The Impossible Man

Jon Morrow and Johnny B. Truant

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SUPERACIÓN PERSONAL

I'm a fiction writer. Jon Morrow is a superhero: an unstoppable man who, afflicted with a degenerative disease and only able to move his face - built a multi-million-dollar business and regularly accomplishes impossible things. We teamed up to tell Jon's story because even though every bit of it is true, his life feels a lot more like fiction. johnnybtruant.substack.com

20/07/2023

Episode 5 - The Phoenix

LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher In this FINAL episode, we close out Jon’s story the way any hero’s arc should end: with Jon having faced his Dark Night of the Soul, now ready to change. He’s always wanted safety, and controlled people to get that safety. In this last chapter, he finds a better way. THIS IS THE FINAL EPISODE OF THE IMPOSSIBLE MAN PODCAST. Be sure to subscribe below so you don’t miss future updates on the project! REMEMBER: Although the podcast is over, the podcast existed in the first place so tease the larger project we’re working on together: Jon’s book, which may or may not be called The Impossible Man. Be sure to subscribe at JohnnyBTruant.com so we can let you know when the book is finish! TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS: NOTE: The transcript below was generated by AI and has not been edited. Accordingly, some things below are a little weird … but you’re smart, so I’m confident you can figure it out. SPEAKER A As they drained my control, it let out and made visible who I really was. SPEAKER B And who was that? SPEAKER A An absolute control freak. The worst they had ever seen in 60 years. SPEAKER B Welcome to The Impossible Man, the true story of how the inability to move allowed one person to tradehis humanity for ODS defying superpowers and how he clawed his way back. Hey, everybody, andwelcome to the final episode of The Impossible Man. The last episode was pretty rough, but that is parfor the course before the hero learns the lesson and ascends from the darkness. And that's ultimatelywhat we're going to be covering this episode. Remember, the entire arc for John was a journey, basicallyfrom the need for control, to trust and faith. And we're going to cover that in this episode. He needed tobe safe, and this is how he attempted to get it. So let's begin with this final episode of The ImpossibleMan. All right, so when we last left off, you were in a very dark place. We heard the story of this brutalrape and what it did to both hummingbird your girlfriend and to your relationship and then to you. Sothat's where we're starting this as we finish this overview of your story. So I assume that the relationshipfell apart and you broke up and you were this broken person. Is that where we began? SPEAKER A More or less. That's where. So even though she realized what she saw and experienced wasn't real, shestill remembered it and she still had the trauma from her not real experiences. She knew how illogical thatwas, but it doesn't matter. She experienced it. And that trauma caused her intense anxiety even to bearound me. SPEAKER B This is a little like if somebody wakes up from a bad dream and is mad at you because of something thathappened in the dream, but it didn't actually happen, but that they still feel that way for a while. And itsounds like even if intellectually, she understood. But she was having this emotional memory of youhunting down and killing the people that she loved. SPEAKER A Is that correct? Yeah. Her experiences where she saw me torture and kill people she had loved or to bemore accurate, to order them. SPEAKER B Tortured and killed, did she go to therapy around that? SPEAKER A Oh, yeah, lots and lots of therapy. And she knew by the end of it, she had reached a point to where shehad made clear dividing lines about what was real, what wasn't. But all of that trauma was still with her.And she told me, I love you with every molecule in my body, but if I stay with you, I feel like I'm nevergoing to heal and I need to move on. You need to move on. I'm going to move and try to restart mycareer. And if you love me, you will never come looking for me. Wow. SPEAKER B So throughout this story, you've been bulletproof and confident and sure that you could do anyimpossible thing that was put in front of you. How much of a hit did that take? SPEAKER A During this, it was the only time in my life that I couldn't get out of bed, that I didn't want to work. I didn'twant to see anyone. I wept all day, every day, for months. I was completely broken. And I started reachingout to a lot of girls, and even though I was a complete mess, not tried to date them, but just try to sleepwith them. And in the span of three months, I probably slept with twelve girls. One of them was a pornstar. I still had all of my old skills, except I now had no filter. I didn't do anything to harm any of thosegirls. I never lied to them. I told them I was not looking for a relationship. I was just looking for sex. And,guys, it'll shock you. There are a lot of women out there that are totally okay. What they want is you, to behonest about it. At the same time, it wasn't healthy at all. And eventually, a mutual