The Dark Side of Childhood Trauma: Michael Unbroken's Inspiring Journey To Find Happiness | DSH #59

did you repair the relationship with your brother?

Because at one point he wouldn't even talk to you, right?

Yeah.

That hurt.

I mean, that was a moment.

And with my other brother, too, I mean, context, we went to war.

Like, for real, for real.

One of them tried to stab me.

I pushed one of them through a wall one time.

I broken my hands on their face.

But you have to think, we grew up in violence.

If your language of love is violence, how do you think you're going to speak, act, talk, behave, show up?

And so my brothers and I, what do you think that we did?

There's a scar.

You can see it on top of my hand.

Me and my, it's small now, but my little brother threw a freaking brick at me one time over a pickup game of basketball.

Welcome to the Digital Social Hour Podcast.

I'm your host, Sean Kelly.

I'm here with my co-host, Wayne Lewis.

What up, what up?

And our guest today, Michael Unbroken.

What's up, my guys?

Doing well, man.

Building.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks.

Of course.

How's it going?

Dude, so good.

So excited to be here with you, man.

Yeah, I love what you guys do.

Crushing it.

Crushing it.

You've been keeping up with us?

A bit.

Yeah, yeah.

I've had a few of my friends on, and I'm always like, let's go.

Let's do it, man.

Give people the rundown on your story.

Yeah, totally.

The short version.

grew up in a super abusive household.

Mom was a addict, alcoholic.

She actually cut off my right index finger when I was four years old.

You know, so multiple skin grass, multiple surgeries.

You know, you hear hurt people hurt people, right?

Stepdad, super abusive.

Out of me and my little brothers.

You got to think, I'm like 6'4, 220.

He's beating up seven-year-olds.

He's my size.

You know, so spent most of my childhood homeless, deeply in poverty, lived with like 30 different families until I was 12 years old.

And then at 12, started doing drugs, started getting high, popping pills, drinking when I was 13, kicked out of school when I was 15,

got put in a last chance program, still didn't graduate.

You know, I'm running the streets,

guns, getting robbed, robbing people, running from the cops, breaking in a house, stealing cars.

I mean, like the whole chaos of all that.

And when I was 18, after not graduating, basically I went to summer school.

They go, here's your diploma.

Get out.

Let the streets handle you.

And I got fired from a warehouse job where I was putting microchips into motherboards all day because I came high and they're like, nope, you can't do that.

So I'm sitting in my car.

I was like, all right, hold up.

There's a solution in here for all the chaos of this life.

And I was like, it's got to be money.

And so I made a decision 18 years old.

I was like, I'm going to chase money.

I want to make $100,000 a year legally by the time I'm 21.

Legal was super important.

I've been in handcuffs more times than I can count.

Family in prison for life.

My three childhood best friends friends have been

like I knew where I was going.

Yeah.

And so that's what I did.

Ended up getting a job with a Fortune 10 company when I was heading into 21 years old.

Started making multiple six figures.

Made almost a million bucks by the time I was 26.

Everyone always says that, but they don't know this part.

I was 350 pounds, smoking two packs a day, drinking myself to sleep.

High from the moment I woke up till the moment I went to bed.

Still in pain.

My little brother, I call him one day.

He gets back from Afghanistan serving and doing his duty to our country.

I go, what's up, man?

What's happening?

How you doing?

He's like, what do you want?

I go, just want to see how you're doing.

He goes, don't talk to me.

You're not my brother.

Wow.

And that was rock bottom.

And in that moment, heading into a bunch of other very chaotic experiences in that window, I was just like, do something.

Do something different.

And I asked myself this question.

I was like, what are you willing to do to have the life that you want to have?

And the answer was no excuses, just results.

And 13 years later, here I am with you guys.

Wow.

That's crazy.

And that's what I can tell you in three minutes.

I can relate to that because

I kind of went through similar, but not as, obviously, not as extreme, but really similar.

My escape was money too, but

money isn't, I still had some internal fixing I had to do.

So how did you,

when did you start working on yourself internally?

So really, I mean, it started to play out when I was 25, heading into 26.

I had this conversation.

I hit this rock bottom.

Like my whole life's a disaster.

On paper, it looks great, right?

Because I got an $80,000 Cadillac and I got all the clothes, closet full of J's.

Like things look good on paper, but like my life is a complete disaster.

Like completely.

