How to Stop Chasing Success and Start Healing | With Howard Steinberg

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[SPEAKER_01]: What do you do when the chasing doesn't actually transform your life?

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[SPEAKER_01]: When on paper, you have all the things that you ever thought you might want.

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[SPEAKER_01]: The family of the money, the cars, the happiness, quote, unquote.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But yet, you're still chasing the demons and the dragon inside of you.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Still working through the trauma.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Still trying to figure out why do I not love myself?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Why do I not feel complete?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Why do I still feel so broken?

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[SPEAKER_01]: I've been there personally.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, this has shared my story many times on the show.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so as today's guest, my friend Howard Steinberg.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Today, we're going to dive into that journey as someone who has built success the highest levels, lost it all, and ultimately learned to love themselves.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I think if you're in that place in your life right now, especially you're being influenced by all the things that people have of the have versus the have nots, the question you might want to ask yourself is, well, how do I find myself in that process?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Hard my friend, thank you so much for being on the show.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm super excited to have this conversation with you today.

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[SPEAKER_01]: My pleasure.

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[SPEAKER_01]: My first question, why should anyone listen to our conversation today?

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[SPEAKER_01]: What are they going to get out of the time that they spend with us?

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[SPEAKER_02]: Hopefully Michael, they see themselves in my journey and feel less alone and perhaps inspired that there's light at the end of the tunnel.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Let's jump into the journey.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Where does it start for you?

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[SPEAKER_02]: I suppose childhood, and I've unearthed a lot, and I continue to unearth a lot of what.

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[SPEAKER_02]: happened to me and what my experiences were and how it shaped me as an adult, um, because, uh, as Gabmar Matta says, it all happens in childhood, um, and I had cognitive recognition for that.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I, like, thinking intellectually, I understood that, but it took me a long time to truly feel it and see those wounds and then begin to heal them.

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[SPEAKER_01]: What's dive deep?

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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to skate over or move too quickly here.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I think that a lot of people, and I am one of these people who I intellectualize myself and took the analytical approach to everything that happened.

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[SPEAKER_01]: What was that like for you?

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[SPEAKER_01]: What were the things that you were looking at and you were kind of putting on shells?

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[SPEAKER_01]: What was the experience of trying to navigate that?

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[SPEAKER_02]: Well, first I had an awareness that my parents had been through tremendous trauma.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Both were Holocaust survivors.

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[SPEAKER_02]: My mother was the only survivor from her family.

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[SPEAKER_02]: She survived fortuitously by somehow getting out of Poland into Siberia where she survived in work camps.

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[SPEAKER_02]: My father was a brave partisan fighter

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[SPEAKER_02]: And just the sidebar on that, he died young.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I was 18, and I didn't really know his story, because they never talked about these things.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Housell had there was a darkness to it.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And just recently, we uncovered testimony he gave in 1947 in Munich around his experiences.

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[SPEAKER_02]: leader he was and recognized for his bravery.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And if I knew, I'd recognize him and me.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's just been so profound just these recent weeks when I discovered that reading it like a movie script.

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[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, so first, the layer of my childhood was we were different.

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[SPEAKER_02]: We didn't have extended family.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Our obligation, my brother and I was to perform is our parents' pain and make their sacrifices worthwhile.

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[SPEAKER_02]: My brother had a different path because he was motivated smart and the good child, the good son.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I was less motivated and distracted because of clearly what was ADD, but not diagnosed back then.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So I wanted to please, but I had a hard time finding a lane, which probably added to my notion of being less than or self-defeated.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Um, but I did have a palpable sense then that I was there to ease my mother's pain and that created this very complex, um, maternal symbiosis, if you will, um, and then, um, while there was sort of a unnatural, um,

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[SPEAKER_02]: rhythm to our household, the darkness, if you will, at age 10, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, which doesn't have to be trauma.

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[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of kids are diagnosed with that and get the support, the emotional and psychosocial support they need to grow in a healthy way, but my parents were wounded and their hearts were shut down.

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[SPEAKER_02]: They didn't want to feel pain.

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[SPEAKER_02]: They didn't want to be available to this

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[SPEAKER_02]: So it was hard for them to show up for me and make me feel safe.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And there's a lot of details about that in my book and how that manifested.

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[SPEAKER_02]: But what I realized and skated past into adulthood was, yeah, shit happened to me.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Everyone's got their shit and their childhoods and traumas and such.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And so I did what they did.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I just kept marching forward

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[SPEAKER_02]: But what I learned was I started to self-parent like it got very scary and there was no one there.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And I had to just fortify myself without capacity.

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[SPEAKER_02]: to deal with this whole new world and then add another layer to that when I came back from the hospital on the eve of starting a new middle school my parents sat me down and they never sat me down for talks we never talked anything and we didn't get hugs or I love yous and I again I don't resent them for it I understand they're journey but they said you know you don't

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[SPEAKER_02]: And I was already, my fragile little psyche was already prone to hide, and now they gave me permission, not just to hide, but the implication was it's something to be ashamed about, it's something that makes me less than when they were just really trying to help me so that I wouldn't be judged and be and as compromised.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And so from then, that launched me at an adolescence, I just wanted to stake my household and in my raw, fearful, survival state.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So that's how I marched forward in life, went off to college and the first kind of woman that crossed my path, I moved in with and before I was 18 and became my lifetime partner.

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[SPEAKER_02]: an unusual, an untraditional, love story, an untraditional love story, but one certainly founded in fear, not necessarily with a young man who was capable of understanding what love was about.

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[SPEAKER_02]: All I knew was I went to feel safe, and I felt safer with a partner by my side.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, man, I resonate with so much of that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And obviously we're going to dive even deeper in some elements of it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But the first thing that comes to mind for me, when I hear this, is it's really unfair to children to have to go and be in survival mode all of the time.

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[SPEAKER_01]: and it sets you up for failure.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I think outside looking in, there's so many elements of it that can create success, right?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Because you find a way to make it through, you find a way to pick yourself up with your down.

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[SPEAKER_01]: you can generally speaking, handle rejection and overcome hard things way more easier than especially kids who have been given third place gold medals, right?

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[SPEAKER_01]: And yet on the same side of it, it kind of shuts you down.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Like I spent.

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[SPEAKER_01]: so much time when I was young, and still even today, I'm still always working through it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I've always said on this show, I'm just gonna always be a lifelong project called me.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And there's been times where I look at people who walk that path and I think, man, they're so amazing at like getting shit done.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But if you're like, wins a last time you cried, they're like, what?

