Ep244. Respond Don’t React: Taking a New Approach and the First Step to Pressureless Productivity.

This episode marks a powerful evolution in the Inner Wealth journey as Mike reflects on how far both the podcast and his message have come. What started as a focus on external success and business growth has shifted into something deeper—helping high performers move from pressure-filled hustle into pressureless productivity.

The truth is, most people aren’t struggling because of what they’re doing, but because of the pressure they’ve normalized while doing it. In this episode, Mike breaks down how that pressure is created, why it compounds, and how to release it in real time—so you can keep building, achieving, and growing… without carrying it.

Key Takeaways

1. Pressure is not required for success.
   Most people have normalized stress and tension, but it’s not necessary to achieve at a high level. 
2. Your nervous system is wired for survival.
   It prioritizes familiarity over expansion, which is why growth often feels like pressure. 
3. Reacting vs. responding changes everything.
   A simple pause and breath can shift you from unconscious reaction into intentional action. 
4. The DRILL method releases pressure in real time.
   Drop, Recognize, Inquire, Listen, Let go—this is how you process instead of carry. 
5. Most people are stuck in survival and self-indulgence.
   Pressurelessness exists beyond that cycle, but it requires awareness, tools, and practice. 

Notable Quotes

•  “Your nervous system has one job and one job only, and that is to keep you alive.” 
•  “If we don’t learn how to manage it, it will manage us.” 
•  “Responding is a pause with a breath.” 
•  “You don’t move forward with the pressure. You move forward from a place of pressurelessness.” 
•  “Internal freedom is basically just pressurelessness.” 

Call to Action

If this episode connected with you and you’re ready to move from pressure-filled hustle to pressureless productivity…

If you want to learn this new approach, apply these tools, and build the accountability required to make it stick…

Email Mike directly:

mike@innerwealthglobal.com

You’ll connect directly with him—no assistant, no gatekeeper—just a real conversation to explore what’s possible.

Mike's Media:
Website: https://www.innerwealthglobal.com/
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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mike_kitko
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mikekitko
Subscribe to my YouTube: / @mikekitko

