Ep243. Pressure Filled Action Isn’t Required: Shifting From Survival Mode to Pressureless Productivity.

Most people are living in survival mode without realizing it. It shows up as constant pressure, stress, and the feeling that everything needs to be managed just to keep life from falling apart. 

But there’s another way to operate. When you develop awareness, use the right tools, and retrain your nervous system, you can move into pressureless productivity—where you still build, create, and grow without carrying that constant internal weight.

Key Takeaways

1. Most people are stuck in survival mode
Even when basic needs are met, the body stays in a state of pressure, scanning for problems and trying to maintain control.

2. Pressure isn’t required for productivity
You can still build, create, and move forward without relying on stress and urgency as your primary driver.

3. The four existential drives shape your life
Survival, self-indulgence, freedom, and meaning all need to be integrated—not just one or two.

4. Awareness, tools, and a new approach are required
Shifting out of survival mode takes conscious retraining, not just understanding.

5. The DRILL method creates real change
DRILL. Drop into your body, Recognize what your feeling, Inquire into the feeling, Listen to what they are trying to tell you, and Let them go—then take action from a grounded, pressureless state.

Notable Quotes

•  “Most people are living in survival mode and don’t even realize it.” 
•  “Pressure isn’t required for productivity.” 
•  “People will buy their way out of pain before they buy their way into possibility.” 
•  “You don’t need pressure to build—you need a different way to operate.” 
•  “You can move from pressure-filled hustle to pressureless productivity.” 

Call to Action

If you’re ready to move from pressure-filled hustle to pressureless productivity…

Reach out to Mike Kitko at mike@innerwealthglobal.com

Music Credit: "What's Left of Me" by Wes Hoffman & Friends

Mike's Media:

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Transcript

The Feeling Something Is Missing

SPEAKER_00 2:11

You ever wake up feeling like there's something missing in your life? You ever feel the need to escape your business? Are you running your life or is your life running you? I'm my Kitko and I'll help you design and turn the life so authentic and align with who you really are. You'll get excited just to wake up. I'll help you create real wealth, success, and freedom from the inside out. Welcome to the Inner Wealth Podcast, where we learn and choose to live inspired each and every day.

Four Drives And The Plate Metaphor

SPEAKER_00 2:55

Maslow's hierarchy of needs and the David Hawkins scale, the emotional scale of consciousness, there are so many of, you know, I guess systems or approaches or or methods or patterns or structures that that'll share the exact same thing, basically. And so I'm not saying that this is brand new to civilization and to society and this is gonna like change everything. But the reason this came to be is because I looked at my life and I looked at how uh how I showed up and how I approached life. And I looked at especially, I looked at when things were going really, really well for me, and think when things felt really heavy for me, when things felt intense and strugglicious, one of my favorite words. And I looked at because I I love to contemplate my life. Like I like to say I'm an existential philosopher, and and that comes with contemplating life and the meaning behind all of it. And when I examined my life, but I I got to put the pieces together and understand the breadcrumbs of when things were really, really clicking and felt really light and inspired and felt awesome and felt expansive, and when they when they didn't feel those things. And there were certain times where I was after a certain thing in my life where other things dropped off. And it's almost like keeping plates, keeping plates spinning. And we want to keep all the plates spinning at the same time. Sometimes we feel like there has to be a plate that's on the ground, smashed to pieces, and that require us to glue it back together, put them, put them all back together. And then, you know, when you get another one spinning, when you get that one spinning, then another one falls out. And we it we don't have to live this way. We really don't. And it literally takes a new approach to living and uh to um to really getting clear about not just not just what who we are and what we're after, but what life is asking from us and what life is showing us. And this is called like raising your level of consciousness, raising your level of awareness. And it's the people that have raised their level of awareness and consciousness that live at a higher plane of just overall being and understanding. Those are the people that can keep all of all four plates spinning. And I know some of those people. I've worked with some of those people. My very, very closest friend has been my uh been my greatest source of understanding because he does have all four plates spinning. Every once in a while, one gets a little wobbly and he goes over and taps it and he spins it a little faster and it stays up. So it's not that it's not that things don't get out of balance, it's that we quickly know when they're out of balance and we understand that and we get it back in balance as uh as quickly as possible. And over time, the frequency of the out-of-balanceness and the magnitude out of the out-of-balance balancedness goes away. And if he were, if he were on this uh, on this podcast episode with me, he would attest to the exact same thing. It's not he has not that he has it all figured out. He just knows how, when it starts to get wobbly, when life starts to get a little wobbly, he knows how to get it back on track quickly. That's what we're here, that's what we're after. But it takes an understanding that most people are living from really one or maybe two in one or maybe two of these existential drives.

