Breaking Free of Mormon Expectations: Chad Michael Hardy's Journey to Zero

Chad Michael Hardy shares his transformational journey from being raised in a six-generation Mormon family to discovering his authentic self and creating a life of alignment and abundance.

• Growing up Mormon with ancestors who helped establish the church in the 1800s
• Confronting his identity as a gay man in his mid-20s and breaking free from religious expectations
• Identifying and dismantling the "human story code" – the beliefs and stories that shape our identity
• Experiencing a profound spiritual breakthrough that helped him release limiting beliefs
• Developing the concept of "The Law of Zero" – a state of being untethered from limiting beliefs
• Understanding the five entry points to Zero: awareness, alignment, ownership, release to receive, and engaging your power
• Transforming his relationship with money by choosing abundance mindset over fear
• Pivoting his team-building business during COVID to create unexpected prosperity
• Acknowledging that authentic spiritual growth often creates temporary chaos as old relationships and identities fall away
• Learning to trust the process even when everything seems to be falling apart

Find Chad's book "Law of Zero" and learn about his team-building company at chadhardy.com.

Spiritual guru, two-time #1 best-selling author, and higher consciousness advocate Shaman Isis (aka Cynthia L. Elliott) is on a mission to turn the tide of the mental and spiritual health crisis with mindfulness practices, incredible events, powerful content, and motivational storytelling that inspire your heroes journey! Learn more about her books, courses, speaking engagements, book signings, and appearances at ShamanIsis.com.

Ready for a life transformation? Ready to bring your dreams to life? Then you will want Glowup With Shaman Isis: The Collection of inspiring books and courses filled with life lessons and practices that raise your vibration and consciousness. 

Ready for a life transformation? Ready to bring your dreams to life? Then you will want Glowup With Shaman Isis: The Collection of inspiring books and courses filled with life lessons and practices that raise your vibration and consciousness. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Glow Up with Shaman Isis
• 2:30 Breaking Free from Mormon Identity
• 6:07 Understanding the Human Story Code
• 13:16 The Spiritual Breakthrough Moment
• 19:08 Discovering the Law of Zero
• 25:15 The Five Entry Points to Zero
• 35:23 Navigating Financial Fear with New Energy
• 43:28 Transforming Business Through Pandemic Pivots
• 52:33 Episode Wrap-up and Resources

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:56

Well, hello, hello, hello and welcome to Glow Up with Shaman Isis. I'm your hostess with the mostest Shaman Isis, also known as Cynthia Elliott, to my friends and family and I am so jacked for our episode today. We've got Chad Michael, author, and you're going to introduce what you do to the audience with us today and I'm so excited to get to know his spiritual journey and to talk about the work that he does. Welcome, chad.

Speaker 2: 1:20

Thank you, so happy to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:22

You have a fascinating journey which I'm really looking forward to digging into. Can you tell people about what you do Give? Them a sentence or two about who you are, and then we're going to dig into your journey.

Speaker 2: 1:34

Yeah, so I mean, I'm an entrepreneur and I started a team building company back in 2005 that we service the whole United States. We work with business to business to do team building activities to help co-workers bond, build relationships and have some fun. And along the way I decided to write a book, which has nothing to do about team building, but it's about my spiritual growth and journey that led me to kind of doing what I'm doing now. And so a little background.

Speaker 2: 2:08

I was raised Mormon in a wonderful family, but six generations deep on both sides, so our ancestors pretty much were there from the foundation of the church in the 1800s and pulled hand carts from Illinois to Salt Lake City, and so I've got that pioneer blood and pioneer spirit in me. And in my mid-20s I finally had to accept the fact that I did not fit the mold of what a good Mormon should be and the fact that I'm gay. So I had to navigate through that, find my authentic truth and satisfy this need within me to be happy. And I really truly can say I found it and I found this tool that has helped me, has helped others that have actually done the work. So I'm excited I found it and I found these. This tool that has helped me has helped others that have actually done the work, so I'm excited to talk about it.

Speaker 1: 3:06

Yeah, I love that. I love that you're so frank and honest about your journey. If you are new to the show, we we talk about people's self-actualization, people's hero's journey. Everybody is a hero, everyone is on a hero's journey and the point of going over them is to allow other people to identify with different guests that I have on the show and I think religious challenges, religious trauma I'm not sure if that's even the case for you, but having to break free from the structures that you're born into, from the thought habits that are gifted to you by your family, community, church, whatever it is is one of the most powerful things that you can do to self-actualize in. Learning self-love and learning to not care what other people think and to hold your own and to glow as brightly as possible is really what this whole journey is about learning to manage that energy so you can create a beautiful experience for yourself. So, chad, tell us like give me some. Give me some highlights of this journey you've been on sure.

Speaker 2: 4:13

So, um, there's something that I talk about in the in my book, and I call it the human story code, and this is the building blocks of all the stories that we've been told since we were born, and these stories build up our identity, they build up the lens of how we see the world and how we perceive ourselves in the world, and all of these building blocks are built up of just that their story and we, um, we treat them as if they're absolute truth, and for me, my human story code told me that, you know, I'm is as a mormon, you, you there's a very clear path on how you live your life. You get an education, you go on a mission, you get married in the temple, and then you repeat, and you have children and you teach them the same thing, and so forth. And I was born out of that system, and so that was my perception of the world, and when I finally had this kind of self-actualization that I'm not unworthy, I'm not broken, there's nothing wrong with me, I'm not unworthy, I'm not broken, there's nothing wrong with me I had to break down, brick by brick, each one of those stories, and I had to keep the ones that felt that I was still in alignment with me and I had to toss away and discard those that don't, and I had to literally rebuild the lens in which I see myself and see the world. So anybody who has gone through this knows it is a extremely heart-wrenching, long experience. It's nothing that happens overnight, and if it did happen to you overnight, congratulations. That's amazing, but I think for most of most of us, no, it is a journey and and it still is a journey, I still find myself stumbling upon old pieces of that story code that's still laying around. There's still moments of shame or fear or confusion that I still on occasion, stumble upon, but now I have tools to know how I deal with those as they come up.

