From Trauma to Transformation: Kelly Siegel on Sobriety, Self-Worth & Success

✨ THROWBACK THURSDAY ✨

In this powerful replay episode of the Worthy and Abundant podcast, Linda Brand sits down with entrepreneur, author, speaker, fitness advocate, and host of the Harder Than Life podcast, Kelly Siegel.

Kelly shares his incredible journey of overcoming childhood trauma, emotional and physical abuse, addiction, scarcity, abandonment, and self-destruction to build a successful business, powerful mindset, healthy lifestyle, and purpose-driven life. 

In this deeply honest conversation, Linda and Kelly discuss:

✨ Sobriety and quitting alcohol
✨ Healing childhood trauma
✨ Self-worth and personal growth
✨ Emotional healing and therapy
✨ Vulnerability vs authenticity
✨ Fitness, discipline, and mindset
✨ Manifestation and goal setting
✨ Spirituality and consciousness
✨ The power of environment and relationships
✨ Breaking free from negative patterns
✨ How to create a life you no longer want to escape from

Kelly also shares how the pandemic became a turning point that led him to launch the Harder Than Life brand, write his book, start his podcast, and dedicate his mission to helping others while giving back to charity. 

This episode is filled with motivation, wisdom, healing, and real conversations about transformation, self-awareness, sobriety, resilience, and becoming the architect of your own life. 🤍

If you’ve ever struggled with:

• self-sabotage
• low self-worth
• addiction
• toxic environments
• scarcity mindset
• fear of change
• emotional pain

…this conversation will inspire you to believe that transformation is possible.

🎙️ Hosted by Linda Brand

#SelfWorth #Sobriety #PersonalDevelopment #Healing #Mindset #Manifestation #TraumaHealing #SpiritualGrowth #Podcast #KellySiegel #HarderThanLife #Transformation #MentalHealth #WomenEmpowerment 

