48. Mike Elliott - You Can Be Numb for Decades and Never Know It

Mike Elliott was watching his own mind show him how to end his life. 

His wife of seven years had just walked out, he never saw it coming, and in the distress he kept seeing an image of a hose running from his tailpipe into his truck. Then a Shawn Mendes song came on, he threw his hands up, and said the first honest prayer of his life. 

Two days later his first coach showed up, and the whole trajectory of his life changed.

In this episode, I sit down with Mike Elliott, a relationship expert and men's coach, for a conversation that runs from rock bottom to fatherhood. 

We get into why Mike was adopted twice before his first birthday, how he spent seven years treating his wife like a coaching client instead of loving her, and what numbness actually is, the kind you can drive around in for decades without noticing the check engine light. 

Mike breaks down his framework of initiation, integration, and inspiration, his idea of "life's report card," and why shame's entire job is to keep you isolated.

If you've ever taken advice from someone who didn't actually live it, ever gone numb in your own body without knowing it, or ever wondered why the breakthroughs never seem to turn into real change, this one is about trauma healing, integration, and the slow work of growing up. 

It connects directly to the work we do with veterans, first responders, and trauma survivors learning to work intentionally with plant medicine.

Guest Bio

Mike Elliott is a relationship expert and men's coach who helps people build thriving relationships by teaching them to move from their head to their heart. He lives on five and a half acres in the Kootenays of British Columbia with his wife and their young son. After hitting rock bottom following the end of his first marriage, Mike rebuilt his life around what he calls relational authority, and now guides men through his program The Initiated Man and a podcast he co-hosts with his partner.

Mike Elliott: itsmikeelliott.com

Instagram: mikeelliott.relating

Podcast: The Sacred We Podcast

The Initiated Man (Mike's program): free for 7 days, then $97/month

Thanks again for listening!

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Visit https://www.becomingom.org/coaching for all the info and to get in touch with us.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hello, folks. Welcome back to another episode of the Plant Medicine for PTSD podcast. My name is David, and you know that because you listen to all these episodes. So my guest today is a gentleman named Mike Elliott. Mike's another one of these people who, you know, his PR firm or what have you sent me an email pitching him to come on my show. 99% of those emails are nonsense, and you guys never hear those episodes. But occasionally one comes through that actually makes me stop and think, hmm, maybe this is somebody that I would like to talk to. Mike was one of those guys. I did a little bit of research into his stuff, checked out his podcast, checked out his work. Seems like he's doing some legit things. Uh, most importantly, as you'll hear me almost start off this interview, I sort of checked out like, is this guy qualified to do what he says that he does? So he's a men's coach and a relationship coach. He is a man, so checks that box. But he also actually has a successful, happy, healthy relationship. He is doing awesome stuff in the world, raising his son. He's got uh sweet property, as you'll hear us talk about. He's doing the the little bit of the homestead life, which is super cool. So, you know, he strikes me as somebody who uh is hit his advice could be worth listening to, for me at least. And as you'll hear us talk about, I actually pick up a few things from him in terms of you know coaching, running an online coaching program. He's a little bit further ahead of me in terms of just experience with this stuff. And I'll be honest, when I saw uh when I saw his stuff and saw what he was about, there was a part of me that resisted it. There's always been a part of me that has resisted doing like men's work and stuff like that. And even if if you're in our program, you'll know that we do have a men's call and uh like a men's group in there, and I refuse to call it a men's circle. We have a men's rectangle, uh, because you know, part of me is like, well, those things are fucking lame, dude. Those things are so fucking stupid. There's I guess maybe I shouldn't name names here, but there's some people in Tulum that I know, and it's just like it's weird, man. It strikes me as weird. And I can look at that and be like, sure, part of that is like my resistance. There's part of me that's scared of being confronted, and there's more work that I have to do, and I'm resisting it. Sure. But I also think some of that stuff is objectively fucking stupid. This is why I like martial arts. Like, we're coming together for the purpose of training and getting better. And then we also happen to talk about our emotions and our feelings and connect on that level. There's just always been something that rubs me the wrong way about like just coming together to talk about feelings and stuff. I don't know, dude. Maybe that's maybe that's my own conditioning that I need to overcome, but it just seems weird. So, all of that is to say, there's always been something that kind of turns me off to like men's work and men's coaches and stuff like that. And even in this conversation with Mike, there's some things that he says that I kind of nod along with for the sake of the conversation, and then internally I'm like, is that real? Or is he just making that up because it sounds nice? Or is that just again, is that my uh resistance to it because there's things that I'm scared to look at, or you know, I'm still immature in certain ways and I need to grow in certain ways, and like I know that. So I I don't know, dude. This is a long ass ramble. So I'll just I'll shut up, listen to the podcast. If you like the stuff that Mike talks about, if you feel like you need some of that, I'll have all the links uh for you to get in touch with him, and maybe you go get yourself some men's relationship coaching. Maybe you like my approach to things and you want a little help with uh microdosing and shadow work. Or maybe you have nothing to do on the other side of this and you're like, hmm, that was interesting, and that's cool too. So with all that said, go please enjoy this episode with Mike Elliott. Thank you for being here. I am always curious how people cat uh categorize, characterize, that's the word I wanted. There's that lack of sleep at work right there. How do you characterize the work that you do? How do you kind of explain yourself and your job now? Because I I know you shared with me a little bit of the evolution of how you got to where you are now. So how how do you how do you even explain what you do? Like how would how would you answer that question?

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Yeah, great question. I just the label that I use, relationship expert and men's coach. And I help people live uh thriving relationships, is how I describe it. How teaching people how to move from their head to their heart and live from that place.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

Bro, we gotta check your bona fides. You are in a thriving relationship, yes or no?

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

We talked a little bit about this earlier, just all like the bullshit shamans out there. I no joke, dude. Yeah, yeah. I could I could count probably three or four relationship coaches that Cordy and I have known here in Mexico, where their you know relationship fell apart and they don't talk to their kid anymore, things like that. There's just so much nonsense out there. So how how long have you been married, Mike?

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Uh been let's see, we're uh six years.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

Six years, awesome. And you uh remind me where you live because I was looking at your Instagram one day, and it was like a video of you like mowing your lawn or something like that, and your house looked awesome, dude. Like it looked so cool, at least just from that one that one photo that I saw.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

Yeah, we live in Paradise in British Columbia, Canada, a place called the Kootenis. It's by Nelson, and we live on five and a half acres in the side of a mountain along the river.

SPEAKER_02 5:33

Hell yeah, dude. Do you uh do you do do you have like a little homestead action going on? You like growing crops and stuff? Oh man, this is the dream. Okay, this is awesome.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

Yeah, we we we were more uh devoted to growing crops, and this is the first year where we haven't put a lot of energy into it. We have a four-year-old and he's so alive and requires so much presence that we left that. We left the garden. We have some simple pieces, our raspberry patch and rhubarb and some greens that pop up, but that's it.

SPEAKER_02 6:08

Well, man, that sounds like I before I actually had children, I was extremely into sourdough, and I would call my sourdough starter my bread child, but I now have an actual child, so I don't have the fucking time to keep up with that anymore. So it sounds like a similar situation over there. Totally. Is that is that your only kid, one four-year-old boy?

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Yeah. We're gonna have another, but so far it's just the one boy.

SPEAKER_02 6:32

Wait, wait, like your wife's pregnant right now, or just like planning in the future.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

We'll we'll plan within the next year.

