The Secret to Manifesting Your Ideal Life: Mindset Shifts, Obsession & Brotherhood

🎙️ New Episode: The Secret to Manifesting Your Ideal Life: Mindset Shifts, Obsession & Brotherhood – with Michael Johnson

In this deeply raw and inspiring episode, I sit down with Michael Johnson — martial arts expert, mindset coach, and founder of Shockwave defence — to talk about what it really means to be a warrior in the modern world.

Michael shares his powerful life story, from surviving childhood trauma and betrayal to becoming a world-renowned self-defence instructor who has trained Special Forces, law enforcement, and top-tier professionals across the globe.

We dive into:

💥 How childhood trauma can forge strength — if you face it
 🧠 The power of the Reticular Activating System (RAS) and how to reprogram your mind
 ⚔️ Why pain is your greatest teacher — and how surrender is a form of strength
 🔥 Turning addiction into obsession and fuel for greatness
 🌌 Why internal alignment is the key to living by design, not default
👊 The "inner war room" — how elite men are conquering weakness, building tribe, and mastering every area of life
🤝 Why every man needs a brotherhood to rise above isolation and self-doubt

Whether you’re dealing with heartbreak, addiction, lack of purpose, or just feeling stuck — this episode will challenge your thinking and give you practical tools to level up.

About Michael:

Michael Johnson, a multi-black belt martial artist, criminologist, and helicopter pilot, is a leader in tactical training for military, law enforcement, and executive teams worldwide. Serving as a deadly force instructor for Florida Corrections, his training reached over 19,000 officers. Johnson has consulted for elite teams, including the Ecuadorian Special Forces, South African Tactical Response Team, and 459th Airlift Squadron, the 336th Training Group & their S.E.R.E Instructors teaching adaptive, high-risk tactics and forging a warrior mindset.

Man is made in the image of God. He has a divine spirit breathed inside of him, and even science can see that 97% of what’s in stars is inside men. We’re literally the universe incarnate. Nothing is beyond us. We become what we believe, so reinforcing these beliefs in a powerful proximity is essential to achievement.

I lead a community of high achieving men who desire to be around like-minded individuals that execute on their purpose instead of talking about it. Being at the top can often be lonely, but being around a culture of excellence acts as fuel and expiration to those who want to step up to their next level.
 
 
 

🔗 Connect with Michael:
 Instagram – @shockwavewarrior
Website – www.shockwavedefense.com

Transcript

0:00

In this week's episode, we talk about radical ownership and how it can give you freedom, how to reprogram your brain using the Raz reticular activating system, how to manifest a life you want without the woo woo, and how addictions can become your superpowers. Welcome to Man: A Quest to Find Meaning, where we help men navigate modern life, find their true purpose, and redefine manhood. I'm your host, James, and each week, inspiring guests share their journeys of overcoming fear Embracing vulnerability and finding success. From experts to everyday heroes. Get practical advice and powerful insights. Struggling with career, relationships or personal growth? We've got you covered. Join us on Man Quest to Find Meaning. Now, let's dive in.

James: 1:00

Welcome Michael. Tell me about yourself.