Survival And Self Indulgence Explained

SPEAKER_00 6:34

So if you recall last week, and if you haven't listened to last week's episode, which I believe was episode uh 292, I believe. Um, if you haven't listened to last week's episode, go back and revisit it, whatever, whatever episode number it was. But I introduced it, the four existential drives of survival mode, right? One drive is survival, and that's where we're after security. We're after certainty. We want to experience security and certainty. We want to understand that tomorrow there's a certain element of security and uh and and and safety that we will have in our lives. Mostly people are living in a sense of financial survival, especially in the first world. Like literally, right now around the world, there are people with bombs dropping on their heads. And here in the US and here in the first world, what we're really worried about is keeping our financial house in order and making sure that that you know we have our survival needs are met in terms of you know the amount of finances that we have in the bank and the amount that we have coming in, and that we have stability and predictability and being able to keep the roof over our heads and maintain our material well-being and maybe you know being able being able to enjoy the pleasant side of life uh you know going forward. So while other people are living literally in a state of of existential survival where their lives are in jeopardy, here in the first world country, we we really don't usually have that uh struggle going on, but we do have this tug and struggle and uh tug of war with financial security and security and well-being in a material sense. So, but most people are living there in in the US, I see, and and the people that I work with, most people are in that place. But but oftentimes there, you know, the people are in the the first two, the first two quadrants of of the uh four existential drives. And that's you know, the the survival drive, but also the self-indulgence drive. And and one time I was I was sharing this with a student, and I said, the four existential drives, and I shared them all. And he said, self-indulgence doesn't really click. That that doesn't, I'm not really worried about that drive. I don't have that drive in me. And I and I said, uh, you know, and I knew him, I I I understood, you know, his life and and what he loved and what he didn't. And I said, So what you're telling me is you don't care about travel. And he said, Yeah, I love travel. I said, it you don't care about going awesome places that you've never been to experience awesome places and eating fine foods and drinking fine wines and really indulging and enjoying, you know, the pleasant side of travel and and and and experiences out in the world. You don't care about any of that. And he said, Well, I do. I love that part. And I said, So is it fair to say that in some of the cases you're working and you're creating security and you're creating certainty and you're you're you're making money and you're building wealth so that you can experience more of what life has to offer? And he said, Well, yeah. So, well, then you're a self-indulgent motherfucker, just like the rest of us, because we are here to experience some of the finer things in life and to really experience. So where survival mode and survival, the survival drive is about making sure that we have some sense of security and certainty going forward. Self-indulgence is about making sure that we're enjoying the sensual pleasures of life. But a lot of people get caught and entrapped between those two and bounce back and forth, right? I know when I was in corporate, I used to have four weeks of vacation and sometimes five. And I used to go from survival mode 47, 48 weeks of the year. And then those four weeks that I was on vacation, I used to overeat and over-drink and over-indulge in excess because you know I wanted the pleasures of life and I wanted survival mode and those survival instincts and that insecurity to go away. But at the same time, I wanted to experience the pleasures of life, but I didn't know how to balance these and I didn't know how to engage in the healthy aspects where I was enjoying the experiences and the pleasure, but I wasn't getting lost in them because they like the shadow states of self-indulgence is excess or escape, overindulgence, not self-indulgence. All right. So I want to want you to let go of any negative mindset or perspective that you have of self-indulgence. Self-indulgence is a very, very healthy part of life. We are here to indulge, just not use it as an escape or use it to excess, all right? But we do want to bow, we do want security, and we do want to experience pleasure. And those are the first two existential drives.

