138. You’re Not Broken: How to Flip the Switch on Anxiety and Depression by Rewiring Your Brain (Mike Wood)

What happens when you've built a successful career, ticked every box on the list society gave you - and you're still miserable?

That's where Mike Wood found himself at 45. A former COO who helped scale Jarrett Companies from $2.5 million to over $100 million in revenue, Mike had achieved everything he was supposed to want. Yet beneath the success, 30 years of anxiety and depression were still screaming.

In this deeply honest conversation, Mike shares the five-year inner journey that led him to become a consciousness coach — and why he now takes those same tools into maximum security prisons and corporate boardrooms alike.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• Why external success can never fill an internal void — and where to look instead
• How a single moment in kindergarten programmed a core belief that silently ran Mike's life until he was 47
• What the subconscious mind's "number one job" reveals about why we hold on to old wounds — and how to finally let them go
• The two-minute gratitude practice that Mike used when his 7-year-old came upstairs in tears about monsters
• Why reframing the past isn't rewriting history — it's giving your younger self more context
• The surprising leadership lesson Mike learned when his company flooded a 30-floor high-rise — and how taking radical ownership transformed the entire room
• What school is failing to teach our kids (and ourselves) about emotional intelligence
• How releasing identity attachments can dissolve the physical stress response almost instantly
• The one thing Mike wants every quiet achiever to know if they feel broken

About Mike Wood

Mike Wood is a former COO turned consciousness coach who spent 30 years struggling with anxiety and depression before finding the tools that changed everything. He now runs Learn to Love Being You, a 10-week subconscious reprogramming program, and takes his work into maximum security prisons and corporate leadership settings across the US. Mike is also the father of seven children, ranging in age from 11 to 33.

Connect with Mike & Claim Your Free Gift

Mike is offering listeners a free first week of his program — including guided breathwork exercises and manual tools to manage anxiety starting today.

Free gift: mwoodmindset.com/warrior 

Program: learntolovebeingyou.com 

Email: mike@learntolovebeingyou.com

Work with Serena

If you’re an introverted woman leader ready to become more visible and influential without performing extroversion, I invite you to apply for a SEEN Executive Calibration. 45 minutes via Zoom. Diagnostic, not selling. Root causes, not symptoms.

Apply HERE.

Work with Serena Low at serenalow.com.au. 

Loved this episode? Leave a review to help other Quiet Warriors find the show.

This episode was edited by Aura House Productions

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Welcome! My guest today is Mike Wood. Mike is a former COO turned consciousness coach teaching subconscious rewiring to maximum security prison inmates and anxiety-ridden professionals. He has led hundreds of emotionally charged, high-stakes conversations at Jarrett Companies before walking away to teach what actually rewired his own life. He now runs Learn to Love Being You, a program focused on subconscious reprogramming and emotional rewiring. Not the fluffy stuff, the mechanical tools that actually change how your brain works. Welcome, Mike, to the Quiet Warrior Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Thank you, Serena. I'm really excited to be on your show today.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Oh, I'm excited as well. We had a great conversation the last time. So let's let's bring that in and share that with our listeners.

Dyslexia And Scaling A Company

SPEAKER_02 0:54

Can you tell us a bit about your academic experiences and your time as a CEO?

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Sure. My academic experiences are not very well um, not very well, very well versed.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Um I grew up with a rare form of dyslexia and I didn't learn how to read until I was about 25 years old. Um, but you know, I worked hard and I worked my way up to uh a COO at Jared Companies and helped grow them from $2.5 million a year to a little over $100 million a year in a in a very short period of time. Um and I still work there. Um and we uh we learned a lot and growing that fast, a lot of companies will go bankrupt in that short of uh time period as as fast as we grew. So I I learned a lot from a lot of the mistakes that we made. And um yeah, but at the end of the day, uh about midway through all of my journey there at Jarrett, um I kind of ran into a wall, reached a lot of success, and uh and I was still miserable. And then that's when I kind of changed gears a little bit and tried to figure out what was gonna make me truly fulfilled inside and uh help me find peace. And that was uh one finding peace in myself. But then once I found it in myself, then you know, trying to help others find the same peace I found.

Success Without Peace

SPEAKER_02 2:30

If it's okay with you, I'd like to ask you a bit more about that time when you are feeling miserable because I think what you are about to say could help other people find the language to describe what they might be going through too.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Sure, yeah. You know, I I was looking outward into the world to try to find success that would fill a void inside of me, and there was no amount of success that I could that would fill the void, you know, finding the right woman, uh having healthy uh kids, growing up, being successful, um, getting the right house, you know, getting to where a job that my wife could stay at home. Everything that I thought was out there that was gonna make me happy. It just it was a momentary uh uh moment of success that gave me a little bit of confidence, but the the inner noise just kept screaming louder and louder. And at 45 years old, I I was as miserable as I'd ever been. And I was struggling with anxiety and depression for 30 years. And uh yeah, so there I I my I have a firm belief that we're not going to fill any voids by going out into the world and seeking success.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

So if the solution is not going out into the world, then where should we be going?