Speaker 2: 6:26

So my kind of the biggest thing that happened to me I was in my mid 20s. I was, I was a very, very ambitious young person. I feel like I'm I'm living my 20s now, where I'm like I go to Disneyland all the time and I don't want to be responsible. But in my 20s I was very much the opposite. I was very laser focused on, like, building a career. And I was 25 and I built a new house in Salt Lake City up on the hill overlooking the whole valley. It was quite spectacular.

Speaker 2: 6:57

And I moved into that house, thinking this is going to make me happy, and I was so miserable, I was lonely, I felt broken, I felt unloved, I felt like shame, all the things right. So one day I thought I just actually come home from a funeral my mom's best friend's daughter we were the same age, so she was all. She was like a cousin, because I grew up, you know, with her and she had passed away in a car accident. And I just come back from her funeral and I remember feeling how unfair that was and it should have been me, you know. I felt like why didn't God take me? Because I was just so miserable and unhappy. And then I had this like, like instantaneous, like feeling of transformation just come over me and I'm like I don't want to be unhappy anymore.

Speaker 1: 7:47

I want to live.

Speaker 2: 7:48

I don't want to die, I want to live. So I was, like, stood there, I went like this meditation, and I write about this in great detail in my book. But I I stood there at my table and I imagined myself holding a deck of cards and on each card was one of these belief systems or bricks of my story code. And I sat there and I imagined laying them all out on the table and I stuck back and I looked at my life, because you have to understand when you're Mormon, if you, especially if you've gone to the temple and you've done all that ritual stuff you make all these promises to God and the church and whatnot they tell you that if you stray from these things, that you'll be in Satan's power and you will lose all the blessings, satan's power and you will lose all the blessings. And I thought, I thought that the reason why I had all this success and happiness is because, even though I was struggling, being gay, I still was staying on that path and working to like discard it or pretend like it wasn't there. So I felt like this was my blessing, right, but I was still like, why am I unhappy? So I looked at all of these beliefs on my table. And then there, this like female voice spoke to me. This voice I've heard before in my life when I've been in these kind of moments of crossroads where I felt broken or unworthy or unloved. And this female voice told me these no longer serve you.

Speaker 2: 9:15

And just like that, like I imagined, this gust of wind come and it took all those cards and blew them out the window, down the hill, into the city lights, and I thought I'm going to do an experiment. If I step away from everything that I believe in my life, like they tell me, that I'm going to become in Satan's power, my life becomes, you know, a living testament of that. Then I'm going to go back to the church, but if I release this and I find the opposite of that, that I'm going to keep exploring. And that's exactly what happened.

Speaker 2: 9:55

I released all of those beliefs and I never once went back to pick up those pieces of those beliefs. And I never once went back to pick up those pieces. I continued to move forward. And that doesn't mean, from that day forward, that life is great and I healed all my trauma. No, that was just the beginning of my journey. It took many years, probably a decade or more to finally I would I would probably say, because I was, I would say, close to 20 years to finally get to a place to be like. You know what I, I know who I am, I know where I'm going, uh, and I have the tools to navigate when these cyclones or storms come and try to knock me out of alignment.

Speaker 1: 10:36

Yeah, uh, I love your frankness and honesty about that. First of all, I think that spiritual journey gets so glamorized for the highs that we don't often talk about. It is not for the faint of heart, it is not a journey for the weak of heart. You're literally ripping your soul out and rebuilding every cell in your body. I talk about this and I'll just take a moment to share this because I think it's important for listeners to get a chance to hear kind of the process for how you, what that process is like when you're tearing yourself down, the old version of you and rebuilding. I created something called the reality wheel because it was I was trying to express to people as I got to come up with some way to express to people this sort of process. And the reality wheel works like this and you'll find this in philosophy, but it really helped me to word it like this for teaching people.

Speaker 1: 11:23

So when we're born into this world, we are gifted with our thought habits and our thought habits are given to us by our mostly our families, but also our community, our churches and our schools and, of course, some of the more traumatic experiences or extreme experiences that we have and one of the hardest things for us to understand, because we're intelligent beings. Is we really, I mean, like I had convinced myself that I invented my own way of being because I didn't look like the rest of my family? I had a successful New York City, you know, glamorous career, and I thought that meant I didn't have the same issues or challenges. I didn't see the generational trauma. I was running from it anyway, anyway, so we're born into that.

Speaker 1: 12:06

Our thought habits, our thought habits, which are subconscious and conscious, repeating thoughts, create our mental state.

Speaker 1: 12:09

Our mental state creates our emotional state and our emotional state, which is energy and motion, creates our frequency and vibration.