Freedom As Pressurelessness

SPEAKER_00 11:23

The third is freedom. But, you know, that word, you know, we think of that maybe politically, but we don't think of that personally. And when I was going out in the world and marketing and inviting people into a state of freedom, I was saying, don't you want freedom? Don't you want freedom? You know, wealth, success, and freedom. And yeah, people will buy wealth. People will buy success and they'll fund those and they'll invest in those, but they would never invest in freedom, which is something that I know I can deliver to them, with them, for them, through them, but they would never invest in freedom. And really, what it is is freedom, when I really take it to its root level, it's just pressurelessness. It's a sense of pressurelessness in this world. The the shadow state in survival feels like pressure. And the highest expression and the the goal and the ambition of freedom is to feel a sense of pressurelessness. So when I started marketing and and and speaking about and speaking to and sharing, moving from hustle-based pressure to to inspired and aligned pressurelessness, productive pressurelessness, productivity with pressureless as the underlying state. It really started clicking with people because they don't, it's not like they don't want to create and they don't want to, they don't want to build in this world. It's not like they don't want to express themselves, and it's not like that they don't want to experience building their business. I work with a lot of entrepreneurs and and entrepreneurs want to continue to build their business, but what they're afraid of is that without the pressure, that they won't be productive. But we can have pressureless productivity. We can. And when you experience a sense of pressureless productivity, you can have security and you can have uh pleasure and new experiences, and you can experience freedom. You can experience pressurelessness and you can remain productive at the same time. You don't need the pressure to for the motivation to drive your productivity. And when those three are in alignment, a lot of times when people have lived in survival mode for so long, they stay in these three for a long time. They they they have the security, they're they're experiencing new experiences and establishing new new levels of pleasure in the world and really just indulging in the fruits that the life that life has to offer. And they're experiencing it from a place of pressurelessness. And when that pressurelessness goes away and pressure resumes, then they have the tools and the techniques and the approaches to get back into balance, just like my friend with the plate.

The Hidden Drive For Meaning

SPEAKER_00 14:19

But when somebody sits in those three for a long time, something like this little voice inside starts saying, Hey, there's something else, there's something missing. That's because we are also here to experience meaning and we have a deep drive for meaning. And it's deeper than most people know because they're trapped in survival mode, or they're bouncing back and forth between survival and self-indulgence, or there's so much pressure that they really can't listen to those urges, to what's inside of them. But like Victor Frankel wrote in A Man's Search for Meaning, we do have a deep desire to be meaningful in this world. And and the the highest expression is significance and giving back to other people. And without a sense of meaning in this world, all of this feels like meaningless. All of it feels reasonless, purposeless. All of it feels like there's there's there's no reason to continue to go. And when that happens, we we don't, you know, as as Victor Frankel said in A Man's Search for Meaning, when somebody lost meaning, they lost the the reason to live, they lost their will to live. And that meaning is is trapped inside. It's locked, but it might be buried under things. But it is in there, all right? So we are here to experience all four of those. And I hope as I really, really keep hitting these four and keep sharing this with you, keep coming back to learn more. I I want to help you, I want to dive really deeply today into survival mode. Okay, the survival drive that we have in. Now, when I share more, more and more, because you know, uh a marketing technique that I heard one time, I'll share my, I'll share this, this greatest marketing technique that I ever heard is people will not buy their way into heaven. They will not buy their way into freedom. They will not buy their way into a concept that they can't that they've never experienced. But when you connect deeply to the to the pain that they feel, to the struggle that they feel, to the lowest level expression that they're they're they're feeling and they seem to can't get, you know, that they can't get like traction and momentum away from, they will buy their way out of that. They will buy their way out of hell, but they will not buy their way into heaven. So when I started talking about pressure-filled hustle and shifting from pressure-filled hustle into pressureless productivity, people's antennas started going out. Something that that's never happened before happened. I sent an email out where I talked about the shift to my to my email, uh, to my email campaign or my my email list. I said, I talked about the shift from hustle-filled pressure to uh pressureless productivity. And I got multiple responses saying that's exactly what I needed, Mike. It's like you were speaking to me, multiple at the same time. It's never happened before. Sometimes I hear little things, but a lot of times with my email campaigns, because I was speaking to buying their way into heaven, I would get, it was like I was screaming into the wind. But when I started talking about the pain that they were experiencing, the pressure-filled hustle and the fight and grasping for some level of certainty and security in life, it got people's attention.

