Healing Into Wholeness with Michael Unbroken

Jennifer Norman:
Hello to all of my beautiful humans. Thank you so much for tuning in to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. My name is Jennifer Norman. I'm the founder of The Human Beauty Movement and your host. The Human Beauty Movement exists to help us all cultivate more self-love. After all, when we love ourselves deeply and uncover the parts that might need healing, we're better able to give love to others and manifest the lives that we want that are truly beautiful. I created this podcast to have open conversations about all aspects of the human experience.

Jennifer Norman:
Together, we'll learn more about ourselves. We'll feel the joy of mind, body, soul, well well-being, and we'll discover new tools that can help us thrive. Take a moment now to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. I'm so glad that you're here, joining me for today's show. It's sobering to hear that about 70% of adults in the world have experienced at least one traumatic event that has forever impacted them physically, mentally or emotionally. Abuse that happens during childhood is particularly difficult to overcome. 30% of adults reported being physically abused as a child. 21% of adults report being sexually abused as a child, and 11% of adults report being emotionally abused as a child. So how do we get over the pain, the hurt and the trauma? It's definitely not easy, but it is possible, and it is so worth it.

Jennifer Norman:
Now, I consider myself a way-shower. I'm passionate about helping people find their way back to themselves, and that's why I love hosting this podcast, because it's the medium through which I can bring on the most inspiring guests, like the one I am about to introduce you to. He's undoubtedly a top voice when it comes to compassionate, trauma-informed child abuse healing. So get ready to meet the man, the myth, the legend who went from homeless to hero. Michael Anthony, my dear beautiful humans. Michael also goes by the moniker Michael Unbroken. He's the founder of Think Unbroken. He's a bestselling author of the book Think Unbroken. He's an award-winning speaker, a podcast host, a coach, and an advocate for adult survivors of childhood trauma. Thank you for being part of He's a bestselling author of the book Think Unbroken. He's an award-winning speaker, a podcast host, a coach, and an advocate for adult survivors of childhood trauma. Thank you for being part of the human beauty movement, Michael, and welcome., Michael, and welcome.

Michael Unbroken:
Thanks, Jennifer. I appreciate it. I'm glad to be here with you.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you so much. Now, when I read about your story of what you underwent as a young child, it was just unimaginable, enduring the kind of trauma that you did. And at the hands of people that were supposed to love you and take care of you and keep you safe. And so I guess it's understandable why so many adults who still harbor the pains of early age abuse have such a hard time making sense out of life.

Michael Unbroken:
Yeah, I mean, for sure.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, you've been through it and you've been able to rise above it, which means that you've been able to beauty some seriously tough odds, and now you're channeling your healing into a life where you're helping others find healing as well. So everybody wants to know how you did it. How were you able to heal and transform yourself?

Michael Unbroken:
Well, I mean, I'm still doing it last night I'm coaching one of my groups, and one of the things I was telling these guys, just because you've been doing this for 15 years doesn't mean you're done. And even in my own journey, I still have mentors and coaches and therapy and other alternate healing modalities. I've got my processes and I still fuck up all the time. And that's kind of the thing. I don't want to sit here and be like, oh, my life's fucking awesome. Because sometimes it's not, momentarily, because I've learned to really understand how to manipulate my own self to create the life that I want, and so much of it honestly, Jennifer, begins with first and foremost just acknowledging where you're at. Like, if your life sucks, acknowledge it. Like, keep it real. Too many of us are lying to ourselves, and a lot of that's protective.

Michael Unbroken:
If I go look at my childhood, to be a liar was the greatest tool in my arsenal. To go to school and be covered in bruises and be like, oh, I fell down or whatever, lying about my stepdad, beating the shit out of me, locking me in a closet. If I would explain to people what happened to my finger — my mother cut my finger off when I was four years old. Yeah, I would come up with the most crazy things you could ever think of that I would tell people. And that's a defensive mechanism. And so we sit here in the course of our journey, and we look at our life. It's subjective whether or not you're happy and it's subjective to you and only you.