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Turning our attention inward, turning our focus on ourselves and being a becoming aware of what is going on inside and dealing with that. And it's really hard for a lot of people because when you say do that, they okay, now I I'm paying attention, so what do I do with it, right? Um, that's the that's the difficult part. And it took me uh about four or five years to really get to a good place. Um, and I struggled a lot through that, but I did start to find little little things that let me know, wait a minute, I've never felt like this before without drugs or alcohol or something, you know, in an altered state. And and I was able to find those moments of peace, and it it gave me the affirmation that I was pointed in the right direction. And so I continued on and pushed forward and I stumbled. But, you know, I've always worked really hard because my learning disability kind of made me feel like I had to outwork everybody because I wasn't as smart as everyone. And when I did finally turn my focus inward, I did it with a lot of hard work. I was consuming 10 to 15 audible books a month. Um, I was meditating for an hour or two uh a day. Um, I was doing anything that was out there in the world, like taking Ricky classes, um, energy healing, anything that I could stumble across that could potentially help me. I tried any and everything available to me. And five years later, it, you know, I was on the other side of it, and all I wanted to do was was help other people. Because when I found peace, when I looked around, all I could see is the same pain in other people.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

I love that you clarified that it took five years and also that you tried everything. I think sometimes when when I speak with people who are going through a particularly difficult time, they want to know what is the thing, what is the one thing that's going to solve the problem. And I have to explain that from my experience, it's never one thing because we're holistic beings and we have so many facets to us. And one little thing could affect something else, and then it complicates other things. And we never can tell which modality, which person, which mentor, which book is going to make that difference. We just have to try it all.

unknown 6:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:13

And then something works, and then perhaps we can go back and think about what led up to that, what was helpful, and it's never quite simple.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

I could not agree with you more. A lot of people ask me why did I create a 10-week program? And it was because you need those 10 different things. That there's more things, but you know, learning to take control of your mind manually, and then learning how to forgive, learning how to remove attachments, learning how to rewrite old core beliefs, figuring out whether or not you're living an authentic life. You, if you're off in any one of those areas, you're gonna be in trouble. Like you're gonna have a hard time quieting the noise in your head that's gonna be, you know, screaming at you. And so you're right. It it does, it requires a lot of different facets for us to truly be uh able to get in sync and find peace.

Core Beliefs And Subconscious Memory

SPEAKER_02 7:10

Let's start with one of those that you just mentioned, the core beliefs, because I believe that whatever we tell ourselves or whatever we've absorbed over the years, especially when we were children, that has a huge impact on the way we show up in the world today. So somebody can be 30, 40, 50 years old, outwardly achieving a lot of success. They've done everything right that they were told to do, but still something feels off. So let's talk about the core beliefs that you've noticed.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

So I'll give you a really good example, and it's from my childhood. Um, I couldn't read till I was 25 past the second grade level. And the first time I realized that I couldn't read like everybody else is when I was five years old in a kindergarten, and everybody was trying to spell their name, and my teacher was getting frustrated with me because I couldn't spell Michael. I in that moment I got into an elevated emotional state, which opens up the subconscious mind for it to be programmed. And then I was left with a clear intention that I wasn't as smart as the other kids because the the other kids could all spell their name. And that program carried with me until I was 47 years old, and I was able to go back to it and rewrite it. And so, no matter what I did along the way, I was always met with, I'm not as smart as everybody else. I'm dumb, I'm stupid. I those voices in my head, those reoccurring thoughts, negative thoughts that were seemingly came from nowhere, were actually coming from that negative core belief that was created when I was five. And there's uh it's very, very interesting when you dive into how the subconscious mind works. It's it could be a curse, but it's also a gift when you know how to use it. So the subconscious mind has no concept of time. And that could be a curse if you don't understand it. But once you do understand it, we can go back in time right now using our imagination to that moment when we were five years old and reframe it all with compassion, love, and forgiveness. I forgive all the kids for laughing at me, forgive the teacher for getting upset because she didn't know I was dyslexic, she didn't know how to work with me, and forgive myself for not understanding the situation. And then the subconscious mind's number one job is to protect us. And so when it's a fearful memory, it's going to hold on to that memory. But if I go back and I reframe it all with love, compassion, and forgiveness, it doesn't have anything to hold on, nothing to protect me from. So it'll just let that memory go because it's a compassionate, loving memory. And now all of a sudden, it's not going to try to protect me from it as I move through my life. And it's one of the most liberating things that we can do in life. And um I the this is the reason I created my program. And it's because when you start doing it, it just it's the most liberating thing that that you could do.

