Welcome to the Excel Stillmore podcast. I am your host, Chris Emerson. I'm here to encourage you in your walk with God. Thank you for joining in.

Today's podcast is sponsored by Cunningham Financial Group. John Cunningham is a friend of mine and a brother in Christ, and he can help you with financial

decisions and future planning.

He's been a big help to me and my family, and I commend him to you.

You can reach him at 205-913-1720.

I am so thankful you're here, so let's get started.

Hey, welcome back and thanks for listening. I'm glad you're here today. I hope you're doing well. I am doing pretty well. I think my voice is affected by a little bit of a cold. I had intended to record new intros and outroes today for Cunningham Financial Group, but at least to my ear, it sounds like I have a balloon in my throat, so I'm not going to do that today, but I do want to give the episode a go. And let me start with this. I love great titles. I don't often come up with great titles, but when I run across them or hear them, I write them down somewhere and make sure

to share them with you as soon as I can. And for me, hugging the cactus fits perfectly on that list.

Whatever it means, and we'll certainly explore that today, you can feel yourself doing it when you say it.

And kind of like, eat that frog, I hope it becomes a familiar term to you to trigger the kind of behavior that will help you solve some of your deepest and most long-term problems.

And maybe that's a common thread that made me think of Eat That Frog. Both of those

phrases are about dealing with issues in your life. And while Eat That Frog is just something you do

early every day to knock a little thing out, hugging the cactus may be a little bit more

intense and intensive. But I guarantee you that it beats that easy road outcome of

avoiding it or ignoring it, which usually just makes things worse. Okay, let me give you some

setting for this and tell you exactly where I first heard the statement. At an award ceremony in

2011, Robert Downey Jr. was giving an acceptance speech. Now, when I say his name,

you may think of Iron Man, and he was famous for that character by then, the first movie was released,

I think, in 2008. And of course, he's an enormous Hollywood star now. Everybody loves him and wants

him to work for them. But Robert Downey Jr. went through a very dark

period in his life in the late 1990s and into the early 2000s. He was considered unhireable by all of

Hollywood. He was heavily steeped in hard drug usage and alcohol abuse. Something changed along the way,

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