How to be The Center of Your Success | with Atlas Aultman

Atlas Aultman: I have a vote. What do I want to do? How strong do I want to be? Where do I need to bring up the memories from the past to make myself stronger? And my grandpa was that guy, man. When he was a mountain of a man and when people would come up to him, they were terrified of him. He's just a big guy. And he had this big presence and he had this big, immense personality. It was really hard to wrap His persona down into one or two words, he was just everything to me. And as a man, he worked out, he took care of himself, people respected him, he helped other people. Always. So, I got to see that at a very young age. It's probably why I always wanted to do service, and I still do. I'm a bolt onto other people to try to make them perform better. I'm a bolt onto other organizations to help them perform better. I'm a bolt onto the leadership community, which is flooded with people who say they want to help, but they're just infomercials. Most of them, and you pay for the service and they come in and I've had this happen to me, dude. As a leader who wanted to help my leaders, I brought in people that didn't help me. And then I still paid these people because of marketing or whatever, what we trust people. Hard and it's wired into us. That when I'm looking at my grandpa, I trusted him and I could actually do that. And I wanted to be a man that could be trusted and he built that into me early. Integrity, honesty, whatever you say, you gotta do it. Like I told you, I was coming. I'm coming. There's nothing gonna stop me from coming. If I say I'm coming, I'm here. Yeah. If I even one of my friends, same thing. And that's a whole Another cycle of conversations as friends, right?

Michael: That's integrity. And for me, like I used to be the opposite of that, not showing up, I'm going to do my own thing. Even if I committed, I'm not probably going to do it. But that was a really interesting reflection of my life also. Because if you don't show up in one area of your life, you're probably not showing up in most areas of your life. And you ask people who know about me today who like really know me deeply. They know I always show up. It's Life and death generally, when I'm going to not show up for something. And so learning that leadership, that trust, that integrity from your grandfather must be a really interesting juxtaposition to dealing with the father who decided to leave. How did you navigate that? On this one hand, it's man, I'm learning all these incredible lessons about manhood and this big, strong bolstering guy of a grandfather. And then on the other hand, my father, the guy who was supposed to be the guy, isn't there.

Atlas Aultman: Yeah. Actually, I didn't really start thinking about him until I was in my thirties. And I was like, I wonder, right? Everyone does that. I like, I wonder, it's the whole process. We do this this game with ourselves. And so I always, I was wondering like what he would have done, but he did it, dude. I didn't want that guy in my life. But instead I got adopted by a guy who absolutely, it was in the special forces community as well. And he pulled me into the military environment as an army soldier. And I always looked at my grandpa as like a hero. And then I had a hero that adopted me and gave me his last name, so I always looked at him and he was there for me. And as rough childhoods go, I had a pretty good, I had a guy that really taught me man things and cared for me, And I wasn't abused or anything like that when it comes to a lot of people's lives You have to go through a lot of stuff and you've interviewed people that have gone through a lot of stuff And whenever people go through stuff They go through it differently I wanted to shut that door, and I did I mean I did I shut that door hard and I didn't open it back up until my 30s. And then I started unpacking it I'm like, why would he do that? You Why would anybody do that? And I realized people just aren't perfect. But the situations that we get exposed to, what makes us who we are, they're all choices, man. Like I could have fixated on that. I could have found myself in something else. I could have found myself in a different mindset, but I didn't, I had had really good role models. And like I talked about in some of the stages I've done, my mom was really my first life coach before that was even a thing. So when my mom would see me start going down a road that I shouldn't go down, like for example, I've never shared this before, but we all have these stories. When I was a kid, I really wanted this neighbor of mine's bow and arrow. And I asked him, cause he never played with it. Hey, can I borrow that? He's no, you can't borrow my bow and arrow. You know what I mean?

Michael: Yeah.

Atlas Aultman: And I'm like, I really want to play with this bow and arrow. So I asked my parents, I said, can I get this bow and arrow? We ain't got no money for bow and arrow. We ain't rich. So now I'm looking at this thing just sitting in the yard, right? What do you do as a kid? Start tossing it up what am I gonna do? So I took that bow and arrow. You know, I remember playing with it. I still remember playing with it and I'm like this isn't that cool Why do I want this so bad? Why am I so fixated on a bow and arrow? That's not mine. And then I had that feeling Just got into me into my bones and I'm like I'm not doing what I’m supposed to do Who do you think put that in me? My mom, my dad, the examples that I had around me. They were just right there. I knew what was right and what was wrong. We, I think we all have that moral compass, but at a young age I developed this fear to not be like that ever again and not take other people's things. I went back and I gave him his bow and arrow back. He's like, why'd you take this? I said, oh man, I just wanted to play with it. He goes, did you have fun? I remember the look he gave me Like you I'm gonna kill you. I remember he's did you have fun? I was like, no, I didn't have fun, man I'm sorry, and I never want to felt like that. I never wanted to feel like that ever again yeah that deep childhood Experience that I don't share. I mean who does who shares their vulnerabilities, right? I don't share that kind of stuff too often But I started really processing that in my 30s and really processing it more now as I start to unpack things, like why I feel the way I'd feel and why I want to help people the way I want to help them.

Michael: Yeah. And while it's also deeply tied into our experiences and the way that I always view it is eventually what is inside you will rise to the top. There's no way it doesn't. And I go look at some of the experiences of my own life where I've hit these massive walls where it's like, why in the world can I not elevate to the next level, whether it be a relationship or success in my career or my physical health. And what's interesting, man, it all ties back to one thing. Fear.

Atlas Aultman: For sure.

Michael: Every single time for every single time I look at it, it ties back to that. That's a conversation I've had on this show many times, but you look at it and a huge part of what I think this journey is at the point in which you bring cognition to it to the, Oh my God, this is in my chest is like the action and having the willingness and the strength to execute and do the thing that you know, you're supposed to do in spite or despite of fear. And what's so hard about it is we create these emotional spaces within ourselves of what we consider to be the allowance of what we can have. And so many people look at their life because of the impact of the past and they go I guess it's not for me. It must be for someone else. How am I going to be able to become the man or the woman I'm capable of being? They've only ever told me I can't, how am I going to be rich when I was poor? How can I be a leader when I didn't have father? And it's like that thing plays in through your mind and your psyche over and over, and over, and that's where people get trapped.

