(00:00) really i know okay i kind of do too make sure your computer’s all uh your zoom is all set with sound yeah mike all right hello welcome boys and babes to the magic hour podcast a place where we navigate through life’s peaks and valleys with all the vulnerability and shamelessness we can muster with the help of world-class guests from all walks of life we uncover new truths and valuable tools for manifesting our highest potential i’m your host mercedes tarot along with my partner in shine jade bryce hey you guys so if you’ve

(00:40) been listening for a while you’ve likely heard us use a four-step mantra that goes like this practice rigorous authenticity surrender the outcome do the uncomfortable work integrate with gratitude the first three steps are the core to what today’s guest touts as his method not just for overcoming his addiction to drugs and alcohol but for how to approach all aspects of life including love relationship business and more that fourth one came from mercedes yeah we added one which we’ll talk to him about later see if he’s gonna jive

(01:13) with it or not um the way i came across this guy was via ted talk that i stumbled upon in which he tells his incredible story and gifts that beautiful mantra that jade just mentioned to anyone wanting to change their lives for the better and when we spoke when he spoke that simple process into my reality i had a major light bulb go off and in that epiphany that is what came to me so are and that why am i [ __ ] this up so bad sorry john this episode’s not the one where we don’t say sorry john um i don’t know how you ended that last one

(01:55) so maybe we start again because we i’ve stumbled on you and then okay so john don’t don’t include this when you send it to me because then let’s just waste both our time having to listen to this i always have to listen to so many intros it’s a waste of time all right go ahead hello and welcome boys and babes to the magic hour podcast a place where we navigate through life’s peaks and valleys with all the vulnerability and shamelessness we can muster with the help of world-class guests from

(02:22) all walks of life we uncover new truths and valuable tools for manifesting our highest potential i’m your host mercedes tarot along with my partner in shine jade bryce hey you guys so if you’ve been listening for a while you’ve likely heard us use a four-step mantra that goes like this practice rigorous authenticity surrender the outcome do the uncomfortable work and integrate with gratitude the first three steps are the core to what today’s guest touts as his method not just for overcoming his addiction to drugs and

(02:56) alcohol but for how to approach all aspects of life including love relationship business and more that fourth one is added by mercedes yes uh we’re gonna see if he jives with that one later when we ask him about it on the show the way i came across this guy was via ted talk that i stumbled upon in which he tells this incredible story and gifts that beautiful mantra that jay just mentioned to anyone wanting to change their lives for the better and when he spoke that simple process into my reality i had a major light bulb go off and

(03:30) in that epiphany this is what came up for me if we come at life with truth and love relentlessly we will build the faith we need to surrender to whatever comes our way with easy acceptance and move through the painful work of it with grace then there will be a pause where we get to absorb the energy we’ve manifested and from that place we will grow immensely yeah i yeah that’s beautiful i remember actually the first time i don’t remember whose episode it was but i remember like exactly where i was sitting in my closet

(04:08) in my in the old apartment uh the first time that you said those steps and it really really hit me as well and then um there’s been times where um you know i’ve i’ve needed to apply them and i can hear it being played out in my head those four steps and it’s really it’s really been a useful tool for me so i’m glad i hope other people are going to gain as much from this uh from that mantra and this conversation as we did because i’m serious it changed my life guys so with that it’s obvious that this

(04:39) episode already holds a really special place in my heart and in jade’s heart and what’s really is incredible is that people like today’s guests who have influenced mine and jade’s lives so deeply even from afar are willing to come on the magic hour and share their wisdom with us and our followers in person this is this is really the work that we signed up for when we started this podcast and i think seeing it incarnate like this just overwhelms me with gratitude so me too yeah so please let me welcome a man who is doing the work of

(05:14) unshackling the chains that bind us to the stories we tell ourselves that are no longer serving us his work is both traditional and groundbreaking in that it uses tried and true methods of dissolving our biggest fears down to what they really are old stories while simultaneously breathing new life into the way we view our ability to pave a healthier more abundant path for ourselves as a student of addiction who’s realigned his own life in order to better serve he specializes in teaching others to live what he calls mask free

(05:51) both as a business leadership mentor as a new father loving husband as a thriving entrepreneur and ceo of the nashville entrepreneur center and as the author to his radical new book great leaders live like drug addicts having been wildly influential in my life i couldn’t be more excited to be sharing this conversation with him today and with our magic hour listeners please welcome michael brady wait to the show i think that was good i’m just gonna read that out loud one more time if you don’t mind sure

(06:39) so please allow me to welcome a man who is doing the work of unshackling the chains that bind us to the stories we tell ourselves that are no longer serving us his work is both traditional and groundbreaking in that it uses tried and true methods of dissolving our biggest fears down to what they really are old stories while simultaneously breathing new life into the way we view our ability to pave a healthier more abundant path for ourselves as a student of addiction who has realigned his own life in order to

(07:09) better serve he specializes in teaching others to live mask free both as a business leadership mentor as a new father loving husband as a thriving entrepreneur and ceo of the nashville entrepreneur center and as the author to his radical new book great leaders live like drug addicts having been wildly influen influential in my life i couldn’t be more excited to be sharing this conversation with him today with our magic hour listeners please welcome michael brody wait to the show the only thing is that word both
(07:43) and then i say more than two things does that make sense i say nothing bothers me when i hear it okay what do i say i say his work is both traditional and great yeah no i say his uh live mask free as a student of addiction who’s realigned his own life to better in order to better serve he specializes in teaching others to live mass free both as a business leadership mentor as a new father loving husband and a thriving entrepreneur and ceo of the national ascendant blah blah and as author of new radical books so

(08:18) it’s like way more than two things how about instead of saying both you just say all as a or um what if you just take out the word both either all or just take out a student of addiction who’s real end of the life or specializing together yeah i can just take it out right as a business leadership mentor as a new father loving husband yeah i think yeah just take it out when you um when when you say it to him i probably originally only had two things and then the list got longer as i studied or something i need a little notebook because i don’t

(08:58) have one today here all right at 6 00 p.m they’re really trying to be catchy with that book title it’s good though i think oh boy wow that was a lot of scrambling today i feel like i know me too and i was trying to book this job in vegas and it paid 1200 for five days which isn’t a lot but it’s almost my rent yeah yeah and um i would have to try a little yeah no i just i remember the days when i could make 1200.

(09:50) but uh i didn’t get chosen and i i just didn’t even it didn’t occur to me that there were other options hi hi hey how’s it going i like the bookshelf behind you it’s a good backdrop yeah i don’t really like it so thank you for saying that i love it it’s so smart how are you doing allegedly smart anybody can put books behind you the dream room to me i’m good how are you guys doing super good also how you really doing jade i just got the kids to bed so scrambled yeah but it’s very exciting

(10:31) excited for the interview though when um what is the exact uh book release date on may 5th may 5th okay so when would you want this ideally to come out oh man i’m not the best person to ask that question i think um probably um late april okay i’ll put that in my choose but i mean you know you guys have to execute your deal so no we like to work around you guys so i’m just gonna put that in my notes um late april because you you said may 5th yeah and i’ll double check with the team um and send you a note if i’m wrong

(11:10) which sometimes or most of the time happens okay sounds good to us we have a backlog of episodes so that works for us awesome yeah michael are you on um any kind of microphone there or you just have the computer getting your sound so mike if that you think that’s gonna sound better you sound okay but maybe let’s test it because i there’s a little echo in the room but all right let me um so i see that you guys have the is that like the yeti yeah it’s just the blue yeti so i had that i had a whole setup and

(11:50) then our house had a flood in my whole album and all that kind of stuff got ruined and so we’re rebuilding it and restocking all the stuff that is a big bummer uh very grateful to have those as problems all right i’m gonna plug this in and then and then go on the zoom and to the left there should be a little arrow change the audio setting yeah okay how’s it sound now that’s better i think say give me a few more words okay how’s it sound now i like it that’s good oh you’re kidding no i can’t

(12:34) uh scroll down to over to your left where you see the mute button and hit the arrow and just select the speaker make sure that your speaker is one that all right i couldn’t hear you what were you saying oh i was just saying like you could select a speaker down in the bottom left the arrow i didn’t think about how you couldn’t hear me built-in output or if you have i mean this is getting extensive probably but if you have headphones then you can plug those in and it’ll pick it up oh um i do okay sorry i’m sorry guys

(13:23) um tom sent me um a bed uh frame yeah that’s a bookshelf oh not like in the mail but a picture of one oh i have one what it’s like yeah but it’s only on the sides you can’t really see it you but that’s where our books go wherever oh no this one is like i think it’s meant for books it’s really cool he thought it was for sex toys i was like no that’s a bookshelf michael’s like you know i can hear you guys still business yeah we know if you’ve heard our show before you know we’re not shy about any

(13:55) of this you know what i’m gonna go get my air pods okay does that work yeah sure all right hold on as long as they’re charged mine die fast oh and i don’t like the um i thought of bluetooth being in my ear oh yeah well that’s a whole nother situation yeah did someone oh i think ghazi was using air pods when we first interviewed him the first time really that long ago i think so the original airpods i thought he had like big ones on [Music] i don’t think so actually i remember being surprised that he didn’t because

(14:36) he’s a podcaster yeah supposedly his podcast on uh kyle’s was really good i bet hasn’t he been on there bunch time so yeah but this one was right after his um very first um ayahuasca experience so it was like it was like a whole new world oh yeah oh so kyle got him first after that i wish it had been us [Music] i would have them on again next month like eric throw your podcast out the window you just come on ours every month uh mercedes is back in town so yeah sounds good sounds good yeah are you hearing us okay

(15:20) yeah i hear you right i’m wondering though it now kind of sounds like you’re picking up from the airpods speaker so just go back in that little uh arrow on the bottom left by the mute on zoom and just make sure it’s picking up through your lapel mic sorry we’re getting all high tech here no this is very educational i appreciate you walking through it with us well i used to um when i was running the national entrepreneurial center we had our own studio and we had a guy and now i’m running all this stuff out

(15:54) of my house i don’t have a guy so you’re still i have you you’re still with the national entrepreneur’s center right no no okay so what’s the current uh so you are no you’re not the ceo of the national entrepreneurial center currently so you can just put and passed fast what was your type or what do you want to be related to that or or do you oh yeah um i was the ceo for three years and then i i left to start a company around mass free living okay was that what i mean if i mentioned it do you want me to say um and former ceo

(16:36) or do you want rebounding it or what was the i didn’t found it um i was the first entrepreneur it served but it’s third ceo okay i’ll just say former ceo how do i sell now yeah that’s great yeah all right sorry about that thank you guys one of the great things about teaching authenticity is i don’t have to pretend i have all my [ __ ] together we never do so don’t be worried about it i don’t know i i think you guys have your stuff together a lot more than i do trust me well it takes for both of us

(17:08) you’re a new dad so you feel jade’s pain with the toddler she got running around trying to put him to bed before we do these recordings i’m sure yeah so jade how old is yours uh three and four three and four all right are you more or less tired than when they were when they were one definitely less like by leap years i wouldn’t be able to have a podcast when they were one there’s no way okay cool it gets better that’s some hope thank you for that yeah they start to play by themselves a lot

(17:43) see that’s that’s why we’re working on uh another one you know together yeah i don’t know i mean my husband’s an only child and he his mom says that he would play for hours by himself so i think you work it out as a kid that’s the thing they play by themselves and then they play together okay and so it’s a little bit good my dad was a single um child and he said he was totally content with it yeah yeah all right all right so we are ready to kick this thing off you sound great over there on your end

(18:17) and we’re all recording here um so what i’m going to do is just intro you and then we’ll get into the questions with you okay awesome and thank you again this is awesome thank you is it have you been on another podcast i was looking for you to listen to other stuff i didn’t know i couldn’t find you i’m just starting the pr stuff so i’ve i’ve done a couple others um in this capacity i’ve done some locally for the ec but no so i’m just starting doing the podcast and i’m

(18:45) starting my own as well okay cool yeah i was just worried that i was like you go by michael brody wait though right the hyphen and everything okay yes but with the hyphen people get me wrong all the time so my stuff’s over i know we’re really trying we’re trying to be really adamant about when we post on um you know i do all the podcast summaries so getting the keywords in there and i i want to be specific with like your name and how you want it spelled however you put it up over and over again so that

