Finding PEACE In Surrender with Nick Cavuoto

 Michael: Hey, what's up Unbroken Nation! Hope that you're doing well wherever you are in the world today. Very excited to be back with you with another episode with my homie Nick Cavuoto. Nick, what is up my man? How are you today?

Nick: What's up dude. I'm doing amazing, man. I am just grateful I am sitting in a place, in a pocket of gratitude and presence today, and to be here with you is an incredible honor and uh, so thank you for creating this space.

Michael: Dude, the honor is all mine. I could not wait to have this conversation after we connected cuz I was just like, it's very rare when I run across somebody, I'm like, Yoho, I understand that story. And so, we'll get into that a little bit deeper here in just a moment. But, you know, you spoke about gratitude and so I want to jump off there because I think that it' a buzz word, you know this, especially because you and I are in the same industry, it's a thing that people talk about all the time, and I have your gratitude journal, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I feel like so often you see gratitude just become this nonplus thing where it's like people are doing it for the sake of doing it. And so, I'm wondering like what role does like gratitude really play in your life and why does it even matter to you?

Nick: You know, it's the emotional return on investment of being divinely connected, and at the same time, I think of being incredibly present with the people and the opportunities and the challenges that are in front of you, it's just a place of saying thank you. And I've been in places in life where I've gotten sued and said, thank you, for no reason. Right? Like I could go through all the reasons why, and I'm like, no, this is a lesson, this is something that's happening for me, which was part of the catalyst that put me into personal development was having to go like, this transition from the caterpillar to the butterfly, it requires the formless depth of going into the cocoon of life and finding yourself as pure liquid DNA saying, Hey, God, universe, whatever the expression is that you choose for me, into whatever it is that life has for me next, everything in life that finds its way to you, it can be accepted if accepted, it can be a blessing and a blessing is the process of saying thank you to the life circumstances, situations, the happenings, the miracles, and the moments of that require fortitude for us to just open our hands and be a conduit of life to generously give in one hand to receive in the other gratitude is the ability to say thank you. And I think that that's one of the things in life that we miss sometimes is everything is happen, it's just happening, but it's happening for us. And that’s the deep meaning that it carries for me.

Michael: Yeah. I know for certain that's not where you started though. And so, I'm curious, let's go back, I always wanna, I've been working on asking this question and figuring out how to kind of build it into the context of conversation recently. And so, it's fumbling out right now but it'll get succinct as I go. I'm always curious about these moments that connect the dots and ultimately, whether we like it or not, life itself is linear the journey, however, is not, and that's what's really fascinating and we are shaped by the experiences of our life, whether we like it or not, many of us do attempt and try to pretend that that's not so, I have done that myself, it did not turn out well. In fact, it was disastrous. And so, I always think about the moments that were the most painful, that have actually brought me the most power. And the whole concept, the theme that I sit in is what does it mean to like, transform trauma into triumph? Right. And so, Nick, I'm wondering here if you rewind, go back to young Nick, to Nick at the beginning of this journey, what were one of those moments that life was happening to you that you've had to reframe into life is happening for you?

Nick: Yeah, it's an amazing question. The one that comes up for me is I remember when I was very young understanding, like becoming a father helped me understand my father so much better. And I think you don't really meet your father until you become one at least for those who are fathers who are listening, you know what I'm talking about. And those who aren't, you know, there's other likely moments in life of where we can find reflections, but there's just something deep that happens and there's a depth of understanding that brings graciousness and empathy and that concept of like, at least in my world, that my dad knew he did the best that he knew to do at the time that he knew to do it. You know, yet at a very young age, I watched my father step out of our home a lot, and that emotional chaos and the friction of abandonment was one of those things early on in life where I felt like life was happening to me. And I've replayed that movie in my head many, many times, and I've gone through deep therapy around many things of my life but this one came up a few times because at the root of abandonment is this feeling of rejection. And I never really understood what I was looking for, what was the anchor that I was hoping to see or to grab out and find protection and through the modality of meditation and going back to that moment several times. What I ended up figuring out is my grandfather was the person that I was looking for in the moments of my deepest abandonment life happening to me, meaning my father, rejecting our home, and leaving. It brought this place of a void of where I had to deeply understand myself and what part of myself was reaching out to my grandfather saying there's a sense of completion that's required here.

