Discover Natural Pathways to Mental Wellness | with Robert Haines

Michael: Robert, welcome to the show, brother. How are you today?

Robert: Awesome, Michael. Really appreciate it. Love being here with you.

Michael: Yeah, man, I'm super excited. You and I got to connect obviously a few months ago and your story and journey is for the space of creating transformation and like really following your dreams. I was like, holy crap. Like I have to have a conversation with you. One of the things that you and I share in common while one of us got to fulfill the dream and one did not is love for all things, fighter pilots, air force and aviation. Which I know we'll get into as we go, but you're living top gun, which like I'm sitting here like fanboying out that said before we walk down that path, I'm always trying to figure out the thing that makes people what they are. And so, I'm curious if you were to describe your childhood in one word, what word would that be?

Robert: The word that comes to mind is turbulence. Yeah, turbulence.

Michael: What does that mean?

Robert: That means periods of. Smooth air, but periods of very bumpy times. And I think when, as an aviator, we get into turbulence, there are times of discomfort. And you don't know how long this discomfort is going to last. You don't know how bad it's going to get. You don't know how much damage it's going to do. When you're in the turbulent air and you're just hoping and praying for smooth air again and looking for which direction do I need to go in my life to find that smooth air again?

Michael: Yeah, I feel like that's probably very common for most people in their experience. As you say that I sit here, I'm like, yep, that resonates. What did you learn about resiliency as a child? I think one of the really big things that kind of carries with certain people is their ability to navigate turbulence. And whether that be through the home or family, or I'm not even saying always that something traumatic has happened, but there's always a space for resiliency, for grit, for determination, to see through the thing that's in front of you. Where did that trait come from for you? How did you at? In childhood, to use the word turbulence, how does one navigate that in such a young age?

Robert: Yeah us experience childhood challenges, I would say, some are very dramatic. Some are dramatic. For, could be dramatic for me, wouldn't be traumatic for someone else. I would think for me, it was discovering very early that although I was in a broken home had a stepdad that, came with some trauma with that. I discovered at an early age, Michael, that I wanted to fly airplanes. And that discovery came when I was about eight years old when I went to an air show, like many kids, their parents drag him to an air show. I got to see Air Force airplanes flying and I was, it was game on for me at that point. So, for the next really 10 years, as I was going through different, periods of challenges, moving to different states, moving to different schools, mom remarried overcoming a lot of these new dynamics, new challenges. The one vision that kept me sane was someday I'm going to go fly airplanes. And that was how I built my resilience. I believe Michael is I had such a strong vision for what I wanted to do with my life. That whenever a challenge came along, it'd be like, okay, how do I overcome this challenge and get back to figuring out how to fly airplanes? And that resiliency was centered around my vision of being able to go do what I wanted to do, but yet had no idea. No idea how to go do it. And so that just kept me laser focused.

Michael: One of the things I think about, like when I was a kid, I wanted to be a rockstar, right? That's the only thing I ever wanted to do outside of join the military. And neither of those things would come to pass, but in my own right, I feel like a rockstar sometimes, being able to be on stages and share my message and help people. And today the vision I have is like very locked in, like it drives me probably to the point of like borderline insanity sometimes where I'm like, I see this so clearly that it pushes me in the moments when I really don't want to do anything. When I guess twofold, right? Cause I think this could be really practical for people. How do you narrow in on a vision? And then more importantly, how do you see it through? Cause like you're talking about a 0001 percent career, right? Probably lower than that. I don't even know what the percentage is, but it's chances are you're not going to do it. But you have to make a decision about the person that you want to be. So how do you lock in the vision and then how do you see the vision through in light of all the chaos that comes along with the mission?