Michael: 1:04

Thanks for having me, James. It's a pleasure to be here and I'll start off by telling you just a little bit about my history. I it was from like a really, I'm gonna give you the Reader's Digest fast version from a instance of my family where my grandfather started teaching us in the martial arts. He was brought it back in the twenties. He had a black belt in Judo in Juujitsu. My dad, Steve Johnson, was one of the original students of Bruce Lee. Lived and trained with him from 67 to 69. Bruce and my dad were good friends. In fact, Bruce was my dad's best man at his first wedding. And after Bruce Lee died, my dad traveled to China and ended up being he wanted to train under Yip man, but he ended up training under Yip Chung instead. After being there for about a year, my mom was done with that. She didn't wanna live in China, so they moved back to the US, looked for Virgin territory and opened their first school in New Mexico. And, then I was born in 79 and had a series of events that pushed me towards the martial arts, whereas my brother and sister weren't really interested in it. And one of those events was me having a knife to my throat at around five years old. And this individual telling me they were gonna slip my throat and stuff, my body behind the television, my parents couldn't find me. And you really adapt to this concept of what it feels like to be so close to death at such a young age. And I believe that was one of the, that experience, at least the fruits of that experience were one of the gifts that gave me the inspiration of conviction to start moving down a direction that was, that there's more in life than just trying to live. There are things in life that are worse than death. And so what you want to do is you wanna learn to live a life that's worth dying for, and then that leaves a legacy for the people that are behind you to follow. And then that went on from other experiences that moved me to have stronger conviction, like my mom marrying an individual that. Was threatening to kill us all in our sleep. And she slept in my room for probably six to nine months. And my objective at that point was just to make sure I kept my mom and me safe. And this guy was just, I was in fights with him every other weekend as a young man, right? Six foot four, 200 and something pounds. And I was at the time like a hundred and I think 35 soaking wet, and five foot seven or something. So this ongoing experience in life where I kept having these experiences that were teaching me the importance I. Of controlling your emotions, controlling your mind, and I still to this day go through experiences of how to do that. I before we started the podcast, I was sharing with you that, there were some I recently went through a breakup and that, even those types of experiences extend to you how to control your emotions because you're not always gonna do that. You're not gonna do everything perfectly as a man. And there's people that are gonna try and weaponize that against you in order to gain leverage over you. So you gotta learn how to con conceptualize that as well. So I went on from that experience to when I was a kid, I finally moved out, got a degree in criminology and political science. My first lawsuit was my mother. She sued me and so she trademarked all the stuff that I'd built for the business at the time. So I had to start from scratch and rebuild entirely, which was one of the greatest gifts that ever happened to me.'cause I had to learn how to figure out okay, if I got rid of all the crap that didn't work and I just made it effective and efficient, how would it be? And so I developed this approach called Bella Caseology, which was the study of militant marshal warfare ways, and moved through that experience and started my school and then met the, a woman that I thought I was gonna spend my life with. And six months after my daughter was born, she cheated on me. And that obviously led to its own experience. And that here's why that was great, is that started to teach me the concept of what is known as external, like versus internal validation. You're looking to the outside world and you're going, man, what's wrong with me? Why couldn't I, why wasn't I, why wouldn't? And you ask all these questions and then you realize that there's nobody that can help you from the pain that you're facing on the inside. The pain comes from the inside and so do the solutions. And so you have to actually search within yourself to find that. And you're hurting'cause you're like, man, this I have a child with this woman. And so that was an experience and I moved past that and had a lot of anger from that and started training with one of my old instructors, God rest his soul, Felix Valencia. And man, an experience one day that like somebody honked at us or something. And this was right after this whole cheating thing. And, I'm like climbing out the window to go after this guy and he's all, you seem like you got a lot of anger. I'm like, yeah it's'cause I'm fucking angry. He's have you ever heard of this group? And he tells me about this group with these underground fights. They fight with sticks and chains and bull whips and you could pick any weapon you want, fight against another man. If he agrees with it, you're good to go and there's no rules and no judges and no refs and you're basically out there trying to kill each other. And I said, yeah, I'm in. I said, if I get to do that and I'm not going to prison, I'm definitely doing it. So he said, yeah, and I started with the first one and next thing I know, like 60, like I, I did it with that group. Then we have our own group also and 60 to 80 fights in. I'm realizing how therapeutic this is for me, right? Like you're teaching compartmentalization of pain, you're learning how to control your breath, you're learning how to do all of, these parts that are really deep self work. And that door led to I, I ended up going out to the Department of Corrections, actually the Tallahassee and Thomas Law Enforcement Academy. Out there. And I'd started going to events and was realizing how powerful what we did in our approach to fighting was and how quick it was working because we didn't just take the physical approach. We taught how to utilize your mind and how to use binaural and is chronic tones in order to hijack your subconscious mind and how to actually start reprogramming your brain and your emotions and how to develop convictions. So we'd take people that were like only training for maybe four weeks, and we'd end up putting'em against somebody who was training for six years and they destroy'em. And we're like, dude, there's something to this. We need to bottle this and start packing this shit up because there's something about this that's unique. And so these fights were really good and. I go down to this thing in Tallahassee and the Department of Corrections walks up to me, Dennis Taylor. Really good dude. We're still friends to this day. He's just an amazing human being. And he he walks up to me and he is so what is it that you do here? And at the time I had like braids in my hair and I'm in the upper north part of Florida and in Florida the farther north you go, the farther south you get, right? So it's not like I didn't fit in, let's put it that way. So I had braids in my hair and green hair and he's so tell me what you do. And I said what I'm gonna teach you is probably gonna get you fired, but it'll save your life. And he goes, lemme tell you something son. We're gonna work on your delivery. But I'm very curious, right? So we go in there and he goes to one of my free classes I'm offering. Next thing I know I've got a and the Lord is so good to me, right? Like the next thing I know,'cause at the time I was hurt financially'cause my head wasn't in the right space. I've got a 12,000 or$13,000 deal to go in there and teach for two days and then it just grew after that, like wildfire. We trained the ERT Rapid Response Cert, all these guys, and then. It was getting disseminated out to 19,000 officers throughout the state of Florida. And then next thing we know I'm down in Ecuador training the Special forces and the defense minister's bodyguards and their Navy Seals. And after that ended up going to South Africa and training the tactical response team for Cape Town. I went to the four 59th there in the Lift Squadron in Tokyo Japan. Ended up training them. I got the privilege and opportunity to work with the five 12 Rescue Squadron in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is honestly how the whole thing started was with Colonel de Palmer. And then that led to, the other branches. So I've been around the world training different tier one individuals, special forces groups as long as they're friendly to the us. That's my rule And law enforcement around the globe. And then come Covid two years before Covid, I wanted to make this thing scalable. And I talked to one of my mentors who's just an amazing human being and a power hitter inside of the development space for industrial development and commercial development, Steve Maestes. And he said, you gotta make this thing scalable. And so by the time they shut everything down for Covid, I was ready to launch my ads. And so we already had this whole approach on how to actually not just train the body, but train the mind. And we went from taking as a primary product, combatives in Bella Caseology and making it almost an ancillary product to our program to build Renaissance man and what a Renaissance man is, as a man who is multifaceted and capable of doing a lot of different things from being a master in spirituality, to being able to operate his own emotions, to being physically dangerous, to being a man who's financially astute. And in tuned, I went from I, I left this part out, but I used to be homeless, right? When I first left, I was homeless, living outta my car. And I, that shit sucked, right? Like you go down to a point where you sit down for so long and you go, man, this is not what I was intending. This is not what I was hoping for. And you get to a very low point. And recently I had met a girl that I thought I was gonna marry and the relationship didn't work out. And that was another huge challenge just for, it's like God keeps letting me know, Hey, you need to always be in tune with your emotions. What did you do wrong here? What did you do right? What did you do wrong? And so I look at what I did right for the, not the purpose of being right, but rather the possibility of emulating the behavior that's successful in the future as far as ownership I will take. And I think this is something that's actually given me a ton of freedom, and I've been meditating on this a lot lately. When we go here's where they went wrong and here's what they did to me. You take on the mindset of a victim and that's never gonna help you. And it doesn't give you freedom. In fact, it makes you weak and it makes you vulnerable to people controlling you. I look at it from a standpoint now of saying, you know what? Everything's my fault. The whole thing's my fault. If it ended, it's my fault. Because if it's my fault, I have power to control how I could do things in the future, what I could use to benefit, right? And my main message out of my experience to men of your podcast is it doesn't matter what happened. None of it happened to you. What happened for you? It's all there. God's designing you and refining you, and the fire is gonna burn all the impurities out of you and make you a stronger, better, more powerful man. Suffering's a choice. Pain is not his men. We're gonna go through pain. Whether or not you attach your identity to the suffering or to the pain is what's gonna cause the suffering, the craving and the desire to have things that are outside of your control is gonna cause the suffering. So a big part of what I'm gonna share with your audience today is I. This concept called a reticular activating system and how to rewire it. But I'm also gonna show'em the five pillars of how to stop being weak and how to get yourself to the next level of being a man. And I have had the privilege of having a ton of events that would destroy most human beings be part of my diet in life that I got to consume so that they didn't consume me, and I could teach men how to come out on the other side hole. So that's a quick overview and I'm sure I left a ton of stuff out, but that's a quick overview of my history and how we are sitting here today and beautiful ene Columbia.

James: 12:05

Yeah there's absolutely loads in there. But let's just, let's start off, you were saying about going into pain. My belief is that in order to grow, you've got to go into that darkness.'cause there's a lot of people who see the darkness and are more, almost don't, we are too afraid to go into the darkness. But inside the darkness, that is where the goal is because that is where you can own your, what I call the shadows. So the parts that we hate about ourselves, the parts that we try to push away, these are the parts we can own. And with owning these parts, we can really turn them around and to create this sense of this sense of growth, this sense of goal, this ability to step into our new, into our best version.

