Life keeps on going and you have to keep going with it. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take the time to lick your wounds. In fact, this step is absolutely crucial for you to be able to carry on. This is what’s called “soul scrubbing” and we’re diving deep into this concept in this conversation with Transition Coach, Camden McGregor. Join us in a powerful conversation about “soul scrubbing” and the journey of personal growth. Discover how to heal emotional wounds and traumas, and why it’s essential to address them. Learn about the transition from being a victim to becoming a warrior, ready to help others. Find inspiration and practical wisdom on taking the time to heal and building a strong foundation for a brighter future.
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TRANSITION COACH, HIGH PERFORMANCE RUGBY COACHING
GUEST CAMDEN MCGREGOR
Hello, Mr. Camden.
Ms. TeeJay, how are you doing?
I’m good. I said I would mention and I’m going to. It took us four times to get here, but that’s okay. We are here. I got done talking to your dad, which was a very fruitful conversation. I love talking to your dad. Off the bat, can you remind everyone what your show is? I would like them to look that up.
We have been doing this for a few years now. We are coming up on Episode 300. It’s the Cam and Otis Show. Check that out on YouTube and all the podcast apps, but YouTube is the best box. You can see the pretty faces.
He has a beautiful smile, people, so tune in. You will love it.
Thank you.
Mr. Camden and I were talking, and I liked what you put down when I asked you what soul hygiene means. I always use the word soul scrubbing because that’s what I feel is the best word for someone who’s going through a healing process. After all, you have to get in there. You got to get that draws broken up and soul scrub. I liked what you put, but what does that mean to you? Can you expound on that for everyone?
When you ask me what soul hygiene means to me, immediately what comes to mind is this analogy I heard about dealing with pain, trauma, and lots of those different things. What happens is we like to bandage it up. I have said I’m a military brat. I played rugby. I have got the tough guy stuff. People like to just bandage it up and leave it there. The problem with that is that you never take the time to clean it. My balance between the woo-woo, take care of yourself philosophy and the tough guy philosophy is that you do need to bandage it up because you have got to keep going.
At the end of the day, we do have to keep moving forward, but you need to take the time to take off that bandage and scrub the heck out of it. Get all that crud out of there. Clean that wound, get it out, and bandage it back up, then keep moving. When you do that, you slowly clean it, but you can keep moving forward at the same time.
That’s a big piece of still having that ability to move forward without completely ignoring the problem. If you have ever had a nasty gash on your arm if you ignore it. It doesn’t get better. It gets infected in those things. You have got to take the time to scrub those wounds, those mental wounds, and at the same time, still bandage it back up. Keep moving forward. I always think of my rugby days. Rugby is a lot like soccer, it doesn’t stop. When you get hurt during your rugby game, you need to keep moving. I always take that philosophy in life, that life is going to keep moving. Time is going to keep moving. It’s not stopping for me or anyone else, so you might as well keep moving with it.Life keeps on moving. It’s not stopping for you or anyone else, so you might as well keep moving with.Share on X
That is the best definition of those words. When I read it, I was like, “I have to have him expound on that,” because when you say that, it reminds me of when I started my healing process, where I had to go back to those things that had traumatized me and looked at them. Let’s dig deep and go back, but then you can’t get through every single day.
You can’t go through all that trauma in one day, so then you have to bandage it back up, as you said, move forward, and the next day, let’s try again. I feel like, after years of doing that, you get to the point like where I am at, where I always say, “I’m on the other side of healing.” You go from victim to survivor to warrior champion.
That’s where I feel like when you can soul scrub and get that draws out of there, broken up, and get it removed. You become a warrior. Not just a survivor. You can help other people. I love that definition. You are the first person who I have told that to who has put it into an exact definition of what it needs to be.
The one thing I’d add is even for smaller things. If you have something traumatic in your life, it’s going to take a lot of scrubbing, but those smaller things. If you ignore that, they get bigger. Thinking back to my Rugby days when I hurt my ankle. If you spray in your ankle and you keep playing. You never take time. That ankle degrades. It just completely falls apart, and you are going to wind up being surgery at some point. There’s not much surgery for mental health stuff out there, at least that I know of, but it’s the same thing. If you have something little and you leave it there, it’s going to get worse.
That is so true. I’m so glad you said that because if you think about our daily lives, someone could say a crossword to us, and it can dig deep into our souls. Hurt our feelings, and if we let that fester. It becomes bigger, and then we become angry at somebody else who didn’t even hurt us. That fits very well into our everyday lives, and that’s how I tell people. Soul hygiene is every single thing we do. Every single decision, choice, and direction that we make every day comes from within. We have to make sure that we are bandaged and ready to go. We are ready to deal with it when that bandage comes off. I’m glad that you added that. Thank you. I know that you had a story that fits with soul hygiene, like a thing that you went through to get you through a hard time.Every single decision that we make every day comes from within.Share on X
I have trouble ascribing it as the darkest moment in my life. That makes it fantastical, and I don’t think it’s necessarily that. I was playing rugby at the University of Arizona, and I had a weightlifting accident. The sport that I love that I was going to go pro in, my whole life was taken away from me, as what probably happens to a lot of college kids when something like that happens. I was drinking and partying, and I never took the time to address what was going on and address my real feelings about it.