Find Kelly Siegel at www.harderthanlife.com and @kelly.siegel.71 on Instagram 

Transcript

0:00

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited about today's guests. I'm so excited to talk to Kelly Siegel. He has an educational background in criminal justice and sociology from Western Michigan. He's been delivering results his entire life since his first paper out at age 12. He's overcome so many things: emotional, physical, and mental abuse, addiction, poverty. And he has written a book, Harder Than Life. And he has a podcast, Harder Than Life. And he is an amazing influencer. He talks a lot about not drinking alcohol, which I love. And I'm super excited to share this conversation with you today. So without further ado, welcome Kelly. Linda, it's an honor to be on the podcast. Um, very grateful that social media connects brilliant, amazing minds. And I'm honored and thank you for taking time to get me on. Oh, thank you so much for being here. We have so much in common. I was saying that before I hit record. I have a Jewish background, which I wasn't raised that way, but and from Michigan, and both have a place here in Florida. So tell us a little bit about the brand Harder Than Life. I'd love to know where that name came from and a little bit about your past. I heard your story and I was in awe of everything. And I love your mission that you share a lot uh around alcohol and how you are a sober. And I love that because I am also sober. So I love hearing all of that. I want to hear where the Harder Than Life name came from and a little bit about your background so people can hear what you went through and how you became the man you are today. All right. Hopefully, we have a long time. Where in Michigan were you from? So I was in Detroit, Southfield, Farmington Hills, and then Wild Lake and Nova. I was in Nova the last 25 years before I sold my house and relocated. So okay, I grew up, you'll know this. I grew up just off of Eight Mile in Warren. So I grew up like the movie Eight Mile that Eminem made. I actually went to high school with him for a year. So everything that went out in that movie, the violence, the betrayal, the drinking, the drugs-that's the way I grew up. And especially for Jewish kids. Right. You know, so what happened was my father lived in Huntington Woods and my mother lived in Warren, and she remarried someone who wasn't Jewish. So on the weekends, I was Jewish, on the weekdays, I wasn't. So it was talk about add to confusion. And then my dad developed a drug addiction and stopped coming to see me, and there was abandonment issues, and just one thing after another. And then his parents picked up where he left off. And they had said to me years later, like, you know, we knew that things weren't great with your mom and your stepdad, but we didn't know they were that bad. And had we known we would have got you out of there. But you know what? You can't fault what your parents did because now at our age, it's up to us to make our lives. It's you can you can't keep blaming your parents, you can't drink the poison and expect other people to die. I am 48 years old. This is 110 on me to make my life what it's supposed to be. So you keep going back to the sobriety, you know. I just I don't say I'm sober, I just don't drink. But that's the turning point in my life. The day that I said I've had enough, you know, because when I grew up, that's what everybody did. That was what made you cool, that's what made you fit in. And when you're running around and running amok and trying to find your way, boy, you can find your way easily when you're drinking. Yeah, always somebody wanting to have a drink on any day. So you can find a tribe, like you just said, the wrong tribe, really quickly. And you know, when you grew up in the ghetto and the poor scarcity that we had, it was easy. And I've just put a post up this morning like, I don't to this day, the only reason I'm not dead or in jail, like most of my friends from high school, is I just wasn't ready to go to work. Everybody graduated and went to work and then found more drugs and found more drinking, and then ended up robbing and stealing, and it's just not good. And I for some reason was like, you know, I'm just gonna go to college, I'm just gonna go to Western and I'm gonna go see what's going on because I still wanted to party, and that was God. Now I look back, looking after me, going, Hey, I got plans for you, Mr. Siegel. And I love that boy. I wish I would have noticed the signs sooner because there were near-death experiences, there were signs where God is like, dude, this alcohol is not serving you, keep showing you, and then finally at 43, I said, you know, I'm done. And then when I done, then things got really bad, and then they got better, and they keep getting better, and it's unfreaking believable how good life can get once you focus on yourself, look in the mirror, not out the window, and realize that you are the architect of your entire life. There is nothing else in this world but what's going on in between your mind, in your mindset, that's gonna make you happy or make you successful. And we are our worst enemies. And the second you think you realize that your thoughts are magical lies and that most of what you think you know, you don't, and it's bullshit, and just accept your own bullshit and just do the things that are good and make you happy. So, yeah, we we grew up. My mother was abusive, my stepfather was abusive, there were alcoholics, there were drug addicts, and they would beat the living crap out of me and my sister. But man, did that make me tough? That built if you look at me, I'm I'm five foot nine, I'm 220 pounds, a solid muscle. I built this physique so I could fight my stepdad. That's what we did. We fought. So, you know what? When I walk into a room, people notice me, so it worked out for me. Would I have changed any of that? I could have used a little more love. It took till probably the last year for me to allow people to love me, for me to receive love. And it's just knowing that you have earned it and you deserve it. And once you do that, once you can receive love and you are love and you emit love and you're an abundance of love, you become very powerful, very lethal. So you had this physical one is about your, you know, you're definitely into health and wellness and fitness, which I absolutely love. So you it wasn't just five years ago, you you got strong way. You've been doing that for a long time, right? Yeah, 30. I mean, I I tease people. I've been doing I started working out when I was 13 to protect myself. And then what really started saving me when I was 16 was I was lifting such heavy weights. My big my stepfather was six one, six two, 260 pounds. He was a big man, and I still was young. I I was very small, I did not fill out until my sophomore year in college. So I graduated young, I graduated 17 years old, so everything was stacked together. Everything in my life has been