This is Let's be clear, who's Shannon Dhorney. All right, Hello, let's be clear listeners. My name is Colin Egglesfield, and I am so grateful and honored to be here today to be able to share with you my personal journey and my experiences of having some health challenges over the past few years. Some of you may know me as an actor, some of you may know me as someone who is active in the health and wellness community, and I just wanted to come on here today to share with you some of my experiences because what I've realized that going through a cancer journey has really taught me a lot about myself, a lot about life, and it's made me realize that life is something that can't necessarily be done alone if you really want to have a purposeful and fulfilling life. So I'm just going to tell you a little bit about my upbringing, my background, tell you a little bit about my experiences with acting, and tell you a little bit about what I'm doing now in terms of having now survived cancer for the third time, yes, three times, And also just wanted to give a little bit of a shout out to everyone out there who's dealing with any sort of health journey, answer journey, whatever it is, I'm going to be sharing with you tonight some of the things that have empowered me and enabled me to stay empowered through this scary experience. Because when someone tells you that you've been diagnosed with cancer, for those of you who have heard that phrase, it can be very jarring and it can put you into a headspace that is not necessarily the best place to be in. So the things that have enabled me to stay empowered and stay positive through this experience is something that I want to share with you all. But first I just want to give a huge shout out to Shannon Doherty. So Shannon is someone who I grew up watching on nine oh two and O and she was someone that I always looked up to. When I watched nine O two and oh, I was always like, man, those those kids look like they're so having so much fun. And I think it was a I want to say, I was a freshman in high school when that show came on, and I always would love to tune in because I was like, man, those kids are in Beverly Hills. They seem to have you know everything, you know, just the best life ever And just to watch the show and see them go through their trials and tribulations of relationships and heartbreaks and breakups, and you know, it's it's it's amazing how close we can feel to characters that we watch on TV. And though I never met Shannon, I felt like she was someone who I knew just from watching her on TV and someone that inspired me to know that no matter what's going on in life, that you can overcome challenges. From what I knew, Shannon was resilient and determined and so passionate about what she did, and I think we can all learn something from her experience of how she dealt with her cancer journey. But just I'll go back a little bit to tell you a little bit about my journey and where I'm from. And I came from a small little town outside of Detroit, Michigan called Farmington. Was born there and grew up and my dad was a doctor, actually he was an obstratrician gynecologist, and he had gone to school in Chicago, and so once he met my mom there, they got married and they moved back to Michigan where my dad was from, and he had my sister, and then myself and my brother, and then my dad got offered a position to move back to Chicago to teach at the hospital. So we moved back to Chicago when I was about ten years old, and watching my dad be a doctor and show up to be there for so many people in times of need, I really loved the idea of potentially doing that. So when it came time for me to go to college, I actually started out engineering first because I for some reason, was interested in architecture and building things. I was always into legos. But once I got to three dimensional vector calculus, I was like, you know what, this isn't for me, and so I decided to switch majors to biology and decided to pursue my pre med endeavors. And when I got to my senior year, I was going down this road and if anyone of you have seen something borrowed. My character Decks actually asks his father this question in the movie, where he says, Dad, have you ever been in a position where you've been heading down a road and you don't think that it's necessarily maybe the path that you intuitively think that you're supposed to be on. And my character's father in the movie shuts me down and he says, Dex, that's not who we are. You're going in this direction. And I think I could, I could relate to that in a lot of ways, because I think sometimes in life we find ourselves in a position in life, and you may find yourself in that experience or have in the past where in a sense, you've been miscast in the story of your own life. And so what I mean by that is because of where you were born, how you grew up, where you you know, who your parents were, what religion you were raised, we can find ourselves sort of pushed this into the traditions or the path that are considered normal for wherever it is that you're from. And so you know, getting the job and having a family and raising kids and the white picket fence. Although that's something I absolutely desire at the time when I was, you know, twenty years old, it's hard to really know what you really want in life, and when you feel like you're being pushed down a path and then you end up into this role and you wake up one day and you're like, how the hell did I get here? I found myself where I could see that path unfolding, where I wasn't sure if that's necessarily where I really wanted to go. And as it turned out, I heard on the radio about this model talent search. So I went to this model talent search at the Davenport Holiday and I was going to the University of Iowa at the time, and I went to this thing and I met these model agent ladies, and next thing you know, I got connected with an agent in Chicago. And so the reason why I bring this up is because in life, we get presented these opportunities and these doors may open up to us, but sometimes we don't always walk through those doors for whatever reason. And I think it's important to at least walk through that door and see what it might look like, because it's hard to make a decision on where you want to go in life and what you want your life to be about if you haven't necessarily experienced it yet. And when a door opens up, I think it's important to listen to your gut, to listen to your instincts, say some prayers to God, to the universe, whatever it is that, whatever it is that you pray to. And as I started going through these doors, as they started opening up, I found myself facing a decision do I want to go to medical school or do I want to go to Europe to pursue this modeling career. And I decided that against probably what I felt everyone expected me to do, I was like, you know what, I'm going to do something that may I may not be able to do ever again. So I decided to go to Europe. And next thing you know, I was finding myself on the runways doing Versace runway shows and met Georgia Ormani and some of these amazing designers, and for the first time, I really discovered what it meant to be around really creative people who were doing something that they truly loved and were passionate about. And after that, I found myself in New York City and started going on some commercial auditions, and acting was something that I never thought was going to be on my radar because I growing up was introverted. I was shy, and the last thing I wanted to do in class was to get up and give a speech or anything. I literally would have these hyperventilating panic attacks, and any time I would have to get up in front of school to talk about anything or give the answer. And so the last thing I ever thought was in the cards for me was getting up in front of people to do an acting career. But again one of these doors opened up where my acting or my acting modeling agents said, why don't you take an acting class to see if you like it, see if this may be something that you want to give a shot to. And so it would have been very easy to say no. And again, if we don't know what something is, it's very easy to judge it to shut it down before we even really know what it is. So I went to this acting class, and I would say it was the first time in my life where I genuinely felt that