Michael: 12:57

Yes shadow self and the shadow self isn't necessarily dark, it's just misunderstood. And typically the very innocent part of you that at one point you adopted and accepted and it somehow got taken advantage of. So then you try to pull it back and say, that's not good. That part equals pain. And it's not that part equals pain, it's just, it's innocent. And the world can't appreciate it because it vomits on innocence. It tries to consume innocence and eat it. And the reality of that darkness, I want you to think about the creation of the earth. God moved on this, amongst this formless void. And there was darkness. And in the beginning, and I think this is the first tool that I wanna give to you guys, is that you only think it's darkness.'cause you don't know how to control the voice. You don't know how to use it. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God. And the word was God. Think of down the road. We see Christ and we understand that he's the word. The manifestation of God's internal dialogue became flesh and spoke to men to teach them how to activate the power within themselves. Think about that for a minute. What is your internal dialogue telling you on a regular basis? What is your internal dialogue creating inside of your identity? We're afraid to go in because we don't wanna face our internal dialogue. We don't wanna face our emotions. We don't wanna face our feelings because I believe in our hearts as men, we fear our weakness. We fear that we're evil. We fear all of the things that we think are what's wrong with us. But on the other side of fear is freedom. Everything you want is on the other side of your fear. So what you do is you lean into it, and this is a part that I've had to do a few times, and you don't wanna go into it alone. This is why it's so important to have your faith that when you go into it with God, you can actually go, okay, God, I'm terrified, then I'm gonna lose who I am. And I gotta be honest. I really don't know what that is in this conversation that you're having with God. And then you go in and you're like, if I'm gonna lose myself and lose everything I am, at least I'll know. And that is a phrase that stayed with me for a long time. At least I'll know. So if you're a horrible human being, at least you'll know. When I thought about starting Shockwave back in 2002, when I started, I was like, but what if I lose it? My dad's in all these major magazines and he's this giant and this gargantuous icon in the martial arts. What if I fail? And God put this voice in me? At least you'll know. And it's so awesome because I've done be because of the Lord's help. I've done 20 times even what my dad was able to do. And so I sit down and I look at that and I go, okay, at least I'll know. So when you go into the darkness, go in with the light of truth, understanding that the truth is what's actually gonna set you free. Learn how to program that narrative inside of yourself too. And so a good exercise for the entire audience is right now, sit there for five seconds and don't let a single thought pop into your head. Notice how that didn't work. So thoughts are coming and going continually. They're passing through. It's almost there's a frequency among all the living, and we think that this physical world is life, but there are creatures and beings that exist within a dimension that we can't see, but they still communicate. If you think of a cell phone, your cell phone, you can put it in a room and you can make a call and it will send a frequency through concrete and still contact somebody else. We are so much more powerful than cell phones. So if we are, and there's other beings that we can't see whatever's going on in their peripheral, I. Is also coming through us and we feel it. There's thoughts all the time that we as men, it's so funny. We as men, we have these thoughts where we're like, dude, I would never think that, where did that come from? How many times have you been driving? And your brain's dude, if you just turned the wheel and just like tag that person and say what the fuck? I would've think that way. Why that thought come in my head? Because I believe that there's things that feed off of our thoughts and our energy. So there's thoughts that we have that will enter into our head and I believe that there's, I had a dream about this long time ago. I was like this energy and I was moving in this darkness and space and there were these other creatures that were energy. They would try to pull you into their orbit because if they could appeal to you and pull you into their orbit, you would get stuck in their orbit and they would feed off your energy and your energy of life until you were no more. And they were called lip mites. And so what I teach my men is you gotta be very careful with the lip mites.'cause they'll try to draw you into their energy. They'll try and steal you. How do they do that? They get you angry. They start controlling your emotions. They start trying to control your thoughts that events occur in life. Like your woman cheating on you or people abandoning you or leaving you or getting in a car accident or whatever, to try to control the urge, that surge of energy that rises from you. And they try to eat it. So they'll try to create events that will take place to actually make more of those things happen. So the dark will eat dark, but that which is light, looks at gratitude, love, joy. So if you wanna attract energy that. Feeds on that and thinks that's beautiful and a sweet, savory smell, then you behave in that likeness. If you want to attract darkness, then you behave with hate, envy, greed, bitterness, resent. So you've got these two things and you need, you can't serve'em both. So you gotta starve one and feed the other. Which one is your attention and your internal dialogue being put on? Are you focusing on the victimhood? Are you focusing on all the negative? Are you focusing on the fact that you were raped as a kid? Are you focusing on what is it that your attention's on? Or are you focusing on the stuff that's actually gonna elevate you and ascend you to the next level? Does that make sense?

James: 18:58

Yeah, that makes sense. And I know it's

Michael: 18:59

a little, it's, I know it's a little out there, but it's the way my head works.

James: 19:03

That's right. I'm well out there. I have to be careful in the podcast, especially not to go too far out, but the funny thing is, now, and again, I will work with my darkness. I'll work with an area that I'll just lie on the floor, allow myself to go into it. But the more that I try to resist it, that almost the more it almost overcomes me. But as soon as I surrender and let go, it just, I just float and I'm floating around. And I find this idea of letting go and surrendering to it powerful. And it's a sense that you just are able to Yeah. So really move through it.

Michael: 19:46

You're so right. It's funny because recently, about two weeks ago, I was gonna go to church and I just wasn't feeling it. And I ended up going to this men's event where these guys were working out, and I meet this dude that's like a former MARSOC guy and. Which is like a marine special operation command guy. And he's just a super cool dude. And he had recently also gone through a breakup. And I'm just sitting there talking to him and I'm, I respect him because I know he's a fellow warrior.'cause I get a lot of guys that they'll come around me and they try and gimme advice and I just don't respect him because I can kill him, right? Like I look at him and I'm like, dude, like you, you're saying all this stuff based off your weakness. It's not because you overcame adversity and now you chose to believe this way, right? I have more respect for the latter. So this guy, he is sitting there and we're talking and he's dude, I went through all this. I used to kick in doors. I've been in gunfights, I've done all these things. He goes, and you know what? He goes, I found out that surrender was another form of fighting. And that was all, huh? Like surrender was never really part of my vocabulary. I said, tell me more. And he goes, yeah. So the more we resist, the more power we give to an enemy that feeds on resistance. And I'm like, no shit. Like it just like my head is I. And then I'm sitting here like listening to this guy that I actually respect and he's all, yeah, man, surrender's another form of fighting. And I thought, isn't that true for like arts, like Wayne Chung, when the enemy punches you, you absorb it, right? And then you can throw it back at him. But if I'm fighting it all the time, you get tired. The muscles always clenched. And I thought, all right, I'm listening now. And so I started using surrender as a form of meditation and also a form of letting go.'cause I'm not good at that. Like when I attach to something I'm a hundred percent in, like I like giving up isn't really part of my makeup, right? Like it's not the way I'm wired. But there's a difference between putting out energy in something that's not worth it and trying to control things that are outside of your control. And learning how to surrender and just control the controllables. Controlling the controllables is where there's power. If I choose to surrender, I'm not giving up. I'm letting go so I can observe. Then use whatever's in front of me. So the analogy of surrender for a lot of men, that's hard because they're like, dude, I don't wanna surrender. That means I become captive. You're already captive. You're already locked into a cage. And one of my biggest objectives with every man I come in contact with is to teach'em how to be uncaged, spiritually, emotionally, physically, financially. The cage we built for ourselves as men are the parts of emotions that we can't control. How many guys in your audience do you think have sat there and been broken up with a girl and next thing they know, they're like, dude, I don't know what my identity is anymore. I fuck. I just recently went through something like this and I had to recapture and bring back. I was like, wait a minute. My identity cannot be attached to the mission of taking care of another human being because when I make another human being my mission, and that fucking mission walks out the door, I'm very confused. So my mission has to be above and beyond any single person on this planet. My mission has to be driven towards the legacy that I'm gonna leave an inheritance from my grandchildren's grandchildren, any woman who gets the opportunity to stand by my side. And any girl that you talk to who I. Remotely still gets along with me from my past. We'll tell you that. I was talking to one of my friends, Iris. She's an amazing human being. I dated her for four years. It just didn't work out between us. We were just, weren't a good fit. But she's just, she's a really good person. She's Michael, any woman who gets to be with you is it's a gift. She's all, you're amazing. You protect whatever is yours. You look after whoever's in your circle, you will provide for them protection and financial protection and physical protection. She's if anybody can't see that, let'em walk away. And I was like, dude, you're such a badass. Thank you. I needed to hear that, thank you for that. And her soul is so genuine in that arena, right? Because she actually knows me. This woman dated me for four years. She knew the ups and downs, and she's and you're just a beautiful human being. And then she also shared with me things that she felt like, you could work on this some more. And I'm like, badass, fair enough. But I was so receptive to it because she wasn't being a bitch, right? She was just telling me out of like purity of Hey, here's the next level of you, like what you could do better. And I was like, man, thank you. I appreciate that. Fucking knuckles, dude. Like just giving her a metaphorical knuckles through the phone, but as men, when we attach ourselves to a woman, we forget our purpose. Any woman who's privileged to be with you as a man and help you achieve your mission, that's a gift to her. Don't make her your mission. She can be part of it. And if she's a good woman, she'll want to help build your mission. If she's a good woman, she's gonna want to help you grow because she understands that what you're doing is legacy building. You're not just there to make money. You're not just there to fucking entertain her like you're some dancing monkey. Your job is actually to leave something on this earth that is known in dimensions that aren't even close to here, that your actions and your purity and the truth that you shine on this planet is so amazing that it's hurt in heaven. And it's not just built around being a dancing monkey for some chick who's never happy. And everything you do is wrong. But I'll tell you, those women and I'm not saying, and I've met those women and I've met women. They're amazing women, right? And they're, the last relationship I had was so beautiful in so many ways because it showed me. The parts that I needed to work on within myself, it showed me the things that I could level up on. And then it also showed me a lot of stuff where I was like, oh, hey, maybe you put up with some things that you should not have. So they're all gifts. We just have to see'em that way. And I hear these statistics that over 75% of suicides, I'm talking all suicides that happen. It's something like 73 to 75% of suicides are men. And I'm like, dude, fuck that. We need to change that. The reason is men feel alone. They can't be vulnerable and technically with your woman, you shouldn't be, but you do need to have a group of men that you can actually be vulnerable with. You need to be able to have a tribe that you can communicate with. And then I also want my ride or die buddies, right? Like I remember I had a scenario, and I won't go into a ton of detail on it, but there was a guy that really wronged. A situation that was going on and one of my buddies was like, let's get a 55 gallon drum. We'll fill it with gas, we'll drive out there, we'll drive back. And I'm like, yeah dude those guys are a awesome, but I had to pull the reins back on that one. I'm like, no, we're not doing that. That is not like you want that type of loyalty in your brothers where they're like, dude, whose car are we taking? They'll show up at any time of night no matter what, and they're there for you. And the sad part is, I'd say 80% of men don't have that. In fact, I'll tell you what I'll tell you about 73 to 75% of men don't have that. You know how I know that?'cause they're putting bullets in themselves. And so you have to find that tribe and it is so important. And you can listen to all the YouTube videos and you can listen to all the podcasts and those can be helpful. They're useful tools. But at the end of the day, you still have to have somebody that's brother, come to me and I don't care how strong you are. I know dudes that were Navy Seals. I know guys that were just one of the guys that's and again, I, I wanna make sure I'm guarding these guys identities. But there's a gentleman that has a show on Fox now and there's a bunch of special forces stuff going on. He had a really rough time when he first got outta the military, and I got to sit down and talk to him one-on-one and just, he was like, dude, I was a mess. And his woman that he had ended up helping him get past that once he got out. We need brothers. And we need brothers more than we need, honestly, more than we need a woman because a woman is there and she's there for a specific purpose. And if she's a good woman, she'll be nurturing, she'll be caring, she'll be, she'll give you love. She'll be there to help you through your weak points. And she will take your vulnerabilities and not use'em against you and go you said this and you said that. That's not a good woman. So brothers will be there for you. They'll stand with you, they'll help you fight, and then they'll call you on your shit. They'll tell you, Hey, man you're being a little bitch right now. Here's how to overcome it. And I think that's why it's so important for men to have a good tribe.