Transcript

Opening Questions And A New Promise

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Do you ever wake up feeling like there's something missing in your life? Do you ever feel the need to escape your business? Are you running your life or is your life running new? I'm like Fitco and I'll help you design and create a life so authentic and aligned with who you really are that 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. Now, if I were to go back to the first 10 episodes, what I did at the beginning of the Interwealth podcast is I recorded the first 10 episodes, and it was some great some great advice I got from uh before I started my podcast, before I started this podcast. And then at that point, it was called Lead Love Profit Play. I was all I like these really wacky names. But uh the beginning of the podcast, uh, I recorded the first 10 episodes before I even launched one. Before, and and I just kept cueing them up and teeing them up. And they started launching because I'm not sure if if everyone's completely aware of this, but there are millions and millions of podcasts in uh in existence. And there are hundreds of thousands of podcasts that are that are launched every year. And most podcasts do not make it past episode five. And the uh most podcasts, even those five or even other ones that go longer, most podcasts, the first, you know, first few, maybe even the first, I don't know, 50, 100, you don't get more than 10 downloads. Now, luckily, I got more than 10, but it wasn't it wasn't this extraordinary breakthrough that that everybody wants when they, you know, when they launch a podcast. But uh the those first 10, you know, gave me enough patience and enough momentum to be able to keep going. And I didn't quit during the 10 because sometimes the reason that some podcasts end within the first five episodes is people become demotivated. And those 10 gave me some staying power. And then I started to see at towards the the end, you know, somewhere between episode five and 10, I started seeing some progress and started up tip upticking in uh in downloads. It was really cool. So um, but we've come a long way on this podcast. And if you go back to those early episodes, the message is radically different. And what I was teaching is radically different. And what I was sharing with the world, what I was focused on in the world for both myself and for other people was radically different. And it just shows where I was then and where I am now. Back then it was it was really geared towards uh business owners and creating more wealth and success in their lives because that's where I was in in that time. I was focused on the the wealth and success aspect of creating a business. And although I still do grow my business and I still do uh focus on the growth, I I understand I see it differently and and I connect with it and I resonate with it differently. And I share the the kind of the things that that have that have lurked in the shadows that were lurking in the shadows back then when I was building my business. And a lot of that is you know the pressure and the stress and the tension that comes with building a business. And what I what I recognize now is there's just like me back then, there was a lot, there are a lot of entrepreneurs, especially entrepreneurs, that wake up every day under intense pressure, stress, tension, and they live in it and they carry it around in their bodies and they don't like it becomes so normal in their lives that they just live in it. And almost when it's gone, they feel like something's wrong, like like they're doing something wrong, and they they they push themselves so that they feel more pressure, stress, and tension in their lives. And they do this at the expense of their nervous system and at the expense of their long-term health. And what I what I share now, and what I'm sharing now, and what's really connecting and landing like nothing else has before with the audience that I've built, that we've built, and the community that we have is moving from uh pressure-filled hustle and and and stress and and grind to pressureless productivity, continuing to grow our business, continuing to build our business, but to do it from a place of of pressurelessness. And there's still pressure in life. We're still we're still always going to experience some level of pressure because we do have this animalistic nervous system that is fighting for survival at any given time. And it still holds true that your nervous system has one job and one job only, and that is to keep us alive. Your nervous system is there to keep you alive, and it keeps you alive by trying to keep you in familiar circumstances, and it tries to keep you in familiar circumstances because it knows how to live there. It knows how to keep you alive there. And anything unfamiliar feels unsafe, feels like there's danger there, and there's there's hidden danger, and there's hidden, there's a hidden trap, and it tries to keep you out of those unfamiliar circumstances because it's it's trying to do you a service to keep you alive. And it it only knows how to operate in the light of what it knows instead of the darkness and the shadows of what it doesn't. And when we begin to step into the unknown, when we begin to step into the unfamiliar, when we begin to step into unfamiliar circumstances, it naturally creates a pressure, a stress, and a tension in our bodies because it's our nervous system signaling danger and a warning sign. And if we if we live in that, like that's just normal, and we and we don't learn how to manage it, it will manage us. And one pressure will turn into another. It seems like one pressure will turn into another, but in reality, one pressure will compound and onto another, and it'll just keep building, and it'll just keep uh burying any joy that's inside, and your life will become heavier and heavier and heavier all the time. And what I'm doing now, and what my team at Interwealth Global is doing right now, is really focusing on helping entrepreneurs. You know, we have a business call in our mastermind, and I love the business call, but that's not the purpose of the Interwealth mastermind. Building our business is fun and it's it's an adventure, and it's something that's it's the most spiritual journey you'll ever go on because there's entrepreneurism is a spiritual path where there's no place to hide, and you'll be exposed to every single feeling that you don't want to feel, and you'll have to say things you don't want to say, and you'll have to do things that you don't want to do, and you'll have to make