this was a place where I could learn how to give over my fear of being in front of people, being authentic and being vulnerable. I mean, as a guy, we don't necessarily like to be vulnerable, We don't necessarily necessarily like to admit when we are struggling, and I think this can keep us stuck in alone. And what acting class I started to realize provided to me was this space where I could show up and learn how to unlearn a lot of the things that I was conditioned to how to act growing up. And I started to realize that the most important thing in life is to be authentic and to be truthful and to be honest with yourself. And one of the greatest pieces of advice that my acting teacher gave me was she said, it's so important for you in order for you to be able to play these characters and walk into these auditions and for people to be able to to connect with you and want to go on these journeys with you, is that first and foremost, you have to honor yourself first, honor yourself in every regard. And I really was like thinking about what that meant and what I started to really think and realize that growing up, I was always more on that people pleasing side, where I just wanted to make friends and I wanted everyone to like me, and I was afraid of what people thought of me in the fear of judgment. I was super skinny growing up. I had headgear and braces, and so I didn't always feel comfortable in my own skin. And so the last thing I wanted was to be, you know, be a target and to be put myself out there for criticism, because a lot of what happens when you get in front of the camera, front of audiences with TV and film is that people are naturally gonna have judgments and opinions. And the second piece of advice my acting teacher gave us was when you start acting and you start getting in front of these audiences, she said, inevitably, people are going to judge you. And she said that roughly thirty percent of the people that you perform in front of, that you get in front of to act or to whatever it is, that thirty percent are gonna like you. They're gonna resonate with you. You're gonna say something or you're gonna do something that makes them feel connected to you, and they're gonna like you. They're going to root for you. She said. The next thirty percent of the people out there that you perform in front of, and even that you meet in your daily life, they're not gonna like you. For whatever reason, they're not gonna like you. They're gonna think that you just look weird, or the sounding of your voice is horrible, or that you just look whatever a certain way. So thirty percent of people are not gonna like you. And then she said, the other forty percent of the people in the world, let's see you that see your performances, that you meet out in the world, they don't care. So she said, it's not your job, with acting or with anything in life to try to make everyone happy or to please everyone. She said, your job is to show up, be truthful, honor yourself, honor the character, and be of service to the writer, to the director, to the producers and everyone that has come together to tell this story. And so it kind of just took that pressure off of me for the first time where I felt like, Okay, I've got permission to not have to worry about what other people think. And knowing that people are going to have opinions and they're going to have probably negative opinions, it's not my job to try to fix it, change it, or be worried about what other people think. So now that I had this this release of like trying to shoulder the burden of pleasing everyone, I could get to work and focus on what was the work of the actor and the first aspect of being an actor and creating these characters, and what really helped me in my real life was, in addition to kind of piggybacking on honoring yourself, is actually a piece of advice that my grandmother gave me, and that was you got to know who you are and know where you're at. So when I was growing up, my grandmother always used to say, remember who you are, and I was like, of course, man, I know who I am. I'm like I'm calling you know. I come from the South side of Chicago and I go to the University of Iowa. I'm ma Hawkeye or whatever it is. So we tend to identify ourselves with our external experiences or circumstances. And so when she said remember who you are, you are if you look at that word, remember, it's remember. So a lot of the times when we are seeking outside validation for who we are, we can get lost in the seeking approval or trying to fit in. And when my acting teacher talked about knowing who your character is at twenty six, twenty seven years old, I finally truly understood what my grandmother meant in terms of remembering and reconnecting to who you really are. And most of the time we haven't really thought about who we really are. So I'm going to give you a little a little exercise here for you to really truly know who you really are. And for a while, you know, I think we go through life trying to figure out who we are and where we fit in. And what I realized with acting classes is that in order to play the characters that we play, we have to decide who this character is and we have to to make choices. You'll hear that a lot with acting teachers. They'll say, you got to make strong choices. Casting directors say, we like actors that make these really strong, bold choices that make you stand out from every other actor that walks through the door. Because with acting, it's roughly you know, for every role, there's about four hundred actors that are vuying for that same role. So you can imagine if a casting director is sitting there an actor after actor after actor, or coming in or nowadays it's all on our iPhones or whatever. Within that first few seconds of someone seeing you or meeting you, it's important that you're able to connect with them authentically. And when a casting director is seeing so many people, creating and choosing these strong choices will help you stand out. But if you're trying to fit in and be like everyone else, you're just going to blend in and be forgettable. So by making these bold choices as an actor, choosing these care I realized, we decide who these characters are. We build these characters so that when we show up on set, we can truthfully play these characters in these imaginary circumstances. And so it's an active choosing who you are with acting. And I started to realize that as I was going into these auditions and choosing these characters and the characteristics of who these characters were, whether it was a vampire or a fighter pilot or a doctor, I started to realize that I was doing more work on analyzing and knowing these characters than I even knew myself. And so I started to apply this same strategy to my own life. So what you can do, start to ask yourself in this circumstance, no matter where you're at, And this is where I'm going to get into my friends here who are dealing with cancer or every other any other health ailment out there. No matter what you were dealing with, you get to decide who you choose to be. Is this experience now, as someone who's been diagnosed with cancer three times, this has come in incredibly handy is the right word. But it's been incredibly empowering for me to use this because in this experience, and I wouldn't wish cancer on anyone, but what it has made me do or afforded me the experience is to choose who I choose to be in life. So I'm not waiting for life to tell me who I am, because most of the time, as we grow up, you know, we get told who we are. Again, we get to decide who we are. And when we start actively choosing who we are in life, that gives us more of a definitive idea of who we are and how we want to show up. And a quick and easy way to decide who you are is pick three characteristics, and in enacting class we choose who is the character's core value. So whether your character's value is truth or justice, or power or love or revenge. By choosing these three core values, you get to decide to be lived by the energy and the essence and whatever else you can channel by these three qualities. And so what this does is it gives you instant access and connection to the answers that you need in order to navigate whatever it is that you're dealing with. So the three core values that I choose to be lived by are inspiration, self expression and boldness, And