SPEAKER_02 6:38

We're gonna plan for another. Amazing. All right, so you uh you you qualify in my book. You're someone I'll take advice from because you have an older kid and you have a dope homestead property.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

So you know that thing of like what I love that you're filtering it because it's something I've been confused by in the market where I'm listening to certain pieces of it pieces of advice, and I think, wow, this is brilliant, this is awesome, and something feels a little off, and then I do a little investigating. Oh, you're talking about relationship and men's work, but you're single and you don't have a relationship, and so like how much of this is actually embodied real lived experience because if I'm taking your advice, but you're in a reality of singlehood, uh, you're gonna project a whole bunch of singlehood into my reality that isn't gonna apply when I go to relate with my wife, exactly, and it's super important, and something my partner actually and I speak about a lot on our podcast as we call that piece out is be uh like educating to be so discerning and where you receive support. Because if you want relational support and you want a thriving relationship, the person who's helping you better have one, or else they'll just feed uh more separation into your experience, and then you'll just fight with your partner more.

SPEAKER_02 8:00

Dude, a hundred percent. So I I imagine this has not always been the case for you. You've not always had a thriving relationship, right? So, how did you figure this out? Like, did did did you work with coaches? Did you go to the Amazon for ayahuasca? Like, how did you figure things out for yourself?

SPEAKER_00 8:19

I I'm a slow, painful learner. I had to hit absolute rock bottom to realize that I even needed help. I was that oblivious, unconscious, numb. I had no idea. You know, I was adopted twice in the first year of my life, and it set a serious set of patterns that I didn't know about because my parents didn't help me through it or help me understand it. And so the patterns just ruled my life, and I just had this theme of being alone. I was kicked out of my own house growing up. I was couldn't stay physically, I couldn't stay in a relationship. Uh if I found or attracted an amazing partner, I'd run away, or or often it was me running away. I was gonna say they left me. No, they didn't. I always left because I didn't want to be hurt because of the abandonment wounding. I had no idea. And then so finally I hit a place of I'm just gonna make myself stay. Found an amazing wife. We were together for seven years, and one day she walked in and left. I had no idea, I didn't see it coming, and it brought me to my knees, and I was so afraid. I couldn't avoid all the feelings that came in when she left, the one that I wanted the most in my life, leaving. And I had so many dark thoughts. I my mind was showing me images of putting a hose from my tailpipe into my truck window in my garage and ending it. And I wasn't choosing those thoughts. That's what was happening in the distress of losing my wife. And I was watching this darkness of considering ending my life, and I was like, I can't, what am is what is happening? What have I done? How did I get here? And then something stood out for me, and it was this story that Oprah talked about when she hit the dark night of the soul, and she said she just threw her hands up and prayed, and I wasn't a religious guy because I grew up Catholic and it's scared the hell out of me. Get away, but I just I wanted to repeat the success. For some reason, it popped up in that moment when I was watching this moment of oh, this my mind wants me to kill myself. So I threw my hands up in the air and I said, God help, I have no idea what I'm doing. And something changed in that moment because I actually acknowledged and accepted a truth that I didn't even know was there. I didn't know what I was doing. My dad didn't teach me how to be a man, it wasn't modeled around me, and so I'm trying to do man, but I wasn't actually a man, and it sucked, it was painful, and I didn't want to keep re-experiencing that, and so I asked for help. I said, God help me. I don't even know if you're there, but help me. I have no idea, and you know what's wild, David is in that moment. This was one of my first huge spiritual experiences. There was music playing in my room when this happened, and it was Sean Mendez, It's Not in My Blood. I don't know if that's the exact title, but it was him describing this suicidal experience and then him hitting this huge part of the song of and it's not in my blood. And I just started bawling because it was the I felt God speaking to me through song. The guy was Sean Mendez was sharing the exact experience I was having in the moment, and I made a decision. I'm not gonna do this, I just need to figure out how to actually grow up. And two days later, my first high-ticket coach came in. He was a soul coach, is how he labeled himself. It was super scary and frightening to do it. It was thousands of dollars. I resisted the hell out of it, and I had a buddy that said, Mike, you aren't doing it very well on your own. Do it. Like, do this, go all in. And it completely changed the trajectory of my life because I finally landed in front of a man who had been doing his work that could offer over the presence that I needed to process all of the shit that lived inside of me to arrive into actually becoming a mature man.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

Oh man, there's a lot there, dude. Could just ask you follow-up questions on all of that for the next hour and a half. This is amazing. Oh my gosh. Um the first thing I thought of, well, actually, no, the first thing I thought of was you get a car and you get a car and you get a car when you mentioned Opera. The second thing I thought of that uh that moment that you described of what Oprah described, like throwing up your hands, just being like, God, help me. It sounds a lot like the first step of AA. I don't know if are you are you familiar at all with like the 12 steps of like alcoholics novels, that kind of thing?

SPEAKER_00 13:24

Yeah, I haven't personally gone through them, but I have a lot of I attract a lot of clients that are part of AA.

SPEAKER_02 13:29

So yeah, yeah, I mean this is this is just from my knowledge of researching and and working with clients who are in it. But it's like step one is basically admitting that you are powerless over your current situation because if you could have figured it out, you would have figured it out by now. So just acknowledge that me in my current state, I literally have no capacity to actually improve anything whatsoever. And then step two is asking a higher power to do that for you or to help you with that. So I don't know, I was just reminded of that because I I came to that place recently also, actually, with my uh my struggles with ADHD and not being able to like get my shit together for lack of a better term, and lead my family and lead my business and everything like that. So it felt very similar. Um, we gotta backtrack though for a second. You were adopted twice? How does that work?

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Yeah, so my biological mother, bless her. Her name was Diane. She was a severe drug addict, and she was raped and abused from the earliest age of 15 on. And so that's where I formed a body inside of her. And her state from when she got uh when she was pregnant with me is she was still smoking crack, she was in hard drugs, she wasn't in a state to take care of me. And so first day of me being born was me being separated from my mother. My biological grandmother didn't want me going into the system, so she fought for me and adopted me, and she was gonna raise me. And within a few months, she got diagnosed with terminal cancer and had to find a family for me because they gave her months to live. And by 14 months, 14 months is when I went and was adopted into the family I ended up growing up with. And what's really cool about this is my biological grandmother Helen fought for my life. She wouldn't let me go into a system and she knew she had some time left. So she chose a private adoption, which she found through a local church, and found this family that I grew up with and had the private adoption with the agreement. They had an agreement that she could be the babysitter and a part of my life that's awesome for as long as she lived, and she actually ended up living till I was five.

SPEAKER_02 15:53

That's amazing. Dude, shout out to Helen, bro. That's some serious foresight and just care about you. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

Uh, were you or or or how old were you when you found out that you were adopted and kind of learned that whole story?

SPEAKER_00 16:09

I don't know the exact age they told me. I the only thing I know is I there's this book that I created, I still have it to this day. Uh uh, this art project and a little story that was that I wrote in when I was five years old, and I write about my adoption in it. So my sense is as soon as I was intellectually able to understand, they talked about it. We didn't talk very much about it, but uh but I knew amazing.

SPEAKER_02 16:40

Man, and then when did you become aware of those patterns, as you said, of kind of being scared of being hurt, and so you're just gonna run from any situation that could bring up that possibility? Because it sitting here with retrospect, it's not a fucking head scratcher to see that abandonment wound and how that plays out, but how how did you actually become aware of that? Because it sounds like there was a point where you were like, I have to consciously override that, and I will choose to stay with this one woman now. So, how how did you become aware of all that?

SPEAKER_00 17:13

The first time I became aware of it at all, and I and I just I want to name, I had no idea or no association for it to be attached to abandonment wounding. I had no idea. I had no intellectual understanding of trauma. I had I wasn't making any connections to my past. I just knew it sucked becoming the guy that couldn't hold on to a relationship. I would attract the most beautiful, loving, doting, incredible women. And I would just not be able to hang on to the relationship. And then later, once I had lots of space, I would miss them and feel really lonely. And I would try to hook back into the relationship, and then they would just say, No, Mike, you're just gonna leave again. I'm not gonna be hurt by you. And then the shame of that then motivated me to just go all in and commit uh to relationship just because I didn't want to feel the shame anymore.