friend of ours, DavidGonzalez, I was telling him about my life, and he just said, John, this isn't you, man. SPEAKER B I'm assuming that you had some degree of that control tendency that had loosened up a little bit whileyou were with hummingbird. Did it all come slamming back? Was there this almost vindicated feeling of,you know what? I was right all along. I shouldn't have relaxed my control. I should have tried to stay safe. SPEAKER A Sleeping with other girls was about control, because my objective was to sleep with them. And I'm notsaying this is good. I was in a dark time in my life. My objective was to sleep with them on the very firstdate. And so it was, how many girls can I sleep with on the very first date? SPEAKER B And you applied, I assume, all the same sort of impossible strategies that you've had all along, that sameforce of. SPEAKER A Will to my credit. Like I said, I was never dishonest. By the way, this is another secret to anyone, any kindof dating, to tell the other person exactly what you want. I would tell them on the very first day, this isexactly what I want. Are you down for that? And about third of the women said, no way, and that was theend of the date. The other two thirds of the women said, Maybe. Let's keep talking. SPEAKER B This is through, like, dating apps? SPEAKER A No, this is in person. SPEAKER B So you were still getting out because this was pandemic times, right? This was, like, 2021, something likethat? SPEAKER A It was right before it. So, yeah, I was attempting to feel some sort of control. By how many women could Iget to sleep with me over the span of a few hours while being completely, 100% honest. I would even tellthem about Comingbird. I wasn't hiding anything. SPEAKER B Well, so control was a strategy for you to feel safe. So did you feel safe at all? SPEAKER A No. SPEAKER B Even though you were controlling everything, did you just keep trying to ramp up the control in an effort tofeel that again? SPEAKER A Yeah, I think there was some of that. I was crucially unaware at the time, but I would say yes. SPEAKER B So David was the one who saw this. You were not going to see it on your own, is that correct? At least notat this time? SPEAKER A Yeah, he came to me. He knew about the breakup and everything that has happened with comingbird andhe knew I was messed up. But then he started to see all of this and he told me, rather than do what you'redoing, just, is it helping? And I said no. He said, well, would you be open to a different approach? And Isaid yes. SPEAKER B So you didn't resist? You didn't tell him he was crazy, that he didn't know what he was talking about, anyof that? SPEAKER A No. And it's because he was very close friend. He had already earned my trust. I knew he had my bestinterests at heart. And he said, there's a group, invitation only group of guys who are all very successful toget together and they talk about their problems. There are no therapists, it's just a group of guys. But it's areally cool group. SPEAKER B Was it that simple? Was it literally just a group of guys who just decided that they needed this supportnetwork? SPEAKER A What I learned when I went there is that there's a movement among some men that have realized thatmen have become emotionally stunted and that it causes all sorts of problems in our lives. And there aregroups around this. Like Lionheart is one of those groups. I never went to Lionheart, but this is very similarprocess. And the idea is that we've been through trauma, learned all the wrong lessons, and now we can'tseem to progress forward as men because we're no longer in control. SPEAKER B Trauma is so that idea of learning all the wrong lessons is something that we talked briefly about before.Can you give me an example of what that means, to go through trauma and learn all the wrong lessons? SPEAKER A Yeah. So after my stepfather, I learned if I'm not in charge, no one is safe. With hummingbird, I think thelesson I learned was, my life is over, it's time to die. SPEAKER B So you were learning that lesson subconsciously. And then when David came in, I assumed that therewas some degree of, well, this person sees it differently and I trust him and he cares about me. Was therethat kind of thing? SPEAKER A Yeah. And he was asking me to go hang out with some guys and he just said, try it and see what youthink. SPEAKER B And so I did what did you think? SPEAKER A I wept like a baby. Told them the story, and each man in the group just gave me a hug. They didn't sayanything. They didn't judge me. I did the same for them. And I noticed that I didn't feel alone. I still feltlike shit, but I didn't feel alone. SPEAKER B How long did you attend that group? SPEAKER A Over a year. Every week. I never missed a meeting. SPEAKER B How did that end? Did you just sort of get to the point where you were like, okay, I'm ready to move on?Thank you. SPEAKER A Eventually, the other members of the group started to move, and it just sort of dwindled. And by thatpoint, I'd already spent hundreds of hours, not 1000 hours, talking to these men. And I'd started tobecome much more in touch with my emotions. One of the exercises they gave beginning members wasto set a 15 minutes alarm on your watch that goes off ev