harder than life, okay. But because I can handle it, and I know that now, and I knew it then, but man, did it it was like, what is going on? When am I gonna get a break? I'm getting it now. That's amazing. It's it's awesome. Life is so good. It it I would just tell people that if you watch me smiling and happy, I don't have a care in the world. I don't. Do I am I trying to do the impossible? Absolutely. Am I pushing myself beyond all the my it company, National Technology Manager? We are so slammed, it's crazy. We're trying to donate a million dollars a year to charity for the Harder Than Life podcast. We want to do that over the next 50 years, 50 million dollars. That's it's hard things. I got these big, hairy, audacious goals, but I know that I've made it this far with all these freaking things stacked against me, and now everything's staffed in my favor. So we're gonna knock it out of the park. So I've been training hard like this for 30, 35 years, but I didn't look like this until I turned 19. So it's that's when I learned how to really work out, where I learned the creatine, the the way to work out at the gym. That's why I laugh at people. If you ever look at my comments, people make fun of me for doing steroids. I giggle, I'm like, yeah, 30 years I've looked like this. 30. So if I supposedly did steroids for 30 years, I think I'd be dead. But no, it's consistency and discipline, and I'll so it didn't step up when you quit alcohol. Like it wasn't like you didn't elevate your physical body or any of that. I've just assumed, which I guess is the worst thing to I mean, at that point you have to remember first of all, 43 and the it at 44, this thing called the pandemic hit. So that's really what kind of sent me. That's when the Harder than Life brand was born. I was sitting here alone, and I was I I have actually I have the notebook where I wrote my notes for my book, Harder Than Life. So I had more time on my hands than I knew what to do with because we were all locked down and I sat here and I wrote a book. I made a home gym, I did 75 hard, if you know what that is, and I just started grinding extra hard on myself. I said, I'm gonna come out of this pandemic. Not only is national technology management gonna come out better, but I'm gonna come out better. I started listening to podcasts, devouring books, I started hypnotherapy over Zoom. I hired an emotional coach. So I basically declared war on myself and I didn't know it. It's incredible. I tore NTM apart and my mind apart four years ago, because that was 2020, COVID. So I'm looking at you and everything you've created, and I'm thinking you've been on this path for like 20 years or 15 or even 10, and you've just begun like four years ago. So wow. Well, it's not even that. We we launched the brand of Harder Than Life January 31st, 2023. It just celebrated its one-year birthday. That's when the podcast launched, that's when the book launched. And we just recently reached number 38 on self-improvement on the Apple charts for the Harder Than Life podcast. So if your listeners want another option, we tell some funny stories and great guests on there. So please head over, rate, and share, and uh follow Heart of Life on on Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube and iHeartMedia. And we launched a book, it went Amazon bestseller in multiple categories. But the funny thing about it is I wrote that book during the pandemic. So if you think about it, it was three years earlier. I'm not even that person anymore. I yeah, I know we grow all the time, right? You grow all the time. Oh man, it's crazy. That's the number one thing. I went you want to talk about empowering. You could empower yourself, and that's what I did through the pandemic. And since then, it's been nothing, you know. I ripped everything apart and then just went up. Yeah, I tell everybody this life is a roller coaster, there's ups and there's downs, and you got to celebrate both. And that's the best part. When you're in a down, you know an up is coming right after, so just keep going, they won't last long. And it's the same thing when you're riding high, it's it's gonna come down. It's harder than life for the people that are on life's merry-go-round because it's just going round and round, and there's nothing's changing. And what happens you go too many times in a circle, you puke. And then the worst case scenario is if you have a flat line, you're not going up and down, you're dead. That to me is like not even living. That's when they say somebody can live their whole life and not live a day in their life, and that's just that's sad. That's my family. Empowering people to realize that if you do a little work on yourself, be a little bit present, look in the mirror, life is pretty freaking cool. Yes, yes, I love that. I love that you're spiritual. So, were you listening to or reading books or any of that before the four years ago? I'm just asking. Well, I used to be an avid reader all in school, all the way through college, and then I became this money-making, weight-lifting woman-loving, bigger than life persona that I rocked for a good 20-25 years. And during that time, I'd read a book here and there, but not much. I still devoured content. I, you know, I the funny thing about it is I'm in the internet business and I have been from the day the internet really started. You know, 1997, I started, or really it was 1998, I started selling internet lines to businesses, which you know, most people didn't even know what the internet was back then. I was had access to content and high-speed stuff that that people didn't, and I was just fascinated. I I have always been a learn it all. I'm a sponge now. It's uh it might be the new addiction for me, where if I were show you, I mean I have books laying around me all the time. I have audio, I've just recently just forced myself to start listening to audiobooks. I am a book guy, I like to grab a physical book and read. If I could show you, I have a bookcase here of thousands of books that I've read since the pandemic. And but to devour more, I have now said, All right, I'm gonna do this audible thing. And I listen to audiobooks just because I can devour more while people are relaxing and having a glass of wine, I'm or at the gym and listening to music. I got a podcast or a book going on. I'm on an airplane, got a podcast or a book going on, and I'm usually taking note. You know, what I'm bringing people is lots and lots of research. This isn't just me. I mean, I I put up a post today that was borderline aggressive, and I feel great, but it was like, I want to make sure to make the massive impact that I can because if I did this, anybody can. Yeah, no, you're doing amazing. I saw your post that I actually shared on my story about two people, you two kinds of people you need to get rid of out of your life, the victim and the negative, Nelly. Coach people on this all the time. I would rather be alone with my dog on the couch