SPEAKER_02 10:19

I hear you, and I I feel the same. So I practice a modality called root cause therapy, which is in some ways quite similar to what you said about going back and reframing how you look at something or how you feel about someone. And I think the the magic of that is that we think that there is only one version of history. But when you go back and reframe something, it allows you to rewrite the narrative, but in a way that feels healthy, that feels wholesome, that feels empowering, that feels much more you use the word liberating. I'm also thinking that for people who are very finely tuned with regards to integrity, they may worry that by going back and reframing and rewriting, they are altering history. They are changing what it was and diluting themselves into into a rosier version of life. What do you say to that?

SPEAKER_01 11:21

I would say it's, you know, everything that we everything that happens to us is our perception of how we how we deal with it. And when we're five years old, we don't have the tools to perceive that situation with enough information. But now that I'm when I was 47 years old, I had so many more tools. All I'm doing is going back and reframing that situation with more compassion and understanding of what was actually going on. That teacher, I had no reason to hold any grudge towards that teacher as a five-year-old little boy that had dyslexia that didn't get diagnosed till I was in my late 30s. Um, like that whole entire situation didn't have to be a negative situation. It still happened exactly like it did. The only difference was how I perceived it. And so it, I would say our ability to forgive is at the the the top of the list in qualities that we that we can have through any situation because our subconscious mind, number its number one job is to protect us. And if we're using compassion and forgiveness on a daily basis, it's not trying, there's nothing to protect us from. We're living free. And and so I don't wouldn't think that going back to that five-year-old little boy is rewriting history. It's just giving it more context, it's giving that five-year-old more knowledge to be able to process that situation.

SPEAKER_02 12:57

That's a beautiful way of phrasing it. And I also think of myself when I go back into that time frame as being the adult version of myself, going alongside the five-year-old version of myself and you know, doing whatever that child needed in that time that they didn't receive. So the hug, you know, the words of affirmation, the words of love, the feeling of you are enough, you know, you are already loved, you belong. You know, there's nothing else you need to do. And I think perhaps that in each of us there is that version, that inner child who receives some kind of message or some some wound that has perhaps been allowed to fester, not because somebody intentionally wanted to hurt the child, because those people also didn't are byproducts of their upbringing, their conditioning, and they too have their own inner work to do. And so I think when you say it like that, when we can go back and apply forgiveness, and not not to say that you know it's and I think it also depends on how do you see forgiveness. Some people have a very narrow view of what that means. But I think it's it's about letting it go so that you don't torture yourself for the rest of your life with what could have been or what should have been. But you're not saying that it was right that it happened that way, but you're you're saying I release I release you and I release myself from this obligation to stay in this story.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

Exactly. Uh I think Nelson Mandela said it really well. Holding on to anger or resentment is like drinking poison and expecting your enemies to die. It's it's really silly, right? So at the end of the day, if we are able to forgive somebody, it doesn't condone what they did, it just frees us from that moment. It it doesn't get to take up any more space in our heads. We don't have to ruminate on it, we don't have to carry it with us. We could set it down and move on with our lives and not let that moment, you know, hurt us anymore.

unknown 15:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 15:04

And I think the key to that is compassion because when we are able to have compassion towards ourselves as well as other people, you extend that grace and then you see that all of us are fallible. And so all of us deserve to be loved. And all of us have been hurt, and that's why all of us are acting out in certain ways to protect ourselves, to stand up for ourselves, perhaps. And not all of us are doing it the right way.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Yeah. You know, I I found that I could use two one of two statements, and some people use both of them, some people just use one or the other. But I I stole one from Jesus. I forgive you for you know not what you've done. And then the other one is people in pain cause pain. And and it's just a true statement, you know. That that teacher, when she was getting frustrated, she was in pain, she was having a physical reaction, didn't know how to do it, didn't know how to teach a young five-year-old kid how to spell his name. She probably was frustrated that my parents didn't teach me. She did, but she didn't understand the situation. And so at the end of the day, it wasn't her fault. She was just reacting to at the best she could with what she was able to do. And and I think that's the case with everything. You know, people, even who do the most horrible things, most people have had horrible things done to them as well. And so you could look back in their lives and see the pain that was done to them, and then they think that's how life is, and they're acting out of that pain. And at the end of the day, forgiveness frees us from the pain that anybody has caused us.