Michael: When I was young, I would lay in bed at night and literally cry myself to sleep because I never met my father, that's not entirely true. I met him once, I met him on my fifth birthday and he was a monster and I won't get in the details now, but it was not a great meeting experience. And I would lay in bed at night and I would cry myself to sleep time and time and time again cuz my stepfather was a monster, 6 foot 4, 250 linebacker size fucking dude who'd beat the shit out of a seven-year-old so, play that. Right? And I would just be like, God, why are you not bringing my dad to save me from this guy? Right. And I used to watch this movie, Richie Rich. I dunno if you've ever seen it or not, I fucking hate that movie. But I used to watch it ‘cuz I would watch him like this kid's dad is rich. Here's where I'm going with this Richie Rich's father was rich, but his father was never there. And so, Richie Rich had everything you could ever imagine in the world except a father. And I would watch this movie and it'd be incredibly envious of him not understanding and knowing the truth, he was actually in the same situation that I was. And as I fast forward and I look at life today, I think to myself actually, I'm incredibly grateful that I never had a father because the men in my life, the mentors in my life, this only guy, there are amazing women mentors in my life too, but I'm speaking towards the men, they have given me more than those other men who were supposed to be there, could ever give me. And so, when you speak of gratitude, especially in that arena, I go, yep, I get that. But there's a transition that has to happen, you have to be able to work through the resentment, the abandonment, the shame, the guilt, the hate, honestly, I had so much hate for a long time until I could let it go. And I'm wondering, Nick, like what was the transition for you? How do you go from, I am feeling so abandoned and lost and seeking to fill this void to being like, oh, now I'm a father, I see the reflection of the experience of life and I'm grateful ‘cuz that's fucking insane.

Nick: So, the pathway for me on going from, I guess abandoned and broken and feeling lost and directionless from a place of where I was seeking maybe that pillar figure, that fortitude in someone else certainly life has a way of bringing us back to the road of self, right? And the deeper part of ourself, which is living an inspired life, which is just living in spirit. And I think that that's now the lens that I look through and what I've found is that safety and that security and who I am, and that's really where I guess this story lands, is I had to go through the experience of going like, man, what was I looking for? And I realized that my grandfather, my dad was an entrepreneur, a fourth-generation entrepreneur. My grandfather was third generation, so by the time my grandfather was in his seventies, he was the one who actually was like taking care of me the most. My mom went to college when I was a young kid and my dad was working 20 hours a day. So, my grandfather was the one who was really that anchor for me. And when I figured out in transition of like, that was always a void, it was like a movie in my head that I didn't want to keep playing and I couldn't figure out how to finish it with redemption; like redemption and gratitude are always tied together. I just had like how my life was normal and then what the explosion of life was, but I never had a new normal, and that's what brings gratitude is defining the new normal and the new normal for me in that story was understanding the qualities of my grandfather were the things that I needed to actually end up accepting about myself. So, although he may have been the visual anchor at that time, if he was there, I knew I would be what protected. He was the first one who came to me and said, he called me Nicki. Right. It's like old school Italian family. He's like, Nicki, you're gonna be a star. You're gonna be a star. Right. He was the one who spoken to my life from a very young age, and what I did was I had this moment of adopting his ideas in adopting his care and compassion, the character qualities of who he was, and then just embedding them into my life. And there was a sense of deep completion there, but also acknowledgement that those are parts of me that I had rejected for a long time, that then I took acceptance of and took on the identity of those elements as well because having four children, I need to be a protector. I need to stand in the gap in those moments. And that's how I found gratitude was through redemption and becoming the thing that I needed the most and finding that within myself.