You know how people are shout out to today's episode sponsor hostage tape man this stuff's good bro i know last night i slept with my mouth open i really needed it did i heard it even uh decreased the blood pressure dude it's got a lot of health benefits for sure i've even used it and slept like five six hours and i felt so refreshed the next day wow when i do that without mouth tape i feel terrible yeah it stopped me from snoring too yeah yeah i can't wait to get the finished results because i know um i actually took a b4 pic and i want to see what the results are in a couple weeks how much face changes yeah i've seen some nasty photos of people with like fat jaws before yeah and then them using tape and it just everything lines up looks so chiseled afterwards it's actually crazy yeah i can't wait i'm excited but i definitely use hostage tape a lot bro yeah people that are struggling to sleep and you know feeling exhausted and snore i definitely try it out it's pretty cheap too yeah and it's really comfortable too it's really really really really flexible you can just kind of slide it on there we go

Well, there you have it, guys.

Hostage tape.

Shout out to them.

Link will be in the bio.

Check them out.

Like dying, and they'll be like, I think I'm going to be dead within six months or a year.

They know that.

That feeling is in their soul.

I remember sitting on my bed one morning and be like, I'm going to be dead in a year.

And it's probably because I was going to

like real talk.

And so I was like,

all right, either die or change.

And for me, it was like, all right, what can I do differently?

Everyone has always told me I'm not good enough, I'm not strong enough, I'm not capable, I don't matter.

Mom's a drug addict alcoholic, ends up dying legless in some town in Indiana you never heard of, never met my dad, like the world's against me.

And I was like, all right, what if I'm not against me?

And I just started doing the work.

It was go to therapy, get a coach.

Dude, I was so poor at this point.

I didn't tell you guys this part.

I made all this money, but I was $50,000 in debt, living paycheck to paycheck, making $15,000 a month.

You know, not knowing that my value and my worth as a human being was tied into how I took care of myself and all elements.

So I just started showing up every single day, doing hard things.

I literally borrowed money from friends to go to therapy.

Wow.

Whatever it takes, man.

Would you say therapy was a net positive for you?

Oh, yeah, for sure, because it helped me understand myself in a deeper way.

You know, for me, I've done every modality of therapy you could possibly imagine on planet Earth.

But I tell people all the time, if I can go back in time, I would have got a coach before I got a therapist.

I needed behavioral changes.

I needed mindset shifts.

I had the understanding, especially because I went into CBT, EMDR, Gestalt, men's group therapy, men's group trauma therapy.

Like I did it all.

But when I got into the coaching mindset space, really tapping into that world, that's where my life shifted.

Because it was like, wait a second, how do you learn to love yourself?

How do you build confidence?

How do you grow?

How do you become that person that you envision being?

And what does it take to get there?

And therapy, I will always say you need both.

I don't think you can have a massive transformation without both, but I think most people think therapy is a solution.

And I always look at it and I go, it's not the only solution.

It's a part of the equation.

It's a part of the puzzle.

So I would tap into therapy, but it would be things like yoga and meditation and breathing and like freeing myself of the chaos.

You know, there were so many dark images in my life.

Things like, to be honest with you guys, I'll never say this aloud.

There's a reserve for my journal and my therapist and my coach where it's like, I don't even know that sharing some of these stories helped the world.

But I had that space to share it in those rooms.

And because of that, I remember one time I was watching this movie.

You got a Jason jersey on, so you'll appreciate this.

It was one of the Freddy Krueger movies, like number 12 or something.

Number 12.

They make all of these.

And there's this part, I think it's called the Dreamcatchers or Dream Warrior or something like that.

It's like early 90s horror movie.

And they're like, this girl is talking about how Freddy is chasing her down.

And she says, somebody's talking to her, and she goes, well, you know, when you share your nightmares, they lose your power.

And so that's what I started doing.

I was just like, I'm going to share these nightmares.

See if I can take my power back.

That's a lot.

That's a lot.

What would you say the best way to deal with toxic household, toxic friends is?

Is it just leave it immediately or do you think there's there's a way to rectify it that's a tough one well yeah it is tough and it's contextual right because if you're eight you don't know better yeah if you're 14 you probably can't escape i couldn't even get a real job at 14.

so instead of getting a job at mcdonald's i was selling

because i was just trying to get some money like figure out what was next what was different well because you developed ptsd sean so the massive the toxic

So going through it from a child until you're 18 roughly, that's 18 years of trauma that you have to undo in order to maintain and keep this sanity in a society that's like fed up.