Speaker 1: 12:17

It isn't until we begin to practice understanding that it is within our power, it isn't until we begin to practice understanding that it is within our power, only within our power, to choose how we want to experience life, that we begin to understand that it requires us to be aware of our thought habits, to become aware, to increase our awareness so that we understand when our thought habits shift. And it's understanding the power we have to change out the unhealthy thought habits for healthy thought habits that create a beautiful mental state, which creates a beautiful emotional state, which creates a beautiful energy, emotion and that frequency and vibration that is generated is the lived experience that we have at any time and it's really understanding that. That is the process that you're going through and it's having to rebuild those, to begin to raise your consciousness is and this is why I bring this up for a reason, because on the human consciousness chart, the very bottom of human consciousness, where depression and anxiety is, really our experience is guilt and shame, guilt and shame is literally the lowest vibration.

Speaker 1: 13:14

And I remember when I looked at the chart, I was about six months into my shadow work and I was like, looking at the chart and I was like, well, where am I at? Of course, thinking because I was a perfectionist that somehow magically been at the top of the chart, even though I was in a 10 year depression that I was coming out of. And I look at the chart and I finally came to the realization that I was at the very, very bottom, at the lowest frequency of vibration. I was like, oh, oh, my goodness. Well, I had moved up the chart a little bit, but it was that realization that I started to understand that guilt and shame, um, are incredibly destructive things that are gifted to us by the world that we live in. We've literally built a world around fear-based living, uh, and victim mentality, um, and would you say that was kind of the experience that you had in terms of, you know, the growing up in the church? Did it create this sort of fear dynamic?

Speaker 2: 14:02

Oh, absolutely. I remember the moment when I had this actualization that maybe the church isn't true, and this terrible feeling of fear that, like, shuttered my entire body, because I thought, oh my gosh, then what's real? Where am I? What's going to happen to me after I die? Because, you know, I was raised with this knowledge that this is absolute truth and this is the path and this is what you're, this is what's going to happen to you after you die. So you don't need to, you don't need to fear death, all this stuff. And all of a sudden I was like oh my gosh, what's gonna happen to me?

Speaker 2: 14:34

what's gonna happen to my soul? Like you know, it's. It's shattering and, um, I had to relearn. It's like almost like being in a terrible accident, or you lose all your motor skills and have to learn how to walk and talk and all those things again. That's what I felt like spiritually I had to relearn everything, um.

Speaker 2: 14:53

And the cool thing about it is, when I started on this journey of discovery, I started meeting so many other people on their journey that they discovered this knowledge within themselves. That was the exact same knowledge I was finding, but we didn't learn it in a classroom, we didn't read it in a book, we weren't taught by our parents. This was just in like, natural, innate knowledge that came from within. And I started finding other people that were discovering the same thing and I thought, well then, maybe that's the truth, because it's not taught, it just is. You know, it's kind of like discovering that the sun rises every single day in the east At some point you're going to discover that. But that, discovering that the sun rises every single day in the East, at some point you're going to discover that. But that's just truth. It happens every day and that's kind of what my journey looked like. And these connections with other people just kept happening.

Speaker 2: 15:45

And the more and more I discovered, the more and more people that I found in the most colorful of situations, in situations where before I was taught that those aren't good people because they smoke or they drank, or they cursed, or they were living in sin, or they were gay or this and that. And those were the people that I felt were the most like, spiritually awake and aware of these people that I had this judgment of before as, oh, they're sinners or, you know, do not engage. So I had to rebuild all of that. And and what the good news of all of this is? Because, because I now can see both ways of living. I have a way to, you know, compare. I am so grateful for my Mormon upbringing because it it taught me now to have more empathy and compassion for other people in their journey and where, where, where there once was judgment, there now is love, so that I have to just be grateful for my, my path and my journey that got me here.

Speaker 1: 17:02

I. You just brought up some really wonderful points. You actually inspired. I was writing down because I was like, oh, this is good. You inspired, like I do, video series and you just inspired one on the great lies of religion, organized religion.

Speaker 1: 17:17

And look, I want to be clear to people who are listening. I don't have a problem with organized religion or you being religious or you going to church, like I do not care, do whatever works for you. As a matter of fact, I think one of the biggest issues with the world right now is that our mental health crisis is a combination of the fear-based living that's been taught to us through media, combined with the collapse of organized religion that told us what morals and behaviors to exhibit in the world, and whether that may have been a lot of fear-based stuff, it still did create a framework that we are not finding a way to replace fast enough, and society, and it's causing us to have a huge mental health crisis. But, um, it's interesting the concepts of heaven and hell, like you had mentioned that about. Oh, my goodness, did I just say that? You know, basically, am I going to hell? Uh, for me, and I don't know about you, but everybody, you know, everyone's allowed to have their opinion and they're all right, because it's all about what we think and believe. Heaven and hell is a vibration and that they were basically the concept was taken to turn it into a threat of, if you do not behave a certain way, this is the eternal life you're going to experience and that, if you do what we say and give us that 10%, you're going to go to heaven.

Speaker 1: 18:30

And and it's created a lot of fear. It's, it's created that fear dynamic. That is the paradigm, that it's the lowest level of human consciousness and it's the reason why we find ourselves in living in what is idyllic circumstances, being absolutely miserable. That's one of the reasons. So what was your? What was there? A real big epiphany for you, like a really big moment? Like maybe when, when you decided to write your book, was that like a big moment? Because you know your book was controversial, uh, and still probably is within, uh, a certain um, because you were telling the truth of your experience within yeah, my, my dad asked me not to publish the book because I I I just tell what happened.

Speaker 2: 19:13

You know, like this is what happened to me within the constructs of this religion, and my dad felt like it would shine a negative light on our family. And I respect that because that's his truth completely and I understand it. But I told my dad I'm like dad, if the church doesn't want these stories to be told, then they need to behave in such a way that those stories never will be told because they are not going to happen to people. And there's two places in our world that you should be absolutely safe to be your authentic self, and that is at home and that is at church.