SPEAKER_02 18:12

That's interesting, man, because I I was just talking with somebody about this the other day. We we talk about shame and forgiveness quite a bit in our program. I don't think shame's always a bad thing, like shame biologically, evolutionarily, right? It should be a motivating factor. It's just when we kind of live in our shame and and we're stuck there that that's problematic. And obviously, there was more healing to be done than just do the opposite of whatever caused this shame. But man, it's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Can I add to that? Please because this is this is so helpful. And it I have a program called The Initiated Man, where we go into this in depth because shame is such a gnarly bitch. It's the hardest emotion to relate with because it's the stickiest, it's the most uncomfortable. And I think it's important for anyone listening to understand the nature of it because for everything, there's a light side of thing things, and there's a shadow side. And when it comes to shame, the healthy expression of it is to really motivate a person to take responsibility for their behavior and how they're impacting other people. It's actually a really beautiful emotion that keeps us humble, that keeps us connected to community. It's the part of us that gets this goes to um oh, what's his name? Uh oh, I can't remember his name. There's a book that he wrote on you can heal your shame. Jordan Campbell. Is that what it is? Anyways, I think it's Jordan Campbell. Uh and what he really describes is healthy shame is this place where we get embarrassed, we get flush in the cheeks. It's the part of us that contracts a little bit and it is uncomfortable. And bec if we let ourselves feel the discomfort, we will want to get really curious on how we're impacting and make changes. We will want to grow up, we will want to add new ingredients the next time we go and have a similar experience. The unhealthy, the shadow part of shame, and the important piece to understand is shame's MO is to isolate. When we're in the unhealthy expression of shame, we will do anything to protect ourselves from feeling the gnarliness of it, which means we will gaslight, we will shame, we will attack, we will just completely avoid hard conversations, we will isolate, we will use drugs and substance to try to not have to feel it. That's its MO. It's the belief of something's wrong with me. I'm not good enough.

SPEAKER_02 20:57

I feel like it's it's not even just that, but it's the fear that someone else will find the truth that I am indeed not good enough. It's not even just that I feel that way, but then I'm afraid of being found out for not being good enough.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

Bingo, and there's its very nature right there is isolation. It's so masterful at creating separation. So if we know that, we can do what I describe as name to tame. We name I'm in shame. If we can start to feel it, we actually release its power because we're looking at it. And then the other piece here is oh, the only way to really heal shame is mobilize and move towards connection. We have to reveal to heal. One of the biggest breakthroughs for the men that I work with is first of all, give me the list of all the places that you're hiding that you're afraid to talk about. Once we start to reveal all of those places, we're starting to liberate the shame and bring it into the biological need. Of being a human being, and that's connection. The place where, oh, me too. And this is one of the most healing things of men's group is when a man shares his deep, dark, gnarly places, the things he's so ashamed of doing. And then somebody else raises their hands, oh man, I've done that too. And then all of a sudden, now shame just disappears. It's lighter, it's easier to navigate because it's starting to bring in the deeper truth of, oh, you aren't alone. We're human. You're imperfect.

SPEAKER_02 22:29

100%, man. We always talk about this uh healing out loud so that others don't have to suffer in silence. Because you're exactly right. It's as soon as one person says, I deal with this, there's four other people who are like, Oh, dude, I thought I was the only one. Thank God.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

Literally, it's one of my favorite, favorite things when I'm in the deepest struggly place, messy, and I reach out to a buddy that I have a lot of trust with, and I say, Oh man, I did this thing. And he's like, Oh, I did it too. Oh, thank God. You're a mess too? Sweet. I immediately feel relieved of, oh, okay, I can love this part of me because I'm not alone in it.

SPEAKER_02 23:06

Well, man, dude, that's that's you hit on the the reason for this right there. Like the reason why it's worth going through this is oh, okay, I can love that part of me too. It's funny. You you mentioned the soul coach, I think was the term you used of the guy that you worked with. I uh hired somebody like that before I went to do ayahuasca for the first time. You know, he worked with like executives and stuff to get the biggest transformation, whatever. And it's funny because like I feel like it was kind of a waste of money, and yet here I am many years later, repeating this one thing that he said to me to all of our clients. So clearly it was true. And he said, All of this work, like the psychedelics, all this stuff, it's all about learning to fall more deeply in love with yourself. And when he said that to me, I was like, Man, that's fucking bullshit. That's not why I'm here, dude. Like, not at all. Get out of here with that shit, dude. And now we are repeating that to all of our clients because he was, of course, completely correct. So you you mentioned some some nice rhymes that you got going on inside your program. I want to circle back to these and basically how you help people out of this, but we're not done hearing your story yet, Mike. So you decide that you want to change that behavior. You kind of sounds like you kind of face it head on and almost just force yourself to not run away from this relationship. It's funny what you said, how you didn't see it coming when she wanted a divorce, and that's standard, and that's also like why you didn't see it coming, right? Because you were so not attuned to her reality of that relationship. The fact that someone is blindsided by the divorce, that's part of why the divorce is coming. But I I don't know how you solve that when you're in the midst of it. So, can can you share a little bit more about that relationship? What was the dynamic that led to uh to the divorce? Like in retrospect, what did you not see? Maybe because you didn't want to.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

The thing that I wasn't aware of is how numb I was in my body. I didn't understand. We're so abundant in information now. I didn't understand nervous system work and I didn't understand what numb meant, but I was numb. I was living in my head. I had an idea of what the relationship was, I had an idea of what life was, and I was functioning from my head. Tony Robbins describes it. If you're in your head, you're dead. And I was in my head. That entire relationship. I read hundreds of books, I went to events, bought courses, I was educating myself, but it wasn't leading to an integrated new way of being. And so I wasn't able to offer over the thing all women or partners need. You know, I'm just talking about my orientation, whoever's listening, find your own sexual orientation or gender orientation, but I identify as male. For me, I like I just I didn't know how to be a man. I was, I didn't know how to feel my feelings, I didn't know how to express my needs, I was lacking presence. I wasn't a present man, and a mature man is a present man. I wasn't present with my own experience, so I couldn't offer that to her. I was trying to find some pill to fix the distress that I was in in all of those books, which I call mental masturbation, but I didn't even know I was distressed because I was just living in my head. I was like, Oh, yeah, I'm gonna learn this thing, and it feels so good to learn the thing. And uh and I just created this huge wedge in our relationship because I started to treat her as a coaching client, not a lover. Yeah, that's a problem, big problem. And I would outsource my my power to her because she was more in her body and she would take the coaching, and she ended up living a really like impressive life. Published author, public speaker. She just really transformed. That's not all because of my coaching. She was the one doing the work, but it was a place for me to hide. It was me so afraid to be seen in the world because I was so disconnected to myself and my biology that I just kept playing out this really codependent dynamic. I was self-abandoning and giving myself to her, thinking that maybe I it would be big enough to feel the love come back.

SPEAKER_02 27:44

You said you you gave your power to her. What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_00 27:49

In the beginning of our relationship, before I met her, and it was just me single, I had just started doing a lot of deeper work, and I was really empowered. I was I had found my passion for entrepreneurship. I had started a business, it was profitable within the first couple months, and I was really strong in my health journey and my relationship to that. I had a group of friends, and when I met my ex-wife, I gave it all up very quickly and easefully. When she would then share her feelings and the struggles that she was having, instead of going to the gym, I would just drop and abandon that need that I had to just hold space for her, wanting to be a nice guy. Got it. Because in the past, I was so my familiar pattern is I just leave the relationship. So I just swung the other way. And with this woman, I just stayed all the time. It just, and so I let go of friendships, I let go of my needs, and then I started to foster a lot of resentment because I actually still wanted to do the things, but I was so codependent, I didn't think I would be lovable if I didn't choose her.