27 min
14/07/2023

Episode 4 - Dating and Defeat

LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher In this next-to-final episode, Jon (and his intense issues with control) embarks on an intense new frontier: dating. It shouldn’t surprise you that Jon’s approach to dating follows the exact same “impossibility principles” as everything else in his life … with similarly impressive results. But this episode also turns a dark corner: Just as Jon’s emotional redemption hits a critical point, an unspeakable event sends him into the most broken, surrendering depths he’s ever faced. This is the next-to-final episode of the Impossible Man podcast. Be sure to subscribe below so you don’t miss future updates on the project! TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS: NOTE: The transcript below was generated by AI and has not been edited. Accordingly, some things below are a little weird … but you’re smart, so I’m confident you can figure it out. SPEAKER A Among the severely disabled, there's this very real sense that we are unlovable, that no one would ever date us, that we are excluded from that race. It occurred to me that could be true. But is just letting thatmassive assumption go unchallenged really the most courageous thing to do? SPEAKER B Welcome to The Impossible Man, the true story of how the inability to move allowed one person to tradehis humanity for ODS defying superpowers and how he clawed his way back. So welcome back to thepenultimate episode of The Impossible Man. We have just this and one more episode left to follow. Andas things turned out, it did end up being a second half of act two and then act three in the episode fourand five. Go figure. In this episode, John covers some really, really rough ground. If you remember, at theend of the last episode, john said that he got to a point where he controlled everything but still didn't feelsafe. In this episode, we're going to follow the aftermath that came from that. And then in the finalepisode to air next week, we're going to close the story and just know that there's so much more when wefinish writing the book and that this podcast series has been an overview of the highest level of the storyand there's so much more depth to it. So without further ado, let's continue with The Impossible Man. Allright, John, looks like we're in the home stretch here. I kind of like that there's some structure to the show.Now. We know that it's got two more episodes. We know what the next two episodes are going to cover,and it feels like a satisfying story. In brief. I mean, not fleshed out. That's why people need to get thebook. But does that feel about the same to you? SPEAKER A Yeah, I think so. It's a good balance to give everyone a taste of what's coming. You get all the low pointsand some of the high points to come, too. SPEAKER B We left kind of off on a cliffhanger in episode two, but there was one thing that just occurred to me almostspontaneously while I was listening back to episode three. I've known you for about a decade now, and Iguess I didn't realize until I heard it on the show. I don't hear you laugh a lot, like, you're a serious guy,even with we know each other reasonably well. So is that just my perception, or are you kind of a seriousdude and it takes a little bit to get you laughing? SPEAKER A I'm a pretty serious dude. I would say that over the past two years, since I went through therapy, I laughmore than I used to. With my nurses that are with me, I'm constantly joking, so they're laughing all daylong. My girlfriend, too, also do I do a really big laugh. It takes a lot of muscle in your diaphragm and Idon't have that. So even when I'm laughing so hard, tears are coming out of my eyes. Still not like a bigbooming laugh. It's pretty quiet. SPEAKER B It made me think that this can't all be negative for you, that there's at least some stories in here that areamusing, and I hope it's cathartic. SPEAKER A It is. One of the concepts from therapy is that if you ask a trauma specialist, will I be able to talk aboutthis without crying? The answer is when you've shed all the tears. So reliving something and experiencingthose emotions in some ways. One theory I heard, which is very interesting, is that trauma is just emotionthat you are resisting experiencing, and if you will experience it, all the trauma goes away. SPEAKER B Well, I feel like I've, I don't know, learned about that or experienced it or thought about it recently as wellin a different context because, knock on wood, I haven't personally had a lot of trauma for which I'm reallygrateful. But the idea that negative emotion hurts because you're resisting it to some degree, I mean,obviously there is a base level of stuff there, but it's the resistance. It's the I don't want to feel that. Thattends to dog a lot of people. SPEAKER A It's normal to have, quote unquote negative emotions, but where you get into unhealthy territory is whenyou refuse to feel them. And that doesn't always mean verbalizing