(19:09) people can find you um okay awesome and just so you know i’m art i’m a huge fan of your work i found you through your ted talk and um we have been talking about you on the show ever since so oh thank you uh before we start i tell you a really quick story sure um uh when my ted talks started going viral uh my wife is a millennial and so she’s all over instagram and i’m really grateful for that and you started following me and you know people start doing the follow thing and then they drop off to build their

(19:43) follower account which i found out later so i was like oh my god like she’s like a legit influencer like this person out there and and she’s like oh she’s probably just doing the follow and fall thing like i don’t know maybe the message resonated and i’m like i’m just an idiot you’re right no way kevin durant did that to me it broke my heart well but then i saw and then i saw and then like literally an hour later i saw a post about the ted talk and i was just so touched and um honored and i’m really

(20:14) i’m just i’ve been looking forward to this ever since so thank you oh i’m glad to hear that thanks for saying that that’s sweet all right so are you ready here we go yeah so please allow me to welcome a man who is doing the work of unshackling the chains that bind us to the stories we tell ourselves that are no longer serving us his work is both traditional and groundbreaking in that it uses tried and true methods of dissolving our biggest fears down to what they really are old stories while simultan simultaneously

(20:45) breathing new life into the way we view our ability to pave a healthier more abundant path for ourselves as a student of addiction who’s realigned his own life in order to better serve he specializes in teaching others to live what he calls mask free as a business leadership mentor as a new father loving husband a thriving entrepreneur and former ceo of the nashville entrepreneur center and as the author to his radical new book great leaders live like drug addicts having been wildly influential in my life i couldn’t be more excited to be

(21:22) sharing this conversation with him today with our magic our listeners please welcome michael brody wait to the show i’m embarrassed by that intro i feel like you should have written my book you’ll be embarrassed that’s all you or at least the forward i know seriously for the next book the next book well thank you it’s awesome to be here yeah yeah she really does reference you a lot on the show yeah and your story um michael of coming through such you know tough addictions and tough times in your

(22:01) life really spoke to me as well because i’ve seen many of my loved ones take that route and not make it out to the other side could you walk us through that piece of your story and how you’re inspired to overcome your addictions and make the choices to redirect your life yeah absolutely and my heart always goes out to anyone who’s impacted by addiction about half the population has a loved one that’s an addict um so it’s something actually touches a lot of us um so for me you know growing up um

(22:34) my dad was an alcoholic but he’s what we call a dry drunk he stopped drinking when i was seven months old but he never got any form of recovery um and so when i was in high school my parents sat me down and said whatever you do don’t start drinking because you have the genetics and um one piece of advice to anybody who is trying to discourage an addict from using don’t tell them not to use because then i immediately became interested in drinking and doing everything oh interesting and um and so in college that’s when i really found my

(23:05) true addiction and that’s when i started using compulsively and i ended up being kicked out of school i ended up being fired from my job evicted from my home my car got repossessed um every day for me was about getting high and doing whatever it took in order to get high whether it’s stealing lying you name it um and so i always like to tell this story so the perfect picture of my average day in the office because we can have a little bit of fun when we talk about addiction it’s heavy stuff but we can

(23:36) have a little bit of fun um us recovering addicts do uh was you know i’m stumbling around the streets of venice beach california it’s 2 a.m i’m drunk and high and i’m trying to get higher and i find myself seated in a triangle with a homeless man on my left and a prostitute on my right and we’re in this triangle of lies and manipulation because i want the homeless man’s blunt he wants the prostitute she wants me to be her last customer for the evening but we were all wearing masks we were

(24:03) all trying to get what we wanted but hiding our true selves and the process and we were also lying about what we had to offer you know i pretended that i had money and i didn’t he pretended that he had more drugs than he did and she pretended flirting wasn’t an attempted business transit and it was and so that was like my average day um maybe not those exact circumstances but getting high and and staying high and i don’t know that i was inspired to seek recovery i just ran out of options um and i could talk about that part of

(24:36) my story but uh you know i think every addict that they have a saying that your your bottom is when you stop digging um and so some addicts it can be unfortunately they just dig forever until they end up in jail’s institutions of death um i was one of the really fortunate ones that um i ran out of options and um actually i was sitting there in the in the room the only guy keeping me from sleeping on the streets and my buddy aaron and he was also my drug hookup and you know you have a problem with your drug hookups trying to encourage

(25:09) you to go to rehab um and so he was trying to encourage me to go my parents were trying to get me to go and so um when i started throwing up blood and my liver enzymes went through the roof and i had nothing left i just chose to go not because i actually wanted to but because i had no other options yeah i’m curious um you said the part about um that your parents told you that you you know to never drink um [Music] that probably scared a lot of people that are listening since you said 50 have a loved one that are an addict um

(25:42) so my children come from two bloodlines mine and their dads of a long history of addicts and so i always thought like oh when they’re the right age i’ll talk to them about how they have the addictive gene um and so they need to stay away from things that can be addictive um so if that’s not what you would um recommend what do you recommend man you know i should think more carefully when i talk about those things so casually um and so i’m really grateful that you said that um because i have to be mindful because see i hang

(26:15) out so i hang out with all these recovering drug addicts and we’re just like glad we’re alive so we try to find the silver lining and everything um and so we’ll joke about a lot of things but um i don’t want to scare people um i so i’m not a professional psychologist or clinical addictionologist but um in my experience the most valuable thing is that i see with children is being able to model um and being able to actually talk about the reality so like what my parents did was they told me don’t do this they

(26:45) didn’t tell me let me take a step back addicts do not stop using because someone tells them to stop we only learn how to recover when someone tells us what to start instead and so for the best example i can use is i have a lot of friends in recovery where they’re in their 40s or their 50s and their children grew up with them in recovery and some of those kids are the best probability of staying clean or finding or getting sober or finding recovery because their parents modeled what the option was if you find yourself in that

(27:20) situation so so do you believe that there is an addictive gene still yes yes and and as i understand it it’s a little bit more predominantly carried through male genes so if your offspring are male it’s more likely um but i but my sister um i think that she has the gene but didn’t manifest itself in addiction to substances i think it’s a combination of nature and nurture that’s my just based off my personal experience but what i would say is if anybody’s scared that they’re going to have a kid that’s going

(27:50) to grow up that way i would say just expose what the options are if they find themselves in trouble and give them the opportunity to talk about what’s going on so they don’t have to wear a mask i funny the reason that i’m so focused on the mask-free movement is i think that most of addicts use because they’re hiding behind a mask and then we were equipped with recovery in order to recover from our addiction and now i’m trying to take those tools and enable everybody so they don’t have

(28:18) to live behind a mass so that we can stop addiction where it starts right that’s not scientific scientific perspective but it’s a philosophical one yeah and we’re gonna definitely dive it does we’re going to dive much deeper into the mask-free movement but i just wanted to ask off of that do you think there was a is a way that you could have really even avoided becoming an addict or do you think it was kind of part of your journey and part of anyone who goes down that road um it’s part of the the

(28:52) the trials and tribulations that life offers so that they can overcome it and can figure out what you know the light is at the end of the tunnel i don’t think it was an unavoidable um i think it was highly likely and i think one of the largest variables is um what i experienced at home you know um and it’s not necessarily as traumatic as as a lot of the stories that i hear for for me a lot of it was i was really sheltered um and so no one taught me how to deal with life and life’s terms and so when i found myself free in college i

(29:25) felt ill equipped to deal with life like i literally felt like everybody was walking around with instructions that i didn’t have and so i didn’t know how to manage my emotions and so i looked for something that would um and i happen to have the genealogy as well do you think that the trauma you know you’re speaking to childhood i don’t know if you’d call that childhood trauma or childhood um domestications things that came along in your life or were created early on that caused you to in this case feel like you were

(29:54) sheltered you didn’t have these tools when you got into you know the real world um and i think for many others they might call it trauma there might be actual things that everyone would consider a trauma um does that do you think that goes across the board for all people and especially addicts i feel the reason i’m asking this question because i feel like the addicts that i know in my life that i have you know tried to have any conversation with there’s always of course if they’re in the middle of the addiction gonna be

(30:26) resistance but they’ll use terms when we talk about or because for me it’s natural to bring up childhood trauma like that’s you know the psyche in psychology is like my thing so when we get into that it’s like oh that’s psychobabble and it’s always there’s some resistance to that but i do feel like that all of us um are created through our domestications you know the the nurture of life is that um i think you are more educated on it than i am honestly i’ll i’ll i’ll speak from

(30:55) my experience i’d say that um well first of all an addict in their addiction is going to say whatever um and and it doesn’t mean that they’re right um i think that a roughly i understand it roughly 50 of addicts um struggle with some form of mental illness and so i think when you really strip it all away it’s a way of medicating and if we aren’t given the appropriate behavioral processes to deal with whatever it is whether it’s trauma whether it’s a mental illness whether it’s a physical malady of some sort
(31:31) i think if we’re not taught the healthy ways to deal with the feelings that we have um i think we look for unnatural ways to do that and then if we have the genes it just makes it even worse or if we have really intense circumstances it can flip something on but i think that dealing with the trauma is really helpful but i think also knowing how to cope with life and life terms is really important and if someone says that psychobabble i think they’re not they don’t understand the intersection and how complicated this

(31:57) challenge is yeah so i think what i’m hearing from that too is that or the part that jade and i are attempting to um help along its way is taking the taboo away from the the idea of mental illness and what that is because i think we i mean this might be the really broad yeah that’s the mask i think that it might be a really broad statement to say but i’m going to say it anyway i think we all deal with mental illness in ourselves at some point in our lives because we just by human nature we got to hit our you know edges we got to get

(32:30) to the very rock bottoms or whatever that is for us um in order to go oh okay that was you know i push it to the edge come back to center you know try to remain and get back to balance again uh but i wanted to ask about something you said a moment ago about uh your parents or your you know the people in your life telling you to stop uh your addiction or to not even you know try alcohol or drugs in the first place because you have this gene um and an addicts needing something to replace the addiction in order to to not fall into that you

(33:05) know rabbit hole in the first place um or once they are in it in order to get out of it so is is the concept of that basically replacing an addiction with an addiction healthy addiction i feel like i don’t have enough degrees to be able to answer all these questions you do you’ve already lived it that’s the real degree well and that and that’s fair but i think also i want to i want to just like say that everything i say is from just my experience in 17 years living clean right um i i don’t think it’s so people

(33:40) have have actually i said so they say like 12 set programs are occult they say we’re replacing an addiction i don’t think i think people want things to be really black and white in order to make them simple because our attention span is completely shot yes um and i think that these things are a lot more complex and that’s why that we don’t have really good answers as a society to these problems um i would say it’s not as simple as replacing an addiction with an addiction because the way that at least i would

(34:09) define addiction is doing the same thing over and over again despite negative consequences and so if you look at how much i would get high during the course of a day it was insanely compulsive i don’t call my sponsor that compulsively i don’t go to meetings that compulsively i don’t work the steps that compulsively and so i think that in a lot of ways i was taught not taught i learned to deal with the feelings that created all kinds of crazy thoughts with numbing it started with uh getting my own phone line in my room in my

(34:45) parents house and i started just calling people and like getting a high from getting them calling me back that sounds really stupid i can’t believe no i know i felt the same way i remember at 12 years old when i got my phone line see you guys rock made me feel a little less alone it made me feel a little less well because like that’s what i love what you guys are doing i love anyone that’s willing to lean into this whole like yes we are all struggling with something the human condition in some form yeah but my mom was always on the

(35:14) phone and i think now with the addicting um the addiction we’re seeing in young people on tablets on video games and all that stuff they’re seeing us on our phones all the time um so there’s that too and i my friend works with addicts on redesigning their whole life like how they eat everything and i know that he said that because it’s such a i don’t want to say fear but it’s something i’m always going to be careful about with my kids um because of their history um and their you know generations before

(35:47) them but i asked him what was the common theme with all the people you work with and he said the parents were one extreme or the other either they weren’t emotionally available or they were so overbearing like so over available you know um it just wasn’t a healthy um you know uh balance and um i also noticed that like you said filling the addiction um i think like as humans when we empty ourselves of something it’s like our nature to fill it back up so it’s just like filling it up with something that’s

