Meet Mark Raines

We were lucky to catch up with Mark Raines recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Mark, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
My resilience comes from my parents. They both displayed the ability to persevere regardless of circumstances their entire lives. I saw this most clearly during my dad’s six-week hospitalization due to complications from heart surgery that eventually took his life in 2019 and my mom’s nearly seven-year ovarian cancer battle before she died from the disease in 2020. They taught me my whole life to give 100% and never give up.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
Born in Monterey, California, my father’s Navy career took me throughout the United States, always living near the ocean, including a tour in Honolulu, HI. I eventually majored in Telecommunication at the University of Florida, then entered into a nearly ten-year career as a local television reporter and anchor in Florida, Missouri, and Alabama. While working in television news, I began volunteering in youth ministry. My passion for working with teenagers led me to a now 23-year career as a television and film production teacher, leading programs in four schools and two states. I recently became a resource teacher, helping teachers and administrators throughout my school. In 2011, I developed an adult on-set speech impediment after an extended period of illness. I continued to teach while I fought to regain speech fluency, through countless specialists and five months of speech therapy. After almost a year, an answer came through Parkinson’s medication. The speech problem is still there today — it’s just controlled by the drug, which causes drowsiness and fatigue. Throughout my health struggles, I turned to faith, family, friends, and fitness to fight back. I began sharing my story, including how fitness helped transform my body, mind, and spirit, on Instagram in November 2014 under the username @california_thor.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
1. Asking for help is a sign of strength not weakness. That mindset also served me well as I navigated helping to care for my mom during her cancer battle and when my father was fighting for his life in the hospital. I could not have handled these difficulties without the help of my friends, family, and co-workers. 2. Vulnerability and sharing your struggles with others can be helpful for you and them. Blogging about my health struggles when it was too hard to speak about them was a big eye-opener for me, and it led to me giving two TEDx talks and sharing my life more vulnerably on social media.
3. The Christian faith that my parents introduced to me as a child continues to be the source of strength, hope, and joy.

Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?
A book I read that led to my decision to throw myself into fitness and working out more than ever before was You Gotta Keep Dancin’ by Tim Hansel. It is a powerful account of how Hansel handled physical and emotional suffering for over 20 years, as he lived in continual pain as a result of a climbing mishap. In the book, he says:

“…exercise, especially of the large muscle groups produce chemicals that fight depression and low spirits. Believe it or not, exercise may be one of the most important things that we can do in the midst of pain or sorrow or grief.”

Since then, I have worked out almost every day at the gym or elsewhere, and I am in the best shape of my life. The workouts with weight training also help me push through the drowsiness of the Parkinson’s drugs, and it feels good to physically do something to fight back. Some days it literally helps get me out of bed and out into the world.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Gym Photo: Kev Freeman Beach Photo: Sarah Castro-Correa All Others: Mark Raines

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