Robert: Yeah. So first of all, how to see the vision through I think the first step really is getting clarity in our minds about what actually do we want to. or what do we want to accomplish? And that clarity really is one learning as much as you can about what that and, in, in my story what that profession entails, right? I want to go fly airplanes. And I want to go fly jet airplanes and I want to go fly jet airplanes in the air force. So, the first part was learning as much as I could about that life, right? What are they doing? Finding people that have done it, talking to the people about their journeys, and be like, okay what are the steps involved in trying to go do that? And that would, that was a period of years of discovery, and that discovery starts for me, and I think it starts for many others, is sharing that vision with people. With other people and not hiding it. Too many people hide it. Hey, I want to go do this, but I'm too embarrassed to tell somebody, or I want to go do this, but I don't believe I can do it. I believed I can do it, Michael. I had no idea how I was going to do it, but I just started communicating, even as a child. I want to go do this. So what do I have to do to go do this? And a lot of, most people said, I have no idea. You're not helpful to me. They're like, I haven't, I have no idea, but good luck. And I just kept telling people, hey, I want to go do this. And I learned a very important question to ask. At a very young age, it's I want to go do this and someone to respond. I don't know how you go do this. And so, I would ask them, who else should I talk to? Which is still a question I use today when I am talking to people about something at the end of the question, be like, who else should I talk to? And often they'd be like, Oh, you should go talk to so and that is such a powerful thing is to start putting the links in the chain together with this person told me to go talk to this person who told me to go talk to this person who told me to go talk to this person. And eventually I started to get closer and closer to the person that has the answer that I'm looking for. This is what you have to do. And once I found that person, which he said, this is what you have to do. I'd be like, okay, let me get started. What do I have to do first? And it was that clarity of vision, which never changed. But be willing to go talk to as many people as I had to talk to, to figure out what the actions I needed to take and then get busy, man. Start taking action.

Michael: Yeah, I think a lot of people get caught up in rejection though, because they'll sit here and they'll go and they'll talk to the first person and then the second person and the third person and by the 30th person they've quit. Yeah, and I think about this with a lot of frequency in my life where for most of the things that I've wanted to accomplish one, they have all taken longer than I thought they would. And two, there's been a tremendous amount of rejection in the process and this question, who else should I talk to? That is so unbelievably powerful because I'll give you a great example. If you go, you're working on your personal journey, you're trying to go down this path of self-awareness. You may find that you're sitting across from someone and you're asking them. Hey, where do I start? I see what you did and the answer may not fit you at all, and then you go who else should I talk to and I think that's a really brilliant point that people do not leverage. Because I have looked at my life over and over again And I look at it as this context of how do you be solution oriented? And ultimately any problem is going to be solved through other people. Like this idea that you can do things alone is so insane to me. And I look at your journey and your career, how important has it been? Not only when you connect to those people, but like to take action, right? Because here's my thought. People will hear this initially. And they will walk away having not done anything. And that means that we didn't do our job. And so I'm curious, like, how do you actually take action? What does that look like? How do you frame that into your life?

Robert: Yeah. Too many people get stuck on, Hey, I know what I want to do. I don't know how to do it. And we, so many people stop at how, I don't know how, so I'm not going to go do anything. You have to figure out the how, and if we don't know the how, Michael, someone knows the how. How is out there somewhere, right? We just have to go find it. And rarely does a how come to us, right? I think it starts to come to us when we start manifesting our vision of and communicating our vision and start to talk to people because you hit the nail on the head is, our success is, it's a team sport, right? It involves other people. Whether we know these people yet or not, but we know to get to where we want to go, it's going to involve other people. And so, we have to start connecting with other people, right? Which for many is scary. It's scary to go talk to strangers. It's scary to call someone on the phone or to send an email because we're afraid of that rejection. Just realize the rejections going to come right people are going to reject your idea or they're gonna tell you can't do it I was told many times you can't go do that, right? There's no pedigree in my family that ever did that before at the time when I was a 18 years old. I didn't have the grades to go do that. I was a fat kid, right? I wasn't gonna go do that And I believe I could do it. And I just had to keep asking the question of who else should I go talk to? I'll go talk to this person. And until I finally stuck, connected to enough people where I started to find the house, right? This is what you have to do. And I didn't know the hows, they knew the how. And when they started communicating to me this is what you have to do. This is how you do it, okay. What's the first step. And I think a lot of people fail at the first step, it's okay. Try it again. I think a lot of people give up too easily, Michael, right? They have a very strong vision. They meet the first part of resistance and then they, their vision crumbles. And we can't let our visions crumble. We can't, you own your own vision and that's something that no one can ever take away from you. If you want to be a rock star, you own that vision, right? If you want to be a pilot, you own that vision. If you want to go be an architect and build big, you Buildings. You own that vision, right? No one can ever take that vision away from you. And so, once you have that vision clear, powerfully embedded in your mind and you feel it, you feel emotional attachment to it. You start to project yourself living that life and you start to feel what that's going to be like. That is powerful, man. And that's where you start generating that resilience. It'd be like, okay, if you tell me, no, you're not the right person to talk to for me, I need to go talk to someone else, right? Who is that person? And if you tell me no, or you don't know how, you're not the right person for me. I need to go talk to someone else, right? The how exists in the universe. To accomplish anything we want to exist, we just have to keep asking the questions and being resilient enough, dedicated enough, passionate enough about what we want to accomplish to just keep asking questions and connecting to until we find the person that knows how, the how is out there.