and reading a book, or I just told a client of mine, you're better off reading your book and taking a bath and taking care of yourself than hanging out with anybody negative or that's gonna bring you down or not lift you. And I love that message. That's gigantic. We are who we associate with. It's gigantic. And there was a third one, and it was the people that keep that there was a third person, yeah. People that keep you the same that want you to stay. I want people to push me to the next level. If you're crabs in a bucket trying to keep me the same, I'm gonna freaking roll right over you. So it's cliche, but we say it over and over. You are the company you keep. If you hang out with five winners, you're gonna be the sixth. If you hang out with five losers, you're gonna be the sixth. Yeah, it's who do you want to associate with? And it's one of the hardest things. That's why I drank for so long, because those people, my drinking buddies, were everything to me. Well, you know what? Try not drinking and seeing who he really is your friend is, and and you get what you want, or you get what you need. You get what you want, that they will go with you, or you get what you need, you realize that they're not who they say they are. It gets lonely, Linda. You know this, it does. There are many, many nights, but I gotta tell you, once you love yourself, you don't need many people. Exactly. I said that to her too. I was like, you need to love your own company, you need to learn to love your own. And I've been on that journey. But you're gonna take it a step for the if you can't love yourself, you're no good to anybody. You can't love anybody else, you're gonna be a problem. So I hate to break it to you, but less is more, and then when you have less friends, they're better friends, they're real friends, they're authentic and they're genuine, and they actually want to see you do well. Absolutely. That's the scary part, man. That's what kept me drinking for so many years. I remember talking to my therapist many years ago and saying, What do people do to have fun that don't drink? I'd like to kick that dude's butt now because I have more fun now than I've ever had in my life, and I do the same things. I still go to bars, I still go to restaurants, I still go boating, I still do everything I do. I just do it sober and I have more fun than everybody else, and especially that drunk guy, Kelly, who thought he was the life of the party. And I'm still just as obnoxious and happy and you're and you're notices it. Yeah, and you have your daughter, so she's proud of you, and and also like you're a better role model for her, and your body's healthier, and you're gonna live longer, and there's a hundred more reasons to not. Oh, good Lord, don't help don't warn people. I'm gonna live well into my hundreds and I'm gonna come after you until I'm a hundred and twenty. I I guarantee it now. Yeah, yeah. So tell me what happened that like the switch went off, and you're like, I'm done. I'm done, like four years ago. That's an easy one. It was five years ago, but it was uh love. I kept meeting emotionally unavailable women because I was emotionally unavailable because I was drunk, I was drinking all the time. I'm partying, having a good time. I was a functioning drunk. I ran a company, I was a father. I would never drink and drive. I wasn't hurting anybody. I had a driver, I just I didn't do anything wrong except Thursday, Friday, Saturdays, I was ripping it up. I just kept meeting women that were emotionally unavailable, which is now that I'm way on the other side, I've done all kinds of therapy, hypnotherapy, MDR therapy, talk therapy, plant medicine therapy. I've done everything to make sure that I'm healed and I am healed. There's I can spot an unhealed person a mile away. So what happened was when I grew up with your caretakers, mother and stepfather, and then my father abandoning me and not loving me. You don't trust love. So you go and find people that you recreate your same childhood. So I went and found people who are emotionally unavailable because my parents were emotionally unavailable. My dad was never around, and that's what I went and got. And I'm like, why does this keep happening? Well, I just looked, it was because I'd meet him at freaking bars and restaurants and while drinking and birds of a feather flock together. Like attracts like, I was emotionally unavailable, I attracted emotionally unavailable. So now I healed myself and I attract better people. It's that simple. So the thing, the real story was for love, and then I kept it going for better love, which was my daughter, and because she said to me one, I quit on New Year's Day in 2019. And so every year I'm in Florida at my Florida house with my daughter, and we're always there for New Year's, and we toasted whatever we're drinking, which is sparkling water, whatever. And then she's like, Dad, I just yeah, love another New Year's because you're sober. And I was like, I didn't know it was really that big of a deal, but apparently it was. So I stay sober because of her. She's 15. We set a very good example for her. So 15 years old, a lot of kids are experimenting with drinking drugs. Not my little kid, she's not she's like, nope, I'm good. Yeah, my and it's funny, my son doesn't drink either. He's never been a drinker, he never, yeah, and he's 25. Good for him. Come in. So let's see. I want to hear about you had um one post I saw that said vulnerability is a superpower. And the first time I heard that was from Gabby Bernstein, and I 100% agree. But I wanted to ask you what do you think the difference between vulnerability and authenticity is? If you want to that is such a good question, and I've never been asked that. Vulnerability is saying the thing that you absolutely don't want everybody to know, and authentic authenticity is just being real, but not your real. Because a lot of people think splurting out whatever they're thinking, whatever that goes through their vice filter, really their ego, and saying, I really just don't like your jacket or or boy clashes with your red lips. And that's being authentic. No, that's being an asshole. Sorry, I don't know if I can swear, but that's if you're going, you when you speak, you have to say, is it relevant? Is it gonna help? And is it kind? Right. And if it isn't all three of those things, shut it. Yeah, no point. Yeah, vulnerability is telling people I had to empty a p a jar of urine as a child. Being authentic is saying, Hey, that sucked. It really sucked. But I I did learn that some jobs are gonna suck and you still gotta do them. Yeah, so that's a that's a great question. I hope I did a good job answering. Yeah, you sure do. Vulnerability is really your deepest, darkest secrets that you don't want anybody to realize is it does it is a super, and you know it's funny, most of the stuff. That I say, I didn't hear it anywhere, and then I go back and hear it, and I'm like, Oh, Gabby did say that. I've