the reason why I choose this is because I've always loved to be inspired. I always loved watching inspirational videos and movies, and I think that's why I love acting so much, Because I love going to movie theater or being at home and seeing inspirational stories about incredible people who have overcome the odds. I love to be in that space of just feeling like empowerment and facing you know, and facing the odds and moving forward anyway. So I choose to be lived by inspiration. The second one is self expression because growing up I wasn't always self expressed. I was shy, I was nervous about what people would think. And by choosing to be self expression, you get to show up and ask the question, not what would Colin do or what would Lisa do? Or what would Mike do? You get to ask what would self expression do? In this moment? Self expression would tell the truth. Self expression would show up and be freely open about their experiences, about their challenges, about whatever it is that they're dealing with. And then the third one, boldness. I choose to be lived by boldness, and that way you get to decide. By deciding this, you get to be lived by would what are the characteristics of boldness? So when I was going through my cancer journy and having to go to my radiation treatments and my surgeries and my chest X rays and cat scans, you get to ask and decide and be lived by what would boldness do right now? So again not what Colin would do, because Colin would want to run for the hills and be like, no way, I don't want to get poked, prodded, lit up or cut open any more times. But when you ask the question what would boldness do? Or you can ask if you want to be if maybe you're lacking love in your relationship, you could choose love as one of your three core values, and then that way you can be lived by love. And so you could ask, well, what would love do? So instead of showing up in the world and expecting or wishing that someone would love, you show up as love, so that when you show up that you are the giving and receiving of love. And when you are showing up in life being the present moment existence of something, you attract it. So I'm sure you've heard of the law of attraction and manifestation a lot of people have been talking about it. It's become a buzzword. But it's important to know that like energy attracts like energy, and so if you're constantly showing up in life with the negative thoughts and doubt and uncertainty, you're going to attract more of that. And it's amazing how when you start to, as my nana said, know who you are, remember who you are. When you start to go inward and choose these three core values, it's amazing how empowerment or love or self expression will start to show up in your life because you have actively chosen it. So that really helped me start to embark along my path. And as I was going through my acting journey, I was going on these auditions and finally, after like seven eight years of auditioning, I booked a role on All My Children, playing the the transplanted, unboarded fetus of Ericacane otherwise known as Susan Lucci, and so being able to play Susan Lucci's son and All My Children, it was an amazing experience. And soap operas are incredibly demanding for a regular TV show that airs on nighttime TV, that hour long TV show is essentially actually only forty minutes because it's about twenty minutes of commercials, and a normal hour long primetime television show that airs once a week usually takes about five to seven twelve hour days to film. For a movie, you're and you usually for a primetime TV show, you're shooting about maybe ten to fifteen pages of dialogue every day, and then for a movie you're maybe shooting three to eight pages a day. With soap opera, you're shooting eighty pages a day. So it is you show up, you got to know your lines, you got to deliver, and so it's this constant, just like flood of dialogue and information, and so very quickly you start to realize that you've got to become good at memorizing. And by showing up and having this experience of doing this for three years, it empower me to realize that if you know you can make soap opera believable, then there may be a chance of actually doing some other things as well. So when my contract was almost like well, i was six months into my three year contract with all my children, and when I got that role, I was super excited because I'd been pursuing acting for like seven or eight years, and what really emboldened me to pursue acting in the first place was if I could just go up for a second go back. I was living across the street from the World Trade Center in two thousand and one, and I'd only been studying acting for like two years, and I'd done one role. My first role was actually getting into bed with Jenny Garth from nine oh two to zero, giving her a glass of wine in this show called The Street, and I had one line. And then my next role was a mail escort on Law and Order SVU. So not the biggest resume to be thinking I could go out to Hollywood and be the next Tom Cruise. That morning of nine to eleven, when I woke up and I saw out of my window the flames, and quickly soon thereafter saw that people were hanging their heads out of the windows of the World Trade Center. I quickly realized that those people weren't just watching, that they were trapped, and I turned on the TV and I started I grabbed my video camera, I started videotaping, and I've got footage of that second plane coming in and it was just horrific to see people actually then starting to jump out of the top of the towers. And after that second plane hit, I ran downstairs and standing outside of my apartment building just watching people stuck up at the top of those towers. It was just heartbreaking and something you can't on sea. And when that first tower fell, I was one of the people running down the street. And then the second tower fell, and it was a few days before I could actually get back to my apartment and when I did, when the towers fell, my windows got blown through, so I my place looked like a bomb had blown up inside of my apartment. So I had only a few minutes to grab whatever I could put into a suitcase and then leave, and I went to a hotel and I sat down on the floor and it really made me think about what was important in life and what did I want my life to be about, because I've essentially I felt like in that moment, I had a second chance, and I realized that those close to three thousand people that perished that day, they don't have a second chance. And so no matter what you're dealing with, whether it's cancer or a challenge or a relationship issue, at least you have the chance or the opportunity to decide who you want to be in this experience, and the last thing I wanted to do was to let that experience define who I was and to get me down. And I realized the only thing that was holding me back from going out to Hollywood to pursue this crazy idea of being a professional actor was my limiting beliefs and that fear of failure. And I just I was like, well, what would my acting teacher, Jackie Siegel say, on yourself and Nana, remember who you are? And I was like, you know what, the only thing that's stopping me is my own self doubt. And I just started thinking about if I were one of those people trapped up in the towers, if I was given a second chance at life, or if you were given a second chance at life, what would you do and would you let your fears and your doubts stop you from going after what you truly care about and what matters most to you? And I was like, I realized the only thing that was holding me back was me, and so I decided, you know what, screw it, let's go, let's do this. I went out to Hollywood, and this is where you got to understand you don't have to be the best, you don't have to be the smartest, you don't have to be the best looking, because that's not about that. I only had two years of acting experience and I went out to Hollywood and I started booking these roles because I was going into these auditions with this passion and this desire to be like, holy crap, I'm glad to be alive. So when you show up in life not worried about what other people think, but you're focused on whatever what it is that you truly passionately desire and want from here not from here, the world starts showing up differently for you. And after I started doing this, after