(36:19) good and i noticed that most people that get clean they either get obsessed with like marathon running or working out or or school or reading it’s like it’s it does to me it tends to be something that isn’t harmful um so one i’m going to say something a little controversial for the recovery community um one thing that happens in recovery is sometimes we think we need to practice recovery only when it comes to drugs or alcohol or whatever was the main thing and so there are a lot of addicts that

(36:48) will then do things compulsively out without choice um that will eventually create detrimental consequences to them in some form maybe not as bad like being so i have a friend that’s addicted to going to school and getting degrees that’s not nearly as bad as like smoking crack every day but he is not doing it out of choice completely and it’s it’s hurting his ability to pursue some other and so i think it’s when we learn to surrender like seriously when we learn how to surrender we learn to surrender our addiction and

(37:20) then we learn to surrender to a process that helps us from a recovery perspective but then when i want to go off on my crazy thing like i get really into something one day and i want to do all that stuff i have to learn how to surrender and it starts with learning how to surrender in the moment and that’s really to me it’s this it’s this thought process of i’m not going to be okay if i can’t do more of whatever this is it could be a candy bar it could be whatever it is and i’ve been now equipped with tools

(37:46) where i can surrender those things and walk through the discomfort and and that tool set allows me to pick up almost anything in this life other than drugs and alcohol for me um and and experiment and use them and then have choice and so the best example i could use is i thought that i was addicted to caffeine because all the addicts like that’s what you get clean or sober you start you know you do caffeine and nicotine man that’s what you do because that’s what you can do and um and so i got really heavy into

(38:16) caffeine i had a girlfriend that was all into it and so i told my sponsor like i’m off of caffeine i just can’t use everything he’s like you know you’re not necessarily ill-equipped to deal with this you were when you encountered alcohol and drugs but you’re not ill-equipped to deal with this so let’s experiment and let’s let’s see if this is a character defect or like a true addiction you’ve no control over and it turned out it was a defect that i just needed to apply the

(38:38) tool set to and i needed to learn to surrender that when i wa have that second cup of coffee and i want the third and i think it’s gonna make me feel better i surrender it and it’s just i have a better tool set that gives me a lot more choice which allows it to not look as much like addiction it gets to look a little bit more like normal living yeah and i don’t want to take away any of the the gravity that anybody going through in an addiction is dealing with uh you know substance abuse addiction

(39:03) but i think we all do have addictive personalities i think that’s what makes us progressive humans at the end of the day you know we figure out a need in us that’s so motivating that then we finally you know do this make the steps to move towards it hopefully most of those are good you know if we’re numbing yeah yeah but if we’re numbing it turns into something else um so you mentioned surrendering the outcome so i want to jump into your beautiful process that you’ve graced the world with through your ted talk and i

(39:33) know you said i believe that it came originally through your sponsor um and through the 12-step program if i’m correct me if i’m wrong but break that down for us i know our audience has heard it a million times and i will continue saying it a million times because i think it’s so amazing so go ahead i’m so honored by that okay so uh a quick disclaimer um it is it is not the 12-step program it’s my interpretation of what addicts that are in recovery do when the rubber hits the road in normal circumstances that all

(40:04) human beings go through okay and so like the 12 steps is this beautiful process so i could spend all day talking about but these three principles are practice rigorous authenticity surrender the outcome and doing comfortable work that is what we learn how to do as a result of having worked in twelve steps and so for me um words are really important and so when i think about those three words they go together um and this is really my attempt to translate so i don’t know if you know do you do you guys know that we call you

(40:33) normies people are not yes people that are not addicts yes and it’s a positive term but uh my wife is a normie she’s proud of it um but so when when it’s my way of trying to codify what we learn so that normies can do it too um and it’s what i taught people in business and all that kind of stuff and so practice rigorous authenticity so everybody’s talking about authenticity authenticity we love authenticity like all this kind of great stuff but the world’s not authentic like everybody’s

(41:03) hiding behind a mask you’ve ever seen a politician answer a question with i don’t know like never right so it authenticity is being true to yourself and word in action anybody can do that when it’s convenient and safe and they can do it sporadically but rigorous is what i had to do to recover from drug addiction so that is the strict application and practices practicing every day and so it’s a different form of authenticity it means that when the boss is in the room when the when the job is on the line whatever it is

(41:35) your goal is not to achieve x it’s to take the mask off and be your true self because i fundamentally believe everybody has this beautiful special gift for the world that if they could only get out of their own way they can manifest it now granted we all need help we need tools and all that kind of stuff but so let’s practice rigorous authenticity and i could go on the next two but i’m going to take a breath so you guys can tell me if there’s anything there that you think is stupid no i think that that’s

(42:01) that’s the the it’s weird because i struggle with the idea of practice rigorous authenticity it’s the you know the initial step so it’s the thing that um my mind goes okay how do i do that my analytical mind turns on it’s like all right we’re going to dig to the root of this we can do that we know how to do that okay now we’ve got it the hard step is the second step for me which is surrounding the outcome yeah the first step isn’t hard for me it’s the second that’s where the mass goes on it’s like

(42:28) i i i don’t think i can be that real with the world i love you guys you so get it you so get it so uh the original inspiration for this so um i don’t know if you guys know brene brown yeah though i assume by all your work that you do so i loved her work but but when i started giving her books to my friends i’d be like well i don’t know how to do this and and there was a lack of implementation um that could allow anyone to manifest the potential on the page and i was like wait a second i have access to a system that allows junkies

(43:00) to completely change their life and it’s a step-by-step system so what did i learn from that that i could then create and so what you’re talking about is the thing that we’re lacking when it comes to authenticity in the world everybody’s talking about it we want it so we all know that no one knows how to do it right and so that’s where the second two principles are the actual how because it’s the outcome that creates the fear that binds the mask to our face i’m scared that if i am

(43:26) my true self if i wear flip-flops in my ted talk people aren’t gonna watch that was actually something i had to work through right but like i’m scared if i tell the boss the real thing if i tell my wife i told my wife that i was struggling to feel connected to my daughter and i felt like a reluctant tourist father and i was terrified that she was gonna be pissed off because she’s sitting there and nursing every two hours and getting no sleep and that she would hate me right that was the outcome i was

(43:52) scared of so we have to learn to surrender the outcome and what we replace is the outcome we’re looking for is to actually practice rigorous authenticity and that means that we will take the sacrifice of not always getting what we want but in order to actually surrender the outcome and this is what i teach people you have to take out a piece of paper and you have to write down the word can’t on the left-hand side and the word can on the right-hand side put a line down the middle and start listing what

(44:17) you can’t control and start listing what you can when you think about the outcome that scares you that makes you want to put on the mask and then that reveals the uncomfortable work and then uncomfortable works a whole other story but i i surrender the outcome is where all the magic happens it’s true it’s so you’re right i mean and i don’t know that i need to even add to it but just to reiterate the fact that we are all seeking authenticity it’s become such a buzzword because it’s something that

(44:47) everybody is after they know they want what’s real everyone’s been you know for decades talking about oh you know she’s a real one and i’m a hundred percent authentic and keep it 100 i mean these are like buzzwords in every community so we know we want that it’s coming around and around we’re selling ourselves on it little by little but you’re right like getting there is all about are you brave enough are you able to be that vulnerable where you’re gonna put the truth on the line and see what

(45:17) happens because it might not be what you want to happen it might be what all of us are afraid of which is you know not being loved and wanted in that moment and well then you’re going to have to deal with that and then you you know this the beauty of what you’re giving us here is that even if the worst case scenario happens you will have the tools to face that situation as well so and okay so bring us to uncomfortable work yeah um so we’re taught how to do hard work and smart work that’s physical and

(45:50) intellectual but we aren’t taught how to do uncomfortable work which is emotional and i’m sure you guys have seen someone doing eight hours of hard work because they’re avoiding five minutes of uncomfortable work yes and so for me it’s recognizing that for so first of all uncomfortable work does not happen if we lack two things and that’s clarity and energy and so clarity is what we achieve if we practice rigorous authenticity what is true to me and what is the mask that i’m tempted to wear like i teach people to

(46:19) actually we have actual masks so like i say yes when i could say no i avoid difficult conversations i hold back my unique perspective i hide a weakness so what’s my mask what’s true to myself and word in action that’s clarity surrender the outcome is you let go of the outcome you focus on writing down all things you can’t control get them out of your mind then just focus on what you can and now you’ve just reclaimed a tremendous amount of energy and with that clarity and that energy now you can

(46:46) actually do uncomfortable work which is about walking through a physical sensation rather than an emotional or intellectual sensation i mean how many of us have avoided a difficult conversation because of a pit in our stomach but there wasn’t actually a pit in our stomach it’s just a feeling in our body and i’m going to creep into mindfulness when i talk about that but all this just requires practice i and anybody who says they’re 100 authentic isn’t because nobody is we’re imperfect human beings like i wear a

(47:13) mask like i’m probably wearing a little bit version of one right now as i’m trying to do well on this podcast and make sure that you guys like me and all that kind of stuff but it’s about it’s about being the process where you just re uh as a ritual you identify what’s true to me what mask am i trying to wear what can i control what can i control then what’s my uncomfortable work and then that becomes the focus instead of what’s all this other stuff that becomes the focus and that’s what drug addicts

(47:40) learn how to do to stay clean that’s so so beautiful i’m so glad that you know you have an analytical we call we call it here a magician archetype a mind that thinks about how to break it down or label it or like you said you you know words are really important to you so put it into boxes that are clean and neat so our analytical mind can see it and be like oh yeah i can do that it’s easy it’s broken down into three steps i mean how who can’t you know what i mean um but you’re right the hard work

(48:08) of it is the emotional side switching over to the other side of your brain that’s not the analytical you know the creative the gooey the fluid and all the unknown gray area stuff um and it’s beautiful the way you even break down to clarity and the energy because for us on the show we use a term a lot uh when we’re trying to move emotion through our body um emotion energy in motion and so get out there and um do something to literally move it to your body so motion before emotion is the phrase we use here a lot

(48:39) but and that’s a tool that would just help that whole system along it’s part of the i guess uncomfortable work like you don’t want to get up and shake that [ __ ] out but you have to because that’s how your body responds you know needs to detox um i love that all that just to i mean i’m just i don’t need to add anything to what you’ve already brought to the table because it is so i think uh concise and eloquent i know everyone listening is gonna soak this stuff up but i did add a fourth step um

(49:12) which is integrate with gratitude to your piece there and i think it kind of goes without saying because after you’ve done all the uncomfortable work you kind of go holy [ __ ] that worked okay so let me sit with this and think about you know how i can conquer the rest of my life using these tools um but yeah here we call it the sacred pause where you let all the good stuff you’ve worked so hard to achieve sink in and so with your permission adding that to your three steps for ourselves i love it it actually you know

(49:45) i i can’t tell you guys how much i know my community recovering our community is gonna like just love you guys because so there’s actually a fourth principle that i wasn’t able to do in the ted talk because it didn’t fit and it’s called give it to keep it and it’s basically it’s basically gratitude it’s paying it forward except in the recovery community the thing that we understand is it’s not about obligation it’s about preservation and so you literally can’t keep it

(50:10) unless you give it and so it’s a form of gratitude but like yes you need to be able to reflect and that’s frankly an area that i struggle with like pretty hard like like i i work really hard to be be grateful and i do that really well but there are a lot of things like when the ted talk was going berserk or whatever like all i thought about was how scared i was that it would stop or i’m an imposter or whatever instead of just going wow this is really great yeah you know even as i prepared for this podcast like a little bit of

(50:38) like oh i want to make sure i do all the right things get the instead oh i’m so honored to be on this i’m so excited to talk to these wonderful women that are doing this amazing work and using this incredible platform and so i think that i love that you guys focus on that i really do yeah get busy being instead of being busy doing and we’re the worst at it that’s why we talk about we’re not good at it there’s um mindy calling’s book um she was the actress in the office for i don’t know

(51:06) what was it like eight years maybe um she said that every she said this was not just her she said every all the actors and actresses on the show they never got to enjoy being on the show because they were always worried it was their last season and then they were on there for like eight nine seasons and they didn’t enjoy it because they were always worried it was their last season and that was i didn’t even when i worked with mercedes i never even signed up for like flight miles because i was like it’s probably my last season