I got into entrepreneurship. I like to talk about this with my coaching program. You can’t necessarily replace an identity with something else. I was not a Rugby player. I was like, “I’m an entrepreneur,” then my first business venture failed. Now, that is taking away from me as well. What I came to the realization there around the identity is you want to identify with your purpose. Identify the progress you are making toward those goals and making that impact.
What got me back to that point was the soul-scrubbing of going back to those wounds because it was still eating away at me. We talked about the analogy of the wound as it comes back up. It would rear its head in terrible ways. I can think of many times I got angry at people or thought people were looking down on me even though they were my friends or my family. It was because I had such a negative image of myself that I let it fester for so long.
It goes back to, as you were saying, taking the time to go back to those wounds and addressing that. Go back to the ankle analogy if you can still run. Your ankles might still be hurt. As you can keep moving doesn’t mean you necessarily need to keep moving all the time. You want to move forward. Life has to move forward like we said earlier, but you have to go back and scrub those wounds.
That was it for me. At some point, you are going to have to address it because it sends your life into a spiral, and you wind up in jail, or you could be proactive with it and go back to those things and scrub those wounds. That’s what I like to preach with that. I can’t say I did it perfectly. As I said, I have replaced it. I replaced one addiction to rugby with an addiction to entrepreneurship and dove all in on it. That’s not a healthy way to do it. You have to go back and address where those problems or where those feelings are coming from. Get to the root of the problem, and when you do that, then you could start to heal and move forward to become that warrior like you were talking about.
What I find so interesting, though, is that you have used what happened to you. You took care of it, soul-scrubbed it, and you let it go, and now you are the person you are. You can use that for other people. You are a leadership coach as well. I would assume you use that analogy sometimes in your leadership coaching. It’s amazing that you can use that now for other people.
We were talking in the green room, as I always like to say on the show beforehand about that. When you reach that point where you can go help other people. I heard this. I think it was a Buddhist phrase. I’m not sure. I paraphrase a lot of famous quotes a lot of time, but if you like to paraphrase famous quotes, come check out the Cam and Otis Show.
When you find your path in life, there are one million different ways of that mountain in life. When you find your path, the best thing you can do is try to show other people that path. That’s something for me. Rugby is one aspect of it, but it’s also the coaching side. I coach rugby, but the leadership coaching and coaching at college athletes for me is another way of looking to give back. The other thing I like is that I wouldn’t even necessarily say I’m through that healing process. My back still hurts all the time, and when it hurts, I get upset.
I’m watching a pro rugby game, and I think, “That could have been me.” Those things can be upsetting. That’s never going to go away. Isn’t it amazing when you work an analogy all the way through, and it keeps working? If you have that nasty wound and you keep scrubbing. They are still the scar, even after it’s all the way “healed.” It’s still there, and it’s still going to remind you of that. That’s a big piece there.
Giving back, I thought this at rugby, and I have tried to apply it to my leadership coaching and coaching with college athletes. I have also done the transition coaching. Make a replacement factor of, “I don’t need to go solve all the world’s problems. I don’t need to go cure everything.” If I can get one person that I can help and replace me, then that’s the goal.
I got so much out of rugby, even though I didn’t get the career I wanted out of it now. I could say maybe a better career in coaching, but I always look at it as when I have a little kid out there. I want them to get what I got up. When you have that approach to helping people of the one person. When you do that, before you know it, you helped 10 or 20 kids. When you focus on one, it makes the problem very solvable. Whereas what a lot of people do is they get to that point where it’s like, “I’m curing Cancer and solving every problem in the world.”
They try to solve everything, and when you do that, you don’t usually solve one thing. When you focus on one thing, you can solve it and go to the next thing. That’s the big thing when you start talking about giving back and helping others. Focus on one, then get to the next one. Before you know it, you have helped a lot of people.When you focus on one thing, you can solve it and then go to the next thing.Share on X
I never thought about it, but you are completely correct. That’s why I call it being a warrior because we have those scars. We have those things that we went through. We were a victim. We were a survivor. The warrior part comes when you can take those scars. You can talk about them without being completely triggered and be able to help somebody else by talking about your scars. I would assume that when you think about it now, seeing those TV shows or those news things about rugby. You do get a little upset, but look where you are now. Do you wish you were back there? Probably not.
I have to say I do wish I could still play Rugby. It is the most fun I have ever had, but to your point, when you start to change that perspective, then you start to look at things differently. Would I love to be out there? Yes, but I can’t go play. I’m one person. I get to build all these people. I have 74 young men that I coach at the University of Arizona. I get to get all of them up instead of just me. You make me think talking about Rugby in the World Cups coming to the US in a handful of years. I could have played in that World Cup. It would have been amazing, but now I can coach kids. I can have 5 kids in that World Cup or 6 kids. It changes your perspective when you start looking at it like that.