SPEAKER_02 29:05

Got it. Okay, so you're abandoning yourself and what you need basically to make sure that you're being chosen by this person over here. Because that's proof then that I am in fact lovable and I am good enough because she's great and she's choosing me right now.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:21

And you you said something else about sort of hiding behind her success. Uh did I hear that right? So explain that to me a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00 29:31

Because I was so dissociated and not fully connected to my experience, I wasn't able to feel life's report card of Mike, you're not progressing into the thing. Oh, you want to create content on YouTube. You bought all the camera gear, but you're not releasing a video. Mike, you you're just you're acquiring a whole bunch of things to go do the thing, but you aren't doing the thing. And so then I would do the easier thing, and I would just ref project all of my stuck places onto her, and then I would just coach her. Hey, well, you need to do this and you need to do that, and you need to make this tweak in your video, and then she would do it so I would feel satiated by seeing her success and feel gratified by it because it was my delusion of, oh yeah, I'm doing it, but it wasn't me actually doing it.

SPEAKER_02 30:23

It's always so much easier to tell everyone else what they should do. This is Duncan Trussell said this on a podcast once. This like hit me like a a ton of bricks when I was in grad school still. He was just talking about this exact thing. He's like, take every single piece of advice you've ever given to somebody else and now tell that to yourself. And none of us want to fucking do that, man. It's so difficult. Are you are you familiar with Steven Pressfield and all of his work, like the war of art and things like that? Uh, I haven't no, not not deeply. You would love this stuff. So he describes some of this as what he calls a shadow career because he's he's a writer and he didn't start actually writing and publishing until he was like 50 or 60 years old or something. He describes how he lived so many different shadow careers because he was doing something that scratched the itch of being a writer, like that is his true calling, that's his purpose. He was doing all these things that were felt interesting or whatever, but they were all distractions. They were all things that kept him off of his path, but kept him feeling just enough of that to feel like, no, this is good, this is what I need to be doing. So it's not exactly applying the term shadow and like younggi and shadow work, but it's kind of parallel to it. So that's what it sounds like. You were almost living a shadow life through that woman because you were telling her to do all the things you ought to have been telling yourself to do and still getting that dopamine and still getting that gratification from seeing it, but you weren't actually living any of it. At least that's that's what I'm hearing.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

Oh, I wasn't living it at all. I was living out my shadow expression. And for anyone listening, the way that I define shadow is the challenged part of us. It's the little kid part of us that is learning how to grow up and mature into a creative force of energy that is serving humanity outside of ourselves. That's the growing up part. And so I had an immature movement of energy inside of me, my shadow, but I projected it onto someone else and controlled her. And my control of her was instantly gratifying, but harming my future self. And it wasn't until she left that I felt the honest mirror back of, oh my God, for the last few years of my life, I've been just exhausting my creative life force to something that is completely out of proportion of health. Our partner is never meant to be a client, our partner is never meant to be a project. And if it becomes that, we are completely losing ourselves. We are in codependence. And I had to lose it to realize it. And then once I could go back and feel the pain of seven years of abandonment of my mission in prime years of my life, that was extremely motivating of learning the actual integrated lesson. I will never do that again. I will take life's report card and my feedback of did I do the thing I said I wanted to do? And if I didn't, it's not embodied, it's not real. It's just a fantasy. And that has been my forever motivator of execution so that I can feel the satisfaction of the man that I'm becoming.

SPEAKER_02 33:42

You use that phrase life's report card a few times. Explain that to me. How do you think about that? Because it seems to be like some the a phrase that you kind of use a lot with your clients, or just to make sense of this. So define that for me.

SPEAKER_00 33:55

Yeah. For me, I found report cards really painful in school because I barely passed. And so I always wanted better grades, but I never got them. So when I'm saying life report card, I'm actually speaking to a really simple way for our brain to take in information to see where we're actually at. Because we can get lost in fantasy, we can get lost as humans in certain ideas. Makes me think of, you know, someone who tells all of their friends they're gonna do this big thing. This is their dream, they're gonna do it. But then it's seven, 10 years later and they're still talking about when they're gonna do it. And it's really exhausting to hold space for something that's not actually happening. And so when I say life's report card, what I'm really speaking to is especially when I'm working with men who are in partnership and they're wanting to show up as a more present man, the life's report card is okay, you offered that thing. You shared that phrase with her. How did she receive it? What was her emotional response? What was the look on her face? Did she move towards you? Does she now feel happier in your presence? Is she now opening up and wanting to pleasure you? If not, your report card is that didn't work. That wasn't it, it didn't land. Let's try again.

SPEAKER_02 35:20

So the the objective feedback, regardless of whatever fantasies you've got in your head, like how is the real world responding to what you are claiming that you are going to do. Okay, got it. Um, it's it's it's funny. The report cards carry such different connotations depending on on you know backgrounds, upbringing, stuff like that. Yeah, dude.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

Totally, yeah. Just real observable data. If you could measure it with a video camera and describe it, that's life's report card. Sure. How well are you doing at that thing?

SPEAKER_02 35:53

Uh, just reminds me of a story my dad told us growing up that his father stabbed him in the arm with a fork one time at the dinner table. Cause my dad is like he got like a C in Spanish or something like that. And it led to that. So, you know, uh my dad has work to do on the emotional level, but also I never got stabbed in the arm with a fork. So progress. Thank you, dad. Good job. Um, there's a couple of there's a couple other things you shared that I want to I want to dig into a little bit more before I hear about your work now. Um I think the most important perhaps you said you didn't realize how numb you were in your body when you were in that relationship. I think that's something everyone should be able to relate to. I'm not gonna say it's something everyone can relate to because if you're so numb in your body, you you you don't know that you're numb, right? And just as you didn't see this coming with a divorce, this is something I've been thinking about a lot, actually, is like, how can we actually accelerate the learning of something for somebody? Because you said before you're kind of like a slow learner and like you had to hit rock bottom to see these things. I feel similarly about myself, man. Like, like you can tell me all the advice in the world until I have made the mistake, fucked the thing up, felt the pain from it, and then come out the other side. The advice is meaningless. And then after you've gone through that, now the advice is just shorthand as a reminder of all that. And I've wondered a lot about this because ideally, I mean, we're teaching things, we have clients that we teach things to, so theoretically, there should be some, I don't want to say shortcuts because you still have to go through it, but some sort of like express path. But all right, first of all, talk to us about the numbness. How how how can somebody even know if they are? Because inherent in the word numbness is like I'm not feeling anything, right? So, how do I even know if I am numb? What are the symptoms that somebody would look for? Um, because I I I think it's very prevalent. And even I, as someone who teaches this stuff to other people, I have a lot of trouble when we do embodiment practices and things like that. I don't feel much in my physical body. We're kind of joking about this before. I usually either feel a stomachache or I'm itchy. I kind of joke that like most men feel uh hunger or anger. That's like the two go-to's or horniness. So just talk talk to me about this idea of numbness, why that's important, why that matters and what what we can do about it.

SPEAKER_00 38:16

Yeah, numbness, why it's important is we are in a body and it runs and functions from a nervous system, and it is the vehicle that we are driving in. If we don't understand what's happening for it, we won't be able to respond in a conscious way to move us in the direction we want to go.

SPEAKER_02 38:44

I like the vehicle analogy because half the time, if your car is making a weird noise, you just turn up the volume on the radio and you keep driving, brother.