(51:34) anyways it’s so true that’s me today i’ve been with the same company for 10 years and every year i’ve been like yeah better just i remember last night i’d always be like nice knowing you yeah but jade tell me you’ve signed up for frequent flyer miles now yeah but i didn’t do it until like my fourth season with them okay such a bummer um i wanted to also ask you we’ve talked a little bit already about it but what it means uh to live mask free and how that benefits us in business

(52:05) relationship parenting self-care what else goes on yeah um so living mass free to me is the intentional choice moment by moment to drop the mask in favor of your face right and for me it’s really hard to communicate that through the lens of what we should do it’s easier to communicate in terms of what i should stop doing which is ironic cause i told you addicts don’t stop something start something i’m gonna ruin myself here but the stop and start thing but people will say well you’re not being

(52:39) authentic when you’re doing x i’m like hey nobody can tell you what authenticity what’s authentic to you i know what authenticity is because i know what it feels like to obscure myself and that is something i can detect far better than i can when i’m being true to myself and so i think that mask-free living is living with the question of am i being true to myself because we are such dynamic ever evolving human beings that have natural blind spots that that’s why no one can ever be 100 authentic because how can we

(53:11) possibly know who we fully are i’m sure you guys surprise yourself every day with different things as you’re raising your children as growing your business i’m sure that you guys surprise yourself and you grow and you go oh my preference changed or or my you know what how i think about this changed and so i think that it’s living with the question rather than thinking about it as a destination which obviously is something that i didn’t invent um but it’s living with the question of am i wearing a mask in this moment or am

(53:37) i actually being true to myself and and i think that that applies everywhere because the only time that we’re tempted to wear a mask is when another human being is involved but as human beings we need to be connected to other humans to work to live to find meaning and all that kind of stuff and every relationship has its own incentive and its own outcomes that are going to give us a reason to put on the mask and i think it helps us flourish reclaim a tremendous amount of energy and one of the things i don’t talk

(54:02) enough about because i have to pick my battles and when i talk about with this stuff but i think this is a way to incredibly accelerate growth because you know what like let’s say me being authentic means i’m an a-hole like if i if i keep the mask off i’m going to get some really really great data that’s incentivize me to change and so accelerate my growth in a meaningful way if i’m scared to admit that i have an issue with something i can ask for help if i’m not wearing a mask and i can

(54:25) just get it and not even worry about how i look and actually worry about who i am and so i think it’s living with the question basically is my answer and i think it affects us everywhere yeah and everybody i think that um something that jade and i do we have a little movement ourselves called keep it realish which the idea of realish is again you know being 100 real is not always an option especially when you are um working a job as a professional model for however many years we’ve been doing this and in the marketing industry generally

(55:06) there is a lot of fronting i want to call it you know there is a lot of fronting in every direction and especially as a female model in this industry as someone who has literally been paid to put on hair and makeup or someone put it on to me to make me look a certain way and the world is telling you that you know you plain by yourself isn’t good enough here’s what we’re going to do so that people pay attention to you so that you will be loved and wanted and all the you know this whole story that i’ve created

(55:39) in my own head because of uh my own domestications and and my ego telling me this this this bunch of stories but whatever the case is our whole culture and society all kind of sponsors it and makes it real right and so the keep it relish movement is is which our listeners know i’m sure by now but um it’s just a matter of where we post a picture or post something on instagram and then say exactly how it was edited or if it was um because the reality is that people in marketing are not going to stop editing photos completely they’re

(56:14) not going to stop you know making a video look a certain way and beautifying it because that’s what catches our attention humans are attracted to the shiny thing but if we can at least say how we are wearing our mask and why or whatever you know and clarify that it allows a little bit of a a sneak peek behind the curtain so to speak but really appreciate your work with living mask free because we get it like yes we that is what we’re striving for i don’t know that we’re there yet but hopefully we’re on the journey towards

(56:42) it as a whole community hey so wait a second though what you guys are doing is beautiful so i i would argue you’re not wearing a mask so when we create binary options of it can be completely touched up or 100 real and then you feel the need to conform to one of those and that doesn’t match what’s true to you i love the i love what you do i love i love how you’ve chosen to approach that because you’re working through your own personal value system and you’re coming up with what you think is the way that

(57:16) you want to operate in the world and you’re staying true to that as opposed to letting other people dictate because we can take really good things and make people wear masks with good things by saying oh you’re not behind that thing you have to be behind that thing when i gave my notice at the nashville entrepreneur center i had to walk around for three weeks and be the mask-free guy that lied to his employees about these plans that we were going to have and it wasn’t not i wasn’t wearing i wasn’t

(57:38) actually wearing a mask my value system was i wasn’t going to short circuit the entire search process for the next ceo for an entire organization that i cared about just by trying to be 100 transparent because that’s easier for me because i prefer to live that way no my value system was to be of service to the organization so i ate that crap and i didn’t i mean yes in some ways it felt like i was worried about i wasn’t i was to me i was living mask free because i was executing to my value system which

(58:04) was a lot more complicated that people don’t need to understand like i’m the only one that can tell you whether i’m wearing a mask you can’t tell me nobody can tell me same thing for goes for you i think what you’re doing is beautiful i think you’re being true to yourself thank you thank you we’re we’re attempting it and i think just in the case where you can feel like okay look i’m putting as much out there as i’m comfortable with and i’m saying hey i’m putting as

(58:31) much out there as i’m comfortable with period like the world accepting that and being like hey thanks for showing up today is i think what we all we need to do in order to in order to initiate this movement in that direction in the right you know in what i think is the right direction but again that’s me shooting on the world saying it is the right direction i don’t know like how am i oh we can go very deep on this we can go very deep you can feel like i can feel like i’m going back to the days where i took a

(58:57) hallucinogenic of some sort with the background that you’ve got and we can get we can get but yes i can go there with you too we’ve got a question for that later yeah we do oh man um you said something really powerful in an interview of yours i read in forbes um i believe you’re speaking specifically about relationships in the workplace and viewing your colleagues as as your community but i have a feeling that this idea seeps beautifully into the rest of your life as well so you said the definition of unconditional love is

(59:28) doing what’s best for you whether it includes me or not which hit me right in the heart so can you expand on that a bit man i’m not sure so i i was given that by a recovering act the one when i flew from california to tennessee i went to a treatment center out here in tunisia and i’d never been to tennessee i thought i was on the east coast um i was like like cowboys where are you um it turns out it’s not not the case and uh this wonderful gentleman named boyce who’s a recovering addict that picked me

(59:59) up and took me to the treatment center and he’s the one that gave me that definition and for the longest time i thought it was some really cool stuff that he was saying to try to look like really spiritual um and then i realized that in my life the thing that i’d always been looking for was unconditional love and it’s something that was really hard to find and it wasn’t until my 12-step community that i found it and it was there that i was able to see this in practice and see that regardless of whether an

(1:00:26) addict relapses or doesn’t follow directions we’re like we love you we’re welcome back yeah and it was really compelling to see us practice unconditional love with addicts that relapsed and came back with no judgment they never felt bad i mean if they did it was on their side but like just this complete i want what’s best for you and if you don’t follow my directions you don’t come to my meeting you don’t come to my fellowship i i want what’s best for you whether includes me or not and so i took that

(1:00:53) definition and just like with everything else i’ve done my recovery i tried to apply it to business and leadership and so when i built my first company in quicker that was the definition that i used in how i treated my employees and my team and i made a number of business decisions that were not actually great for me as the owner as they were for the employees but it’s because i was trying to live to my word of actually prioritizing their welfare so for example we barely could afford health care benefits i didn’t do a high

(1:01:21) deductible plan because i didn’t want my employees to to be at the doctor and feel like oh my god i have to pay a 200 bill and i want them to have a 20 copay i want them to have that to feel loved in that moment and so i made a decision where i sacrificed profit for a bootstrap startup to actually and you know roll out this benefit and and you know the abundance theory i think it works i mean i don’t think i’m actually paying a price i paid a price in the short term but i think in the long term everything’s worked out really well but

(1:01:49) i think it goes back to surrendering the outcome a lot of people will love someone with strings attached but we have to surrender right yes and we’re also controlling we want things to go we want things to go the way that we want them to go so we’re going to put conditions on our love yeah we’re not surrendering the outcome and when we step into that word abundance too right about that i think your your rant is um it really resonates with me because of the word abundance and when we try to step into that word you

(1:02:23) know what is the definition of abundance and i think a big part of the definition is enough to share and so the whole concept there is sharing it doesn’t necessarily mean you know blatant altruism where it’s like i put everyone in front of me and i don’t fill my cup up before i fill someone else’s but it’s it’s a matter of taking that that risk adverseness that feeling that we get that we’re worried we’re not going to have enough to build our empire that we’re not going to have

(1:02:54) enough to do whatever we think we need on this human plane to do with it um and kind of just surrender that okay but if i have what i have today and i can share it doing that could potentially bring not just not just like you know financial abundance something like that but just the feeling of the sharing is something that’s so um priceless it’s something that what we would call on our deathbed head you know like the the mindset you’ll have on your deathbed we would not be sorry that we did that there’s no way you will be

(1:03:30) sorry that you shared something with somebody you know but you would be sorry that you didn’t share absolutely also you you lose a lot of energy trying to keep the thing like i remember when i searched i was trying to practice abundance got like my higher power i call them god i’m not religious but um put me in a situation where i got to test it and i got my car detailed these are really great leaf in the pool problems but i got my car detailed and i was i was worried about money that month and i opened my wallet for the guy that

(1:04:03) was doing it and i want to give him a tip and i had a one dollar bill and a 100 bill in there and i absolutely grabbed the one dollar bill because when i went for the 100 bill i was scared to death and then i chose to override that and i walked away with a level of freedom of being a good human but also not blocking my true spirit that wanted to give him the 100 bill and i think at the end what i want to do with this money like do we really want all these things like i have things like all that stuff i want to feel good

(1:04:41) exactly so like it’s actually i could pay a hundred dollars for a piece of crap that i’m gonna throw in my garage or i could have given the guy the tip and actually that’s the one that i remember i don’t remember what i spent 100 on back in that time but i remember that moment and it gave you the feeling you were asking another smile on his face so i got to pay it forwards maybe he does it for someone else and that’s how you actually manufacture abundance i mean i’m not an expert i’m not deepak chopra

(1:05:04) but no i really love that it is true when we give it’s the it’s what we remember most i remember giving when i was 19 giving like most of my money to a family that i would see all the time and it was almost 16 years ago and i’m still not i mean i didn’t remember it until you said that but but i still remember it you know and who knows i i don’t remember anything else i bought that year at night right you know you remember the feeling attached to it of i remember the look in their eyes and the way they they um

(1:05:37) received it and and that i mean i’ll never forget it so yeah i wonder if we really broke it down to the psychology of what that feeling creates in us and why we become so attached to that type of feeling that maybe it’s because we’re were um again at the end of the day just seeking to be to be to be seen and heard as a existing being on this planet and if somebody is so ecstatic that you’re alive after you hand them the 100 bill for instance you’re like that guy who you tipped is like i am so thankful you’re alive today

(1:06:18) buddy like i am really stoked the guy who you know you sell the or who sells you the motorcycle or whatever at the store yeah he might have made a little commission he’s glad about that but he’s not getting a hundred dollar tip like out of just someone’s generosity so he’s not seeing you clearly you know he’s just like you’re a customer you’re passing through he’s not like seeing your heart and your authentic self i think also when life is doing something good it’s like there’s that feeling of

(1:06:44) like that’s really what were were on the planet to do and so there’s a that sense of um of what would be the word the sense of um [Music] incarnation uh i don’t know what the word is but there’s like we’re i mean we’re here yeah like we’re yeah we’re all looking for a purpose and for our calling but like at the root of it that’s what we’re on earth to do is like to be good to be a light to people and so when we are in that when we’re in that and we’re being selfless it feels right you know

(1:07:24) so yeah and it allows the energy to flow through if you want to get metaphysical yeah yeah what um does your daily routine look like i’m curious like do you have any practices or rituals that you attribute to your success in life in business yeah you know so um so routine is something that i know so addicts either really love or don’t but um for me i have a lot of experience trying different routines and either having success or then failing to follow and over the years i found something that really works for me

(1:07:59) um and i don’t do it perfectly and i have times like when i have my daughter where it all goes out the window and then i appreciate it when i come back to it but for me it’s about um the first thing is the biggest thing that i learned was no phone no work no digital when i wake up um i used to use my phone to wake up i was either curious or helped wake the fog out of my you know head but then i would immediately start chasing all the different thoughts that typically were fear-based for me um when i saw the messages or the opportunities