Michael Unbroken:
And if you're not and your life sucks and you're looking at it, why does this keep happening to me? That famous thing we tend to tell ourselves? Why am I in another bad relationship? Why didn't this keep happening to me? Why am I in another job where I'm underpaid? Why does this keep happening to me? It's like, maybe go look in the mirror, maybe go sit in this for a second. And ask yourself, why am I doing this to myself? And what happened for me at the beginning of the journey was, look, there's a space for just an unabashed amount of honesty that I think is necessary if you do want to change your life. And so I'm looking at my life. I'm at 25 years old, and I come from this background, being the son of a drug addict and alcoholic, a super abusive stepdad. This guy was six foot four, 220, beating up a seven-year-old, like a real man, I'm saying, like, this dude was a complete coward. My grandmother, who adopted me, was a racist. I'm biracial.

Michael Unbroken:
Not to mention I lived with over 30 different families as a kid. So it's like all these things that inform who I was. And I got successful very young, working in corporate America, chasing money. But at 25, I'm like 350 pounds, smoking two packs a day, drinking myself to sleep. I'm high all the time. I'm cheating on my girlfriend. My little brother one day tells me, don't talk to me. You're not my brother.

Michael Unbroken:
I'm 50 grand in debt, and my car got repoed. And it's like, it was always everybody else's fault but my fault until I sat in the truth of the reality, and I was like, this is on me, not the abuse. Right? Let's be very clear. It's a fine line here. Like, you're not culpable for the bad things that happened to you as a kid. That's nonsense. We all can agree on that. But if you're looking at your life right now, and it's a complete disaster, you have to ask yourself, what role am I playing in this? And so that's where it began for me.

Michael Unbroken:
That was 13 years ago. I still ask myself that question all the time. I'm like, man, if my life is not in order, my money is not in order, my health is not in order, my friendships and relationships are not in order, my business is not in order. Like, I'm asking myself, what role am I playing here? Because this is a me problem. It's not a you problem. When I acknowledged that and I looked at it, it was really difficult in the beginning because it's a complete mindset shift that you start going through when you start to acknowledge reality in that mindset shift. The thing that happened for me, probably more so than anything, was this thing called discipline and accountability. And those were two things I lacked in all areas of my life except destroying it.

Jennifer Norman:
So when you were in your 20s, it's almost like no doubt, of course, because of all that you had gone through. Of course there's going to be rebellion, of course there's going to be dysfunction, of course, and no one can blame anybody that has gone through it and doesn't know how to make heads or tails out of life. I think it's what you do with that time and how you're able to ultimately learn is this. Leading me down a path from which I might not return, which I know for you was a very real thing, because, as I understand it, you almost took your life a couple of times, too. Once you get to that place where some could consider it rock bottom, you can either continue down that path and there's no way out, or you can start seeing a little bit of light. It's not easy because it seems like such a far road, it seems so foreign, and you've had very few role models all of your life in order to be able to look up to for inspiration. What did you look to for inspiration? I know that from what you were saying, you started to chase the dollar sign, and a lot of that is compensatory. A lot of that, we know is just trying to seek outward validation for that God sized hole that we all have inside of us. What was the shift for you from realizing, yeah, it's not even the money, it's actually something that has to come from within?

Michael Unbroken:
That's a great question. I was young. It was Jay Z, it was Kanye West, it was the guys on film. My obsession with cinema as a kid and trying to build this larger-than-life, which in a lot of aspects, I did, because at 20 years old, I made 100 grand. People don't do that where I'm from. Illegally, no doubt. And by the time I was 25, I'd made almost a million dollars. And so I had the nice car, I had the nice clothes, I had all the women, I had all the drugs, I had all the chaos that comes along with that.

Michael Unbroken:
And so I got exactly what I was focused on. It's always that old adage, be careful what you ask for, be careful what you wish for. And I was wishing for this lifestyle, which I had, which was abundance, but in the wrong way. And when I kind of hit this major shift at 20 heading into 26 year goal, it was kind of like a measurement of, I have nothing. And at the beginning, there were no real mentors. Like, in this space of the first year or two, it was like, I'm just going to go to therapy and I'm going to just try to do some things differently. And this was very difficult. I always say this.