Michael: I think about like when I first started building Think Unbroken, it was throughout this process of really just trying things that didn't work, right? My, my hypothesis was I could create programs that would help people navigate the mental game, the mindset shifts, and the practical tools that you need to execute against in order to create change in your life. What I didn't understand in the beginning of it was that People will do a lot of listening and not take a lot of action. Kids, what I think is so brilliant about children is that when they get zeroed in and focused, nothing interrupts their ability to get what they want. If you think about it, like as a kid even if you're a kid in a traumatic, space like I was, or like many people were like growing up and having a stepdad and a mom who remarries and going all over the place and traveling and all that, right? You, if you can get this almost maniacal focus, like about the idea that you can have what you want, the universe will support you in that journey. But you, I think you do have to have maniacal focus. I think that it has to be so important to you that you're willing to lose everything in the pursuit. How do you get to that point? This is what I'm always trying to, this is the solve for X. How do you get to the place where you have people who have never believed in themselves, start to believe in themselves?

Robert: It starts to me. To me, it really starts with asking questions. And what do we know about kids? They ask a ton of questions, right?

Michael: Yes, they do.

Robert: To the point where it can drive us crazy. I have, I have five kids and three amazing step kids. And when my kids were young, they ask tons of questions. And to the point where it'd be like, Oh my gosh, stop asking questions. It's but they're so curious. They're just, they just want to learn. They crave learning and they ask and they ask questions. But what happens is we start going through, School, you go to an elementary school, the class is full of people asking questions, raising hand, bothering the teacher, interrupting the teacher, right? And as we progress through different levels of school, we are told to stop, ask so many questions, put your hand down, stop, let me finish, let me continue the lesson. By the time you go to high school, you look at a high school classroom, hardly anyone's asking questions. Everyone is just sitting there listening, they've been told, don't interrupt, don't ask questions, and we lose that passionate curiosity where we just want to learn, we want to learn, we want to learn, just so I tell people all the time, just start asking questions go back to your two, three, four-year-old self. Where you're so curious about things and you're not afraid to ask questions and almost be a little annoying sometimes to be like, so how does that work? What do I have to do next? How does that work? What do I have to do next? Tell me more about that, which is a beautiful question, right? When someone is telling you something, tell me more about that. It gets, just, that curiosity that just drives us we have to get that back into our lives and just be willing to ask and ask and even be willing to ask someone where, they might not know the answer. Okay, who else do I need to talk to? Who might have the answer? Where do I go find the answer? The answers are out there, Michael, we just need to. We need to develop that curiosity of a three year old again to go figure stuff out.