Michael: Hmm. And that's healing, right? Because that's the space in which you actually discover who you are. And so, I have a bit of a hypothesis about like what it actually means to go down this journey and it always starts with acknowledgement, right? And you acknowledge, you look at it, you go, okay, this is fact, not hiding from it, not running across ‘cuz some people like misconstrue truth, but reality is reality and fact is fact. And so, if you can look at fact and acknowledge it, not with culpability, but just saying, yep, this is actually what happened. It gives you the ability to actually explore within that realm. And when you're exploring, you can step into discovery and when you discover, you actually get to let go and when you let go, you actually start to love and that fills to be like the sequence of events that leads down the path that gets you to where you want to go. And I think it's really fascinating that you said that your grandfather would be like, Nicki, you're gonna be a star because in a lot of sense, like you are, and some people, have the ability to embody that thing that other people see in them. When I was young, people used to call me, coach kids, my teachers, whatever. But here's what's interesting about it, Nick, they did it in a pessimistic and in a, you're a loser kind of way. Right. Oh man, whatever, coach, get away from here. Why are you always trying to help people? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And to me it was always looking at life and I was like, I just want people to understand what I understand and that's like, you can do whatever you want. Right. And even though my life was chaotic and I did a lot of really insane things, I did those things with clarity and I always proved to myself I was capable of doing them. And so, now you're in this position, you have this really similar journey where suddenly in whatever sense of the reality you live in, you are a star, right? You're building these amazing things around you, amazing relationships, amazing family, and yet somehow, even though you go through this building process, like the same thing that I experienced, you lose it all. And I think that, losing it all, one, I would love for you to go into that a little bit. And two, how do you rebound from that? Because I feel when most people hit that space of, I've lost everything that becomes their identity and that is the rest of their life?

Nick: Yeah. Oh man. I mean, I lost a million dollars in two days when we were met with the pandemic in March of 2020 and it was an interesting moment because I can recall it very, very vividly of just like how quickly those phone calls came in and how quickly everything that I'd worked for about five years previously that I was building just got decimated overnight. And there's a very deep realization of like what's important in that moment like all of it can just be taken away instantaneously, but I can't give back the time that I missed or the memories that I gained, whether they were positive in building or whether they were challenges that I overcame, it doesn't make a difference like you were met in that moment with like how life is truly like a paper and how the things that you build can be erased and demolished in an instant. And how at the same time you can stand in the gap and if you can be unbelievably present and stand in that moment, you can go like, okay, what do I believe? You know, ‘cuz events are always gonna happen in our lives and the path that most people take is those events are immediately followed by a feeling. So, if I lose a million dollars in two days, I'm a loser? That I have nothing to offer the world? That everything and everyone is out to get me? Hell no! Thankfully I had done the work to sit there and say, what do I believe? I believe that everything happening in and out of its season, it's here as a benefit to me. I believe that God has called me to be a conduit of the world, to give in one hand, to receive in the other, and to be a blessing to other people. I believe that every single person who comes into my life is for me and the ones who are not the life lessons will be learned. You know, I had to move into my beliefs as the filter of the emotions that I was experiencing. And here's the deal, the emotions of our life are treasured, like treasured part of human experience, they are so treasured that they should have a lock on them, that they should be protected and insulated ‘cuz that's the treasure of your life. So, I've just watched most people walk through life and what happens event, what does that determine? Their feeling. Ah, poor me. And they live a poor me life, they live a victim mentality, they live in that world of not enough and then their beliefs just confirm the emotions that they've already projected out into the world, that's the emotional return on investment is like if an event happens and your emotion follows, well, guess what? Your beliefs are gonna solidify your perspective. So, I found a better way, and I met with a Dallas monk who changed my life, I mean, this happened, he's 45 years a psychologist, incredible guy. And he said this, he said, if Nick, if you can replace after events that happened in your life, if you can replace those events, followed by your beliefs and not your feelings, it'll change your life. And that simple formula changed everything.

And so, in that moment, I was prepared to go like, where's my book with my beliefs? Where's my book of beliefs? Where is it? Because I had like 10, I'd write down, right? And in any moment when I felt like I was struggling, I would just go back to that book. I’d go back to that book; I'd go back to that book. And many things have happened since then and guess what? Those beliefs, they still stand true from two years ago, they still, almost three years ago, they still stand true. And so, that's my call really for people today is like you're gonna have events that are gonna happen in your life if you allow your emotions to immediately follow your events, you're always gonna be like a feather blowing in the wind, and you're always gonna allow the beliefs that you carry, which are really rooted in a lot of identity. Those things are gonna be solidified by the waves of your emotion. And so, my call to you is to allow your beliefs to be the grand filter of your life, to allow events to happen, cuz they always will. But my first question after a hard event is, well, what do you believe about this situation? So as long as it's rooted in truth, honesty, and integrity, and not criticism, comparison and judgment, you will find the life lesson very quickly and you will live a redeemed life.