a few years of auditioning, I booked that role on all my children. So then I'm like, oh my god, this is amazing. I'm now doing what I love to do. I'm now getting paid to do it. And six months into my three year contract, I got diagnosed with testicular cancer. And now, for those of you out there have been diagnosed with cancer, that's not a fun day when someone you know, when my doctor told me you've got cancer, it's advanced stage, and I'm scheduling you for surgery. This was on a Friday, scheduling you for surgery on a Monday. It was like I was in denial. I was like, how can that be? I take care of myself. I try to eat healthy. And so this is where the disempowerment can come up. And you really got to decide that I'm not gonna let this experience define who I am or how my outlook is going to be. So I decided, all right, I'm going to decide who do I need to be in this experience. And so I started relying on my acting training, and so I decide to be bold, courageous. I decide to be Maximists from Gladiator or whoever character or superhero that you choose to be, and start channeling that energy because this is this is the access and the leverage for us to be able to accomplish anything in life. And I'm telling you it doesn't matter what challenge you are facing right now. You can start to create this definitive way that this is going to go for you and know that no matter what happens in life, that we are these spiritual creatures having this human experience. And if you can start to look at yourself through the eyes of like let's say a screenwriter or a director. You can start looking at your life and say, how do I want my life to go? How do I want this story to go? And if I don't like how it's going, how can I choose to be this empowered character in this experience? Because face it, we all know this. We're not all going to live forever. We're all gonna die at some time. So it's important to focus on making this life as amazing and as great as it possibly can be. And if you are feeling stuck, if you are feeling frustrated, or if you're feeling like there's no way out, I'm telling you there is. And the way to find a way through this is to look at this from a different perspective. And so this is what now leads me to my third point. The first one is know who you are. The second one is decide who you are. The third one is you got to have the support of your community around you. So it's important that you reach out to your friends, your family, and you don't have to be needy in this experience. It's about being honest and honoring yourself and communicating to other people what you need in this experience, and by doing so, you provide other people the opportunity to show up to be what and for them to be who they want to be. And a lot of people want to be purposeful and they want to experience what it means to be there for someone. But when you deny them that experience, then both people are disconnected and alone. And after being diagnosed with cancer that first time and having my first surgery, I had to go for my radiation treatment, and I was showing up on all my children working in the morning and then going for my treatment. And after my treatment, I would just feel sick and tired and just sluggish, like you've got the flu. And I would go back to work the next day and do this over and over again. And towards the end of my treatment, I had my scene and all my children were scheduled for the end of day, so I scheduled my radiation treatment for the morning, so I went to that and then I went to work, and then I started feeling tired and sluggish and just sweaty and hot, and I tried to do my scenes and one of my director, the director at the time, came up to me and he said Colin, you're right, you don't look so good, and I immediately I just I broke down because I realized that I couldn't hold it in any longer. I'd been holding this in for like three months, and I didn't tell anyone at work. No one knew it all my children because it's guy stuff, it's testicular cancer. And I realized that I finally realized I couldn't do this alone. I needed to tell people. And what was great about that as soon as everyone found out at all my children, everyone showed up and they offered to take me to my doctor's appointments, to go with me, to help, you know, to bring food to me. And it really helped make me feel supported to be able to go through this experience. And then that way, as I started to get better and I started meeting other people who are going through this experience, I started to be able to then show up for them to pay it forward and pay it back. And then a year later I got diagnosed with particular cancer on the other side now was two thousand and six and two thousand and seven. So the benefit to this is that I've been in this high risk category, so I've been getting my checkups regularly, And for those of you out there who haven't gone to the doctor in a while, I would say, if you care about yourself. And again, as Jackie Siegel, my first acting teacher, said, honor yourself. One of the things I got to do. Whenever you're facing a decision, just ask the question, does this honor me if I don't do this? Or does it honor me if I do do this? And so by asking you that question, does it honor you to go to get your checkups? If not for you, for the people that love you and care about you, It's not that difficult to go to the doctor and get your checkups. For prostate cancer, which I was recently diagnosed with last year, it's the number one diagnosed cancer in the world. And for women it's breast cancer. And so by going and getting your checkups, if you go for early detection, and if you get it and catch it early, the cure rates are are way more in your favor. For men, it's a ninety seven percent cure rate if you catch this early. And I elected to have surgery, and so after that, and that was two months ago, and so I'm two months post surgery from prostate cancer and again being diagnosed and being told you have cancer for a third time. It's still it's still a scary experience. But what I've realized again through this third time of going through this is that now that I'm more able and open to be able to communicate to people what I'm going through and what I need, this has been an incredible exp because so many people have been able to show up to support me along this journey. So, no matter where you are at or what you're dealing with again, I would implore you to honor yourself, remember who you are, and to ask for support when you need it. It is actually courageous and it requires strength to ask for support. But when you do that, your community will show up. And if they aren't showing up for you, there's a lot of support groups out there that can support you in whatever journey that you are going on. And so if you are looking for any need, if you're in need of any support, you can go to my website callin Nicholsfield dot com. I do monthly meetups through my Patreon community. I do retreats. I've got one coming up April third through the seventh in Scottsdale, Arizona. At these retreats, anyone is welcome, men, women, And what we do is we do a weekend of rejuvenation. It's health and wellness. We do yoga, sound bowl healing, we go hiking, we do a dance contest. On Saturday night, I have a whole lineup of empowering guest speakers about mindfulness and wellness. And on Sunday we're doing horseback riding and then I'm going to be doing a private screening of my new movie Where the Wind Blows on April sixth. So if you're interested in coming to the retreat, we've got a great group of people coming. We've got four spots left. Again, you go to my website Collinegglesfield dot com, click on the events tab and so I've got Scott still and I've got Ireland coming up May twenty seconds through the twenty sixth hike's wellness, yoga, all that good stuff. So again I'm here to support you, and I'm here to just sends you through the internet waves. Here my support, my love, my strength, and i just want to say thank you again to Shannon for inspiring me to go out there into the world and pursue my dreams and my goals. And I just want to say thank you teaching every one of you out there who's here listening to this, And if anyone you know needs to hear this message, I would encourage you to share it with them. And I just want to say, take care for now, You're not alone. Love you all,

