Heal Yourself and Regenerate: Change Your Life Today with Trauma Healing Strategies on the Think Unbroken Podcast

Jerome Myers – How To Unlock Your Ultimate Potential and Change Your Life Forever!

Michael: So tell me a little bit about like what it was like for you not necessarily growing up but just learning, developing, understanding, making mistakes, facing failures then ultimately what I think you laid a beautiful track on is making choices. Talk to us about your journey?

Jerome: Yeah. If I back all the way up to you know growing up, you know I'm a son of a soldier and a stay-at-home mom and you know while we didn't have everything we have a lot man, I don't have the struggle and strife story in the trauma that a lot of people will have because my upbringing was very, very I'll call it sheltered. Like my complaint is my dad jumped out of airplanes for extra two hundred bucks a month. So he could help me get the clean or we could go out to dinner, right? Like that's why complaint my dad would stay at work later, go super early so that he could go make that extra money so we could do the thing. And the backside of that for me is an adult was seeing the arthritis that came from putting that type of stress on his body and seeing my hero somebody who I thought was superman, the guy who could jump out of the airplane, go to someone who was very uncomfortable moving from a sitting position to a standing position deciding not to sit down because it was gonna be so painful to get back up whenever he decided that he wanted to move from that place. I played sports, you know, I place sports through actually play football through college, had of two full scholarships when I went to university and it wasn't because I knew what I was doing it was because my mom was there to pay attention to me and make sure that I submitted the applications and that I was doing the studies that I was supposed to be doing. Got the engineering degree man and you know, I had a choice was it, go do your PhD or do you start working? And what I realized is and I wanted to make money, I wanted to start earning and so I jumped into corporate and started on that progression that ended with kind of the end of the story that we gave the listeners in the beginning. But for me like I learned so many lessons from sports that's where outside and the role model that I had in my father that's why I learn about leadership and being somebody of character and integrity and knowing what happens when you don't fulfill your commitments. And you know it's funny, I say all of that and now when I think about sports, I go to this place where I'm in the eighth grade and I promised a teammate of mine that we were gonna go to a football game that Friday night; high school football game, we're getting ready to go to high school so it was a big deal to go to the high school football game on a Friday night. I didn't call that guy and he got into some alcohol that evening and he found the gun and they played that night and he lost.

So, I get the phone call the next day that says hey, he's gone and like what you mean he's gone? He's dead like he's not here anymore and I have to live with the fact that I didn't make that phone call to let him know that we were leaving so that we could pick him up to take them the game with us and maybe, just maybe he's still be walking this earth had I done my part and kept my word to a person who I appreciate it because we went to school together from elementary school all the way through that point of life. So, you know, I carry that burden man, your word means everything, it really does and right-wrong people die and least in my world if you don't keep your word.

Michael: Yeah, it's powerful man. And you know, I actually resonate with that a ton. You know, as the Unbroken Nation audience knows you know my three childhood best friends were murdered and no bullshit the only reason I'm here right now is because I said, I did not follow through on those promises to like show up or do the thing. And that's like this really odd stream strange juxtaposition of the world and the choices and decisions that we make. But as I've gotten older you know, I think about the idea, what if I would said yes? What if I would have been in that situation with them? Maybe, I wouldn't be here. You know, those burdens like I try to think about them like bricks in a backpack and if I can let them go, not that they don't carry weight but if I can just sit them down just like keep moving through life, there's just tremendous weight that is relief from us.

When you're in this journey and I think you pointed to something that for me holds so incredibly true, that's so profound that I do not think people really understand is the power of keeping your word. You know, I had a moment in my life where I had to recognize that I could not negotiate with myself any longer because I was not keeping my word, I was not being a man of character. And for me that was both inspiring and like earth shattering at the same time because was like oh shit, I don't know how to do this. One of the things that I've seen in my life now being a coach and being someone who speaks on stages and leadership and having teams and things like this is you know there's always that person that we see where it's like man, if you just listen to this one thing that I'm telling you everything about, everything for you could be different. And so, what I'm curious about in this moment, Jerome, as you’re with people, as you're teaching people about leadership, as you're coaching people and talking to these businesses what is it that you think is kind of for lack of better term the chasm? What is that gap that people must cross in order to step into what's next into their life?

