Michael Unbroken on How to Overcome Childhood Trauma

We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they fee need their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on

this episode is Michael Unbroken. He's the host of the Think Unbroken podcast and he's also an entrepreneur, bestselling author, speaker, coach, and advocate for survivors of child abuse. Today, Michael and Eric discuss his book Think Unbroken, Understanding and Overcoming Childhood Trauma. Hi Michael, Welcome to the show. Eric. It is my pleasure, my friend. I'm very excited to be here with you. Man. Yeah,

I'm excited to talk with you. We're going to talk about your book Think Unbroken, Understanding and Overcoming Childhood Trauma. But before we get to that, we'll start like we always do, with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent talking with a grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always

at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at the grandparents says, well, which one wins? And the grandparents says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what does that parable mean to you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah, I mean, it's

it's so spot on. I believe that inherently we all have the ability to create the life that we want to have, and I have found over the course of my life that there is a truth to the reality that it takes as much effort and energy to destroy your life as it does to build your life. And in that, I mean, it's so much about which wolf

are you feeding? And for many of us we don't know which one to feed because we don't have clarity, or worse, like in my case, you're set up for failure, and so you find yourself in this position of just being like, is this who I am? Is this what I'm supposed to be doing? And you kind of get lost in that. I know, when you can get to this place in your life where you make declarations about who you are, you'll find that you are choosing which

wolf that you feed. I love that, and I want to go into some of what you just hit on there, which is the not knowing and how childhood neglect and trauma often you say it screws up our GPS. So I definitely want to hit that. But before we do, let's give listeners a little background. The book starts. I don't know if this is the first line or if it's in the early part, but it says it was November of two thousand thirteen that I decided to change

everything that was happening in my life. I was a hundred and fifty pounds overweight, cheating on my girlfriends, sick with a bacterial infection from drinking too much, smoking almost two packs of cigarettes a day, and getting high from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep. So what was it about that day that caused you to decide to make a change. Well, I

was just tired of my own ship. Man. You know, I think that the truth about this experiences at some point you have to recognize that your life is bad because of your choices. And that's where I was. I had been set up for failure. I mean, I come from an incredibly traumatic background, and I'd let everyone else always dictate who I am. You know, you're not good enough, you're not strong enough, you're not capable enough. And I started to believe it, and then I started to act

like it, and then that became my reality. And you know, to be sitting three fifty pounds smoking two packs a day, my life as a disaster. But I'm doing really well in business. Like that's stupid, Like what is that? That makes no sense to me? There was so many just last straws, so many did. I quit smoking five thousand times, you know what I mean? I quit being a monster

five thousand times. But it was like I just kept going back to it, back to it, back to it, because I realized like I was just still that hurt, lost little boy from all the experiences of my past. And as I was really starting to step further and deeper into this journey, it was on the back side of me putting a gun in my mouth. I was so miserable with my life and I'm just like, this is not who I am, this is not what I want.

Why does this keep happening to me? And I realized that it was happening to me because I was allowing it to happen to me. I realized that my life fell upside down because I had let all of the people ingrain and in bed and groom me into believing that I'm supposed to be a loser and Eric I was a loser because I let them tell me that I was. And I was so terrified that I could

be me. And and the thing about this is so many people experienced this where it's like you're sitting here, You're looking at your life, You're like, why does this keep happening, right, and like you're like, you can continue to be the victim, which I did really well. Man, it was your fault, my parents fault, community's fault, school's fault, Obama's fault. Like, dude, it was everybody's fault except mine, and we're not culpable for the bad things that happened

to those children. Like, let's be very clear, like I have scars, cuts, burns, my mother cut my finger off when I was four years old, Like, that's not on me. And the thing that I realized in that moment as I was like reconciling all these experiences was very simple, I'm no longer a child. And that to me hit me like a brick to the face because it meant that I had to start taking accountability for the direction

I wanted to go in my future. And what you're talking about is a really difficult and conversation to have, and it needs a certain degree of nuance because what you're saying very unequivocally, it is not my fault for the damage that was done to me. It is not my fault for the patterns that may have kicked off, but it is my responsibility at this point to change it. I'm the only one. You make that point often in

the book, like nobody is coming to save you. Yeah, there's no Disney moment like whatever it is that you think is about to happen where somebody's gonna ride in on on the white horse, like that ain't going down. It just isn't. And and I wish it was, man like, honestly, I swear to God, like I wish that life was so much easier for people. I wish that the suffering

would go away. I wish that you know that thing that you needed when you're where a kid was given to you, because then you wouldn't have to be listening to this right now, and I would be obsolete and I would be doing literally anything else with my life. But that's not the cards that were dealt. That's not what we were given. That's not the reality of the world. And so you have to be willing to understand that everything that you do from this point forward is on you.