your emotions. The most emotionallyhealthy people I've seen, they feel the full range of emotions, but they fully experience and then releasethat emotion rapidly. So they're in a state of flow with their emotion, even if they're not speaking. Andthat's what I strive to do. SPEAKER B Let me ask you about something else that came out after we pressed stop on the recording last time, andyou said something like therapy or maybe you can recontextualize this for me, that therapy will help youget rid of 95% of trauma. And this is obviously a little hyperbolic. It's not an exact figure, but that the 5%that remains is kind of yours forever. And I posited the idea that maybe that's grit in the oyster. Maybethat's the 5% that you need that makes you stronger. SPEAKER A What do you think about that? I think it's very possible, and I've had multiple trauma specialists tell methat that some of it stays with you. Another metaphor I've heard is it's scar tissue that you can completelyheal the wound, but some scar tissue is going to remain, and that scar tissue actually makes that part ofyour body stronger than it was before. So I think there's some truth to that too. SPEAKER B To give people an idea of what we have in mind for these final two episodes, I'm seeing everything in acts,and I actually told my wife yesterday, I couldn't have written a better character and a better story. Iwouldn't have made any different choices. Your life made all the right choices as far as a satisfying story. SPEAKER A You're welcome. SPEAKER B Yes, thank you. Makes my job a little easier. So the first episode was the overview. The second episodewas basically act one. Last episode was the first half of act Two, right up to the midpoint. And this onelooks like it's going to be the second half of act Two. And then the final episode will be act Three. So westopped when we said and it was kind of on a cliffhanger. You needed to be safe. That was your goal andyour strategy was to control everything. And I said, hey, can you give me a sneak peek of what's going tohappen going forward? I said, did you get to a point just yes or no? Did you get to a point where youlearned that you could be safe without controlling everybody? And I said it in such a way that I was justassuming a yes and you said no. You said, I basically got to the point where I controlled everything, but Istill wasn't safe. And so I'd like to begin with addressing that and we're going to talk largely about whereyou began to kind of see that that strategy either wasn't working or wasn't effective. I guess that's thesame thing to the point where at the end, I think you're going to have to drop it. Does that sound roughlycorrect? SPEAKER A When you're the CEO of the company and you're the founder and you're the 100% shareholder, which bythe way, 100% shareholder, major control sentum, I control everything in my business. I am king. And so Igot to a level there where I had a successful business where I was in complete control. And then I startedto feel the sense of that it wasn't enough. One of my core values has always been to live courageously.And I realized that I was living that value in the world of business. To some extent, I would argue I wasn'tas far along as I thought I was, but I wasn't living that value in other parts of my life, like dating. I was avirgin until I was 31 years old. And part of the reason why is among the severely disabled community,there's this very strong and very real sense that we are unlovable, that no one would ever date us, that weare excluded from that race. And my implicit answer was that's true because anytime I was around girls,they never communicated any sort of attraction my entire life. So my assumption was it was impossiblefor them to be attracted to me. It occurred to me that could be true. But is just letting that massiveassumption go unchallenged really the most courageous thing to do? And the answer was no. So myoriginal intent when I started dating was to actually test that assumption. And my hypothesis is that it wastrue and that I would prove it. And then I would never have to worry about it again. SPEAKER B So your stepping into dating had less to do with wanting that particular adventure and more about thisfeeling that if you didn't, you weren't living according to your core value, one of your core values, whichwas to live courageously, is that correct? SPEAKER A Yes. SPEAKER B Usually someone who is charging forward, wanting to control everybody, living sort of a domineering lifein order to feel safe, usually that strategy comes with a certain degree of obliviousness. You need to feelbulletproof, you need to feel that you can kind of do no wrong, that you are smarter than everyone else,all that stuff. And realizing that you weren't living courageously feels like it flies in the face of that becauseit took an awareness that you weren't living courageously, which a lot of people in your position with thatattitude wouldn't have seen. But then courage itself, like a