Jerome: Being honest with themselves. So, many people romanticized their current situation, they believe that their future is happening right now even though they haven't done the things they need to do in order to have what they want. So many people believe that they're great just because they show up but that's not true like you're not your best self right now. And if you don't have something that you want it's because you haven't become the person, that does the things to have that. And people get really upset when that starts to sink in because they know it's true and if you've got this thing in your world that you desire and you won't tell anybody about it; it's because you're scared that they're gonna say to you, well how you gonna do that? You don't do the stuff that's necessary in order for you to have that. But the moment that you get bold and you're willing to say hey, this is what I do, this is who I am and this is what I want. And then your actions line up with that so that you're action in coherent, that's when life starts to change.

Akbar Sheikh – The True Meaning of Giving

Michael: What I'm curious about is two parts. One, why do you think people struggle so much with money and two why do people struggle with the idea that they have to stay poor to create impact?

Akbar: Yeah, man. I love that. I think there's a couple of things and one of them, I don't think it's talked about a lot first of all, and I don't know how helpful this is, but I'll just quickly talk to you about like. My relationship with money is very, very different it's because I grew up with a lot of money that went through these hands like I told you my family's in retail. My dad is the first guy to bring the dollar store concept to Connecticut. So on the weekends or whatever you ever still a kid, I would be cashiering. I mean like Christmas Eve didn't twenty thousand dollars in one day, it's like constantly and back then did people that are really use credit card at all actually funny enough it's the opposite now, everyone's got apple, pear whatever, but that acting is all cash, cash, cash, they're very rarely you know, someone use a credit card. So since I was a kid, I've always been transacting with money, you know what I mean? So, I've always been very comfortable with it.

Now there's something interesting that I want to actually blog about or whatever, and it's the headline is peep fellow people of color lend me your ear because what I've noticed about a lot of immigrants who are people of color, they have immigrated, isn't there are the previous generation, you know, migrated to America. For example, so I'll just talk about that for a second, they came to America to live a better life because wherever they came from. My parents came, you know, we're born in Africa for example, say like, you know, wherever they came from things are not going that well, they came people to America for better opportunity. So, think about that for a second. The generally speaking, a lot of people come to America coming because they're not a great situation, they want to live a better life. So the kids are growing, so let's just call him parents for now, those parents that had it hard in their old country and they had to struggle and save so they come to America and now they're very frugal, very frugal by this is my own kind of hypothesis, in my own observation. They're very frugal, okay, and that because they're used to living in the old country was a struggle and then that frugal list that scarcity mindset transfers over to their kids. You see? I mean like I grew up in America and I saw firsthand, you see, my parents got here, they grew up, they were born in Africa then they moved to England and they came to England they came here from England to New York in the 70s. When my dad came here with his brothers, it was Winter, it was a big Lincoln Towncar, one of my favorite cars I should actually buy one it was snowing and there's a Lincoln Town Car got stuck in the snow and my dad and a couple of his brother sat on the trunk to put weight on the trunk and the dude got on stock, the car came out. The guy came out of the car and said, you guys are awesome and give my dad and his brothers like a dollar each or whatever. And my dad said, they just got to Americans had met you can never starve in this country and it's a hundred percent, right? Like because that type of stuff doesn't happen in the old country like you got to understand something like you have with all due respect I'm not trying to be funny or anything I'm trying to be literal, but you have to be kind of mentally ill to not be able to generate wealth in a first world country.

You cannot starve in a first world country it's impossible again, it's just impossible, it's absolutely impossible in my observation, my experience sorry, sorry, you can't starve to death. You like you can't lick another country all over the world people's die of starvation, you can't do that here, it's impossible, there's too many places that give you food, you go to any church, any religious Center in any restaurant. I mean anyway, you know, to do any soup kitchen blah blah blah. But what I've experienced is that, have you ever asked somebody for $5 bill? Hey, dude, I need to borrow $5 and man, I wish you asked me five years ago. I had five dollars, five years ago, but I bought that cheeseburger, and I was it, man, never got any money after that. Money is constantly replenishing it's just that I think a lot of people have scarcity mindset, I think they inherited a lot of that from their parents, in my observation and I just want to make it clear to people that dude like especially online, it's important, I mean it's the greatest opportunity of seen in my entire life. I mean, it's like I don't know how you cannot make money online it's just historically we are the first generation ever to be online entrepreneurs in the first users ever to be on I mean, this is only the tip of the iceberg and it's impossible not to crush it. And a lot of people, you know, then you have the problem of people saying, okay, awesome, I won in, I want in, but then they come into that lottery ticket mentality, they come into that Lottery, they don't understand that it's a real business. You see business, the first business transaction ever was, I don't know, 77 thousand years ago, something like that with your trading, volcanic glass off the coast of Fiji and then they got into marketplaces tense bazaars, then the trains and ships were invented they started doing business that way then they invented mail then they started doing business with mail-order business, then retail was invented and everyone started going to Bach brick and mortar, you know, Walmart's and stuff like that and now then you mode so to speak is the internet and it's crushing it. And so it's impossible not to make 12 off of it if you're dedicated to it you treat it, like what it is and that's an actual business, not a lottery ticket.