Speaker 2: 19:44

And sadly for many of us, those are the two places where we've had to mask the most and um, yes, and, and it's unfortunate and fortunately now I feel like and I, because I meet these young kids you know that are, you know, in their early twenties and they're, they're gay and are out, and their parents are extremely accepting of them and they don't have the same trauma that I have, that I had growing up in that world, and that's great, that's progress and I think no one should feel shameful for for who they are, how they want to live their life.

Speaker 2: 20:28

But like the epiphany, the epiphany for me kind of came as a friend. It was wild. So I I have this good friend, his name's quinn, and I there's a dedication to him in the back of the book he called me up one day because back when I got excommunicated from the church and yes, that happened to me um, and it was. It was a wild experience because it made international headlines and I actually remember this and byu uh followed suit and revoked my degree after the after this happened.

Speaker 2: 20:52

So it was like this big, like drama. It was just really toxic and gross, but at the same time it was and it was this exciting news, because back then that was so like shocking. Now people don't really seem to care about, oh, you gotta explain it. And but back then it was like, oh, oh, my gosh, um and um. So I started, I reached this point. My first touch point was I need to like forgive all of this. So I started writing a book, thinking I wanted to like write about forgiveness, because that was one thing, that that, even all of the bad experiences that happened to me in the church, for every bad experience there was two good experiences, and one of those was learning forgiveness. And so I thought, well, let me kind of talk about this. So I start like writing, you know, and I realized I'm not ready to forget. So I put those writings away. That was 2009.

Speaker 2: 21:44

Fast forward to 2019. My friend Gwen calls me up. He lives in Los Angeles. I was in San Diego and he's like Chad, you've got to finish your book. And me and Yayoi, which is his friend from college, she's Japanese, and I say that and I'll tell you why. I need to tell you she's Japanese, but in a minute. But they drive down from LA, two hour drive, sit at my dining room table and tell me I need to write this book. I mean, yeah, that to me was okay.

Speaker 2: 22:12

Message received and, um, I opened up Mr Google and I typed in the name of my book that I was writing and somebody else had written it in that 10 year span, like the exact title, the exact concept, everything like. Well, my grandfather always said, if you have a good idea, you better act on it, because that information is out in the universe and someone else is going to pick that up and do it. So it happened. I thought, well, I really don't want to write about forgiveness, so what is? What else can I write about? So I started thinking there's and we had this discussion okay, well, there has to be something greater and bigger than forgiveness. What is it? And we didn't come to any conclusion and they left. They went back to LA and that night I was meditating and I was just kind of asking my natural knowing and that voice spoke to me again, a female voice voice, and she said it's called the law of zero the hair of my whole body is standing up I get up and I get mr google, law zero.

Speaker 2: 23:17

Nothing. There's some weird like math stuff, maybe some like financial things, nothing about this. So I call yayoi, who's japanese, and I'm like, all right, well, I got the title of my book. It's called law of zero. I don't know what this means. She says oh, in japanese culture we have this thing called the enzo. It's a handwritten circle and it means the nothingness, the void, wow. And I'm like, oh, interesting. So that was my um jump off point. So because I I'm running a business, I don't have time to like, do all this research. I hired somebody who does a lot of um, like research and writing for me, for my team building company. I said do you, do you want a new project? Can you help me do some research? So she died.

Speaker 2: 24:02

Joe did a deep dive, finding books and everything to to figure out what is this zero thing?

Speaker 2: 24:09

And the only thing we really could liken it to is again this like enzo thing, this, this, this concept, the concept of nirvana, the void.

Speaker 2: 24:18

There's a goddess named shakti that was worshipped and she was the goddess of the void, the nothingness. And why is there so much emphasis and power given to this concept of nothing. And then I realized it's when we are untethered from everything in our human world, all these stories, this construct, this make-believe fantasy that we've created on this earth. If we can detach ourselves from it, we can then be neutral and then, at that point, navigate through life and create the things that we want, without that fear that holds us back and pulls us back out of alignment and pulls us back into the system. So if we can release all of those, those stories, those beliefs, those um, fear-based, um, you know, realities that we've created, we know nothing will hold us back. The only thing that will hold us back are natural law. Like I'm, just because I I'm going to be untethered from the world, I can't just jump off a cliff and think to fly like there's, there's natural laws and those are the only laws really that we, that that need to to um navigate our lives.

Speaker 2: 25:37

Everything else is human construct and um and and this human construct is designed to keep us small so yeah, yeah, yeah if, if we can like, if we understand that and understand that all of the, all of the, the drama that we create in our lives is just that drama. It's like a script. If we can just um, rewrite that, unwrite that, delete that, we, we can be completely free. And the thing is and that's what I discovered just what zero is so. So zero is, it's a place and a state. So it's a place, uh, in our universe. That is that everything, all thought, all creation comes from this, just nothingness. Right, when you have a thought like where did that thought come from? Well, or if we want to get biblical, you know genesis, god said let there be light. Well, what was there before there was light? Well, there was darkness, but there was also, at one point, there was an idea of light that came from some intelligent source. So, whatever that is, we can debate that forever, but it came from some intelligent source. So, whatever that is, we can debate that forever, but it came from somewhere. And I that that I call zero, and zero is constantly creating. As we're speaking right now, as you go back and listen to this again, in that moment, when you're in that moment, right now, zero is at work creating. And so the state of being at zero is being in this untethered, neutral state where we can navigate through life and literally open a portal and create magic. Create the things that we want, because when we no longer are held back by limiting beliefs, nothing can stop us except natural laws. You know, like you still got to, you can't go three days without water. There's certain things you still have to do to stay alive, but other than that, it's just put your energy on what you want to create and don't and don't allow any of this building blocks of shame, fear, anything limiting, just release them. So I discovered, through through this writing process, that there's five entry points to zero and they can be done in any order. So and it's, it's like a, it's a circle. In fact I have a graph I can show you right here. This is actually in my book, I put it right up. So it's, it's a circle and um, so they can be done in any order. Um, but, but the ones, I'll kind of explain them in the order that in natural progression, as a lot of times we we discover them.