Michael: So, let's go through scenario. ‘Cause I think this would be very beneficial when you're coaching people and you are helping people navigate problems. That's what people come to you for, right? Same reason they come to me. We're helping them navigate problems. Yeah. I present you with a problem and I say, Robert, here's the reality. I am. So clear about the vision that I want, but I can't seem to stop sabotaging myself. Like I know what I'm supposed to do, but I ended up playing video games. I know what I'm supposed to do. I ended up scrolling on Tiktok. I know what I'm supposed to do. I ended up going out to the buffet dinner, like whatever the thing is, right? What are they missing? What is the pattern interrupt that has to take place? Because in your journey, there were a lot of moments in which you didn't have to do the thing that led you down the path to having the life that you wanted. You could have went a different direction. So what is the, like when presented with these problems, like what are we needing to do to actually solve them?

Robert: So my experience working with business owners for the last few years when we, when they have a, when they have a goal and we talk about, okay, what are some strategies to accomplish this goal, right? What are you trying to achieve? What are some strategies? And the strategies are the hows, right? How am I going to accomplish this goal? And oftentimes, if we don't know the how, we go find the how. We go talk to other business owners. We do some research, right? We go try to figure out potential hows, potential strategies. And then once we settle on a strategy, okay, this is how we're going to go do it. And we define some actions. Okay, these are the actions to take. My discovery, Michael, is if someone is not taking the action, It is because they lack the confidence, either, either they lack the confidence that action is actually going to achieve the result that we hope it will, or they lack the knowledge of actually how to implement the action, right? And so they might tell themselves, okay, I'm going to go do this. But deep down inside, there's a tension where they don't believe that this is what they need to do, right? So they don't do it. They go play a video game or they go. Do something else, right? What I found is if we have the confidence that this is the exactly the right action that we need to take, and we have the knowledge on how to take that action, and we have the resources, if resources are required to take that action, could be money, it could be time, right? If we have the resources, we have the knowledge, we have the confidence, we're going to take the action, right? If we want that result, Big enough if that's the right result, and if that result is connected to our vision, right? What we're trying to accomplish if all those things are in alignment, right? We have the vision. We know the result we're going to accomplish. We know the strategy and what actions we need to take. We have the confidence. We have the resources. We have the skill set. Then my experience working with my clients is they're going to take the action. They're going to do it, right? If they're not doing it, 1 of those things is missing. And I almost, when I started working with someone, I am waiting for that moment, Michael, where we get to the action and it's okay, what action are you going to take? What does that look like for you? When are you going to get it done? When I follow up with them a week or two weeks later, it'd be like, did you do it? I am waiting for them to say no. I didn't right because that opens a whole door for me. I'd be like, why not? Why did you not take it? Because something is holding them back. And it's one of those things. Typically, I don't have the resources. I don't have the skill set, or I don't even believe this is the right action to take. Something there exists that is holding them back. So that we got to discover what that is right for them to get the action.

Michael: So how do you take it? You look at some of the elite top high performers in the world, the one thing they all have in common in their field of expertise. I'm not even saying across the board, because even for myself, I wouldn't consider this across the board, but as being an expert at what I'm an expert at, dude, I am a highly confident in my ability. How do you get people to build confidence? Like where does that come from? Because if that's one of the things, I think the how is pretty self-evident. Go ask the questions, find the answer, do the thing. But if you don't have, it's like chicken and the egg, right? You can't have the confidence if you don't have to do the thing, but you won't do the thing if you don't have the confidence. So how do you build the confidence? Where does that begin?

Robert: A lot of it comes from other people, Michael. I tell people all the time, if you don't, if you don't have the confidence, borrow mine, borrow some of my confidence is this is the right action and the right thing for you. A lot of that is social proof, who else has done this action that achieved that result? And we, if we don't have it ourselves, we've got to go find it. And someone else either you borrow it from your coach, you borrow it for someone who's really important to you in your life, or you borrow it from someone who has done what you want to do, has stood on the stage you want to stand on, has flown the airplane you want to fly. If did they do that and did it work for them? And if so, that's confidence enough for me to try it.