James: 28:08

Yeah. I, myself have come to this realization, so I'm absolutely great on my own. I'm able to deal with loneliness quite easily. But at the same time, you still need them, people around you.'cause even myself, who's very good on my own, it sometimes can get a better of you. And it's those times when you need to have the people to support you and to be able to lean on, to be able to go and have some fun with, to be able to, as you say, deal with situations that need dealing with. And it's so important. Yeah. Important. Can you talk about how to reprogram the Raz?

Michael: 28:52

Yeah. Let's in fact, if you don't mind, I'll share my screen here and I'll give you guys a little bit of insight. I'm gonna send a request to you.

James: 29:01

Yeah. So this will be on YouTube as well as on on Noah podcast. So anybody listening can watch it on YouTube as well, so you can actually see the screen.

Michael: 29:17

Yeah, and I'm just gonna cover this kind of quickly for you guys, but I think it's important that like you need to direct your mind to train your reticular activating system. And there's a creator within you. If you look at the way the human being is made and you look at how as people we are designed, we are like, they can find 97, 90 8% of what's in the universe and it stars and everything else inside of the human structure. What that means is you are literally, the universe incarnate, and then you have a divine breath breathed inside of you. You're made in the image of God. So although you are not the God. You are godlike, which means that when you choose to take on an endeavor and you choose to pursue something, you're doing it with the authority that's been given to you from above as a God. So if you tell yourself you're a loser, if you tell yourself that you are weak, if you tell yourself you're broke, if you tell yourself any of these negative things, you are putting faith in doubt. You are putting faith in limitations and you are going to create that in your reticular activating system because you identify what that's gonna show you more and more proof around you to actually make you right. If you do the reverse of that, the same will happen. So let's talk about what the reticular activating system is. Just, you guys can understand it. Basically in a nutshell, it's the gatekeeper of the mind. It's a mental gatekeeper, it's an information filter. So it is based on conscious awareness and your what you believe to be true. It will shift your consciousness and your attention and your focus on it as though it's a spotlight. And so it'll only see what it believes matters. There's over 2 billion bits of information trying to get into your head at any given second. So what the brain's gonna do and what the mind's gonna do is it's gonna filter what's important. If you're a top level CEO and you're like, man, I'm working on this multi a hundred million dollar deal, that is gonna take priority over say something like what you're having for lunch. Now, if you have that same pressure and you're about to lose that deal, and you're like, a lot of people's jobs are on the line and a lot of people are about to suffer, and all of a sudden an active shooter pops up and start shooting at people, guess what you're not thinking about anymore? You're not thinking about that a hundred million dollar deal. You're thinking about not dying. So the brain is going to see the information that matters the most and what it believes is the most important. It's also an opportunity spotter. So what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna spotlight some of this. People aren't jumping ahead. So when you start to have this belief that this is significant and you believe it to be significant, the RAS is gonna reveal the pathways of your goals so that you can get there and it's gonna say, Hey, look, here's all the evidence. Like you may be looking at one thing over here to the right and something exists on the left. But the way the RAS is gonna work is it's going to put highlighting focus on what's on the right, if that's what you believe is real and what you believe is true. Does that make sense so far? And I'm gonna take a, yeah, a really, like I'm not a neurologist, I'm not a brain surgeon. I'm a dude who is fascinated by psychology studying neurology associative linkage pavlonian, and operating classical conditioning and BF Skinner's rats and all that. So that's why I got a degree in criminology.'cause I'm fascinated with how to hijack the mind. And so I'm gonna break this down in really layman's terms. The other thing that the RES does is it's an identity reinforcer. So whatever you believe is who you are, it's gonna find evidence and it's gonna seek it out. That confirms that self image. So if your old image is based off of an old relationship where your woman cheated on you and she constantly was like just tearing you down, telling you all the things that you did wrong, telling you how she can't forgive you for those things I'm just gonna make you feel bad. Those are her issues, by the way. If somebody can't forgive you, that's something that they need to work on. It doesn't mean what you did was right, but it does mean that, if they keep trying to use it to lord over you, to have control, to have power, that's a problem with them. And here's what I found in certain relationships that when somebody says, I can't forgive you and I can't do this, I can't allow you back near, all they're really trying to do is maintain control. The reason they're trying to maintain control is that they themselves cannot control themselves. So inside of themselves, they feel vulnerable. So they have to try and control the relationship instead of working on themselves. So you have to be very careful what you allow other people's beliefs to become your reality, because then you will adopt that and the RAS will start looking for ways to reinforce it. So don't just accept other people's beliefs of you as reality and truth, because once you start doing this, it builds momentum and it becomes a loop, and it goes, all right, belief, proof, reinforcement, belief proof, reinforcement, belief, proof, reinforcement. And then you, before you know it 20 years later, that God design that you've been given has created something you don't like and don't want and does. All that makes sense so far?