And here's the thing.

So it's 18 years of undoing.

Yeah, it's a lot of time.

You know, and people reference the Matrix a lot in personal development and the world that I exist in.

And it makes a lot of sense.

But, you know, the thing that if you tie into and you really pay attention to the matrix, people don't know they're in it, right?

Until somebody comes and they're like, hey, red pill, blue pill, do you want to escape?

Right.

And one of the things that happened for me, and this is going to sound really backwards, but like real talk, really fortunately, I was homeless as a child.

So I had to live with so many different families, so many different collections of people, strangers, friends of friends, church members.

I got to see what was potential on the other side.

Like, you know how crazy it was one time I was at this boy's house and he talked back to his dad and his dad didn't throw him through a wall.

And I was like, what the f?

Like, how is that possible?

And so, you know, when you're indoctrinated, groomed, and enmeshed into that chaos of those environments of what you don't know anything different.

You think it's normal, and then that becomes your normal.

And so, when you're a grown-up and it's like, now I'm in this toxic relationship, I'm in this abusive relationship, I can't handle my finances, I'm out of health, I'm out of control, debt collectors hit me up every day, and you're like, This is just my life.

It's like, well, how do you deal with it?

Well, dude, honestly, step one, you got to acknowledge it, Stop lying to yourself.

So you had a lot of PTSD from your childhood.

Oh, yeah.

Bro, I got all the PTSD.

I mean,

that's a fact.

It's true.

I can't tell you how much work I've done.

I coach both entrepreneurs and I like to call them civilians because they're not in the entrepreneurial space in the mental health, in this guide of like transforming trauma to triumph.

And one of them asked me in a session that we did about eight months ago.

It was right before my big conference.

He was like, how much have you really invested in yourself?

And I was like, everything.

All my money, all my energy, all my time, all my effort.

And I still do it every day.

Yeah, because I mean, even in our communities, therapy is like taboo, bro.

Like, to see you going to therapy, bro, they'll look at you like, what are you going to therapy for?

So you have these, now you have these, a bunch of angry men.

6'4, 200 pounds walking around full of anger.

Right.

So now they're walking past each other and you stare at them for just a quick second.

And now it's

what you're looking at.

See?

It is not you.

The best thing for you to do is keep walking because it's not your problem.

But as soon as you turn around and you start to interact, now you've brought yourself in this world.

And that's when he takes all his anger out on you.

And then that's when you got someone accidentally beat him to death or he shot him just because that's just anger.

And it happens in our community, bro, a lot.

It's probably the number one the number one reason why most people in our community the black community end up in certain circumstances is because of child trauma ptsd and we all not all but a huge percentage of us suffer from that most of us don't overcome it because it's a small percentage that actually take accountability So we have to learn to always forgive ourselves and then forgive our parents and what they don't know and the pain that they went through.

So it's, that's what the generational curse is.

It's passed down trauma.

Wow.

That's one thing they will pass down you.

It won't give you a house.

They won't give you a car, but you're going to get some trauma.

It's real talk.

And what I think is really fascinating.

So I grew up biracial.

I'm black and white.

Right.

And so I grew up both in the hood and in like the dirtiest, muckiest, white trash parts of towns.

I once had somebody call me black trash.

I don't, I never heard that part.

Like, that's a new one.

Well, that's right, exactly.

So I'm like a little white trash, a little black trash from Indiana, like whatever, right?

So you grew up in Indiana.

I grew up in Indianapolis.

Oh, Indianapolis.

What part?

In the city.

So I grew up right by the speed.

I thought you were going to say Gary.

I was going to say Gary.

That's very north.

I grew up in the Hallville campus area.

If you know it, you know it.

Yeah, I trust it.

All I heard is Gary.

And that's what Michael Jackson is.

Yeah, that's what Michael Jackson is so far.

And so, I mean, that's so far away, man.

I've never even been to Gary.

But, you know, you look at it, it's this indoctrination of pain.

Just generationally, it hits people again and again and again.

And it doesn't even have to be the big things, man.

It can be neglect.

It It can be your parents not taking care of you when you're sick and you need to go to the doctor.

Bro, it could be divorce, somebody in the family going to jail or prison.

You know, there's so many different things that, you know, it's a domino effect.

These singular moments in time can shape who we are forever.