Michael: When you look at your life, obviously you've done some incredible things, but you've faced adversity and you've been in scenarios in your life in which the idea of coming back through them feels almost seemingly impossible. Can you talk through in your experience in your journey, like when you have hit that massive turbulence, A, kind of an example of what some of those experiences have been for you, and then what your process was in navigating through them, because I'm going to try to borrow some of your confidence right now.

Robert: Yeah, I'm going to give you a 1 that was a long time ago, and I'm going to give you one that's recent. So the 1st experience, a long time ago is so I'm in high school. I applied to the Air Force Academy. I got selected for the Air Force Academy, which is where I wanted to go. Because one, it's a cool place, great education, but most importantly is the highest graduates of the Air Force Academy got to go fly airplanes in the Air Force. And that's okay, if I want to go fly airplanes, that's where I need to go. When I arrived there, Michael, I was labeled not pilot qualified for medical reasons. I grew up in central Texas. I had according to my medical records, hay fever and allergies, which was at the time disqualifying to be a pilot in the air force. You cannot have hay fever allergies. And so for four years, I wanted to go fly airplanes and I was not medically qualified. But it didn't change my belief, man. I knew. I was going to go do this, right? I just need to figure out how do I overcome this obstacle, right? And for me at that time there, when I went to my graduation physical four years later, still not pilot qualified with my medical records and I handed them to the doctor at the time, he flipped through them and it says, and he tells me you're not pilot qualified. And I'd be like, I know what the record says, sir, but I do believe that I'm medically fit to fly. And he's I do also, cause you've been here for four years. We've never seen you in four years for any instance of hay fever or allergies. And so. he's like, where did you grow up? And I said, central Texas. You're like, I'll never forget it, Michael. He's son, it's like everyone in central Texas has hay fever and allergies. It's a seasonal reaction. It's like everyone has it. It's so it's not symptomatic to anything physically wrong with you. It is just your seasonal reaction at that time. And so. he stamped me pilot qualified. And let me graduate. And so I took that piece of paper pilot qualified back to my commanding officer. And it's sir, I want a pilot slot. And we were able to get 1. and so that instance is my belief was so strong. I just knew somehow this was going to happen. I just needed to find the 1 person. That was going to make my dream come true. Recently I had a very tragic accident several years ago that I should have died from, I was out playing golf, tragic accident, really weird situation, but I should have died from that. In fact, at the time, the neurologist neurosurgeon at the time be like, we don't know why and how you're still here. I ended up being immobilized for four months, staring at the ceiling. Trying to heal myself and I had thought at that time, man, I'm never going to go fly again. This happened to me. I'm never going to go fly again. And I was remember having a conversation with this neurosurgeon and he's Hey, I really want to, I'm not going to get into a lot of it here, but I really want to go do this surgical procedure on you because it is the fastest way for you to recover medically and physically. And he also said, I also know that you are a pilot. And if I do this procedure on you, you will never fly again. Probably right. At least not professionally. And so he's or plan B, we cannot do this procedure on you. See if you can heal naturally and organically, and then that would preserve the option of you potentially. Fully recovering and being able to fly again, but there's no guarantee. One is a short-recommended procedure. One is a very long. Very long procedure. And so I'd be like plan B, right? We're going with plan B just immobilize me and let my body heal itself, right? Without surgical intervention to preserve, hopefully with no guarantee that I'm going to go be able to fly airplanes again. So, we did plan B, Michael. So, I sat, I laid there for four months staring at the ceiling, willing my body to heal itself hoping that I would be able to go back and do what I love to do. And it worked for me. And I do believe the body wants to heal itself. It's designed by nature, to heal itself. We just have to equip it to do and so through meditation, through positive vision, through manifestation, through nutrition, just rich, healthy nutrition, I was able to equip my body to heal itself back to where it originally was. That was an incredibly powerful lesson for me, right? At that time, because my vision, I think, motivated me to do whatever I had to do to continue to live the life I wanted to live. But that started a whole path for me of self-awareness and self-discovery. And you and I've chatted a little bit about this, going down to Costa Rica as part of my healing journey, after being immobilized for four months, my wife and I went down to Costa Rica to work with some folks to really try to continue to accelerate my natural healing, without drugs, without surgery, just trying to equip my body to do what the body does and put yourself back together again. That opened my eyes to all kinds of modalities of healing with energy, healing, and different types of meditation and working with a shaman, not in a medicinal sense necessarily, but with working with a shaman from their psychology and their different forms of connecting to the universe and the world around us and using the natural elements of the earth, right where we all come from the earth using the natural elements of what the earth provides us to equip our body to be a strong and as healthy as possible. And that was a journey that I started several years ago and I'm still on. Just trying to figure out what man, what are we, how do we make ourselves as strong as we can possibly make ourselves right? Mentally, physically, biologically, emotionally, right? That resilience that can overcome any adversity. And I really think it starts inside of us, inside of our bodies, right? And how do we equip our bodies to do that?