Atlas Aultman: Yeah. They do, they get trapped in the negative. It's common for people to go negative and people live there. People live there all the time. So you're going to have, if you have a hundred people in your life and 97 of them say, Hey, you're going to do it. I know you, you're the man. If you have two people to say I don't know. We'll see. But if you have just one person say ankle work, man, how are you going to do it? And for me, that was my ex-wife. I was writing my book. She goes you're not a doctor. Who's going to listen to you? And then I heard it again, the very next year, someone that was senior to me saying you're just a lieutenant colonel, which that's the fifth rank from the highest rank you can get in the military. I'm a senior officer at the time. You're just a lieutenant colonel. Who's going to listen to you? Yeah. So let me unpack that. My ex-wife, she's an ex for a reason. She's not part of the team anymore because she never believed in me to begin with. So we picked these people to be in our lives. And if we pick the negative people to be in our life, boom, every day you're going to get hit with negativity. Boom. Every day you're going to be held down by the people that are around you. Boom. The people that are supposed to love you just show up wrong all the time, right? That's happened in all the time in people's heads. The next thing is you believe people who are supposed to be ahead of you, right? Whenever they tell you something negative, screw that. Yeah. There's so many people out there going to tell you that you can't do something and they don't know you. They don't know you, they don't know anybody, they're just giving you their opinion, which is worthless.

Michael: Yeah, I tell people all the time, like when I'm coaching people, whether it's in my group or one on one because this is the thing that changed my life forever. And it's funny because when I go back and I look at a lot of childhood and growing up in the hood, being around just some of the most crazy environments, being in hundreds of fights, like being in the street, selling drugs, the whole nine, there was always like this code of ethics, even in that environment, which people don't know, which is crazy. And one of the pieces or pillars of that code was effectively this, keep my name out your mouth. And effectively what that means is mind your fucking business. And one of the problems with asking for people's opinions is it's not their business what you do ever under any circumstances. Now, of course, there's the context of this is my partner. These are my children or this is my wife, blah, blah, blah. You know that always exists. But in general, people will naysay you far more often than they will help you rise due to their own fear. And the hard part about that is if it does start getting in your head and you're ruminating about it, you won't write the book, you won't make the podcast, you won't join the military, you won't do the thing that's in front of you. That is ultimately your destiny. And that is the path of instant regret.

Atlas Aultman: Yeah. For me, it's a bolt on mentality, man. So for me, when someone tells me I can't do it, I'm like challenge accepted. When somebody says for example you can't work in special ops because you're colorblind. I'm like, cool. We'll see. And then I was a director of special operations in Afghanistan when Trump was like, hey, we're leaving. And then all these other special operators from other countries are coming and asking me, what do you think? Are we going to do this? I ought to listen to the first person that told me I couldn't do it because I'm colorblind. That'd have been interesting. I'd had a different experience. You can't work at the White House, because you don't have the experience yet. Oh, okay. Challenge accepted. You can't do a David Goggins challenge. You're not even training yet. Have you read his book? He doesn't train at all for the first time. He really figured out where he was and you're to die. And the next person who tried it ended up in the hospital, by the way. If I can do it, then they can do it too, just cause they have a special badge on their shirt, it's amazing. The mentality that you can get into once you start cycling through not believe in other nonsense that other people are spitting at you. It's a, my mentality has always been a bolt on mentality. I don't belong here anyways. Let's see how this is going to work out.

Michael: So, yeah. That's about giving yourself permission. And you look at it and most people I think limit themselves and they can't pull themselves out of that limitation. When I look back at some of my experiences, dude, everyone knows the story. So, I'll truncate it. But by the time I was 25, I was 350 pounds smoking two packs a day, drinking myself to sleep, lost a million dollars, 50 grand in debt. And I look at my life today and it's very different. And that was just because I was unwilling to accept that standard. And I had to raise my standard. And what's so difficult about that is raising your standard means shedding an identity.

Atlas Aultman: Yeah. For sure.

Michael: And you've had to do those multiple times in your life. How do you shed the identity of the abandoned child to become the leader? How do you shed the identity of man? The relationship didn't work out. Love's not for me. How do you shed the identity of I'm going to go and steal the bow, but then become an honest, truthful person? How do you raise your standard for yourself? Like when you think about these moments in which it's really easy to quit on yourself, to be weak, to not be the person you're capable of being, like, what does that process in your head look like? Like, how do I, if I were to bottle that up, what would that be?

Atlas Aultman: You can't bottle it. It never ends, man. It's if you're going to go biblical it's the water that keeps you from having to be thirsty. You know what I mean? The spring inside of you is much stronger than you believe. Once you start to experience these wins, which you did too. You've experienced win after win. What the problem is most people can't figure it out because they're trying to label it as something like, is it ADHD? Oh, why are you trying to label it, man? It's kids, a kid's going to be anxious at sometimes excited on other times, a kid's going to be a kid. PTSD, I don't, I'm not a fan of PTSD because of the D, right. Like this whole stigma that goes behind the disorder. Look man, you trained me how to do something, and then I went and did it. And I went through hell, like a lot of people have experienced. Was it a disorder that I did exactly what I was trained to do, and I have no I'm very honest. I'm very open with what I've done. It's all in reports. I did nothing wrong. So do I have a disorder? Are you labeling me? I don't. And I had to fight that, actually. When I got out of the military, they're like, you have PTSD. I'm like, I don't have any problems. I don't have a, I don't have a disorder, I have post traumatic stress. I think a lot of people do, but I don't have a disorder because of it. It's not really affecting my life. So I had that strict from my records because they looked at my combat experience and are like you've been around explosions. You've been around death, you've been shot at. So with a lot of people, but I chose that life and I went in with training. So, I was a lot more prepared to do that than a lot of people mentally are whenever they go through life, but I'm going way off topic here. So, I'll bring it back. The whole point of how strong you are is a decision pattern. And when you give yourself permission, whenever you step out of that boundary, whenever you do what I like to call stress cycles, and you identify a new stress something that doesn't make you comfortable and then you go conquer it, you become mentally fortified in a way that most people can't do it. So, if you're stuck on labels, most of them come with names. When you get married, woman changes her name. For me, a call sign ceremony, which you know about my call sign Atlas. I changed my whole name when I got out of the military because I was no longer the person that I was for 27 years. In the military, you have specialties and badges. We all do it with degrees, we put little symbols after our name, we put little labels in our life to give ourselves credibility with other people who don't know us. Look at my LinkedIn profile. Number one best selling author. That's a label. And it gives me credibility with some people. And others, it doesn't. And that's okay. Cause I'm not trying to impress them and I'm not doing it for them. I'm doing it to help others who want it. The 97, not the 3. And there's a lot more people who need people, who are into service, who don't care about labels, than there are with the 3 who do.