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[SPEAKER_01]: at least that that was me.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and I think that that ends up being this trauma that we carry that on this one hand, it makes you a super hero in a lot of sense and on the other hand, it's also your kryptonite.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm wondering, when you were trying to navigate childhood because I also had ADHD diagnosis of child.

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[SPEAKER_01]: They tried to put me on meds.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I have a learning disability.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I grew up in a very traumatic household.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So school was just like the furthest thing from my mind.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But I remember having these moments of

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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just trying to explain to people like, hey, I'm not crazy.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I just don't fit into your box and honestly, that holds true today.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm six foot four covered in tattoos.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I do martial arts and shoot guns and I'm an entrepreneur.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I don't fit into most of the standard boxes.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm curious.

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[SPEAKER_01]: When you, I think people's lives really shift when they get out on their own, and you end up in college on this journey.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But were there ever other conversations that you attempted to have with your parents where you're like, hey, like, this is a real thing I shouldn't be afraid of, or did you even have the language to be able to communicate things like?

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[SPEAKER_02]: No, I didn't have language, nor the awareness, but it's fine.

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[SPEAKER_02]: There's some humorous stories

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[SPEAKER_02]: And I relate very much to your journey because but I always felt alone in the crowd.

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[SPEAKER_02]: There was no, I didn't have any sense of security or confidence.

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[SPEAKER_02]: There was almost, and maybe because I had a biological issue, I had a medical issue that was my private pain and I had to be vigilant because bad things could happen to be, and they did because of a secret.

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[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and I got myself into some real unfortunate circumstances

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[SPEAKER_02]: But when I was getting close to college years, my mother was very controlling and dominant and protective, but in an unhealthy way.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And she had decided when I narrated the book,

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[SPEAKER_02]: do her accent, because it was a very caustic, shrill way of speaking, like she decided that the career for me was to go to community college nearby where she could keep an eye on me and become an optician, just two years of college.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And their logic was, you know, even I could handle two years of college and I'd still be professional.

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[SPEAKER_02]: and it would be, and I'd be safe, you know, I would have a career.

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[SPEAKER_02]: My brother at that time was already advancing towards medical school.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think their calculus was, you know, a doctor, close to an optician, is still a net positive.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Um, but I'm funny.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And so many years later, when I've had success as an entrepreneur, I would give my mother some good nature, shit about me as I'm showing her around our latest house on the water and saying, ma, you know, to bed that audition thing didn't work out and she'd be able to laugh without it because they couldn't see potential in me.

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[SPEAKER_02]: in their narrow world, you come here, you have this opportunity of education.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And that sets you up.

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[SPEAKER_02]: That's why so many of these Jewish kids become doctors.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It's almost an inherited path.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Doctors, lawyers, dentists, profession.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So,

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[SPEAKER_02]: But I didn't feel embodied with a strength.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It was just, my mind was always just active.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It's almost like I had a secondary operating system that was behind the external one.

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[SPEAKER_02]: trying to operate the gay, stay safe, manage your bloodshed, or what's my bloodshed in now?

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[SPEAKER_02]: What do I need to do?

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[SPEAKER_02]: What can I eat?

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[SPEAKER_02]: Do they like me?

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[SPEAKER_02]: Do they not like me?

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[SPEAKER_02]: How do I validate myself?

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[SPEAKER_02]: Not necessarily so consciously, but just always concerned about what people were thinking of me.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And there's a chapter in the book called Accidental Success, because all I was trying to achieve, all that I was feeling was I just want to be safe, money meant safety.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And I think, I think Michael, if you scratch the exterior of a lot of these successful men, particularly entrepreneurs, that's what you find.

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[SPEAKER_02]: You find fear.

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[SPEAKER_02]: You find, um,

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[SPEAKER_02]: for masturbating as achievement as success.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And I can tell you, that didn't ilman, that didn't ilman.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And I just, I marched forward, but there were symptoms.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It continued to be symptoms that, you know, just really hard to be present to the moment to joy is discomfort.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Sleep issues, plague me my whole life.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And just, and you know, and the greatest distraction is fatherhood.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And having the purpose of children, I have three wonderful daughters, that set, that created this,

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[SPEAKER_02]: this beautiful, noble role.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So I had, I was husband, I was father, and I was entrepreneur and collier.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Kept me busy, kept me busy, kept me busy.

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[SPEAKER_02]: But there was an honest, you know, if I was honest with myself, I knew this wasn't enough.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I knew this wasn't complete.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And I was just holding on, holding on till I couldn't hold on.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you're dead on when I go look at and I've interviewed some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world on this podcast, vision like Yani, Tom Bill, you David Meltzer.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the list goes on and on, but I mean, I'm talking about guys who have built Bill Yendal or companies, you know?

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[SPEAKER_01]: And it was always the same thing.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It was about survival.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It was about safety.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It was about a lot of it I think is proving it that you can do it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you talked about not having confidence.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It's interesting because I have had this experience as an adult over the last 10 years since I was in my early 30s where people will just come like, you are the most confident guy ever.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like,

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Not by nature.

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[SPEAKER_01]: That's certainly not true.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And confidence was this thing that I had to build through just constantly putting myself into the wildly uncomfortable scenarios all the time.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Part of that was escaping my home and living on my own at 18 years old and getting into the workforce very young and corporate America very young and you're getting at a lot of trouble and doing a lot of things I shouldn't have done and having to like turn my life around.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But I think about the reality of entrepreneurship is the greatest life coach.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Like if you really are like, hey, I'm going to go build this thing that is my dream.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It's like you better buckle the fuck up because it's going to get way harder before it gets easier.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And the spoils of it are phenomenal.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?

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[SPEAKER_01]: It's incredible to travel the world and help people and get to do things like this.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But the truth is our people don't see the it's 11 o'clock at night and I don't know how I'm going to pay pay roll this week.