James: 34:12

Yeah, that makes sense. Yes. Yeah.

Michael: 34:15

So one of our mindset coaches that we have in our training is a personal friend of mine. I've known this guy for 20 plus years now, and James is just brilliant. And one of the things that we do on our live calls every week is that we take the wins that our men give us, and we start focusing on how to design those into RAS conditioned drills so that these guys can get in, they can experience what they want, and then go, how do I reinforce it? And how do I build it so that they can start attracting more of that visual mind, the mind's eye perception perception to it. So it's very important that every single person gets into having daily wins and declaring them. And the way that this is important, the first part is that you gotta speak it when you verbalize your progress. When you tell your RAS what to look for, it hears it in the ears. So I'll give you guys a drill. One of the things that you can do every single morning is you tell, you're not asking, you're telling and commanding with presence what the RES should do based off the previous days wins. So you're like, man, I made money yesterday. I was great. So now what you do, you know that you feel it, you experience it because feeling is the bridge between imagination and manifestation. And so you sit down and you say, alright, today you're gonna show me one new way to increase my financial wealth. Today you are gonna show me one new way to increase my influence. Today you're gonna show me one new way to let go of what was and manifest what I want. But you speak it out loud and it's a commandment. And as you speak it out loud, one of the things I like to do, and people think I'm weird for this, I just don't care is that I'll actually take like a dry erase marker and I'll write things on my mirror so that I'll eventually ignore it. I'll come and I'll see it and I won't pay attention to it. It starts to embed itself into my subconscious. System, and my subconscious mind sees it even if my physical mind forgets. So speak it, write your wins on your mirror, and then train it out loud. Number two, notice when you're winning. A lot of people go I want to be humble. Hey, that's great that humility is the ability to have great achievements and not brag about'em. But this isn't about self-deprecating on yourself. You can't sit down and go, oh, I'm really not good when you are. That's actually you're a fucking liar. If you're really good, you're good. Don't lie about it. Just don't. It's the difference about being humble and knowing that even though you're good, you don't have to sit there and flaunt it and tell everybody, oh, look how great I am. So notice when you have a win and then that RES becomes more attuned to spotting similar opportunities as evidence for your success within your identity. Number two, feel it. Or number three, you wanna feel it because feeling, and I wanna talk about something that I give to my men. Inside of our training, we talk about the four vs. And the vision, the voice, the visceral, the vibration. We break these down into a ton of, and I know I'm giving you guys a really condensed high perspective here, a 30,000 foot perspective. But when you feel something, you need to fully feel it with all five senses, and you feel it in a way of belief. So belief is feeling, we believe what we feel. So if you start experiencing that dropping feeling and that, oh no, you're gonna start to believe, oh no,'cause you feel it, but see where the Dante is. If you guys are familiar with Chinese energy, about two inches below your belly button, this is that gut area. That's also where the elixir of life of energy is. This is why I. You can have children from down there, right? Like that spiritual energy. You'll notice most of your feeling as a man is gonna come from down there or in your heart. The heart has over 40,000 neurons in it. Did you know that the Heart and Math Institute did a study on this back in the nineties? That means your heart literally thinks your Ian also feels, and it thinks so. We have to learn how to feel productive. A lot of people don't think this way. We don't go I'm gonna condition my muscles, but they don't think I'm gonna condition my feelings. Start conditioning your feelings. Start exercising your feelings first thing in the morning. Train yourself to start feeling a specific way. What does it take to feel? And acknowledge that and create that positive emotion, energy, and motion, and reinforce it with your new identity. And also don't forget to tell your face, right? Because if you're like, I'm happy. You're not gonna feel happy, right? So we gotta make sure that our whole presence of who we are as men is being manifested. Okay? And then this is important. Repeat it because building momentum and getting that feedback loop is very important for reinforcement. Okay. So next thing we're going to look at is how do we create that manifestation? What are the four steps? The one, you gotta see it clearly without a vision that people perish. The main person that's gonna perish if you don't have vision is you. So you have to have detailed mental images. You have to experience it like we talked about before, on five levels of your census, but also with the four Vs. And that's a topic for a different day.'cause that in itself, like I could spend an entire podcast just talking about the vision, I could spend an entire one talking about the voice, an entire one. Talking about the visceral response, the entire one talking about vibrational frequency. So first thing, see it next. Feel it. Feel it fully generate authentic. Now this is important, authentic and genuine emotions as if your visions already are there. Like when we're told to pray for something Christ didn't say, pray for it and see if it comes. He goes, I'll pray for it and give thanks. So he's saying, pray for it and give thanks. Is soda already exists? When you walk with a level of belief that you already are carrying it, not that you're working on it, not that it one day will come, but as though it already exists right now, it'll come forward. There are so many parts of scripture that help us understand the power of our image being made in the image of God, and then utilizing faith to manifest something without doubt. And there's a lot of people, especially unfortunately in the Christian community that get very confused on this, like manifestation evil. It's throughout all of the New Testament. It's also in the Old Testament you fucking read, right? There's so many times where I just want to take people and shake'em and be like, read the Bible, right? You're sitting down you're making all these claims and you haven't even read the book that you claim that you're gonna follow So, so fervently, right? So you gotta learn how to manage those. You gotta learn how to manage those feelings fully. Now, next manifested internally. Now alignment is a you're not broken, gentlemen, you're not stuck. You're misaligned. If you get in a car and it's misaligned, what happens? The ride's really bumpy. If you let go of the steering wheel for one fucking second, you're veering off into Dairy Queen, right? Like you're here, cars driving off the road. Like, how do we get realigned? Think of the fact that you're made in the image of your maker. A lot of people think, oh God must have two arms and two legs, and a core in a head. I believe that there's a part of that, may be accurate, but I think what's more accurate is like we look and see that God has manifested himself in a burning pill pillar of smoke for the Jews when he was leading them through the desert. One of fire we see that he appeared to Moses with a burning bush. I don't think it's talking about physical structure. What it's talking about is Father, son Holy Ghost, you have three separate tongues that are speaking as one tongue. So when we align our thoughts, when we align our internal dialogue, when we align our feelings, when we align, when things are in alignment, they speak as one tongue. The only way you're gonna manifest something externally is if you do it internally first. And see there's other parts of scripture that talk about, woe to them that need proof. The one that believes without proof is the one that's actually gonna get it. Why? Because those who have the faith, right? When you believe inside and it's unshakeable, the external world is a manifestation of the internal world. Our flesh, for example, is nothing more than a manifestation of the subconscious mind. If you are sick in your head all the time, you will manifest illness in your body and disease. So if we sit down and we look at this from a standpoint of going, man, what I really need to do right now is I need to believe that I am successful. The more you believe that you will carry that and you'll put out that frequency, and then the proof will come. So you believe inwardly first, and then the proof becomes the evidence that other people without faith can follow. But us as men that are renaissance men, that are men of God, we don't need the proof. We know it to be true. It's self-evident. Think of that. It's self-evident. You are the evidence. So when we sit down and we start to take on belief, we will believe to a level that most people will not. And then we become the vigilance of that proof and they can follow based on that. Does that make sense?