This is Let's be clear, who's Shannon Dhorney. All right, Hello, let's be clear listeners. My name is Colin Egglesfield, and I am so grateful and honored to be here today to be able to share with you my personal journey and my experiences of having some health challenges over the past few years. Some of you may know me as an actor, some of you may know me as someone who is active in the health and wellness community, and I just wanted to come on here today to share with you some of my experiences because what I've realized that going through a cancer journey has really taught me a lot about myself, a lot about life, and it's made me realize that life is something that can't necessarily be done alone if you really want to have a purposeful and fulfilling life. So I'm just going to tell you a little bit about my upbringing, my background, tell you a little bit about my experiences with acting, and tell you a little bit about what I'm doing now in terms of having now survived cancer for the third time, yes, three times, And also just wanted to give a little bit of a shout out to everyone out there who's dealing with any sort of health journey, answer journey, whatever it is, I'm going to be sharing with you tonight some of the things that have empowered me and enabled me to stay empowered through this scary experience. Because when someone tells you that you've been diagnosed with cancer, for those of you who have heard that phrase, it can be very jarring and it can put you into a headspace that is not necessarily the best place to be in. So the things that have enabled me to stay empowered and stay positive through this experience is something that I want to share with you all. But first I just want to give a huge shout out to Shannon Doherty. So Shannon is someone who I grew up watching on nine oh two and O and she was someone that I always looked up to. When I watched nine O two and oh, I was always like, man, those those kids look like they're so having so much fun. And I think it was a I want to say, I was a freshman in high school when that show came on, and I always would love to tune in because I was like, man, those kids are in Beverly Hills. They seem to have you know everything, you know, just the best life ever And just to watch the show and see them go through their trials and tribulations of relationships and heartbreaks and breakups, and you know, it's it's it's amazing how close we can feel to characters that we watch on TV. And though I never met Shannon, I felt like she was someone who I knew just from watching her on TV and someone that inspired me to know that no matter what's going on in life, that you can overcome challenges. From what I knew, Shannon was resilient and determined and so passionate about what she did, and I think we can all learn something from her experience of how she dealt with her cancer journey. But just I'll go back a little bit to tell you a little bit about my journey and where I'm from. And I came from a small little town outside of Detroit, Michigan called Farmington. Was born there and grew up and my dad was a doctor, actually he was an obstratrician gynecologist, and he had gone to school in Chicago, and so once he met my mom there, they got married and they moved back to Michigan where my dad was from, and he had my sister, and then myself and my brother, and then my dad got offered a position to move back to Chicago to teach at the hospital. So we moved back to Chicago when I was about ten years old, and watching my dad be a doctor and show up to be there for so many people in times of need, I really loved the idea of potentially doing that. So when it came time for me to go to college, I actually started out engineering first because I for some reason, was interested in architecture and building things. I was always into legos. But once I got to three dimensional vector calculus, I was like, you know what, this isn't for me, and so I decided to switch majors to biology and decided to pursue my pre med endeavors. And when I got to my senior year, I was going down this road and if anyone of you have seen something borrowed. My character Decks actually asks his father this question in the movie, where he says, Dad, have you ever been in a position where you've been heading down a road and you don't think that it's necessarily maybe the path that you intuitively think that you're supposed to be on. And my character's father in the movie shuts me down and he says, Dex, that's not who we are. You're going in this direction. And I think I could, I could relate to that in a lot of ways, because I think sometimes in life we find ourselves in a position in life, and you may find yourself in that experience or have in the past where in a sense, you've been miscast in the story of your own life. And so what I mean by that is because of where you were born, how you grew up, where you you know, who your parents were, what religion you were raised, we can find ourselves sort of pushed this into the traditions or the path that are considered normal for wherever it is that you're from. And so you know, getting the job and having a family and raising kids and the white picket fence. Although that's something I absolutely desire at the time when I was, you know, twenty years old, it's hard to really know what you really want in life, and when you feel like you're being pushed down a path and then you end up into this role and you wake up one day and you're like, how the hell did I get here? I found myself where I could see that path unfolding, where I wasn't sure if that's necessarily where I really wanted to go. And as it turned out, I heard on the radio about this model talent search. So I went to this model talent search at the Davenport Holiday and I was going to the University of Iowa at the time, and I went to this thing and I met these model agent ladies, and next thing you know, I got connected with an agent in Chicago. And so the reason why I bring this up is because in life, we get presented these opportunities and these doors may open up to us, but sometimes we don't always walk through those doors for whatever reason. And I think it's important to at least walk through that door and see what it might look like, because it's hard to make a decision on where you want to go in life and what you want your life to be about if you haven't necessarily experienced it yet. And when a door opens up, I think it's important to listen to your gut, to listen to your instincts, say some prayers to God, to the universe, whatever it is that, whatever it is that you pray to. And as I started going through these doors, as they started opening up, I found myself facing a decision do I want to go to medical school or do I want to go to Europe to pursue this modeling career. And I decided that against probably what I felt everyone expected me to do, I was like, you know what, I'm going to do something that may I may not be able to do ever again. So I decided to go to Europe. And next thing you know, I was finding myself on the runways doing Versace runway shows and met Georgia Ormani and some of these amazing designers, and for the first time, I really discovered what it meant to be around really creative people who were doing something that they truly loved and were passionate about. And after that, I found myself in New York City and started going on some commercial auditions, and acting was something that I never thought was going to be on my radar because I growing up was introverted. I was shy, and the last thing I wanted to do in class was to get up and give a speech or anything. I literally would have these hyperventilating panic attacks, and any time I would have to get up in front of school to talk about anything or give the answer. And so the last thing I ever thought was in the cards for me was getting up in front of people to do an acting career. But again one of these doors opened up where my acting or my acting modeling agents said, why don't you take an acting class to see if you like it, see if this may be something that you want to give a shot to. And so it would have been very easy to say no. And again, if we don't know what something is, it's very easy to judge it to shut it down before we even really know what it is. So I went to this acting class, and I would say it was the first time in my life where I genuinely felt that