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[SPEAKER_01]: they don't see the struggle of the the offer didn't land they don't see the first two years when you're like I can't even pay my rent you know what they see they see ten years twenty years thirty years like they see the house on the lake they don't see you sleeping in the office under the desk because you don't have a place to live not saying that's your story but you know that that tends to be the thing

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so one of the big reasons I started this show, all these many years ago, and my word a thousand episodes in, and I still keep going.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, I want to know the stories.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I want to know how you do this because as an entrepreneur, like I look at this podcast as a channel, you know, for a lot of reasons people get to tell stories like you.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I get to tell stories like mine.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We have communities, offers, products, blah, blah, blah.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But it's always like, okay, cool.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Like I want you to take me on a deep dive in that window because, you know, there, there's so much that I think you had pressure around this is the Howard, we expect you to be and you're like, I don't see that for myself and, you know, you're right, yeah Jewish families Indian families immigrant families, it's like you're not a doctor and engineer like you are a

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[SPEAKER_01]: failure, you know, and that's true.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And that's a whole lot of pressure to carry to then sit in front of it and go, well, I see this vision, nobody believes in it or me, but me, I'm going to do it anyway.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So if you were to give me like a step by step, how do you actually build confidence?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Like, if you're sitting here, you're looking at your

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[SPEAKER_02]: Confidence kind of operates at two levels.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So I've looked at that, like, how could I be confident and also be horribly insecure at the same time?

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[SPEAKER_02]: So I think the inner me was extremely emotionally immature and insecure.

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[SPEAKER_02]: but I started to believe in self in my ability to do things, not from a secure place, but from an anxious place, right?

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[SPEAKER_02]: So the title of the book, Confessions of a Problem Seeker.

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[SPEAKER_02]: you know entrepreneurs like us are good problem solvers so that neurotic obsessive skill or or instinct made me a good on to pretty can't shut it off always thinking always solve it always solving and why was I seeking problems why was I living on that on that plane because if I drop down to feel

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[SPEAKER_02]: It would, I didn't want to feel what was below there.

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[SPEAKER_02]: This wasn't conscious, of course.

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[SPEAKER_02]: But I think when you look at, particularly, man, high-achieving, man, and I'm not saying this goes for everyone, right?

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[SPEAKER_02]: People could be very grounded and have balance in their life.

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[SPEAKER_02]: But things like,

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[SPEAKER_02]: productivity and achievement and thinking are in their own respect addictive or or addictions because being there means you're not down here, you're not feeling stuff that you don't want to feel or and again on an unconscious level.

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[SPEAKER_02]: That's not something you choose, you just do it, you just do it and you do it over and over and over again in that pathway becomes so grounded in

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[SPEAKER_02]: that neural pathway that you don't know any other way to operate, so, but as I advanced, I, yeah, there were like, hmm, I could do this.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I could do this.

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[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I started, and the same even with education, like somehow I got through NYU's undergraduate schools,

20:25.891 --> 20:32.013
[SPEAKER_02]: in spite of not being able to retain a lot of information and take tests effectively.

20:32.333 --> 20:37.314
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I ended up in the corporate world for a few years, but it felt like such a misfit.

20:37.394 --> 20:44.076
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, it's always looking at the other side of the desk, the vendors and the agencies that we're coming in on as a marketing guy.

20:45.597 --> 20:57.971
[SPEAKER_02]: And saying, no, I need to be there and, you know, when my two daughters were two elder all the stuff, three daughters were babies still, I took the leap into entrepreneurship and started my own agency.

20:59.893 --> 21:03.176
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was because each step,

21:03.877 --> 21:09.358
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, I got some greater confidence in my abilities, but it started with, I don't even know if I can get a job.

21:10.099 --> 21:11.639
[SPEAKER_02]: And, oh, I interviewed well.

21:11.779 --> 21:15.100
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, one thing led to another and people, and I got good reviews.

21:15.140 --> 21:26.083
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, so it was, you know, the the market place if you will society was giving me feedback that I'm not as stupid and as lazy as I thought I was or as I was condemned.

21:26.703 --> 21:27.724
[SPEAKER_02]: to be as a child.

21:27.784 --> 21:29.867
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, yeah, one step at a time.

21:30.067 --> 21:32.990
[SPEAKER_02]: But it was on a, it was an unhealthy balance, right?

21:33.050 --> 21:41.260
[SPEAKER_02]: Because, you know, I could be, um, the confidence, um, manifested as a look at me.

21:41.720 --> 21:43.142
[SPEAKER_02]: kind of confidence too, right?

21:43.162 --> 21:44.484
[SPEAKER_02]: You see, I could do it.

21:44.684 --> 21:45.265
[SPEAKER_02]: I could do it.

21:45.585 --> 21:48.389
[SPEAKER_02]: I need your validation industry.

21:49.350 --> 21:53.516
[SPEAKER_02]: If a client hired me, hired my agency, they means they liked me.

21:53.796 --> 21:55.418
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just fundamental is that.

21:55.538 --> 21:56.099
[SPEAKER_02]: It's silly.

21:56.559 --> 21:59.664
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I tell there's an anecdote in the book about

22:00.638 --> 22:11.814
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we'll get to the reckoning, but when I moved back to New York City, some eight years ago, and I was walking through Washington Square Park, kind of the unofficial quad of NYU.

22:13.402 --> 22:36.355
[SPEAKER_02]: I kind of felt like the same insecure 19 year old that was walking through then that you know still wanting some validation but just a little more wisdom and a lot more money to feel a little more comfortable in the world that that I could trade in that need for validation and.

22:38.356 --> 22:42.257
[SPEAKER_02]: for authenticity, for being my true self.

22:42.457 --> 22:44.138
[SPEAKER_02]: It was finally accessible to me.

22:46.118 --> 22:49.459
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I actually, I mean, talk about again, resonating.

22:49.659 --> 22:55.461
[SPEAKER_01]: I look at the beginning of my entrepreneur, journey 17 years ago.

22:56.201 --> 22:58.661
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the beginning, it was the same thing.

22:58.681 --> 23:01.882
[SPEAKER_01]: I just wanted to prove people wrong.

23:02.922 --> 23:04.503
[SPEAKER_01]: I left corporate America,

23:05.498 --> 23:06.378
[SPEAKER_01]: at 25.

23:06.978 --> 23:16.061
[SPEAKER_01]: Now you have to think kid with no high school diploma, no college education, making $150,000 a year in 2010.

23:16.621 --> 23:17.281
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you kidding me?

23:17.321 --> 23:18.782
[SPEAKER_01]: That's like 400 grand today.

23:18.942 --> 23:19.522
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?

23:20.162 --> 23:22.883
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember it was a sales job.

23:23.163 --> 23:26.564
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a very good sales person just because it was never high pressure.

23:26.744 --> 23:27.544
[SPEAKER_01]: You want it by it.