SPEAKER_00 38:51

Bingo, bingo. The perfect example of numbness. If we are so caught up in our own experience and the tunes are blaring and we miss the check engine light, we miss the tranny overheating light, if we miss the low fuel gauge, we're not going to be driving in that vehicle very long. Now, what's tricky being human is we can actually go decades of being numb until the signals get loud enough because we actually are quite resilient beings in our bodies. We can smoke, you know, I've watched people smoke cigarettes for decades, drink coffee every day, not eat veggies, and they keep going. They just keep going. And that would be an example of numbness, not fully connected to the vehicle that they're in to know what ingredients lead to it flourishing. It's super important because there's so many men. I think this is true of all men, because I think the DNA inside of all of us, if we were born with a penis, there's a really deep draw and desire to become something in the world, to become a leader of something. It's just innate. We want to penetrate. You know, we have this penis and it's designed to penetrate a woman, but I believe it's a metaphor for penetrating life with our mission. But if we don't have access to what's happening inside of it, we won't know how to penetrate. We won't receive the feedback of is this being well received or not? We have to understand the vehicle that we're in and honor it so that we can move and adjust in a way uh that we can be proud of. So we have we've got this penis.

SPEAKER_02 40:38

We're meant to penetrate things. You see it as a metaphor. That was that was the last thing that I heard. I was like, dude, come on, how's it gonna stop right now?

SPEAKER_00 40:44

Yeah. So I really feel that this physical body is just a mere representation of this spiritual journey. So we have this penis, and it's designed to penetrate and impregnate to create new life. When I look at that on a spiritual sense, I really believe every man is here to penetrate life with his unique version of leadership. How can the use of his unique power and expression be of service to humanity? I believe that's true of all men.

SPEAKER_02 41:17

Say say that again about uh you see our physical, like the physical plane essentially just as a metaphor representation of what we're meant to be doing spiritually. Is that accurate? I don't want to twist your words.

SPEAKER_00 41:29

Yeah, that's how I see it. There's this when I look at my physiology, I have this really easeful nature to want to penetrate my partner. I I love it. I love the friction, I love wanting to learn how to open her up to be in that experience. But there's a there's a penetrating energy, which means there's certain ingredients I have to learn in this human body to get the life's report card of how well am I leading for her to want to be penetrated. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 42:05

I know you're speaking from your male perspective. We're two white dudes here. So what's the female equivalent of that? What is their energy and their spiritual reflection of that?

SPEAKER_00 42:13

Yeah, so define the two differences. And again, my orientation, you find your own orientation in relationship to this. I just feel this is masculine energy, feminine energy, and I've noticed patterns in the uniqueness of certain what we're born with. And so for a man, a man, it's this strong nature and desire of this energy of becoming, it's doing, becoming feminine energy, it's the energy of being and receivership. So the virgin, when I think of Courtney, her forever work is whoa, can I work with all the parts in me to receive the amount of power that my husband has and is approaching me with? Can she do her work to soften the edges that resist it? Can she uh teach and guide me in the deliverance of my power so that her system does soften and surrender? Because if she's in that practice and she's able to speak up to where things don't feel good too fast, too much, slow down, if she isn't in that part of her uh wild woman, her mature wise woman, she won't be able to use her feminine energy to express and mirror back, not it, not feeling good. And what I found that just seems to be an interesting representation the better she's at of growing up to receive the amount of power that I have to offer and offer me the power that she has in the receivership, the more inspiration that I have to want to satisfy her. To provide for her. And then it directly translates into my mission. So when I think of us mastering this dance of polarity between the two of us, it directly mirrors, oh, I'm attracting more clients. There's bigger shifts with my clients because it's teaching me how to lead and guide my own energy in a way that's well received.

SPEAKER_02 44:23

Agreed. It's it's ideally, it is this like flywheel that is is self-sustaining and accelerating, and it touches all different aspects of life. That's why I love jujitsu so much, even though you're speaking of abandoning yourself and your fitness and everything in your first relationship. I am the stereotypical bluebelt who started a family and quit training. But it's the the maths will be there for me. But um I see jujitsu as that. It's a it's a metaphor for everything going on in life and relationships and business, everything. So I definitely agree with you on this front. You mentioned growing up Catholic.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

Can I add one thing to that? Because I love what you just shared there, and this is because I've had that same insight. You know, when I think of every sport I've done, I was big gym rat. You know, I was in the gym from the age of 12 on, just really incessantly. I've been in jiu-jitsu, and what I've noticed is I really feel that any practice is just mirroring the dance of true healthy embodiment, which is feminine energy claims, masculine energy devotes. And so, what I mean by this, and translate it to is life will mirror back and invite someone to do a thing. So let's say there's a passion, and life says, Hey, David, you should do jujitsu. That's the feminine, it's life speaking. And if you're attuned enough and aware, you might move and mobilize towards, oh yeah, I want to do jujitsu. I feel something speaking to me. And if you fully devote to it, just being in that dance of devotion to a practice will start to unlock and reveal so many different layers of self, the psyche, how this translates into being a father, how this translates to be a partner. And it's going to be translatable in all areas of life. And what's really cool about this is it's actually just going back to the simplicity of the dance between masculine and feminine energy. That's why some people can do the practice of meditation and reach total enlightenment and freedom and inner peace. Learn how to be with the complexities of life. Some people it's jujitsu, some people it's painting, some people it's but ultimately it's life saying, You actually have to learn how to relate with me and devote and commit to me to know the depth of what I have to offer you. But if you leave, you won't get the richness of the teachings.

SPEAKER_02 46:50

Said feminine energy claims and masculine energy devotes. Where is that coming from? Help me wrap my head around that.

SPEAKER_00 46:57

One of my favorite definitions uh from Albert Einstein is if you want to understand anything better, look deep into nature. And so when I have investigated through this lens of looking at nature, what's really interesting to me is with almost every single species, I haven't found one where this isn't true yet. The woman is the one, the feminine energy of whatever species is the one that decides whether the masculine energy gets let in or not. So we think of these birds, you know, I think of the natural discovery channel, and there's these birds, and there's like these men are like making putting all these fancy rocks, and they're flashing their feathers, and they're trying to do whatever they can to be claimed. But what I found is feminine energy is ultimately the one that says, I claim you. I see the qualities that resonate with me that I want perpetuated into pro into a generation ahead. And if that feminine does choose to claim, she's the one deciding what ingredients are going to pass down. There's just like that practical biological piece of procreation, survival of the fittest, where they would choose the strongest. And I'd say, as humanity, where things have gotten interesting, is if women aren't fully in the woman experience of themselves, they'll just accept, not claim, they will accept whatever's familiar in their patterning from what experience of love they witnessed growing up. That's being unconscious, that's being numb. But if we learn how to grow up the little parts in ourselves, women will actually be more discerning. They'll have boundaries to the unhealthy expression where they aren't being respected and revered for the role that they are, and they won't want to claim him. They'll say, back off, buddy, and they'll actually be more discerning and choose one that will actually help her evolution and vice versa.

SPEAKER_02 49:02

Okay. I'm more on board with this theory than now. Because it I would say maybe like healthy feminine energy and masculine energy or refined. Because my my initial thought is well, like an unhealthy masculine claims a lot of shit. He's like, Well, that's mine, this is mine, this is mine, because it's acting out of like the ego self and wanting to lay claim to things. Uh, so I'm with you.

SPEAKER_00 49:26

Different though, because what this is again the power of words and the power of consciousness. If what I would say when I hear you describe that, I would actually say that's taking, that's not claiming. Very different.

SPEAKER_02 49:38

Sure, yeah. And and that's why when you said that at first, I was like, the fuck is this guy talking about, dude?