Michael: Yeah, I know, I agree with that. And I think that a big part of it is, that's where this idea about being careful who you let into your life comes into play. Because it's, there's always going to be people in your life who don't believe in you, Oh, what's really interesting? Is that the better you do the louder those people get? Oh, yeah And the louder those people get the easier it is to get lost in the whole struggle of that moment and that experience especially when you're talking about this mental health game and It's really interesting that when you break down the, what mental health is. It's I can't look at your mind. And understand what's going on in there. Whereas I can with a broken arm. If your arm is broken, we go, Oh yeah, we have an issue. We know what a solution is. You talked about stress cycles, that's a stress cycle, but what do you do when the stress cycles every single day that you wake up? And this idea about mental health awareness, especially for military is so important. This is why I love having people who served in the military on the show. I come from a military family. I couldn't do it, unfortunately, because of an injury and having asthma as a kid ruined my dream. It was my only dream. And then I watched my brother go through the army cousins in the air force, uncle in the Navy. Like it was the out for us. And now we know that the negative impact of some of those experiences that our servicemen and women go through are so unbelievably detrimental that they have labeled it disorders. Now, look, I'm not a doctor. I didn't write the DSM. I'm not here to label anything or anyone. I'm just here to have conversation. But for those people who have served, we Whether or not it is in that kind of environment. They're still impacted Mental health is not something that can be seen or measured but on a day to day you're still impacted.

Atlas Aultman: Okay, so I’ll say something really real there's a lot of people that are reminded people who serve their country, which is a very small percentage because unlike a lot of people Who think that you can just go into military, the military doesn't accept everybody.

Michael: No, they don't. Cause I would have fucking been in the military.

Atlas Aultman: Yeah. And so would have my oldest son would have been in the military too, but he had a high frequency hearing loss. Wouldn't, and they wouldn't let him in. So, a lot of people think you're in the military. I'm sorry that you had to go into military. And I've had that said to me when I was working at the white house, one of these to do staffers came up to me and was like, Hey, I heard you were in the military. Cause I did not wear a uniform or suit. Just like everybody else. So, when they came up to me and said, yeah, I heard you were in the military. I'm like, yeah, I still am. And they're like, Oh, I'm sorry. You have to be in the military. And I was like, you're sorry. Why is that?And then I start processing that. I'm like, what were my options when I got out of high school? Military. That was pretty much it.

Michael: Yeah. That was my option.

Atlas Aultman: That was it. Then what or crime, or live with my parents, which not an option, so the whole thing there, it goes into What is said to most service members. And that's this, thank you for your service. That's some BS. Cause whenever you hear that as a service member, someone goes, Hey, thank you for your service. Now one, you're usually probably in uniform, but if they hear about you being in the military and they say, Hey, thank you for your service, they verbally patent themselves on the back while they're saying it, you could see it in their eyes that they're happy that they're recognizing you for being below them, for being beneath them, for being a servant to them. And we're all conditioned to say it, everybody comes up and says thank you for your service, and it's better than getting you know spit in the face But when you think about what these people go through you nailed it. There's a lot of mental things mental minefields that these people have to go through that they just they have to go into training to figure out because we have this saying in the military you don't rise to expectations you fall you to your best training ability. So, if you train, like you fight, you're good. But how do you fight that when somebody is looking at you, belittling you in public, how do you fight that? Yeah. You don't know what I've been through. So I always change the script. If you want to thank somebody for their service, you should say, thank you for your sacrifices. And let me give you some of my sacrifices. I didn't see half of my kids birthdays. Christmases might as well be with other people carrying rifles and guns. I was getting shot at most holidays. I was in helicopters with people who don't speak my language while everyone else was at home, cuddled up next to their loved ones, being with their kids, going to the practices, all the choice I've made. But instead of going to church on Sunday, I was going to the range so that I could make sure I was qualified, if I ever had to pull my weapon out. And defend myself so I can get back to my family. Being around other people who were having marital problems because, there ain't no sex in war. And contrary to popular belief of movies, ain't none of that happening. At this general order where you're not drinking, what's your stress relief? The gym, everyone goes there and that's their only relief, but they don't get to do that because most of the time they're working, they don't work nine to five. Whenever there's a war, it's all the time. So you have to consistently be in this mental cycle and you process Six to 20 times the amount of work when you're deployed downrange in a war zone Where a lot of people don't get that kind of experience and that stress level. So that's one part of it the other part that I had the other stress level that I introduced myself was working at the white house That was a different stress level because as a military guy I'm now around people who have a lot of money and a lot of political interest you, I don't care if you're Republican or Democrat or Independent, I don't care. That does not affect me. Who you are is who you get to be. That doesn't, I don't care if you're black, white, gay, doesn't matter. You're a person to me. And if you can be on my team and be helpful, good. If you're not, I also think that's good, you just don't need to be around me. So that stress cycle of like why people do what they do, it really started to beat me down, man. And I was in a no fail mission making sure that the president of the United States could talk to whoever he wanted to talk to whenever he wanted to talk to them by any means necessary. And that's stressful, man. It's no fail mission. So different kind of stress cycle being in a political realm so combat, politics, and then eating at like really high levels. Multiple times I was in command and I get calls on the weekend. I get pulled out of church. Somebody got in an accident, somebody died. Now you got to go tell their family, you got to wake up at three in the morning, knock on somebody's door and tell them bad news. That's a different stress cycle. Nobody wants to do that. That's what I signed up for. It's not service, man. That's a bunch of sacrifice for service so that you guys could do whatever it is that you want to do in your life. And yeah. I hate that comment.

Michael: yeah, that's interesting. And then, I do think about the sacrifices of even missing my brother while he was gone, right? Missing my cousins while they were gone. My one of my best friends growing up, we went to go and register at the same time. He went on to go and join the Marines. And I did not. And it dude, honestly, like I never, I don't think I've ever put it this way. It was heartbreaking for me. It was the one thing I wanted to do. And so people I resonate, like I'll never live that in this timeline. I will never live that experience. But all I wanted to do as a kid was be a Marine Corps scout sniper, something I've shared many times on the show, but it was what drove me. I'm the kid who played with GI Joe's and guns, even in the chaos of growing up the way that I did. And my favorite thing ever was like, if I got sick and I got to stay home from school, we had a VHS copy of full metal jacket. And I must've, and like at nine years old, I must've watched that movie like a dozen times, not a children's movie, mind you. But it made me think about goals, right? Because ultimately when we put ourselves in a situation of any capacity in our life, we are always striving towards something, especially when you get to the highest levels of performance, striving towards goals, they do require sacrifice. What's difficult about sacrifice is you have to set so many things to the side because if you don't, you will never achieve the goal. You never will. And two things I believe happen in this one is people set goals way too small and so they don't put enough energy in that's true and then to they're not willing to actually make the sacrifice you're facing life and death right in a lot of capacities but and I'll say this in the most candor so I can think to say it so am I.

Atlas Aultman: Yeah, everyone is, right? Everyone really is.

Michael: Everyone is Right? Everyone really is. And we really are on a daily basis.