Michael Unbroken:
The four years between 26 to 30 were the four hardest years of my life. And around 28 years old, I came across Gary Vaynerchuk. And so I'm on a very early episode of the Ask Gary Vee show, back when I had this other company. And my question for Gary at the time was like, how do you ask for help? Because I was so isolated and by myself in entrepreneurship, and I was working on these other elements of my life, and I just didn't understand how do I help people and how do people help me? And that kind of snowballed. And one day, I'm on Facebook, I see this ad from Brendan Burchard for some course of, like, $50 or something. And I was struggling hard. I mean, I was massively in debt, and I had no money.

Michael Unbroken:
I was, like, 50 grand in debt. And so I was like, well, fuck it. I'm already 50 grand in debt, what's another $50? I bought that course. And that course didn't change my life, but it planted seeds. And that was a really interesting kind of jump off point. I was very cognizant of this even a decade ago, where it was very important for me to learn from men of value, because I had only learned in a personal aspect from men who had no value. The drug dealers, the abusers, the dads who never show up, the guys I loved as a kid were not good men. And I was like, I want to become a good man, so I can kind of shift what's happening in my life knowing that, again, I ruined another relationship by cheating. Again. My little brothers have been like, dude, go fuck off. Leave us alone. Again. I've wasted money on things that I'm at, so all these things are happening. And then it just kind of shifted more and more, where about eight years ago, I'd come across this show called Inside Quest, hosted by Tom Bilyeu, who started Quest Nutrition, now the founder, with his wife of Impact Theory. And Tom, I always call him out whenever I get a chance. Tom changed my life forever because he was the measure of the man that I wanted to become.

Michael Unbroken:
And so I've had the amazing fortune of sharing stages with him and having dinner with him and meeting his wife, and I continue to work with Tom, but people like David Meltzer in my life, who's an amazing, amazing man. And so the thing that I'm always thinking about, there's a multitude of ways that one can seek mentorship day now. The pay-to-play method, of course, that's always on the table. And, in fact, I think that's the best way to play the game because you take it more seriously. And I don't mean just in entrepreneurship, but I mean in life. And then there's podcasts, right? Like this. Like, people listening right now. They're getting mentorship from both you and I. There's tremendous amount of intrinsic value in that.

Michael Unbroken:
There's mentors I've had who they've been dead for hundreds of years. I don't know about you, but I've never met Marcus Aurelius, you know what I'm saying? And so you look at that and so much of it, I'll kind of close the loop on that. But ultimately, the number one thing that is of import when I'm measuring, because if they're not, I'm out. And so you see a lot of these dudes who, like, they're posted up with their lamborghinis and half naked chicks. I'm like, I'm good. I already lived that life. That is not what I want.

Michael Unbroken:
Who's the man who has a stable relationship and a demeanor that is admirable? Full of strength and honor. They are these good people. And so that's what I look at. And so my advice to anyone would be like, who do you want to be? Who is it that is doing the thing that you want to do and go mimic, model, master that person?

Jennifer Norman:
I actually was speaking to a gentleman not that long ago who has a similar background as yours, and he said that the hardest thing that he learned or was told growing up was "be a man", because he had no idea what that even meant.

Michael Unbroken:
Absolutely.

Jennifer Norman:
Be a gang, man? Or be a multimillionaire man? What does that mean? And I don't even know how to begin to act. And so chasing after the dollars and seeing that cheap success or money-for-nothing kind of lifestyle. Yeah, you see it for how shallow it is, where men of character, humans of character, that is really where I think that you saw lack in your life the most and that you really wanted to feel that embrace inside your heart and inside your soul. To say, that is what I'm longing for. That is what I really want to be. I haven't had that. I'm hungry for it. And so, yeah, give me the Gary Vee's, give me the Dave Meltzer's, who I love dearly, Tom Bilyeu. I mean, these are all just champions of character in my book. And it's great that you were able to get those little bites from them and then start working with them more and more and more and continue to do the work, because I always say the work is never done. It really isn't.

Jennifer Norman:
It's nice when you're able to get to a point where telling the story doesn't hurt so much. And so it's not that open wound that you're gashing every time you tell the story. And I know that you tell the story quite a lot, and I always wonder, oh, my gosh, are we retraumatizing you by having you relive this? But I'm hopeful that you've gotten to a place where the pain isn't necessarily there. It's just a part of your experience that helped you to build this resilience and is continuing to show you the way. Because everything happens for a reason, as we know the darkest times, the dark nights of the soul that people go through as adults. I know that so many people that have adverse childhood experiences. Even at four or more, the amount of alcoholism, the amount of depression, the amount of suicide escalates. You had about ten, as I understand. And so the fact that you're still surviving and that you're able to have enough in your cup to fill and overflow into other people is quite extraordinary.