SPEAKER_00 49:45

So this is the dirt discernment, and this is why I love that we're having this conversation because it's nuanced. There's a subtlety, there's a feeling, there's a difference in the energy of even the words, and there is a place where a lot of men are men are taking and aren't even aware that it's taking energy because it just feels good to mobilize and do the thing, or the woman just does come in and believes whatever it is that he says in a text that's maybe not the full truth, and he's actually uh manipulating so very different, claiming is it's funny, even the the inversion of the devotion as well.

SPEAKER_02 50:24

You even shared before this first marriage that you were in, you would attract all these wonderful women. You you use the term doting, and I almost wonder if that's because you had this avoidant attachment style and you're attracting people with an anxious attachment style who need to be chosen, and that is just a recipe for disaster when that pure devotion actually becomes abandoning themselves to people please and to just do whatever their partner wants. I maybe I'm reading too far into it, but it is an interesting thing when those two patterns kind of come together. So, yes, there's a refined devotion that's very different from just like pleasing your partner or abandoning yourself to do whatever that other person wants.

SPEAKER_00 51:09

Yeah, totally. And there's some truth in what you're sharing in the pattern, and this is one I've sat with very intimately to go to the depth on when you described the pattern. And what I noticed is the pattern was more attached to my biological grandmother who fought for my life. She was so loving, so present, so caring that that created an imprint for me. That a woman who was really emotionally available and had a lot of resource and had such a richness to her, big open heart, that's what I would attract in women. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 51:51

I'm glad that we defined our terms more carefully. So you uh what one last thing from your upbringing, your background that I kind of want to dig into. Uh, we talked a lot about shame. You mentioned growing up Catholic. Religion can be one of the biggest sources of shame in Catholicism. Obviously, it's a joke, like the Catholic guilt. How how did that color your experiences like all through life, all through these different stages that we've been talking about? In the beginning was the word yeah, nice, uh great timing.

SPEAKER_00 52:28

Yeah, in the beginning, it was this relationship of just naivety, not really sure what it was, just showed up on Sunday because I had to show up on Sunday, and the inner experience that I couldn't fully intellectualize until I was older, is I felt very unseen and invisible. It was really confusing to me because it just perpetuated the wounding I already had inside of I don't know where I belong in this, because the guy at the front isn't asking me any questions, he's just talking at me and telling me to stand or to kneel and the like it's so controlling. I didn't feel guided in it. It wasn't an experience where I felt like a participant, I just felt like a soldier, and I really rebelled against it because I didn't feel good in my body, so I really pushed against it, which is probably part of why my grades were so poor, because I went to private school and I just would ask. Once I got older, I would challenge certain questions in religion class, and the reply would often be, Well, that's just how it is. That's what God said. That's not great. And so there's no dialogue back and forth, and they were actually pretty good questions, so it was confusing. And as I got older, this is what's interesting is I rebelled against it so damn hard. I was angry and enraged at Catholicism. I was so mad and angry and vocal about it. And then what's interesting is the older I got, I started to become aware of how much the stories of the Bible trickled in and I remembered them. And then I would start living my life, and all of a sudden, one of the stories of the Bible would come up, and then there would be some insight in there for me that would be super applicable to the experience I was having in life. And I would integrate it and work with it, and my life would get better. And what's interesting is now I'm 41 and I'm not religious, but I have a deep inner relationship to my version of God, you know, prayer that I have every day is God that lives deep, deep within me, take up more space in my thoughts, my feelings, and my actions so that I can be of service to humanity. I really feel that there is part of that rooted in me basing in a culture where there was wisdom, where there was health. And then it was just a long journey for me to find my right relationship to it, where it's actually nourishing for me and the people around me.

SPEAKER_02 55:21

I I well it's funny because regardless of how angry the the church makes you, there is a lot of wisdom in those books. Like that can't be denied. And it's just like I was saying before, where you would go, you would go through some life experience, probably feel some pain, and be like, oh man, this is just like what Job went through. This is just like God's instruction to Noah. And it's what I'm saying, where the advice is meaningless until you've had the lived experience, and now the story becomes shorthand for the experience that you had. And going back to my question to you, really earlier, which is well, how do we help people bridge that gap so that there's less suffering? I won't say no suffering, because I think suffering is necessary to some degree, but no more than is what is strictly necessary. And I think the answer is learning to listen to I would say God's plan for you. You could call it the universe, you could call it, you know, your intuition, what have you. And I think this is literally the opposite of numbness when you're actually listening to all of those signals that are coming in, the the check engine light, as we talked about before. When you're actually in tune with that, it's not to say that there will never be hardship or suffering, but you are on the express path out of it instead of the scenic route of struggling in a relationship that was failing for seven years or or what have you. So that was not a good podcast host question. That was just me rambling at you, Mike. But I'll I'll let you respond if you'd like to. Uh I want to hear about your work now and and how you actually teach things to people and what you guide people through.

SPEAKER_00 57:00

Yeah, I I love what you shared there, and what I'm hearing is what's the pathway to reduce the amount of suffering as a man. And for me, what I found, and it's the whole foundation of my work, what I describe as relational authority, so I can even bridge the two here. Please, is what's completely transformed my life is following a certain set of principles that have led to me really deeply loving myself and confidently bringing myself to my work that has attracted opportunities that bring me an experience of I'm living a thriving life. I have deep, meaningful relationships in my life. I love how I show up as a father. I love how I show up as a father, as a partner. And when things get hard, I have the tools to move through them with grace and ease. And so, what I have found is relational authority is such a powerful way to reduce suffering because it's accepting suffering. So, in my work, there's three pillars I have found are very helpful to become a fully mature man. And the first pillar is initiation, second is integration, and the third is inspiration. And what I found is life is hard. The second we are born into a body and we leave our mother, it's traumatic. It's scary. We're gonna have a whole bunch of feelings and experiences. It's and if we aren't held well in it, we won't be able to integrate and we won't live a very inspiring life because trauma that doesn't process gets stuck in the body. That's where it's hard to move through our blockages, our limiting beliefs. That's just stuck trauma. Energy that was too fast, too much, too intense. But if we start to see life through a whole new lens, wanting to be a relational warrior and learn relational authority, now we're looking at life through a different lens of oh, life is hard. I'm going to let myself feel the pressure and the tension to be initiated. Initiation is pressure and tension that squeezes us from childhood into adulthood. That's what initiation was intended to do. Taking a child who has gathered all his experiences of life and feels safe in his body because his mother really attuned to him in an ideal situation. And then at 12 years old, the father takes him away. And the pressure and the tension of not having mom there now and this masculine energy, but love, respect, care, mentorship, guidance, that pressure and tension squeezes him into who he's here to be, shows him that he's capable, shows him, you know, his power, what I describe as gentle power. So if we start to see that all pressure and tension in our life is initiating us into a more mature version of ourselves, now we can start to see the pressure and the tension as something trying to teach us something, not we're a victim to it. So if we can see, oh, ooh, I'm being squeezed, and we just see it as that, oh, I'm being squeezed, this financial situation, my partner being emotionally upset with me and enraged and calling me out in some pattern, oh, this boss at work, or a client who's just shaming me, whatever it is, if we can feel the pressure, we can get curious. Wow, what let's just take a moment here. What's life inviting me to learn? If we go into that curious mind, often we get an insight, an aha, an intuition to go in some direction, to say a certain thing. If we do that, if we capture the insight, that aha moment in the shower, a creative idea, it can die there and we don't go into the full initiation. Or we can grab that aha and get curious on the second pillar, which is integration. What's the new behavior? What is the new way of being in the doing that will bring me into a more mature version of myself?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:26