been trying to get Gabby to come on the show, she's actually sober as well. So I have every book I've been trying to get her to come on our live show. She's amazing. I'm gonna get her on to see her in Tampa. Yeah, I bring her up every episode with my guests because I will ask you. I have several questions for you. I want to know your morning practice. I want to know your diet. I already asked you when you started working out a long time ago. I wanted to ask, do you still have a relationship with your parents if they're alive? I would I want to ask just a couple. Let me think. I also wanted to ask, I don't know. I've I'll do some editing. Those are all great questions. You want me to run through run through those? One more question. I I definitely want to touch on the alcohol thing because I see people, and it's not like I'm judging. It's sad that society and TV and media makes it so glamorous. I'll be walking the dog and I see these young men walking out of publics with their case of beer on Friday or Saturday or whatever. And it's just like a sadness comes over me, an empathy or something. It's like society makes it like normal and acceptable because it's legal or whatever. But I just feel like I like your mission of that. I know you you kind of went away from that a little bit. I uh on your posts and stuff, but I I do I feel it's important because I have a friend back in Michigan and she has cancer. She had cancer, potentially, you know, it's in her mission or it's whatever, and she drinks wine like every single day. And I said to her when I saw her recently, I just said, you know, if I were you, I mean, you're not asking me, but I'd be drinking juice. I would not touch alcohol, I would not touch animal meat. I mean, I'm just saying, I would like, you know, it's not that she was asking, but I just because what I learned recently was grapes have so much, so many pesticides on them that they make wine out of. But anyway, I just love that mission around alcohol. And I wanted to just have you maybe share because I feel like people are out there and they don't know why they're depressed and they don't know why their life isn't really working, and maybe they just have a few drinks here and there, but it does affect you. Like me, I quit two and a half years ago for the second time because I was in real estate back in Michigan and I was having some emotional thing happen. Like oh, oh, I just had two drinks last night, uh, cocktails. And I'm like, this doesn't serve me. There's like it's affecting my emotions, my body, and I'm in my 50s. Like, I'm older than yeah, I don't want to. I was just saying, like, it doesn't do anything positive, it's not gonna make me look younger, it's gonna make me look older, dehydrates the body. Anyway, there's no nutritional value. Go ahead. I first of all let me correct you. I have not gone away from non-alcoholic. The two things that my audience loves to hear is fitness and not drinking. Yeah, so I just have softened the way that I talk about not drinking and it and it's making a better impact because that one I'm very passionate about because my whole life changed. The book that I showed you, by the way, is an alcohol book. This is a book sitting right next to me. It is no willpower required, a neuroscience approach to change your habits with alcohol. This is a good friend of mine, Michael Hardenbrook. I'm gonna have him on the podcast or in the Heart of the Life app to discuss the book. And it just talks about new ways to look at alcohol because up until recently, all you ever had was AA or rehab. And where does the rest of the universe fall? I didn't go to rehab, I didn't go to AA, I just quit. And then when I quit, I started working on my mind and I realized oh, I didn't have a drinking problem, I had a thinking problem, and that's all it was. Is it that freaking habit happened so fast that the second I had a feeling that I didn't want to feel, immediately it was go get a drink, and that happened in a millisecond, and it was happening in my subconscious. The moment that I was able to realize that and intercept that feeling and say, huh, I'm not gonna this feeling of loneliness is associated with being alone and scared when I was a child. You're gonna be okay, and I did that over and over and over again. I didn't have the need to drink. So when you go back to that, is is if you I've cultivated and built a life that I don't want to escape from, so I'm always vibrating at level 10, and I'm I'm trying to match your energy because you're you're real calm, and I don't I want to make sure that we're I don't blow the flickering. So no, I'm I'm high vibe, I'm in an I'm vibrating at a 10 on all times. That's amazing. And when I was drinking, I was vibrating at zero or negative two. It went, I'd have I would drink just to bring myself to zero. If you wake up and you I just say this is a Frank Sinatra thing. I feel sorry for people that don't drink because they wake up and that's the best they're gonna feel all day. You know what? I wake up and I feel freaking fantastic. That's the way I want to feel all day. So why would I ever have? And here's the funny thing about it I have cured the desire to drink. Could I have one? Sure. I never was a person that one turned into 30. Did it sometimes? Yes, not so you don't you don't attend AA? Yeah, I don't, I've never done anything. Oh just did therapy. That's amazing, that's great. Yeah, so at the end of the day, I just I am so happy that I could have one drink, but why? What am I what do I what do I need to relax from? I was on the freaking empowerment podcast today. What do I gotta go escape from? I've been in meetings all morning. I'm sitting at my home office in my home studio. I got no, not a worry in the world. And are you in Michigan or Florida right now? I'm in Michigan right now. I was in Florida all last week with my daughter. I'm headed back next week. So I go back and forth. Back and forth. Where in Florida are you? I'm in the Sarasota Bradington area. Oh, you saw you're just north of me. I'm in Cape Coral, so about an hour south of you. Lakewood Ranch, yep. So I was gonna ask you. Oh, where are you in Michigan now today? Bloomfield Hills. Oh, nice. I was in Farmington for the longest time, but now I'm in Bloomfield. Okay, awesome. And the app, you have a new app. I I saw that. Tell us about the app. Yeah, it's really cool. It started off as a fitness app. I was just gonna put out, hey, this is my diet, how I exercise, these are the supplements I take. And then as we were building the app, I'm looking at it, I'm like, holy smokes, this is a social media app because there's a feed. It's just, and then when I was building it, I'm linear going, you know, when you go over to my social media, you got all these freaking haters and all these people spewing negativity to me, and I can take it. But what people, not everybody has done the work on themselves and they can take that. They haven't grown up the way that I