Forgiveness As A Practical Tool

SPEAKER_02 16:43

Now, on the subject of teachers and students and classrooms, uh what is it that school is not teaching us?

SPEAKER_01 16:51

Emotional intelligence. It's teaching us math and language, but it's not teaching us how to deal with our mind and how to process, you know, our emotions. Um, you know, over the I've got I've got seven kids, and they range from 11 years old all the way to 30, uh, 33 years old. And there's a 10-year gap in the youngest one. And I've been able to teach him all of these tools. He actually has a rare form of dyslexia, just like I do. Um, but he's not suffering. He understands all of the stuff that I'm teaching you and or teaching uh in my uh learn to love being you course. And he's able to use all this information. And and I just think schools aren't trying to teach us how to manage our emotions. And I I think if we would we would take an hour a day and try to teach our kids how to you know calm ourselves down when we get excited and you know, when we get upset, understand what's actually

Emotional Skills Schools Miss

SPEAKER_01 17:56

happening and be able to separate from that emotion almost a little bit and then diagnose where it's coming from and then use some of the tools that are available to us to kind of work through those and be able to manage them.

SPEAKER_02 18:10

What's a simple exercise you can share?

Two Minute Gratitude Switch

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Um, you know, gratitude is one of the one of the coolest things that uh, and I know everybody uses it, but it I think it's underused. I think I don't people think people truly understand the power of it. Um so gratitude is one, breath work is another. Uh, I use those both with my kids a lot. So if anybody's I got a young kid, I I realized the power of gratitude. I'd been working on it on myself, and my son came up when he's about seven years old for the first time, come upstairs completely crying. It was past his bedtime, got out of bed, he's upstairs, and he's freaking out. And he's saying monsters are in his closet and there's somebody's gonna come get him from outside. And he's in tears, almost snot coming out of his nose. He's so upset. And I didn't really know what to do, but I had been doing the gratitude journal, and I just kind of went into go mode and I was like, Tucker, I know what's wrong with you. Um, you're in the fear bucket. We need to get you in the love bucket. And he said, Okay, but I don't know how to do that. I said, Well, it's real simple. All you gotta do is play a game with me. And uh he said, Okay, I said, It's it's all you got to do is play the grateful game with me. He said, I don't know how to do that. He's all upset, and I said, It's simple and I'll go first. And I said, I'm grateful for our house. I said, Okay, it's your turn. He said, I don't know what I'm grateful for. I said, Well, what about your cats? He's like, Okay, yeah, yeah, I'm I'm grateful for Leroy and Nala. And so we just start going back and forth saying what we're grateful for. And after about two minutes, he's not crying anymore. And I'm like, Okay, this is working. All right, let's go, keep going. We went for about 10 minutes and we're smiling and laughing. We carry on for another couple more minutes, and I realized, like, I don't have to talk to him about monsters not being in his room. I was able to just give him a hug, let him tell him to go on back down and get in bed. He went downstairs, got in bed, went straight to sleep. What happens to us when we get into our brain starts to ruminate on negative thoughts, our mind goes into panic mode and we start producing cortisol, and we're in fight or flight. Our our our our mind doesn't need logic at that moment. It doesn't need us dead to tell us you're safe. It needs your system to calm down. And when Tucker was going back and forth with me saying what he was grateful for, he turned, he flipped the switch in his brain and stopped producing cortisol, started producing oxytocin after two minutes. Now he's producing oxytocin. So for the next 10 minutes, while we were doing the gratitude journal, he's getting drug-induced happy. So by the time we were done, there was nothing left to talk about. His body was chemically happy and was able to go back downstairs. And I I this is so underused with with children and adults. We should all be starting our day this way. Um, this is it, it's it's just an extremely powerful thing. Uh breath work isn't a is an amazing thing. Um, and then just getting getting separation from our thoughts, realizing that the negative thoughts inside of us, it's not us. All right, it's it's just uh uh uh regurgitation of the past. And uh there's a lot more I could go on and on with all the different uh ways that that our mind is working. But these are some simple things that we can do to help quiet our mind and start taking control of it instead of feeling helpless whenever we do get into these emotional states.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