(1:08:31) or the news or whatever and then i was hooked into like what we call a hamster wheel just going around around and running around so i literally physically put my phone um on a different level of my house for charging overnight um so it’s physically away from me which is like terrible that i have to do that i put mine um the living room oh dude that’s awesome my wife will be glad to know that someone else does this so i’m not crazy um and so then for me it’s about um talking and listening um and so it’s about uh in our in the

(1:09:04) 11th step in the 12-step program it talks about prayer meditation is a is part of the maintenance of your request of your program and so um for me it’s about praying and and meditating it took me 10 years in recovery before i meditated i thought i would never meditate for three minutes and i was like screw that but like now it’s you know it’s a it’s a practice for me um but i used to pray and try to connect my higher power and set my intentions but then someone’s like have you ever actually listened

(1:09:32) i’m like oh okay maybe i need to start meditating and then i got a concussion um and then i had post-concussive syndrome when my brain was basically feeling like it was microwave for like 10 months while i couldn’t run my company and stuff and i couldn’t watch any tv i couldn’t be on a computer i couldn’t use my phone it was like the world said learn to meditate yeah that’s when i learned to meditate and so that’s been part of the practice and then for me um that’s that’s the morning and then for the day

(1:10:00) i’ve really learned um how to hack my productivity um i’m much better at creativity and strategy and introverted thinking um in the morning as soon as i’ve talked to other people i get into a more tactical mindset more relationary mindset and it’s not as easy for me to do creative strategic things so in the morning i try to keep the morning free to do that stuff and i do my meetings in the afternoons and then in the evening it’s i’m doing one of two things unless there’s like something

(1:10:31) unique and it’s i’m either at a 12-step meeting um and out to dinner after with my fellow recovering addicts or i’m with my wife and daughter that’s cool i like that breakdown and man it’s just blowing me away how how analytical your mind is first of all where you you see it’s because you can articulate it it makes me feel good about well okay i could see those steps and how they work and it makes it clear for me that that’s an easy um you know little program or routine to carve out for

(1:11:04) someone or myself because i need to implement a lot of those things you just said but i wanted to to touch on where you said about you know where meditation came up for you for the first time uh you said i think the 11th step um and or thinking about god and prayer and all that is that because you said you weren’t religious um and i know that a lot of uh addicts who go into a program come out religious sometimes or you know find their religion again or whatever it is what does that process look like or what did you witness while you were going

(1:11:41) through it for yourself um great question um and i’m gonna preface it by i i think that everybody’s um own relationship with god is there so i don’t ever think that my views are what there should be and right but um i was raised in a household where uh we there was a religion my mom was jewish my dad um was christian and they believed in religion and god and um i went to college and i was a messed up human i became an intellectual atheist and i’m like everybody that believes in god’s stupid
(1:12:11) um and then i got um into rehab and i saw on the second step it said in a a higher power basically and i’m like uh no no no no i’m not going there um and then they were like oh no you know what the higher power can be anything it can be the group you just have to believe that you’re not everything i was like oh okay and so it’s so the process that i learned was this this unfolding of really understanding my relationship with a higher power and what really helped me was when someone told me that my first higher power

(1:12:43) dropped me and that’s why i don’t want to believe it when i was like what do you mean how do you know they’re like your parents my parents you know they’re they’re good people but they’re imperfect people and i think a lot of us have that stuff we all have childhood stuff um and so then the second thing i said was i i don’t understand how god works so i can’t trust it and he said if your higher power is bigger than you then how do you expect that your p brain could actually understand it

(1:13:07) and that gave me the freedom to surrender trying to control my higher power through understanding my brain um and it allowed me to start to experience my higher power through my actions which i love what you talked about getting in motion because i think it’s we we do so much up here and so for me that became like i remember hiking with a friend and being like hey can my higher power be a woman because you know i’m in the i’m in the south so you know we have certain ideals down here i just offended a lot of

(1:13:33) people i don’t know yeah and so and so and so he was like yeah i was like could it be an animal and they’re like yeah it can be whatever you want i’m like can it change like yeah and and nobody had ever introduced the concept of a higher power at that level of freedom and that really connected to me and so i started praying and while be praying i’d be like making jokes about how stupid it was but then i after a while i started to actually see how surrendering to this even if it was placebo effect this

(1:13:59) concept of something larger than me was creating so many positive outcomes in my life that i couldn’t explain and so many synergies that i didn’t have to like grip to make happen right that i was like dude i don’t need to understand god i don’t need to understand religion i think i think there’s a higher power and i don’t even know how to explain it but i think it understands that we all think in terms of differences so it created all these different religions so we could all find our own path to it

(1:14:25) and i think that i just try to the only times in my recovery when i felt separate from my higher power have been when i’ve tried to understand right my higher power to a degree that is more than when i surrender good things happen yes there’s so many bits in there that i that i love um and i think that you articulate that so beautifully i’m surprised i haven’t heard you talk more about that actually i don’t want to shout on you but you should well so i appreciate so i’ll tell you like um that’s been a challenge for me

(1:14:58) um that’s been a big challenge as i wrote my book um god isn’t in the book but he’s in the dedication i say he’s it’s convenient um but uh so my faith journey is non-religious it’s 12-step it’s it’s this open-ended thing but it’s like anybody that knows me it’s at the center of everything but what i’m trying to do with these three principles is i’m trying to do the beautiful thing that the the people that created the 12-step program did so the people who created the 12-step program

(1:15:28) they took religion out of it so it was accessible to all and i’ve seen atheists go through that process and be able to recover and so i think that as valuable as it is to frame a higher power as god as a religious spiritual thing i think simply the act of surrendering to something bigger no matter what it is is such a powerful thing that i chose to let people find that as they’re wrestling through surrender the outcome and in my dedication it’s the first thing in my book so the first thing it says is um

(1:15:58) to my high power who i choose to call god i don’t know why you guided me i’m gonna get emotional i don’t know why you guided me um to leave you out of this book but you’re on every page and i can tell you honestly that for me learning how to see god’s will instead of my will i i don’t know 100 i i think i know my i think i know why but i don’t 100 know i think it’s so it’s more accessible but um i chose to follow the path and i’ll tell you a lot of my recovering addict friends were like really

(1:16:26) struggling with that just decisions like what we learned we learned the higher power thing like i know but leaders in business and and stay-at-home parents that aren’t addicts they don’t need as extreme of a solution and so i need something that’s simpler that just tells them what do i do right now in this business meeting with my kid like whatever what do i do right now and and i didn’t want to try to bring in that philosophical debate and and and truly it wasn’t it was an unconscious knowing it was that’s how i was guided

(1:16:54) and i still feel really vulnerable about it i’m kind of scared a little bit that like it’ll end up being a big mistake but i’m it won’t be if i if i chose not my will so right well it’s beautiful and i’m glad you’re sharing it here at least um and it makes me think of you know that going from i want to call it like a narcissistic way of thinking about the the things happening around you or you know first of all life happening to you instead of for you or you being the center of the universe and

(1:17:33) not having to consider anything else essentially and stepping into this other place that’s actually scary because it’s now not in your control if it’s in someone else’s control if you’re living from this other mindset of like this is my box i’m keeping it all in control um and and when you step into that other place which we call gray area on the show you know step into something that there’s a lot of fear around um you’re going to be humbled by because it’s something that you can’t really even

(1:18:04) consciously understand probably as the you know small self um and i like to call it because i i have a similar i guess uh upbringing as you when it comes to religion where atheist father uh catholic mother um went through a big stage where i was very angry at just religion in general like being forced on me when i was younger and all the fear that’s forced on you through that um and then coming to a place where you realize that there is this thing that you are a part of that’s much bigger than you you’re

(1:18:47) just a small piece of it um which is beautiful that you get to be a piece of it and i like to call it god or conscious collective uh or collective conscious or my subconscious even if someone wants to still feel a little attached to the narcissism my subconscious because it feels like it’s mine but it’s really like this collection of stuff that i can’t grab and hold onto and it’s very fluid but all of that like you spoke to i think does um formulate the story we’re living at the present moment so when we can really uh

(1:19:22) clearly start defining it and i think you do that through things like meditation and listening to your thoughts and letting the subconscious arise or you know tapping into the collective conscious or all the the words you want to use to define whatever whatever the process is and how it’s how it’s accumulating um we get to step into our highest selves or the higher self or and i don’t even like using the word higher because it sounds like we’ve got levels of this but you know what i know you’re saying yeah

(1:19:50) so and and i think beautifully you um spoke to the fact that humans see the world through differences i think you use and i like to say through contrast like we have to have the darkness in order to see the light and i think that goes for every part of life and when you start realizing those small little concepts it puts a lot of this into place so you you can label yourself you know atheist you can label yourself any religious title whatever it is um as long as you’re understanding that we’re all in this thing together i think

(1:20:25) that it creates the the bond that we all need to have in order to make it through you know absolutely and it’s and the world’s getting harder and harder i mean we need more and more genuine connectivity and we need i i really like the way you make it accessible though when you were talking about like the subconscious because like people have varying levels of need when it comes to being able to relinquish that control wow and and at the end of the day whatever con like whatever concept allows you to let go

(1:20:56) i think puts you into a place where you’re able to manifest your best self i agreed agreed we can agree on that michael dude you guys don’t happen to be 49ers fans do you oh hey we don’t watch oh actually don’t talk to jade about that i like colin king she’s a cowboys fan like colin kaepernick wait wait you’re a cowboys fan no no no no no i mean no i’m not i’m not a cowboys fan my kid’s dad is i don’t know why mercedes said that actually she’s got the cowboys cheerleader outfit

(1:21:28) that’s all i know oh yeah there we go now i know why you said that but not totally kindred spirits because you know a barrier boy myself totally 49ers fan i don’t even care if you like them or not if you have anything related to the cowboys growing up we didn’t like them but now seahawks so [Music] i honestly don’t really watch any sports except for mma at this point in my life sometimes some motocross that’s about it so as you get older you have to kind of choose don’t you you got to choose yeah

(1:21:58) you can’t you only got so much time you know oh dude i used to follow like every sport now it’s like dude football and that’s like about it and even then i really question like am i just am i just engaging in empty calorie intake and this is like i don’t i don’t know i don’t so but i i still question like is this is this worth the energy that i’m allocating to and that’s where um when i was in treatment they said mike you’re not going to stay clean if you over intellectualize so you’re going to need

(1:22:26) to go ahead and just bring it down a little bit let go and yeah let be some of it yeah no i feel you on that that’s something i don’t practice enough myself to be honest but working on it all right we’ve got a question from dougie on instagram who asks how can i help a loved one who is an addict or who’s dealing with addiction man so i get that thank you for that question i get that question a lot both online and offline um so i think we kind of thinks that like intervention we kind of know these

(1:23:00) things but um if you know the tv show intervention um so enabling um people talk a lot about stop enabling an addict um i actually like to tell you what to start instead only enable their recovery that’s it and so um for people that have loved ones that are an addict unfortunately there are programs and resources for you so that you can learn how to surrender the outcome when it comes to their addiction and the value of that is twofold one it allows you um to give them the opportunity to experience what they need the only thing that stops

(1:23:41) an addict in my experience is pain and consequences so anything that we ever do to even soften that a little bit is like digging a grave so the the key is is that let an addict experience their consequences and then always be there to enable their recovery when they’re willing and so the reason that we need to ask for help ourselves as they say addiction’s a family disease so the addicts addicted to the thing and then the family and the loved ones are addicted to the addicts process and that allows them to distract from

(1:24:10) themselves and they get to numb the same way the attic gets to numb the diax using this substance and they’re using addicts drama to numb from their own pain and code access these resources and what that allows you to do yeah yes absolutely and so there are 12 step programs specifically for codependency there’s 12-step programs for if you’re an adult child of an alcoholic if you i mean they go on and on but if you’re able to take care of yourself it’s like the um airplane oxygen mask then you’re able to flourish as a human

(1:24:40) and you are more capable of being there when the other person reaches out but here’s the thing that i’m going to say that is going to be really hard to hear and this is the thing this is the outcome that people need to surrender in order to be able to to focus on what they can control the odds are not good people think it’s all going to be a happy ending and that’s what actually leads them to wanting to okay i’m just going to give a little bit more money or i’m just going to help them with this