Atlas Aultman: Very risky.

Michael: And what I'm always thinking about is if I don't perform, if I don't do the podcast, if I don't wake up and go to the gym, if I don't write the next book, if I don't do the next stage, I don't get the message from the person who's thank you for saving my life. Now I always tell people I didn't do it. You did it. I'm just a harbinger of the information, but I do look at this as life and death and their sacrifices and dude, I've lost relationships. I've lost friendships. I've lost a lot of money. I've lost sleepless nights. Because I'm so driven by the idea that I could change the world forever. And there are people who are going to hear this right now and they're going to go, Oh man, why don't you take it easy? Take a break. It's okay. Go on vacation, have the glass of wine. And I just, I don't subscribe to that. And so what I'm curious about is because there are so many sacrifices for our goals. How do you, I almost want to use the word justify, but I know that's not how you think, cause it's not how I think, but I want to plant this in people's head because there are people right now and they're like, I have this huge goal and I'm so scared. I know I got to sacrifice, but I can't do, they can't bring themselves to do it. That's the problem I'm trying to solve for here.

Atlas Aultman: That's easy though. That's so easy. And you are, you and I are on the same page when it comes to this. It's the mindset, it's the can't word, you just need to remove that. How do you know if you'll never try, if you'll ever achieve whatever it is that you're going after? I don't do goals. Ryan Tracy did a great job with goals in the seventies and eighties. I think goals have been a foundation of motivation's bullshit too. Great. So like, whenever you look at goals, I think goals are junk. I think people use that as an excuse and they say I have this goal and then it becomes fearful and so Goals and fear for goal fear four letter word. What else is for love? Four letters right there love yourself enough to try And so how I do is I face a target and this is a military mindset But it's never something I learned in the military. It's something when I was reflecting on I’m like what was I doing? One of the things I did with all of my military experiences was take all these notes of things that I saw as awesome. And I used to call myself a student and professor of awesomeness because if it was awesome, I'd write it down. One of the things that I saw as a pattern is the most elite winning as teams that I was on. They focused on one thing, one thing, and they targeted that one thing. And the science behind this is amazing. When you focus on just one thing, it, alleviates a lot of time on your calendar. The last book that was written on this was called the One Thing, and they did a statistic. They said 25%. And I'm being light on that. It was 33, I think in the book, 25 percent of your time during the day is switching between tasks. So let me put that into perspective. That means out of every month, one week out of every month, you're switching between desks. You're not sleeping. You're not eating. You're switching between tasks, wasting time. Four months out of the year gone 4 years out of every 10 years is potentially switching between tasks and eating. Think about that. If you alleviate that, Which we did on all these teams that we just blew things out of the water, new innovation, crazy cycles. We're able to do things that were just thought of as impossible. We did it by focusing on one thing. And then when that one thing went away, the next one thing got put in its place. And then the next one thing got put in its place. We weren't focused on a whole bunch of things. Now we wrote them down, but we picked one target and we put it down range. Do you think shot at it?

Michael: Do you think that's the mistake that people are making?

Atlas Aultman: Absolutely. A hundred percent. I think when people look at these goals, this giant goal globe that they put in their mind and they're like, I got to do the, all these little things and it's going to come back and then I'm going to have this nice little compact package. It doesn't work like that, man. Pick one thing, shoot at it. And then define, is that good enough or do I need to hit the bullseye on that target? Cause then you can, you hit the target, you're gonna hit it again. Do you want to do better next time or do you want to move on to the next target?

Michael: So how do you, let's go into this for a second, right? Because I think this is, I agree. I might parse it out a little bit more because I always look at my life yearly as I need three main goals. I love that. One in health. One in wealth, one in relationships. So you can interject target goal, whatever. It's still the same thing. Health, wealth, relationship. I have three objectives every single year at the end of December, before the new year even starts, I sit down on our right arm. A whole laundry list of life planning, but it all is to distill down to these are the three core things I need to focus on in this year, right? Health wealth relationship. Most people get so trapped in I have to do all the things all the time. How do you narrow down and know what the target and the objective is? And I think like approaching this from a very militaristic standpoint would make a lot of sense because this is a practical thing. This is not a mindset thing.

Atlas Aultman: What you're doing is absolutely gold. You absolutely need to do that because you're wiring your subconscious to engage your reticular activating system in your brain. That's the science behind it, right? That's when you buy a new pair of shoes and then you see everyone else wearing the same pair of shoes. You buy a new car and you're like, dang, I thought I was the only one with a red, whatever. There's a whole bunch of red cars now. And Tony Robbins talks about that at great length. And then if you add a couple other books in there you're going to see The pairing of the reticular activating system and then writing things to make it real. Whenever you take things out of your head and you put them into the world, you do that with your hand, predominantly. A lot of people do it with their thumbs now. But if you do it with your hand, like I think you do, and you write down, then you're making it real. You're bringing it into a world of reality. Walt Disney used to say, if you can dream it, you can do it. This is how you do that. So when you engage those two things together, you start making things work behind the scenes while you shoot at your one goal.

Michael: Yeah. But what if you're like, what if the goal is scary?

Atlas Aultman: It doesn't matter. Every target's scary. Something's going to kill you. Is it going to be your health, your wealth, or your relationships? And do you need to switch the target whenever it gets closer to you? Yeah. Do you need to hit the closest one.

Michael: So that's a good point. So what I hear there is you don't have to be dogmatic even about your own dreams. All right. Can you switch? Can you recognize that you are off and the objective isn't the objective and it's actually this thing over here even though you're down range, you're already like in the mission, it's like pivot. Yeah. But I think people get so trapped in that because here's what I think happens. They don't hit the target that they set out and now shame and guilt start to come and kick in.

Atlas Aultman: It never works like it's planned to work out. Like Mike Tyson used to say, everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the face, right? Everyone's got a plan to fight me until they get punched in the face. And life's a big punch in the face. It rarely works out a dead shot, first time you hit that target on the range. Rarely, unless you're very practiced. And whatever you're trying to hit, does it work that way? And even if you're practiced, everything is a perishable skill. Speaking is a perishable skill. I have a microphone in my hand and I'm not on a stage on the week I go and I sing karaoke so that I put the microphone in my hand and I'm in front of a crowd, cause it's a perishable skill. If you're not staying polished with shooting, speaking, anything in life that can kill you or make you better is something that can go away at the drop of a hat. And everyone has problems until they have health problems. So whenever your health problems start to ensue, guess what? It's there. But what I like to always look at is, yeah, you can bounce between those targets. Just don't bounce every day. Cause if you have a team that's helping you get there, they're going to be focused on whatever it is that they're helping you with. If it's health, like you got personal trainer, they're going to focus on that. Cool. When I'm with my personal trainer, he's going to help me or she's going to help me with my training and my diet. And we're going to be focused there during that period of the day. But you have cycles you can go through too. Like for me, I have three cycles in a day. I do a morning cycle. So this morning I did health. I did working out. And then we went and ate and then I came make sure I was hydrated so that I could speak for an hour No, it's not if I needed to and then I started here. This is my second day, you know Now I’m doing this content with you. Hopefully we'll change some lives together. This is gonna be amazing And I just I love doing this kind of stuff. So this is my second day I'm gonna take him somewhere else. My son's with me today. We're gonna go do something on the town because we're in Vegas and then my afternoon is going to kick in and I'm going to do content, book writing, and making sure the next stage is good.