And it's like the hardest part of that is when you pause and you look at your life and you say to yourself, how did I get here?

And then you rewind and you're like, well, of course I'm in a relationship where my girlfriend yells at me.

My mom yells you're you.

not.

Of course, I have debt.

All I ever heard was mom saying, Don't answer the phone.

You don't know who that is.

Right.

And it's the debt collector.

And so, you know, it's really this game.

It's such a matter because you're in this consummate journey of like understanding all the dominoes that have fallen to lead you where you are.

And it's like, here's your life, man.

Here's who you are today.

And here's who you want to be.

It's like that thing inside of you.

You're like, I'm going to take this risk.

I'm going to build this life, this community, this health, this wealth, these relationships.

But you're always being drawn back to who you used to be because it's comfortable.

And you got to start closing this gap

and build confidence by doing incredibly uncomfortable things consistently.

I mean, people ask me, how do you write books?

How do you have the podcasts?

How do you do it?

I'm like, because I just work.

I just go and I figure out the thing that I want and I move towards it.

And people go, aren't you scared?

I'm like, yeah, I'm scared.

Terrified.

All the time.

Terrified.

But I'm not dying with regret.

I'm not doing that.

what thing about me what i realized is that um i've been to more funerals than i have weddings wow i've been to two weddings my whole life wow i don't even know how many funerals i've been to to the point to where i don't want to want to go to another funeral i don't care who it is last funeral i went to was my grandmother's and i was reluctant on going to that because i just i don't want to go to no more funerals i've been to two weddings ever that's crazy in my whole entire life bro yeah so and i don't know why my parents took me to funeral well that was just it was a norm

They don't know any better, bro.

So,

it's an uphill battle.

It's always a fight when you come from certain communities.

And I didn't really learn about affection until I started being around other families.

Wow.

That's crazy.

Seeing like, wow, your mom kisses you.

Like,

that's crazy.

You know, so it's, yeah, bro, it's, it's a lot, bro.

Like, that's dude.

It's a lot, bro.

It's dark and it's heartbreaking because everyone wants love.

I mean, go look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

It's love, security, protection, food, intimacy.

And it's like, if you're denied that, how do you go find it?

Same thing, man.

My mom was never around.

My grandma was racist.

Like, imagine growing up a biracial kid with a racist white grandma.

And your mom's not right.

And my mom's like in and out of rehab.

It's chaos, right?

And so I was like, I'm going to go hook up with all these girls.

I'm going to go make all this money.

I'm going to get all these clothes.

And it never filled any gap.

Wow.

And then you got to figure out the game why people always i love entrepreneurship because you always hear we're gonna put you on game i'm like no i'm about to put you on game here's what you do get to the place that you can look in the mirror and love yourself and then you win life yeah everything else will flow pretty much after that so money doesn't even matter i give about money it does though it matters here's why it matters

access

and it helps you with your therapy sessions and you're able to produce a lot of more a lot more self-improving and then you're able to look at the things because then money stops being a chase and then the correction the improvement the whole time is you because money is really just something that we desire because we didn't grow with it yeah right so it's a for sure it's something we're chasing because we want to experience it because we see it so much on tv it's something that's marketed to you but then once you attain it the

the focus changes now it's like in order for you to stay here you have to change who you are because then you start to battle substance abuse because we have money right and then your uh spousal abuse domestic violence and then just abuse on other people now you're getting charged with assault because money only fuels it makes you more of who you are so you're in pain here money's going to amplify amplify that pain so now it's like you're the painful dude driving the ferrari

so true people cut you off

you want to pull your gun out you want to do all that

and god has granted you all these things so now it's time for like oh i got to do some self-correction or I'm going to lose.

I'm going to spiral.

I mean, wow, you know.

Are you a fan of Western medicine culture, like antidepressants and

stuff like that, to treat mental health stuff?

I think there's an over-prescription happening in the United States.

You know, I watched my mom lose her life to OxyCon.

You know, and that's something still, it haunts me, man.

Like, there were just these pill bottles all over our crib all the time, constantly.

She wouldn't pay our water bill.

Our water gets turned off, our heat gets turned off, we get evicted, but she always had those pills, man.

And so, look,

as someone who is deeply in the mental health space, I've coached thousands of people around the world.

You know, the pod does really well.

And it's like, I'm always a proponent of doing the thing that makes your life better.

That is not a crutch.

And so if you need pharmaceutical intervention, I'm never going to be like, no, don't do that thing.