(1:25:08) and the truth is that you can’t control that it could be a very unhappy ending you can’t control whether you optimize that’s a positive one but it’s a completely counter-intuitive action that is required to make that happen it has everything to do with letting go and everything to do with not trying to control their process and start controlling yours and i don’t mean to say that with any lack of sensitivity but it’s i get calls all the time and i’m like man if you want your son or daughter to

(1:25:32) live the best thing that you can do is not withhold their consequences and take care of yourself and let them know that you will enable their recovery when they want it i like that um take care of yourself i um uh my father my uh both my parents struggled with alcoholism but my father was a heavy addict and um i as an adult chose addicts and was just trying to i was so codependent on them trying to get them clean as a way of healing my childhood so um it took me a while to figure that out that i was a codependent

(1:26:07) and then i started reading books on codependency and i knew there were programs and um that was when uh i stopped choosing addicts but i know that my codependency was enabling all of them so but that’s a level of work jade that like you need to be so proud of and and so proud of as a mother because you’re breaking a cycle just in doing that and yeah that’s rewarding don’t do that so many people don’t do that and i’m not saying it’s bad but it’s just like kudos to you for changing that and for recognizing that

(1:26:43) and for doing that uncomfortable work and as a result you not only get to have a better experience on this earth but so do the people that you love like that’s people need to listen to that because that happens a lot and it’s when you are healing the codependency because a lot of times i think like you said they have to um go through pain and consequences to want to change so we think sometimes like if we leave them they’ll get clean and we’ll get back together but that’s staying codependent so you actually have

(1:27:10) to do the uncomfortable work yeah i think it’s such a um like i can only imagine too you know being a mother of a child that’s dealing with an addiction or um i have a family member who is married to an addict and they have kids you know like it’s a whole it becomes i think that you said it’s a hard family issue yeah it’s not one person it’s how do you as the mother put your child on the street essentially because you know that’s what’s gonna happen you know in order to stop enabling um how do you wrap your head

(1:27:49) around that and i think the the for anyone listening i think you know the thing to remember is that it is way harder than anyone is able to describe in words because it’s an emotional process that you have to go through and that’s why the support that you’re talking to michael getting that support is 100 necessary because you’re going to relapse as the person who’s not struggling with the substitute substance addiction but who’s struggling with the codependent you know issue of wanting to

(1:28:20) create a safe place for your child in this circumstance or for your husband who’s an addict or whatever your thing is you know yeah um i was only speaking from a partner standpoint i can’t i cannot imagine if a mother is listening and her her child struggles with addiction um my friend that i brought up earlier that helps children uh helps people through addiction he said that he has parents call him moms call him sometimes and say i think i i i worry every night that my child is going to die because of their addiction

(1:28:50) and this will be the last time like you know that he even contacts me so i can’t i can’t even imagine i um and so i only wanted to make sure to be clear that when i was saying you have to do the uncomfortable work i was in no way trying to sound in um not empathetic to any parents that’s one of the hardest things that anyone could probably go through well this is so this is stuff this is tough stuff to heart to talk about because um i have a tendency and i don’t know if it’s you know me being an addict and not

(1:29:23) liking emotion although i feel like i’ve really developed it but i have a tendency to jump right into the solution and have a tendency to skip the um empathy part um space and time mercedes does that too well you know and i learn a lot especially having a daughter and all stuff i’m learning different ways to relate and and i think that i’m also so desensitized sometimes to some of this stuff i’m not i’m not completely but um i see it all the time and i i have always said i’ve had i have sponsees i know what

(1:29:57) it’s like to detach from somebody’s process and know that it’s going to risk a negative outcome and i never realized until i had my daughter and i stared at that beautiful little being in the bathtub that couldn’t you know lift itself up if we weren’t you know there doing it or had the little thing and i realized that this isn’t about the odds anymore and it’s not about the process it’s about amarette and when it’s no longer about statistics and odds and do this right thing and it’s about

(1:30:25) that one person um i’m only a year into being a parent and i can’t possibly imagine i know i can’t relate to what my parents went through and i know i can’t relate to what a parent goes through it doesn’t mean that the work is any different but to what mercedes said i think it’s recognizing that just like the addict is suffering they don’t need to um if you’re suffering because you have a loved one that is having an issue you do not need to suffer on your own there are resources and people that will rally

(1:30:56) around you and help share your pain shared is pain lessened it’s not completely lessened but you can get the help that you need and if you’re sitting there and you’re looking at the loved one you’re saying oh you really really need help if you just put the mirror in front of yourself you’re the person that you can help and in doing so you actually put yourself in a better position to help that person that doesn’t mean that it’s easy that’s why i you if the 12 steps of a loan were to

(1:31:21) get got people sober and clean we wouldn’t need sponsors we wouldn’t need meetings like we just said hey here’s the book it’s an online course see ya like you need the you need other people that have been through it and so like i have this list of all these people that i know that are parents of addicts so when i get that call i like i i send them to these friends because they love hearing from the addict that’s been clean a long time but no i can’t i can’t imagine what it’s like to be that parent

(1:31:47) and knock on what i hope i don’t but um i’ve got a little bit of time to worry about that but yeah it’s it’s a tough situation yeah one of the people chasing sorry go ahead no you’re fine um i wanted to ask about your thoughts on psychedelics and plant medicines um specifically because i know i know people who um actually used things like ayahuasca in order to overcome their alcoholism i have one friend who um his marriage would have ended and then he did ayahuasca and his he he became his wife and saw

(1:32:26) how he acts when he drinks and he felt her emotions and she wasn’t just trying to control him and he stopped drinking like that after that experience because he it’s it’s um the way i know that there’s rehab centers too that use um plant medicine because it it’s like it rewires your brain with the addiction and then i also feel like um with your with the other part of your work it it uncovers our truth and is potentially you know a catalyst to to living mask free um so carrie is your thoughts on that and i i also um

(1:33:00) as i was asking this question it it i remembered that um i had a partner that struggled he struggled with alcoholism and i was so angry at him for so long because i felt like he um uh had kind of abandoned me in the relationship and he wouldn’t give up alcohol like my father didn’t and i became him while on psych while on ayahuasca and i felt his like um his sister’s a despair but his um disappointment would be the word he was just the most disappointed man like i i was overwhelmed with disappointment i just wanted to get away

(1:33:40) from that feeling like i was i would have done anything i was like get me out of here i don’t want to feel this and then alcohol like poured in to me and i was numb and i was relieved and i was just like oh thank god i’m not feeling the disappointment and so for that was the first time that i understood not not that i’m um you know saying okay yeah just keep doing it but i i was the first time that i understood like how they’re it’s just running away from feelings and i couldn’t grasp it before

(1:34:09) because it before it was the like you said kind of the lack of empathy get to the solution and this time it was like the first time that i thought you just don’t want to feel that ugly feeling that i couldn’t handle for five minutes you know so anyhow i was just curious your thoughts on um the use of psychedelics yeah so i don’t i’ve been clean for a while i don’t even know what you’re saying with the ios um street name would be like dmt i guess yeah okay yes uh so man um i would say just generally speaking any

(1:34:47) instrument that develops empathy is probably very helpful um i think in general that allows us to see other people’s perspectives and relate to the world and then any mechanism that allows us to improve ourselves is really helpful and this is all my prefacing is because i don’t know what i think about that honestly um i i haven’t i haven’t really studied it um i don’t have a lot of people that really talk about using it and um in a medical way or in a therapeutic way um what i do know is um in the 12-step

(1:35:20) community at least my personal experiences sometimes you know we find this thing that works for us so here’s what i would tell you like being a 12-step person i’d be like oh that’s an addict shouldn’t do that that would be my thought process um at the same time i also know that in the process of becoming clean um i was taught that the only person that could determine if they’re an addict is the addict so it would be arrogance for me to say what somebody should do and then i remember when i had about four years

(1:35:47) clean i had two sponsees that both left the program that i’d worked through step work i knew all their horrible stuff they had gone through and they stepped away from the program they both chose an alternative method for recovery and i remember calling my sponsor and being like they’re wrong like the self-righteous narcissistic like they’re wrong i found the way you have to do my way they’re wrong they’re stupid and my motivation was i was i loved them and i was scared for them um and he was like dude

(1:36:17) you learned how to be open-minded in this program that you are not god that you don’t know all right so how do you know what’s best for them so what i would say is that for me um i don’t know what’s going to be most effective to help people in different circumstances but i’ve seen i have seen addicts use other methods to recover now the only method i’ve seen that works consistently is the 12-step program and even then the success rate’s pretty bad that’s usually because addicts don’t follow directions

(1:36:50) not because the program doesn’t work but that being said if there are cases where i don’t care what it is whether you’re talking about a psychedelic or whether you’re talking about someone talking to a teddy bear i don’t know why i made that up maybe i’m surrounded by my daughter’s toys um but but if if that if that helps you in your journey to to make better choices and to think differently in a way that helps you like i’m all for it and and i’m not a scientist so that’s a

(1:37:16) really long-winded way of saying i don’t really know but i wanted you to know the thought process behind it because it’s i think the most important thing is that i think a lot of times we find a solution and we want to club everybody over the head with that solution and i try to be really careful in recognizing that i don’t know what’s best for everybody and i encourage anything that’s working to be something that is uh supported and grown um i like that is that the longest non-answer you’ve ever gotten it’s gotta

(1:37:43) be like i said a record of some sort i don’t know all i do is literally talk through thought process that lead us to nowhere so no i feel like that was right on target enjoying the heck out of this like you guys are clearly like present and engaged and you really care like thank you it’s just the thoughtfulness that you have in the platform and the way you’re leveraging your platform is something that’s really really really awesome and then just like to hear the way that you’re thinking about life on life’s terms is something

(1:38:10) that i think more people need to hear thank you yeah well there are a few short questions we like to ask everyone who comes on the show so that’s how we’ll wrap up this episode so first off if you could hug your younger self right now what would you say um i’ve actually been asked this question before um and so i i had to think about it here’s what i would say i’d say you’re about to go through some of the darkest times in your entire life but it’s going to be worth it and the light on the other end

(1:38:48) will be something that you couldn’t have dreamed and everything that you’re going to experience between now and then over the next five years is going to be so painful and you wouldn’t have it any other way hmm how old were you 17 17. well i like that that was something we all probably needed to hear too because i feel like that’s a turning point yeah a lot of us if you could have the whole world read one book which would it be well i think i already showed my card on this one a little bit but uh brene

(1:39:28) brown’s the gifts of imperfections and daring greatly i’m gonna cheat because i see them as one big book that needs to be read um that book i worship her a little bit unhealthy you’ve seen her netflix special um i actually have not we were off netflix at the house so i’ll tell you swearing off i’ll give you my password so that you can watch it okay it’s so good it is so i could because someone showed me the trailer and i’m like that’s my girl they’re like who is she i’m like

(1:39:55) you don’t know who she is i go so good i’ve seen it dozens of times and i cried even i’ve got it i want your login because i want to watch it um i promise i won’t miss use it but like i’ll go do speaking engagements where i’ll be like so who here knows who renee brown is and sometimes like nobody raises their hand wow sometimes everybody does yeah and my heart when they don’t know but her book um gives some imperfections specifically and then during greatly it was when i was not the

(1:40:21) ceo of my startup it was a fast-growing company and i really wanted to lead in a way that nobody was modeling for me with my vulnerability and then specifically using my 12-step program as a way to build my culture at my company is a way to think about my growth as a ceo and i got shamed a little bit well i’d probably share myself but i got called naive and i got called that i didn’t know what it meant to be a real ceo and and so i felt really insecure about the path that i wanted to forge and it was when i read her book that i said no

(1:40:54) i can choose to take this thing over here and apply it in a way that most people think is not cool um and she’s the one that gave me permission she’s the one that gave me the language um and and the way to think through what is being true to myself and then and so like gives me perfection really helped me with that but then daring greatly i was like man i’m i’m supposed to do this and that was 2011 or 12.

