The Inner Wealth Podcast
Mike Kitko is the Founder and Creative Director of Inner Wealth Global, a personal and professional development company that helps business owners create aligned wealth, success, freedom, and deep fulfillment—without sacrificing themselves in the process.
As an author, speaker, podcaster, and coach Mike guides visionaries and impact-driven entrepreneurs to align their inner world with the life and business they are truly meant to live and create. His work helps you master your mind, energy, and emotions while building intense personal power so that wealth and opportunity flow effortlessly.
Through coaching, training, and transformational content, Inner Wealth Global helps business owners break free from unnecessary struggle, trust their path, and create a life deeply aligned with their soul.
The Inner Wealth Podcast
Ep253. You Are What You Feel, Until You Choose Higher: Why Your Inner Reality Creates Your Experience.
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In this episode, Mike explores one of the most transformative realizations in personal growth and self-leadership: you do not experience life through your circumstances—you experience life through your emotions. Drawing from his own journey with imposter syndrome, executive leadership, entrepreneurship, and coaching, he reveals how the gap between your inner world and outer world creates unnecessary suffering, even when success, wealth, love, and opportunity are already present.
At the heart of this conversation is the understanding that most people aren't actually chasing money, success, relationships, or achievement. They're chasing the emotions they've assigned to those things. The challenge is that no external circumstance can permanently change your internal experience. True transformation happens when you learn to release old emotional patterns, embody new emotional states, and consciously train your nervous system to receive the life you've already created.
Key Takeaways
1. The feelings in your body are real, but they are often lying to you.
Just because you feel inadequate, unsuccessful, unloved, or insecure doesn't mean those feelings accurately reflect reality.
2. Imposter syndrome is a mismatch between your inner world and your outer world.
When your achievements expand but your internal identity doesn't, you continue feeling like a fraud despite evidence of success.
3. Most people don't want the thing—they want the feeling they believe the thing will provide.
Money, relationships, business success, travel, and achievement are often emotional pursuits disguised as external goals.
4. Embodiment is allowing yourself to feel now what you've been waiting for circumstances to give you.
The body must receive the emotional experience before life begins to feel different.
5. Managing your inner world separately from your external circumstances is the real work.
Your business, bank account, relationship status, and achievements do not determine your emotional state unless you allow them to.
Notable Quotes
- "The feelings in your body are real, but they are lying to you."
- "The imposter syndrome comes when your internal world doesn't match the external world."
- "You don't want the thing. You want the emotion you've assigned to the thing."
- "You only experience yourself as the emotions you're carrying around."
- "You don't experience the world as it is. You experience the world as you are."
Call to Action
If this episode challenged the way you think about success, fulfillment, and personal growth, take a moment to look at what emotions you've been waiting for life to give you.
What if peace doesn't require a bigger bank account? What if love doesn't require a different relationship? What if success doesn't require another accomplishment? What if the next level of your life begins by allowing yourself to feel differently today?
If you're getting value from The Inner Wealth Podcast, subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen. Every rating, review, and share helps us reach more people around the world who are committed to expanding their life and circumstances from the inside out.
Reach out to Mike directly at mike@innerwealthglobal.com to discuss working together to create more in your life.
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Two Books And A Breakthrough
Welcome to the Interwealth Podcast, where we learn and use the live inspired people every day. I released my first book in 2019 and it was titled The Imposter in Charge. And that was my attempt to explain the imposter syndrome. Now, at that time I was doing a lot of executive level coaching and I had just gotten booted out of corporate, right? The year before or a couple years before. And I started to understand what really caused me to spiral and unravel that would have caused me to get uh fired twice in 20 months after a long, long runways of success and ladder of success in corporate. And I thought that's a that book is really, really long. And I ripped, I wrote it uh at a time where I was still experiencing a lot of inadequacy. And what I mean by that is there's 185 pages to probably describe what could have been described in just a couple pages. All right. So my latest book is Inner World, Outer World, and it's really short, really sweet, and really powerful because I ended the book when it was finished instead of just like the imposter syndrome or the imposter in charge. I just kept writing because I wanted to hit a certain like word count and length threshold because I it was about proving myself in the world, and uh I still felt inadequate. Now we're gonna we're gonna come back to that. But listen, here's what if I were to remake that book and redo the book, here's what I would describe. Okay.