So, that's some of my thoughts on money mindset, it is a kind of a pet peeve of mine. I feel so bad when I see, because I'm like Dad and I personally know some people I'm like, yeah, and I look at their parents, I'm just like, yeah, dude they just had their parents had it really rough and they always had the scarcity mindset, they just transfer that over to their kids and that really saddens me when I see them.

Brian Keane – From Childhood Trauma to Massive Change

Michael: One of the things that I wanna talk about Brian because I think this happens so frequently is that people don't start these things because of fear of failure and what I'm wondering here is you know especially when coupled with from your own experience and having trauma and working through that and getting to this place in your life, how does one really start to step in through the fear of this entire process in consideration of a lot of times we carry a lot of darkness with us?

Brian: I have two trains, the first is probably one of the biggest mindset tech conception that I had for a massive chunk of my life and that was seen failure as a bad thing and seen failure as an in product, failure really the bad thing, failure is feedback, it's feedback on what's not working, it's feedback on where you need to make changes it's feedback on what you are doing right now for some reason isn't in line with where you wanna go and you use that feedback to make changes to make your life better; that's food related. training related, mindset related, trauma related you use it as feedback. My biggest mistake with failure and I also a misconception, I'm not sure if you had this as well Michael was, I would attach to the label failure didn't realize that failure was a thing that happened. I put my myself worth in my attachment of self to failure so when my language for that was, I'm a fucking failure like, you know if I did it did something that wasn't to my expectation, I'm fucking failure, I did it again, not realizing that failure is this external thing that happens based on the actions you've taken and it's not who you are. And I had to disconnect and disassociate from those two things and realize that it's just that failure is the thing that happens as a result of some of the actions that I've taken. So, once I was able to separate that which isn't applicable for everybody but it was for me then it was about realizing that fate really helpful and as an entrepreneur you know this. Failure is feedback, you can make changes based on failure, every failed relationship, every failed business adventure, it took me three attempts at my business off the ground, I made three attempts Michael before I eventually got off the ground because I kept fucking up, I kept making stupid mistakes. One of the things I did which was when I look back at hindsight in 2012 I was working as a teacher in elementary school teacher here in the day and a personal trainer at nighttime and when I try to make that transition over to make a full time as a personal trainer I rented out a gym and like six hundred and seventy pound at the time on top of my rent, I didn't have a lot of money because you don't make a lot of money as an elementary school teacher in London and I went and got a bad branded kit, I went and got business cards, I no fucking clients like not realizing that because I wanted to be a personal trainer that for me was down to the ego issue of people be like, well he's successful, he's a personal trainer, he did the thing he said he was gonna do and I just wanted to look the parish and as a result I fucking got broke.

The only time in my entire life Michael, I know we had different experiences again first were a problem on my side that it was the only time in my life on my bank account was zero you know what I broke college student, didn't have loads of money grown up, didn't have loads of money as a teacher but I always had something in my account but that was the time it went to zero and I had to put down the back of my couch in London to look for pennies so that I can get the boss to go to the bank so I could take a loan to pay my rent that month and that was failure. But now ten years later that's feedback I tell so many trainers that I work with and coaches that I work with don't make that mistake, don't pay those dumb taxes, don't focus on shit that doesn't move your business forward, focus on getting clients and helping people and things will grow that way so that's one example of failure feedback. And I think when you start to see it that way you change your relationship with failure, when you change your relationship with failure it opens up a lot of doors that previously remained close to you and then when it comes to the darkness I've kinda of changed my opinion on this in recent years because I've always been a subscriber had for long period of time been a subscriber of the union philosophy that you know your roots need to go down to hell if you want your branches to reach up to heaven and you know feeding that dark side like it's not a coincidence that I was able to make myself sick with leg workouts before a body, it's not a coincidence that I was able to run six back marathons in the Sahara or run through in the arctic, I tore my Achilles eighty six kilometers from the end and around the last eighty six kilometers, I use the term loosely, I moved to eighty six kilometers on a torn Achilles like that's darkness driving. You know, for me that's all the fucking the soul, the dark side of it that's driving us but it can be useful you know for a large period of my life it was helpful for me got me through those workouts, it got me through those races, it got me through times, when times get tough but I also don't fucking can live in that day, I don't be walking around playing my daughter and playing you know Elsa and frozen and dolls and be like having this fucking darkness this over me, you know. I wanna make sure that's a tool that I have and my personality I can check in with if I need it when times get tough because I quite like it don't get me wrong, it's like, the incredible hulk, you know, it's quite, it's nice to have is that darkness fuel you, you're thinking about the traumatic experiences as a kid you're thinking about the people about the shit out of you, you're thinking about all the things that happened and that shit fuels you like, that's fucking fire but fire like anything can light up your house or can burn the fucking link down so you need to be very mindful of how your relationship is with us and that's how I look about the darkness it's something that I want probably don't want to let go off just, yes because it's supportive but I also don't want you know steering in my car, I don't want be in the front seats it gets put back into the back until I need her into the fucking boost or into the trunk until I need us and then when time to get off I can draw and I can use it and it helps me. And again, I'm not sure how helpful that is for people but it's something that's massively supported me and it's been kind of one of my methods for dealing with some of my issues, some of my traumas, some of the things that have happened to me in a positive way.