decisions that you don't want to have to make. But the the reality is, is the entrepreneur journey will expose every single shadow that's inside of you. And if you don't know what to do with these shadows, you don't know what to do with the pressure, tension, and stress inside of you, it'll just keep building and eventually it'll bury you. The the focus and the mission of the Interwealth mastermind and of the inner wealth community and of my private coaching right now and and everything that I do, this podcast is all about helping people let go of the pressure that they feel that they've almost become normalized in and just associate it with being a human being. And it's just not true. That's not part that does, it's not a required part of being a human being. And although it will continue to show up, when you have the tools to be able to do something with it, you won't have to carry it around forever. You'll know how to manage it and deal with it in the present moment. And then you can return back to a place of pressurelessness. And from there, we can continue to build and grow and create. And when the pressure shows back up, when it shows back up, we'll know what to do with it. We'll have a we'll have a mechanism to be able to release it and instead of carry it around. So that's kind of the the this difference, the shape shift that we we did during the uh during the Interwealth podcast, formerly known as Lead Love Profit Play. And vastly different message, but it also reflects my state of consciousness over time. And as we grow, as I have grown, the message has grown. As I have evolved, the messages evolve. It's just a natural part of life. So the the branding may seem to change, but the teacher is just evolving and the branding and the message evolves with the teacher. That's kind of like how this whole thing works with this, with this life that we're we're here to live. So in last week, episode 243, uh, we talked about moving from pressure-filled life and a pressure-filled journey to uh pressureless productivity. And today, and I shared that you need uh you need to um understand and see things at a different level in order to really transform and and move from pressure to pressurelessness. You really need to understand some understanding options and opportunities at a deeper level, you know, expanded level. And and I said that's what that's what the four existential drives is meant to do. And if if if you've uh if you've watched maybe my Facebook, and if you haven't connected with me on Facebook, please do. Uh also TikTok. I share some things on TikTok and and a lot of time on on Facebook. But if you haven't connected with those, connect to them. Um I'm I'm I'm recording this podcast episode right now, and it's going to go on YouTube. You can also check out my YouTube channel, which you know, subscribe, like, share across all the platforms because they really help me. But the point being is I share about the four existential drives where the drive for survival, the drive for self-indulgence, the drive for freedom, and the drive for meaning. And these are four inherent drives that I've recognized in myself and I've recognized in other people. And that is the new awareness that you need to have in order to, in order to really get out of the rat race. And when I say rat race, it's bouncing from the two drives that people often get stuck in drive for survival and the drive for self-indulgence and back and forth. Survival, self-indulgence. You work in your business and your grind and your hustle, then you go on vacation and you take a pause for a week, and then you go back into the survival mode and you go back into grind to hustle and you bounce back and forth between these two. Never entering the real, the third uh drive and as the drive for freedom. And that's where the pressurelessness lives. So uh that's the new awareness. The second is a new approach. You need a new approach. And and uh this is what we're gonna talk about today is this new approach. I'm gonna slow this way down and we're gonna teach, I'm gonna teach some basic things. Number one is the difference between responding and reacting. It's really, really critical because if we don't know how to respond instead of react, then your nervous system will hijack you and and it'll take you places that you trust me, that they're they're not, they're not aligned for you, and they're just because of a survival response. So we're gonna talk about uh learning the difference between uh responding and reacting, which is critical to everything uh in transforming your life. And then next we're gonna talk about, we're gonna revisit the drill method. And the drill method is a uh it's a framework and terminology that that I kind of developed to be able to teach how to let go of the pressure that's inside. All right. And the so this is really just a new approach, respond versus react, and a new tool, the drill method. And these are some, these are a few of the things that I shared last week in terms of the five things that you needed to do differently in order to transform your life. So, first we're gonna talk about respond versus react. I I ask this question a lot of my students, and it's a very, very basic question. And when I ask it to them for the first time, they they don't know. And it's one of those questions. I know the questions that when I ask, you know, people are gonna flounder and they're not gonna know because they've never really thought about it deeply. And I think about a lot of these things, you know, deeply. And I'm the existential philosopher, I guess you could say. I love I love that terminology for kind of the work that I do by myself and with other people. But uh a lot of people don't contemplate the difference between respond and reacting. It's very, very critical. And I I'll ask them, you know, what's the difference between responding and what reacting? And they'll give me these really vague answers that are all over the board. It's like shooting a machine gun at a barn and they they hit all over the place, and there's always some truth to every answer they give, and and and it's okay. But I say, listen, I just want to simplify the difference between responding and reacting. And I say, responding is a pause with a breath that's responding, pausing, taking a breath, setting an intention, and moving forward without reacting. And reacting is you're triggered, your nervous system goes into fight or flight, you get this stress signal, and immediately you just react. You just go to work, you just pop off, you whatever. All you're trying to do, all you do is almost