23:27.624 --> 23:28.305
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't care either.

23:28.505 --> 23:30.325
[SPEAKER_01]: Being nonchalant about sales is the keys

23:33.402 --> 23:35.626
[SPEAKER_01]: walk into this SVP's office.

23:36.348 --> 23:38.972
[SPEAKER_01]: And I go, hey, Sean, I'm done.

23:38.992 --> 23:40.936
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I don't want to do this anymore.

23:41.701 --> 23:50.267
[SPEAKER_01]: And he goes, you know that you are making more money than 97% of the people in this office, right?

23:50.287 --> 23:55.250
[SPEAKER_01]: And I go, yeah, I know he goes, we'll give you $50,000 more a year to stay.

23:55.991 --> 23:58.673
[SPEAKER_01]: Cause like, I was bringing in $20 million a year.

23:59.193 --> 24:01.875
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was like, nah, I'm good, I don't wanna do that.

24:02.715 --> 24:09.960
[SPEAKER_01]: And that night, I tell my then best friend, Howard, I go, hey man, I quit my job today.

24:10.861 --> 24:19.724
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to do this anymore, and he says, I think that was really dumb, because you're never going to make this much money again.

24:21.404 --> 24:26.806
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, it became this thing of like, okay, I'm going to prove them wrong.

24:27.526 --> 24:37.069
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it became this thing like you mentioned of, look at me, I'm seeking approval every time I get a job, it's like, I'm important and I matter, right?

24:37.089 --> 24:39.170
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's really tough in the beginning.

24:40.190 --> 24:54.942
[SPEAKER_01]: 17 years later, one of the things that I've realized is one, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you do have to have an ego, like there is some truth to that, because it's like being a boxer or MMA fighter, you got to be a little bit crazy.

24:55.603 --> 25:04.330
[SPEAKER_01]: But on the other side of it, the thing that about 10 years ago, when I started this show, and it morphed over time, but I was like, wait a second.

25:05.050 --> 25:06.051
[SPEAKER_01]: I can help people.

25:06.531 --> 25:08.492
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have to be the center of attention.

25:08.572 --> 25:25.100
[SPEAKER_01]: I can be the proctor to the success and I think that that helped my confidence a lot because I realized like as a like a host in an author and a speaker and coach like I can't make you change your life.

25:25.976 --> 25:30.018
[SPEAKER_01]: And I used to take the hit person, like, man, that client, they're just not doing it.

25:30.438 --> 25:32.499
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, wait, that's not on me, you know?

25:32.819 --> 25:41.163
[SPEAKER_01]: But the confidence came from me from the consistency and the being willing to be like, okay, cool, let's show up.

25:41.443 --> 25:48.387
[SPEAKER_01]: When you're talking with people, because I know obviously, especially in your world, you've probably crossed paths of all dimension of people.

25:49.407 --> 26:07.865
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think is the thing that people are missing because they spend their whole life trying to get confident and trying to move past the things and they probably you've probably set with people go you're so lucky and you're like I have to work right and so it's like what do you tell to the people who are like

26:08.990 --> 26:10.792
[SPEAKER_01]: You're living the American dream.

26:11.433 --> 26:17.099
[SPEAKER_01]: You built confidence, you built a business, you ever come trauma, but that wasn't really the truth of what was happening.

26:17.159 --> 26:20.182
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you navigate that part of the reality of Howard?

26:22.605 --> 26:27.370
[SPEAKER_02]: With myself, I think they're just as you discuss and

26:30.489 --> 26:39.873
[SPEAKER_02]: There's like an intrinsic sense that you know you're worth which I felt and I was I was a pain in the ass and play but they had to deal with me.

26:41.713 --> 26:44.655
[SPEAKER_02]: They're you know as as I marched forward.

26:46.495 --> 26:50.897
[SPEAKER_02]: They're there was you know this quiet inner voice that expressed.

26:55.406 --> 27:03.934
[SPEAKER_02]: a capacity, a capability to be doing more, but also of questioning, there's more to this.

27:04.574 --> 27:07.437
[SPEAKER_02]: It was just inquisitive.

27:08.257 --> 27:21.549
[SPEAKER_02]: And when, and I always wanted to talk about this stuff, but I don't know about you, but for me, it was really hard to find other men in this business world that wanted to drop into more human place.

27:23.682 --> 27:36.753
[SPEAKER_02]: It started to become so obvious to me that I was like an outlier, and I always sought out the other misfits that wanted to talk about that shit, that wanted to talk about how it feels.

27:37.773 --> 27:44.199
[SPEAKER_02]: And when I hear and I'm talking to men now who feel quite accomplished,

27:45.579 --> 27:54.821
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, particularly, you know, at my stage of the game, where there's a resistance to retire, it almost means weakness to retire.

27:54.841 --> 27:59.002
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing because I like what I do and that's legitimate.

27:59.162 --> 28:02.903
[SPEAKER_02]: That's legitimate, but I ask them, do you know if there's something you like more?

28:04.164 --> 28:06.144
[SPEAKER_02]: How does this make you feel inside?

28:06.944 --> 28:11.305
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you disconnect from the thoughts and drop into the heart and get a sense for that?

28:17.352 --> 28:23.813
[SPEAKER_02]: When things were uncomfortable for me and laying in bed awake at night, and I'd count my money.

28:23.853 --> 28:28.935
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd think about how much you're in, what's my net worth, and that actually would calm my nerves.

28:29.195 --> 28:31.776
[SPEAKER_02]: There was such a correlation.

28:32.356 --> 28:41.419
[SPEAKER_02]: to peace of mind, to comfort in the world with net worth and then like how much does one need to feel comfortable in the world?

28:41.459 --> 28:44.780
[SPEAKER_02]: It's such, it's a fool's errand because it never adds.

28:44.840 --> 28:45.700
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just a treadmill.

28:45.821 --> 28:52.183
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just a hamster wheel, rounded around and around and around and you know, and I got to the point where I recognize that.

28:53.483 --> 29:03.409
[SPEAKER_02]: And that happened several years ago, which in a kind of a convergence, if you want me to go into it now, a kind of convergence of circumstance.

29:04.628 --> 29:22.195
[SPEAKER_02]: We're, you know, I accident my first business very successfully, I was barely 40 and I had the opportunity to stay with the public company that acquired it indefinitely, but then I got another big idea and I started pursuing that and it was a bigger lift.