But I'm going to ask you what you're hiding from first.

What's the fear?

Are you scared of being in your own thoughts?

Are you scared of being alone?

Are you scared of the potential that you have?

There are more people on antidepressants in this country than almost the entire world combined.

The most medicated country in the world.

There's only a handful of countries where you can even show pharmaceutical ads on television.

So the Fortune 10 company I worked for, I won't say who they were, but they're a healthcare provider.

And I was in insurance sales.

And so I used to be dialing for dollars at 21 years old, wearing khakis and a polo, just trying to make it.

And

the number of people, and this was 15 years ago now, the number of people who were on three to four medications then,

Xanax, Zoloft, I mean, Ritalin, Adderall, is insane.

And now I can't imagine it's not doubled or tripled.

And we live in a society where people are so quick to pop to the pill.

Where I'm like, wait a second, what if you went and sat in your thoughts and you figured out why you're stuck?

Figured out why you don't like yourself.

But more importantly, and this is the hard part, you can acknowledge it, but it's the taking action that changes your life.

You know, most people are terrified to take action because of shame, of guilt, of fear, of resentment, embarrassment.

And my argument is always like, most people need pharmaceuticals because they don't love themselves.

So how do you get to the place that you do?

And of course, I mean, there you go look at biology.

There are certainly people who absolutely need to be on pharmaceutical medications.

I would never take that away for sure.

Right.

And, you know, I believe that there are people

that I coach in my life and my family that are like that.

And I support that entirely.

My concern is more geared towards the people who are avoiding reality.

Right?

How are we numbing ourselves?

Is it booze?

Is it

alcohol?

I already said booze.

Is it?

Is it prescriptions?

Is it it shoes?

Like, I had a shoe habit, bro.

Oh, and shoes?

For real.

How many pairs do you have?

I'll tell you, I had a shoe habit.

I'll tell you a crazy story.

I'll give you the short of it.

So I'm 50 grand in debt.

I got this wall underneath my record player with probably 25 pair of Jordans.

And one day this Facebook ad pops up.

And it's for a Brendan Brouchard course.

Brendan's an OG

in the game.

He's been around longer than pretty much everybody but Tony Robbins at this point.

And he had a course for 50 bucks.

And I remember looking down on my shoes, the same shoes I have on right now, these Jay-Z, these $300 shoes.

And I had never invested one penny into myself, but I had this wall with thousands of dollars of shoes.

And I remember being like, well, I'm already 50 grand in debt.

I might as well just buy this course.

And that course did one thing for me.

It didn't like change my whole life, but it planted a seed that made me realize that if I invested in myself things could be different

and so people invest in themselves by going to the doctor and being like I have a hard day give me a prescription the doctor's like here you go because they get paid on the back side of it but is that investing in yourself it does it make your life better

for a moment do you feel like it does is a placebo effect like what does it give you i think it's a it's the lack of accountability that they're hiding from so i wouldn't say it's investing in yourself it's kind of running

That's the game.

You've got to decide that.

Right.

But

that's a fact.

Right.

So you've coached thousands of people through mental health problems.

What are the most common things you see with anxiety and depression clients?

Yeah, people feel stuck, man.

They're like,

my relationship is stagnant.

My health is stagnant.

My career is stagnant.

I feel like I'm not tapping into my dreams.

Like, I can't show up.

I sleep in every day.

I'm depressed.

I'm anxious.

Feels like the world's against me.

It's caving in on me.

I'm having three panic attacks a day.

Every time I take a step forward, I get hit in the face.

And I'm like, welcome to life.

Welcome to the club.

This is how it works.

But the people who pull themselves out of it, what I love, I always ask people a question when I coach them.

Whether that's a free coaching session or they join one of the groups or we do the one-on-one thing, I always ask them, do you believe you have the ability to change your life?

And I ask them on a scale of one to 10, do you believe believe you have the ability?

One being, yes, I can radically change everything in my entire life.

I believe it's possible.

To one being like, absolutely not.

This is a waste of time.

I don't even know why I'm here.

How many people say one?

More than you believe.

Out of ten, how many ones you get?

Two.

20%.

Most people sit a lot.

That's a lot to me.

Most people sit in the middle.

I'm a five or a six.

And how do you feel about those?

And I think about this, and I, no matter where they fall on the spectrum, so I'll give you behind the the curtain, the little Wizard of Oz here.