And that's a hard pill to swallow because that means you have to take responsibility, radical radical responsibility for who you are. You have to own your mistakes, but also you have to own your amazing accomplishment some victories. You have to take your flowers, you know. And and that's one of the things I think people struggle with so much, is because we're always told to be small, be quiet, you walk on the right side of the hall, raise your hand to go to the bathroom. And I'm like,

that's nonsense. Be big, be loud, be you own your space. Don't apologize for being you ever. And and that's one of the things I think that comes along with this hilling journey as confidence and and ultimately, the only way you're gonna build confidences, you're gonna have to repeatedly do incredibly difficult things ad nauseum, and eventually, on a long enough timeline, you'll look at your life and it will

be different. I don't want to spend a lot of time on it here, but let's spend I don't know, one minute on your trauma background. I mean, you mentioned some of it. Your mom cut off your finger. We could stop right there and that would be sufficient. But there's more to it than that. Kind of gave us a quick run through of it, just so listeners have a sense of kind of where you're coming from. Yeah, man, so mom was a drug addict alcoholic cut my finger

off when I was four. My stepfather super abusive, the kind of guy you praised. Never your stepfather put me in the hospital multiple times, never met my real father. I was like, oh, he must be out save in the world now. That fool just did not come, you know. And I was homeless as a kid. I lived with thirty different families between like eight to twelve years old, getting bounced around place to place to place. My grandmother adopted me when I was twelve, and I'm bi racial,

black and white. And my Grandmo's an old racist white lady from a town in Tennessee you never heard of, and so insert identity crisis. I got high for the first time when I was twelve, drunk at thirteen, expelled from school at fifteen, must have been in a hundred fights. Still a hundred cars, got shot at by the cops. Watch my three childhood best friends get murdered. I mean, we can keep going. Yeah, we got sexual abuse in there. Let's not forget that. Well, there's that. There was a

religious abuse growing up in the Mormon Church. There was dude, there's this thing called the ace serve a a study and it's a great marker for long term health ramifications. And you know I answered yes to all ten of those questions, Like, look, it's not a competition. I want to be very clear about this. I have the worst childhood of anyone I've ever met, and I've met some people had some dark shit happened to them, but it's like, you know what, That's what I was dealt. Man, those

were the cards, and I can't change it. I can't change the abuse, the homelessness, the evictions, the sexual abuse, the religious abuse. I can't change any of it. Right, it all shapes and forms who you are. And let me assure you man, I had to spend a lot of money and a lot of hours to be able to even be functional to where I am now. And I look at my life and I go, but I'm still not even close to where I'm going. And I think that's the thing I decided. I made a decision.

I'm not gonna be a damn victim anymore. And you've got to be willing to rise. You know, I wrote in the verse book, I said, you know, my life was like standing inside of a house that I had set on fire and was holding the matches. That's what it felt like. Man. I was like, damn, I'm burning everything down all the time, relationships, friendships, community, money. I mean, I was making six figures with a fortune ten company with no high school diploma or college education, and I'm

in debt like forty rand. It's the chaos. I'm ruining every relationship. I'm ruining my body. The thing I hate more than anything that people who are traumatic experiences say is that I thrive in chaos. You shouldn't have to, Like, that's crazy to me, man, And so I had to discover through discomfort that on the other side of chaos is calm and be willing to thrive in that. And

that's been the journey. So you just a minute ago said I made a decision, right, And I'm curious about that because we make decisions, and then if there's trauma in our background or mental illness and background, we're not one person inside, right, you know, there's all these different parts of us running around. So Michael makes a decision, but the next day there's loud screaming voices going no, dude, like do this, do that? How do you make a

decision like that? The acts as an anchor point that you keep coming back to again and again. Yeah. Look, you know that's such a great point, man. I remember making that declaration after looking in the mirror and being like, I'm going to change my life. I wish I would have wrote this in that book, and when I revised it, because I'm going to I'm going to actually add this. The next three years were so incredibly difficult, dude. It

was like one step forward, eight million steps back. I would be like, oh, man, I finally did something right today, and then I'd go burn it down. I finally went to the gym today, and then I smoked a cigarette. Like it was just three years of constant and like pushing, like crawling, like like I think about being in a pit, and like you're crawling up this wall and you make it to the top, you put your hand on there, and then you fall back down. You gotta do it

over and over again. And what happened was I just I looked at my life, dude, and the real truth of this. And I didn't write about this in the book either. It's actually been kind of a weird thing that I've been sharing recently. I used to call myself a terrorist. I used to go in the mirror and look at myself and call myself a terrorist because Eric,

I don't negotiate with terrorists. And what happened was it started to be this mind game I played with myself to force myself into the discomfort because you asked, how do you like make that north Star? And I looked at my life and I said, I've let myself down in the same way that everyone else has always let me down. And I was just so tired of it. Man, I just set up no more, go do it anyway, deal with it. Suffer, right, And I hate to use this word, but I don't have another word to use.

I believe that you have to some extent suffer through creating your life, because rehashing the past is suffering. Going to the gym and losing a hundred fifty pounds of suffering, writing books is suffering. Like there's different levels of it, right, And because I was so clear of not negotiating with myself as a no excuses, just results, right, it's a huge part of this book. It's a huge part of

the narrative. And the book's not even necessarily about me, right, there's parable in it, right in my stories, but like the reality is it's about tools, and the tool that I believe as the greatest tool in the human experiences the mindset that you take into everything that you must face. Then when I adapted this truth, no excuses, just results,

like man, I meant it. I meant it because I knew that if I didn't force myself literally force myself into what's next, I would never be here talking to you. And that forcing that process is about understanding what you're capable of doing. Because one of the things that I do believe people do not understand about trauma. Dude, it's not the finger, right, It's not that, it's not the cuts, it's not the burns, it's not even the sexual abuse. It's none of that stuff that I carried that I