Why Survival Pressure Hooks Us

SPEAKER_00 17:57

Today I want to dive into really dive deeper into survival mode, because this is where most of humanity lives and most people are trying to escape. They haven't built that level of security, they haven't built that level. They're still experiencing tremendous levels of pressure and stress and tension inside. And this is all showing you that you're fighting, your body is literally fighting for its survival. Sometimes it's justified in fighting for survival, like people who don't know where their next meal's coming from, when you don't have access to clean running water. But in the United States, none of these are true. But, you know, when we have roofs over our head and we have money in the bank, and we have uh air in our, you know, all around us that's right around 70 degrees. And when we have uh a fridge that has a refrigerator that has food in it, we really don't have a reason to maintain and remain under constant pressure because we have these desires and wants and goals and ambitions. These are healthy, these are healthy, but we don't have to build our body around those and surrender our internal peace to those things. So we can shift from pressure-filled hustle to pressure-less productivity and maintain a sense of momentum and forward, forward movement, and creation and building. But it takes a couple things, and that's what I want to share with you. Number one is it takes a new level of awareness, and that new level of awareness for me is that there are four existential drives in life survival drive, a self-indulgence drive, a drive for freedom, and a drive for meaning. And some people and some teachers talk about how love is a drive in this world, and I do not believe that's true. I did at one point, but I believe love is all there is, and love is expressed in survival mode as attachment. You're attached to outcomes, you're attached to relationships, you're attached to goals, you're attached to results, and that creates deep pressure. Those attachments create deep amounts of pressure in your life and in your body. The expression of self-indulgence is pleasure. We are here to experience pleasure and pleasure and the pleasures of life. Somebody says, I love travel, they're saying I love pleasure and I love experience, I love self-indulgence. The pleasures of self-indulgence is an expression of love. In freedom, love is expressed as acceptance, acceptance of where I am, acceptance of where I'm going, acceptance of my circumstances, acceptance of the world around me. And this creates a sense of pressurelessness. It's almost like surrendering into the present moment, like Eckertoly has taught for decades, surrendering into the present moment, accepting the present moment as it is without fighting the current reality. And now we can move forward in pressureless productivity with and gain momentum in that place by getting clear about what we want, moving forward in that, but not needing to be there, but accepting where we are and then being inspired and moving forward and taking action from a place of pressureless productivity. And finally, greatest, the expression of love in meaning is devotion, devotion to society, devotion to impact, devotion to your mission, devotion to living an awesome life and then giving the very, very most of you, surrendering and being devoted to a mission and a purpose and something greater than yourself, leaving something behind, reshaping the world around you. Not because you want to be remembered or leaving a legacy, just because you really want to feel like your life matters and that you actually have meaning. You're that you're not a coincidence and you're not a mistake. And this is the spiritual path, the spiritual world. But most times people can't get there because they're in a state of survival mode or they're trying to, they get it, uh, they they escape and and they indulge in excess and they get lost in those. And it's very biblical, right? Don't get trapped, don't get trapped in the material world. Don't fall in love with the material world, but definitely experience it. Survival mode, there is so much more to survival mode, but you need to become aware of that.

Breathe, Pause, Respond Not React

SPEAKER_00 22:56

The second is you need to be opened to a whole new approach to life. And I remember when I was in like deep, deep, deep in survival mode, and I felt like everything in my life was gonna fall apart and everything was gonna collapse. I remembered when my first mentor that I was paying, I remember when I was feeling like hopeless, and I was I was suicidal at that point. And and when I was like, I was sharing what I was scared of and I was sharing my anxiety and what I was feeling in my body. He said, Mike, stop, breathe. And I'm like, fucking breathe. Why are you telling me to breathe? Because with breath and with a pause comes a body's ability to relax into the present moment. And and maybe when we're when we're deep in survival mode and the anxiety's high and the pressure's high, maybe we can breathe really shallowly. Maybe it takes us a while to remember to breathe. Maybe it's not muscle memory yet, but through repetition and through. Retraining and through re-engaging life in a completely different way. And reinforcing breath first, breathing, recentering ourselves, rebalancing ourselves, regaining our own sense of security, regaining our own sense of presence without changing our circumstances. Over time, we can begin to respond to circumstances in life instead of react. React means you jump right in to solve the pressure. Respond means that you let go of the pressure. And then you take pressuress action. And this is how we shift from survival mode into a sense of freedom and pressureless productivity. But it takes retraining. And the tool that I offer, the third thing you need, not just the awareness of it, not just the new approach, but the third thing we need a tool.