James: 42:59

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael: 43:00

So manifest it. Manifest it internally. Okay, so next part of this is you wanna live by design and not default. There's a lot of people that go, we'll see, I've experienced this in relationships where they go it just is what it is. And I've even said this, it's not what it is, it's what we make it. But if only one person's playing on that page, you can't force other people, right? Like you, you've got control over you. So it's not, it is what it is or it's not. Let's see what's gonna happen. We're men. We create it. And men, I wanna give you some advice. Also, if you're stuck in a, like a toxic relationship or something that's just not healthy for you, you need to get away from that. That energy's gonna pull you down and it doesn't make her bad. She may go away and fix that shit and come back a brand new person down the road. But as of right now, if it's toxifying to you and it's destroying you, you gotta let go, dude. That is so hard for men that are power hitters and men that are warriors.'cause like we don't fucking let go. We keep going. We're like pit bulls. We grab onto something and we don't quit till it's done. That can be to your detriment. It becomes sunk cost, right? Like you don't keep putting money in a business that just keeps losing business. At some point you gotta cut that thing free and build a business that's gonna work. So we live by design. We don't walk in doubt or we don't sit in doubt. We walk in faith. And I want you guys to start thinking this way. So when we live by design, we're gonna take the top part of this pyramid as though, hey, there we are and we're gonna work our way in reverse. How do we actually get to the end result? We start with, hey, the creation was realized. Your visions, they manifest as a physical reality. Like you can sit down and you can create things. You cannot control other people. If they wanna walk, they walk. But you can control your reality and manifest into existence. Your ability to control your thoughts, your physique, your finances, the life that you get to live, you can draw towards you, the right woman. And sometimes we think it's the right woman and we keep trying to hold on. And she keeps trying to run. Fucking let her go, right? If she can't appreciate you and she keeps wanting to run every time you guys have a difficult conversation, she's not strong enough for mature enough emotionally to have a strong conversation, let her go. Now, your job as a man, the best of your ability is to lead her. She needs to change. And she's not gonna change on her own. You gotta guide her to that change. But if she's going to leave and she's gonna keep running all the time, at some point you gotta let go. Let that realization of yourself in the world, you want focus on that. That's where your energy should be. Now, what did we do before that? Deliberate action. You've gotta take action that is aligned with your vision. If you're like, man, I really want to be successful, but I'm not gonna do anything in business. I'm gonna sit at home all day and watch Netflix or sit in my mother's basement and play fucking video games. Gentlemen, one of the reasons that a lot of men have a bad name now is'cause men aren't acting like men. They're acting like fucking little boys. It is up to us to shift that. We have to choose to change that, right? If you're gonna sit down and be like, ah, I just want net of code red and I'm gonna sit here and fucking believe it, grow up. There's a level of us as men where we have to step up to the next level and don't be offended. If that offended you just now, good. You need to work on that. Like getting to the next level of financial protector and financial provider and a warrior, all the shit you don't want to do.'cause it's uncomfortable and painful. That's why you do it. You do it because it makes you the best version of you that you can be. If you're addicted to comfort, you're gonna live a miserable life, right? Pick your poison. Pick your pain. If you decide to go do your pain first thing in the morning, that might be a cold shower. The rest of the day is way easier. Stop pursuing comfort. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. But all of the uncomfortable shit that you do leads to something great. Like working out leads to something great, making those phone calls you don't wanna make in business. It leads to something great. Going to getting cash collected leads to something great, getting used to rejection leads to something great. Stop seeking permission from the outside. And like I talk to guys all the time that'll, oh, I gotta go ask my wife or I gotta go ask my friends, dude, make a fucking decision. The only reason you gotta ask these people is'cause they don't trust you.'cause you made bad decisions in the past. And the truth is you don't trust yourself. So how are you gonna make a better decision? Start making better decisions, and then learn to trust yourself and have that confidence. I never ask a woman before I spent money, I didn't do it with my kids' mom, I didn't do it with anybody. And people go maybe that's the problem. Nope, they didn't want me to. What they loved was the fact that they knew, no matter what decision I made, I would never put our family in a position where we'd be without. So they trusted me to make those decisions. Gentlemen, you wanna be the same way? So that deliberate action learn. What are the deliberate actions? What are the egos? What are the income generating activities that if you did every single day, you'd be a fucking gee, right? What does it take for you to get to that next level as a warrior? What are the deliberate actions that if you took, you would be the best man in your relationship? And granted, she's gotta be willing to accept it. If she's one of those girls that's yeah, but in the beginning you did this and I just can't accept, fuck get someone else, right? Like at that point you've gotta, you've gotta make a decision that like somebody can accept your growth. If they can't accept your growth and they're not willing to do that, it's'cause they're not willing to grow themselves and they're not willing to take the steps and the actions for them to do the work on themselves to get to the next level. And if you're in that kind of fucking toxicity, it's time to go right? But what are the deliberate actions that you need to take to get to be the best friend? A lot of guys would go, I don't have good friends. Are you a good friend? Maybe that's why, right? My men are so loyal to me. Why? Because they know a fucking do anything for'em. Does that. Deliberate action. I think we beat that dead horse. Okay, let's go. Let's move forward. Okay. Conscious des, conscious design. I am so big on action.'cause a lot of people, they're like, if I just sit here and feel good, then you know, I watch the secret and if I sit here and feel good, everything will come to me. I'm like, nah. That's how you end up fucking broken living in a cake, right? That's not, yeah, that's not gonna work. You've got to take action. So conscious design is a deliberateness of you being willing to think this thing out and reverse engineer it. So you craft your vision with intention and emotional energy and you reverse engineer that thing so that you get what you wanted. But emotional energy is really important. We talked about the importance of feeling emotional energy. If I walk up to you and I'm about to do a multimillion dollar deal and I shake your hand and I look like I just fucking woke up, right? And I'm exhausted and my energy's hi, my name's Bill. You're not getting that deal. What's the point? Because it doesn't happen anyway. Yeah. It's'cause of your energy. Nobody wants to do business with somebody that looks like they're ready to kill themselves. Like you've gotta get yourself to that next level. Who's the man that you have to become in order to have everything you say you want? I want this kind of woman. What do you deserve her? Who's the man you have to be in order to get her? Now women have to look at this the same way. I only coach men now, but I had a girl jump on a call probably last year. And it was a reinforcement to me as to why I only train men. But, as of right now,'cause I feel that's the best way to help women. But I was talking to her and she said, I don't think like I should have to change. I want this guy to be this. And she lays out this whole thing and I said, what do you have to become in order to be the woman that deserves that man? She's all nothing. I shouldn't have to do anything to get him. He should love me for who I am. And I was like, and who the are you? That is the stupidest shit I ever heard, right? You think you're gonna attract a guy that's gonna come and do all this stuff for you and you're just gonna do nothing? No, that's not how that works, gentlemen. You gotta take on the same role. And I want a woman who's a 10. Okay, great. You better be like a 90. You better be a hundred, because those women are gonna have high standards. And a really good woman is gonna want to have a man who can take care of things and get things done and protect her, and also give her that safe space for her to be a little bit of a nudge job every now and then, because they're built differently than us. So she's gonna have emotional times, especially once a month, probably gonna lose it. And you need to be able to give her that safe space. And this is something I wasn't always good at, and I had to learn this. You gotta give her that safe space so that she can lose it, not have to save everything perfect. And you're like, I still love you and I'm gonna help you. Okay? But it's a conscious design from spiritual to emotional, to physical, to financial. And then you also have to wake up and realize your divine potential. You are made in the image of God. You need to stop having faith and doubt in limitation and start having faith in the design that God built you to be. You start doing that, you'll kill it. You start doing that, you'll actually understand the power that you have. My goal my, my job and my main goal in life is to teach men how to conquer weakness. Yeah, combat is part of that. But think about what you just got from just this training today on this podcast of a man who has a true heart. James has a true heart to just go out and really wants to help men because he knows what it's like to be in pain. He knows what it's like to really be searching and just feel fricking lost. And how many of us as men, we get lost and we're like, dude, I don't know what to do. I thought I did everything fucking I got the job. I fucking went to school. I took care of the kids. I took care of the wife, and she left, right? Or I did this, and this, and my boss fired me, or I did this. Am I'm still not approved by my family? Stop seeking that external validation. Who are you? You are whoever you say you are. God gave you the power to be you. You are a fluid concept. You are not your past experiences. You are the design that you choose to be today because you're made in the image of your maker. Are you living like it? Because whether or not you understand it, you may go I'm just a loser. As a person who's creating God's image, if you think you're a loser, guess what? You're gonna create a loser. But if you believe that you are a manifestation of what you choose to be, and you design that, like the person you look up to, and that becomes like the identity in your reticular activating system will start showing you all the evidence that you need in order to create it. And that's how you do this programming. Does that make sense? Was that helpful?