this was a place where I could learn how to give over my fear of being in front of people, being authentic and being vulnerable. I mean, as a guy, we don't necessarily like to be vulnerable, We don't necessarily necessarily like to admit when we are struggling, and I think this can keep us stuck in alone. And what acting class I started to realize provided to me was this space where I could show up and learn how to unlearn a lot of the things that I was conditioned to how to act growing up. And I started to realize that the most important thing in life is to be authentic and to be truthful and to be honest with yourself. And one of the greatest pieces of advice that my acting teacher gave me was she said, it's so important for you in order for you to be able to play these characters and walk into these auditions and for people to be able to to connect with you and want to go on these journeys with you, is that first and foremost, you have to honor yourself first, honor yourself in every regard. And I really was like thinking about what that meant and what I started to really think and realize that growing up, I was always more on that people pleasing side, where I just wanted to make friends and I wanted everyone to like me, and I was afraid of what people thought of me in the fear of judgment. I was super skinny growing up. I had headgear and braces, and so I didn't always feel comfortable in my own skin. And so the last thing I wanted was to be, you know, be a target and to be put myself out there for criticism, because a lot of what happens when you get in front of the camera, front of audiences with TV and film is that people are naturally gonna have judgments and opinions. And the second piece of advice my acting teacher gave us was when you start acting and you start getting in front of these audiences, she said, inevitably, people are going to judge you. And she said that roughly thirty percent of the people that you perform in front of, that you get in front of to act or to whatever it is, that thirty percent are gonna like you. They're gonna resonate with you. You're gonna say something or you're gonna do something that makes them feel connected to you, and they're gonna like you. They're going to root for you. She said. The next thirty percent of the people out there that you perform in front of, and even that you meet in your daily life, they're not gonna like you. For whatever reason, they're not gonna like you. They're gonna think that you just look weird, or the sounding of your voice is horrible, or that you just look whatever a certain way. So thirty percent of people are not gonna like you. And then she said, the other forty percent of the people in the world, let's see you that see your performances, that you meet out in the world, they don't care. So she said, it's not your job, with acting or with anything in life to try to make everyone happy or to please everyone. She said, your job is to show up, be truthful, honor yourself, honor the character, and be of service to the writer, to the director, to the producers and everyone that has come together to tell this story. And so it kind of just took that pressure off of me for the first time where I felt like, Okay, I've got permission to not have to worry about what other people think. And knowing that people are going to have opinions and they're going to have probably negative opinions, it's not my job to try to fix it, change it, or be worried about what other people think. So now that I had this this release of like trying to shoulder the burden of pleasing everyone, I could get to work and focus on what was the work of the actor and the first aspect of being an actor and creating these characters, and what really helped me in my real life was, in addition to kind of piggybacking on honoring yourself, is actually a piece of advice that my grandmother gave me, and that was you got to know who you are and know where you're at. So when I was growing up, my grandmother always used to say, remember who you are, and I was like, of course, man, I know who I am. I'm like I'm calling you know. I come from the South side of Chicago and I go to the University of Iowa. I'm ma Hawkeye or whatever it is. So we tend to identify ourselves with our external experiences or circumstances. And so when she said remember who you are, you are if you look at that word, remember, it's remember. So a lot of the times when we are seeking outside validation for who we are, we can get lost in the seeking approval or trying to fit in. And when my acting teacher talked about knowing who your character is at twenty six, twenty seven years old, I finally truly understood what my grandmother meant in terms of remembering and reconnecting to who you really are. And most of the time we haven't really thought about who we really are. So I'm going to give you a little a little exercise here for you to really truly know who you really are. And for a while, you know, I think we go through life trying to figure out who we are and where we fit in. And what I realized with acting classes is that in order to play the characters that we play, we have to decide who this character is and we have to to make choices. You'll hear that a lot with acting teachers. They'll say, you got to make strong choices. Casting directors say, we like actors that make these really strong, bold choices that make you stand out from every other actor that walks through the door. Because with acting, it's roughly you know, for every role, there's about four hundred actors that are vuying for that same role. So you can imagine if a casting director is sitting there an actor after actor after actor, or coming in or nowadays it's all on our iPhones or whatever. Within that first few seconds of someone seeing you or meeting you, it's important that you're able to connect with them authentically. And when a casting director is seeing so many people, creating and choosing these strong choices will help you stand out. But if you're trying to fit in and be like everyone else, you're just going to blend in and be forgettable. So by making these bold choices as an actor, choosing these care I realized, we decide who these characters are. We build these characters so that when we show up on set, we can truthfully play these characters in these imaginary circumstances. And so it's an active choosing who you are with acting. And I started to realize that as I was going into these auditions and choosing these characters and the characteristics of who these characters were, whether it was a vampire or a fighter pilot or a doctor, I started to realize that I was doing more work on analyzing and knowing these characters than I even knew myself. And so I started to apply this same strategy to my own life. So what you can do, start to ask yourself in this circumstance, no matter where you're at, And this is where I'm going to get into my friends here who are dealing with cancer or every other any other health ailment out there. No matter what you were dealing with, you get to decide who you choose to be. Is this experience now, as someone who's been diagnosed with cancer three times, this has come in incredibly handy is the right word. But it's been incredibly empowering for me to use this because in this experience, and I wouldn't wish cancer on anyone, but what it has made me do or afforded me the experience is to choose who I choose to be in life. So I'm not waiting for life to tell me who I am, because most of the time, as we grow up, you know, we get told who we are. Again, we get to decide who we are. And when we start actively choosing who we are in life, that gives us more of a definitive idea of who we are and how we want to show up. And a quick and easy way to decide who you are is pick three characteristics, and in enacting class we choose who is the character's core value. So whether your character's value is truth or justice, or power or love or revenge. By choosing these three core values, you get to decide to be lived by the energy and the essence and whatever else you can channel by these three qualities. And so what this does is it gives you instant access and connection to the answers that you need in order to navigate whatever it is that you're dealing with. So the three core values that I choose to be lived by are inspiration, self expression and boldness, And