The DRILL Method To Let Go

SPEAKER_00 25:11

And I call it the drill method. Take a second, take a breath, drop into your body, recognize what you're feeling inside, inquire and investigate what it is and what it's trying to tell you. How did it get here? Where did it come from? Who taught me this? Why am I so scared? Is there really a survival danger? Or is this just a mental construct? Or am I just making a want a need? Or am I just afraid that the house is going to come down because I've always felt that the house is going to come down? Or have I always just been living in a state of thinking that everything's going to fall apart as soon as something doesn't go exactly the way I prefer? Inquire. Understand it at a deeper level. Listen to what it's trying to tell you. Listen. It will give you the answers. If you inquire and you listen, it will start to give you answers. You will start to understand yourself at a deeper level. And finally, and most importantly, is let it go. Let these feelings go. Let these pressures go. Let the stress go. Let the anxiety go. Now when I share this tool with somebody who's brand new to this journey, they say, that doesn't make sense. I've got, you don't understand. I've got these things. I've got bills to pay. I've got this spouse that XYZ. My business is falling apart. I just, you don't understand. I just had a somebody, a team member quit. I just lost a hundred thousand dollar deal. And I say, no, I do understand those. Now take a breath. Take a breath, release it, drop into your body, recognize why are you so scared? What's the worst case scenario? Recognize what you feel. Inquire, listen to it. Why is it there? What's it trying to tell you? Why is it trying to get your attention? What are you really scared of? And then let it go. And when they do let it go, I say, okay, now give me three things that you can do right now to help move forward in a precious, pressureless state where you take action from a place of response and not reaction. And when they do that, their power is the power in the action is more prevalent, it's more beneficial, it's more, it's more forward moving instead of just trying to escape survival mode and the pressure that they feel. So those tools, there's also the the Sedona method. There's also so many different, you know, so many different tools and techniques to let go of the pressure to move from a state of pressure, pressure-filled hustle to pressureless productivity. But it takes time and retraining. It takes retraining. It took you decades to get here. It took you decades to get a body full of pain and struggle and pressure and anxiety and fear and the accumulation of all of these emotions in your body. It's going to take some time to retrain your body, your nervous system, to learn to respond instead of react, to learn how to pause and to drill into what you're experiencing and what you're feeling. It's going to take a retraining period.

Retraining, Accountability, And Invitation

SPEAKER_00 28:44

And this is why the last part is accountability. We've already gained awareness, the four existential drives. We understand that it's going to take a new approach, like a pause between what you're experiencing and the action that we're going to take. You've got to tool, the drill method, the Sedona method, whatever it is, whatever it takes to get your awareness into your body to start to let go of the pressure that's accumulated, understand and let go of the pressure that's that's built and accumulated, and then let it go. And now we can get forward momentum. And I guarantee you, with that plus accountability over a long period of time, somebody who keeps bringing you or a group that keeps bringing you back to the four existential drives, the new approach, right? Respond versus react, the drill method, and taking forward action from a place of pressureless productivity instead of pressure-filled hustle. Over time, you will shift the entire way that you approach life. And from this entire shift and this retraining and rebalancing yourself instead of relying on your circumstances to rebalance you and your nervous system, you'll gain security, you'll gain experiences and pleasure of self-indulgence, you'll gain a sense of pressureless freedom in the world. And you will find deeper levels of meaning, significance, and impact in this world. And I know all of those things are what you really want. Guys, that starts now. This podcast 240-some episodes. I've never been so clear on the path forward. And what I'm after, if you are an entrepreneur, if you are a business owner, if you are someone who manages a pressure-filled life and a pressure-filled business and wants to move into a state of enjoying life more, living more fulfilled, and experiencing a pressure-filled or a pressure-less existence while still uh gaining momentum, while still creating, while still building, while still indulging in the pleasures of life, while still making an impact and doing it all from a place of increasing levels of security and certainty over time. Reach out because I want you in my life. Because I know I can help you more than I can help anybody else on the face of this planet. If you you're ready, if that's you and you're ready, I'm here for it. I'm here for you. All right, guys. I'm gonna keep beating this until it really, really, really cracks the code. I love y'all, and I will see you next week. If you enjoyed what you heard and you want to learn more, go to www.innerwealthglobal.com for more tools and resources.