Thank you for that. I really like your two minute gratitude exercise because that's something we can start and end the day with. So when we start the day with gratitude, it sets a tone for the rest of the day. And then when we finish the day, gratitude again reminds us. And takes us out of that sense of, oh, I haven't done this and haven't done that, and and ruminating. And I think what you said about flipping the switch is really important because what you're doing is you are con you're deciding that you're the one that controls how your brain operates. And because you understand how it operates, you can turn the switch on, turn that switch off. You can activate the right parts of the brain to do what they should be doing. And then you talked about the fear bucket and the love bucket as well. And that reminds me that you know we can our brains really can only focus on one thing at a time. If you're focusing on love, you're not thinking about fear. You're busy looking for evidence of love, of stories, of things that happened, of you know, what somebody said. So if you're constantly looking for evidence of something that is that inspires in you that positive emotional state, that elevated state you're talking about, then you'll be immersed in that state. You have no time, no space for that other stuff.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Yeah. Yeah. And it's we are chemically made this way. Like God or the universe, however we were created, designed us to have that cortisol or or the adoxytocin be produced at any one time. And it takes two minutes to get flipped with one way or the other based on the content of our thoughts. And we are in control of that. We can stop in the middle of a panic and go, wait a minute. I'm grateful for the air in my lungs. I'm grateful for my spouse. I'm grateful that I have enough money to eat dinner tonight. I'm grateful, you know, that I have hot running water in my in my house. Like we could just keep going and going. And two minutes later, I'm running, I'm full of oxytocin and I'm happy. And here's another thing. And so I in my program, I have everybody do this for 10 minutes because two minutes flips the switch, and another eight minutes, you're overwhelmed with oxytocin and you're drug-induced happy, and it's it's amazing. But the the really cool thing that happens is after about a month, you'll just be going through your days, and you have manually programmed your subconscious mind to reproduce grateful thoughts. So now, mixed in with all the other random thoughts that you get, you're gonna have random grateful thoughts, things that you're grateful popping up in your head because you have started to program your mind to think that way. And it's it's really a beautiful thing.

SPEAKER_02 24:26

That's the kind of mind programming we want to learn. We want to hear more about. Now tell us more about your program.

unknown 24:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

What are you teaching in this program? Who is it for? Who is it helping?

The 10 Week Rewiring Framework

SPEAKER_01 24:38

So um what I'm it's a 10-week program, and the first three weeks are manual controls, like we've been talking about, all the manual stuff. And then after the first three weeks, we get so cognizant of what's going on in our minds that we have to start paying attention to what's going on around us because the the people who really take my program seriously and they do everything the way that it's designed, after about three weeks, we start to notice negative coworkers, negative spouses, negative friends, negative family members. And we have to set boundaries and re-establish boundaries to protect our peace inside. Because if everything is negative all the time, all the time, you don't even realize that you're you're induced with cortisol all day, every day, and in that negative state. But once you start to experience the other side, when you get out of the world and somebody triggers you to feel that way, you're gonna be like, whoa, wait a minute. I I can't, I need to do something about this. So it's a challenging week or two for people to deal with their family and friends and co-workers. And then so I kind of go to some perspective shifts in week four and five to try to help everybody deal with that in a calm way. And then we get into um attachments, identities, um, how they cause us pain. Um, when I first working with that, start started working with this, I took off Tennessee Titans fan and politics. And I was amazed how much better my life got in one week. I wasn't worried about a football game, a win or a loss. It didn't mess with my emotions anymore. And then I stopped worrying about politics. I stopped identifying with it. Whoever was saying something on one side or the other, it didn't, it didn't affect me anymore. I didn't have an emotional response to it. I was able to process information and it didn't affect me. I ended up going back about a year and a half later and taking everything off, being a good husband, being a good uh a good dad, a good grandfather, a COO, like taking off all of those titles. And now, if one of my kids comes to me and he says something to me, he's upset, like I'm able to process this. Son, how how can I help you? Like, I'm sorry if I've done something, you know, I'm able to process the information instead of reacting back. Or the same thing with my job, because early on in my career, I was defending my job title with with ferocity. That was how I paid my family, take care of my family. And now, if somebody attacks me in my job, I just, you know, I take the information in, but I don't have a physical response coming out of my belly where I'm I'm I'm wanting to want to fight them right now. You know what I mean? Go back and have an argument. I'm able to just process information and then respond from a place of calm knowledge, you know, wisdom. And uh and so attachments is a big one. Then we move to forgiveness, then we move to uh core beliefs. Um, I teach everybody a writing uh exercise on the uh rewriting core beliefs, and it's simple. Once you do it once or twice with somebody, you could do it the rest of your life. Um, I've done it to myself over 200 times, and uh and I I paid for the probably the first 70 or 80. And once you do learn it one time, you you could do it the rest of your life for free. Um, and then we learned at the end, towards the end of the program, what it what it actually means to live an authentic life, because uh lying to yourself and and making yourself small to please everyone else is going to cause a tremendous amount of pain in people. So we have to really understand what it what we want and as individuals and and find our peace in inside um by being honest with ourselves. And so that kind of rounds out the program as a whole. Um and then we set up a uh at the end, we set up a plan, an action plan, because you're not gonna get rid of anxiety and depression in 10 weeks. You'll be able to manage anxiety. Actually, anxiety is actually pretty easy with the manual tools if you use them, but you'll be able to manage it and put it away. Um, you won't, there's a lot of people after the first week and a half, two weeks that are able to get off of anxiety meds. Um, but depression, it's a long time. It's gonna take a year, two years, five years for people to really be able to go back and get rid of all those things, forgive the people that needed to. And and some some of this stuff is really scary, right? It you have to face your fears, you have to dive in, and uh it can be really scary. So that's why we put this stuff in the in the order that it's in, is so you have the manual tools when it's time to face the scary stuff, that you have the tools to be able to keep yourself strong and and get through it.