did. So I said, you know what? We're gonna make ours a social media app. We're gonna charge a few bucks because we're gonna give it to charity, and that should keep out the negative Nellies. We put a couple of rules on that just said, hey, we're not gonna uh censor you, we're not gonna algorithm you. Everybody has a voice. I just want it to be positive. So I call it the healthy happiness hangout place. Oh, I love it. So far, we've been up a month, and the people that are in there are all leaning into each other, doing business, collaborating, and we've only got about a hundred people in there right now. And it's we're gonna turn on the marketing engine. Our goal is to get a million, a million like-minded individuals. Anything is possible. So I'm not trying to replace any of the other big social media. This is an alternative, and all I'm saying is everybody has a voice, everybody's happy, everybody's positive, and come on in and get loved on. It is a safe, happy, healthy hangout, and there's five components to it: fitness, nutrition, love and relationships, rethinking drinking, because that's very important to me, and personal development. Those are the five areas where you can go in and get resources and then start a there's a wall, a feed for you to chat with people, and then it's a lot like both uh Instagram and Facebook, where you can chat with each other, and it it is. And then, of course, I put the three charities that we donate to so people understand that what this is for. We're gonna make a little bit of a dent and have a little fun doing it. It's growing by the day, and I I enjoy it. This is what gives me purpose to be able to donate. We'll get a million people in there, we'll donate a million dollars at least. Yeah. Tell us the three charities, and then I also have to say that when you're getting haters, you know you succeeded, you know you're a success. When you start getting the negatives, and it's you just have to send compassion to those people because they're on the I'd argue the other way. So we I've reached a level in the branding now that I'm having celebrities reach out to me saying good job. So when a bodybuilder reaches out to you and says, Dude, congrats on your physique, don't listen to those people. When you know people that are ahead of you reaching out, because that's what people do. Winners help other people win, they don't throw negativity, right? Like hurt people, hurt people, like that's the thing and heal people, and yes, that's what I'm going to do. I'm trying, yeah. So I will they they can be as stubborn as they want. Guess who's more stubborn? Me. You are not gonna turn me into a negative Nelly, it's impossible. I've been through hell and back again. So it's available on the Apple store, the Google store, it's harder than life, it's a couple of bucks, it goes to charity. But get in there and you're gonna see people, like-minded people, all gassing each other up. And the beauty, but I love seeing is people already doing business with each other. I love that, and it's all over the world, anywhere, right? Yep, and and we're gonna take this, and there's three billion people on Facebook, three billion, and we're we're after one million. What we're one little million. I love that. That's a goal of yours. So I wanted to ask you how important goals are because I just finished an NLP class, and that's what I the big takeaway was, and and of course, like things that I already knew about moving your physiology and all that to change your state. But so tell us the three charities, real quick, if you're open to sharing. Yeah, absolutely. I'm gonna just steal your thought for the NLPs. NLP is what you're speaking out, so don't ever say you can't do something. What you speak will happen. So we say I notice I didn't say I'm hoping to have. So we're gonna have a million people. There's your NLP. We will have a million people. I love that. I said that the three charities are variety, which is they provide prosthetics, arms and legs for children. That's their main part for their entire life. So think of it if you lost your arm and you can't afford a prosthetic, they give you one free of charge, among other things. I'm very big in that charity. As a matter of fact, National Technology Management donates all of the IT to them. We make sure that they run. And our goal is to write a big six-figure check to them. The second one is the Children's Foundation, formerly the Children's Hospital, which for uh you know, feeds the Ronald McDonald house, which is where people go when their children are sick and they stay free of charge. Third charity, families against narcotics, which provides support, specifically financial and and emotional support, excuse me, for families that have an addict or an alcoholic in the family, because when you have it, my father was an addict and then an alcoholic, and he was such a drain on the family until he died. And and and that's usually how this happens, guys. That's why I'm so passionate. My father died at 46, I'm 48, and that's how it happens. My dad didn't start off and go, I'm gonna die at 46. I'm gonna drink and do so much drugs now I'm gonna kill myself. But at 16, he took his first hit of uh uh of drugs and went, whoa, this is different, and then it became a bigger drug and a bigger drug, and then it became drinking, and then that's how it works. It just doesn't happen overnight. I'm lucky to be alive as well. Those are the three charities families against narcotics, variety. Variety is a real interesting story, by the way. If you log into the app, that's the whole breakdown of all the stories of the backstory of this charity and why they're important to us. Now, those are the three charities we've chosen now, mostly because we do business with all of them, donations from my uh NTM, and I just very passionate about them. I I love them. Two children, one one added. Yeah, I love children, you know, and then that's just a scratch of service. Our goal is to donate a million dollars per year. But if you do that, we when we reach our target of a million users, it's seven bucks a user. That's actually after Apple takes their money, it's five million a month. So I'm not doing this for me. I'm not, I don't need a jet, I don't want another house. So we will figure out what the next thing will be. Rehab centers will be it'll be a good problem to have because we will pump it all back in to chair to work. So one day when when I do take my last breath, people will be like, That dude and his family did a lot. Yeah, and you overcame so much, and everything was stacked against you, and you turned it around into an empire. You created an empire, it looks like. And try it. I love that. The questions that we were gonna cover were about the morning practice and your spiritual practice, and I wanted to know how important goals are because I realize how important those are now. Um, stop right there for just a second because I don't want to get off track of the