Why Imposter Syndrome Shows Up
The imposter syndrome comes when the in your internal world doesn't match the external world. It literally is that simple. It's when when the feelings that are inside of you are of failure and the external world, the evidence, is success. Or when when the external world is achievement and the internal world feels insignificant and like you've accomplished nothing. There's a disparity in what's happening inside of us and what's happening outside. And since we're living in the body and we experience the feeling that's in the body, we tend to, when we're unconscious, we tend to believe that instead of the evidence that's everywhere outside of us that says that we aren't what we're feeling. And I, in a, in a recent one-on-one conversation I had with one of my clients, I took about 10 minutes to just keep repeating over and over. The feelings in your body are real, but they are lying to you. The feelings in your body are real, but they are lying to you. And I did this for about 10 minutes while she while she just listened and I just kept asking her to deepen her understanding and her acknowledgement of this. The feelings are real. I was never invalidating the feelings that were in her body. She was feeling whatever she was feeling in terms of fear, insecurity, inadequacy, insignificance, like she didn't matter, like she was, she didn't have anything valuable to offer. She was feeling all these things, and that was her inner reality. But the reality is those those stories that were underneath of those feelings, they were all lies. And I just kept diving into that. And that's kind of what the imposter syndrome is. And the imposter syndrome is is very much about, you know, you're you're you're achieving things on the outside or you're moving in a certain direction in the outer world and you're doing certain things in the outer world, but the inner world doesn't reflect what's happening outside of you. When I first started coaching, I I would, when I would say that I was a coach, it felt like a freaking lie. Even though I was, I was a coach and I was actively coaching, it still felt like a lie when I told myself that I was a coach because the the feelings that I was holding on my body in inside of my body were of a corporate executive. And the the kind of the identity that I was carrying around was like a corporate corporate executive. But when I would say I'm a coach, which was true, it still felt like a lie. Those feelings that I felt of of inadequacy, of, of
Feelings Are Real But Misleading
insignificance, of uh the imposter of being a coach, those feelings were real, but they were lying. They were lying to me. There were stories underneath of those that that didn't, that, that weren't true, and the evidence outside was different than than the inner reality that I was experiencing. I hope that makes sense. I hope that makes sense. And and listen, I this this episode isn't about the imposter syndrome. It's not. It's about the difference between what's happening in your body and what's actually happening in your external experience. And that was just a lead up to to really anchor everything else that we're gonna do. Now we're gonna talk about. One time I was on a uh a mastermind call and I asked the inner wealth mastermind community, I said, the mastermind, I said, uh, do you know anybody who's really, really wealthy but feels broke? And there was one gal that immediately pointed to herself. And she wouldn't, she acknowledged that she felt broke inside and she felt like she had nothing, and it was all gonna, whatever she built was all gonna fall apart. Whatever wealth they had, it was all gonna fall apart. Like the the wealth that they actually had, which was substantial, her and her husband, it it didn't, it didn't match the feelings and the emotions that were happening in the body. Now, the feelings of insecurity, the feelings of having nothing, the feelings of lack in her body in that moment, they were real. They were as real as real can get, but they were lying to her. And it's important to draw that distinction. The feelings in your body are real, but oftentimes they're lying to you. When when I was in corporate, the the whole point of the imposter syndrome is, and I I've told this story time and time again, is I was managing hundreds of employees. I was managing, I was, I was, I was managing a $65 million manufacturing and a company and later a $350 million manufacturing uh um operation. And I had all the authority, I had all the responsibility, I had all the ownership for all of this, and I had an MBA and I had experience and I had talents and I had already accomplished and achieved, and I was well trained, I was highly trained, but inside I felt absolutely inadequate and incapable of achieving anything and succeeding in in the plant. And especially early on when I was starting to feel the imposter syndrome because it kept getting bigger and bigger with the with bigger and bigger roles, because I wouldn't allow the, you know, I wouldn't, I didn't know to address the feelings that I was experiencing in my body. But when early on there was achievement in that facility, there was uh success. We did accomplish a lot of amazing things and trans transform that environment, transform the organization. Me and my team and and all of our employees, we did miraculous things, but still inside of me, all I'm sitting in a conference room with all of my functional leaders, and all I could think about and all I could feel was if they really knew who I was, they'd fire me. I'd get fired. My employees wouldn't fire me, but my bosses would. Because the the the feelings that I had in my body, and the feeling, the internal experience was real, but I they were lying. It was lying to me. Okay.
