This is the Alamo baby!

Reviv is where you go to make your last stand when all else has failed

The other day a new member of the Reviv community said “Nice to be part of a support community for folks who, like me, I am sure tried everything else but are now here. :)”

And I thought it was so fitting.

It reminded me of how I felt when I entered this game in 2014.

I responded with something like “This is the Alamo baby!!”

I actually teared up a little bit after.

Because it reminded me of where I was. I felt like a piece of crap back then in mid-2014.

Someone that life had eaten up and then spit out. Despite all my best efforts.

And today I want to tell this story a bit… because it reflects how I want Reviv to be viewed. Our brand ‘vibe’ so to speak. lol

Back then it is as if my whole world started shriveling up

It was 2014 and a dentist in Vietnam had basically drilled my curve of spee flat. I was in free fall.

Not only did i start to look a lot worse quite quickly, but I also couldn’t retain information. I felt like I was in a deep brain fog.

If someone said something to me it was out of my head a few minutes later. So on my job i had to type everything.

I also couldn’t concentrate. Anything complex felt impossible. And i’d get distracted after a few minutes. Then it would take me a long time to focus again.

People at work started to look at me like I was an idiot.

I was a very proud guy that was accustomed to performing well my whole life. In school, in jobs, etc But here i was…. having people more than 10 years younger than me treat me like I was incompetent.

That hurt and it hurt deep.

I also felt like a hermit. I didn’t want to see anyone. All i wanted to do was stay home and research how I could get better.

To that point I’d had a lot of friends from the various parts of the world i’d lived in. But over the next few years they all started to disappear as my world got smaller. I guess they thought that i’d gotten ‘strange’.

And each night I was sleeping poorly but then forcing myself to get up and go to work again. I needed to hold down the fort even though I didn’t know if the cavalry was coming.

Because we were in Vietnam and my wife was pregnant with our first child. Quitting my job would have meant losing our visa and having to figure out where we are going to live.

Which would in turn mean that we’d have to find a new doctor and hospital for my wife who already about 7 months into her pregnancy.

It felt like mental torture.

I decided I was not going to give in

I remember sitting on the couch one night around September 2014 after my wife went to bed and thinking… “Ken… knuckle up. You’re gonna get your sorry ass out of this thing.”

I’d pushed through the last few months and my son, Kevin, was born in July.

So now there was a bit less pressure and seeing my new son gave me fresh drive.

I told myself.. “You’re gonna stop relying on dentists and doctors to save you. Because to this point they had failed you.”

I think i’d already travelled all over Saigon to see about 5-6 different TMJ dentists. And i’d tried a variety of splints and treatments to no avail. I was still getting worse.

I was going to color outside the lines to find the answer.

And that’s when I found Starecta and read the ebook. Then I became the 2nd person outside of Italy to do it (a guy “Plato” was the first).

The early results gave me some confidence and it set me out on a journey that has now lasted a decade as I was searching for ‘the truth’ in this game.

I made my Alamo stand and it changed me

Since beginning my journey back then in 2014 I have changed as a person a lot.

I was on a mission to dig myself out of this hole and figure it out. Regardless of the sacrifice.

It changed my values, my personality, and much more.

I no longer cared what my friends thought. Nor my family for that matter.

It changed me from a guy that was pretty stylish and social to a guy that just didn’t care about any of that stuff anymore.

Everything simplified.

I focused on my immediate family…my wife and child. And I began to view us as a fighting unit. It was us against the world.

I went from surviving to taking the fight to the enemy

And all kinds of enemies (ie. the shit that life throws at you when you’re down) tried to come up over that Alamo wall during those years from 2014-2021 when I was figuring this stuff out.

But no matter how many times they stabbed and shot me. I just kept fighting.

And my child gave me the strength.

At some point I started to feel hollow. Like a soldier that had been through too many battles and seen too many of his friends die alongside him.

And as i figured it out… the fighting got easier.

I realized I was no longer fighting just to survive. I was going on the offense.

I was gonna take the fight to the very people & things that had me hit when I was down.

The game was changing.

Most of the folks doing Reviv are probably in a similar boat to the one I was in

I mean let’s face it.. this stuff is pretty unorthodox.

If someone starts Reviv they have probably done tons of stuff for many years beforehand.

They’ve had dentists promise them they knew the answer and sell them some useless splint or treatment method for thousands of dollars.

They’ve probably dabbled with DIY as I did.

Their lives and families have probably been massively impacted by this stuff.

Reviv is their Alamo. Their last resort when all of the conventional wisdom failed them.

And I love that.

We’re like a group of wounded soldiers knowing that we’re the last things standing between the shit that life throws at us and all of the things we love behind us. If we fall so do our families, our careers, our futures.

I know that fight all too well.

But this story is going to end very different from the Alamo

In the Alamo everyone died at the end. Davy Crockett, James Bowie and about 200 others.

They were overrun despite their best efforts.

That is not how this is going to play out with Reviv.

We’re gonna write our own new version of the Alamo.

One in which Davy Crockett and his raggedy band are charging out of the Alamo as Santa Anna’s men are fleeing. Picking them off as they run.

And then years later when people reflect on this ragtag band of soldiers.. they’re gonna realize something historic had happened.

Something that will lead to many millions more never having to face their own Alamo.