Michael Unbroken:
I mean, it's not easy for anybody. In fact, I think the people who have the silver spoon have it the hardest because they don't have a lot in them. I'm making a broad generalization, but a lot of those people struggle with being resilient. It's like you put me in the middle of, yeah, you put me in the middle of any situation on planet earth. I'm going to find a way out. Like, I just am. And when it comes to sharing my story and the things that I do, it's taken me years.

Michael Unbroken:
I think one of the things that's been fascinating, before I ever shared anything of a public nature, I had been working on myself for one of the things to take into consideration also. And I had never had the intention of doing this. I don't remember a moment of ever being like, I'm going to go help people who got fucked up as a kid. That wasn't on my agenda. But I was a writer, and I was just writing and sharing stuff that I thought was of interest. And people just kept asking me to help them. And that only happened through sharing my story. And we live in this really horrible time.

Michael Unbroken:
And what I mean by that is people go and dump all their garbage on social media, but they've not done the work. And I think that's really dangerous game to play, and a lot of people are hurting by that. And so I think we all have the space to share our stories. I think we all should in the right capacity. But sometimes that sharing, because it is best where the healing is. Sometimes that sharing is in a group like mine. Sometimes it's at a therapy session. Sometimes it's like with your coach in your journal.

Michael Unbroken:
And I always want to caution people, just because you have a story doesn't mean the world needs to hear it. And so that's why some of these things I will never say.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, because where you focus, that's where the energy goes, and it doesn't need to necessarily resonate. So it's your decision and it's your choice, and it's valid. I totally get that.So when you first started getting into your trauma recovery journey, you said that you started first with a therapist or first started with coaching from...

Michael Unbroken:
No, it was therapy.

Jennifer Norman:
It was therapy. And so if somebody goes through therapy and is excavating a lot of what they have gone through, how important was self awareness for you at that stage? Did you have self awareness? Did it take you those five years or even longer to be on a self awareness journey?

Michael Unbroken:
Yeah. And look, I'll say this. If I can go back in time knowing what I know now, I would have done coaching before I did therapy because I needed to change behavioral patterns majorly. And, I mean, therapy helped. Obviously, I'm a huge proponent of therapy, and it's played a massive role in my life. Still does. But in the beginning, because I wasn't self-aware, I could not identify a behavioral pattern. I could not figure out why I would do this, and then that result would happen.

Michael Unbroken:
And a lot of that's dissociation, right? A lot of that is growing up in this hyper vigilant state where we're always in this hyper arousal place and life is just moving by at a million miles an hour. And I think that, to answer your question, self awareness, for me, you're a human. You're a cognitive being. You are self aware to an extent. There's always that thing in the back of your head where you're like, and I know if I drink these three shots and I smoke this joint and then I go get in my car, that's probably not good. But then there's that other part of you where just because it is in the human nature, for whatever reason, to, whether it's live on the edge or to behave in ways in which we've seen others behave, which is indoctrination enmeshment, grooming, whatever it might be. You get behind the wheel, you know, you shouldn't be doing that. You always see people if they're drunk, driving accidents or they kill somebody.

Michael Unbroken:
They're like, I wish I wouldn't have done that. I knew I shouldn't. Yeah, you know, but it's the honoring process that is the most difficult. To take that self awareness that you have. And to sit in it and be like, yeah, this is who I am. And that applies across the board for everything. Like, boundaries, like conversations with people, like the career you have, the people you date, like, everything. And self awareness for me, really didn't develop until, I mean, probably, like, I was heading into 30.

Michael Unbroken:
I didn't understand that it was okay to be me. And so how can you be self aware if you don't understand who you are? And so, growing up as a kid, I was not allowed to have an opinion. The fastest way for me to get my ass kicked. Was to speak my mind, to ask for a want, a need or an interest. To try to put boundaries in place. Those things were nonexistent until I was 18 years old and I left. And I walked away from everybody. Not to mention.