had to fight through. It was the theft of my identity, right, Because think about this, what is the service of the brain? Survival? That's it. It does not care about anything else. It does not care about your goals, doesn't care about your dreams, doesn't care about the color of your shirt. It cares

about you surviving. And so we understand that the brain is so adaptable and malleable that when you were in these traumatic experiences, when you're going through this, your brain goes, wait a second, hold on, If I'm me, that means I suffer, I get hurt, I get beat, I get locked in a closet, I get my head slammed into a wall. Well, I don't want to be me anymore. And so you learn how to turn off. It's an adaptability, it's a survival skill. It's an autonomic response to the

stimulus of the environment. And so the worst part about this is it serves you for a period. So when you're eight, twelve, seventeen, it keeps you safe, like that's what's so crazy about it. And then you're thirty seven,

fifty two years old. You don't know how to say yes, you don't know how to say no. You've never been yourself before, and so now you're in this crazy juxtaposition of trying to reconcile the past and look at the impact of the truth that we are the sum total of all of our experiences leading to this moment, while simultaneously balancing this nuanced idea and understanding that maybe you can be you, but you've never been you before, You've never been allowed to be you before, and the only

way that you're going to discover how to be you is by choosing that north star, doing incredibly difficult things and just trying to figure out if it's true that your hypothesis, that this idea about what I think it is that I want is actually correct. Yeah, there's about fifty different ways we could go. I'm going to back up a little bit though, to your talking about those three years and how it was like one step forward, eight steps back, because I think this is a really

important point. People often ask me when I'm being interviewed, tell me about how you got sober, right, and I'll pick up the story of when I got sober that time, like while I went into this treatment center. And but what it's missing is everything that happened before that, all the half starts that I tried. It would be a

long ass story, right. We don't have enough time on the podcast for me to talk about all the different ways that I tried to get sober before it actually worked, right, And so so many of these stories of quote unquote redemption that people here You're wars or Mine or anybody, lots of people have them. They're not that special, but they're these tidy little narratives that miss just how brutally

difficult this process can be. And I think it's critical to talk about because people who are in the middle of them, who are in the middle of their story right now, are going this is brutally awful and I must be doing something wrong, and I'm like, no, you're not, You're not. This is hard, dude. I'm a decade in and I'm still in the middle of this, right, yeah,

you know what I mean. It's it's kind of like always being in recovery, like you're always like I'm just trying day in, day out, but like I had been going to therapy, like I've been going to therapy for years. I've been going therapy since I was seven years old. But I learned how to not tell the truth to therapist because I thought it was safe, and then they go tell my parents what I said, and so you

learn to turn that. I'm like, all right, cool, I'm just gonna go pay this full hundreds of dollars a week and I'm gonna lie to him for what It's so funny. It reminds me of I was always stealing for the time I was you know, I was just a kleptomaniac from early on, and I remember getting arrested one time and being sent to therapy, and I remember the therapist coming out and telling my parents like he seems like a really well adjusted young man. I can

only imagine the snow job I gave that woman. I can't fully remember, but I surely didn't open the doors to my inner chaos. I became a masterful liar, man, I will argue today this is why, like I think values are so important, My number one value is honesty. Because I became a masterful liar. I watched my mother and my stepfather manipulate everything and everyone. Anyway, that's another tangent, because I want to ask you a question because I

know how important it is. I would be in these situations that I said I'd never put myself in again, the random hookups on the internet, drunk in the bar at eleven o'clock at night on a Tuesday. There I am again at the damn gas station buying a back of cigarettes. Yeah, man, I said I wasn't gonna do this anymore. This is the thing that I think is so important that I hope people will take away, is that I noticed that the more work I did, the

more effort I put in. The more therapy, the moral personal development, the more they weren't really called podcast then, but the more of those I would consume, the further distance and time between those actions. And that's the thing that I think people need to hold on too, if you're in the middle of this, because if you haven't stepped into that vice in six weeks, that's fucking awesome. I'll give you a context. I'd get off of work and I drive to the gym every day for a year.

I did this literally for years. You talk about like chaos, and in the gym parking lot was a bar and a McDonald's, Like talk about perfect place to put a freaking McDonald's right next to the gym. And they're gonna assume it's like the good wolf, bad wolf in a parking lot, right, Like it's Here's what I would do every day for years. Eric bags packed. It's in the passenger seat again, in the parking lot. I'll look at that gym and smoke a cigarette and go to McDonald's,

go to the bar, get in my car tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow. And that was years of that man just suffering through the inability of being aware enough to understand that the choice that I make was killing me. And as I started the journey into healing and I got deeper into this, it started being like, okay, cool, what if I just don't do the McDonald's today. I'll go to the gym and then I'll get a drink, right.