Desire And Destination Fatigue
Now listen, everybody on the planet is walking around. Human beings have desire. Desire is natural, right? To to to to try to uh ignore or pretend like you don't have a desire, it's just not real. Human beings are fueled by desire, expansion in life, more from life, more life, more wealth, more success, more happiness, more joy, more love, more sex, more pleasure, more all of it. We are fueled by the expansion of life. And God put desire in our hearts, desire in into our soul, the spirit brought that you are, the soul that you are, carries a dream. And part of that dream is to experience expansion. And to pretend it's not there is to disavow yourself from your humanity. All right. So we are always looking to expand our circumstances. But what happens is someone expands their external circumstances, but their internal environment stays the same. The inner world that they are living in stays the same. And this is why someone who maybe starts a business and is struggling financially starts to build and achieve some financial stability and some financial some financial gain. And later, when they have you know, two, sometimes three commas in the bank, they still feel scarce, they still feel a lack, they still feel like they don't have anything, they still feel insecure because they haven't dealt with their inner environment. The the external world hasn't impacted the internal world. And sometimes, this is an important word, sometimes they just haven't given themselves permission to feel something different. They're expecting, like at some point, they're gonna achieve something, they're gonna accumulate something, and that's their permission slip to rearrange the internal world. But but they never allow themselves, they keep delaying the permission. And this is why there's destination fatigue in the world. That somebody says, I want to, you know, I want to make a thousand, and then they want to make 10,000, and then they want to make a hundred thousand, then they want to make a million, then the 10 million, they keep moving the goalpost, and that's okay. Moving goals and achieving goals and accomplishing things, it's awesome, and that's part of the human experience. But but to only move the goalpost, to try to feel something that you're not feeling right now, that is a whole different level of crazy. All right. And I would invite you that if you're like, invite you to understand that if you're like most human beings on this planet, you are you don't right now, you want the thing, but really you don't want the thing, you want the emotion that you that you have assigned, and you think the the the feeling, the emotion or you feel the thing is gonna give you. You don't necessarily want the thing, you want the emotion that you've assigned to it. Now there are things we do out of inspiration to experience it, but if you really think deeply about it, one of the reasons you want to go on vacation is because you want the feeling that vacation gives you. One of the reasons that you want uh money is because you want the feeling that money gives you, the feeling of freedom that money can potentially provide. You don't want the relationship because you you want the love and the acceptance that you feel the relationship will deliver. And oftentimes we actually go on the vacation and we we get the the money and we get the relationship, but yet we still feel the absence of these things because we haven't given ourselves permission to feel something different. And literally, that's you don't need permission, you just need to allow yourself to feel something different, and that's the imposter syndrome. That was that goes back to the beginning of this episode about the imposter syndrome. The the evidence of success was there, but I would never allow myself to feel successful. The growing bank account that I had was awesome, but the the feelings of having nothing remained. Now, I hope this is making sense, and I hope this is really hitting home, and I hope I'm clarifying this because what we need to do is embody new circumstances.