SPEAKER_02 29:47

So, what you're doing is you equip people first so that they have those resources that they can turn to, they don't feel they are stranded or they are helpless. And so those tools, I guess, give them courage and give them a way out, some language around how to solve because I think we're all wired for problem solving. We all want to know what the solution is. What should I do now? What should I do differently next time? And so having those tools is very reassuring. So I love the way you've um paced them. Now you've mentioned that your program goes out into corporate settings as well as

Prison Coaching And Corporate Leadership

SPEAKER_02 30:19

prisons. What's a favorite story for you from each of those settings?

SPEAKER_01 30:26

Um prison, you know. So when I got when I got to the other side of this thing and and I'm trying to start to marketing my program, and it I'm not very good at it, so I'm learning. That's why I'm out here with you. I'm trying to figure out a a new business here when I'm 52 years old. Um, but you know, so I just have a longing to help people, and the people who are most successful are the ones that have time to do this. And who else has more time to do this than somebody sitting in prison, right? And so I got myself in there um through a Christian organization. And I the way that I've been going in there is door to door. All right. I go into maximum security prison um and it's door to door. So I don't get to sit down with a group of people. I I basically go from door to door. And, you know, not everybody's interested. Um, but when you find somebody who is, and they get excited about what you're talking about, and they take these tools and you go back and talk to them in a month, and they cannot wait to talk to you, and they've been using them, and then you give them another set of tools, you give them the next level of tools, whatever you could process in about 20 to 30 minutes. Um, and they're taking the they're taking notes and they're doing it. And in the first for the first one for me, there's a guy named Diego, and I went and seen him, and I came back about three weeks later, and you know, he's I think he's got about 16 years in that cell. You know, he only gets one hour a day out. And he told me that his life has changed in that cell. Good things were happening to him, even in that cell, by the way that he was changing his perspective on everything. He was taking the the gratitude and the meditation and the different tools that I gave him and just running with it because that's all he had was time. And it it when you could give somebody in that environment that type of peace and joy and and alter their life, it it just lifts me up. And I uh yeah, that's happened to me, you know, handful of times, and I just I truly enjoy it. And I have no idea what those guys are in there for. Um, obviously they've done something terrible, but that's not for me to judge. You know, spread spread the the these tools and and help somebody uh find peace is is a beautiful thing. And in the uh in the business world, um it's a lot of fun. Um, I'm actually going to Philadelphia here in another week and I'm teaching another leadership course. And I get to interact with guys, see how their business is working, find their problem areas, and then I take those problem areas, and it's it's very easy to use all of these tools and help these leaders. Um, and one of the main things that I try to teach these leaders is is to take ownership of everything because that's what's happening. When I turned my focus inward, I stopped blaming the outside world. I stopped looking for the outside to the outside world for validation. And it at Jarrett Companies, when I started doing that and going into a meeting where I took ownership of whatever was going on, let's say here's an example. I I went into a conference room and we had just flooded a 30 uh 30-floor high-rise building. We had a sprinkler company, and we sent uh unqualified person into the building to do some work, and he flooded flooded the building. It was about a one and a half million dollar insurance claim. It was a really bad day for us. We were only about three or four years into the company. And we all go into the room, sit down. There's about 12 sprinklermen, and I am not a sprinkler man, but I am the boss in this situation. And I go in and I knew I had to find a reason to make this my fault. And not just a silly reason. I needed them to be able to buy in that this was my fault. And so when I walked in, I basically told them all, hey guys, I want before we get started here, I want to make sure everybody understands that this is my fault. And they're like, no, no, this isn't your fault. I said, Yeah, it is. Let me ask you guys a few questions. How many uh times have you guys been trained in the four years we've been doing this? And they've all said, none. And I said, How many sheriff tools are in all of our trucks that could have prevented this flood? And they said, none. I said, both of those things are my fault. And if I would have had a little more foresight to train you guys and get you the tools that you needed, this wouldn't have happened. And then all of a sudden, everybody in the room started popping up. Oh, Mike, that wasn't your fault. I could have done A, B, and C. Then another guy would pop up, no, and I could have done this, this, and this. And now all of a sudden, we had a room full of people coming up with solutions to find to fix the problem moving forward instead of everybody pointing and blaming at each other. And that is such a powerful thing for a business to be able to do. And but that's not possible if the leader, whoever is sitting in there, doesn't have the capability to take ownership of a problem. Even if it was 1% my fault or 100% my fault, I have to take ownership of it. So it allows the rest of the team to be able to not be afraid and to be able to speak freely and take ownership as well. And you know, that's what I really do try to teach in the in the in the business world and how to communicate with each other. And there's there's some more to it. But that's right there is the is the biggest principle I teach when we do these leadership courses.