The whole purpose of sole hygiene is to change our mindsets and our perspectives of what we thought we needed to what we needed to be to pursue our purpose. As I always say, I want to nourish souls. Every decision we make comes from within. We can’t make good decisions if we are hurting and always reliving the trauma and not healing. I love everything you said because you bring that soul-scrubbing to the forefront. It is the exact definition that people need to hear about what sole hygiene truly can do for them. That’s amazing. Was there anything else you’d like to add?
To hammer that home, it’s about taking the time. It is a process. You mentioned that it’s as if you are scrubbing the wound all in one day. You can’t do that. You might be able to do it faster than others. Everyone is different. Every wound is different. The key is you have to keep moving forward also. As I said, this is the marriage of the tough guy and the woo-woo. We got to have both at the same time.
All the tough guys will tell you have to keep moving forward, guys like my dad, is because they have to. They are in combat. They are in those situations where you do have to keep moving forward, and that’s the reality of life. Life is going to keep moving no matter what, but you have to take that time and scrub those wounds. Otherwise, they are going to fester and get worse. You are going to pull other people down with you, but if you scrub the wound. You can turn that around to a positive instead of pulling other people down. You can build other people back up.
I’d love to end on that note, but I want to add a thought.
Go ahead. That was darn close to a T-shirt.
That was. To add to your point, it’s taken me years to get here. I’m always going to carry those scars and those mental things that pop into your brain that tell you, “You are not good enough.” Going through the healing process, you learn how to be strong and not let those triggers affect you, but as you said, everybody is different.
Some people may take them ten years. Some people maybe like in one year, “I’m good. Let’s go.” That’s like my personality. I like to get stuff done and move forward. I don’t stay in one place and like the green room like we were discussing. I’m the type of person that, “If I’m capable, we are going on. We are moving forward.” This has been so much fun. Mr. Camden and I took quite a few tries to get to where we are. A few glitches and a few near-close life calls.Get stuff done and move forward.Share on X
The conversation was better because of it.
I feel like everything happens for a reason. This was amazing, and I cannot wait. I did tell you I want to have you and your dad on at the same time. It would be amazing to have you both on and enjoy that time. Being a leadership coach, do you put your information out there for people, or is your leadership coaching only for Rugby players?
I work in a couple of different facets. That’s why people ask me what I do. I could say coach because it’s simple, right, but I do coaching. I do developmental rugby coaching with little kids with a local nonprofit. I will give them a shout-out, the Engage Foundation. It’s all free stuff. I’m teaching life lessons to kids. I coached with the UA for Rugby. I have a coaching program with Tribe and Purpose, which I run with my dad.
With that, it’s the program called Next is Best. What it is, it’s a transition coaching program to help college athletes, whether it was an injury like it was for me or if they graduate. It helps them to deal with that loss of identity that comes from closing that chapter of their life, then helps to build a stronger foundation that they can move forward. This is the cheesy part, but make that next chapter of your life the best one yet because when I look back on my journey. I tried to keep moving without the foundation, and when that happens, you are going to keep tripping and falling. You are never going to make that progress.
I want to go help as many college athletes as I can to deal with that loss of identity and build that foundation so they can find more success in their lives and make an impact. To answer the original question there, the best way to get in touch with me is to watch the Cam and Otis Show. Find out about Next is Best. If you are a college athlete who’s interested in the program, go to FindYourPurpose.coach.
On there, we have a bunch of different free resources, from the Cam and Otis Show to some other different tools I have put together to help people out. You can also learn more about my program, Next is Best, and learn about our other flagship program, the Green Beret Leadership Program. There are a lot of great resources on there.
I love it and I hope people will go there. I feel like you and your dad have so much to give. You are not just touching one person. You are touching many people. When I first talked to Mr. Otis, he helped me through a lot of things. I am grateful to Mr. Otis, but I can’t wait to have you folks on. I’m so excited that we finally got this done.
I was going to add on that talk about my dad. That is one of my biggest inspirations around working with him with Tribe and Purpose. I got all of that leadership advice. I got all those life lessons. If they just end with me, that’s not very good. We want to spread these out and help as many people as we can.
You are a great father-son duo, I always say that. I do listen to your show every once in a while when I get the chance. Thank you so much for finally having this conversation with me.
Thank you so much for having me.
My pleasure. We will have to schedule a time for you and your dad to come on.
That will be perfect.
Thank you so much. We will talk soon.
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About Camden McGregor
Camden’s passion is to help people succeed. He fulfills this passion as a Leadership and Success Coach with Tribe and Purpose. Camden has years of coaching experience in rugby where he has worked extensively with high performing teams as well as skill development teams. Leading these teams during intense situations has taught Camden to remain calm and provide the certainty and consistency that teams need to perform at a high level. Camden applies this background of teamwork and leadership to the business world in order to help teams become collaborative and perform at higher levels. With several entrepreneurial ventures under his belt, Camden understands the struggles that entrepreneurs face and the psychological situations that unfold internally during these struggles. Between coaching rugby, studying agricultural business, and having a passion for behavioral economics Camden is adept at combining different schools of thought. He believes that the best answers can only be found by learning different perspectives. His diverse experience helps him to find creative solutions, helping clients to create lasting change for themselves and their companies.