Embodiment Over Chasing Outcomes
Embody what we get to do with it with all of this is learn how to embody. Now, it took me a long time to fully understand what embodiment is, but what it means is letting the emotion into your body that you've assigned to the thing. Like you can be loved, but feel unloved. So now it's a matter of allowing the feeling of love into your body. You can be wealthy but feel broke, so it's a matter of allowing the feelings of wealth into your body. You can be successful but not feel successful. Now we get to allow the feelings of success into our body. And this is embodiment to embody the circumstances, not to just have the circumstances. And I'm gonna invite you to consider this simple concept. You won't you only experience yourself as the emotions that you're carrying around. You don't experience the world, you don't experience your circumstances, you only experience yourself as you're built from the inside out. The bank account can go up, but if the internal, internal level feels low, then you're feeling a low level of financial circumstances. You're walking around and you experience life inside of your body. And this is why, on like especially on last week's episode, I said the soul carries a vision, the mind creates, and the body receives. We gotta allow the body to receive the new circumstances. We have to allow, you don't have to. We get to, though, if we want to truly feel fulfilled, but we get to allow the new circumstances into our body. Now, how do we do this?
Trauma Stored In The Nervous System
In inner world, outer world, I talk about semskaras and the thorns that we're carrying around inside of our body and inside of our nervous system. And semskars are records of the past, they're trauma that's that's buried into our nervous system. And our nervous system really is an accumulation tool. It just carries around all of the suffering and all the pain and all of the trauma and all the torment and all the neglect until we address it. It carries it around and we start to build lives around all of this internal madness that's going on inside of our body. And this is sometimes this is our motivation mechanism. People, people are motivated to make more money because they're carrying around so much financial strain and trauma inside of their body, feelings of scarcity, feelings of feelings of lack. They're carrying that in their nervous system, they're carrying it in their body, and they're trying to rearrange the external world to try to soothe that, try to sav it, to try to try to dissolve the the lack and the scarcity that they're carrying around in their body. And that's that's just not viable. It's just not gonna happen. And what it takes is two different things.
Shadow Work And The Drill Method
One is shadow work, okay? Shadow work, and I've had episodes about shadow work where we actually go, we sit still and and we close our eyes maybe for a while, and we do some deep breathing, and we literally get into our body and we address it. We know we feel scarce, we know we feel lack, so we get into our body and we feel it and we start to release it. How do we release it? I've done episodes on the drill method too, right? Drop into your body, recognize what you're feeling, inquire and investigate, listen to what it has to tell you, and let it go. And as we do this over and over, we release the train the pain, we release the trauma, we release the pressure that's inside of us. Okay. Over time, if you feel financially uh insecure, if you feel financially fragile, then that is because that's what you're carrying around in the body, in the nervous system. And over time, as you feel these things, as you get where maybe you get triggered, you drop into the body, you recognize what you feel, you inquire and investigate into why it's there and what it's trying to tell you, how what it's what it's trying to teach you is trying to get your your attention. You listen to it, maybe it has something to tell you, maybe not. But at the at the end, the most important step is to let it go. Because as you let it go, you're literally letting the energy. Emotion is energy in motion. When you feel that emotion and you feel all of that, all the scarcity and lack, and you let it go, you're literally letting the energy out of your body. Energy in motion. You're literally letting that emotion that got trapped into your body, that got trapped in there, you're letting it out. Okay? So shadow work, drill method. You gotta, you gotta, when you're triggered, either trigger yourself and get into get into the scarcity and and the and the lack that you're feeling, the insecurity, the fear, financial fear, or whatever kind of fear or feelings of failure, it doesn't matter. Get into it, get into the lower levels of that, feel it, drop into your body, recognize what you're feeling, inquire and investigate, listen to what it's telling you, and let it go. And you you loosen the grip that it has on you a little bit. And you start to start to let that pressure and stress out of your nervous system. And over time, you you have more space for something different. Now, that's the first, that's the first
Training Higher Emotions On Purpose