James: 52:50

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's massively helpful. And it's yeah it's seeing yourself as a limitless being. And that you can do, you are, you can accomplish and do whatever you want, but again, you've gotta put the work in, you've gotta see yourself there already.

Michael: 53:08

Yeah. I'm gonna throw two things in there'cause I wanna make sure that men don't get too frustrated with this because you are a limitless being until you contradict God's flow. Okay? So if you, if what you are doing is not in alignment with what God's mission is for you on the earth and you start contradicting like the benefit of God's plan, you'll hit everything along the way. And that's where we were talking earlier about surrender, right? When I was learning how to fly my helicopter. It was actually pretty funny because like you get up there, dude, and I'm not gonna lie, I got a little bit of an ego from time to time and I'm like trying to fly this thing and I can't fucking hover to save my life. Like literally. And I'm sitting there and I'm all over the place and I'm asking my flight instructor, I'm like, dude, what's going on? He's don't worry, everybody has an issue with this. It is so hard. It took me 15 hours to like hover and not be moved by the wind and stuff. And some people it takes'em a lot less. Some people it takes some more. For me, it took 15 hours. And I was like, dude, this sucks. And so I asked the colonel from the five 12th Rescue Squadron and I said, Hey Puma, what is the deal here? Why am I not able to fly this helicopter? He goes,'cause you're trying to, you're letting the helicopter fly you. He said, you don't get in and strap into the helicopter. You get in and you strap the helicopter onto you. And like that dude, like everything changed for me. Just having that one simple principle, I was like, oh fuck. Then I get in there and I could do everything I, most everything I wanted the helicopter to do. And there's a time in life that's the action that you take, especially when you're being deliberate in design. But I wanna caution you guys that when you start going, man, I have done all of this and it's not working. Sometimes that is because God wants you to keep pushing and he wants you to pursue it. Other times it's because you're in a riptide. I went to Costa Rica and I'm down in Santa Taa and I'm looking at these currents, dude, and they are wicked, right? You're surfers out there. If you try to swim against that current, what's gonna happen?

James: 54:56

You gonna tie yourself out.

Michael: 54:58

You're gonna tie yourself out. You're gonna drown, you're gonna die. You need to know when it's time to strap on the helicopter and when it's time to swim alongside the current and then swim over it, right? There's a time and place for everything in life. Your job as a man, especially as a renaissance man, is to learn discernment and to learn when to swim with the current and when to strap the helicopter onto you. Does that make sense? Makes perfect sense.

James: 55:24

So perfect example for myself was that when I launched my podcast, it was effortless. It's effortless, doing podcast episodes, scaling, launched, edit to them myself, and it's dead easy. But trying to launch a coaching business at the moment in time isn't quite an alignment with myself at the moment. So it's that realization that when you've got hard work, when things are hard working really when things are flowing and it's dead easy, you are in alignment. When things become hard, you are out of alignment somewhere.

Michael: 55:59

And you may be out of alignment, not with the principle of launching a coaching business, but rather with the way you think you're supposed to go about doing it. So for a long time I, I kept, God blessed me to be able to train some of the coolest people on the planet. And I am, I'm surrounded by greatness and I'm just so grateful for that. But I kept trying to take the tactics side to a level and it was keep hitting resistance. And I finally realized, oh, I've done what I was supposed to do with that. That's ancillary. Now, God wants me to take the principles of warfare and teach men how to conquer their inner war. He wants me to take the principles of warfare and teach men how to fight their inner demons, right? And then things start flowing again, right? So becoming a coach I think is really important. And that's something that I actually coach men on how to be coaches, because that's a gift, and we need more of them. And it's not just this thing of oh, I'm a coach. And so you're out there trying to like, just take people's money. You have to genuinely care. And I think that's the problem with a lot of men. I don't think you have that problem, but I think that's the problem with a lot of men and just coaches as a whole, is that you gotta have something very unique. You gotta actually care about your clients. One of my guys, he's 70 years old, he's had a lot of success. He hired Michael Jordan's coach personally. He hired all of these like he's had a ton of really high level coaches. And the other day he's dude, you're like within my top three. He said, you called me from Columbia to make sure I was doing okay. He's all, you actually care. I'm like, yeah, it's'cause I actually care. Is coaches, one of the things that we have to give to men, whether it's a podcast or anything, is like, how do we elevate them to the next level? Because they're coming as they are. And oftentimes we get upset with that. I know I did. I was like so upset by men's weakness and I realized that's a weakness in me and why am I really afraid of that? Because if I'm getting angry, it's not anger, it's fear. So why am I really afraid of that? Oh, it's because I'm afraid if I hang out with them, I'm gonna become like that. You just have to be a more powerful magnet and train'em to your frequency. Don't get entrained to theirs. Every time you get pissed with something going on, there's something inside of you that needs to be worked on. True. And the more we dive into that true, we can be better men. So what else can I give you guys and your audience today?

James: 58:11

So can you talk about the inner war room and what that, yeah. What's that about? And what are the biggest battles that people deal with and how can they overcome them?