Michael: I want to go into this a little bit deeper. I interviewed Kelly Gores who made the documentary called Heal. I don't know if you've seen this or not. It's an incredible documentary about the power of the mind and our ability to heal ourselves. It has Deepak Chopra in it, it has Joe Dispenza in it, Kelly Turner. Michael Beckwith, like a bunch of these people. And the hypothesis of the documentary is exploring the human potential through our own ability to eradicate disease through natural capacity. And this idea that I think is so striking to me about your journey is okay. So, on this one hand, you have a very systematic lifestyle that is built in practicality. That is based on the foundation of everything is documented. There's an SOP for how you tie your shoes to how you eat dinner, you spent all of this time in the military under that. It's indoctrination, Robert, let's call it what it is.

Robert: It is. Yeah.

Michael: And then the willingness. This is where I want to go with this, the willingness to be opened other opportunities for those who are actually, I'm going to stay with you for a second. I think there's going to be really practical. You're faced with a really interesting dilemma, right? Do something that is so far out of your comfort zone that it forces you into the unknown. And I believe that all growth comes through suffering and through the unknown. And suffering, if you look up the definition just simply means to be in discomfort. And so here you are faced with a critical life changing decision. What was the conversation you were having internally? To really, give yourself permission to try something different because here's what happens. So many people are trapped in this idea of this is the way it is and they can't free themselves from, this is the way it is. Is it your willingness to do whatever it takes? Is it because you have the vision? Like, how do you make that shift, especially after so much time in the military? I'm just trying to figure out how does one break their own psyche about dogmatic belief?