like unconsciously act because of the pressure, stress, and tension it's inside. It's kind of like when somebody, when somebody insults you. Have you ever noticed sometimes somebody gets insulted and they just they go from zero to a hundred in a split second where you're an asshole. No, you're an asshole, and suddenly they're screaming and yelling at the other person. Complete reaction. There's no intentionality to it, there's no response what whatsoever. They their nervous system was triggered and they literally went into action. And it's almost like it's unconscious and they they don't even know how to pause and take a breath. Okay, because responding is trained where reacting is strictly a primitive response to survival response, and it'll keep you in in survival mode. And the only way to move into the freedom, the natural pressurelessness drive for freedom, is to uh is to learn how to respond instead of react. And these two are are opposites. However, because survival and freedom are opposites, moving from pressure to pressurelessness, but the only thing they really take immediately is to learn how to respond instead of react. Now, when you're gonna go through life, if you are anything like the other 8.22 billion people that are on this planet, you are going to be triggered by life. Life will cut you. Your relationships will cut you, your your business will cut you, your job will cut you. And what I mean by cut, it will trigger your nervous system. Something will, something will set your nervous system alarms off. And that'll trigger the pressure, stress, tension, anxiety, all this stuff inside of you that most people are trying to avoid. And this is when we we have the opportunity to train ourselves to respond instead of reacting. But when that nervous system is triggered, with enough training and with enough practice, practice, not perfect, with enough practice, when your nervous system is triggered, instead of just immediately reacting, you will pause, you will take a breath, and you will intentionally choose the next action instead of just react, which is just actually taking an unconscious leap forward or an unconscious leap backwards to solve or sort out or to deal with the pressure, stress, tension, anxiety, whatever, fear that's inside. And it starts with a pause, a breath, and an intentional move. It's almost like playing chess instead of you know beginner chess players looking to move their piece as fast as possible. Where a master chess chess player in between moves, like I I don't know exactly, I think it's 10 minutes. They have 10 minutes between moves. And and and when you know, when the when the timers hit, they'll sit there for nine minutes and 90 or so nine minutes and 55 seconds and play through every single scenario and look for the greatest move that they can make, not just a move that is going to uh get the the other person to play their move. So this is a matter of pausing, breathing, and then pausing long enough so that you can deal with the pressure that's happening inside of you, not allowing it to control you. But then when you do move forward, you move forward when we're responding correctly. You don't move forward with the pressure, you move forward from a place of pressurelessness to take the best action or the best amount of inaction in order to resolve this thing, if it needs to be resolved. It could be a false flag, it could be a false, your body signaling a false danger, and it never really needed inaction. But your body was trying to get you into action because if it sensed danger, your nervous system sense danger, but there was none. And really, inaction was required where when you're living in a place of reaction, you just immediately hop into action in some way, and it's to solve that pressure, stress, tension inside. I hope that makes sense. That is critical, and that's key to opening up a new approach to life. It's first in any situation where you're triggered and there's pressure, stress, and tension, the very first thing to do is to pause and address the pressure first, not take action first. Okay. So I want to clear that out. That really is important to get to get it out in the open. That is how we take a new approach to life. Now, next. So we're gonna talk about the drill method. This is a tool for taking that new approach, for shifting to response instead of instead of reaction. And the drill method, I'm gonna go over, it's an acronym, and I'm gonna go over the acronym first, and then I'm gonna go through each layer and each component of the drill method because it stands for uh drop into the body, recognize what's inside, what's happening inside, inquire and investigate why you're feeling this way or why this condition exists, listen to it and inquire. You ask it some questions. I know it sounds weird, but you ask it some questions, you listen to what it's saying to you, listen to what it's telling you. It will, it will, your body will start to speak to you. It will give you the awareness of where some of this stuff came from and why you're being triggered. And then the last and the most important and the only one that is required is to let it go. Now, I remember the first time, you know, when I was making my spiritual journey or my my shift, my my embarking on a spiritual journey back in 2016 when my coach and he didn't exactly express it, you know, as respond and react and the drill method. He didn't have these terminologies to give me. But but when he shared this with me, it almost felt impossible. What do you mean when my wife says something disrespectful? What do you mean when my kids say something disrespectful? I'm not supposed to just pop, pop off at them. How can I possibly do that? It's just natural, it's just my natural instinct. And back then that was true. It was almost like I had zero self-control. I had zero self-awareness. It was like that was instinctual because I only knew how to live in survival mode and I couldn't see anything beyond it. And since then, not only have I developed a healthier relationship with my wife and my kids, and I've learned not to react from pressure and stress of just people like throwing insults and social. Media disagreements and all these things, just not reacting to them and just kind of like dealing with the pressure and laughing them off and letting them go. Not has not has it only like improved my social interactions, but it's also uh improved the way I handle and resolve problems in my own business. That you know, when you see that dip in revenue, that dip in sales, it's gonna it might send shock waves up your nervous system. And