And then what if it was I won't go to the bar, but instead I'll go to the gym, I'll get McDonald's, I'll do the salad right this time on my way home. And it was just like this iterative process again and again and again and again, and now I haven't had McDonald's like twenty years, right, well ten yere excuse me, And so I think about that, and I'm like, you know, this process it sucks, dude, it's

so freaking hard. But again, what happened was even though and here's where people will get caught up in the black. But I thought you said you don't negotiate with yourself. I don't. But it's just you are learning. You're going through this process of understanding who you are, what you're actually capable of doing. Because if you've never been allotted the space to do this before, you gotta give yourself some grace. And I say that because think about this, Eric,

We've never had this conversation before. This is the first time we have ever done this. You are going through this process of the human experience and discovering things that you've never been exposed to. Right, So, in that space in which you're like, all right, I'm trying to be sober, I'm trying not to hook up with strangers. I'm trying to go to the gym, I'm trying to eat well, like you're learning through failure. Right. John Maxwell writes an

amazing book called Failing Forward. I believe everyone should read because it's so much about this idea of like, yeah, you're gonna fail towards your goal. You're gonna fail forward, You're gonna trip over the finish line, right, but you're gonna make it there if you keep going. And then now I look at my life and I go I don't get drunk, I don't eat fast food. I'm a hundred and fifty pounds lighter. I don't smoke cigarettes. I

don't get high when I wake up. You know, it's not that I don't still have my moments, because dude, sometimes a movie will come on, they're like smoking a cigarette. I'm like, damn, I want a cigarette right now, and I go, no, you can't have one, dummy, It's not allowed. And so it's that thing where the triggers are always

gonna be there. But if you adapt these tools and you bring them into your life when you have them, whether it's you know, you have a sponsor, or you have a coach, or you have that meditation or that journal, you go to that thing instead of the vice, and in a long enough timeline you'll find that six weeks turns into six months, into six years, into the rest of your life. Then it's just simply this process of just keep going forward. Don't stop because you screwed up,

does not mean you erased all of the effort. You don't rewind time. Time's gone forever. I'll tell you something really interesting. If people understand what I'm about to say, it will change things for them. When I go to restaurants and I put my name on the list and it says time I right now. Because the time is now, that is the time it is. And so if you are willing to understand that right now is the thing that matters the most, not yesterday, and not ten minutes

from now, but right now. The choice you're making in this moment is the thing that matters the most. It will change the trajectory of your future forever. You talk about how trauma really corrupts, you call it your GPS system, right, and it's got you thinking that what you really need is a big mac, what you really need is a drink,

what you really need is a cigarette. And those voices don't go away right away, right, So how is it that you were able to sort of decide who you really are and which of those voices you want to listen to and which of those voices you don't want to listen to. And I'm just gonna add to that a little bit because part of the problem is that all those voices talk in our voice. They all sound the same. It would be it would be great if the one that told us to do the self destructive

things sounded like the Tasmanian devil. It would be easy to be like, oh, that's not the right voice, right, So they talk in our voice, and sometimes the ones that are pushing us in quote unquote the wrong direction are really loud, and the one that's saying here's who I am. Here's who I want to be is very quiet. How do you stay oriented? Yeah, that's that is the question, right Like literally, if I could make a pill and sell it, I'd be the richest person on planet freaking Earth,

because that is the question. Ultimately, I think it comes down to understanding really fundamental truth about this is that this thing right here called a pen is the most powerful tool you'll ever own in your life. And what I did in the beginning, as I sat down with a piece of paper and I wrote who I wanted to be, I wrote it out top to bottom, massive, massive, massive clarity. I said, this is the person I want to be. That's the impact I want to make in

the world. This I want to show up in my relationships, my friendships, my career, my business, my personal life, all of it, right, And I just started moving towards it a little bit every single day because without the clarity, it's like being in a rudderless boat. You're just gonna end up wherever the breeze takes you, and you're gonna be like, oh, my life sucks. Well, yeah, because you weren't clear about where you wanted to go. If you're

on a desert Island. It's because you let yourself get there, because you weren't super clear about where you wanted to be, and so in the beginning it's so difficult because people don't understand the power of the mind. I truly believe what I'm about to say more than anything that I will ever say in front of me. There's a sign that says mindset is everything. I believe that so inherently in my soul, in my body that I mean, it's

the most true thing that I know. But in this personal development space that I live in, everybody's always like mindset, mindset, mindset, but nobody tells you what it is. So I'm gonna tell you what it actually means in a practical way that will help you navigate those voices, because I promise you, man, they don't turn off. I tell people when they come into coaching with me, I'm like, man, this is the rest of your life game. Don't think that this is

just gonna be over because you did some coaching. It ain't. I promise this is the rest of your life game. But one of the most important tools you have in this game is mindset, and mindset means this what you think becomes what you speak. What you speak become your actions, and your actions become your reality. And some of you listening to this right now are being so mean to yourself that if you said it to me, I would punch you in the face. And you're expecting yourself to

be successful. There's something wrong with that picture. What I want you to do is I want you to take this pen. I promise you will change your life. Is the most important dollar you'll ever spend in your life. And you're gonna write down what I'm about to tell you, and then you're gonna convince yourself that this is true. I am the kind of person who is kind to myself. I am the kind of person who is kind to myself. And I know what you're thinking, Michael. You're six ft four,

covered in tattoos, gold nose ring. What do you know

about kindness everything? Because here's the truth about it. If it is true, which I believe it is that what we think becomes what we speak, and that becomes our action and our reality, then if we're operating through a scope of kindness when we are faced with making the difficult decisions and hearing those voices battle back and forth, you have a mechanism for deciding which one is louder, because you'll ask yourself when you're in challenge, when you're