So basically, what do I do with that aha? What do I do with that that that knowledge? The the invitation that the pressure and the tension of this current experience is inviting me to learn. I can either say, Oh, that's neat and stay the same, or we can integrate that. Is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:44

Bingo. Knowledge is knowing, wisdom is doing.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:50

I'll share something else with you about me in a moment, but continue. So we've got the initiation, and I we talked about this earlier. I was it's another term that kind of throws up some red flags in my mind because you see these programs out there where you pay $10,000 for some dude to yell at you in like this Navy SEAL boot camp. It's like, what are we doing here, bro?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:08

So I I mean, essentially what you're saying is every uncomfortable situation becomes a path to growth. This is what we talk about with intention setting with the medicine in terms of microdosing. Really, this is karma yoga, dude. The the Vedas figured all this shit out 10,000 years ago in India. It's just working with any situation that's coming up and asking how where where is my path to God within this uncomfortable situation? Um, before we move on, you you you explained it. You had some beautiful way of phrasing it that I didn't catch. So, how do you define the initiation? It's like pressure and tension for the purpose of how did you phrase that?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:43

Yeah, so initiation, simply put, is pressure and tension that squeezes us from childhood into adulthood.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:52

Okay, I like that. I just had on this developmental therapist, and we talked about how the baby is an active participant in birth, and you're literally describing like the pressure and tension of the uterus, like squeezing you out the birth canal, man. All right, so that's the initiation that gives us some aha moment. Talk to me about the integrations basically. Well, what do we do with that now? Like, yeah, so what, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:16

Yeah. So, an example of what it doesn't look like if I'm not being initiated, when I think of when I was in my early 20s, married, super codependent, I had the insight of Mike. You should create content on YouTube, you should share the message you feel inspired to share with the world because you've lived a lot of experience. The non-initiated version has that idea, and that idea just is an idea that comes in the shower when I'm in nature, and I just keep dishonoring it by letting it fall to the wayside and it doesn't turn into a new behavior. Yeah. What it looks like when we say yes to the initiation, we get the insight. I honor it, I receive it with the importance of, you know, in your work, the medicine, the medicine showed me something. I'm gonna honor it in this relationship and I'm gonna write this down. This is important. I think we all know this moment of we have this brilliant idea and we think to ourselves, I will never forget this. This is so good. And then the next day, ah shit, what was it? It's like that's that's a missed initiation. And so if we start to see all those moments as sacred and we put them somewhere that we can come back to and turn it into a seed, planted into a conversation, a new BA behavior, reaching out and inviting someone into a business deal, whatever it is, if that turns into something that can be measured practically and looked at in the schedule of you are planning to become the person, the new person that life is inviting you into, now we're in the juicy spot because now we're living a life of integration, which, as you know, is the most important part of medicine ceremonies. If we we can have some big life-changing experience, but if we don't integrate it into practices, regulation vacation, dude, it meant nothing.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:10

That's what it's all about.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:11

Yeah, exactly. And this is maturity, this is what it means to grow up. I actually now need to go do the work. Yeah, that was exciting to process all the past and all these things and see what I'm here to do, but now you gotta do it, you gotta be the person. And then what I what's so cool is when we start being the person we're shown we're meant to be. Now we're in the process of integration. And what organically happens is we graduate into I think the part we all want is living a life of inspiration, which is where life starts to bring in all these serendipitous moments where you write down in your journal, I want to make 50 grand this month, and two weeks later, at the last moment of that two weeks, some Messages and signs for $40,000. And oh miraculous. Where did that come from? I didn't see it happening. Moments like this start to be the new way of being. It starts to become normal where there's you know, you think of someone and they call you. It's where life starts to be a very inspiring experience to be having because there's an accepting of the pressure and the tension, not fearing it, moving it into some new embodied wisdom, becoming that person, and then life mirroring back. Yeah, that's it. Thank you for doing that. I want to reward you with more abundance and prosperity and meaningful connections and opportunities because that's embodiment and that's what we need in the world for the heavens to be bridged into the earth.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:51

And we talked about your scriptural basis of some of these things. To he who has more is given, to he who has not, that which he has is taken away. It's the parable of the talents right there. Chills. Um, okay. So this is a beautiful framework, Mike, that you've described of how this process can look, should look. How does someone actually do that? How how do you shorten the period of suffering that it takes to do that? How how do you actually help people to do this? Like, what is what is the coaching around this look like?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:21

Yeah. Connection is the most important ingredient for it to be able to happen. So when I think of all the years I spent reading books, I couldn't integrate it. I was stuck on pillar one. I was having all the initiations of ideas and insights and breakthroughs and dreams and fantasies. And I'm going to, I'm going to, I will one day. But I was stuck on integration because I wasn't in my body. I hadn't processed my past. My trauma was driving the bus. So if somebody is stuck, this is the filter. If you're listening to this, you get to find yourself and where you're at in this process. If you are having lots of breakthrough moments, but it's not turning into a new way of being, you're having an integration problem. If you're having an integration problem, you're actually having a connection problem. We can't bridge ourselves into an experience we didn't experience in the past. This is why coaching is so powerful. We can have an idea of I'm going to do this thing, but why do we hire coaches? Because they've done the thing we haven't done yet. And just the proximity, proximity's power, just the confidence that they're holding in their nervous system can easily hold space for the distress and the fear of the person who hasn't gone there yet. It's unknown territory. That safety and presence in that person's nervous system is now being transferred to the person that is the student.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:59

Yeah, it's interesting to uh characterize it that way with coaching. There is a book that my listeners will be sick of hearing me mention, because I mention it on every podcast, uh, called Coyote Medicine. Um, and it is written by this gentleman who's a Native American shaman healer and also a Stanford trained physician. And he says that the healer's job is purely to maintain 100% confidence that their patient is going to get better until the patient comes to believe that for themselves. And I've thought about this quite a bit with my background as a doctor of physical therapy, now doing the plant medicine healing stuff. I found that very applicable. But I feel like it's precisely what you just described, just in the in the coaching context, just the proximity to someone who has done that. So I have 100% confidence that it's possible because I did it, and now I'll help you along that way too, until you get to that point where you have that confidence in yourself as well. It's just interesting that that crossover.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:57

Yeah, man, I'm getting chills because that's ultimately biologically what we need to thrive. We need relational attunement and safety. If we feel safe, the healthy healer that lives inside of all of us, our nervous system, will adapt, will shake out, will move the complexities of life and grow up and evolve into capacity. But if we don't feel safe, the energy gets stuck and we're we are immovable to graduate into more maturity. That's why coaches are helpful, and that's why the greats, you know, it makes me think of Tony Robbins. This guy's, you know, late 60s, and he he forever invests in himself, forever is hiring the next person, the next mentor, the man, and then you look at his life, it's pretty inspiring. Yeah, you know, uh, investing hundreds of millions of dollars to serving people without food and the sex trafficking trade. It's just it's so much resource, it's so much to give back to humanity. But I'm sharing that because I really see it from the lens of that guy is a forever student. He's forever willing to look at the places he's stuck and get support, move into proximity to somebody who's transcended that place. This is why when we go back to some of these really healthy cultures, you know, there's this idea of a guru. What is a guru? Somebody who is so free in themselves, they can hold loving presence to their students, and that guides them into the experience they're longing for and projecting out onto him. Not better than just the different vibration. When I think of it with my clients, one of the great, and this has been the mystifying in the beginning. When I started coaching, I was trying to do coaching and I was like, I just want to get it right. And I don't have to all the information, and yeah, information's important. But what I started to learn over year over the years is if I just do my work, if I just heal the trauma that's in my body, I can just sit there in loving presence, like you described, and I can just see where this person's going once they work through all the places that are stuck, afraid, resisting, resentful, and just sit there and love them, love them, love them. And then eventually they start to have the insights. You know, it's obviously not that simple, but that's the quality I have to hold in my nervous system. And what I found is transformation happens in the proximity to presence. If transformation isn't happening, guess what I do? Where am I not present in my own experience that's impacting the field? And then I'll go do my work that lightens the load. I go back to the client, and then all of a sudden that place moves.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:56