No matter where you fall on the spectrum, I always say the same thing.

I can't help you,

but I will show you the path.

And that's all I can offer you.

I know what it's like to hate yourself.

I know what it's like to want to put a gun in your mouth because I've done it.

I know what it's like to have family members never want to talk to you again.

That same brother helped me move here to Vegas, and we went and spent a few days having bro time.

Wow.

Right?

So you're talking about this massive radical radical transformation in which I close gaps.

And so when I sit across from these people and they share their most deepest,

intricate, and really dark truth with me, more times than not, Sean, I get to be like, I understand because I do understand.

I have been there.

You know, and there's a fortune in having been in a lot of these scenarios where I get to connect with people in this deeper way.

But ultimately, whether it's anxiety or depression or just the general stresses of life, I'm like, what do we need to do that we can transform today?

So many people are leveraging the idea of better, right?

They're like, I'm going to make my life better.

And that's in conjunction with the if, when.

If I do this, then this will happen and then my life will be better.

I'm like, no, no, no, no.

That's not how this works.

You start doing incremental changes now.

today.

What can you do in this moment?

And for me,

I used to smoke cigarettes, which is freaking freaking disgusting.

If you smoke, quit killing yourself.

You're dumb.

Stop it.

Right.

And, but, you know, people always like, well, I quit smoking a thousand times.

I'm like, okay, well, so you're a person who gives up on yourself.

You know, we know what we should be doing.

We know how to change our lives.

When you put your head on your pillow at night, like that thing that's in your head about what it is that you need to do, quit the job, start the business, leave the relationship, go to the gym, journal, yoga, meditation, get a new therapist, like whatever that thing is.

It's like, if we can give people permission, guidance, community, support, show them possibility, like, bro, your dreams can come true.

You guys sitting here did not get here alone.

No.

There's been support and community and reach out, but it started at some point, each of you.

I'll tell you right now, I don't have to know your stories to know this.

You raised hand and you said, I need help.

And that's what these people do

they get on a call with me.

Whether they're at a one or a 10, they've said, I'm stuck.

I'm in a bad place.

Show me the path.

And just like the Matrix, I'm like, red pill, blue pill.

What do you want to do?

Because I promise you, you open up this

amazing possibility of life that I can show you is in front of you.

If you just take one step a day, you do 365 steps a year.

You can't tell me your life's not going to be different.

What's your view on

how

impactful relationships can be when it comes to, you know, your love life and how some people may use that like as it

can be a control mechanism in a sense of take them left or right.

How, what do you tell people it's best to be single or work on it or what kind of partner would you suggest certain people have

when it comes to relationships?

Dude, that's such a good question.

Here, I'll give you a little context about my own journey.

When I was young, I cheated every relationship I had.

Just destroyed them all.

You were supposed to.

You're young.

I don't know that you're supposed to.

I think that's a really weird way to phrase it.

He's young.

He doesn't, I mean, you don't know.

But I didn't because I watched my stepdad do it.

You know, I watched the people in my community do it.

I had my dreams, the people I looked up to growing up was like Jay-Z,

right?

And I was like, girls, girls, girl.

And so, like, but really what it is, is I was seeking love,

admiration, comfort.

Somebody, I'll do anything for you if you love me for four seconds and then you have an orgasm and you come back to reality

and then you feel sick.

And so the relationship that you have first and foremost with yourself is the most important relationship.

So when I started this journey, I left a seven-year partnership when I was 29.

We've been together almost seven years.

I left the relationship.

I packed up my bags.

I moved across the country.

I stayed entirely single for years.

No hookups, no dates, no anything just on me.

Because I think you have to get to the place where you can, again, it's this is about loving yourself.

That's a fact.

Get to that place.

Love yourself.

Be willing to sit in that.

And if you can get there, then you won't be looking for people to fill you up.

Instead, your energies will come together.

It'll be symbiotic, and you will grow something beautiful together.

And since this, I mean, I've had good relationships.

I've had not so good relationships.

And relationships are really beautiful because as a human being, we need support.

But you have to heal.

Like, you have to go through this journey.

And I don't think you're ever like fully healed.

Like, I'm always going to be dealing with it.

You always show people that.

There's no such thing as healing.

You'll never be 100%

owning it.

Every day is just a process.

It's the journey.

Like, can I get closer to who I believe I'm capable of being?

And then.

What's interesting, it's both compounding, exponential, and reciprocal.