(1:41:19) and so seven years later you know that’s like the centerpiece of my entire i’m carrying this message that that was really born out of reading that book so if i haven’t sold that book to you by now you need to go get it and read it because it is immediately yeah so anyhow i can keep going but no we love brene brown trust that’s uh that’s one of our our own personal favorites so right on with that cool i gotta see netflix back and forth yeah yeah that’s into her audible book and she’s so funny and she’s so she

(1:41:50) practices she practices what she preaches that’s what’s so beautiful about it i discovered her through a ted talk too i feel like i don’t know if it’s just me like uh projecting my own stuff onto others but i feel like the podcast community and this is also like a big stereotype but a large part is like the brene brown or ted talk watcher you know like that’s kind of their jam as they’re looking for information or they’re looking to self-help and self-grow love you fam all right so if you could whisper one phrase to

(1:42:23) everyone on the planet what would it be whisper one phrase okay do i have to actually whisper it when i say no um i just don’t want you to yell it that the worst thing about you can become the best thing about you and maybe it already is so hard to believe that sounds like a pastor turn your mess into your message yes being an addiction uh being an addiction being a drug out that was absolutely the worst thing about me and i was raised there was a tremendous amount of shame and all that and now you know it’s i

(1:43:04) don’t think when i do my prayers i don’t think my higher power for recovery i think my higher power for addiction because it’s walking around with a loaded gun pointed at my head that forces me to practice my program that continues to make me seek the things that you guys bring on this podcast that we talk about here if i didn’t have that loaded gun point in my head i wouldn’t be doing what i’m doing right now and i wouldn’t be worth anything to my wife my daughter and so it’s what i’m grateful

(1:43:29) for that is something i wanted to ask you is if you still live with the fear of um you know heading back into relapses of addiction normal question so uh no uh i used to so my first uh year i thought that this is gonna sound crazy i thought that um a like a beer or a pipe was gonna jump me in an alley somewhere and force itself down my you know into my body somehow um and so i remember being at a supermarket and thinking that if i picked the wrong cereal i was gonna relapse don’t even ask me how i got there but it

(1:44:02) was crazy um and so it was something that i was scared of but um you know once i got 10 years um a lot of the old-timers had told me that you know a lot of people relapse in the first year a lot of people relapse going from one to five and even from five to ten is a really hard time because people get all their stuff back and they get distracted but if you keep doing what you’ve been doing for ten years um it’s it’s habit so like i go to my home group and i got five sponsees and i do my i do all the stuff it’s my life and i

(1:44:32) enjoy it and it allows me to deal with life and life’s terms i’m not sitting there talking about the drugs so i don’t worry if i were to stop my wife and i talk this whole time i don’t worry about relapsing um i worry about becoming a human that sucks and then i worry about being connected to the people around me and my higher power and i think that i would start to do addictive things either become an ultra marathoner or become a wicked gambler or something to kind of deal with the life and life’s terms and i do

(1:45:06) worry that eventually that would take me back um if i if i’d stopped doing this stuff at five years i probably would relapse within a year if not sooner but i think at this point i would have i would it would take a long time but nobody’s impervious um and what would happen is i would i would generate so much collateral damage doing those things that eventually i would look for the thing that i know absolutely will make all the voices stop and all the all the pains stop so i stay vigilant frankly not out of fear though because

(1:45:36) i’m just i’m not worried about that um i stay vigilant because to me it’s the best platform for thriving absolutely that’s really good it makes me feel for some reason this comes up so i’m going to say it um someone who gets in like a major accident let’s say and they become [Music] you know unable to use their legs or something like that something super traumatic that happens and now they have their life is turned upside down because of course they’ve been a human who’s been able to use their legs and all the

(1:46:13) things that comes with that um forever and now they got to figure out how to acclimate to this and if they maybe have a tendency to go to substance to help them cope or feel better um i can see a situation like that really being like okay i’m what’s what’s it all for now and becoming so hopeless that they choose this addiction again and they choose this substance that’s going to make that all go away and i don’t know how you walk someone out of something that’s that’s that traumatic or how

(1:46:46) quickly you can or if you can save somebody who’s you know got this tendency to go to that place and i don’t even know why that’s coming up in me but it just love that you brought it up yeah do you have anything that that comes up for you and i bring up a circumstance like that extreme so without having gone through that circumstance i think it’s always easy to pontificate on what’s possible when you haven’t gone through it so i want to acknowledge i haven’t gone through that and it

(1:47:10) but i have thought through that kind of stuff and i’ve i’ve al but more importantly i’ve witnessed it in recovery and what we’re taught is um it’s an inside job and that our satisfaction in this world is going to come from what we do internally not externally and so i’ve seen people dealing with pancreatic cancer dealing with dealing with all kinds of terrible terrible things where they’re living in the hospital um and i i see that the ones that think of recovery as a way to not use drugs

(1:47:44) they’re the ones that suffer the most but the people that see recovery as a way to thrive in life that’s actually what helps them get through those things i’ve seen people lose their children i’ve seen people lose their spouses i’ve seen all kinds of terrible things happen and it’s the coping mechanism because i had a spiritual mentor that one time told me because i got i was really grateful i didn’t know how to deal with the success after i sold my company like i was like embarrassed and and i didn’t

(1:48:13) know what to do and and he was like have you celebrated it i was like no and he’s like well here’s a deal one is paralyzed and someone’s the lottery over a year they’re going to end up at the same level internally and i think there’s something tied in there around the hedonic treadmill and all that kind of stuff but i’ve learned for myself that you know what i have so many blessings today with the wife and daughter and and you know building a platform not like this but trying um that you know what so my happiest
(1:48:45) moments were when i was in the halfway house sharing a 10 by 12 room with two other dudes that like were really rude and talking to their girlfriends on speakerphone while i was trying to sleep like that was like peace for me so i’ve learned that the peace and the happiness comes internally now i don’t know what it’s like to deal with that circumstance but for for just this one addict i have no doubt that the thing that’s got 17 years would be the thing how to thrive in that circumstance easy to say though

(1:49:17) no but i mean like you said it’s a matter of putting it into practice so much that you become it becomes you you know you become it’s a part of you and it’s just second nature it becomes almost your new comfortable you know it’s like going to your new job for the first time this might be a really really subtle example of this but going to a new job that is really seems a little out of your league you know a little higher over your head than than what you might be actually qualified for and you show up and then

(1:49:46) you go on your first day and you’re like i think i got through that you know no one no one saw through my mask or whatever and you go on your second day and you do the training and you get through the training and then you’re convincing yourself little by little that you can do this thing and then at the end of a year you’re like you know what not bad they actually offered me a raise or whatever the case and eventually you’ve convinced yourself that you are this person now you are actually 10 years later a master at it

(1:50:13) and it’s become a part of you and now you are whatever the original job you signed up for so it’s almost a little fake until you make it so it’s like wearing a mask in a sense i don’t know i feel we’re so confident no just yeah i’ve been with you like this stuff like uh like and we’ve been an anonymous program so it’s like you put on a mask to take off them yeah there’s all kinds of interesting that is interesting dynamics yeah one thing you said though um in my book uh i end it

(1:50:38) with a story called the tale of two divorces and it’s about the year in which i had to divorce my wife not my current life um divorced my wife and my business partner and i lost my company like all in the same year and the reason i tell that story is it’s the year i stopped practicing everything that i teach and everything that i learned um and i thought that if i could just fix all these things around me it’s not like losing the mobility of my body right it’s not like but but it was massive like i didn’t know where i was

(1:51:09) going to live i didn’t know what my i did i didn’t even know if i was gonna be able to keep my dog like i was crazy and and when i continued to focus on all this external stuff and the wife and the business and the partner like i was so miserable and then finally like someone’s like dude you just gotta surrender dude like do what got you here and i went back to doing the stuff and then i was able to kind of detach from the outcome of all these things it all worked out pretty well um it wasn’t perfect but all worked out pretty well

(1:51:37) but like i still remember staying at my old sponsor’s house when i didn’t have anywhere to stay and thinking that that was a beautiful moment in my life that i really enjoyed not because there were great things going on around me because i remembered how to practice this stuff and so that’s like a that’s you know it might that might be a tried example too but like i think that might be a little bit relatable to some people and i just think that if you learn to surrender um and do uncomfortable work anything’s possible

(1:52:04) yes it’s like a little religion in itself i love it so much i like it i feel like we came full circle yeah in that episode like it was planned for the place so as long as you feel good about it michael where can we find you online and also where can people find your book oh thank you so much for asking so um i have a website michaelbrodyweight.

(1:52:29) com but because that’s a mouthful i actually set up something simple for your audience and a gift for your audience because that’s like what you do with podcasts um and so if you text mask free all one word two three three seven seven um not only will i send you my information but i will send you my mask assessment that’s on my website for a fee but anybody that comes through that card uh that word gets it for free and helps identify masks and all that stuff and obviously it’s great for me getting my word out um and then if you want to

(1:53:01) buy the book um it’s on amazon right now for pre-order and if you do um the pre-order you get the audiobook for free and so just go on amazon and put great leaders of like drug addicts i don’t think there’s another book quite named like that so it’s the best name ever for worse yeah great leaders live like drug addicts i’m so excited to read it too um you’re amazing as i’ve already told you before we started this i’m a huge fan of your work and i am just thrilled that we got you

(1:53:31) on the show to speak your magic into our listeners ears and into our ears so thank you so much for the work you’re doing for being vulnerable enough to live mask free and to show the world that that’s a possibility and for being such a light in that way thank you guys for the same it’s been an honor to be here and i’ve so enjoyed it you guys are beautiful and using my definition i love you guys thank you very much it’s been great cool so that is good i haven’t read it yet but i feel like your book’s gonna blow up

(1:54:09) i hope i’m a little scared but uh i’m i’m scared that it won’t i’m scared that it will but right elizabeth gilbert says she elizabeth gilbert is like you know the ted talks are impacting so many people yeah what’d you say about elizabeth gilbert oh i love her to talk about about writing but she says in that ted talk i think about how um like even when she gets a book that’s like a new york times bestseller she doesn’t enjoy it because she’s like well what if i never write another good

(1:54:39) book or what if nothing ever lives up to this moment and contrast yeah yeah yeah so maybe you’ll enjoy her i need to watch the ted talk but all my friends are like okay so you didn’t really enjoy the first company you didn’t necessarily enjoy when you did all the cool things at the ec and this is your life’s work so you’re gonna have to freaking enjoy this one and your daughter’s watching so what do you want her to learn yeah i’m like okay so i’m i’m gonna try so you know what this is like

(1:55:06) i can’t if i am this um i’m great for the opportunity to carry the message but you guys are just so thoughtful and i’m just gonna keep recycling compliments i am really touched by how you are spiritual warriors i really am thank you yeah so i don’t know how to end calls by the way i just keep like fawning over people [Laughter] you’re fantastic we will be excited i’m sure to get you on for a second time and i hope that your journey of your pr journey for this book and for whatever else you end up doing goes really

(1:55:48) amazingly smoothly thank you for being a warrior in the uh trying to figure out all the tech for this this episode with us yeah dude i need to figure it out for real man i’m gonna do more of this so i’m grateful that you guys were patient um cool if there’s ever anything i can do for you please let me know um and also if you personally ever run into someone that’s struggling with addiction and you’re like i need them to talk to somebody send me a note i’d be happy to talk to them that’s amazing thank you um we’re

(1:56:15) gonna make some promo material for this episode and we’ll be airing it around your probably around your book release early april like you mentioned um and if by the way if you’re if your team says that it’s they have a specific time they want to have it aired shoot us that note as well and we’ll try to um apply that as well so we’ll give you any promo materials we make of course and thank you then send you the info when this is coming out all that good stuff awesome is there uh outside of promoting it is

(1:56:43) there anything that i can do for you guys uh no just promoting editing it is really yeah that’s the best if you want to write a review on our podcast we always are happy to capture one of those and no dude i will do that because i just had a front row seat to it um i would pro i’ll i would promote it but i think you have more followers than i do i can do a review for sure and i will promote it to my mom and my dog that’s fantastic all the other five people they’re following all right you guys have a wonderful

(1:57:19) evening and you guys are beautiful thank you have a good night bye good night all right i really um yeah i really want to see his book blow up and um his message is just so pure it’s so clean and it’s just so crisp you know what i mean yeah that’s the thing because it’s truth it’s simple you know exactly it’s just the simple truth i love it um i love it so much i hope i know our audience will resonate with this but you know both you and i jade have a lot of um i guess history with addiction in our