38 min
07/07/2023

Episode 3 - Control

LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher Thank you for your kind words about the podcast so far! If you’re enjoying this series, please like and/or comment on this post so we’ll know about it. In this episode, we move Jon’s story out of the First Act and into the Second. Jon faces a choice, then embarks on a journey … but watch out, because like all heroes on a path to change, Jon brings a flawed strategy into the Second Act with him, and it puts him on the path to more big lows before the tide can possibly begin to rise. Wondering why I’m talking about Jon like he’s in a character in a book? Subscribe below to get a cheat sheet of the process I used to uncover Jon’s “character arc.” I also discuss a solidifying of the podcast format in this episode, so listen for that. We now know this will be a five-episode series giving the complete and hopefully-satisfying story … but told in sparse enough detail that you’ll still want to buy the book when we’re done with it. Y’know. Because that’s a thing, too. TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS: NOTE: The transcript below was generated by AI and has not been edited. Accordingly, some things below are a little weird … but you’re smart, so I’m confident you can figure it out. SPEAKER A I said, listen, I'm gonna give you a very important decision tonight. You have one of three options. Optionnumber one is you can kill me right now and there's nothing I can do to stop you. Option number two is Iwill sell everything I own and hire a hitman to kill you. Option number three is that you leave and no oneever sees you again. SPEAKER B Close. Welcome to The Impossible Man, the true story of how the inability to move allowed one person totrade his humanity for ODS defying superpowers and how he clawed his way back. Hey, everyone, andwelcome to the Impossible Man. This is our third episode. Big thanks to those of you who got in touchand said that you enjoyed the episode or the podcast as a whole and encouraged us to continue. We aregoing to continue, but we're going to continue in a very specific fashion. So what we've decided is thatthere's just so much that we're going to need to plunge here. There's bottomless stories. I mean, you guyshaven't heard what I have heard from John, but let's just say that there are a lot of rabbit holes, and all ofthe rabbit holes have rabbit holes. So John and I are going to be talking quite a bit. And our original ideato record absolutely everything is kind of falling apart for a few separate reasons, one of which is I didn'tsign on to make a podcast. I'm happy to do it. It was my idea. But there's a book to write here. And if Ispend all this time editing up the podcast, it's a significant expense of time. We don't come out this cleanand polished sounding that requires a lot of effort. And if I keep doing this, then I'm not going to get thatbook finished. And that's obviously not something that we're looking for. And the second reason is if Icould pull back the curtain a little bit, it's honestly commercial. We've been in touch with some peoplewho are advising us on the proposal and pitching this book. And they said, don't put everything out there.Put out a small portion and leave people wanting more. Well, that's exactly what we're going to do, but Ithink we're going to do it in a way that's really going to satisfy you. So I think that this episode that you'reabout to listen to contains both sides of that coin. Number one, you're going to see how many stories arehere. You're going to get a really compelling story from John. Let's just say it involves criminals. It involvescrazy behavior. It's something. But you're also going to be able to tell that there's a lot more to this, thatyou aren't hearing the full story. That's why you got to buy the book. A lot more fits in a book than fits on apodcast. And honestly, it's a better format for it anyway. So what we've decided to do is to complete anoverview of the entire story so that you have the entire story, but you're going to have it in kind of asummary fashion. We anticipate that taking two more episodes for a grand total of five episodes for thispodcast because it was never really meant to be a podcast, podcast ongoing. It was always meant to be alimited run to let you know a little bit about this amazing story and to honestly interest you in learningmore. So this will be episode three, and unless something kind of unusual happens that we aren'texpecting, we think that there will be two more episodes after this. Please keep letting us know if you'reenjoying this because honestly, this is kind of a market test for us. We want to know how interested youguys are and there is still time to get in questions. So if you have any questions, you can always just get intouch with either of us. So I'm not going to waste any more time here, especially not if that tease that youjust heard in the little Stinger opening the episode that story and many more are to come in this episode.And let's just get started. All right, John. So the response has been good to the first couple of episodes.There are a few things that I feel like we should get out of the way, though, that we haven't really done yet,that we've just sort of been assuming. Why are you, a prominent author like you are known as a writer?Why are you working with me on this project at all? Why are you working with any writer? SPEAKER A I've tried to write this story many times and it's always ended in disaster. Either I can't write it or it doesn'tfit together right. And I know it. And it eventually occurred to me after going through a lot of therapy, thatthe reason why is I just went through so much trauma during all of this that it just brings up too much painpieces of the story for me to be able to write about it. So in all likelihood, my story, which is the thingeveryone wants from me, is the thing that I am most unable to write. It's probably the only thing I'munable to write. And so that's why it eventually came to me that, well, what if you didn't have to write it,but you could still tell the story and that's where this idea came from. SPEAKER B Do you think any of that is distance from the story or I guess I would say lack of distance because you'retoo close to it. So, for instance, the major arc that we're pursuing, this idea of learning to be human, thatwas something that you didn't realize was there from an arc perspective. So do you think that it's just thatit's too emotionally close for all of these stories that you can't do the story justice, or is it more traumaticfor you, or both? SPEAKER A When I'm telling these stories, I'm actually experiencing what happened. Some of these stories are abouttimes almost died. Some of these stories are about violence. Some of these stories are about timeswhere I was incredibly depressed. And what happens when I tell those stories is I go back into that statein order to be able to give you as honest of a story as I possibly can. And that results in me losing touchwith the present. And it makes it very hard for me to reflect on how to tell the story appropriately or in themost compelling way. SPEAKER B So you told me some stuff before we started recording. It was in this vein, it was cautions about howmuch this was going to affect you and so forth. And that makes me wonder how much you feel that you'vesort of processed all of this stuff just holistically. Because a lot of times you'll hear people who hadtraumatic experiences and they're over it or not over it to greater or lesser degrees. But the way that youtalk about this, it's almost like you're afraid for your sanity if you go back and revisit them. So do you feelthese memories really have that grip on you that you haven't moved through in the ways that you mighthave otherwise? SPEAKER A The best definition I've heard of being healed from trauma is that you can relive the experience without ittaking control of you. I am, to that point, with all of these memories that it doesn't take control of me. Thatwasn't always the case. And taking control of you, by the way, can mean different things. Doesn'tnecessarily mean you just go into a trance. It means if there are certain stories you cannot tell, then thatstory is in control because you want to tell that and you can't. And for a long time, that's where I was withmany of these stories, is I wanted to tell them, and I just couldn't. And I've already told all of these storiesnow to therapists, to people I deeply trust, to close friends. And in the beginning, I was not in control. Ifyou start crying uncontrollably while you're telling a story and you don't want to cry uncontrollably, thenyou are not in control. And those kinds of things happen. They don't happen now. Now, I can't say that I'min complete control because the story still makes me feel a certain way, but it at least doesn't control mybehavior. And so from a therapeutic perspective, that's progress. SPEAKER B Another question that I wanted to ask before we really resume this story is I realized it would probably bebeneficial to have kind of a quick list of the things that the accomplishments that you have. When I talkabout the things that you've done and the things that you've achieved, I say very successful multimilliondollar business. One of the best known writers on the web, super intelligent, all that sort of thing. But canyou give me a punch list of some of the things that you've done that would be impressive if. SPEAKER A Anybody had done them writing things that, as far as they could tell, literally hundreds of millions ofpeople have read? That would be one. I've made a lot of money, but I'm certainly not like, mega rich. Ifanything, I feel like I've underperformed as far as how much money I've made, even though I am amillionaire. So it's kind of weird to say. SPEAKER B That underperformed relative to what expectations that you had. SPEAKER A When you look at my skill level compared to people wi