But I have three cycles, so I have three targets each cycle. But also I've been conditioned to shoot at a lot of things, a lot of the times. Like my straight away target isn't like a lot of people's. Like I'm not coming out of the box and switching between a lot of tasks that I got going in between my head. And trying to figure out what's noise and what's a target. That's where most people need to start because it's so scary because everything's so dang noisy today. It's so noisy. And this is where the influence of people come in. So now more than ever, you have the ability to have the right people in your head all the time through social media feeds, and the ability to Google them, their talks, like your talks, I can go out and listen to what I need to know for that day by listening to one of your speeches. And then I'm like, I'm good. Because I have you playing whenever I'm trying to do my mindset thing, and that's not something we've ever had in the past. So when people are looking at that, it's scary because it's noisy because they don't know how to control the noise. When you start controlling the noise, you start focusing on one thing at a time. Things start to lighten up a lot easier. You don't need the rest. That's why we don't need rest, man. We know where we're going. And then when we don't, we ask somebody, Hey, where are we going? And then they're truthful and honest because we picked the right people to be in our lives to give us that feedback. Not people that are going to tell us yes, because that's what we expect to hear. They won't give us the truth. And when we start to go off path, they're going to be like, why are you going that way? Not negative. Just asking curiosity. I'm just worried. I'm worried that, I'm not helping you. And those are the kind of people you want in your life. And those people are like, Ed Milet, Gary Vanderchuck. These are people you can throw in your feed that are positive. If you like colorful language, Gary Vanderchuck and Dave Goggins, it's, you can put a whole bunch of these positive influences into your feed. You'd be golden, your mindset could start to get in a different direction in as little as a week, just by putting those people into your life.

Michael: Yeah, I believe this fully show me your YouTube feed And I will show you your life.

Atlas Aultman: I love that.

Michael: And mine is God what am I probably? 14, almost 14 years now of consuming personal development on almost a daily basis. And I swear to you, if not for that effort, I would not be here. I'm so thankful for the internet. I'm so thankful for YouTube. Thank you to all the people who are way smarter than me. Who gave me a place where I can go and get access to that stuff on a daily basis. Because when you're a guy like me and you grew up not really understanding the reality of possibility, I'm not even talking about the pain of the world. Cause I understand the pain of the world. I'm talking about, I didn't see the possibility. I didn't know that I could have what I have today. I didn't know that I could go and build an amazing company, helping thousands of people and millions of downloads on a podcast a year. I just was like, dude, at 18 years old, I was working freaking warehouse jobs. I was putting microchips and motherboards all day. I was working at a fast food joint. I was working at Chili's and Outback Steakhouse. I was the guy who was working all these dead ends with a 21 percent interest rate on a car payment at 19 because I didn't know better. Didn't know any better. Cause nobody told me where would you get that information? Yeah, because you don't. And what did I learn that from? I learned that from my mom. I learned that from my community, from my teachers. We learned the wrong shit growing up. And then we wonder why as adults things aren't working. And then it's dude, show me how you're spending your time. Show me. I dare you. That's it. I dare you. And I tell people all the time, when you become a student of your calendar, you change your life forever. And I always challenge my clients. I'm like show me your calendar No, literally just pull it up and like people feel super embarrassed about it But I'm like think about this you're here at the time that we're supposed to record why because we're students of our calendars We didn't have a lot of back and forth. Hey, man, when can you do this? When can you do that? No, it was like here Let's go and lock it in and then you follow through and you execute, right? But on a daily basis, that's what it has to be. If you look at my calendar in the morning, personal development is scheduled into my day.

Atlas Aultman: Yeah,  it's good.

Michael: It is. It has to be. So I start my day with whether it's Tom, Bilyeu are a guy like you or Grant Cardone, or really any, I go generally with a lot of men. Cause I need that energy in my life. But then there's times where I need maybe a little softer energy and I go Brene Brown or Mel Robbins or Stormy Wellington. But so much of it is like the willingness to learn. I'm going to close the loop on something and ask you a question. Cause I think it's really important for me. Goals has always been an acronym, I wrote my first program for think unbroken seven years ago. And one of the phases of that program in the latter half is goals. Goals is actually an acronym. It means get off your ass and learn something. I love it, okay. And all of these things that you set as markers in your life, these objectives about this is the health, this is the wealth, this is the relationship. You have got to become studious to make those things come to pass. And so I'm curious for you what is your process? If I put a problem in front of you, here's the objective, here's the mission. This is the map. This is where you're going. What are the things that you're looking to learn to be able to go and execute?

Atlas Aultman: Yeah. So, for me, and I'm a big proponent of people. I look at whatever needs to get done, and then I look for the expert. I always look for the expert. A couple old money hacks that you've already, you talked about one of them. One of the biggest things that very successful billionaires do, and they still do it today, is, What'd I do today? Review the day. And if you're reviewing the day, you'll find out what you missed and what you need to put on the calendar for the next day. And you're also sub, subconsciously looking at what you need to do and your brain goes to work while you're sleeping.

Michael: What are you doing in the review?

Atlas Aultman: During the review, I, how did I spend my day? So, I can show you my calendar. Yeah. I'll show you my calendar later. I have exactly what I did down to the 15 minute. If I traveled here for 15 minutes, it's on my calendar so that I can figure out how much travel time I put in last year. And if I'm working from home, if I'm doing something in my studio at home, I put that in there and then I don't have that travel time. So, I'm like, maybe it's beneficial for me to do more podcasts instead of stages, which is what I'm doing this year. Doing way more podcasts than I am stages. They live longer. They help more people. They're always out there. They're evergreen, right? So back to your question, what am I doing? I'm looking for the right person. So, whatever the task is, who's the expert? So what does Google say? What does Google say again? What does Google say again? And so Google has become this major proponent to the way we live life, but people aren't recognizing it for what it is. What's changed recently is the power of AI, which is Google without ads. So, if I ask Google and then I ask AI, which I use chat AI, I'm going to get a good answer on who needs to help me figure that out. And what's great about today that no one's ever had before is. I could probably get some free content off of that person just by Googling them. And then I could use whatever, like tons, yes. Mel Robbins what she has a three second rule, right? Count to three in your head and then you'll do whatever it is that you're trying not to do because that's the magic number and your brain won't rewire itself to do whatever it is like Mel tells you about that. So if you're worried about taking the first step Mel Robbins will give you the right answer on that one. So if you're trying to get people to take the first step, Mel Robbins is going to come up on Google, but she's also going to give you free advice on AI and it's going to come out in Mel Robbins voice. And if you get really good at using AI, I use AI every day. It's become the best personal assistant that I have ever met because it knows what questions I'm going to ask. It answers it in my tone so that I'll understand it quickly and I don't have to keep refining. But it also helps me figure out the world around me because I'm using all these experts. to help me build the answer that everyone used to spend weeks, if not years, trying to figure out. Condension is a condense, condensing the information gives me a compression officer, a compression offer. Condensing the information gives me a compression offer that was never available until today. And every day gets more powerful.