the reason why I choose this is because I've always loved to be inspired. I always loved watching inspirational videos and movies, and I think that's why I love acting so much, Because I love going to movie theater or being at home and seeing inspirational stories about incredible people who have overcome the odds. I love to be in that space of just feeling like empowerment and facing you know, and facing the odds and moving forward anyway. So I choose to be lived by inspiration. The second one is self expression because growing up I wasn't always self expressed. I was shy, I was nervous about what people would think. And by choosing to be self expression, you get to show up and ask the question, not what would Colin do or what would Lisa do? Or what would Mike do? You get to ask what would self expression do? In this moment? Self expression would tell the truth. Self expression would show up and be freely open about their experiences, about their challenges, about whatever it is that they're dealing with. And then the third one, boldness. I choose to be lived by boldness, and that way you get to decide. By deciding this, you get to be lived by would what are the characteristics of boldness? So when I was going through my cancer journy and having to go to my radiation treatments and my surgeries and my chest X rays and cat scans, you get to ask and decide and be lived by what would boldness do right now? So again not what Colin would do, because Colin would want to run for the hills and be like, no way, I don't want to get poked, prodded, lit up or cut open any more times. But when you ask the question what would boldness do? Or you can ask if you want to be if maybe you're lacking love in your relationship, you could choose love as one of your three core values, and then that way you can be lived by love. And so you could ask, well, what would love do? So instead of showing up in the world and expecting or wishing that someone would love, you show up as love, so that when you show up that you are the giving and receiving of love. And when you are showing up in life being the present moment existence of something, you attract it. So I'm sure you've heard of the law of attraction and manifestation a lot of people have been talking about it. It's become a buzzword. But it's important to know that like energy attracts like energy, and so if you're constantly showing up in life with the negative thoughts and doubt and uncertainty, you're going to attract more of that. And it's amazing how when you start to, as my nana said, know who you are, remember who you are. When you start to go inward and choose these three core values, it's amazing how empowerment or love or self expression will start to show up in your life because you have actively chosen it. So that really helped me start to embark along my path. And as I was going through my acting journey, I was going on these auditions and finally, after like seven eight years of auditioning, I booked a role on All My Children, playing the the transplanted, unboarded fetus of Ericacane otherwise known as Susan Lucci, and so being able to play Susan Lucci's son and All My Children, it was an amazing experience. And soap operas are incredibly demanding for a regular TV show that airs on nighttime TV, that hour long TV show is essentially actually only forty minutes because it's about twenty minutes of commercials, and a normal hour long primetime television show that airs once a week usually takes about five to seven twelve hour days to film. For a movie, you're and you usually for a primetime TV show, you're shooting about maybe ten to fifteen pages of dialogue every day, and then for a movie you're maybe shooting three to eight pages a day. With soap opera, you're shooting eighty pages a day. So it is you show up, you got to know your lines, you got to deliver, and so it's this constant, just like flood of dialogue and information, and so very quickly you start to realize that you've got to become good at memorizing. And by showing up and having this experience of doing this for three years, it empower me to realize that if you know you can make soap opera believable, then there may be a chance of actually doing some other things as well. So when my contract was almost like well, i was six months into my three year contract with all my children, and when I got that role, I was super excited because I'd been pursuing acting for like seven or eight years, and what really emboldened me to pursue acting in the first place was if I could just go up for a second go back. I was living across the street from the World Trade Center in two thousand and one, and I'd only been studying acting for like two years, and I'd done one role. My first role was actually getting into bed with Jenny Garth from nine oh two to zero, giving her a glass of wine in this show called The Street, and I had one line. And then my next role was a mail escort on Law and Order SVU. So not the biggest resume to be thinking I could go out to Hollywood and be the next Tom Cruise. That morning of nine to eleven, when I woke up and I saw out of my window the flames, and quickly soon thereafter saw that people were hanging their heads out of the windows of the World Trade Center. I quickly realized that those people weren't just watching, that they were trapped, and I turned on the TV and I started I grabbed my video camera, I started videotaping, and I've got footage of that second plane coming in and it was just horrific to see people actually then starting to jump out of the top of the towers. And after that second plane hit, I ran downstairs and standing outside of my apartment building just watching people stuck up at the top of those towers. It was just heartbreaking and something you can't on sea. And when that first tower fell, I was one of the people running down the street. And then the second tower fell, and it was a few days before I could actually get back to my apartment and when I did, when the towers fell, my windows got blown through, so I my place looked like a bomb had blown up inside of my apartment. So I had only a few minutes to grab whatever I could put into a suitcase and then leave, and I went to a hotel and I sat down on the floor and it really made me think about what was important in life and what did I want my life to be about, because I've essentially I felt like in that moment, I had a second chance, and I realized that those close to three thousand people that perished that day, they don't have a second chance. And so no matter what you're dealing with, whether it's cancer or a challenge or a relationship issue, at least you have the chance or the opportunity to decide who you want to be in this experience, and the last thing I wanted to do was to let that experience define who I was and to get me down. And I realized the only thing that was holding me back from going out to Hollywood to pursue this crazy idea of being a professional actor was my limiting beliefs and that fear of failure. And I just I was like, well, what would my acting teacher, Jackie Siegel say, on yourself and Nana, remember who you are? And I was like, you know what, the only thing that's stopping me is my own self doubt. And I just started thinking about if I were one of those people trapped up in the towers, if I was given a second chance at life, or if you were given a second chance at life, what would you do and would you let your fears and your doubts stop you from going after what you truly care about and what matters most to you? And I was like, I realized the only thing that was holding me back was me, and so I decided, you know what, screw it, let's go, let's do this. I went out to Hollywood, and this is where you got to understand you don't have to be the best, you don't have to be the smartest, you don't have to be the best looking, because that's not about that. I only had two years of acting experience and I went out to Hollywood and I started booking these roles because I was going into these auditions with this passion and this desire to be like, holy crap, I'm glad to be alive. So when you show up in life not worried about what other people think, but you're focused on whatever what it is that you truly passionately desire and want from here not from here, the world starts showing up differently for you. And after I started doing this, after