43 min
30/06/2023

Episode Two - Beginnings

LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher After giving listeners the ten-thousand-foot view of the Impossible Man book project and Jon’s story in Episode One, Episode Two begins the more-or-less-chronological exploration of Jon’s “character arc” as described by me, Johnny: a fiction-minded storyteller. Wondering what the hell that means? Enter your email below to get a cheat sheet of the process used to uncover Jon’s “character arc.” In this episode you’ll hear about Jon’s earliest years, when he began kindergarten and was mocked by the other children because he didn’t know what “handicapped” meant — something his mother explained very differently than most people do. The way Jon responded to those taunts might surprise you. As with the pilot, please let us know if this project is interesting to you and if we should continue! Ratings and reviews on podcast directories (like iTunes and Google Podcasts) are very appreciated and will help us a lot! TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS: NOTE: The transcript below was generated by AI and has not been edited. Accordingly, some things below are a little weird … but you’re smart, so I’m confident you can figure it out. SPEAKER A When you're on a table in a hospital and the doctor tells you you're going to die, there are only tworesponses. The first response is to get very afraid and then die. Second response is fuck you. I wasn'tready to die, so the fuck you response was all that was left to me. SPEAKER B Welcome to The Impossible Man, the true story of how the inability to move allowed one person to tradehis humanity for ODS defying superpowers and how he clawed his way back. Hi, and welcome to episodetwo of The Impossible Man. I am your host, Johnny B. Truant. Thanks to everyone who got in touch afterthe pilot. Clearly a lot of you out there interested, so we're going to continue. We're going to see whathappens over another few episodes. If you are still into it, be sure to let us know. The first episode of thepodcast was meant to be a complete overview of John's story and the podcast idea and the project thatwe're doing. And as such, we covered a lot of ground. We covered kind of John's general introduction, mygeneral introduction, the project's introduction, as well as a lot of his attitudes and beliefs and the idea ofthis impossibility that he has cultivated. Now, when I followed up with John to do episode two, I wanted tobe a little bit more organized, a little bit more linear. And as you heard in the previous show, I'm a fictionwriter. So I'm looking at this story as if it were a fictional story, as if John were a character. And so Imapped out the markers that would appear in a story if John were fictional. And I'm beginning to exploresome of those in this episode. Every character, before they go on their journey, begins in an ordinaryworld. And so that's a lot of what we covered in. This is what was in John's early life. What were hisattitudes when he was born? What were the dispositions of his parents, and what were the influencesthere? And how did that propel him forward into the beginning of his arc where he originally had someemotion and then learned that he had to turn it off in order to protect himself? And that is the larger arcthat we're going to continue on. And I have in mind what his inciting incident, his first act climax and allthat good stuff is, but we're going to tackle them all in order. So in this one, we really go deep and you'llsee the beginnings of how this unstoppability was forged and how John propelled himself forward andeventually got himself in some trouble that will spend the entire book trying to get himself out of. Andinterestingly, it has nothing to do with his disease, at least not as the main show. So here we arecontinuing our discussion with episode two of The Impossible Man. All right, here we are back for sessiontwo. I guess we're calling this podcast the Impossible Man. That's an evolution. We didn't know that thefirst time. Are you happy with that? SPEAKER A I am, yeah. I may be unhappy with later, but I reserve the right to be unhappy later. But for now, I am. SPEAKER B You do well. But I think it works as a good reminder because we've been focusing on your arc, and that isobviously the point of the book. But we to some degree lost track of the point that the whole idea wasthat we're also going to try and teach people how to do this. I asked you on the one we didn't record, theone we didn't share on the podcast, and I said, Is that something you can teach? You can teach peoplehow to do impossible things. And you said yes. SPEAKER A Yeah, absolutely. I was even thinking, when this eventually becomes a book, maybe that'll become anaddendum that no one gets on the podcast. What do you think of that idea. SPEAKER B How to do impossible things so they have to get the book. You can't just cheap out. SPEAKER A Yeah, I'll write you'll be able to pick it up if you're listening closely enough. But I can add a little manual,field manual to doing impossible things. SPEAKER B I like this. That's the content marketer in both of us right there. That's what that is. All right. So what I didis in between these, because last time was kind of an overview. We were all over the place. We coveredkind of your mentality and your history and all that. But I think it might make sense with if we takediversions, that's fine. But as a general through line to begin kind of telling the story in chronological order.So I wrote down on my little cheat sheet here what I believe to be the act markers in your story. The waythat I'm approaching this as the person who's going to be putting down the actual words is to suss out acharacter arc as if you were a fictional hero. So if you were a protagonist in a book, there are certainpoints that you would go through. You would begin in your ordinary world. You would have an incitingincident that kind of kicked you out of normal and taught you that something was needed attention. Youwould have the first act climax where you're going on a journey. You would have a midpoint whereeverything changes. That's the hallmark of the midpoint. You would have a dark knight of the soul, whichspoiler, we kind of already know what the Dark Knight of the Soul is probably going to be a second actclimax where you're all in on this new information, this change that you're going to realize in your arc andfinally resolution. And so I wrote down what I think are the act markers. And the arc that we decided wewere going to use was this idea of you were always confident, but in order to have that confidence, youwere angry and emotionless, in your words. Was that accurate? SPEAKER A Yeah, definitely. SPEAKER B So you kind of said, Get out of my way, world. I'll show you who I am. I'll show you what I can do. But itcost you empathy and personal relationships. SPEAKER A I was a machine. SPEAKER B What I had here, maybe we just kind of start with because I've never done this before in a podcast. So Iguess with the ordinary world, I'm imagining you. So this is what I'm imagining. I'm imagining young John. Imean, we have to start from the beginning, right? And so tell me the story as well as you can from thebeginning. Now, one of the things we need to keep in mind as we do this is that at the beginning, yourmom was obiwan, right? She was the mentor. She was the one where you got your unstoppable,unbreakable sort of an attitude. So I imagine a lot of this is going to be her story, but where would you liketo begin? Where does the John Morrow story begin? SPEAKER A I mean, it might be interesting to know that when I was a young child, I was not emotionless. And you canactually see it in the photography from when I was a kid, when I was, say, before I had my back surgery, Iwas your average, normal, happy go lucky kid. And then somewhere along the way, I think it was my backsurgery, the way my eyes looked completely changed. They became more dead, more distant, andthey've never really even now regained the same quality I had when I was a child. SPEAKER B When did you feel like you were different? Because you said at some point you became like anotherspecies. But was that after the back surgery or was that before? SPEAKER A It probably started around the time I went to kindergarten. That was when this whole idea of othernesstook root in my mind, because I didn't feel like the other kids in kindergarten and before kindergartenwasn't really around other kids that much. SPEAKER B So it was the lack of comparison. You basically were able to believe that everybody is like this. SPEAKER A Before that, I don't know if even the idea of having an identity had really taken root. And I remember myfirst day of kindergarten vividly for this very reason. Up until that age, my mother had never told me I wasdisabled. And I didn't know what the word meant. I had never heard the word. I knew I had SMA, but thewhole idea of a disability or being handicapped was completely foreign. I didn't even know what thosewords meant. So when I went to school, I remember one of the children said, kind of pointed at melaughing and said, he's handicapped like kids do. And I remember I said, what's that? And he yelled out tothe whole class, he doesn't know what handicapped means. And the whole class started laughing at and Ibroke down the tears the teacher because I was like, there's this word, I don't know what it means.Everyone else thinks I'm ridiculous because I don't know what it means. And the teacher took me outsideand she said, you really don't know what henshaw means? And I said, no, I don't. And she thought aboutit for a second and she said, I think this is a conversation you're going to have to have with your mother.So I went through the whole bay, like the whole day, I was just obsessed with there's this word that I'mexpected to know and no one will tell me what it means. And just feeling really frustrated with that. And Iremember