Michael: Okay what I hear in that is to solve the problem, we find the expert, we make sure that we review our day, we use the tools that are at our disposal, which I, here's what I will say and I might say this to some contention, I believe that people are spending their whole damn day doing that.

Atlas Aultman: I think people get wasted on social media. I think porn is a problem for men and social media is a problem for women. And I think social media is now becoming a contender to porn for men. So, I think social media in its contention is and I like how you use that, it's contentious. You have to fight against getting away from social media because it's got you most people. And that's usually where the fear comes from. You're seeing all these people who are 15 to 30 steps ahead of them. Being successful with whatever it is that they are trying to do because they've established a 5 to 15 year process to be able to figure out exactly how to deliver a process exactly the right way to exactly the right audience and you can't duplicate that without putting in the time And figuring it out your own way, which is going to be different It's a different time. You're a different person and you got a different process You're going to help in a different way the 10 rule would come up there You 10 percent rule says, if I take something that's working and I change it 10 percent to make it mine, it's probably gonna work better for me than anyone else. And if you can figure out your 10 percent and you can give that to someone on their 10%, they're going to actually execute on whatever it is. I realized it's a step at a time.

Michael: I think consumption of content is deadly. Like even as we sit here and we are making content to be consumed, my greatest encouragement to people is to stop listening to this show. If you've listened to all 775 episodes to this point, I have failed tremendously at my job and so have you. And my hope is that like people I want them to consume I want you to come in and learn what you need to learn and then go out into the world and execute the game plan.

Atlas Aultman: Go do it.

Michael: But so many people are caught up in the consumption It's the mental masturbation of it all where you're just sitting here more and more You know, it's crazy as I look at the reason why my life changed It was all action. Yes, there's the learning. That's what get off your ass and learn something means, but it's the execution. I think carries even more value is like doing it anyway, doing it when you're scared, doing it when you're fearful, doing it despite all of the social media is built for it to steal your attention. And you're looking at your life, you're like, why am I depressed? Why am I anxious? Why am I this? Why am I that? It's dude, because you're spending 14 hours a day on the internet, not in the real world, not in this moment. And I fear that because people are so isolated, alone and afraid that now the shame and guilt of them being quote unquote behind here's the thing. I'm helping in this show is built to help people navigate the hardest mental health challenges that they have. And ultimately what that challenge is, if I were to narrow it all down into simple sentence, helping you overcome your past to have the future that you want to have. That's really what it is, right? You go, we are impacted entirely by our past. We want to have a future Caleb there. But you can't do that if all you're doing is consuming. That's right. So how do you take action? I get it, man. I went there, I laid out the plan, I have the framework. I did all the checks and balances. I'm so a Type A, and when I did a pros and cons list, I found my expert. I reviewed the day, and I still didn't fucking do anything. Yeah. How do you break that cycle?

Atlas Aultman: Yeah. That's, yeah. I think you're right. I think you're right. I think a lot of people get stuck in that cycle. Because they confuse being busy with being productive. So if you're occupying your time and it makes it look like you're working, people confuse that with work. A lot of times it's just spinning the wheels. Looking at social media doesn't do anything. Looking at the experts and trying to figure out the best one is not making the cycle. We have an 80 percent rule. If it's 80 percent good, let's start working on whatever it is that we were doing. That's what I do in my company. So at 80%, is this good? 80 percent we'll roll out. That's a piece of content. That's a show. That's a clip. And then we'll get feedback from that based off of the folks that we're trying to help. One of the big ones that we got from, I'll shoot, I'm doing Mel Robbins commercials today, a high five in the mirror, she, she does this whole high five thing where a high five has been proven to give you endorphins and boost your ability to start working. It makes you happier because you're physically contacting somebody who's physically in the world. But you can do that in the mirror. You can do that to yourself. So one of the biggest feedback points that I got on one of my master classes was, Hey, I've been doing this, people are, they're really skeptical about that, but then I don't want to private. They were like, Hey, I did this high five on the mirror thing. It actually works. And I'm like, that's pretty cool, man. I said, don't stay there. Don't stay there. High five in your mirror, figure something else out. They can go in, ​that's, that could be part of your routine. But once you start getting used to things, and I think people are used to social media. They get caught up into it and then it becomes busy and not productive. Busy work and not production. So that's what's happening. People get into this busy cycle and they're like, Yeah, I've been doing all this, I'm not getting anywhere. I believe you. I believe that you are doing it all. And I believe you're doing it all. Instead of moving forward with the next step.  So if you're doing research and you find the expert and the expert's there, reach out to the expert. If that reach out, doesn't work, reach out to the next expert, you're gonna find an expert that comes back. The biggest thing that I always get to is fixing your car. You can go on YouTube and fix your car, and it may take a very long time to do that. There's a lot of knowledge out there and you can figure that out. And it'll be free, but it'll take you a long time. Or you can just find a mechanic that's certified. Yes. To tell you how to do that. It's like a coach, any coaching. There's a lot of coaches out there trying to tell you how to live life. Some of them are good. Some of them are not. And you have to figure out who your expert is. And if your expert isn't working, the biggest failure there is firing that person early. Everyone that I spoke with that has lots of success in life looks at that as the most important thing to learn. Because you trust people and some people you shouldn't trust and keeping them on as a nicety doesn't help your bottom line or your progress and whatever you're trying to do in life. It doesn't help.

Michael: Yeah, that costs you time, effort, energy and money. And one of the things that's really interesting about the way that I've been able to find success is by being around successful people. Yes. And almost entirely I have paid to be around those people.

Atlas Aultman: Yeah, but you get what you pay for.

Michael: You do get what you pay for. And when I didn't, and I was like trying to short, cause I'm just be honest about it at the beginning of this journey, I was like, I'm not paying 500 for a conference. What in the world are you talking about?