29:22.235 --> 29:27.618
[SPEAKER_02]: I had to raise a lot of capital and, you know, venture money and board structures etc.

29:29.722 --> 29:31.424
[SPEAKER_02]: And I got played out of it.

29:32.185 --> 29:34.547
[SPEAKER_02]: So long story, but I lost control of it.

29:34.567 --> 29:36.689
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was really a mission driven business.

29:36.709 --> 29:37.610
[SPEAKER_02]: It meant the lot to me.

29:39.032 --> 29:42.956
[SPEAKER_02]: At the same time, our marriage was fatiguing.

29:42.996 --> 29:45.519
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was just we just couldn't go on anymore.

29:45.599 --> 29:47.981
[SPEAKER_02]: And we finally decided to throw in the towel.

29:48.021 --> 29:48.822
[SPEAKER_02]: And at the same time,

29:49.468 --> 29:51.430
[SPEAKER_02]: my kids grew up and left the house.

29:51.450 --> 29:54.972
[SPEAKER_02]: So there was nothing, there was no ground to walk on.

29:55.013 --> 29:57.134
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, so it became like, who am I?

29:57.935 --> 29:59.576
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, who the fuck am I?

30:00.477 --> 30:07.703
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was working on this big idea to launch yet another business and I just couldn't do it.

30:07.743 --> 30:10.105
[SPEAKER_02]: I kept, it felt very uncomfortable.

30:10.365 --> 30:11.386
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't have to do it.

30:11.766 --> 30:16.770
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't have to do it like the first one and the second one was a different dynamic.

30:18.322 --> 30:21.405
[SPEAKER_02]: And I didn't know where to turn in.

30:21.425 --> 30:23.568
[SPEAKER_02]: That's when the deep work started.

30:23.868 --> 30:30.435
[SPEAKER_02]: And I recognized that I've got enough money to live three lifetimes, take care of the kids and everyone.

30:31.015 --> 30:41.306
[SPEAKER_02]: But there's no point in continuing and then that really started me down a wholly different path of investigation and discovering myself.

30:42.186 --> 30:50.494
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I won't, you didn't say it, but my mind goes, oh, yeah, I had a rock bottom moment, you know, it's that moment where you're faced with like, well, who am I now?

30:51.074 --> 30:54.698
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's that dark night of the soul thing people talk about all the time, and

30:56.133 --> 31:02.375
[SPEAKER_01]: I, when I was building my first business, the isolation was brutal.

31:02.855 --> 31:06.096
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you know this, because sometimes you're just like, man, I'm just working.

31:06.696 --> 31:07.937
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the nature of it, right?

31:07.957 --> 31:09.417
[SPEAKER_01]: And you just work.

31:09.697 --> 31:14.759
[SPEAKER_01]: The thing that you love to do that you think is the business is one person of the time that you're actually working.

31:14.879 --> 31:17.900
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and so it's like, I spent so much time working on the business.

31:18.980 --> 31:22.422
[SPEAKER_01]: complete disaster at 25, I mean, life was bad.

31:22.522 --> 31:24.023
[SPEAKER_01]: So I walked away from that corporate job.

31:24.043 --> 31:25.244
[SPEAKER_01]: I went to go build this business.

31:25.284 --> 31:30.967
[SPEAKER_01]: It took longer to start than I thought it would and cost more money than I thought it would as does everything we ever do.

31:31.628 --> 31:34.049
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, young lessons, right?

31:34.229 --> 31:37.852
[SPEAKER_01]: And by the time that I was 27, I was just like, I don't know who I am.

31:38.532 --> 31:41.115
[SPEAKER_01]: By the time I was 29, I'd really hit that wall.

31:41.155 --> 31:42.696
[SPEAKER_01]: Relationship wasn't working.

31:43.237 --> 31:44.258
[SPEAKER_01]: Business was great.

31:44.378 --> 31:52.586
[SPEAKER_01]: I became like the number one at what I did in the entire city, billboards, writing and articles and magazines, television shows, like things were working.

31:53.803 --> 32:06.791
[SPEAKER_01]: Except for everything else, you know, it was like everything else didn't work and I found myself being like, okay, well, I have to take this deeper dive because there's something holding me back and it was the trauma.

32:06.971 --> 32:09.813
[SPEAKER_01]: It was the growing up with drug addict, alcoholic parents.

32:09.873 --> 32:12.054
[SPEAKER_01]: It was being on my own since I was eight.

32:12.174 --> 32:14.676
[SPEAKER_01]: It was all of the things that people have to go through.

32:15.016 --> 32:18.038
[SPEAKER_01]: Now my story might be a little bit different than most, but we all have our shit.

32:18.933 --> 32:38.475
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was in men's group therapy that I really started to have like an actual understanding that this was something I needed to do deeper work on, that the success was not gonna solve that inner turmoil that I was trying to hide behind.

32:39.395 --> 32:56.591
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, there's a guy named Gay Hendrix, he, it's, I've talked about this a lot recently because I'm reading the book for like the third time and he talks about this idea of this upper limiting belief where you'll get the exact thing that you wanted and then you'll sabotage it and that was just my life story again at 30.

32:57.932 --> 33:04.896
[SPEAKER_01]: And then on the back side of it, doing the work, showing up, taking care of myself, this was bored.

33:05.236 --> 33:06.237
[SPEAKER_01]: Think on broken, right?

33:06.257 --> 33:12.961
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, coaching thousands of people, millions of millions of downloads, tens of thousands of books sold, all that stuff.

33:13.681 --> 33:17.903
[SPEAKER_01]: And then two years ago at 39, I hit that wall again.

33:18.444 --> 33:20.125
[SPEAKER_01]: Not as bad as the first time, right?

33:20.165 --> 33:22.706
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I had learned so many lessons and I was fucking 39, not 24.

33:24.667 --> 33:34.035
[SPEAKER_01]: And I realized, like, in that space, that it was about something that you mentioned a few minutes ago, it was like, you have to be more authentic.

33:34.882 --> 33:46.552
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't, I don't feel like it was like me on this show like not telling the truth or me not helping people in the appropriate way, but it wasn't as authentic and open as invulnerable as it could be.

33:47.173 --> 34:00.785
[SPEAKER_01]: Because do I got trapped into creating this image of whose Michael and broke it like the guy that speaks on the stages and lies first class and went from homeless to millionaire and all this shit and then I took two years off and I was like, who gives a fuck?