51 min
23/06/2023

Episode One - Overview

LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher In this pilot episode, we cover Jon’s background, why he’s teamed up with me to tell his story in a forthcoming book, all about the confidence and downright cockiness that became both his salvation and his curse, and the timeline of the slow nerve degeneration from the disease that today has left him unable to move anything but his face: Spinal Muscular Atrophy, or SMA. We’re releasing this first episode in order to determine whether there is enough interest in this series for us to continue it. So if you enjoy this and would like to hear more, please let us know! To do so, you can comment below, subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast directory, and ideally leave us good ratings and reviews. If you’d like to reach Jon directly, the best place is on Twitter. If people are into it, we’d love to continue … so let’s hear it! Curious about the process? Enter your email below to get a cheat sheet of the process we used to uncover Jon’s “character arc.” TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS: NOTE: The transcript below was generated by AI and has not been edited. Accordingly, some things below are a little weird … but you’re smart, so I’m confident you can figure it out. SPEAKER A There are children of the darkness and there are children of the light. I was born in the dark withmonsters, and to survive I became a bit of a monster. And then at a certain point in my life, I stepped intothe world of the light and out of the world of monsters and I had to learn how to survive. You. SPEAKER B Welcome to The Impossible man the true story of how the inability to move allowed one person to tradehis humanity for ODS defying superpowers and how he clawed his way back. Hey, everybody. My name isJohnny B. Truant. I will be playing host for what I believe is going to be a very interesting behind thescenes look at a project that I am doing with and for John Morrow. Now, if you don't know either one ofus, I am a fiction author. I have written over a hundred books. I've been doing this for about ten or twelveyears. John Morrow is kind of a copywriting guy, kind of a content marketing guy, a writing guy, a blogger,a guy who teaches blogging, a consultant general all around internet badass. I would say that's certainlyhow I met him. But what it took me a long time to realize after hearing John's reputation and just thinkingof him as this larger than life personality was that he actually can't move anything but his face. I just knewwhat was inside first. And that's unusual because with somebody like John, usually people see what'soutside first. They see that he is in not just a wheelchair, not just a power wheelchair, but a powerwheelchair that he operates and drives exclusively by blowing into and sucking on a small tube. He has acondition called spinal muscular atrophy or SMA, which is sort of a cousin to ALS, also known as LouGehrig's disease. SMA is a little bit more mobile than that, but not very mobile at all. With just his faceand his voice, he has built a multimillion dollar business and just generally been one of the mostunstoppable people that I have ever met. John, being a writer and being somebody who has a way ofknocking people onto their ass with his writing, has written several posts about his condition and aboutbeing unstoppable in a way that it's kind of astonishing how unstoppable he is. And it's not just within therealms of his disease. He is unstoppable personally. Regardless. It's John's mentality that has made thingsthat seem to be entirely impossible possible. He has defied what seem like impossible ODS over andover again, both with things that seem to be within volitional control and things that seem like nobodycould control them. Like his health, john has survived close brushes with death many times. He has beentold by doctors many times that he would not live through a given ordeal. He's somebody with an attitudethat has somehow transformed his physical reality. I know how that sounds, but it is true. And as youlisten to this series, you'll find it. So publishers and others have been on John to tell this story for a longtime. And he keeps procrastinating, he keeps not doing it. He knows that it could be an instant bestseller.He knows that he could get a very large advance for it. But delving in, even as a writer, even though he's avery good writer, and even though he has a very good story, delving into it, actually penning the wordswould be too painful. And so John asked me if I would co write the book with him. We thought it might beinteresting to record the process of me discovering John's story. And there's a very particular slant to that,because uncovering his story could mean recounting the events in his life as they occur. And this is verydifferent from that. Just recounting the story in an autobiography doesn't really give you the lesson. AndJohn and I really wanted to convey sort of how this unstoppable personality was forged and how to do theimpossible. But in order to do that, we need to see how the listener can relate to John as a person fromwhere they stand, where things that are impossible tend to remain impossible. And that's one of thereasons that John