Atlas Aultman: That's cheap.

Michael: I'm not doing that.

Atlas Aultman: I do it. You know how many contacts you're going to get out of that?

Michael: But you don't, but you don't know that, right? No, you don't know that initially. And at the beginning, I was like, I'm not paying for this. I will find a way into the room. Dude, I would sneak into the room. Sometimes I look, I will say this. I did have a do whatever it takes, no excuses mentality. So I'll give myself that. But there's also the part where it's you didn't earn that. And I remember the first time that I paid 20,000 for an event. Dude, this was super high in private mastermind. It's the most I've ever spent on anything I've ever done. Terrified to spend that amount of money. Cause you have to think I'm a kid from the hood who stole food to survive. I know what it means to be broke. I know what it's like when I was 25, 26, I was borrowing money from my girlfriend who lived with me to pay our rent. Think about that. And then to go spend multiple five figures on an event. And what I realize is abundance only comes to those who are willing to invest in themselves. And so the very first thing I ever invested in was a 50 course with Brendan Burchard. That's where this whole thing started for me was the willingness to put money on the table. And that is the shortcut that all successful people know. All of every single successful person. I know they know that money is the shortcut because money is an abundant mindset.

Atlas Aultman: There's not a shortage of money.

Michael: There is not.

Atlas Aultman: Yeah, you always find the money if you can. Tony Robbins talks about it. He didn't have the money to pay for Jim Rohn's conference. He talks about that. Grant Cardone talks about it. And his, he's I didn't have the money to figure this out. Then I figured it out. It's always that,

Michael: you know what those guys have in common though? And the women who have done it too, because I think about an amazing woman, Stormy Wellington, she was like a stripper when she was 13 years old. Now she's worth multi million dollars. But the one thing is, and it actually brings up this amazing patch that you gave me. The one thing these people always have in common, which I believe I have in common with them, which you probably do too, is that we all know that we have to put ourselves first. And you gave me this incredible patch that I would love for you to explain and talk about because it says on there, who's first.

Atlas Aultman: Yeah. And then I have a target on the heart. There's three parts to this and it's redoing. What what's been messed up for about 14 years now. Simon Sinek came out with this speech and everything on the stage failed. It was a technology disaster. So I think all the Ted people found out about it and they started watching this mastermind of words and Simon Sinek got out there and he talked about start with why, which is a marketing concept. Start with why is reshaping. The field of marketing and it's a very popular concept called sell the drill, not the whole, it's like you sell the end state, not what the tool is, right? So he started that and then they branded it as a leadership talk, which it's not. Whenever you make decisions, the five cycles that you would go through from the beginning of time, whenever leadership was created with vexaloids and hunting parties was who, what, where, when, and why the five W's. And if you're fancy like we all are with education, we get the house. We have six things. These six things then get paired together into this mastery of like confusion. And he started with why. And now every time I go to a leadership conference, they'd be like it depends on what your why is. And I hate that because it's an excuse not to think. There's three dots on there. There are three things that you need to look at. The first person is you. You're the first who. Who are you? What's your purpose? What are you trying to do? What's your objective? You start with you. If you aren't able to do anything, then how do you expect anyone else to work with you? You have to be healthy, you have to be mentally fit, all the stuff that comes with who you are. And that's a big task. You have to start there. Everyone needs to start there. Everyone's got junk. Everyone's got crap. They had to get through and then we're here now. What are we doing? Whenever anything bad happens the worst thing that can happen is death or shame. And people feel shame more than they do death because they're still alive to feel that so how are you working through that? That's what I think your show does to a lot of people and I'm with you like you do five, six, seven, of these, you should be able to figure out where you are in this giant thing that you've created for them to go to called a resource to get better. So, who are you? How are you working on you? It's the first thing the second thing is who's in your circle, who is in your team If you can figure out who you have in your team, who's helping you and who's not, you can figure out who you need to spend more time with and who you need to spend less time with. This is a hard cycle because people grow up in the same town, they go up to the same friend circle, and then their friends don't want them to grow up whenever they start to surpass whatever their friends are doing. Then their friends come and say, Hey, I'm not comfortable with where you're going, the success that you're creating for yourself, I'm not able to do that. I need you to come back down so I can feel comfortable about myself. You need to watch your team. And the third thing is it's encompassing your team of teams. So there's a book out there called the team of teams by Admiral McChrystal or General McChrystal. Team of Teams is a book where it talks about him having teams of these highly elite performers working together in this giant conglomeration of ridding the world of terrorists and evil. It's an amazing masterpiece, but where you should be in your life is finding the same team of teams. Like you're not going to have the team that does it all, but you might know a team that does. And if you can pair with that team. then your ability to make something great happen, it grows at an exponential rate. And if you keep adding more and more teams to that, you're going to be able to figure out where you'll be able to make a huge difference in the world. Starts with you, ends with the world. And isn't that what we're all doing here anyways? Trying to help each other.

Michael: I agree. That's what this is all about. Like at the end of the day, everything Think Unbroken is, can I do enough? To end generational trauma in my lifetime. And that's about the who that's about. That's about, can I remove the possibility that another child will ever have a story remotely close to mine?

Atlas Aultman: It's just tough, man. Cause the world's full of negativity. So that is captain back blackbeard's flag from the seventies. He did they did a movie on him. Cause he was a prominent pirate in in American history. So Captain Blackbeard was very scary. He did not care about people at all. And they say that this is a flag there where he's toasting to the devil and killing all the hearts. And so I put a target on the heart and I put a red beard on there. Cause I have a red beard and I'm flipping the script instead of being a toxic person in the world. Why don't you figure out how to lead yourself, lead those around you and actually impact the world and you can do it. You have the power to do that. You don't have to have the power given to you in a title. You don't have to have the name. You can start today with what you have and it's amazing how powerful you are when you let yourself be that powerful. So it starts with you. That's who's first.

Michael: When is the moment that you realized that you had to be first?