Michael: I think about the transition that I had in my own belief system. And the reality is, and you can look at research on this, your zip code is a higher indicator of success than anything else in this country. There is a lot of fact that points to the reality that I should be dead or in jail, and let's be clear, I've put myself in many, many, many situations where that should have come to past. Right. Call it God, spirit, universe, Batman, mother, nature. I don't know. For some reason I'm here. For some reason, I'm here and the only reason I've been able to prosper for what it means for me is I did have to change my belief systems, Nick, because I believed this ‘cuz this was embedded, ingrained, enmeshed, and groomed into me that I was stupid, that I was dumb, that I was unlovable, that I would never mean anything, that I would never amount to anything and this started with my parents, right? So, you tack that on, you tack on your community, you tack on all the things that then reinforced it, which are really your behaviors, and I've sabotaged everything for years, relationships, friendships, community, anything I could do to make sure my wall was so high that no trebuchet on planet Earth could ever break it down, right? And what I discovered is the more that I sat in the hurt, holding on to the feelings, which I love, you're talking about holding onto these feelings of angst, anger, hurt, resentment, shame, guilt the more I watched my life be that. And the thing that happened that transitioned everything that transmuted this caterpillar to the butterfly for me, since we're in this analogy, was I sat and I was like, is that shit true? Is it true? And the biggest truism that I discovered was that the answer was unequivocally no, it can't be true that I'm not worthy of having the things that I want because if that were in fact the case, I wouldn't be here to begin with. And in that came this incredible sense of freedom and I started just thinking, why can't I have this? Why can't I have this? And it's not that it's not work and it's not necessarily material that this is living an embodied life based on the principles, the integrity, the values, and the boundaries that I have. And the biggest one was the shift of just being like, no, I can't. If all the beliefs I've ever had, that's the one. And so, I'm curious, what was the biggest belief change and shift for you? How does Nick step into that?

Nick: That's a good question. I'm gonna sit with that for a minute. I think the biggest belief shift that I had to make was the visual that I'm getting in my head is a labyrinth. And it's the concept that life feels like a maze, but it's not it's more like a labyrinth you actually come out the same door that you went in. And although I spent a lot of times as an anti-theist after kind of rejecting a lot of my foundational faith, I found a way to make peace with it and allow it to be something that's wildly empowering to me. But I think the thing that I had to believe that is, like, if God said it, then I believe it. If there's something deeper in me that's connected to source, that I can trust my intuition on it deeply, deeply, trust my intuition on it and follow that in almost a blissful state of allowing the dominoes to tip so, as they please, and where they please. To believe, I think on a deeper level now, it's really hitting me of the solidified promise when I was 12 years old that I had from that still small voice that sits within all of us that just said, no matter what you do, you'll be successful, doesn't matter what you do, like you've already won. And I think that when we get into a place of having a lot of BS in our lives, and what I mean by that are like a lot of bad stories and a lot of broken systems around the way that we think things work. We have to find ourselves back to the eternal truths that we believed when we were in that child state of imagination and wonder and awe and those were the ones that I believed that at the end of the day, my faith system of what I was brought up with suggests that we can accomplish more than we could ever even imagine, that we can bet on a tiny seed and say to a mountain, be removed and it could happen. Now I know that everybody doesn't agree, this is just my dialect. It's like an accent, right? Like these are the truths I was raised in. So, when I come back to foundational truths, they allow me to activate my belief, I think in a different way. And the one other thing that I'll mention, and this is a more of a recent realization, although the one that I talked to you about was the cornerstone absolutely.

The secondary one that I've been expressing and understanding now I think is deeper on the side of surrender and the importance of surrender and just letting things happen as they happen, and awakening is important, but I think surrender is almost the operating system of life that I've lended myself to now and that's been a wild ride but I have to trust so as long as the ecosystem of Mother Earth works, why would I not be taking care of it the same way? And that's where I find myself today, brother.