a few years of auditioning, I booked that role on all my children. So then I'm like, oh my god, this is amazing. I'm now doing what I love to do. I'm now getting paid to do it. And six months into my three year contract, I got diagnosed with testicular cancer. And now, for those of you out there have been diagnosed with cancer, that's not a fun day when someone you know, when my doctor told me you've got cancer, it's advanced stage, and I'm scheduling you for surgery. This was on a Friday, scheduling you for surgery on a Monday. It was like I was in denial. I was like, how can that be? I take care of myself. I try to eat healthy. And so this is where the disempowerment can come up. And you really got to decide that I'm not gonna let this experience define who I am or how my outlook is going to be. So I decided, all right, I'm going to decide who do I need to be in this experience. And so I started relying on my acting training, and so I decide to be bold, courageous. I decide to be Maximists from Gladiator or whoever character or superhero that you choose to be, and start channeling that energy because this is this is the access and the leverage for us to be able to accomplish anything in life. And I'm telling you it doesn't matter what challenge you are facing right now. You can start to create this definitive way that this is going to go for you and know that no matter what happens in life, that we are these spiritual creatures having this human experience. And if you can start to look at yourself through the eyes of like let's say a screenwriter or a director. You can start looking at your life and say, how do I want my life to go? How do I want this story to go? And if I don't like how it's going, how can I choose to be this empowered character in this experience? Because face it, we all know this. We're not all going to live forever. We're all gonna die at some time. So it's important to focus on making this life as amazing and as great as it possibly can be. And if you are feeling stuck, if you are feeling frustrated, or if you're feeling like there's no way out, I'm telling you there is. And the way to find a way through this is to look at this from a different perspective. And so this is what now leads me to my third point. The first one is know who you are. The second one is decide who you are. The third one is you got to have the support of your community around you. So it's important that you reach out to your friends, your family, and you don't have to be needy in this experience. It's about being honest and honoring yourself and communicating to other people what you need in this experience, and by doing so, you provide other people the opportunity to show up to be what and for them to be who they want to be. And a lot of people want to be purposeful and they want to experience what it means to be there for someone. But when you deny them that experience, then both people are disconnected and alone. And after being diagnosed with cancer that first time and having my first surgery, I had to go for my radiation treatment, and I was showing up on all my children working in the morning and then going for my treatment. And after my treatment, I would just feel sick and tired and just sluggish, like you've got the flu. And I would go back to work the next day and do this over and over again. And towards the end of my treatment, I had my scene and all my children were scheduled for the end of day, so I scheduled my radiation treatment for the morning, so I went to that and then I went to work, and then I started feeling tired and sluggish and just sweaty and hot, and I tried to do my scenes and one of my director, the director at the time, came up to me and he said Colin, you're right, you don't look so good, and I immediately I just I broke down because I realized that I couldn't hold it in any longer. I'd been holding this in for like three months, and I didn't tell anyone at work. No one knew it all my children because it's guy stuff, it's testicular cancer. And I realized that I finally realized I couldn't do this alone. I needed to tell people. And what was great about that as soon as everyone found out at all my children, everyone showed up and they offered to take me to my doctor's appointments, to go with me, to help, you know, to bring food to me. And it really helped make me feel supported to be able to go through this experience. And then that way, as I started to get better and I started meeting other people who are going through this experience, I started to be able to then show up for them to pay it forward and pay it back. And then a year later I got diagnosed with particular cancer on the other side now was two thousand and six and two thousand and seven. So the benefit to this is that I've been in this high risk category, so I've been getting my checkups regularly, And for those of you out there who haven't gone to the doctor in a while, I would say, if you care about yourself. And again, as Jackie Siegel, my first acting teacher, said, honor yourself. One of the things I got to do. Whenever you're facing a decision, just ask the question, does this honor me if I don't do this? Or does it honor me if I do do this? And so by asking you that question, does it honor you to go to get your checkups? If not for you, for the people that love you and care about you, It's not that difficult to go to the doctor and get your checkups. For prostate cancer, which I was recently diagnosed with last year, it's the number one diagnosed cancer in the world. And for women it's breast cancer. And so by going and getting your checkups, if you go for early detection, and if you get it and catch it early, the cure rates are are way more in your favor. For men, it's a ninety seven percent cure rate if you catch this early. And I elected to have surgery, and so after that, and that was two months ago, and so I'm two months post surgery from prostate cancer and again being diagnosed and being told you have cancer for a third time. It's still it's still a scary experience. But what I've realized again through this third time of going through this is that now that I'm more able and open to be able to communicate to people what I'm going through and what I need, this has been an incredible exp because so many people have been able to show up to support me along this journey. So, no matter where you are at or what you're dealing with again, I would implore you to honor yourself, remember who you are, and to ask for support when you need it. It is actually courageous and it requires strength to ask for support. But when you do that, your community will show up. And if they aren't showing up for you, there's a lot of support groups out there that can support you in whatever journey that you are going on. And so if you are looking for any need, if you're in need of any support, you can go to my website callin Nicholsfield dot com. I do monthly meetups through my Patreon community. I do retreats. I've got one coming up April third through the seventh in Scottsdale, Arizona. At these retreats, anyone is welcome, men, women, And what we do is we do a weekend of rejuvenation. It's health and wellness. We do yoga, sound bowl healing, we go hiking, we do a dance contest. On Saturday night, I have a whole lineup of empowering guest speakers about mindfulness and wellness. And on Sunday we're doing horseback riding and then I'm going to be doing a private screening of my new movie Where the Wind Blows on April sixth. So if you're interested in coming to the retreat, we've got a great group of people coming. We've got four spots left. Again, you go to my website Collinegglesfield dot com, click on the events tab and so I've got Scott still and I've got Ireland coming up May twenty seconds through the twenty sixth hike's wellness, yoga, all that good stuff. So again I'm here to support you, and I'm here to just sends you through the internet waves. Here my support, my love, my strength, and i just want to say thank you again to Shannon for inspiring me to go out there into the world and pursue my dreams and my goals. And I just want to say thank you teaching every one of you out there who's here listening to this, And if anyone you know needs to hear this message, I would encourage you to share it with them. And I just want to say, take care for now, You're not alone. Love you all,