Speaker 2: 28:26

So awareness is is the first one. So you got to have awareness of what you want, or awareness that you're out of alignment, or awareness that your life is not what you want, because many of us and for me up until my mid 20s, I was unaware that I was, you know, completely out of alignment. And then the next one is is you have to secure alignment? So you have to get in alignment with what it is that you want. So you probably notice, if you ever want like a new car, everywhere everything you see you start seeing that car because your brain starts to like constantly focus on that thing.

Speaker 2: 29:05

So you've got to get in that lane with what it is that you want, if it be a career, a relationship or just healing, whatever it is you have to get in that. And maybe, if you want, if it be a career, a relationship or just healing, whatever it is you have to get in that. And maybe, if you want to do personal development, maybe you start finding some books that will help you, or talk to your therapist or talk to your friends, or listen to podcasts podcasts like this. That gets you in alignment. The next one is take ownership, and this is very difficult for people to do because we live in a fear-based victim society and we want to point everyone else's fault, right, you know, and I always say that everybody's right and everybody's wrong, because it just is based on your point of view, based on your human story code.

Speaker 2: 29:51

so, if you can take ownership of everything, even if you were abused as a child yeah, like I was, you were you did not ask for that, you did not deserve that, and the person that abused you should not just, you know, shouldn't be, we don't have.

Speaker 2: 30:05

It's not like we don't need to hold them accountable for what they've done, but we can take ownership of it by no longer being a victim and blaming that person for all of our misfortunes that have happened.

Speaker 2: 30:16

Because you were traumatized as a child, you can just say that is my story, that happened to me. Once you take ownership of it and you name it kind of like naming Rumpelstiltskin in that fairy tale you know, once they were able to discover his name, they were free of his curse, right? So it's kind of like if we can name our traumas and bring them to the light, we then can do something about it, which takes us to the next entry point, which is release to receive. So you can release that story, you can release that victimhood, you can release whatever it is that's holding you back, so that you can receive what it is that you are trying to get in alignment with. And I have to say that you need to zero responsibly, because when you truly start doing this work and you get in alignment with your authentic, true self, there will be a fallout. You will find people, places, things, careers, whatever, start to leave your life and it will feel chaotic.

Speaker 1: 31:21

Oh yeah, I think there's not enough emphasis of that. There's so much talk. I just did another interview with Kelly Sparta and we were talking about this. We talk so much about the highs of the spiritual journey and the oh, you're one of the chosen ones which I, you know. That's not even that. We won't even get into that right now. I believe we're all chosen. I do believe there are some people who are called to to help lead the future. That's just a. There's a difference in wording, but there's not enough conversation about about that. You know it, there is. It is painful. I love my spiritual journey.

Speaker 1: 31:54

I would not go back to the person I was before. I was overweight, I was miserable, I never went anywhere and never did anything, didn't have dreams coming up, I just did nothing but work. Um, but I did give everything up, everything, uh, my reputation, my career. I lost almost all of the people that supported me when I was running an agency because they were benefiting from our relationship, which is one of those spiritual bitter pills. You're like, oh my goodness, all these people were around me because they benefited from me, but they don't want to be around when I need help or support for my new mission and that's a whole experience that I think bears more conversation. You will lose a lot of things and it will be chaotic and you will, um, get confused and like, uh, I was just talking to the previous interview about is like I, I, I, my old self, would pop back up because I kept having to be put in environments where my old self was thriving and, uh, and it was hard not to pick up the old habits and and beliefs.

Speaker 2: 32:55

it's a process it is a process, so, yeah, but you can't. It's like designing uh, your your living room, you want to get new furniture. Well, you can't get the new furniture delivered until you get rid of the old, and so you really have to toss it. And even though in a lot of times, we're like emotionally attached to these things or this way of life, or it's comforting, it's a status quo. This is why people who are in abusive relationships find another abusive relationship because, even though they say they don't want it, it's like embedded in their DNA, because it's in their programming. It's kind of like if you play Super Mario Brothers on video game, it's like it behaves a certain way. It's not going to all of a sudden be Zelda, it's going to be Super Mario Brothers and, uh, the only way to change, you got to recode it, so we have to recode ourselves. Yeah, there's that really uncomfortable time when you're going through this journey where everything feels like, oh my gosh, everything's falling apart, and that's when you have to stay firm, which is the fifth entry point is engage your power. You've got to plant your feet firmly on the ground and trust that the storm will pass and it's going to be a beautiful day tomorrow, and it will. Everything will just work out, because when you put your life to the zero test and you untether yourself from everything, everything will just work out. It's wild.