Michael Unbroken:
And I don't know how much research you did on me. But when I was 18, I told my mother I'd never talk to her again. After putting a restraining order on her. And I meant it. And so there was some level that I have felt preservation. But I feel even in my twenties I was incredibly codependent. This is the thing people don't understand.

Michael Unbroken:
It's like codependency somehow gets labeled to be a feminine problem, but it's not. It's a human problem. And I was massively codependent. I was a yes person. I did everything everyone ever wanted me to do. I didn't know how to stick up for myself. I didn't know how to set boundaries. I didn't know how to take care of myself or ask for help.

Michael Unbroken:
And so you cannot be. How the hell can you be self aware if you can't do any of those things? And so it was like, the more work I did and the deeper I went down the journey, the more I understood myself. My values, my boundaries, my wants, my needs, my interests, my goals. All the things that make me who I am today. It wasn't until I would literally just write them down. I'd be like, this is who I want to become. And then as I did that, then I became more self aware. Because I started asking myself are the behaviors that I have now moving me closer or further away from the man I want to be.

Michael Unbroken:
And that's what really started to shift for me, was I had a point of measurement. And I think if you don't have the point of measurement, it's like, how can you be self-aware? And that is arguably one of the most critical elements of the healing journey. And I've said this many times, and this is my opinion, obvious. I don't think childhood trauma is necessarily the cuts, the scars, or the wounds. Right? Like, I look at my cut off finger every day. The burn marks on my arm, the scars on my back. I know these things. The most traumatic thing, in my opinion, is the theft of identity.

Michael Unbroken:
And so, as a child, your identity is stolen from you, and it is replaced with you having to be what everyone else tells you you have to be, in some respect, in a grooming or an enmeshment manner. But in most respects, it becomes a survival mechanism to turn off who you are. If you've spent your whole life turned off. Yeah, that's exactly right. So if you've spent your entire life turned off, how the fuck are you going to be self-aware? There is no self, and so you have to create yourself. There's a chapter in one of my first books, and it's titled Create You. And when you start to create who it is that you want to be, you have a point of measure, really, where self-awareness came in. And so when I'm 30 years old, that became a really important marker for me, of looking at everything I did, from the food I ate to the city I lived in to the people who were my friends. And all of that still applies to my life.

Jennifer Norman:
I think that a lot of people will say, okay, creating the you, is that where veneer comes in, though? I'm wondering if it's "create you" or if it's "finding you". Is there a YOU — the capital Y O U — that's really deep down inside that actually is there, but is longing to jive up with the "you "that you create, and the "you" kind of melds that path into self-awareness and realizing you are fulfilling the purpose?

Michael Unbroken:
But is it...

Jennifer Norman:
Go ahead.

Michael Unbroken:
But I would say that I hear you, and I understand what you're saying. I would say that's overcomplicated, and I would actually say it's the same thing.

Jennifer Norman:
Okay. Yeah, excellent.

Michael Unbroken:
Finding yourself, creating yourself. To me, it feels like the same exact idea, because it's all about honoring who you are and what your truth is, and all that comes from within.

Jennifer Norman:
It does, and it is a damn hard journey. I was a person who was adopted. I went through my own traumas as a young person, and I felt that I was chasing identity. I was chasing the creation of a look, of a superficiality that I didn't even know who myself. I was raised by people who weren't my parents either. And I just felt like no matter where I went, I was like a fish out of water and I didn't belong. And so, yeah, I would latch onto media and say, oh, well, that's how I want to be. But it was just like emptiness inside.

Jennifer Norman:
I just felt like, man, it wasn't me. It felt like I was putting on a show. I was a dancer. And so everything was, like, performative. And so, yeah, at least at some point, at one point, I was able to recognize, yeah, I really need to do some more soul searching to really know where the "I" feels that she's at home, because I felt like I was just not at home anywhere I went. And I think that people who suffer from abuse, they can probably relate. It's like you just don't know how to act or how to be.

Jennifer Norman:
And as you're going through this exploration, it's uncomfortable. A lot of stuff comes up. You have no idea what to do. And a coach is helpful. And the, that self discovery, and in that self-awareness, I think. And that's something that you have learned and are now helping other people with as part of what your give back is.