Michael: 58:22

Yeah, so I'll do this quickly. Like the inner war room for us was a concept that we all men go to war with themselves, and they're gonna fight internally way more than they are externally. So we developed, as part of our product of what we offer men, which are typically pretty high level achievers from a financial standpoint. They come to the table and they say, look, I've achieved a lot I've done this, I've done this, I've done this. I've got money, I've achieved all this wealth, but I'm still feeling like something's missing. I still feel like I'm not who I'm supposed to be. I still have these limiting beliefs and self-doubts in these specific areas, and I wanna conquer'em. And we're like let's go into the inner war room and conquer'em. And that's part of our community where the high level achievers, they go in there as men and they go to war together in this community. Every single day against the weaknesses inside of'em. And they'll say, Hey guys, here's my wins. Here's what I'm struggling with today. And then as a tribe, the other men will go in there and say, Hey brother, here's something that you might wanna work on. Here's something that I found, or here's a YouTube video that I found that really helped me with this exact same thing. And then we have our live calls that we do every single week, and we post that inside of the inner war room as well, where they're coaching calls. I don't agree with just doing check-ins, right? Like a lot of people go, here's where I'm at. And okay that's not a useful time for me. I want to teach you shit, right? So every single week we have educational trainings that we do for our men, and they get recordings of that. We do want the check-in, but we don't want it from a check-in standpoint of like victimhood. Because a lot of people go, here's what's wrong. And then that entrains the whole group, right? So we say, what are your wins? Let's get there. And then one-on-one, they get interaction through our app with the coaches where they can actually say, Hey, I'm struggling with this. And then we'll give'em, whether it be an audio like word power or the power of expectation or any of our stuff that we have, we've got some really amazing tools that we give to our clients. And that's what the Inner War Room is about. I don't know if that's what you're asking me, but that's how we, that's how we work. The inner war room and the main challenges that men face, I think are the same that all men face, the seven deadly sins. Like men face greed, they face lust, they face pride, they face, and it's all relative on different things. Like we, we had a guy last night in our group, and I think his company's going to. Like they're at like 25 million or 30 million for the year, but they still have their own forms of financial challenges or employee challenges or whatever that the guy that maybe is making I've got another guy out here in Columbia that I'm hanging out with right now, who's a buddy of mine. They're on track to make 1.1 million this month. The same challenges that he's dealing with at 1.1 million, this other guy is dealing with at a different level at 25 million. So it's like the challenges that we face as men, because we're dealing with ourselves and we're dealing with human beings, they're the same. Everybody has addiction issues. It's just what are you addicted to? I tell people that addictions are superpowers if channeled correctly, right? If your addiction is like cocaine and snorting it off a hooker's ass, that's not a healthy addiction, right? That's gonna lead to some problems and you're probably gonna lose all your shit. The addictions we do want are self-betterment, self-growth reconditioning your mind, so it's the strongest muscle, emotional muscle that you have as well, so that you're not getting stuck in your thoughts. Learning how to limit your belief, sy get rid of limiting belief systems and conquer the narrative inside that's maybe defecating if you're addicted to that kind of stuff, it's gonna be really good for you.

James: 1:01:40

Yeah, that makes sense. It's so can you talk about the addictions being your superpower?

Michael: 1:01:47

Okay. So I'll say this as quick as we get internet connectivity here. Sure. When you're obsessed with the right things. You can actually achieve great things. I was obsessed with wanting a Dodge Viper. I put the picture on my screensaver. I started doing research on'em. I was like, okay, what do I need to do in order to make that? And I had no idea how six months later I had the Dodge Viper that was on my screensaver, right? It was one of 300 copperhead edition. I love Dodge Vipers. If any of your listeners have a collection of Dodge Vipers, I will fly to your house and go check that thing out and spend a day with you, right? Like I love Dodge Vipers. I had an obsession with stick fighting for a while, and so became the best stick fighter that I could be. I had an obsession with flying helicopters. I put the picture of the helicopter that I wanted on my screensaver. I actually own that exact helicopter. Now. Getting obsessed with certain things will help you work towards manifesting the behaviors that you need in order to achieve it. And it'll actually build inside of the alignment of what you wanna do. My buddy that aligned this together for us I got to a point where I was like, I wanna be on podcasts and I wanna start actually helping men at a level that I can't do on a one-on-one level. With a podcast you can hit fricking a million people in a day and I was like, alright, that works and it's scalable. So I became obsessed with it. And now my buddy Andre, as you know him also like he was Jordan Peterson's former son-in-law and did a ton of work to help Jordan Peterson become who Jordan Peterson is. Andre's an amazing human being. All my experience with him has just been phenomenal. I meet him after moving to the Optima in Scottsdale. Like when you get obsessed with things, God will start aligning stuff for you and then your reticular activating system will start working in unison with it and you'll start catching the opportunities that start to put you into that zone. That's why we have to be so careful because when we have negative obsessions, we'll start like. When you're addicted to negativity, and this is something that I recently realized that I, it got brought to my attention and then it got brought to my attention probably two or three times. And I was like, man, I'm not as positive as I thought I was. I focus a lot on the negative. Maybe that's why so much negative shit keeps happening, right? And so I was like, all right, how do I shift that? How do I start moving out of that and into alignment with what's positive? I still wanna pay attention to what's real. I still wanna pay attention to the stuff that needs my attention.'cause I don't wanna ignore that there's some guy over there with a knife. But I do wanna make sure that I see the guy with the knife, but I also see that, oh my goodness, they have vanilla ice cream also. So after I kick the shit outta him, I'm gonna go get an ice cream cone, right? Like you, you have the full spectrum, but you put the heavy emphasis on the positive. Does that make sense?

James: 1:04:30

Yeah. Makes get obsessed. Makes sense

Michael: 1:04:33

With healthy obsessions.

James: 1:04:35

Can you finish off by telling us how can we get in contact? How can people get in contact with you?

Michael: 1:04:42

Yeah, there's two ways of doing that. Probably the easiest I'd say is just go check out my Instagram channel. I am somewhat politically incorrect, so if my Instagram channel gets shut down, I'll give you another version of that. But it's at Shockwave Warrior. So one word, Sierra Hotel, Oscar, Charlie kilo Whiskey, alpha, Victor Echo. And then you have Delta Echo. No, I'm sorry. The next word is warrior. So shockwave is the first word. And then Whiskey alpha Romeo, India, Oscar Romeo. I forgot all of my, my, my helicopter alphabet terms here for a second, for some reason. So it's at Shockwave Warrior. And then you can also contact us through our website, which is shockwave defense.com. And don't forget, the defense is spelled with an S here in the us. So it's delta echo, foxtrot, echo november sierra echo.com, not with a C like it is in London.

James: 1:05:37

Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. I, I have, I'm ingrained with the phonetic alphabet because I'm, I work for the fire service. Oh, very nice. So we have to know it. We have to know it all and stuff. But yeah, thank you very much for having you, for having you on.

Michael: 1:05:51

Thank you, brother. I wa I really, here's one thing that I found, if I give and I contribute to the world, it always comes back. And I'm sure that there's gonna be a few of your listeners that are like, dude, I wanna work with this guy personally, and I'd love to, I'd love to help them out. So anything we can do to help let us know. And I know if you guys have any questions, I'm sure you'll post'em in the comments below.

James: 1:06:10

Yeah. Thank you very much.