in struggle, when you have to do the difficult thing, what would a kind person do right now? How would a kind person show up? What would kindness look like? How do you deploy kindness in this moment? And then because you're thinking that, you will act that, and because

you act that, that will become your reality. Because Eric, dude, I don't know about you, but the voice that says you're a loser, you're not good enough, you're not strong enough, you're not capable enough, you're fake, Like that voice never fucking turns off. But I don't listen to that voice because I operate through kindness, because I have clarity about who I am and my goals in my mission. Then when you start to add on other layers of this,

because dude, it's like putting together a cake. You gotta throw all the ingredients in right. And when you add on the layer of like your values. My values are honesty, kindness, leadership, self actualization, and no excuses. Those values become a funnel for the decision making that I'm making every single day. Great example, you invite me to come on the show. I listen to the show, I go, I'm not in alignment with the show. It's not gonna move me towards my goal. I don't do the show, or it does,

so I am. So I'm here, but I have to filter through my value system first, because if I don't, then I don't have clarity about whether or not it's moving me forward. Do This applies to dating, to the food you eat, to the to the things you consume and watch on television, to the internet, to your phone, to your body, everything, because when you start operating and

understanding that mindset is everything. It changes when you are in that moment of those voye is going to war because I don't know that I've ever had a moment where they haven't been there. And it's just like one's going to be louder because I'm choosing to make it louder by executing against the tools that I have that I know work in this process. Yeah, so you're saying, basically, you get clear on your values or some orienting ideas, I'm going to be kind to myself, and then any

voice that isn't saying that that isn't reflecting that. You go, that's not the voice that I listened to. Like, I've decided which messages I'm going to give credence to, and anything that's not that, even if it's yelling in my head, I go, Nope, that's not me. That's not who I want to be. That's not the direction I'm going. That's not the thing I'm following, which is easy to say

and very hard to do. Of course, Like to your point, let's go step deeper, because I'll tell you exactly why what I said is not going to work for people. I will lay out exact clear the roadmap for why what I just said is going to leave somebody in four minutes from being like, that's nonsense. Because one of the things that you have to understand is causation and correlation.

There is a direct connection to everything that's ever happened in our life that has led to this moment where the sum total of all of our experiences and so that means every single thing that has ever happened in our life informs us. And so think about a paint a picture. Let's let's say you're in third grade and you're coloring a house and ms Smith comes up to you and you just colored the moon purple, and she chastises you and criticizes you in front of the whole classroom,

and they go, Eric, the moon's not purple. And all the kids laugh at you and they don't play with you at recess, and then your brain goes, oh, man, when I'm creative, when I'm artistic, when I try to do something that makes me feel like me, they laugh at me. They take me out of the playtime. The teacher embarrasses me. I'm not gonna be me anymore. I'm

not gonna be me because it's too painful. And so now you're in this place where like you're hearing this idea about wait a second, but I can create myself. The thing about this journey is like when you get to this moment and you're hearing what we're saying, and you're like, I want to have the good voice be louder. You want that so desperately. You have to understand that the loud voice that has controlled you for so long has been immeshed in you, ingrained, and you groomed into you.

It is not you, it's not you, it has never been you. But because of the brain's autonomic response for survival. It becomes this thing that keeps you safe, and you really have to understand the truth. The only way you squelch that voice, you make it quieter, is you have to challenge the narrative of who you believe you are. You have to be willing to do things you've never done. You have to be willing to fail. You have to be willing to step onto the edge of the diving

board and jump. People will get sevent into this, you get eight four into this, and they won't take the final step. And this means really innately is when you have these moments, in these thoughts, in the silence, right especially at bedtime, getting ready to go to bed silent, your brain won't turn off. It's like, do that thing, just keep hearing it, do that thing that you're like, no, I'm scared, Yes, of course you are. You've been told

to be scared of being you. You've been told to be scared of quitting the job, leaving the unfulfilling relationship, starting the business, doing the part. You've been told to be terrified of it. But the only way you make the voice about who you are bigger is by feeding the wolf right. Going back to where we started this feed, it be willing to step into the unknown because you choose to. I think one of the greatest aspects of healing. And I think if people really understand what I'm about

to say, it will be impactful. I only do what I want to do, and I never do what I don't want to do. Like if you call old me and you're like, hey, Michael, do you want to go to this country concert, I'm like, no, absolutely not. I hate country music. No way, dude. Fifteen years ago, I'd have been the first one to say yes because I wanted to feel like you made me feel good about myself. I needed that from other people. I needed other people. I needed to bend who I am, to have community,

to have brotherhood, to have companionship. And you know what I got out of that. A lot of drunken nights, a lot of hookups, a lot of bragging to my bros, a lot of bullshit. And as I changed. Jay Z has my favorite quote of all time, goes people around you staying that you changed. Well, I didn't do all this work to stay the same. Who do you want

to be? Who do you want to be? Because without putting in massive action, that voice that you want so desperately to be, the voice that is predominant, will never be heard. I want to go back to what you said a minute ago about and never do anything that I don't want to do. I assume you mean that you might very well know that going to a recovery meeting or your therapist is the right thing to do, but you don't quote unquote want to do it in

that moment. Reconcile that with what you just said. Yeah, well, it's really simply about this. Let me actually preface this. You have to do things you don't want to do. That's just the nature of the world. There's monotony. Like you're you're gonna have to do the same thing eight