34:01.365 --> 34:29.722
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, and I got this, I got this deeper sense closer to myself, then I went on this plant medicine journey, did some ayahuasca, which was like unbelievable, lots of mushrooms, lots of LSD, lots of different things that I came to realize, like so much of the stockness was like literally my brain, my brain, my, my physical body, I could push through to do anything that I wanted it to do, like that's a really amazing strength that I have.

34:30.562 --> 34:47.385
[SPEAKER_01]: But I stop dreaming, like I don't know how it was to fright like you're talking about like I want to build this third business and I was explaining this to my best friend Damon and I said who's been on the podcast by the way, and I said to Damon I said dude I feel like I'm standing in front of a fucking brick wall.

34:48.006 --> 34:51.727
[SPEAKER_01]: And no matter what I do, I cannot push through it.

34:52.287 --> 34:54.728
[SPEAKER_01]: I cannot seem to get the next business off the ground.

34:54.788 --> 34:56.468
[SPEAKER_01]: I cannot seem to take the next step.

34:56.988 --> 35:03.070
[SPEAKER_01]: I basically took a two-year hiatus, traveled the world again, was in a relationship, blah, blah, blah, all the things.

35:03.670 --> 35:14.272
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I realized, like I had to go all the way back to the core root, not only of the healing journey, which involved, again, some psychedelics and plant medicines and things like that,

35:17.993 --> 35:28.735
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm wondering when you have that third moment that place where it's like, man, I can't seem to like, ah, push through and make that thing happen.

35:29.355 --> 35:31.095
[SPEAKER_01]: What what changed?

35:31.475 --> 35:33.656
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, how did you make it happen?

35:34.516 --> 35:35.736
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it makes the wrong word.

35:35.776 --> 35:37.937
[SPEAKER_01]: But how did you get it out of yourself?

35:38.317 --> 35:45.018
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think, and I'll talk about my psychedelics experience because it was very meaningful and breaking through.

35:46.281 --> 36:02.414
[SPEAKER_02]: But as I'm listening to you think you'd agree that it was recognition that I couldn't power through this with my intentional mind, with power, with thinking, with analytics.

36:02.654 --> 36:03.895
[SPEAKER_02]: It was the work of the heart.

36:04.015 --> 36:07.098
[SPEAKER_02]: It was the opposite of trying.

36:07.738 --> 36:08.979
[SPEAKER_02]: It was not trying.

36:09.099 --> 36:09.920
[SPEAKER_02]: It was surrendering.

36:10.506 --> 36:14.211
[SPEAKER_02]: it was surrendering to emotion, to feeling.

36:15.253 --> 36:22.543
[SPEAKER_02]: And that would let me be present to myself and form this interconnection.

36:23.744 --> 36:24.766
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's, it's,

36:25.934 --> 36:36.998
[SPEAKER_02]: When I use the word authentic, it's just it's being radically honest with ourselves and not accepting bullshit, you know?

36:37.839 --> 36:48.283
[SPEAKER_02]: And being able to witness when the ego is run in the show, or one of those parts, like control or protector, is running the show.

36:48.563 --> 36:50.444
[SPEAKER_02]: Because then you're gonna be making decisions,

36:51.144 --> 36:58.027
[SPEAKER_02]: typically from a fear base you go with mind and not from where love lives down below in the heart.

36:58.607 --> 37:08.092
[SPEAKER_02]: And it sounds so cliche and tripped to say, well, I just tried to live in my love space, but decision making can be that simple for me.

37:08.432 --> 37:12.054
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, what's driving is this fear versus love?

37:12.274 --> 37:13.474
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it head or heart?

37:13.574 --> 37:14.175
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it brain?

37:14.515 --> 37:15.115
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it mind?

37:15.525 --> 37:16.425
[SPEAKER_02]: or is it a motion?

37:17.426 --> 37:21.648
[SPEAKER_02]: And you start to learn a new language.

37:22.248 --> 37:25.870
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you have a somatic part in the body, which we don't have time for.

37:25.890 --> 37:27.651
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is really open to you.

37:27.911 --> 37:29.592
[SPEAKER_02]: But I wouldn't be able to get there.

37:30.820 --> 37:42.411
[SPEAKER_02]: without some very curated experiences with psychedelic medicine starting with mushrooms and MDMA and progressing to Ayahuasca.

37:43.211 --> 37:52.200
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know Ayahuasca will show you, doesn't matter where you wanna see, we'll show you your wounds and we'll show you the truth.

37:53.060 --> 37:54.882
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's a question of what you wanna do with that.

37:55.618 --> 37:58.679
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'd get no get me wrong, man.

37:58.759 --> 38:06.863
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm still got all the same issues and can get caught all the time, but I can see it now.

38:07.083 --> 38:12.525
[SPEAKER_02]: I can witness that and I can be kind to those friends with those issues.

38:12.725 --> 38:19.968
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, I don't have to beat myself up when I slide back or when I react to the world in a non-healthy way.

38:24.977 --> 38:27.459
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, getting there is the battle, right?

38:27.560 --> 38:32.264
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when you're there, the war is dealing with it in the day today.

38:32.565 --> 38:34.006
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's the work, man.

38:34.607 --> 38:42.234
[SPEAKER_02]: And like everyone thinks, you know, you just have a regulatory experience in, in an Ayahuasca ceremony, but it's, it's the integration.

38:42.274 --> 38:47.299
[SPEAKER_02]: It's coming back to Black and Earth and doing the work, doing the work.

38:47.599 --> 38:48.981
[SPEAKER_02]: I just had a recent, um,

38:50.197 --> 39:02.744
[SPEAKER_02]: ceremony experience, and I'm working through it now, but you know, gotten some new information, some new, some new sense of connection to myself and my journey.

39:03.844 --> 39:12.229
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think, so I'm curious, do you think that your views on success and confidence are now different on the backside of Plant Medicine?

39:13.750 --> 39:14.010
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

39:15.110 --> 39:15.811
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, for sure.

39:15.831 --> 39:17.672
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, again, it's moving me,

39:18.808 --> 39:35.538
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, to me, success is simply just being in my loving self, just being present to humanity to others to the universe and with through joy and equanimity.

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[SPEAKER_02]: These are, you know, these are very esoteric subjects that if you,

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[SPEAKER_02]: if you told me 20 years ago or 15 years ago or even 10 years ago that I'd be saying this, I would be laughing because I was so pragmatic.

