Watching award-winning professional speaker, musician, and two-time war veteran Ryan Stream talk about overcoming adversity, leadership, and taking care of your mental health with hundreds of captivated teenagers, it’s hard to believe this is the same person who stole food from a homeless shelter’s kitchen when he was only five years old. Ryan has such energy onstage and is so relentlessly positive that you could be forgiven for doubting that he had ever experienced such a tough start in life. However, that rough beginning is one reason why Ryan has become a motivational speaker who is in-demand in America and around the globe: he has been to the bottom of the world, where poverty, drug addiction, and prison awaited him, and has pulled himself out of it. Now he is bringing his message of the hope and redemption that come from positive thinking to children, teens, and adults, and it’s resonating with thousands of people.
Ryan says that if you had seen him when he was younger, you never would have thought he would be where he is today. “I was born in Los Angeles in the ghetto,” he states, thinking back. “It was a very rough neighborhood, and my parents made really bad choices. As you can imagine, our lives were very unstable, and there was a lot of violence in the streets that no kid should ever see. We ended up moving to Colorado and then Utah, but we had nowhere to live. I remember napping under a bridge and living in a shack-like shed behind a relative’s home at one point. This was a lot for a young boy like me to handle, and it was already giving me the mindset that life was not going to allow me to dream of anything better. School is often a place of refuge for kids who are having problems at home, but it wasn’t for me. I found out in high school that I had a learning disability, and it was already showing up in elementary school. Spelling competitions? Forget them – I was always the first person out. I made a joke out of it to give myself some cover, and people laughed. Really, though, I just honestly didn’t know how to spell.”
His parents continued to struggle in their lives. When Ryan’s father was arrested for drugs and his mother passed away from suicide, his family was ripped apart. He and his siblings would end up in foster care. “The system is tough,” Ryan confides. “My foster parents tried to help, but the reality was that I was suffering from being separated from my siblings. I struggled a lot and had anxiety, depression, behavioral issues, and academic problems. As you can guess, I was the kid who didn’t have a lot of good friends at school.”
Many children stay in the foster care system for years, but Ryan was fortunate: he was adopted by a police officer and a school teacher. “That was awesome for me,” Ryan relates. “What was even more incredible was that they adopted my three brothers, too, and we were reunited to become a loving, very close family of thirteen members.”
Even so, Ryan would continue to battle his inner demons and academics. Once he graduated from high school, he fell into drugs and alcohol. “It was one wrong choice after another that just snowballed into multiple arrests and jail time,” he sighs. “The court fines were through the roof – $25,000+ at one point, and I definitely didn’t have that kind of money on me. I also had nowhere to stay and ended up couch-surfing or living in my car.”
The turning point came when he joined the military, though he would still face enormous challenges. Ryan was deployed twice to Afghanistan and entered the harrowing world of war and combat. “I went out with a sapper unit and our mission was to locate and destroy I.E.D.s,” he relates. He was deployed with a round of 32 soldiers in his platoon. “I won’t ever forget the sound and the force of the explosions when the I.E.D.s went off. Around 23 of my buddies in my platoon had their vehicle hit with an I.E.D. Sadly, one was killed in my unit.”
Ryan pauses a moment before continuing. “There is no way to describe what war is like. You see the best and the worst in humanity and in yourself. When I came home, I couldn’t forget any of it. I struggled with PTSD and almost lost my family. I finally fell to my knees and made the choice to change what was going on in my mind so that I wouldn’t lose my wife or children.”
Once Ryan decided to change the trajectory of his life by changing his thoughts, his life took off. In the first year, he read 54 books to educate himself and broaden his understanding of the world, people, and himself. He also discovered that he had a passion for bringing a message of positive thinking to others. “I had a horrible childhood, and my start to adulthood wasn’t all that much better,” Ryan says. “I learned, though, that the future was still ahead of me. I could accomplish anything I wanted to if I was willing to change the quality of my thoughts. That’s what I did. I went from $0 to six figures in that year, and I’m talking to anyone who wants to improve their life just like I did.”
Ryan has multiple sources of income and finds joy in helping others stand up with purpose and focus to obtain the same rewards. He is developing his career as a multitalented motivational speaker, model, actor, pianist, and musician who performs in front of packed crowds. He travels the world, talking about how to overcome adversity, have a healthier mentality, and stay positive with adults at real estate conferences in Mexico, inside prisons, and at universities and with youth at high school assemblies, elementary schools, and concerts. He has been featured in dozens of magazines including Valor magazine, Entrepreneur, Yahoo!, Influencive, Marketwatch, and been honored with multiple awards for music and speaking. He had already released a third album called Front Pages and was awarded Best Video of the Year and People’s Choice at the LDS Film Festival.
At his shows, Ryan frequently uses music to connect with his audience and is known for his ability to play almost any genre. His lyrics talk about suicide, drug addiction, his desire to be a hero as he grew up, and the importance of never forgetting about how to dream. He amazes his audience with his talent for playing the piano blindfolded and also upside down. It hasn’t always gone smoothly, however. “The first time I got on stage, I completely forgot the music because I have memory problems,” he says. “People laughed and said I wouldn’t make it, but guess what? I didn’t listen to them, and here I am today.”
That story perfectly embodies Ryan’s firmest belief: we must all believe in ourselves because no one else will. “As we grow up, we forget to believe in ourselves. If you don’t believe in yourself, you better start playing make believe. You can’t let yourself get complacent or be okay with living a normal life. Instead, you have to remember to dream and envision. That’s when you’ll dig into the law of attraction and see your life change in remarkable ways.”
To book Ryan, go to RyanStream.com and find any other information on him or watch his videos, type his name in the google search.