then the tendency is just to go right back into reaction mode to make some more money, where there might be just a natural cycle and a natural flow to business where you're in a cycle where there's no amount of action, there's no amount of whatever work that's gonna solve it because it's just a natural flow of life in business. And the a reaction will, it'll cause you to do work that's unproductive and unnecessary. And a response will understand, pause, breathe. What am I feeling? Why am I feeling it? Drop into the body, recognize what's in there, inquire into the feeling, into the condition, listen to what it's telling you, and then let it go. And that let it go might say, Wow, I really don't need to do anything because there's nothing wrong. It was just my body signaled danger because like my your body is riddled, our bodies, nervous systems sometimes are riddled with insecurity, inadequacy, and insignificance. The the three three voices of survival mode. And I've done plenty of episodes about the three voices. The four voices, actually. The fourth voice is the voice of creation mode, the voice of freedom, and that's and that's inspiration. Now, when I learned and I trained myself and I practiced over and over for you know, it's been a decade now. I still get triggered. Somebody says something and I feel it. Something happens in revenue in sales, something happens in the business. I have I have a an awesome client that that uh decides not to continue on, not to renew our work together. It might trigger something inside, but instead of reacting, I know how to respond. And I get triggered, and I immediately pause, take a breath, drop into the body, recognize what's in there and what I'm feeling, inquire and investigate into why is this here? How did this get here? What is it trying to tell me? What am I scared of? What am I afraid of losing? Listen to my body, listen to what my nervous system is trying to tell me, because it will tell you where all this stuff's coming from. And the only one, the one that's most important, and the only one that's required is to let it go. And what I mean by the only one that's required is after an amount of practice, it's almost like the first four you can bypass and just get right to the let it go, where you pause, you take a breath, and within that breath, you feel the pressure that's in inside of you, and you just release it, and your body returns back to pressurelessness. And you don't have to sit in that pressure-filled state for very long. And that is how we move from hustle-filled pressure to pressureless productivity by learning how to respond, the difference between responding and reacting, and learning how to respond more to life instead of constantly reacting from survival instincts. And then, second of all, is to let it go and doing whatever you need to within the drill method, drop into your body, recognize what's in there, inquire into it, listen to it, and let it go. And there are other methods. There's the Sedona method, there's tapping, there's EFT, there's cranial sacral therapy, there's Reiki, there's all these energy modalities that help you get the energy, the stale, trapped energy that's inside your body to get it to let go and release. And they're all, they're all meant to do the same thing. Create internal freedom. And internal freedom is basically just pressurelessness. That's what we're all after. But most people only bounce from survival to self-indulgence. And the self-indulgence is the only thing they have, the only mechanism that they have to really escape or pause the survival pressure, stress, and tension that they feel. But as soon as the self-indulgence is done, they go right back into survival mode. And this is why me and my wife and my kids used to take 10-day vacations when I was working in corporate, 10-day vacations, go down to Mexico, overeat, over-drink, oversaturate ourselves with pure pleasure. And then we'd get on a plane, come back home, and I'd go right back into survival mode where all the pressure stress intentionally lived with no way to deal with it and no way to let it go. No tool, no new approach, and no new tool. And that's why all of my life imploded back then, and now this is why I get to share this with the world. And I want for you, if you want for you, if you want to live in the pressure, and a lot of people say pressure is a privilege, and that's fine. If that's you and you want the privilege, privilege of pressure, and you are you you are you are in love with your pressure and you glorify pressure in life, please keep it. I'm not trying to take it away from you. But if you are ready to move beyond the what we've deemed as the normal pressures of entrepreneurism and building a business and relating with our family, if you want to move beyond that, then I want to help you with that. And that's gonna take understanding that there's more available, a new approach and new tools, and and understanding that you know we need to be different and do different to have different uh outcomes and to have a different experience in life. This is you. I wanna I want to connect with you. Give me uh on every podcast episode in the show notes is my my email address. It goes directly to me, not to an assistant, not to anybody else. That email goes directly to me. Email me, get in touch with me. Uh we'll get some time on my calendar so that uh so that we can jam and I will see how we can work together in order to move from a pressure-filled life to a pressureless life. If that's if that sounds good to you and that's what you want, I'm here for it. All right, podcast has evolved tremendously. But right now, as I send out these messages about moving from pressure to pressureless productivity, it's really getting a lot of attention and the antenna's going up. I had more discovery calls over the last couple weeks because of that little simple concept than and responses from emails. If you're not on my email list, drop me an email and so I can and tell me you want to be on the email list and I'll get you on there. But if if all of this or any of this sounds good to you, reach out. I want to jam with you. All right. Listen, thanks for listening to this. We're approaching 250 episodes. That's a milestone and a marker that I couldn't have perceived back then. And I'm honored to get there with you. Thanks for sticking with me. I'll stick with you. Let's keep jamming together. Until next week, create an exceptional, internally pressureless life. If you enjoyed what you heard and you want to learn more, go to www.innerwealthglobal.com for more tools and resources.