Speaker 2: 34:27

I have reinvented myself so many times in my life. Looking back, I think of those scary moments, and in those scary moments like, for example, the scary moment for starting my own business is that you don't have a steady paycheck. And now I'm you know, mortgage is coming due and all this and you haven't gotten any new clients Like, oh my gosh, so when I'd have this fear about money you want best way this is don't take financial advice from me, trust me. But let me tell you the way that I um, I got rid of that fear of money is I would go shopping anytime I felt like I didn't have enough money. I would go to the mall and I would buy a new outfit, or I would go car shopping or I would start house shopping.

Speaker 1: 35:16

I actually, I actually agree with this, because I believe that you have to behave in the energy of somebody who's abundant. And so when you're, what you're doing is behaving abundant and and acknowledging that well, more is clearly coming in, or I wouldn't be out here shopping.

Speaker 2: 35:29

Right? No, it's, and it worked every single time. I mean, and there's been moments where I was down to $2 in my bank account and then I would have that like panic and fear, and then I would just go for a walk, or I would go for a shopping walk or whatever. I would just get out of that situation. Imagine my life not in that situation and then I would come back and there would be an email from a client wanting my services. I mean, every single time I would, it would turn a corner and it's like there. So I got to the point where I'm like I'm going to stop fearing money. I honestly have not balanced my checkbook since 2005.

Speaker 1: 36:10

I love that.

Speaker 1: 36:13

It's so true though that's a huge part of it. I mean I noticed, like going up, because I grew up in the system in an orphanage and in care and a lot of you know a lot of religious trauma there from my foster families, but the money for all of them everybody who had any influence in my life was, uh had had that fear of money situation, like it was a constant in my childhood and it's been work as an adult. Um, having to work through that because you don't really see how deeply rooted that is in your experience until you've gotten healed enough to become aware of when your thought habits are shifting and it's like, oh, you know you shouldn't be looking at the bank account going oh no, what am I going to do? That is not helping.

Speaker 2: 37:01

Yeah, Like I said, well, you have to.

Speaker 1: 37:03

you know, like I say, don't take financial advice from me because you should be responsible.

Speaker 2: 37:07

But I figured out a way. I figured out a way to just like, just be and let it just happen. And during COVID, you know, my business was shut down for three, four months and you know, doing in-person team building, I mean we were toast, we were done. And one day I had this epiphany that I need to shift from in-person to Zoom. And I'd been using Zoom because I was having weekly calls with Emily who was helping me with the book, and I'm like, oh, this platform does a lot of cool things. So I started looking into it and I realized I can broadcast my team building experiences and make them interactive through Zoom.

Speaker 2: 37:51

So I put a word out newsletter to all of my previous clients and within months I was back in business and we were doing back to back programs with people from all over the world. And because there was no overhead, I made so much money during COVID. I feel blessed because a lot of people lost everything or lost their lives even. And here I was just like, like having all of this abundance and and just because I made, I had a choice. I could sit around and, you know, collect my I don't know money that was coming from the state every week or I could get up and do something, and I made enough money during COVID to pay my house off.

Speaker 2: 38:34

Wow, that's amazing, that was like and then even after I paid my house off now I'm going to be cashed for it because I just paid my house off, but again, I don't look at the balance, I don't balance whatever. After I paid the house off I still had the same amount of money. I don't know how that happened. I still I told my bookkeeper I'm like, don't tell me what happened. I just I want to just trust that whatever happened was magic, because I have no explanation for it.

Speaker 1: 38:58

Oh, that's wonderful. I love hearing that and I think you know I don't think we're saying to people be irresponsible, but there's a fine line between putting negative energy towards the potential negative outcomes of a situation and taking imperfect action, taking action towards your dreams and being in the energy of success. That's just a big difference between the two.

Speaker 2: 39:24

It is because everything in our life, in our world, is just construct of belief, right? So if you can believe in fearful things, then you can believe in magical things. It's, it's a choice, and zero was just going to say one thing to you yes. So zero doesn't know right from wrong, it doesn't know between what you know. This way of living is better than this. That way of living, all it knows is just to respond to how you, what you put into it is what you get out, and I think most of us, I think it goes back to that fear-based living that we're all programmed since birth. Um, that's where I think most of us can spend some time in that find awareness, entry point to find all of the parts of our, our dna and our existence, and the stories and generational stories of where we, we have fear and I did come from a family of um fear based about money oh yeah to this day.

Speaker 2: 40:28

They everyone in my family struggles except me, because I released that and I, when I moved to Las Vegas to start my company back in 2006, I had a meditation room in this house. I rented this house. That was way more money than I could afford, but I thought that would get me out of bed. And it was a huge house. I had all these extra rooms. So I had this room that I made into a meditation room and every single day I would get up, because I would wake up every day with anxiety because I knew I had just like financially, um, overextended myself.

Speaker 2: 41:03

But I wasn't gonna. I was gonna get up every morning and go into that meditation room and I wouldn't come out until I felt like power and magic. And that is where I spent a lot of time rewiring all of this coding from my family about fear, fear about money, fear of success, all of those things. But there are times that I would be in that meditation room for hours because I was not allowed to leave until I had zero anxiety about anything. And then I would go out there and I, I started that company from scratch. I started just going to meeting planners and hotels and I, I. I had done like one team building event for one client and that was my experience. And I showed up and, like I'm a team builder, and I just pretended like I knew what I was doing. And next thing I knew I knew what I was doing. And I think, yeah, we all, we all might go through this imposter syndrome, but you want to know what? I hate that phrase.

Speaker 1: 42:08

I hate it. The word imposter, just it's like fake it till you make it. But you know newbie phase. Newbie phase.

Speaker 2: 42:17

Yeah, when you're driving down, when you're driving down the street, driving down the highway, look around at everybody driving around with you and know that they all feel the same way.