thousand times, right, you know, That's how this works. What I mean at a deeper level is the things that bend your identity are the things that you are not in alignment with, are the things that are against your values, your once, your needs, your interest, your moral compass. Right, it's going to the strip club or the bar when you're like, that's not who I am anymore. It's the smoke and the joint in the morning when you're like,

that's not who I am anymore. It's like those things I don't do, the things that I don't want to do because you peer pressure me, because I feel connection. One of the most interesting things that has happened over the course of last decade is watching the people move away from me who have been in my life as I've changed, as I've grown, as I've said I'm not going to go to the bar with you tonight, as I've said I'm not going to go, you know, do

that thing that we used to do. And then you know, it's really funny because I'll pop on social on the occasion and they'll show up in a feed and they're doing the same thing we did fifteen years ago. It ain't different. I'm like, I'm changing because I don't want to do that stuff anymore. Right, And that's what that means is you're taking fool ownership over who you are in all aspects, and I literally mean all aspects. I mean your career, I mean your relationship, the food you eat.

Like if you're like I hate coffee and you're going and drinking coffee because you want to fit in with somebody, you need to question and check yourself right and the things that I want to do. I want to be healthy, I want to eat well. I want to go to therapy. I want to have a coach. I want to invest in personal development. I want to have a business that changed the world. I want all these things. So I only do things that move me towards those goals. Anything

else does not bring value to my life. I will say this because I understand why you asked the question. You cannot do this without the massive clarity that we've been laying the track work for trying to figure out. You've got to be able to step into that because if not, again, you're just gonna be on this rudderless boat not going anywhere. Yeah. I love that I don't do things that it bend my identity. I think that's a great way of saying it, because you know, you've

got your own business. I've got my own business. There are lots of tasks within that that I don't There are times I'm like, I do not want to do this right, but I know that it aligns with the direction I want to go with the person I want to be. You in the book talk pretty eloquently about the fact that there was no sort of single modality that led you to change. Right, you have done a lot of things right right us through a list of

some of the ways you've worked on healing. Not much time do you have, man, Well, look, I'll go back to what are you willing to do to have the life that you want to have? No excuses, just results. Do that literally meant I'm gonna do everything everything. I'm gonna try it all because I don't know what works, and I don't know what doesn't work because I haven't done it yet. And so it was therapy, group therapy, men's group therapy, men's group, trauma therapy, gestalt therapy, CBT, E, M,

D R N, LP, ABC, all the acronyms. Dude, it was literally all those things. That was. I went to all the support groups, A A, in a essay, just trying feeling seeing is this right? Is this wrong? Do I belong here? Do I not? It was getting a coach, going to personal development, investing in seminars, reading the books. Dude, I've read over seven d books in the last decade. Right. It was going and listening to podcast, getting certifications in

trauma education. It was all of the things, man, it was bodywork, acupuncture, raiky you know you name it like I did at all. Man, I was like, something's gonna work ship. I don't know what, but we're gonna find out. And it was the willingness to dedicate myself to it. And it cost every penny I had, and it cost every second of time I had, and even at one point early on I had to borrow money. I was like, dude,

I need this therapy. I don't have any money. Somebody I reached out, I asked for help because I was like, I gotta do something here. Man. I'm I'm going to therapy four times a week. I'm going to groups on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and you know, spending time on body work. I'm healing my body because I got so sick from

all the drinking. Dude, I mean I spent I literally spent probably a quarter million dollars and a hundred thousand hours on this, you know, because I looked at I go, what price are you willing to pay for your health? I don't care how much it costs. Signed me up. And I found in that process like some thing's worked really well, and some things just I did did not connect with remotely and I will never do again. Right, But I wouldn't have known that had I not ventured

into it. But but I will say this, like honestly, and I mean this. I've thought about this a lot over the years. If I could go back in time, the first thing I would have done is I had hired a coach because the therapy, while is very very important and should be a part of your journey, it wasn't getting me out of the habits. There was still no accountability. There still was no roadmap or game plan. And that's the thing that it would take me a

few more years to discover. And that's ultimately what changed my life more than anything. You know, there's a symbiosis in it, like let's be clear about that. But where I believe that I really likes and bounds like started really laddering in this was when I hired a coach and I got deep into personal development because I realized

there's this interesting distinction. Therapy to me felt like making meaning of past experiences of being able to understand again causation and correlation, to be able to have rhyme and reason like, oh I act like this because of that, and then putting it on a shelf, and then I realized like, oh wait, therapy is not actually propelling me forward. It's really really beneficial for this stuff over here, but it's not giving me what I need to go to

over here. And so that was a really really powerful decision in my life when I got into coaching and deeply, deeply ingrained in a personal development and look, I'm the guy who used to be like Tony Robbins is full of shit, right, you know? All these personal development guys are morons. They don't know anything about life. And then you get in and you're like, wait a second, maybe

they do. And that became really interesting when I switched to that type of investment, and it became super powerful for me, Like there's no question, like all of the modalities help. There's always a benefit to everything that you're willing to try, if for no other reason, then you'll learn something. But ultimately, I don't think there is no one single right thing. And even I have my own qualms with therapy at times because I'm like, you've been