Atlas Aultman: Oh, Afghanistan. So for a long time I was doing things for recognition from other people who I thought I had to impress, from people who just don't care about me. And a lot of people still do that. They try to impress people that don't care about them. And as a bolt on person I felt the need to impress the people that I was on the team with, that I was in a family with and I got this name from, another family. So I was always trying to do something to the best of my ability so that I can go on to the next thing and do something bigger and better and bigger and better. And what I found was none of that matters. You can have all the success in the world and people don't care. People don't care. So when I started looking at how I could make other people's lives better and not worry about the honor of my name or not defaming my family or something like that, when I started looking outward on how I was affecting other people, that's when I realized I need to be whole before I can help anybody. Like, why am I beating myself down to a pulp and working 20 hours a day? Why am I working so hard for an organization that whenever I'm done with them, they're not even going to remember my name. I might go die on a field. My name might go somewhere, but no one's people will walk past that. It's just another name. It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. So what matters is how I'm showing up, how I'm showing up for my family, the people who actually love me. How am I showing up for my friends, the people I can call at three o'clock in the morning? And say, hey man, can I talk? And they go, yeah, let me put on, let me put on a robe. Let me throw on a shirt. What's up, dude? You good? Are your three o'clock friends? If you can call those three o'clock friends in the morning, that's some real, you got some real good circle right there. And they know they can call you too. And you'll always be there. That's the person you have to become in order to have those type of people in your life. And those people didn't come until recently. It didn't come, I had a lot of fake friends. I still have association with some of those fake friends. And they are not going to watch the show. They're going to tell me it was a good one.

Michael: You know what I'm talking about? I do know what you're talking about. There's two kinds of people that I keep out of my life. I keep out negative people and I keep out liars. That's it. Yeah. It makes my life so much easier.

Atlas Aultman: Everyone lies.

Michael: But you know what that is? No, of course. And here's what's interesting is, my one of my core values is courage and I think that being courageous means to be honest And we're all it's a part of the human experience. We're going to lie. We're not perfect And seeking the idea that you will be as one of the biggest trappings in the world But I tried to honestly dude, I just tried to be like, I don't know why I said that was stupid my bad Like I just totally made that up. That's something that I’ve implemented in my life. That's freed me that's obviously another conversation for another day, when I think about this idea about the who being first, it's that is the ultimate sign of healing, right? Because, you have the pressure of the world on you from the youngest age to live up to a name. That's not yours to create expectations that you didn't put on yourself to go and to serve a country that honestly probably doesn't give a shit about you. Like you said, which is, it's just true. Let's just call it what it is, and yet it's You still keep going. And that's the thing. That's one of the biggest reasons I wanted to have this conversation with you is because that's really what it's about. It's like the world is going to be against you, but the world doesn't know you understand. That's right. It doesn't owe you anything, nothing. And the fact that. Look, I know the majority of the audience listening to this show is in the United States because I have demographics or they're in Europe They are not in worlds in which they are under indentured servitude and they can't make it out and there's royal hierarchy Yes, do we have a few of those listeners? Yes, and I love all of you equally. I promise you But what I will say is if you live in this country, if you live in this society, if you live in a Westernized civilization that has access. And now, dude, I read the crazy stat the other day, 96 percent of people in the entire world, 96 percent of people of the whole world have a cell phone.

Atlas Aultman: That's crazy.

Michael: I know. I just read this the other day. It blew my mind. I was like, that is a fucking lot of cell phones. And what made me think Now more than ever, you're out of excuses.

Atlas Aultman: Yeah, really? You can connect to anything right now.

Michael: And my hope is that people will connect to this, that they'll take something from it, that they will learn from it. We could have went into your military history. We could have talked about the White House stuff. We could talk about all the books, but really what I wanted to take out of this is This story in this journey that you've been on to be here. You are as this young boy who? Really in a lot of ways could have went down some really bad paths Yeah, but because you had a couple of pivotal moments, you created the life that you have and the life that you're working on creating next. Yeah, and I think it's admirable.

Atlas Aultman: I had all the excuses. I was adopted kid. I didn't know my family I had yeah, I had all the excuses I could have just been no one. No one would have said anything. No, everyone would have expected that, actually. My adoptive family, I think, expected me to amount to nothing. And I still tell people that. They don't see that those family members that are now all in my life, pretty proud of me. They didn't see me when I was 18, not seeing those family members around. Those people didn't care about me, but now that I've made something out of myself, Oh, they're interested in, they're supportive and that's all a mindset, man. I'll give something to your listeners. It's super powerful that I use all the time. It's a personal thing. But it's powerful. So in the military and special operations training, they teach us box breathing. What box breathing is it's breathing in for three seconds, holding for three seconds, breathing out for three seconds and holding for three seconds. And what that does is it connects your mind to your body and allows you to make the best decisions. It's a sniper school tactic that they use to connect themselves to whatever the target is. You can do that in the morning and you can connect yourself with the world. What I do when I'm on the stage or whenever I get nervous, whenever I don't want to do something I do what's called three breathing and I breathe in for three seconds and then I hold it until I feel the connection between my mind and my body. And then I tell myself my body, I'm connected and I'm ready to go. And it turns what would be fear into excitement because it's the same bodily reaction. The only difference is how you think about it. So whenever you're ready to start an action. Give yourself that three second breath and just wait for it to happen. And I guarantee you, I think the reason why Mel's count to three works is because that's about how long it takes for you to connect your mind and your body together. You can do it with breath, which is very staple Muslim, Buddhist, Christianity, yoga, anything that you want to do to connect your mind and your body together. That happens through breath. So, if you add that in there, it's something I personally do. Works every time.

Michael: Yeah. And I hope people will do that. And stepping of recognizing that they're allowed to be first, no matter what they come from, they're allowed to be great, but man, you got to earn every inch every day. There's been an awesome conversation, brother. Before I ask you my last question, where can everyone learn more about you?

Atlas Aultman: Yeah. I'm on Google, obviously, Atlas Aultman, you'll find all my shows. I have a website. I'm not trying to sell anybody anything. But I'm on Amazon, you can get books there. I think 99 cents is what I'm going to be charging for my book on if you want to buy my ebook. It's real, real expensive. But LinkedIn, if you want me personally. Atlas Aultman on LinkedIn, you'll actually get me on LinkedIn and every other platform. I'm not sure you're going to get depends on the who I find.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. Guys go to think unbroken podcast. com. Look up Atlas'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?

Atlas Aultman: Yeah. I think we talked a lot about honesty, but no one really is honest with themselves until they have to face whatever demons that they're working through. So being unbroken is a mindset. It's always a mindset. Remember that you are strong enough to get through whatever you're facing, no matter how dire it seems. In combat situations, you get real close with God, whoever your spiritual entity is. Because you figure out how to do that. I think the best and you realize that it doesn't matter what happens as long as you're acting on it, you're going to get through it.

Michael: At least son. Yeah, I agree. It's like the leap of faith is a leap that requires faith. And if you believe in yourself and that the universe is here to support your mission, and if you get clear on your goals, If you execute and get out of the distraction and do the thing in front of you, your life will be very different. My friend, thank you so much for being here. Unbroken Nation, thank you for listening. Please share this episode with someone who needs it. Please subscribe, comment, and tell friends. And remember that when you do, you're helping others transform their trauma to triumph, breakdowns to breakthroughs, and helping them become the hero of their own story.

And Until Next Time,

My Friends, Be Unbroken.

I'll See Ya.