Robert: Yeah, that's a great question because I was in the, I was active-duty air force, 27 years. There was a right way and a wrong way. There was black, there was white. This is how we did things, right? And in fact, one of our core values in the Air Force was service before self. I put the service before myself for 27 years. I will tell you, and this, I'm speaking to many veterans right now that when you take that uniform off it is really starts a journey of discovering of who are you when that, when you're no longer wearing that uniform, which is your, for me, it was my identity, right? It was really who I was. You can look at my uniform and you can tell a lot of things about me. I'm a pilot because I have wings, right? I have my rank up here. I have my ribbons over here about all the campaigns I've been in. All the different things I participated in. It tells an entire story about me. When I take that thing off, who am I? Who am I if I'm not wearing that? And so that journey of discovery really started after I retired. from the Air Force and started to really struggle with who am I and what am I going to do now, right? And I think many veterans talk, or experience the same thing. And so, for me since I really didn't have the confidence at the time of really who I am outside of this uniform, I had to borrow the confidence of others, right? veteran support groups other people that mentors that have retired, 5, 10, 15 years ahead of me. I had to talk to them about how did they do this, right? What was their transition like? How do they find out who they truly were? And so I had to borrow their confidence that this is a journey worth taking, right? And this these are the steps you need to go do this and many of them recommended things for me to read a podcast to listen to meditations to do to really just start that self-discovery. So that journey has been in motion for me for several years before my incident. And I was, so I started to be open minded to, there's a lot that I, there's a lot, there's a lot that I don't know, right? About trying to find out who I am and interestingly, my sister had given me a book called cured by Jeffrey Rediger, another book about healing and the bat book really started me thinking about how we heal even before I had, my accident. And in that book, it's really about ER doctor, Harvard, I think it was Harvard ER doctor who was not satisfied as a medical professional about these miraculous discoveries or recoveries, people that have stage four cancers that are supposed to die that then heal themselves, right? The medical community be like that's an outlier. That's a, Miracle, right? And we'd like, no, there's a reason for this. And starting to understand how, yes, we have medicine and that's really important, but we also are very uniquely built and equipped and created to heal ourselves. And so people that have had these miraculous recoveries, there were some trends in these recoveries. And a lot of them were, they believe they were going to heal that power, the minds that heal the body. They just willed themselves to get better. They equipped their bodies with the nutrients and the environment and the rest, and the clean, water and all those things that the body needs at a biological level, right? To be as powerful as it can to use our biology to heal ourselves. And that was very powerful to me, right? And for four months that I was staring at the ceiling, I was as willing myself to get better. I had that very strong vision of being able to go fly again and being the best person I can be. And I just willed myself, Michael. And so that process has started. And then when I went to Costa Rica and was introduced to some really woo Psychologies and modalities about just breath work and different types of meditation and different types of yoga and different types of nutrients. I was really open to it, right? Because I had realized that there is so much, I don't know about myself. From a not just mental emotional state, but a biological state. There's just so much. I didn't know about how our mind and bodies work together. I was just really open because I saw the miraculous recoveries and others, or I read about the stories of others, or I was told about the stories of others. And so, I borrowed that confidence of, okay, I'm going to go down this journey. This has worked for others. It might work for me. And I was open to that.

Michael: Yeah. I think that's the move, right? It's Siri Lindley comes to mind. She was an ultra-marathon Ironman runner. She got stage four cancer and was on death's door. Like literally, and through the power of her mind and through the willingness of being exposed to these other ideas and modalities and nutrients and foods and ideas and psychologies. pulled herself will herself through that. I think it doesn't, here's what I think is interesting about it. Does it have to be life and death, right? This is what I'm always like trying to mitigate the risk for. Most people don't change their life until it's on the edge of not being in their control anymore. I'm one of those people, right? Many people know my story, my background where at 26 years old, I was rock bottom, put a gun in my mouth. That doesn't happen by accident. I think honestly, it happens by design. The universe says, look, you're meant to do something, but you're going to have to face the darkest recesses of who you are in order to do and it was only through my willingness to be open, which changed my life because I used to sit here, Robert. And I was always the guy, not only who was right, but I was always the guy who was the smartest person in the room. And I was always the guy who would say the most dangerous sentence in the English, in the human language, regardless of dialect, and that sentence was, that's just how I am. And so the willingness to be open is where transformation comes. What do you think is the greatest lesson that you've learned in your transformation?

Robert: To try to determine who I need to be, Michael, in order to become who I want to become, right? I think so many times we start with, Hey, this is what I want. This is what I want in my life. And we create this picture in my mind. It could be physical objects. It could be, a lifestyle could be whatever. This is what I want. Now. We ask ourselves, okay, if that's what I want, what do I have to do to go get it? I think the most important question is who do I have to be to do what I have to do to get what I want right to have what I want to have right and it really starts with who do I have to be? And to I live I truly believe in living with truth, with living with authenticity and being honest with ourselves about who we are now, but also being open to be like, okay, I can change. Other people have changed. If there's something about me that I don't like or is there something about me that I feel like is a barrier or an obstacle to me achieving that vision that I want to achieve, right? What has to change. And identifying that first, we might not even know how to change it yet, but just identifying, okay, something needs to change. I need to be different than I am now in order to achieve what I want to achieve. So, what are those differences? And then what Am I willing to do what I have to do to create those differences? And then trying to now discover how do I create those differences? Who do I need to go talk to? And what do I need to start doing? But being open to that, but I think being honest with yourself, am I, who I need to be in order to achieve that, to be on that stage? And if not, am I willing to change? Yes, I am. Okay. Let's get started. What do I need to do? But really just come to grips with who you are now. Who do you need to be?