here for seven years, is it really working right? Like I had those moments with myself. I'd sit in my therapist office same Wednesday five o'clock, same part of town, same chair, same tea, And I'm like, why am my hair man? Like what are we doing? This is nonsense, right, And and it just took so much effort and energy to realize, like, man, you gotta clear the slate. You gotta wipe this thing clean so you can bring in all the new stuff. And so, you know, I always

tell people try it all. I know it's not cheap, borrow money. I don't care. People will take out debt for shoes, but not for therapy or coach. I literally sold everything I owned, Like how committed are you to have in your life? And you know there you've got three and in your basement right now. Bullcrap. You don't need sell it. Go make your life better, read a book. You know you gotta want this. Nobody's gonna give it to you. And I think that that's part of the journey,

is just the willingness to bet on yourself first. Yeah, I think it's interesting. People often ask me, like you, I've done a lot of different things over the years. You know, I've been in therapy on and off. I don't know how old you are, but I've got a good number of years on you. So I've got X a number of years to do this stuff, and you know,

people be like, well, did that thing work? And I'm like, you know, at this point, I can't even tweez apart what worked and what didn't and would this have worked if I hadn't done that thing first if I had, It's like, You've got to try for yourself and see

what's helpful. I coach people as well, And one of the distinctions I often make about a therapy and coaching things I say oftentimes like therapy is really valuable, Like therapy could get me really clear on why when there's an adult male in my life who's older than me, who seems like they're inn bad mood, I want to go crawl in the closet, Like, Okay, it's pretty clear. I know why that is. I know why that is. The reality is, though it still happens. Knowing doesn't make

me not want to hide. So what I need help in is what do I do right in this moment when that fear is coming up, when I'm in that situation that has paralyzed me in the past, how do I stay in it? You know? And that's really where I think coaching can be helpful because it's really focused

on right now or moving forward. Yeah, and I think that societally everyone's like therapy, therapy, therapy, therapy, And I'm like, yes, but and that's right, that's right, Yes, And for sure We've talked a little bit about this, but I'd like to hit it again in more detail, which is talk about the power of community and other people. Well, I mean, name is somebody who's done something great on their own,

Name them? I got all day. Man, You know you can't like I'll speak to this from the perspective of you and I sitting here as men. Right. We grow up in this society that says, figured out, put some dirt on it, don't be a pussy, you know, all this toxic ship around what it means to be a man.

That's actually why I wrote my third book it's called Unbroken Man, is because like we're lied to, I'm gonna tell you right now, the greatest thing that has like really changed my life as the willingness to ask for help. I need help. Somebody, Please, you got the answer, Give it to me. Please, for the love of God, help me. And this idea that you can do this by yourself is a lie that comes from shame and guilt. And it's not even just about men. It's about the society

women go through. However you identified, it doesn't matter. We all go through that. Especially if you grow up in the United States. Name your neighbors. What are your neighbors names? You don't know because you are not willing to go over and talk to them. You know, I was in the gym the other day. I'm new in this gym. I've never been there. I'm trying to like figure my way around some things. I got this big facility. I'll

walk up to this woman. I introduced myself. Five minutes in the conversation, she goes, I am so scared to talk to people. Thank you for saying hello to me. And I thought to myself, that's the society we live in. Go be ostracized, Go watch TV, Go be in your cell phone, don't be in person like you have to

understand that that is not working for you. And so if you're in this place like, especially especially especially at the beginning of this again, this thing about that suffering you have to suffer through the discomfort of asking for help, of putting yourself out there. And I don't mean crying on Instagram. Let's be very clear about that. That's nonsensical.

What I'm talking about is going to the meeting, going to the group, signing up for the program, doing the thing that's with other people, because you'll be amazed at what you take away from that, not only because of what you bring in, but even what you give an offer and deliver to other people. You know, there's so many people that will reach out to me. I'm so low, I'm so depressed. I'm like, what are you doing? What

are you doing with your time? One of my mentors taught me something that changed my life, which I really believe is actually probably the catalyst how think Unbroken started. They go, when you're at your lowest, you need to go, serve, go be a value to other people because you're being selfish, because you're only thinking about you and your problems. And that felt so true to me, because if you think

about it, we are a communal species. Everything about our experiences really until the last fifteen years has been about community, has been about going and being a part of something. And I think one of the most dangerous things that you can do is think that you're alone because you're not. You know, there's eight billion people on planet Earth. I promise you are not the only one with that problem. It's called Google. Use that shit, right, Go and find it,

go ultivate it. It's not gonna fall in your lap. Right. People are so faster like, Oh, I'm gonna hop on Amazon. I'm will order this thing I don't need. Well, why don't you hop on the internet and find a group you can go be a part of. Find a coach that can help you, Find a mentor that can support you. Find the community that you can go and foster and build into. Give your time, give your effort, give your energy.

It will be reciprocated to you. But I want to say this Eric too, because I think this is really important. I think as a coach, you'll appreciate this. You got to invest into this ship. You gotta put some skin in the game. I came up this acronym a couple of years ago. Team, time, effort, energy, money, Team. You're gonna have to invest one, but you're probably gonna have to invest all four. And if you want your life to be different, you've got to be willing to make sacrifices.