Michael: That's fascinating. I do think about surrender a lot because I historically have been a massive control freak, it's a survival mechanism like I know what it is. I know where it comes from when you're digging out of the depths of society, you have to control everything. There's no other way I've seen anyone be able to rise out of what we come from and that did not bode well for human interaction and relationships. In business, it's great. Right? In business it's great. I've always been able to kind of figure out how to navigate that, maybe not in the best way, especially early on in my leadership careers, but you know, as a late teen, early twenties kid looking at the chaos of my home, mother's, gone all the time on these massive drug benders. She would disappear. I'd live by myself for months at a time. My grandmother was an absolute fucking crazy person. She grew up in a little town called Sun Bright Tennessee you've never even heard of. And so she was incredibly racist and un biracial so, here's another layer of the cake and then just dealing with having to survive where I grew up. Right. Fighting, stealing, breaking in houses, getting shot at by the police like it was like a fucking movie. And as I got into my teens and not graduating high school, I was like, I gotta control this shit, like literally that's the first I need. My brain went to this operating system of I have to control everything all the time and Nick, this did not really work efficiently in any capacity because it came to this place where I'm like, I have to control relationships. I have to control friendships. I have to control strangers on this street. And if I don't, my brain goes, I'm unsafe. And it was in this word that you just used that I think is incredibly powerful when people understand the depths of its capacity is surrender. And when I was just like, fuck literally, so I'll exchange that word for my dialect. Fuck it. And that's what it became, I was like, fuck it, whatever's gonna happen's gonna happen. I'm gonna do my best. I'm gonna show up. I'm gonna live life on my terms. I'm gonna know that at the end of the day, this is all gone. So, fuck it. Let's see what happens. And the greatest sense of freedom came from that. And so, I'm wondering, when you think about, and you go deeper into surrender, what has that actually done for you? Because for me, it's changed the game, dude.

Nick: Oh yeah, exactly. It's allowed me to be very aware of the battles that I choose to fight and which ones I choose to allow God to fight on my behalf. You know, I had a partner in one of my businesses, I've founded four different companies, and one of 'em is my best friend from high school like we were buddies from like, you know, 13 to like 30, right? And long story short, you know, we had to hire an operator for the business and we didn't agree on who that person was, ultimately, I had to make the decision of who that person was going to be so, I chose this gentleman and really, really strong personality, great as an operator of a company, right? Control freak, by the way. And I think that what was interesting was for my partner, I created so many lanes of opportunity of like, Hey, I want you to have this, so like, let's figure it out like just show me one book, like one book that you've read about business operations. Like, no, no, no, it's not about that. I deserve this because I've been here for a while, I'm like that, bro that's just not how it works, this game's about results, it's about leadership, it's about like understanding the mechanism of how these things function and creating order, it's not about who like was first in line that's just not how this stuff works. Anyways, long short, man, what was interesting is three months after this COO started within our company, my partner ended up leaving. He took the entire paid media team, this was an agency, he sold the customer leads list, the entire ripped, the whole Google Drive, all my IP, everything I'd worked on for a really long time and started selling back to our customers that we had in the company by half saying, Hey, I was doing the work anyway. Why don't you just pay me to do it? Now, this doesn't only have civil implications of like, how that would affect things, it also, from my lawyer's perspective, it had a lot of criminal intent as well basically like robbery, it's like infiltration-based robbery. And we were looking at a lawsuit of 2 million in the potential that I could put this dude potentially in jail, if not take his house. And I just found myself in a place of going, like with the ability to create what would be justice in my eyes, or maybe that of anyone who looks at it in a very analytical way and says, yeah, it's logical, the dude pulled out the rug from underneath you. He went $300,000 into debt four months after he left based on all of these things that happened with proof of those, of course you'd be wise in a 3D world to then go like, what's mine is mine? And I made a decision to sit back and look at the whole scenario and just go like sometimes praying for your enemy is the best thing that you can do. And it made no sense, man like no logical sense. I'm like, what? And I remember like as a kid growing up, my dad is like, he's a drug dealer who met Jesus and then like changed his life, okay, so like that's where I come from. And I remember this scripture my dad used to talk to us about, which was like, that praying for your enemies is like putting burning coals on their head. So here I am, I find myself in this crazy scenario, my belief systems are very like 0% congruency at that time. But my intuition said, no, no, no, don't punish him. Pray for him. That's surrender when something is rightfully yours, but you choose a different path when forgiveness seems to be your modus operandi, when gentleness and kindness, because you're making a decision at a quantum level that has no bearing on what's here now, that's where I chose to find my place of inspiration, living within the spirit of who I am. And that's one example of surrender because surrender I think is like when you have all the reasons in the world, when you have all of like the justification in the world to create justice on your own, but you choose a different path to open your hands again and just go like, God, give me the ability to receive so therefore, I have the ability to give, and God give me the ability to give so I can continue to receive and create abundance and bountifulness for the people that I'm called to serve, that's being a gift to humanity, is allowing God to be the judge and in my life and in my story and in my upbringing, the uniqueness of the way that I'm created that's where I find surrender in my life. It's being okay, not knowing it's loving the unknown.