Michael Unbroken:
Yeah, well, I mean, that's like, you're right first and foremost, and I'm in complete agreement with what you just said,. Because I've spent so much of my life being like, where do I belong? And now I belong wherever I want to be. Which is, like, this really interesting notion when you wrap your head around it. Coaching for me is, let's draw a clear line here. I only have one purpose, and that's for them to leave my program. That's it. Can we get your shit together enough where you don't need me? And that, to me, is the victory. I look at coaching as you look at sports, which is obviously a great analogy to use in this context. If you look at any sport, you've never seen a coach on the field kicking the ball, throwing the ball, passing the puck, doing the takedown, like, whatever it is, right? And I can't go live your life for you. And what I do is I sit on the sidelines.

Michael Unbroken:
I look at what you're doing, I help you understand the critiques and measures. We break down the game tape. This is kind of like, let's look at where your life is. What are you doing? What's going on? I go, hey, this is where you course correct. These are the moves that we need to make here. But all of that is in alignment with one thing. Who do you want to become? Because if you're trying to play a game that you don't know the directions of, you're going to keep losing. And so it's really, when I'm sitting with people, whether it's group or one on one stuff, or hosting an event or on a stage or whatever, the one thing I'm trying to get them to get to is like, who do you want to be as a collection of your entity, of your soul, of your being, of your energy? And that's not about money or a job title, but who do you want to be? Like top to bottom, all of it, everything.

Michael Unbroken:
Because if we can get that now, we can reverse engineer. And then what's interesting is you will play the game, you will go run a bunch of plays, and then you'll recognize there's even in that idea of who you want to be, there's some adjustments that need to be made, because that's not actually true. And you'll make these adjustments, and then we will rinse and repeat. And all of this is happening as you coincide, a truth that you went through suffering as a child when you were supposed to be loved. And so this is where you step into playing the game around mindset and limiting beliefs and habits and situational awareness and discipline, acknowledgment, responsibility, resiliency. It's really all of the above. And what's so fascinating about it, as I get to sit across from people for years now, I mean, what we're going on, eight years of coaching, and thousands and thousands of people, like 2 million people, will download the podcast alone this year. That's an insane number of humans.

Michael Unbroken:
And the one thing that every single one of these people have in common is they have a desire. But desire is not enough. It's just not, you know, this, we all know this. I desire whatever. Well, you don't get it unless you work your face off. And then, so it's like, what does working your face off mean? Right? What does that truly mean? Is that therapy? Is that one on one coaching? Is that hitting the gym, changing the diet, going through and doing the habits that you need to do? And when I come into play, I think probably the way that I've benefited people more so than anything that I do as a coach is I'm just dead honest with them. A lot of times, it's incredibly uncomfortable for them, but it has to be because we have to stop lying to ourselves. And so it's funny, if you go, look at the best coaches in the world, in any sport, there is kind of like two camps around them.

Michael Unbroken:
You have the camp of people who can't stand them because they're too honest, and you have the camp of people who absolutely love them because they're too honest. But the reason that they're successful is because they sit down with their players and they go, you did this wrong. We talked about it 37,000 times. What's going on? Let's solve this problem right now. Okay, cool. Course correct. And then it's just a rinse and repeat of that.

Michael Unbroken:
But the honesty is delivered, at least I do my best to deliver it with kindness and candor and let people know that, hey, it's okay. But at some point, you got to understand the role that you're playing in this. And so if I can help people understand the role that in the way that they are impeding with their own success, it's incredible what starts to happen, because now, coming back to your question about self-awareness, now they start to become self-aware in a deeper way because as someone who's a coach, I'm just simply a mirror for them because I get to see further down the line and the horizon than they have the ability to see. And so, a lot of times, people come in. Most of the time, people join live programs or join coaching because they're at the worst moment of their life. And I'm like, perfect. Now we can only go up.

Jennifer Norman:
Can you give an example of somebody who came in with very little self-awareness? Of course. No names needed. But what was the behavior that might have been typical of other people and that they just had no idea that they were either doing it or living it or being it, and then how you were able to see it and with that complete honesty and take it and absorb it?

Michael Unbroken:
Yeah, for sure. I got you. I was coaching a person. I'll just say person. An executive at a company that everyone on planet Earth knows. All right? And from a business perspective, their life was incredible. People would kill for that life. But they're smoking every day. They're in a sexless relationship. They're in a workaholic state. They're in a hyper-arousal state. Everything is on ten. They're getting sick all the time. They're not resting. They're not recovering. They're faltering at the important aspects of life, which are not business, right? Friendships, family, relationships, health.