SPEAKER_02 36:14

I would say that what you're teaching, Mike, is a sort of moral courage as well. Because at the time when everyone is looking outwards and blaming the world, the economy, the climate change, and you know, all the things that we personally don't have any control over, so we can't do anything about it. It's not our fault. But you're saying go inwards, take ownership, take responsibility, whether it's 1%, whether it's 100%. I see that as moral courage. I think it takes someone who is humble enough to say, in some way, this is somehow my fault. I accept responsibility for it, and let me see what I can do about it. And very few people, I think, would actually admit that publicly. We we are so attached to, and I know you talked about identity as well, we are so attached to that that's a side of that definition of identity that is outward facing. What will people think? How will I be judged if I admit that this was somehow my fault? So, no, I'm not going to go there. I'm going to blame other people, I'm going to blame the systems. It's not me.

SPEAKER_01 37:25

Yeah. And it it's it's super scary for for those who haven't done the work and understand some of this stuff, it's extremely scary. You know, you got your livelihood on it. Most people, especially in the United States, they're living paycheck to paycheck. You know, we're probably one of the most wealthy countries, but everybody's in debt. Everybody's, we have all these things, but at the end of the day, everybody's in debt. And if you lose your job, you're it's gonna be a a lot of uh pain and suffering. And so everybody's protecting, everybody's holding on. And it doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't have to be that way. In some companies, it is that way, you know, because the leaders are are treating in that way. Um, but I do think that if the leaders are able are capable of doing that, it sets the stage and you can start to teach people by by example.

Dropping Identities To Stay Calm

SPEAKER_01 38:16

But you know, one of the things I teach people in in the first uh first part of the attachment, learning about their own attachments is I'm kind of mean to them a little bit, but I do it to prove a point. And I'll find out whatever everybody's job title is, and I will look at them and say, you are the shittiest at this job that I have ever seen. And they will have a physical response, like a physical reaction in their gut. And and I I point that out to them, and then I look at them and I say, You are the shittiest attorney that I have ever seen in my life. And they're they they kind of chuckle and laugh because they're not an attorney and they don't have any identification with that. And I said, Well, just I I did that as an exercise to show you that your job title, you you if you're a mom or a dad and you're identifying as as a as a good spouse, as a good brother, as a good daughter or a good son, as you're identifying with these things, you're as soon as you say, I am, and then fill in that blank, COO, now all of a sudden my subconscious mind is going to protect the identity of a COO the same way it's gonna protect me, my physical body. And and so that's why your body has a physical response to those attacks against your identities. And in those uh situations where you're at work, if if you're holding on to that identity and there's blame to go around, there ain't no way you're gonna you're gonna admit to fault because that's gonna go against your your physical nature with your subconscious mind because your subconscious mind is saying, no, do not do that. Like it you're gonna have a physical response to do that. So it and it's a very simple thing. It is so fast to remove. You could put get rid of something off your sub off your uh off your identity, remove an attachment just as fast as you could put it on. And it's kind of dangerous how fast you could put something on and take something off, but it's just it's really simple. My my uh 10-year-old boy removes things from his attachments all the time because he understands it. He he removed uh being a good soccer player. He'd come home and he started getting upset because he's playing soccer and he's not having fun because now he wants to win. I said, Well, you just attach it to your identity, and he's so okay. Well, how do I get rid of it? All he has to say is, I'm not a good soccer player or a bad soccer player, I just play soccer, and all of a sudden it's removed from his subconscious mind, and he can just go play soccer by just saying those that two little simple uh sentences, and it it's gone. And once we understand that, it's it's very easy to remove that physical response that we have to anything. But a lot of people, it scares the heck out of them to even think about removing one of these uh identities.