Michael: Yeah. And that gives you the ability to lead and you have an amazing event in which you're leading people in which you're giving them every aspect of who you are so that you can show them possibility. And I love you if you just take 72 seconds and talk about this event that you're doing and why it's so important for you.

Nick: Absolutely, man. Well, you know, coming out of a season of trying to figure it out where it felt like nothing was working, what I realized was I was in a season of feeling trapped in transitioned between two different worlds. The one world is the old world and the one where I could just build a bunch of companies and I was just very, you know, let's just say very systematic in how I created prosperity in my life. And then I was met with a few different moments of unique challenge of where I was distilled back to the core, which begged a bit a bigger question of like what is it that I really want to do? Who do I really want to become? Where do I want to invest my time and energy and resources? And I had to find alignment within my personal life and my professional life as an entrepreneur in order to create change that would carry me forward into the future. And that change is something that I was willing to spend my time away from my family from because it gets to a point of where you're like, is this really even worth it? Right. And so, the external challenges that I experience in addition to the internal ones, I look at unique individuals who are out there today saying, there's gotta be a better way. And I'm here to tell you, I walk the path and I know that there is, you can seek in your deeper intuition, you can seek a place of finding truth for you, truth for your alignment and inner abundance, and finding a way for you to go out into the world and do your greatest work. And that's what AlignCon is all about, it's redirecting your energy in the right way in order for you to create the prosperity and abundance that you're looking for and the fulfillment as well. And I've always said this, you cannot do epic things with basic people. You need to be surrounded by powerful people who are up to something, and that's the crowd that I always bring together. So, AlignCon is really about just viewing your world and saying, am I on track to do my greatest good? And I'm here to help you take that lightning in a bottle of energy and point it in the right direction. So that you have 1000% confidence that you're headed in the right direction. So, Nashville, we're gonna be down here February 2^nd and 3^rd we'd love to see y'all come out AlignCon2023.com is where all the info can be found. And David Meltzer is gonna be there with us and you're gonna be coming as well so, I can't wait man.

Michael: Yeah, I'm very, very excited and I highly recommend if you can make your way to Nashville, if you're on the precipice of feeling like this is the year that things are gonna be different for you, make them different because I can promise you this shit ain't gonna change and tell you make shit change. And I believe in this guy, and that's why I had Nick on this show today to share his story and his journey, his mission you. He is a purpose-driven human being and I feel very much in alignment with you, my friend, and have so much gratitude for you being here. And so, go to AlignCon2023.com.

Nick: Yep, you got it.

Michael: Brilliant. And of course, we'll put the links in the show notes at thinkunbrokenpodcast.com, just look up Nick's name and it will be in the show notes. My last question for you, my friend, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Nick: To be unbroken to me means to live a life redeemed and counting our past as our life lessons of opportunity to create a better future. So, to me, unbroken is synonymous with redemption.

Michael: I literally, I got goosebumps too, that was beautiful. Nick, my friend, thank you so much for being here.

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