Michael Unbroken:
And when they came to me, they were like, look, I haven't been successful in my whole life. And I've resonated with this a lot because this was like my journey in a lot of ways. They're like, I've been really successful in business, but my wife is ready to leave me. My husband is ready to leave me. I don't know which one. So I'm going to try to stay in the person space. And I sat with them, and I started asking them a question, and it was very simple. The question was this, why can't you have everything that you want? And their response was, well, I have the business. What else do I really need?

Michael Unbroken:
Sitting there, and I looked at them and I said to them, well, what you need and what you want are not the same thing. This is, again, that thing about self-awareness coming into play. And what we got to the root of was recognizing that they felt secure when they had money. They did not feel secure to think about what are basic human needs. One of them is security. And what we came to realize is that they did not feel secure in any other element of their life. Their physical health, their emotional health, their friendships, their relationships, their family, their intimacy, nothing. But if they kept having zeros in the bank account, they felt more and more secure.

Michael Unbroken:
And I asked the question, which is a very common question you ask people who are generally successful, and they don't have, like, it's the triad, right? Health, wealth, relationships. So they don't have health, they don't have relationships, but they have wealth. And it's like, okay, there's problem here. And so we got deep into it, and it said, what was it like for you in childhood? And they're like, oh, we were always struggling. We were always struggling. We never had money for anything. There were always bills piled up in the kitchen. The phone would ring and my mom would tell me, don't answer the phone, because it's probably a bill collector.

Michael Unbroken:
What do they have? They have this tremendous amount of fear when it comes to money and well being. And so what do we do? We want to make fear go away. We want to make fear go away. We want to not be scared. We want to have security, and we want to have peace. And so they had done that really well, because, again, an executive for a company, everyone who's listening, that has heard of. And as we went deeper down the journey, I pointed it out, because here's what it is. This is the mirror with you.

Michael Unbroken:
I go, well, of course you only are interested in chasing money to create security, because that's the only thing that you believe is what security is. But what would it be like to feel secure in your relationship? What would it be like to feel secure with the family members and the siblings that you are in contact with? What would it be like to feel secure within your own physical body, knowing that you love yourself enough to not smoke and not get drunk every single day? And as we went down this practice, now, look, this wasn't an overnight change for this person, because it never is. And anyone who tells you, I can solve your problem in 18 minutes in my five step process, fucking get away from those people. Those people are full of shit. And we sat, we looked at it and understood that this is an infinite game. And it was like, what are the behavioral patterns that we can start changing right now and align that with the mindset shift around having security in these other elements of life that will allow you to become the person that you want to become? And slowly just started implementing something day by day by day that gave them the space to fully become the fullest version of who it is that they wanted to be. And that's just what it is constantly. It's like evaluation.

Michael Unbroken:
Create a new game plan, execute the game plan, measure it. Here's one of the big mistakes I think a lot of people make that they're missing opportunity around is they don't have a debrief about the things that they've done. They're just like, oh, yeah, I either succeeded or I failed, but they're not asking why. And so we would debrief and the rinse and repeat against those goals of the person that they wanted to be. And that was just a process. And I look at their life now, and it's unbelievable what they've been able to do.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, I think that that's very interesting, because if people think, well, I'm making a living, what more do you want? And so they almost take for granted or don't recognize the other needs that are in the relationships of the other people and the way that they might need love or their love language, how they want to have communication or feel a sense of security, and whether or not you're actually risking that for that other person, even if it makes you feel more secure.

Michael Unbroken:
Yeah. And again, that all comes, I mean, that's kind of the crux of this conversation. Like, know thyself, be self-aware enough to acknowledge where you're at, to look at it nakedly and then to do something about it. Because here's the truth. And you know this, Jennifer, and this is not me trying to be an asshole. This is just reality. Nobody cares about your problem. They just don't.

Michael Unbroken:
Not that they don't love you, not that they don't support you. And if your life's a disaster, which it can be, and as someone who has had a disastrous life as many times over, it's like at some point you really have to stop complaining and you just have to start acting. And I know that's hard because a big part of that is moving through the victim mentality. I don't want to take victimhood from people. Like, I get it. My mom cut my fucking finger off. I was homeless as a kid, I stole food to survive. My three childhood best friends have been murdered.