(1:58:00) families yeah and so this topic and having someone here who can speak directly to it because he’s lived it uh is so i just hope it reaches so many people not just the people that are maybe dealing with addictions in themselves but also the family and the people you know on the sidelines we don’t even realize are being affected the way that they are i hope that they gain a little bit of perspective or insight or something that makes the journey a little more easy yeah great yeah because it’s such a heavy topic but

(1:58:33) um this was this felt hopeful at the same totally so um yeah what’s your what’s your magic for us today which magic so i was debating on i was trying to figure out how to do this magic trick because um i don’t know that like people struggling with alcoholism would openly click on this episode because like he was saying um addicts don’t really or people struggling with addiction don’t really probably want to deal with it right now unless they’re um in the process of overcoming but i also think though that like

(1:59:08) just because you’re not an addict or because your life isn’t being destroyed by a substance doesn’t mean that you um it doesn’t mean how much it doesn’t mean that like so i feel like a lot of people if they don’t really um i messed up john that’s okay let me just say this piece again so what magic do you have for us today yeah so i was trying to figure out how to um how to do this magic trick because i know that maybe not like the typical person struggling with addiction or trying to overcome

(1:59:49) addiction may click on this episode because they might still be like knee deep in it but i also know that just because you’re not addicted or just because it’s not controlling your life doesn’t mean um that like it should be in your life um i saw the other day it was like um you not wanting to drink is good enough reason for you to to like give it up it doesn’t have to be like oh well it’s ruining this for me or it can just be um like you know that it’s you don’t feel your best the next day

(2:00:19) you know something like that but i remember also um i was surprised at when i read um like the typical alcoholic drinks five drinks in a couple of hours or 15 drinks a week because i have so many friends that they drink 15 drinks every weekend and they just they don’t consider themselves alcoholics because it’s like that’s just their weekend that’s them cutting loose that’s them um and it’s so i guess the term would be like a functioning alcoholic almost you know and so i think a lot of us so it’s

(2:00:50) 15 for men it’s only eight for women i know so many women that have eight drinks on the weekends because they don’t they go to dinner they have four or five they have a couple glasses of wine at home the next day i guess you’re right mm-hmm yeah so it goes so i mean i just get so full off of like one drink i don’t know how but i think it’s just a different mindset on the whole thing anyway i mean i when i have dinner with a girlfriend i i typically she’ll order three or four drinks i feel so i mean having eight in

(2:01:18) a week is considered alcoholism um according to um uh i don’t remember what this i think it was alcohol.org to be honest i think was the link but um but yeah so so it’s surprising because i feel like a lot of people drinking is such a normal part of their life right and a part of their social how they bond and how they have um social encounters that they don’t realize that it is actually like functioning alcoholism i think we tend to think of well i’m not an alcoholic because like my life is fine i’m not suffering you know um so

(2:01:55) anyhow i if that was something that like when you heard that if you were like huh i do um because i feel like maybe people who are listening to this year are either long-term listeners or they listen to it they clicked on it because they know someone um who may be struggling with addiction and so um but if that resonated with you like oh maybe i maybe i do drink more than i realized that’s a good point yeah there’s there’s some little things that i um put here that can just help you cut back if if you’re realizing that you drink

(2:02:29) more than you uh yeah or if you don’t but you just have always wanted to cut back because you know you don’t feel good um so or the calorie content for that matter yeah there’s so many reasons okay your liver i don’t know that’s a known carcinogen for a pretty obvious reason it’s poison but whatever yeah anywho um so the first thing is put it in writing um either put it in writing or like announce your goal to somebody because that gives you this feeling of like um having something to be

(2:03:03) accountable to you know um and then set a drinking goal so if you if that when you heard that yeah i have 14 drinks or i have eight drinks if you’re a woman set a drinking goal too you know what i’m only gonna have three like maybe cut it in half so that you’re at least not um meeting the quota of being an alcoholic right that might feel better um and then um uh maybe keep it like how people who are trying to eat healthier they keep a food diary as cheesy as it sounds maybe keep a diary of your drinking and i know

(2:03:35) if you’re having 15 drinks you might not remember how many drinks you had but you know just try maybe try to keep a diary of it don’t keep alcohol in your home this is a big one for me if someone gives me a bottle of wine and i take it home i’m gonna drink it and then but then i’m not i’m i’m not like happy that i did so so don’t keep alcohol in the home that’s it sounds like a given but um and then for a tip for drinking less when you’re out if you are the one that tends to order multiple

(2:04:03) drinks um this sounds so silly but what i was reading is just drink slowly like so many people they like yeah it tastes good so they just chug it it tastes so good you know but um the big thing that they were saying is is sip your drink and never drink on an empty stomach um [Music] choose alcohol-free days um i know for me my addiction i don’t know if i guess addiction might be the right word but the thing i struggle with is always getting on social media to like um distract myself or to um tune out maybe so i’ve set myself

(2:04:39) um screen free days um and it’s more days of the week than i’m on screen um so maybe try that um having alcohol-free days um and then of course watch for peer pressure because i know personally for me i’ve had so many friends that went sober and they’ve announced it on facebook and you see so many of their drinking buddies because that’s their that’s how they stay functioning is because they need you to like drink with them that’s how they don’t feel like alcoholics because you’re doing it too

(2:05:06) right everyone’s doing it everybody has three dwis and so um i live in austin um so anyhow like don’t give in to that peer pressure because people not everyone is going to be happy that you’re cutting back because it means that they don’t have you as their drinking buddy so watch for pressure um keep busy like maybe um start jogging or start pick up hiking like do something that you know is is a good type of um filling the time um ask for support um like have an accountability partner like someone that you know wants to see

(2:05:42) you do better obviously not one of your drinking buddies most likely um and uh learn from the past so if you if you really think about your drinking habits and what came what good came from drinking if there was good it probably could have come from sober living as well um but so learn from the past think of reasons why you would want to give this up think of reasons that would motivate you when you are being tempted and then also i i know from personal experience with um people that i’ve been with in a relationship with

(2:06:20) when you stop drinking your digestion changes this is all like for the worse in the beginning okay because you’re dependent it’s like you stop drinking coffee and you get headaches so you drink coffee so when you stop drinking you feel like you can’t sleep you get you get night sweats yeah you can get headaches you feel like you can’t go to the bathroom like you used to um you [ __ ] up dreams because all your dreams are very memory bound you get super moody it’s it’s uh what’s it called um

(2:06:48) withdrawals you know you’re going through withdrawals you start getting snappy with your loved ones you feel edgy you feel anxiety of course because now you’re starting to feel all these emotions that you normally numb and so i don’t think we’re selling it here we’re not selling the not drinking here yeah it sucks right these are all the best things so the thing is is like expect that to happen and i know i’ve got to get through this point right the thing is people who start like they

(2:07:13) start on the mission to stop drinking that’s what stops them as they start to feel like crud right and so they drink again and that’s the thing then they don’t realize that it’s the alcohol that’s making them feel crummy because they don’t give themselves enough time to feel good right you know so give yourself enough time um and expect that you’re going to feel crummy for him for a little bit it’s just like any good habit that you’re doing whether it’s cutting out caffeine or

(2:07:38) whether it’s detoxing you always go through the withdrawal symptoms but you feel so much better after look at brad pitt like he looked like crap last year you see how handsome he looks because he stopped we would never say that about you he looked like crap last year i remember thinking like what the hell happened to him last week at the grammys i was like he lost like 10 years because he stopped drinking he looks so good so i mean like if if anything like giving up alcohol for 30 days it makes a such a difference on your

(2:08:08) appearance so anyhow i don’t know if that was a magic trick but there’s some tips if you if you’re trying to cut back on alcohol or if you’re trying to if maybe you don’t even really need to come back but you just want to cut it out because you know that you know it’s not benefiting you so yeah maybe my most annoying uh magic trick of all time but that was a magic rant not a trick but we really wanted this go i think it’s good though i think it’s um something you said about being social

(2:08:40) and having drinking buddies and stuff i think that that’s part of the addiction in itself is that this is a way we’ve decided that we’re gonna let down our inhibitions and bond and we can’t figure out how to do that without the alcohol or we just haven’t taken the time and energy to figure out which is about the alcohol we’re not allowing ourselves to be our authentic self right we think that alcohol is making us authentic it’s not no sitting on a drunken conversation it’s going nowhere there’s no depth no

(2:09:05) circles about nothing yes if you’re listening to this podcast that i’m sorry that i sound judgy [Laughter] i’m sorry move on that’s your magic trick all right y’all we love you we don’t want you to poison yourself or to do it into a place that’s harmful so take any bit of what jade said there to heart and also i just wanted to put a caveat before i get into my magic trick brad if you’re listening brad pitt uh we don’t know if you went to kim kardashian’s plastic surgeon and that’s

(2:09:36) why you look 10 years younger or if you stop drinking but either way do you brother it’s working just keep it realish with us and let us know what the real deal was there we need to know these secrets he got a hydra facial yeah what’s your magic trick brad okay so my magic today is coming from taiskai who we had on the show oh we loved her so much we love her so much she is incredible her whole hashtag is worthy women rise she’s just uh so great um she posted something that said re-parenting ourselves means releasing

(2:10:14) the expectation that as adults our parents will validate our feelings and i felt like this was related a bit to this episode just in the fact that if you have you know an alcoholic or substance abuse abusing parent or any addicts in your your early years especially growing up maybe you know even if you even if you’re dealing with that now this is something that really can speak to all of that but really can speak to anyone even if you don’t have you know a parent that went through substance abuse or anything like that um so she goes on

(2:10:48) to say on the journey of healing many of us may begin to realize that our parents harmed us during childhood in ways they may not have taken credit for as we process our experience of that pain now it’s understandable why we may seek validation from our parents in the form of apologies and or ownership after so many years of taking responsibility for things that we now realize was not ours to take responsibility of it makes sense we want our parents to make amends in some meaningful way to bear a share of the

(2:11:20) pain the desire is valid however we must be wary of waiting for other people to change or take ownership or apologize in order to heal and move forward this is where we’re invited to offer ourselves the grace we may or may not get from the others by being tender to our hurt parts to our hurt parts we do not need our parents to acknowledge our pain in order for our pain to be real i say that again we do not need our parents to acknowledge our pain in order for our pain to be real we do not need their apology in order to

(2:11:54) move forward we do not need them to change in order for us to heal we do not need them to change in order for us to heal um that’s really good so major man i don’t know why that didn’t occur to me before because it’s your whole story is telling your whole story from built from your domestications from your childhood traumas for all the years after that that you’ve continued to practice that story and run that background script has told you that that thought that our parents don’t have to change in

(2:12:29) order for us to heal or that our parents don’t have to cop to the you know hurt they caused us in order for us to heal it’s not part of the story you’ve been running so why would you have that thought someone has to place it in you so thank you ty skye for doing that for us today um yeah we i actually um i was thinking of her episode earlier just because um it is this episode and her episode i was i was really proud of her episode just because i felt like we really covered some important topics but

(2:13:01) um i’m really proud of this one too i really um i feel like it was it was just so um heart centered so yes and rigorously authentic yes um yeah so that was anyway you guys that was just a reminder you can love your parents and acknowledge how their behaviors have impacted your health it’s okay if you don’t love your parents because of the hurt they cause too so wherever you’re at on your journey we respect it we love you we want you to move forward and be progressive amazing human beings that are stepping into

(2:13:31) their highest so yes all right magic mob i want to give you guys a little reminder that uh what do i want to remind you of oh that we are doing a little giveaway for our magic mob basically all you have to do is leave us a rating and review on your podcast app you can do it right now while you’re listening to me speak and once you’ve written your review just snapshot it post it on your instagram and tag our instagram at the magic hour spelled majic so that we can see it and we’ll be picking a couple of winners each month to get a

(2:14:13) 100 amazon gift card yes thank you guys all so so much for tuning in and taking this journey with us if this episode held some magic for you please share it with your friends and family this would mean so much to us and don’t forget to join us on our instagram page at the magic hour and let us know what your favorite episodes have been so far we appreciate all your feedback and want to know what’s lighting you up yes and we release a new episode every monday so you can catch us again next week or go listen to some of our past episodes in

(2:14:44) the podcast library until then be alive bye thank you to at rayton royal for our intro jam and to michael for being on the show and to john aaron garza from real in motion productions for producing the show stay magical friends um push end oh wait yes