wanted to work with me, a fiction author, to write this book, is because I believe that lifeis a story and that there's a lot of noise that crowds what could be a character arc, as if it were designedby an author. But most people don't see it because of all of the noise, because of all of the competingstimuli in our world. But if you delve Deep and I've written a whole book about this called The StorySolution, co written with Sean Platt, where we talk about picking out the pieces of life that, whenassembled together, can be a cogent story arc, you as the protagonist, you have an inciting incident at thebeginning. You have a first act climax, you have a midpoint, you have a second act climax. You have anemotional arc that needs to be developed to reach your fullest potential. And when John started thinkingabout that and we started looking at John Morrow as a character not fictional, but in real life, you canclear away the noise and see that he had an emotional arc that not only made this possible. But thathighlights what could have been a potential tragedy in his life, not as his health, but instead as somethingentirely different. Because we're both entrepreneurs, because we both think outside the box, we decidedthat we wanted to record the process of uncovering John's story so that you'll see how it came about andjust kind of to see if people are interested in it. And that's what this is. This is a pilot. Now, in subsequentepisodes of this, if everybody enjoys this and we want to continue it. I have the act markers of John as acharacter. I know when he reached his crisis points, when he pivoted in general because of this interviewthat you're about to hear and because of other times that we've spoken before. And I'll begin to have himtell his story linearly. But this first one is to give you the full picture. And so we're going to covereverything in this one now to get a. SPEAKER C Few of the things out of the. SPEAKER B Way so that I don't have to ask John what both of us already know. Here are some things that you need toknow as you listen forward again. John has spinal muscular atrophy. It's a condition where he slowly lostthe ability to move everything but his face. And so John spends his working hours in a power wheelchair,hooked up with all sorts of doodads that allow him to work with only his face. So if I had video of thisrecording, john has a rectangular object that's connected to an arm that's in front of his face, and it's a lipmouse. So he's able to move a cursor around on a screen using his lips. Most of what he does is withdictation. Now, another thing about SMA is he can feel everything. All of his sensory neurons work, but hismotor neurons, except for the ones that directly feed his face, don't. So in the interview that follows, I'mbeginning to suss out some of the themes that are in John's story and to begin to build what will becomethis rather epic story that's very different from what the earlier people who wanted John to write his bookwanted. They wanted the Hallmark version. And John said, that's not the truth. There's something else,there's another truth behind it. And I think it's something that's relevant to anybody who is drawing breath.So I hope you enjoy. SPEAKER C Here's our talk. Hey, John. How are you? SPEAKER A I'm great. Good to be talking again. SPEAKER C This is the second time that we've talked about this, but since we decided that we were going to do this,what I'm gonna I'm gonna call it a podcast. You can't see it's audio only, but I'm putting it in air quotesbecause it's kind of a podcast. But it's really our attempting to determine what the story is actually goingto be and what's going to go into it. And people might be interested. The idea is that if we have a goal forthe book, which we do, which is this idea of teaching the impossible and if you're the main character ofthis book, even though you're a real person and everything we're going to convey is real. We want to finda story that is like the focused thread that most clearly conveys this impossible thing. Right. Becausethere's all sorts of things that you've done in your life that have no real relevance to the story that we'retrying to tell. So I'm looking at this through the lens of a fiction author. Why did you like the idea of afiction author being involved in this project with you? SPEAKER A Because I think my life more closely resembles fiction than the average autobiography in my life. There'sa very real story arc with everything I'm doing, and I think ultimately, even for autobiographies orbiographies, often what makes the best ones are the ones that are actually the best stories. And peopleget a little pure obsessed with reporting every detail or reading ev

48 min

5 episodios

I'm a fiction writer. Jon Morrow is a superhero: an unstoppable man who, afflicted with a degenerative disease and only able to move his face - built a multi-million-dollar business and regularly accomplishes impossible things. We teamed up to tell Jon's story because even though every bit of it is true, his life feels a lot more like fiction. johnnybtruant.substack.com

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Jon Morrow and Johnny B. Truant
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The Impossible Man