39:53.274 --> 40:02.220
[SPEAKER_02]: I was so dismissive and cynical about these kind of love spiritual pursuits.

40:02.280 --> 40:03.121
[SPEAKER_02]: I respected it.

40:03.341 --> 40:05.302
[SPEAKER_02]: I respected it, but not for me, not for me.

40:05.963 --> 40:06.723
[SPEAKER_02]: My new at all.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm a better person for it.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm a better dad for it.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm a better human.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting when I, when I was younger, I was, I guess it was 22 at the time.

40:22.299 --> 40:24.620
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't shared the story in years on the show.

40:25.281 --> 40:34.805
[SPEAKER_01]: My roommates girlfriend at the time gave me a copy of Eckert Toli's The Power of Now, because it just like crushed on Oprah book club.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this is like peak, right?

40:37.787 --> 40:39.788
[SPEAKER_01]: And she hands it to me.

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[SPEAKER_01]: She turns around and I throw it in the trash

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[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'm an honorary 22 years old.

40:45.600 --> 40:46.183
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?

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[SPEAKER_01]: You don't know shit.

40:47.227 --> 40:48.372
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought I knew everything.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And then years later, someone had suggested to me, hey, you should consider reading, unleash the power with it.

40:59.193 --> 41:02.854
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, Tony Robbins, but I think that's what it's called.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, no, fucking Tony Robbins, this is my connection, Tony Robbins.

41:08.135 --> 41:11.916
[SPEAKER_01]: The guy from shallow hell, you'll mean to read that guy's book.

41:12.036 --> 41:17.998
[SPEAKER_01]: If you ever seen that, the comedy movie with Robbs Knighter from the 90s, and I was like, I don't want to read this fucking guy's book.

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[SPEAKER_01]: a schemer, right?

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[SPEAKER_01]: And then the deeper that I went, I started to realize, sometimes a lot of times,

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[SPEAKER_01]: The universe is conspiring for you to be successful using other people as a proxy.

41:35.782 --> 41:38.724
[SPEAKER_01]: Saying, hey, here's the thing in front of you.

41:39.264 --> 41:43.868
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you're a fucking ego is so big because it's protective.

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[SPEAKER_01]: This is what I didn't know.

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[SPEAKER_01]: This is why I'm telling the story.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Because I didn't know it was my ego driving me.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know the thing that I was protecting myself was from myself.

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[SPEAKER_01]: from my power, from my ability, because I'm an empath.

41:58.491 --> 42:04.614
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I don't think you become a childhood trauma coach because you don't have empathetic tendencies, right?

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[SPEAKER_01]: But I shut them down so much because they were rejected as a child.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So I'd be like, no, I'm not the fuck you fuck your feelings.

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[SPEAKER_01]: due to the number of arguments I was with as with people growing up in my 20s and even sometimes it still happens today because again, still on the journey where people are like, you don't know how to be a human in your robot.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, yeah, I got to work through that every day.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And on the back side of the medicines, the things that have happened for me is that I've been able to find a deeper sense of the okayness of the human emotional path.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And, and that to me is probably carried more weight for me than anything in my life, because I'm even thinking, you know, we've got this massive event with hundreds and hundreds of people coming that I'm putting on, and I had to take a step back and ask myself, why are you doing this?

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[SPEAKER_01]: 10 years ago it'd been like for the money because I can because I'm successful all those things and then today it's like because I want to help people.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Like because I actually am at my heart Howard, like you, I'm a marketer and I'm really fucking good at it.

43:17.788 --> 43:18.828
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's my superpower.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Like it really is.

43:20.089 --> 43:23.792
[SPEAKER_01]: For whatever reason, I've been obsessed with since marketing since I was a child.

43:24.112 --> 43:36.600
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a really weird thing to like, I would like study advertisements and read nonfiction books in the library and study marketing rates and, you know, I remember reading Dan Kennedy's newsletter when I was like 12, it's like, who does that?

43:37.591 --> 43:43.073
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, but I realized it had to stop being about the money and had to start being about the service, right?

43:43.694 --> 43:58.219
[SPEAKER_01]: And, and so I'm curious because I think that people can be really driven by fear instead of ambition, like I feel the ambition to serve at a higher level now a decade into the coaching world.

43:58.960 --> 44:04.442
[SPEAKER_01]: But in the beginning, it was fear that was driving me, but not enoughness, the having to build a business,

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[SPEAKER_01]: How do you how do you how do you reconcile those two things and how do you shift to this place where like on this third venture you were like I'm going to do this because my heart tells me to I'm not going to let fear money or success drive me yeah those things may be a part of it but I'm going to do this because I feel it within me how do you transfer to that space just across the board in life I'm not even talking about just business well first let us recognize right that

44:35.737 --> 44:57.332
[SPEAKER_02]: healing is a privilege, like if I didn't come to this stage in life where I could afford to do nothing and just work on me, it's not necessarily inexpensive to do plant medicine ceremonies taking the time, sitting trying to sit still and not having the pressures.

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[SPEAKER_02]: If I was feeding a family

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[SPEAKER_02]: a different story, but I think getting to this place, it's developing that felt sense that I mentioned, where it's re-learning how to exist in the world.

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[SPEAKER_02]: For me, it was almost a complete re-engineering of how I related to the world and not in a fearful way, but in a loving way and being of service.

45:33.470 --> 45:53.994
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like I worked really hard at being not obligated to anything anyone and that instinct to be productive and said, just wanna nap during the afternoon, take a nap, just walking the dog, going to the gym, taking a nap,

45:54.555 --> 46:06.260
[SPEAKER_02]: is reasonable day, and that's a hard thing to disconnect from when you were just productivity, achievements, success, that was your way of operating.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And so, and I knew that being of service

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[SPEAKER_02]: I started feeling it.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And so, again, this sounds a very woo-woo, but when you can tune in, when you can quiet the chatter and tune in, it'll always lead you to the right place.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And that's a big surrender.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It's a big surrender from most men in modern society, right?

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[SPEAKER_02]: Like, up, it sounds,

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[SPEAKER_02]: It sounds so unrealistic and, you know, like you, I read Toli and Ron Doss and all the principles are the same, it's about just being present to something bigger and to the moment, to the moment.

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[SPEAKER_02]: That's all that matters.

46:58.951 --> 47:03.895
[SPEAKER_02]: The past of the future are just ruminations and trust me.