Michael Unbroken:
I understand fucking pain, but I also know, and I understand truly what it feels like to become who you're capable of becoming. And that feels a lot better than being a victim. And you just got to be willing to just walk the path knowing that this is the rest of your life game. And that's all it is. This is just a game. It's input in, it's output out. That's all it is. And I know that sounds like this very binary thing, but in so many ways life is just binary.

Michael Unbroken:
It's like if I do x, I have the opportunity for y to happen. If I go to therapy, I have the opportunity to love myself. If I get a coach, I can change my behavioral patterns, if I get a mentor, I can grow a business, you know what I mean? But so much of it is just in the action of the decision. And I wish more people would just make a decision.

Jennifer Norman:
And I think that that's interesting, to just elaborate on for a moment, because you're right. I think that people very deservingly fall into this identity of victimhood and the "woe is me me" and the blaming and the shaming of everybody else. And I need support and look what happened to me. Everybody feel sorry for me and it's something that they've just become so identified with and it becomes hard for them to see any other way. But do you really want to live disempowered? Do you really want to live based on the pain that somebody else gave you? Or would you rather feel like you can have radical responsibility for the way things go in your future? Like you might not be able to change anything that happened in your past. Frankly, you're not going to be able to change anything that happened in your past. You've just got this present moment to make a choice, to make a decision. Am I going to go left or am I going to go right? Am I going to choose this habit or am I going to choose that habit?

Jennifer Norman:
And it is, it's a very distinct choice. Everything that you do is formed out of a choice which creates a habit, which creates a lifestyle. And so starting small, deciding, you know what? Maybe I'm going to put that drink away and try something else. Or maybe I'm going to put that cigarette down. Or maybe I'm actually going to try to say something nice to my spouse or my girlfriend or my boyfriend rather than snapping and saying that they didn't do something right or didn't show affection the way that you want to. Maybe this, maybe that, maybe there's these little tiny bites of bravery and courage and resiliency that you can take in order to start moving yourself into a more positive way. And I like to say radical responsibility, because it's nobody else's responsibility to create your life, but you. You have to do it for yourself. And the idea that you're going to, to your point, it's not going to happen overnight.

Jennifer Norman:
It is day by day by day. But one day you'll wake up and you'll look back and you'll be like, you know what? I feel a little bit better today. I actually feel like I might be able to go out and actually smile today. And I don't think I need to have that beer or I don't think that I need to resort to these behaviors like drugs or other things that felt like I needed. I had this codependency with, maybe there is a way for me to start falling in love with myself because I never have before. And the only way that you're going to be able to have a solid relationship, whether it be your sister, your brother, your mother, your father, anybody else in your life that you wish to have in your life. And that's your choice, too. It starts with you.

Jennifer Norman:
You got to actually love yourself before you can even show any love to anybody else. Otherwise, it turns into resentment, it turns into transaction. It turns into, what did you do for me? And keeping score. And that's not really love. That's not really a real relationship. That's just a bargain or that's just a tool. Michael, I want to thank you so much for coming on and sharing your work with us. I know we're running out of time, so everybody please take a look at Think Unbroken.

Jennifer Norman:
Michael has written a great book, which I think gives a good indication of some of the steps that you can take to become self aware. If you've suffered from any kind of complex post traumatic stress disorder, childhood abuse, any kind of dysfunction that you still feel is harrowing you, that you feel that you are still beholden to, that prevents you from being happy and living the life that you want to. Michael is a real fellow and you can see that he is extremely trauma informed. He definitely knows how to empathize with you. If you've been in that place, he could be exactly what you're looking for. And so I'll make sure that all of Michael's information is in the show notes that you know where to find him. Thank you so much Michael, for being on The Human Beauty Movement Podcast today.

Michael Unbroken:
Honor my friend. Thank you.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you for listening to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. Be sure to follow, rate and review us wherever you stream podcasts. The Human Beauty Movement is a community-based platform that cultivates the beauty of humankind. Check out our workshops, find us on social media, and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn more at thehumanbeautymovement.com thank you so much for being a beautiful human.