live.com. But James, what keeps you hungry to live?
Speaker 4:It is, you know, kind of what we talked about a little bit before. It's just that growth. It's waking up every day, excited about life, you know, learning, um, helping other people see what the potential is because I held myself back for so long. It's one of those things where I'm 50 years old. And I look at people now, you know, some of them that are in their teens or twenties that are figuring things out, that I am still, you know, kinda like, man, how did I miss the boat on that? But it wasn't as prevalent back then, but helping people maybe closer to my age or whatever age it happens to be, but just see that there is that potential for them to do really anything that they want. And I know we kind of glamorize this whole idea of the money and the fancy cars and all of that, that does not have to be what your life looks like is helping people understand that you get to decide whatever your live life looks like. If that is the, the fancy car great. If it's the jet set life, that's great. But if it's, I hate to use just, you know, being a stayat home mom or stay-at-home dad, or that it's designing the life that you want to live and creating that. And so what makes me hungry to live is just helping people see that it is absolutely possible for anybody and everybody, no matter who you are, where you've been or what you've been through.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you. So the end of every episode, I read a poem that I have written about my guest. So this is a poem for you. Awesome. Always seemed to be starting over from a biological family, to an adopted father who was far from sober, living in toxicity, always fighting hostility, arrested for attempted our robbery at the ripe age of 17, seems like a cry for help. If you ask me using all those examples. As a foundation, James had a challenging time living with motivation. All those events painted a picture in his head because there was nothing different from, from his experience to be said, then he realized he deserved more, that he was capable and had something to live for. Believing change is possible and creating the life that you want. James shares his story with his audience to help others in a similar or unmanageable spot. Thank you so much, James. And thank you for listening to hungry, to live
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