Speaker 1: 42:26

Yeah, it's so true though, you know, we're sort of trained into this belief that we need somebody to tell us that we are something that we just deserve a title that we like.

Speaker 1: 42:34

I was talking about this again in another interview where we're talking about shamanism and the problem with it. Most people's perception of it is it was all a based on western tv, which always showed a drunk high weirdo uh the loner. It was never a good reflection. Most people don't know.

Speaker 1: 42:50

Shamanism is as old as time and has existed all over the world in almost every culture and uh, in that, in some, some sws of of shamanism that you're not a shaman until a shaman acknowledges that you're a shaman and it's like it's very sort of old school way of looking at things or you need to go take that course and get the certification and it's like you know you. You need to trust in your relationship with spirit and in your own understanding of what you're being called to do, to just own what that is and don't explain yourself to other people. That is such a weird thing that we do in our culture that we feel we have to explain or justify or talk someone into seeing something for a. That's not going to work. Um, but you're actually telling on yourself when you feel the need to convince somebody else of what you are.

Speaker 2: 43:37

It's knowing that you are, yeah, owning that I remember when I started doing team building for these, you know, big companies like microsoft and google and amazon, and I remember thinking I remember one time I was invited by facebook to come on their campus and do a team building and I've been there a few times on campus, saw Mr Mark like and I'm like, wow, if only they knew that I didn't know what I was doing. But then I realized I know what I'm doing and I had to like, step into that and own it and it took me a while to finally feel like I I'm, yeah, this I'm, I'm good at this, this is what I do. But I still never let anybody know that. But deep inside I felt I would I would you know finish a game and I would think, if only they knew that.

Speaker 2: 44:26

I'm just this little guy from don't know what I'm doing, Don't even have a college degree Cause I got taken away from me.

Speaker 1: 44:34

Oh, I know. Yeah, in my case, I never did graduate, you know. So I, I I was fortunate, uh, in my career. Although I was a bit lost as a person, I was really successful in my career and marketing and PR, and I worked with a lot of really famous people, like a lot of real household names, and I always tell people, um, especially people who are new at entrepreneurship or my students, that, um, I've worked with a lot of famous people in technology, business, hollywood, you know, global names, and the only thing that they had going for them aside from who they were related to, the only thing that I saw consistently across the board, because I was I was quite astonished at how dumb a lot of really famous, successful, rich, intelligent people were in real life.

Speaker 1: 45:20

I was like you know, you're not that bright, how did you get to be so rich? But it was this attempt, this opportunity as a young 20-something-year-old, 30-something-year-old, to study at the feet of some of the most grand names. But the thing that I found is A most of them are not particularly special. They just had a radical, almost delusional belief in their own abilities and that was really it, and they would even share with me the stories of like they didn't know anything, they didn't have the certificate, they weren't told they were that person or that title or whatever it was, they just did it because, they believed in themselves, and I think that's your problem, and hats off to them.

Speaker 2: 45:56

I mean that's. I never poo-poo anybody's success, I don't, even if I feel like they don't deserve it. It was like, well, we all deserve it. It's just they somehow figured out the code and they, they, they cracked the code.

Speaker 2: 46:10

Because you know, to me, I do games for a living, so I look at life as a game. You know, every time you go to CVS, you're like play the game with the coupons. You know, there's always some sort of game that we play and a lot of it is like how we, how we make it in this, in this world. You know it's, it's, it's a game and we win some, we lose some, but I think the what's helped me navigate all that is just to be untethered from the outcome. So it's, it saves me from disappointment, uh, and it saves me from beginning knocked, knocked off my path.

Speaker 2: 46:42

Because these, these little things, you know, like if you want to become, let's say, you want to become a famous actor and it doesn't happen, it's like, well, why? Well, there's, maybe there was. If you really get honest with yourself, did you really do the work? Because I look at myself with my business, why, why isn't it a bigger business? Why isn't it more of a well-known brand? And when I'm completely honest with myself, it's because I don't want to work that hard, I don't want to be a slave to my career. I want the play. I want to have fun.

Speaker 1: 47:12

Yeah, it's hard for people who haven't gone through that experience. Like when you, I get a lot of the push from especially linkedin. It's like oh you if you're not working 14 hours a day. You don't deserve it, and it's like fuck off.

Speaker 2: 47:25

I mean, honestly, work smarter, not harder, right, and that's kind of what I did a couple years ago. I had this epiphany and I because I used to have to travel and do most of my team building programs, so I was in a plane I I mean, I've got like status on all these different airlines, I fly down them and I finally got to one. I'm like I am tired, I can't do this forever. So I hired a videographer and I had him follow me around for a week and I videoed myself doing everything. This is how you do this. This is how you facilitate this. This is how this game is played. Now I have all these training videos, so I don't have to do I haven't.

Speaker 2: 48:06

I think I facilitated one game this year and it was because a client asked like, specifically asked for me, because they've come back, you know, frequently, and other than that, no, I just say, watch my training video and we hire these people with great personalities. A lot of them are actors, and so if anyone's listening to this you want to facilitate, let me know. We're always looking for good talent and they watch the training videos they show up and my, my staff is kind of behind the scenes, helping them remotely If they have any questions, and they just have to follow a script, and then our clients have a great time. And I figured this out. I'm like, wow, I now can leverage myself to be a digital person so I can go out and have fun and write a book, promote the book, to have time to talk to amazing people like you, and it's great, and so I think. But I didn't just discover that overnight. It like took me all these years of finally going. You know what?