SPEAKER_02 41:19

Yes, and I can identify with that myself. I think for many years I had an unhealthy attachment to a lot of things, a lot of things to do with identity, with my place in the world, with a sense of belonging. And I think it goes back to that root primal human fear that if we don't have this identity, we're not going to be loved, we're not going to be accepted, we're not going to belong, we're going to be cast out, we'll be all by ourselves, we can't survive. So it's a survival response. And I think what you've just taught us there in those two sentences, getting your son to reframe just by dropping one extreme and then the other extreme and just saying the thing that is in the middle, which is a neutral thing. I'm a soccer player, and that's all there is. So nothing too performful, that is powerful. So thank you for sharing that.

You Are Not Broken And Next Steps

SPEAKER_02 42:08

What is one thing one thing that you want our listeners, our quiet achievers and our introverts to remember to take away from today's conversation?

SPEAKER_01 42:20

You know, the the the one thing that I would really want everybody to know, because when I was suffering, and and you know, what when I say I was suffering, guys, at the end of the day, I by the time I was 45 years old, I didn't know if I wanted to live to 46. Right. I was suffering at a at a level that I I refused to go to live this way anymore. I I told my boss that I was going to quiet my mind by any means necessary. And I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know, but I meant it. Um, and at the end of the day, I thought I was broken. I didn't think there was another way to live. And that's what I want everybody to know is we are not broken. We just don't understand how the system works. And when we understand how the system works, then we can start doing things to take action and actually take control of our thoughts and our emotions and take control of our lives, you know, once we do that. But we there are there are simple action items that we can take. Um, and I hope everybody's able to take some of that with them here here, listening to this show today.

SPEAKER_02 43:32

Yes. And I think we will be listening to this episode a couple of times to digest and to really break down those things you've shared, like the two minute gratitude exercise, the power of you know, making the a statement neutral so that it's de identified from who you think you should be, and the moral courage, I think, which comes from turning inwards, but also being humble enough to say I own this, I take responsibility. For this and all the perspective shifts, I guess you've you've introduced to us today, whether it's in a prison setting, in a corporate setting, we're all the same in that. All of us need compassion, all of us need forgiveness. And so when we start at that level of self-awareness and that, you know, all of us are byproducts of what we've been through. And so going back to that, reframing, rewriting the narrative, finding finding a new meaning. Then it becomes possible to create a new story for ourselves that works for us right now. And that is to do with being present, not being trapped in the past, not being trapped in your own mental prison as you put it on your LinkedIn profile. So what is the best way, Mike, for people to connect with you and to find out more about your program?

SPEAKER_01 44:52

Um, well, is it okay? I would love to give the audience a free gift if that's okay. Of course. And basically, it's my first week of my program, um, which is gonna help everybody understand the gratitude and uh and some other manual tools, and then some breath work um in the middle of that, just a handful of manual tools. And then I created two manual uh or two guided breath work exercises. One of them is extremely powerful that it will get rid of all of your anxiety, and you can't even have a negative thought for 15 minutes. It's it's one of the coolest things ever. Um, but I would love to give everybody that it and to get it, all you have to do um is is look up mwood mwoodmindset.com backslash warrior for your show, and uh and you'll be able to get that that free that free gift. Um, and then what was your question again? I'm so sorry. Oh, how can we find you? Okay, I'm sorry. So that's one way to get a hold of me. Um, and but that'll get you a free gift, and then learn to love being you.com is is how you get a hold of my program and you could uh get me there. But then my email is Mike at learn to lovebeing you.com. Feel free to reach out to me directly and I'd be happy to uh interact with folks.

SPEAKER_02 46:22

Oh, that's a very kind and generous thing to do, Mike. Thank you so much on behalf of all our listeners. I will make sure to have those links in the show notes so that people can explore and reach out to you to have that important conversation. So thank you so much, Mike, for coming on the Quiet Warrior Podcast today.

SPEAKER_01 46:39

Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed uh our conversation today. You're you're amazing.

Free Gifts And Quiet Achiever Resources

SPEAKER_02 46:46

Thank you. If you're a Quiet Achiever, ready to be recognized and promoted without having to perform extroversion, I have created a new leadership and visibility resource just for you. You can download it at Quiet WarriorAcademy.com backslash leadership for introverts, and I'll make sure to have a link in the show notes for you. See you on the next episode. High performing introverts with leadership ambition don't lack competence. What many of them lack is a psychologically safe and sustainable pathway to visibility and leadership. If you are successful on paper, but still feel unseen, overextended, or quietly stuck at the same level despite everything you've achieved, the scene executive calibration was designed for you. It helps identify the deeper patterns that may be affecting how you communicate, advocate for yourself, lead, and show up professionally. You'll find the link in the show notes.