So here, it's like this line where every day you're taking these little steps, it feels like nothing's happening, right?

You're four years in, and then suddenly it's like, boom.

And then you look back at the last four years and you go, this is incredible.

And then you meet the man or the woman or whatever who's also at that level.

And your energy coexists together in this really powerful and beautiful way.

And so relationships are everything.

And they'll show you if you're dating a hurt person,

pain.

You're going to be in a painful, toxic relationship.

Yeah, compounded pain.

Yours and theirs.

Yours and theirs.

And that is the thing that I'm always trying to convey to people: is like, you can have the exact relationship that you want.

Like, right now, in this conversation, I am single because I know exactly who I'm looking for, and I'm not waiting until I find her.

I'm not settling.

I will be single till I'm 55 years old if that's what it takes.

And I think that's part of it because I'm good being by myself.

I have a going back to the people,

amazing friends, amazing community, amazing entrepreneurship friends.

Like this city is great.

And so it's like for me, every single day, I'm good.

Yeah.

Again, this whole game, guys, get to the place you're good with you.

And the universe, God, Spirit, Source will place everything else in front of you.

There's a zero fucking percent chance I'm having this conversation with y'all if I didn't do the work.

So important.

Because why would you want me here?

It's so important to do the work on yourself.

And I always put emphasis on that.

Like, you got to look at yourself in the mirror and and make sure you're straight, and then everyone else, you know, a second, but you have to make sure you're good.

You're the most important person in the room.

Don't ever let anybody tell you differently.

I say that all the time.

How did you repair the relationship with your brother?

Because at one point, he wouldn't even talk to you, right?

Yeah.

Look, man, I mean, that was

that hurt.

I mean, that was a moment.

And with my other brother, too, I mean, context, we went to war.

Like, for real, for real.

One of them tried to stab me.

I pushed one of them through a wall one time.

Wow.

I broke my hands on their face.

You got to think, man.

All brothers.

How many brothers, y'all?

I got three younger brothers and an older sister.

But you have to think, we grew up in violence.

If your language of love is violence, how do you think you're going to speak, act, talk, behave, show up?

Right?

My stepfather, my mother, my grandmother beat us viciously.

And so my brothers and I, what do you think that we did?

There's a scar.

You can see it on top of my hand.

Me and my, it's small now, but my little brother threw a freaking brick at me one time over a pickup game of basketball wow right that's the level of violence that we had in our home and so that violence turned from physical into verbal into neglectful into all of the things and it wasn't until i started doing the work started showing up and look people always like the work the work okay here's what actually happened i sat down i went

therapy i talked about the things that hurt i got in my journal i meditated i got in shape i quit drinking all the time.

I quit smoking all the time.

I became the man I was capable of becoming and I asked for forgiveness.

And then I paid my dues.

I kept showing up.

I kept doing the work.

I kept bringing them into mind.

Hey, what's up, man?

How you doing?

I text both of them just now before I even walked in here.

Spent two hours on the phone with my brother on Sunday talking about a relationship.

Spent four days the other day with my brother when he's here in Vegas with me, and we explored and had fun and connected and bonded.

But the journey was like, I'm not giving up on them because they gave up on me because I'm not giving up on myself.

And I simply looked at it and said, I want relationships with them, so I'm going to do what it takes.

And the what it takes element is painful a lot of the times because you got to be like, yo, I know that I made almost a million dollars by the time I was 26 and I never gave you a penny.

when you were struggling, when you were hurting.

I know that when you needed my love, I'm out here chasing all these girls and getting whips and putting rims on my car and I wasn't there for you I didn't call you back when you needed me and so it was like I gotta sit in my truth you talk about acknowledgement like this people won't do because it sucks like I'm never gonna sit here and pretend like

the perfect guy because man I made every mistake yeah but man life is iterative I've learned and because of those mistakes because of those failures I get to show up as this version of me

and I wouldn't change it for the world it's not that it doesn't suck but my god I'll pick up my my phone, call my brother Hans right now.

Wow, yeah, it's tough, powerful, you know, it's tough.

I can relate because we fought like enemies in my household, like we fought bad.

You had brothers, yeah, I had a brother, but it was 11 of us.

Whoa, wow, yeah, so my mom had you know, my sister and me, but she took care of my eight cousins.

So, we all grew up in the same household, so it was definitely um it was war, bro.

Wow,

it was tough growing up, like it was tough, and again, like

you you turn into an adult.