goals. Because what happens is if you don't set goals, you're gonna end up nowhere. So you'll end up in nowhere every single time. So I have to have a destination in mind. And even if you set a goal so big and you attain 80% of it, you will have far outreach if you set a goal that's attainable. Like I could have very easily said, you know, to reach our goal of a million dollars, we only need 10,000 users in the thing. Let's do a million. Because if I get 900,000, then we've exceeded it and we've made bigger. But if you know me, we're good to get two million. So again, goals are important because it provides your north star of where you're headed. And I don't kill myself to achieve them, even though we've blown every goal we've ever achieved or ever put out way out. It just gives you that north star. And you know what? The people who are big on this manifestation. So, manifestation without action is nothing more than a dream, right? So you got to manifest it. I see it, I feel how I'm gonna feel what I want to do when I'm handing that million dollar check to variety children, and I can feel it every day, and I wake up with gratitude to that, and then I work every single day. I was just on the phone with the marketing company for the app, planning out what we're gonna do for next week to get mass exposure because we had to make sure it could take the load, and now we're gonna load it up. I love it. So, yeah, we're doing a bunch of lives, and you're gonna see it everywhere in the next couple of weeks, everywhere. It's just gonna be obnoxious. And again, if I just encourage your listeners that it's for charity, oh jump in, introduce yourself, say what you guys are doing, and and be surprised. I've already seen people message other people and say, Hey, you own a restaurant in Florida, I got this non-alcoholic booze that I want to freaking put it. Bring it on, and it's that's such like-minded people. Everyone's like, Yep, come on. There's it's not like social media where you're like, Is this a real person? Right, exactly. Yes, you get all these random, you know, is this real? Is it a scam? What are they trying to do? Yeah, so what is the name of the app? Harder than life the entire brand. The book is harder than life, the podcast is harder than life. Okay, everything is harder than life. You go to the website, harderthanlife.com, right? I can buy merchandise. You see my shirt, I got hats, I got hoodies. We're gonna start putting. I have to update the merchandise because I got it. But the cool thing about it is that the shirts, everything are all form-fitting, they look great. Again, all of this is for charity. That's nothing, nothing in here is to make me rich. I I am wealthy, and notice I said wealthy because I have a healthy, happy daughter, I have no wants, I'm healthy. I think life is good. I don't need anything more. Yeah, no, it's amazing. Right, because yeah, wealthy is all perspective. Wealthy is, you know, I'm wealthy too. I have a beautiful, healthy son, I have my dog, my healthy body, and I would I you just let out life's little secret, and it's you don't need much to be successful and to be happy and to be wealthy. It doesn't require much because you know I say this a lot, and and it's a little overblown, but um, money doesn't make you happy, but happiness will make you money. Oh, yeah. I love people understand that, man. Oh, I do. Helpiness, money doesn't make you happy, but happiness will make you money. Oh yeah, that's your vibe, yeah, that's your vibration. Like when I moved to Florida and changed my whole life in 2022, and I just everybody says, Linda, you look so happy in Florida, and like it totally was the right move. And I was struggling, and I knew I knew I deserved more, I deserved better. I was struggling my business, you know, real estate. But yeah, I think you and I have a lot in common with multiple things. But so here's a question that I used to ask everybody in the pod on the podcast interviews in the beginning. I would say, what would you tell your younger self? Or what would you tell the 18, 19 year old today, living in this world of social media? And just what advice, what would you tell them or your younger self? Well, Linda, remember when I was 18 or 19, there wasn't really so much social media, there was no social. So, what would I say to myself? What I would say is be kinder to yourself because I was hard on myself. Be kinder to yourself, and then I only wish I would have started the work a little sooner. Everybody says I have no regress, I do. I wish I would have started this personal development journey sooner. I read John Gordon's The Energy Bus in my early 20s. I was fascinated. I just interviewed him, he was just on the podcast, and I told him this. He was my first ever that and Man Search for Meeting by Victor Frankel were the my first two introductions to personal development, and I didn't liked it then, but it it wasn't I couldn't be vulnerable or authentic, which you asked me earlier, because my friends, my drinking buddies would have thought I was weird and I wouldn't have fit in with my party buddies. So I I would go back and I would say start uh working on yourself and doing this personal development stuff or sooner. I'd already been working out, I'd already been in therapy. Take it more serious because you want to raise your net worth, raise your self-worth. You will never overcome what you think about yourself, you will never outpace what you think of yourself, and and that usually is a subconscious ceiling that you don't even know exists in this world. Do you love yourself? The answer is like, yeah, yeah. Because if somebody says absolutely not, then they're probably suicidal. But most people don't because you can just look at their actions, look at their decisions. If you love yourself, you're not sitting eating Cheetos on a bean bag and freaking on a Friday night getting hammered or going out with a bunch of friends blowing up, taking cannabis. That's not loving yourself. Loving yourself is being kind to yourself, giving your body rest tonight. It's Friday. I will I'm gonna read a book, probably hang out in my hot tub, maybe go back to the gym for a second time. I got no plans. Because my schedule up until now has been insane, and then it starts right back up next week, and I'm back in Florida, then I gotta go to Wilmington, then I gotta go to freaking Dallas, and I'm in such different states all the time, and I'm always on an airplane. So, hey, I know that I need to take my time, and I want to expand upon that a little further. Is you know, people say I wouldn't change anything because I do not change anything that got me here. I just wish I would have gotten here sooner so I could help more people. I love it because we are now at the point where we've reached a level where we're able to make a difference, and that's what I want to do. And that was my conversation with our marketing department was hey, we gotta do more. And we're gonna do