Michael: Was that your greatest discovery about yourself?

Robert: It was, it was. Who do I need to be to go do what I need to do, right? Even as a child, I realized the person I was is not who I needed to be in order to go do what I needed to do or what I wanted to do. I realized that very early, and I think I started to realize that, Michael, because I had people around me who Okay. They understood my vision. I'm a kid, right? I'm eight, 10, 12 years old during this timeframe. I'm telling people, this is what I want to go do. And be like you're not the type of kid that does those things. And so in order to get to that point you need to go, you need to have better grades. You need to have math and science. Number one, be the best in your class in math and science. If you're not a, I was not a gifted athlete, I could run, go run, go join a team, go lose some weight, go work out. Go do the best you can be right. I'm not going to be number one or two in the team, but darn it. I'm going to go be the best I can be and just kept pushing myself and pushing myself. And then they say you need to go be a leader. You need to learn how to lead. I didn't know how to lead, right? And be like, okay, go join this group and volunteer to be the leader of that group. So, I did and I sucked at it, Michael, right? But I learned a lot and I was open to that learning and I kept trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Of all the pieces I need to be to go live the life I wanted to go live Or go do the thing and go to the school that was going to lead me To the life I wanted to live and so it was being one understanding I'm not that kid who's going to be able to go do that unless I make some changes I didn't know what changes I needed to make I started to ask questions people started to give me actions to take, I took the actions. Some of them worked, some of them didn't. You have to be willing to fail also. But I think that one question of, and I still ask myself that same question today, is who do I have to be in order to go do that, right? Because it's not, if it's a huge vision for me and I'm not that person now, what do I have to do to go do it? And if I don't know how, who does know how, let me go talk to them and let me go borrow their confidence until I have my own. That's, to me that's where it starts.

Michael: Talk about a formula for success. I look at that in my life where, because of the mentorship I've sought, the rooms I've put myself in, the investments, whether that be time, effort, energy, or money, generally, most of the time, all of the above, but it was always in the willingness to see if I could do it. And even still, I still have coach. I still have a therapist. I still have a mentor group. I still have masterminds. I still am always like, to be honest, Robert, most days, I feel like I'm just starting to touch my potential. And what's so fascinating about it is this whole process. If I were to narrow down everything that you said, it really comes down to just start. Yeah, you're going to be scared. Yes. There's going to be turbulence. Yes. You're going to get rejected over and over again. Yes. You're going to have near death experiences. Yes. You're going to have to change your dogmatic thinking, but ultimately you don't get any of those without the willingness to just begin the journey. Yeah. My friend, this has been. Amazing conversation. Thank you for being here. I know that people are going to want to learn more from you. I certainly do. But before I ask you my last question, can you please tell us all where we can find you and learn more?

Robert: Yeah. I appreciate that. I do have a website, robertmhaines.com. I am an executive coach, a business strategist, so you can find me there. You can engage with me there. You can look me up on LinkedIn or Facebook, Robert Haynes. I love just having conversations with people. I love having conversations with veterans just to help them discover who they are, what they're going to do in this next chapter of their life. It's so important, but you can you can just start at the website.

Michael: And guys, remember, go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com, look up Robert's episode for that and more in the show notes. My last question for you, my friend, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Robert: It means being resilient, Michael, completely emotionally, physically, mentally resilient. That is unbroken. You cannot break me.

Michael: Yeah. I love that. It makes me think of, there's also a Lib Talib wrote a book called anti fragile and the concept of anti fragile is very simply to grow stronger in those places. And that is resiliency. Robert, my friend, thank you so much for being here. Unbroken Nation, thank you guys for listening. Please share this episode with someone today who needs it. And remember that when you do, you're helping others transform their trauma to triumph breakdowns to breakthroughs and help them become the hero of their own story.

And Until Next Time,

My Friends Unbroken,

I'll See Ya.