So now those kids, that love language,

you got to go outside with that.

So now you become a kid, getting suspended.

You run around with certain groups.

And you just,

it's that energy.

You know, it took a lot of self.

What he's saying is like, I damn near want to leave.

Because it's too relatable.

It's way too relatable.

It's too common to you find out to you around

a certain group of people and you find out that it's not normal what you went through.

It's not, none of it's normal.

It's not supposed to be like that.

Yeah.

You know, it's, you got to undo a lot of pain.

And like you said, you never heal, bro.

You get, you get used to

living with it, but you have to not be that person anymore.

You know what I'm saying?

Healing's this.

I'll give you guys a definition.

What's your definition?

It's very simple.

You only do what you want to do, and you never do what you don't want to do.

So many of us live live into everything that people say we should be.

Be quiet, walk on the right side of the hallway, stay in the back.

Be humble is the most nonsense.

I hate when people take it out.

Like, no, if you're a winner, be a winner, bro.

Give yourself, no, no, for real.

Give yourself your flowers.

Yeah.

Give yourself your accolades.

Like, shine.

I mean, don't be afraid.

Like, be like, I did some really good things with myself, man.

And then it's like the no thing is like, man, I'll share a quick story.

My best friend, when I was 17, he and I did everything together.

Grew up same neighborhood, chaos.

His parents were nightmares like mine.

He's three doors down right side of the street.

We did everything, man.

First time I got high with him, first time we hugged a check with him, like a whole nine, man.

It was like, we were best friends.

He calls me one night.

He's like, hey, man, I got the lock on some Coke.

We're going to go to the next level.

To the next level?

Well, we're at 17.

We don't know many.

Well, I'm 17, about to turn 18.

I'm like 18 in a week or two.

He's 16.

And he comes over to the crib and my heart, like my gut, my whole organism is like, do not do this.

Like, do not do this.

You, you got to go this other path.

I'm starting to see inklings of like what my reality is about to be at a deeper level.

And

he comes over and I'm like, I'm not going to go with you tonight.

And like the heartbreak in this dude's eyes, like I mean, real heartbreak.

This is my best friend.

We did everything together.

but he was crushed that i wasn't about to go do this with him and so he leaves

next morning i see his mom on the street hey did come home

i was like oh no i didn't see him

i was like oh

probably dead was he he probably got got wow and so another day goes by

and his mom's like oh did you hear about him I go, what happened?

What's going on?

Because she's not that like, she's not over herself.

I'm like, what happened?

she goes well when he was coming home the car the taillight was out he got pulled over by the cops in carmel indiana more cops per capita than any city in the entire country

and so if i would have been with him i'm not with you two right now because i would have been charged as an adult with like almost a kilo of cocaine

And he was 16 years old.

Wow.

And so it's really about trust yourself.

Get deep in it.

You got to learn how to say no, man.

Yeah.

You've got to learn how to say no, and you've got to learn how to say yes.

Yeah.

And not short, not long after that, I told my mother, I will never talk to you again.

And until the day she died, I talked to her one time.

And I'm telling y'all, like, this sounds intense and heavy, and it is, but I promise you, healing is this journey of learning to put yourself first in the healthy ways.

We're really good at doing it in the unhealthy ways.

We're great at that.

Most people are more afraid of success than they are failure.

Wow, Michael, that was such a powerful episode, man.

Yeah, it's been a pleasure.

It's over already?

It's been 40 minutes, man.

We went over.

It was not good.

Dude, it's been a pleasure.

I appreciate you, man.

Thank you.

Any closing comments for the crowd?

I always say this: you know, where you're at today does not have to be where you are tomorrow, but you got to make a decision.

That's something I need to work on, honestly.

Yeah.

Yeah, I need to be more decisive.

It's tough, man.

But I feel like, Sean, you actually do do the work.

You put the work in from a health standpoint, from a mental standpoint.

You take full accountability, bro.

Yeah.

Like, that's one thing about you, bro.

No matter what, like,

you're honest with not only yourself, but with everybody.

So I think you're doing a pretty good job.

For sure, but there's some relationships I should have cut off sooner, for sure.

They were pretty toxic, but I think I'm working on that.

And you've definitely inspired me to work even harder on it.

Yeah, that was a great episode, man.

Thanks for tuning in, guys.

Digital Social Hour.

I'll see you guys next time.

Peace.