Russ Yeager – How To COMPLETELY HEAL Your Body & Mind!

Michael: And so I said to myself, well if he did it why would I not ask for help? You have to understand something really important that asking for help can be the difference between success and failure in your life. Russ, I'm leading to in this talk to me about the power of vulnerability, especially as a man because I do have some men listening right now of asking for help in the role that that's played in your life.

Russ: Yeah. Well, it's been, we're stubborn. That's why we, you know, will drive and get lost for three hours versus asking for directions. But man, like your example is perfect and that's crazy, like I said, I think of you is like Mr.10x, and I forget that you were just introduced to the community back in February. So I remember that day, we met, man and it's like, like you said, some people you're supposed to meet for a reason and I know you and I were meant to meet for a reason, but it's crazy. Like you gave one of the simplest and one of the best pieces of advice, right there is to ask for help.

But then to take it one step further. So he at who did, who do you ask for help? Because you got to be careful.  Right? There's a lot of people especially everybody's a bringing coaching, consulting and they want to tell you how to make more money. You know, get more leads, get in shape, you know that's a relationship with who are you getting your results from? Who are you getting your advice from? Right? If I want to know how to grow my business and create generational wealth, guess what? Grant Cardone is one of the guys that I'm going to do is he has done all of that and continues to do that. So if you want to silence, they don't go to the dentist with rotten teeth. Don't go to the fitness guy, that knows everything, but they're out of shape. And so you knew you wanted to win that contest, and so it sounds natural. Of course, you're going to go ask the guy who won last year. Hey, you got any advice, you know how many other people wanted to win that contest?

Probably everybody. You know, how many people came to me and asked me for advice, I think what I shared was good to you and Dr. Greg parsley. Guess who came in second place? Dr.Greg, and so they like, guys like the simplest thing you modeling if you want something, find someone who's already done what you want and ask their advice. And here's the last thing is you'll be surprised how much? Not only they're willing to help you but they want to help you. And I don't know if you were surprised but like dude, I could feel it. Did you leave me a voice message or a text message?

Michael: Yeah. Initially, I sent you a voice note.

Russ: Okay. So that's why I felt it. I was going to say I even felt it in your, writing. So that’s smart voice or video because communication is 93% tonality and body language. If you in person, you're not in person becomes almost virtually all tonality. So I could feel it, dude, like that you wanted this and I knew as soon as you reached out to Emily too, so this guy is going to win and then we made it like our personal mission. Like how many times do we communicate back and forth that day? We made it like, are we wanted you to win because we knew. Number one, you wanted it. You're asking for help like people want to help people who are hungry, excited asking for help when and have a great obviously, having a great mission and something to share the world. Like I wanted generally wanted to help you so much. So man that could be the number one, there's a lot of success principles. Like the number one thing, especially to get bastard, you can if you got enough desire, you got enough hunger, you're committed enough, you'll figure it out, but instead of just running a brisk walk, a brick wall and you know, getting their bullheaded, lie over 15 or 20 years, skip to the front of the line ass, someone's died. Exactly what you want to do for help, and you'll be surprised how much not only they will be willing to help you but we'll be happy to help you because it's rare. Like it's not, I've never met a lot of people that are like really want to be successful and actually willing to do what it takes to get there. So when somebody like you comes to me like that I and it fires me up to where I want to, because I know that you're going to go out, it's not just about you like to think of all the people now that you've reached and the lives that you've changed, because you didn't, get on that stage and win that contest and continue to get on stages.