part. It's the first option. The second option, and this one is a little, for me, it was a little more challenging when I started this work, it was to actually feel something higher. And I was in so much pain inside my body, I tried not to feel anything. I was, I just wanted to not feel. So I would numb so much. And in workshops and in some of the work we do and in some of the retreats, when I when I invite somebody, when I put them into some meditative activity and I invite them to drop into their body and feel, they've spent so long shutting off their feeling faculties, their feeling mechanisms, their emotional mechanisms, because there's so much pain that they struggle to even feel anything and recognize what they're feeling. But as we practice feeling what's happening in our body, we can begin to reach for higher levels of emotion. We can reach for higher levels of emotion. For instance, I can uh there's an image that I have of our uh inner wealth mastermind retreat in Miami when we had a large group and it was a beautiful, beautiful retreat house that we were in, and the energy in the room was awesome, and the experience was fantastic, and the weather in Miami was was magical. And I remember it just being an awesome, awesome experience. And I can literally just bring to mind the image of that retreat, and my entire body starts to starts to feel differently. And I can do that at will. Now, at the beginning, 10 years ago, I couldn't, but by practicing and and reaching for a higher level, reaching for a higher octave of feeling and emotion, we can begin to we can begin to feel something different. And if we feel something different more frequently and for a longer period of time, then we can actually start to rebalance and rebuild our body to accept that as our new normal. And we can regulate at that emotion instead of the old emotion. And that also naturally helps release some of that old emotion that's in there. Okay. And this is embodiment. This is when when I hold an image in my mind and I start to feel it in my body. I'm literally embodying that circumstance. And the feeling and the emotion that comes along with it starts to become the new, a new baseline. It starts to move the baseline of emotion up so that I experience more so experience that as the default instead of something that that was distant in the past. I can feel that more regularly. All right. And this is how we reshape our inner world is by feeling what we want to feel more and feeling what we want to feel less. And as we practice and as we train and as we teach ourselves to feel what we want to feel, our body starts to adopt and adapt to that new level and to that new feeling. And we literally can rewire ourselves from the inside out to experience life at a whole different level of emotion. And this is how I've moved from being feeling unloved to loved, from unsuccessful to successful, from insignificant to significant, from adequate or inadequate to adequate. Not saying I'm perfect in any of those, but but the needle has moved. And when the needle's moving, as the needle moves, so does the impact. Okay, the impact I make in the world because I start to show up differently because I'm feeling differently. And I'm experiencing myself differently because we experience the world and we experience ourselves through our emotions. We don't experience it in the external world, we experience it in our emotions. And the soul carries the dream, the mind creates, and the body receives. And if you're not allowing yourself to receive, all you need to do is give yourself permission to receive a new level of emotion and a new level of feeling. This is called embodiment work, everybody. You don't experience the world as it is, you experience the world as you are, and you're experiencing the world through your inner reality, not the external reality. So the game and the real growth and training is embodying the new reality that you are, that you're you've either created or that you're creating so that we can move our bodies into it more naturally, so we can experience a higher quality of life and a higher quality of being, higher quality of experience. Because the circumstances in your life will not rearrange the emotions in your body. And Angie and I moved from Maryland to Oregon, from Oregon to St. Louis, and we always expected something different in our inner world. And the old saying is no matter where you go, there you are. And where wherever you show up with the same exact embodied internal state, you're going to experience that just as that. Because no circumstances can take it away if you don't manage your inner world separately from the external world. All right, guys.
Daily Prompts And Closing Invitation
Hope this is helpful. Uh we we we talked about shadow work and the drill method. We talked about uh uh reaching for another higher level of emotion, even just a little higher level of emotion. What just reach for the highest level of emotion you can. If you, you know, if you love your kids more than anything in the world, think of your kids and feel the love that in your heart that you have for your for your kids more regularly and watch the emotional level, watch the amount of love that you feel normally and naturally increase. If if you remember a time where you accomplished something magnificent, bring yourself back to that, think that thought, feel the emotion you felt in that moment, and just sit in that for as long as you possibly can and watch the watch the emotional level start to regulate at a higher level over time. All right. If if you're if you're feel unhealthy, remember your peak fitness time and remember that. Remember what you you felt and bring yourself to that feeling state and watch your the feelings of health, inner health increase. All right. But we got to do the work inside. Got to manage the body, separate from the business, separate from the bank account, and separate from reality. All right. If you enjoyed what you heard and you want to learn more, go to www.innerwealthglobal.com for more tools and returns.