Slide 1

You have a medical condition that won’t go away.
How do you still live well?

Media Appearances

0
Guest Appearances

Get inspired! And get some new ideas about how to live your life well (even when you’re “sick”).

Book Dr. Payne for your show or event.

Events

We offer a schedule of 16 rotating webinar topics, built to address the real problems of better living and better care with a health condition you cannot escape. We may have diagnoses, but we can still live well!

Questions?

 In March: Book your ticket for ANY scheduled webinar. Use the coupon code ‘mar60‘ at checkout to save 60%! Book now and get started on your better life! When March is gone, so is this discount.

About Dr. Payne

Dr. Kevin J. Payne
Skydiver
Living with MS
Researcher
Entrepreneur
Dr. Kevin J. Payne

Dr. Kevin J. Payne

[ ^^^ select pictures for more ^^^ ]

Kevin is a social psychologist, entrepreneur, author, podcast host, speaker, teacher, and frequent guest interview or panelist. He shares the results of his extensive research concerning how to live a quality life with chronic distress, pain, and illness. He also shares his personal exploits as a collector of experiences — even while battling Multiple Sclerosis for decades. Life is too remarkable to sit on the sidelines, even when we’ve got to get more creative about how we get in the game!

He was born and raised in the Kansas City Metro area. He can’t have too many books, is a lifelong tech geek, devoted to his animals, pretty fond of his kids, and sometimes appears as a pirate.

He also never misses a chance to jump from a perfectly good airplane.

Skydiver

Skydiver

Kevin had a childhood dream of flight. He was serious about it, but fortunately managed to avoid major injuries from his youthfully misguided experiments with homemade parachutes. In the ’90s, he first took the Accelerated Free Fall skydiver training and logged a handful of jumps.

Then a lot of life intervened: finishing his doctorate, growing his family, building his career, supporting a wife’s decade-long battle with cancer, and years of enduring the capriciously terrifying challenges of a body plagued by Multiple Sclerosis. Eventually, he despaired of ever returning to his dream. He thought he’d given up.

But he vowed to find a way. In the summer of 2019, he threw himself into figuring out a way to make his wonky body safe and functional at terminal velocity, and to stand up a parachute landing even when he couldn’t feel his legs. With a lot of support from his sky family and lots of extra work, he managed to log more than 500 jumps (earning his coach rating) over the next year-and-a-half — 370 jumps in 2020, alone.

Now, weather permitting, you’ll find him in the sky. “Someday, I may no longer walk, but I will still fly!”

Living with MS

Living with MS

Dr. Payne has lived with multiple sclerosis for decades. He’s faced chronic pain, fatigue, trauma, and depression. He once gained and lost 120 pounds in the span of four years (and has kept it off since early 2002). He spent a decade supporting a wife on the verge of dying of cancer. He’s lived the challenges of chronic health conditions, both as diagnosed and caregiver.

Those experiences radically changed the course of his life. As a researcher, he did the only thing he knew to do: turned himself into a guinea pig and experimented relentlessly. But he wasn’t happy finding answers just for himself, so he interviewed hundreds, surveyed thousands, scraped 2.23 million data points from the open web, and re-analyzed over 8,000 studies on more than a hundred conditions to build practical solutions.

He discovered that most of our challenges aren’t directly from our medical symptoms, but from the practical, mental, emotional, and social fallout of managing a condition that will never go away. Medicine doesn’t have our solutions, or our conditions wouldn’t be chronic. We need quality of life care: grounded in science, driven by data, delivered with compassion, and personalized for everyone.

Researcher

Researcher

Kevin holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and Psychology from the University of Missouri–Columbia. He spent 15 years as a professor and headed a large program with 150 instructors serving over ten thousand annual enrollments.

In an active research career spanning three decades, he’s authored over 40 peer-reviewed academic articles and presentations. He has also designed, analyzed, managed, or consulted on over a thousand basic and applied projects. His academic specializations are in social and behavioral research methodology, and in studying why people succeed or fail under challenging conditions. His new book, Your Life Lived Well, will be published in October, 2021.

A lifelong tech geek, he first sat down in front of a computer in 1977 and was hacking into the ARPANET by the early ’80s. He has always employed computer modeling and digital technology in his research approach, effectively doing “data science” long before the field formally existed.

Entrepreneur

Entrepreneur

In 2012, Dr. Payne left the academy to become a full-time tech entrepreneur. He’s led enterprise generating millions in annual revenue and double-digit growth. He served as Founder of DART Research, Inc., Co-Founder of TeraCrunch, LLC, Chief Data Scientist of Sickweather, Inc., among others.

Through decades of consulting, he has advised dozens of enterprises. Now, his advising focuses on helping medical, therapeutic, health, and wellness organizations more effectively serve the needs of those with chronic health conditions. He remains committed to selectively advising these ventures.

His current company is his labor of love. Your Life Lived Well, LLC (formerly Chronic Cow, LLC) brings a new approach to supporting the cognitive, emotional, behavioral, social, and environmental quality of life challenges faced by those whose lives are touched by chronic illness. It delivers the education we need to live well under the strain of chronic distress, pain, and illness; the technology that analyzes us to find how each of us can successfully make — and stick with — the life changes we need; and the ongoing support to see us through the process.

 

The #1 way to stay connected to the

YOUR LIFE LIVED WELL Podcast

Join Dr. Payne as we explore living well in the face of chronic illness!

Being a ‘Sick’ Man

Your Life Lived Well
Your Life Lived Well
Being a 'Sick' Man
/

Episode 302 Men don’t do well at being “sick.” So what happens when we’re stuck with a chronic illness that won’t go away? These are

Read More »

Life with Multiple Sclerosis

Your Life Lived Well
Your Life Lived Well
Life with Multiple Sclerosis
/

Episode 301 In recognition of Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Month, I shed some light on what Multiple Sclerosis is and the surprising ways it affects our

Read More »

Words have Power

Your Life Lived Well
Your Life Lived Well
Words have Power
/

Episode 224 This episode digs into the words surrounding health, illness, and disability. We look at how words shape our thoughts, the surprising meanings of

Read More »

Leave us a review today on iTunes or your favorite podcast directory. Thanks!

Speaking

Now booking speeches, seminars and webinars!

For those living with chronic health conditions, their loved ones and caregivers, and for medical, therapeutic, health, and wellness professionals.

Blog

They say, “every picture tells a story,” and I had a clear vision of the story I wanted this book’s cover to tell. But when the idea first came to me, I didn’t know whether I could actually pull it off. A guy in free fall may seem a weird choice for the cover of...
Read More
The Battles You Never See “Be [kind], for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” Ian MacLaren (likely attribution) Recently, I’ve seen this (usually misattributed) quote making its rounds on social media. It’s a laudable sentiment. One we should all practice. It al...
Read More
High Speed Sabbatical I have a story I’d like to share with you. I’ve been under the radar for a while. Multiple Sclerosis isn’t an easy thing to live with. At least, it hasn’t been easy for me. I’m always pained, fatigued, confused, and my body is always resisting my wis...
Read More

Contact

    Get Free 100-page Preview