You've got to be willing to put yourself in that room, in that community, in that group, show up for it, make effort, put energy into it, because again, it takes as much energy to destroy your life as it does to build your life. So what are you building? What do you want? What are you willing to do to have it? And if you think that you're going to do this on your own, let me break it to you you're not, because I promise you. The more I tried to do this by myself, the worst my life got.

And so be willing to step into the discomfort of saying, you know what, I can't do this alone, because if you are willing to do that, watch how the universe starts to bend itself to what you need. It's incredible. You are very clearly sort of like you said, no excuses kind of guy. You know, no excuses, you know, just do it, get to it right. And yet you also, I know, talk a lot about being really kind to ourselves, and so I want to talk about what do you do?

How do you talk to yourself? How do you work with yourself when you don't live up to your expectations right when you are, when you are, when you make an excuse or when you don't do that, because you clearly have this balance of holding yourself accountable but also treating yourself kindly, talk about how those come together for you. Yeah. Man, Look, I'm human like everybody else. I struggle like everyone else. I'm not some superhuman. I'm not some superhero. I'm not.

I promise you I'm gonna sunk up. I guarantee I will bet you everything in my life that I'm gonna make a mistake by midnight. I probably already did. I've been up since six am. Man, I probably already screwed up ten times today, you know. And it's like, fine, we're iterative. We are a processing machine like you have to understand the power of the human brain, like and its service to be able to learn and to adapt. There's no other species known to man that is as

powerful as we are. And when you recognize that first and foremost, I don't allow myself to talk to myself negatively, I don't. I refuse it. It's a non negotiable for me. You will never hear me put myself down. Ever. I took that out years ago, even the notion of it. Na, I just don't even I don't align with it, and so that that becomes precedent. Now, let's be clear about this, because you're like, well, what happens when you do screw up? And I screw it massively? You know what I do?

I own it? Yep, I totally screwed that up. I dropped the ball, I messed that thing up. I made a mistake, I fell back. I did the thing I said I wasn't gonna do. Yes, I did that. I own it. I'm sorry. I learned something I understand. Here's here's where that sorry comes into play that I think people need to factor in as well. What did you actually learn from that mistake and how are you going

to adopt that into your life? Because guess what. The thing about this is often, especially the deeper I think you'll agree with this, the deeper you get into this work, you start to identify your triggers better. Right, same reason you're like, oh wait, older guy than me, I run and hide? Got it? Copy right? But now you know that trigger. And I think that's what mistakes do for you. They give you the ability to recognize the triggers. And when you can do that more effectively, that's where that

gap in time really starts to show itself. And so in these moments where I make a mistake, where I screw something up, where I go against my character, I go there was some reason why that happened. I need

to uncover that reason and look. Going back to the point about therapy, you know, I've had the same therapist for five years, and I will literally call him and be like, I got this dude on speed dial because it's like, I don't need therapy every day, I don't need it every month even, but about once a quarter I'm like, hey, man, I need to talk to you. You know what I'm saying. And so that's the thing about this. Be willing to find out why why don't

beat yourself up? Beating yourself up isn't going to solve anything. You have never solved a problem once in your life by beating yourself up. But if you're willing to sit in it, make meaning of it, figure out the direct correlation between the past experience and the current moment, then now you have a framework and a roadmap for the next time that thing happens, which assuredly it will happen.

To be prepared for it because you have the tools that you can deploy against it because now you understand it. And it's why being kind to ourselves I think is so important, in addition to the fact that it just feels a whole lot better to live in a brain that's nice to itself, is that when we beat ourselves up and we go into shame and we go into being really hard on ourselves, we don't learn. We're not capable of learning. We go into that shame at precisely

the moment that we most need to learn. Like you said, why did I do this? Yeah? Well, and look, I mean, where does that shame come from? Like, really, let's tie this together really strongly right now. When you were a kid and you made a mistake, you suffered through shame and guilt. So as an adult, when you make a mistake, you shame and guilt yourself because you believe that is

the way that you handle those experiences. And it's not until you reframe that understanding and recognize the truth that is not shame and guilt that will take you to the Promised Land. But instead it's understanding patient's grace, hope, love, and compassion that will And that's the thing about this, And you have to adopt that you have to bring that into your life. You've never experienced this before, so the only thing you know is I'm gonna beat myself up.

But I'm not. I could. I could destroy my whole life today. I could. I'm not gonna beat myself up over I'm like, damn, what happened? Something dark must have went down. It was that talking to Eric zimmer Man that really screwed things, really ruined my life. And so I'm like, wait a second, but now I know I'll never talk to Eric again. I can make meaning of it. Yeah, but that's the that's the truth. We're joking and we're

in jest, but like, that's the truth of it. Man, like you, you've got to be willing to recognize that we are habitual creatures that operate on behavioral patterns that are ingrained in us in our developmental years, whether you like it or not. Well, Michael, thank you so much. This has been a really fun conversation. Your work is really powerful, your story is really powerful, and thank you so much for taking the time to come on and

share with our listeners. Like, I think we can probably riff on this for another hour easier, but we are out of time. So thank you so much. Yeah, Eric, my pleasure. Man, I thank you so much for the opportunity, and I want to acknowledge you for researching because I do hundreds of these a year and you know the fact that you took the time out of your day to understand what this conversation would be to help your

audience means the world to me. So I just want to give you some gratitude and say thank you, my friend, my pleasure. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community. With this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now. We are so grateful for the members of our community.

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