47:03.975 --> 47:05.736
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm all, you know, and I still do.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Look back, look forward and disconnecting from those primal, that primal way of reacting to the world

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[SPEAKER_02]: allowed me to have this deeper felt sense and a more meaningful path in the world.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Before I ask you my last question, I want to ask this too because I've been thinking about this a lot lately and it's like, how do you trust yourself more deeply?

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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, because I think that as you walk this journey, especially the older that I get.

47:38.279 --> 47:39.261
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'm I'm 40.

47:39.301 --> 47:47.372
[SPEAKER_01]: I still think, you know, I'm almost 41 relatively young all things considered, you know, but yeah, but you know, but the thing is, man, I've lived life.

47:48.672 --> 47:50.112
[SPEAKER_01]: not live life, you know what I mean?

47:50.132 --> 47:51.933
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been on my own since I was 18 years old.

47:51.973 --> 47:55.634
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, since I ate, and then I lived on my own since I was 18.

47:55.774 --> 48:00.015
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think about a lot of the mistakes, a lot of the mistakes.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But I think about a lot of the successes.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And what I'm always trying to get to is a deeper sense of trusting my gut, my intuition, and I mean like, and no I'm doing the right thing here.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Even if the right thing is like a really hard thing.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But I had a mentor once told me it's always the right time to do the right thing.

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[SPEAKER_01]: that includes when it's hard.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So, but a lot of people really struggle with trusting themselves because they've made mistakes and they think that they are the worst thing that they've ever done.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, obviously, you know, I think that so much of life is within the context of how we frame and how we look at it.

48:35.338 --> 48:37.179
[SPEAKER_01]: But how how do you trust yourself?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Like how do you get into that deeper sense of just being okay with who you are?

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[SPEAKER_02]: Hmm.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you know, in trusting yourself in decisions, it's like, what's the risk?

48:47.611 --> 48:48.992
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, it's a big, so what?

48:49.112 --> 48:53.617
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, like, what am I trusting myself to do or be?

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[SPEAKER_02]: It's, and again, like, the way I do it is I check in and saying, where's the motivation coming from?

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[SPEAKER_02]: And even if I recognize it's coming from a wounded egoic place, I can still see it and accept it.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And I think the key thing is not having not living in self-doubt and self-criticism.

49:20.510 --> 49:31.521
[SPEAKER_02]: about how you navigate life and the decisions you make and just doing the best you can with the information you have in that moment and moving through it.

49:32.663 --> 49:40.911
[SPEAKER_02]: And not looking at the world as doing like decisions yielding mistakes or successes.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It's just

49:42.352 --> 49:44.373
[SPEAKER_02]: and isn't this, it's just the others, right?

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[SPEAKER_02]: And that's what I try to do, I just check in.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And I know when, you know, I might be doing something that is unhealthy and holding me in place, but I forgive myself, versus beating myself up and that is a big difference.

50:01.064 --> 50:10.530
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a big, that self-defeating, self-critical loop, that plays in the background, no longer serves me.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Turn that, turn that, I'm good enough, yeah.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, powerful.

50:17.309 --> 50:18.750
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the self forgiveness, that's hard.

50:18.790 --> 50:19.970
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the hardest thing that we do.

50:20.250 --> 50:22.952
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I don't think anything is more difficult than that.

50:23.892 --> 50:28.274
[SPEAKER_01]: And often you see people who, they're still punishing themselves for things.

50:28.294 --> 50:32.435
[SPEAKER_01]: They did like 30 years ago, and I'm like, dude, it's fucking 30 years ago.

50:32.476 --> 50:33.576
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you're in a carry that.

50:33.736 --> 50:35.517
[SPEAKER_01]: Like at some point, you're gonna have to let go.

50:35.537 --> 50:43.340
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to encourage people to come and learn from you and to connect with you and to read your book.

50:44.120 --> 50:45.641
[SPEAKER_01]: How can people find out more about you?

50:46.977 --> 51:04.301
[SPEAKER_02]: Easily it's Howard Steinberg.com, you can contact me on the website, you can find a book and Steinberg, STE-I-N-B-E-R-G, and the book is available on Amazon and other outlets, you know, all forms and formats.

51:05.602 --> 51:06.042
[SPEAKER_01]: Amazing.

51:06.622 --> 51:14.744
[SPEAKER_01]: And guys, remember, you can go over to thinkonbrokenpodcast.com to find that end more of the show notes here for Howard's episode.

51:15.695 --> 51:17.135
[SPEAKER_01]: My last question for you, my friend.

51:17.755 --> 51:20.156
[SPEAKER_01]: What does it mean to you to be unbroken?

51:26.817 --> 51:30.738
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's with in love with yourself.

51:31.038 --> 51:32.458
[SPEAKER_02]: It's intimacy with self.

51:32.498 --> 51:33.858
[SPEAKER_02]: It's in connection with self.

51:33.938 --> 51:42.840
[SPEAKER_02]: It's all, and I hope that your listeners, viewers can relate to that, because it's down a bit ambiguous,

51:46.596 --> 51:58.198
[SPEAKER_02]: a satiric, but when you really do find that connection, the healing is happening, is unbreaking.

51:59.877 --> 52:02.920
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, brilliantly said, I absolutely agree.

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[SPEAKER_01]: My friend, thank you so much for being here today.

52:06.244 --> 52:08.527
[SPEAKER_01]: Unbroken nation guys, thank you for listening.

52:09.207 --> 52:20.740
[SPEAKER_01]: If you took anything away from today's episode, I want you to share it with someone else in your life because chances are they might be in need of this conversation.

52:21.673 --> 52:27.018
[SPEAKER_01]: You might find a great deal of power in reading Howard's book or connecting more deeply with him.

52:27.598 --> 52:33.823
[SPEAKER_01]: It might also be one of those things where you have to really assess where you're at in the journey and what are the things that are most important to you.

52:34.224 --> 52:39.748
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think so much of this life is about that, the deep inner work of knowing who you are.

52:40.289 --> 52:42.451
[SPEAKER_01]: That said, thank you all so much for being here.

52:42.571 --> 52:44.452
[SPEAKER_01]: Howard, my friend, thank you for your time.

52:44.913 --> 52:45.793
[SPEAKER_01]: Take care of yourselves.

52:46.354 --> 52:47.134
[SPEAKER_01]: Take care of each other.

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[SPEAKER_01]: and until next time my friends, be unbroken.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I'll see ya.