more and we're gonna push harder until our reach is so big that everybody can feel the love of the from the Heart of Than Life brand. I love that. That's amazing. I had never heard of the book, The Energy Bust. That's really interesting. I'm gonna have to look into that. It's such a good little book. So wait, let me ask you what you if we're such a like, you're probably a reader. What's your go-to book? What's your favorite book? I love Gabby's Super Attractor, actually. That's one of my favorite. What else is the badass series books? The Jen Sincero books. Jen Sincero's. Yeah, you are a badass. Out to her too. I I her book, You Are a Badass, was the second book I read in the pandemic. I still have it. She's it was awesome. Yeah, and you are a badass at making money. I have all of her books, I have all of Gabby's books. I just found Gala Darling. She is amazing. Do you know her? No, she wrote this book, Magnetic Mindset, but she is really freaking interesting. She does tapping, the EFT emotional freedom. Did you ever do any of that? No, it's only the only thing I haven't done. Okay. I wanted to ask, and then I just got my new Jamie Linker. I just messaged a friend that had her on her podcast, and I said, Will you introduce me? I love her story, she's fabulous. And try Brene Brown's books. Yeah. One Atlas of the Heart was good. Which one? Atlas of the Heart. Okay. Atlas of the Heart. Yeah, there's so many books. I love books too. I have like I'm into spiritual big time because I grew up and didn't have any spiritual, like my dad was an atheist or chose to be, but they were Jewish. And then my mother's side was from Russia. And I don't think they knew anything. And she we had a Christmas tree and they just said everybody hates Jews. Don't tell anybody you're Jewish. So yeah, that's how I grew up. And um, so my sisters would always lie and say there were other things, but I never lied ever about that. And um, yeah, a lot of stuff. Lying is for the is not courageous. I get it, I understand I'm not judging it, but a lie hurts forever, the truth hurts once. Um, I always encourage my daughter to always tell the truth and never deviate. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can see in my videos, sorry, David. I take a beating point, I don't care. Yeah, oh no, I'm just a good person, I believe in God. As a matter of fact, in the last several months, I've really accepted God in my life. And since I I read the book Conversation with God, you want a spiritual book? Read Conversations with God. Yeah, remember I said that. Read that. I know of the book Donald Walsh. He was writing, hearing it from the divine. I read Outwitting the Devil just before that. That was pretty it was funny. So it those are spiritual books, but like I said, I read a ton. I I read Conversations with God, and then I downloaded the book and listened to it right after. And I've never done that before because I just wanted to say, What did I miss? It was fascinating. I'm that's gonna be one of my go-to books a lot. So another book that I would highly recommend is the four agreements. I I quote that all the time. I got four agreements. Yeah, so me too. No, it's amazing, but right now I'm taking I'm actually reading a book that has nothing to do with anything about personal development. I mix in about probably every 10, 12 books, I mix in one that just let my brain reset. And this is one that a buddy of mine gave me. It's called From House to House, and it's about the war in Baghdad and how the troops went in Fallujah from house to house to house to basically like Vietnam was, where you didn't know who the enemy was. So it's a very interesting book, but it is you know, isn't one that I gotta actually like take notes and think because most books that I read, if you ever see my books, they'll be pinched over freaking pages. I love that. And then I go into my notes and I make notes about it, and then I talk about them later on, and then a lot of the people's books that I read, like Jamie Lynn Kerr was like, I'm gonna interview her about her book. So I I love reading and then asking them what we were thinking here. What was that? Tell me more. Oh, yeah, it's fun. I wanted to touch on the self-worth thing. That book worthy, and I saw her interview with Oprah, and uh she was just on Gabby's podcast today or yesterday. And worthiness is a huge thing. There's a difference between self-confidence and worthiness. I've worked on both for years and I I have more confidence, but like the worthy stuff is still a thing, it's an ongoing thing. And um, how did you how did you tell us how did you heal? I know you named a lot of different therapies and things, hypnotherapy. What was the biggest one that like you think helped you like not self-sabotage, like not fall back to the programs that you had your whole life? I think that there's I'm gonna redefine your question a little bit because is which one made the most impact and which because you said something that that was never an option for me. It I was never gonna fall back, it's not an option. That is the stubborn, grit, scared little kid in me that would sit at home and wonder which parent was gonna come home and beat on them. And then my mother had a stalker, and he would come around the house and beat on the dog. I was just scared little kid. My entire upbringing until I left that house when I was 16 years old. I was scared to death. There was no going back to that. There was no going back. It's just now, did I quit when I quit drinking? Did I know I was gonna quit forever? No, I just put 90 days. I said I'm gonna do 90 days, and after 90 days, I felt great. I said I'm gonna do another 90 days, and then it was 4th of July, and I was with a bunch of drinkers and partiers, and I was gonna drink, and I went, I looked around and I said, These are not my people anymore. I left and I went and spent the fourth of July by myself, grabbed a non-alcoholic drink, and said, Holy shikies. I started crying and I said, I'm done. That's it. There was never an option to go back to that life. Two um holidays, you quit drinking on New Year's Day, and then fourth of July, Independence Day. Those are my two drinking days. But to answer your question about which modality of therapy had the greatest impact for me. There were two. One was EMDR. And basically, what happened is you do therapies, and then you got to kind of go out into life and test and say, okay, am I healed? And I was healing, and then I ended up meeting a girl, and it was the same type of woman. And I went, Oh, you know, and I was able to break it off and stop and not get in trouble or do anything bad. And I was like, wait a minute, I thought I was healed. How did she get in? How did I attract that? That was the end of part one with Kelly Siegel. I have part two coming up next. I had to cut this in half because it was almost two hours. I hope you're enjoying the show and stay tuned for part two of Kelly Seagull. Thank you for listening.