Oh I I like that way of looking at it where you're essentially taking ownership of that experience and saying, like, well, if if this person is not getting better, if this person's not having results, where have I not done my job in my own life? Where have I not worked on my own stuff to create the conditions for that person to have that result?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:16

Which is going back to the piece that I talk about that we explored earlier, they are my report card of how embodied I am. If they're not shifting, what is it in me that's impacting the field that's slowing down the shift?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:36

You're seeing me staring off into space because I'm thinking through all of my clients right now. Do you do you think that there is something to be said? There's there's some outliers. Um because you know, the the adage of you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. I I've found there's some folks who are still so attached to their story, they don't seem really ready to actually move on from it, no matter how much work we do for them. And I've I've tripped myself up on this because we've we've had some of these people come through our program. It's like, well, they must have wanted it some degree because they signed up, they paid me money, right? They they said they wanted to be here, but perhaps sometimes they wanted to want to change, but they're not truly there yet, to the point that it's actually less uncomfortable to spend a few thousand dollars than it is to actually do something about it. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:31

Makes all the sense in the world. And I imagine it's tricky in certain areas of work. For me, the there's a filtering process that I've had to learn.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:42

I think it's really on me where that guy shouldn't have signed up.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:46

This is where, yeah, and it gives me chills there because there's a place where if I'm really doing my work and I'm attuned to the situation that's happening within the relationship of the person who's sitting in front of me, exploring whether we're gonna work together or not. If I'm attuning to what's actually in front of me and I'm feeling my own experience, I'll be able to get the message whether I can help and support the person. Yeah. And if I can't, I usually feel it in my body. I start to all of a sudden, if I'm doing a discovery call, when I know I'm gonna be able to help the person, I get lots of goosebumps and chills, and I can see their past already. And then I'll say something and they start crying. Like, oh, okay, there's so much resonance, we're gonna work magic together. But if I'm sitting there and I'm really uncomfortable and I'm getting triggered, and I actually part of me doesn't want to be there, I already know there's something that I probably'm probably not the person to help this part of the journey. And then I'll actually say, This isn't a resonant fit. And that's the that's been a hard part of me to overcome because the people pleaser, nice guy, the scarcity inside of me in the past is I need every client that comes in the door. And I I really had to get a to a deeper relationship to spirit, to God, and trust. I'm not here to serve everyone. And trusting, if I can find the courage in myself to attune to the situation and say no to the person that is a pretty clear no, I'll have to trust that they'll be taken care of somewhere else. And I have to trust that I'll be taken care of of somebody who is a very aligned fit to then fill that seat. For sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:28

Last thing, Mike, that I want to hear about is how does all of this relate to your, I would say probably your most important job, your most important role, and that is being a father to your son. So I I almost wonder, um, it's like you know a little bit too much, perhaps, about the nervous system development and the attachment and showing up as a man and things like that. Do you ever overanalyze what you're doing as a father, or have you found yourself falling into like perfectionism with that because you're aware of all of these things?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:00

Yeah, all the time. Yeah. I I have the standards inside of me exactly to not repeat the past that I experience and not to become my father where I felt so hurt, or the biological dad who tried to have me aborted. There's a lot of there's a lot of stuff there in me. And there's a place where I overinvest my awareness into how I'm showing up for my son, and that level of perfectionism creates pressure and tension on him. And it, if it's too much pressure and tension, instead of initiating him, it'll stunt him. And so my job is to track what his actual experience is and take that as my report card to where am I at? Am I lost in a delusion? Do I have a blind spot hidden here? Am I making him a project? The feedback for me is if he's continually reaching for me, if he's expressing his love with me, if he feels safe enough to say no and push against me, I'm doing a good enough job because he's in his healthy attachment and there's enough safety between us where he's being his authentic self. What's interesting to go to your question is there's been places where I have projected I'm scanning his nervous system too much, and I'm thinking and I'm looking for where a rupture my partner Courtney and I had is now gonna mess him up. And I'm so afraid that he's now gonna be traumatized because we fought and we yelled a bit and he got scared, and now he's just gonna be wrecked for the rest of his life. And then we'll sit there and I'll look at him and I'm projecting all over him, and we'll sit there. I remember the first time it happened. We're just sitting there on the couch and we're watching him, and he's just having his entire unique experience. He's not dissociated, he's just playing with his toys and he's happy, and we're sitting there, and we're just so upset that oh no, what have we done? And he's totally fine. He just he was in his own experience, he knows that we love each other. We've ruptured and repaired so many times in front of him. He knows we love each other, it's just a moment. And what was interesting is one time we checked it out and like, hey, Cedar, and we're you know, we're are you okay? How are you feeling? What are you feeling? Like, ah, I didn't like it when you yelled at mama. That hurt my feelings, but it's okay. I yell at you sometimes, and then he just moves on, and we're and we sit there and we're crying. Oh, we're just feeling our past where we didn't get that from our father or our mother, and then we're actually in this big healing experience because he's actually so much more held and secure in himself, and so it's been this really beautiful mirror and dance of yeah, we get it wrong a lot of the time, and we just need to show up and try. It's not about perfection, it's not about us now over uh attuning to his experience to try to prevent the things that we have. It's just we are going to do our work, feed our relationship, our work for Courtney and I is we deepen our bond so that we have this overflowing resource to accurately attune to what is his experience so that we can just guide and support him in his beautifully said, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:36

I love it. Um Mike, I I will have provided, you know, all the relevant links and everything in the description for this. But is there any any place that you would ask people to go or any anything that people should check out, anything that you want to ask of our listeners who uh maybe felt personally called out by some of the stuff that we discussed, or you know, we we spoke about the shame being a motivator. So if anyone out there is feeling motivated by some of this conversation, what should they do?

SPEAKER_00 1:21:02

Yeah, if there was a resonance to what was shared today, I could send you to my social media or newsletter. But really, if there was something that hit today, I would say I'll share the link, go check out. I have an online program called The Initiated Man. It's super risk-free. It's free for seven days, then it's only 97 bucks a month. My invitation is if you feel called out, something got revealed, receive the initiation, move towards the integration and move towards the space that's speaking to you. And it might not be mine, but if it is, don't let the initiation die and then repeat the same old pattern that leads to the same old experience. Really choose to do something different.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:49

Mike, thank you so much, man, for for talking with me. Um, I apologize for not perhaps being a hundred percent on my game, but also stepping out of being the perfect podcast host role. Perhaps allowed some of what you shared to land with me in a way that I actually needed to hear it more. So thank you very much just for being with me today, Mike. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:10

Oh, chill, such a pleasure. Thanks for the conversation and being all of you, David, and for everyone listening. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:16

All right, guys, that's it for this episode of the podcast. Maybe you learned a little something, maybe you got entertained, maybe you came away uh from this episode being like, Yeah, that Mike guy really knows his stuff. Or maybe you're like, Yeah, I can see why David doesn't like this men's work thing. I don't know. I still don't know how I feel, frankly. I gotta listen back to this episode again and uh and sit with this a little bit more. Because sure, there's absolutely a few things that I still need to work on as a a coach, as a guide to other people, as a father, as a husband, just as a person, 100%. So not trying to say that I am uh I'm perfect here or I have all the answers. So who knows? Maybe one day I will be a client of Mike's. We shall see. Until that day, and until next time, thank you very much for listening. God bless you. I'll see you in the next episode.