Speaker 2: 49:08

I'm ready for something different and and that's one thing about that truth. Um, is that anything that's like our, our personal truth, which is just stories and construct. It's going to evolve and change, because there was a time in my life where I felt like I need to be working 14 hours a day to be successful. Now I'm like no, I can work two hours a day and make more money because I am, I've leveraged myself, I don't have to physically be anywhere. Now, yes, yes.

Speaker 1: 49:39

Oh, I love that, okay, I got to offline, I got to talk to you about entrepreneurship, I've got the soul tech foundation, so for me, and we go back to religion. So, because I grew up, I mean I understand the benefits of spiritual teaching and training and, although I'm not interested in opening up a traditional church per se, the soul Tech Foundation, which is my 501c3, um, is fundraising for its first Soul Tech Wellness Center, which is not just about your physical, it's not just about yoga and meditation and moon rituals, but we will have a Sunday service and, uh, in the same, in in the, with the ideal of renewal and community, because I believe it's something that's actually needed in the world. Um, but it will.

Speaker 1: 50:24

It is not religion based per se and fundraising for when you start the minute you open your mouth and you start talking about spirituality or you're like oh yeah, I want to have a, uh, and it touches on the woo, woo. I can just see people's like just they sort of glaze over, like oh, she's more.

Speaker 1: 50:40

she's one of those, and it's like no, I'm actually trying to address what I think is a really important challenge in the world. We have a massive mental health crisis that people under 30, people, young people under the age of 30, the second leading cause of death is self-harm and and and yet, you know, we just keep plotting forward with more technology and more, uh victim mentality and and I believe we need answers to that. And if it's not organized religion because they sort of burnt their boats, then what? What is? What is an evolved answer to that? And for me, it's. It's that uh kind of thing anyway. Uh, I'd love to tap into that, your incredible experience as an entrepreneur, to ask you questions about that. So, chad, if people want to learn more about your work, the incredible work that you do doing these adventures for businesses, or learn about your book, where would they go?

Speaker 2: 51:30

So you, if you want to just know everything that I do, you can go to my, my website, chadhardycom, and there's there's links there to adventure games and to also my book, law of zero. So, and from that, from law of zero book, uh, from the law of zero book website, you can see where you can, um, pick it up, because it's on amazon, barnes and noble, um, and different booksellers carry it and the audiobook is now out and I, I, I read the whole book into a microphone and let me tell you, when you listen to yourself talk for that many hours, the english language starts to sound very weird.

Speaker 1: 52:10

it does I try to. It's hard for people to know they've never I've recorded my book memory mention. I didn't do the other ones. I actually used kdp just launched a beta for their for uh of the voice, which I had tested, but the voices weren't developed enough at the time. Anyway, the one I did do was Memory Mansion and it was such a weird experience. I had to redo the whole thing because I messed up the audio. I was like what? Are we doing over here. It is weird listening to yourself, right?

Speaker 2: 52:38

Yeah Well, just because after a while you get numb, where your brain just kind of turns off. You're just reading and then the language starts to sound weird, like is that a word? This is so funny. It's funny, but I was just listening to the playback the other night and I fell asleep to my own voice. Talk about an inflated ego. I'm like, oh, this is so soothing.

Speaker 1: 53:07

I struggle to listen to myself. Like I re-listen to things so I can perfect my delivery and stuff, but I cringe through the whole thing. I got to get better at that.

Speaker 2: 53:17

Yeah, I performed for so many years. I'm a trained vocalist so I don't have a problem listening to my own voice. Um, I, actually I don't like listening to like conversation, like like I I cringe a little bit listening to podcasts and what I've been on and but spoken word, no, because it's, it's a performance oh, my gosh chad, it's a delight, such a delight, we have to meet in person, because I can tell you and I would get on like a house on fire oh my gosh, yes uh, thank you so much for coming on the show uh, you guys chad.

Speaker 1: 53:50

What's your middle name again?

Speaker 2: 53:52

chad.

Speaker 1: 53:53

Michael hardy is my full name thank you, I knew I was doing. I was like I'm getting something off and I've seen I've been to your website many times. So, chad Michael Hardy, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your fabulous energy and your incredible story.

Speaker 2: 54:06

You're awesome. Thanks for doing what you do so that we can have these conversations.

Speaker 1: 54:10

Yeah, no, absolutely All right, you guys, hold on, I gotta, I gotta bring out my bullets while we're doing this. If you're not familiar with my work, I'm Shaman Isis. All of a sudden it is Cynthia Elliott. I've got three best-selling books out. Two of them have been packaged together in my glow-up collection Unleash the Empress, which shows my spiritual practices.

Speaker 1: 54:26

Memory Mansion, which was my first number one bestseller, shares my journey from Catholic orphanage to PR, new York City, pr diva, to waking up and learning to love myself. Certainly an adventure. It'll have your eyebrows hitting your hairline a few times, but you've been forewarned. I've learned to be guilt-free and shame-free, so I'm being shameless. Anyway, if you want to learn more about my work or what the events I have coming up, go to shamanicistcom. If you want to learn more or potentially support the Soul Tech Wellness Centers, where we're looking to help raise the human consciousness on the planet and help people learn to love themselves and have strong mental and emotional and spiritual wealth in their lives, check out soul tech foundationcom. We are fundraising right now for our first wellness center, so go check it out and support us, and I thank you guys for listening. If you aren't subscribed, what are you thinking it's intelligent, listening, uh, something to uplift you um on your days when you're struggling or just when you want to.