CPTSD Healing & Facing Fears: Personal Journey & Expert Strategies for Trauma Recovery

Hey! What's up, Unbroken Nation! Hope that you're doing well, wherever you are in the world. Today, I want to talk to you about this idea of momentum and what it really means to create a pathway and a framework to have a life that you want to have. And I want to try to make this practical for you today in a way that I can with you consuming this content and I want to do this in a way that I think will be beneficial, especially if you're maybe you're at the beginning of this journey or in the middle or you're deep into it. I think, this still applies so you're definitely going to want to listen to this episode as I dive into this.

Here's what I think about often, life changes within the scope and framework of small, microscopic, granular and incremental shifts. What I mean by that is I'm always thinking about how do you move one degree to what's next? How do you shift the pendulum just a little bit to get to where you want to go? And this idea prompted for me the other day because I got invited to be on a very, very big podcast. In fact, it's the number-one entrepreneurial podcast on planet earth, like a hundred million downloads. It's unbelievable. And they were like, you need to make a quick bio short, my bio is huge, it’s like, it's got to be like a thousand words long and they're like, it needs to be 200 characters, like, cool. So, how do you summarize yourself in a tweet, right? Basically is what it was, and I sat down and I wrote Michael Unbroken is an entrepreneur, award-winning speaker, best-selling author, mentor, coach and advocate for adult survivors of childhood trauma and I wrote that and I sent it and it felt really amazing because I look at my life a decade 11,12, 15, 20 years from what I thought my life was going to be or who I could be and it's very much an alignment today with who it is that I want to be its alignment with my values, its alignment, with my once, my needs my interest, it's in alignment with everything that I want.

And look, I will tell you this, there are often people who reach out to me and they go, ‘Wow, that's incredible! You've had this life; I could never do that.’

You can do anything; you have to understand this. I am not somehow special, I don't know anything that you don't know, I've never learned anything that you can't learn, I'm not around people, you can't be around and I'm not invested in myself like you can't invest in yourself, that's the truth about it, right? But this took a long time and as I'm sitting and I wrote this and I sent it, I thought to myself, Yeah. But I used to be this hurt, lost, abused person, who doesn't love themselves, who was angry at the world, it was pissed off at their parents and their stepparents, it's pissed off at their family, who was pissed off at society, who blamed everyone except himself and who for lack of a better term, and I wrote this in my book, I'll it was like, I was standing in a house that I had set on fire. I was just in self-sabotage, right? Destroying everything around me and in that, and then when I wrote that, and I sat down and a half understanding and these memories just started to flood through me of all these things that I've done leading up to this moment and people look at thinking I'm broken or what I've done and think to themselves, “Man, I can never accomplish that, look how great Michael is.” I literally have people message me this, but here are the truth guys.

The only reason that I'm able to be here and talk to you today and you listen to this podcast and you show up to the events and you do all the things that are part of what my I did the hope of the movement of Think Unbroken is twofold one because I did it for myself and am doing it and continue doing it. And two, the more important part is an excessively patient, and that's the thing you have to understand about this like the roadmap to the life that you want to have is pretty cursed, that's a word, the precursor for the life that you want to have is patience. But it's also do All the things and celebrating the little wins, the micro victories and going day in and day out, and showing up for yourself again and again, and again, and look, here's the thing that's really fascinating about this journey. The one thing that I've discovered, probably more true than reality, anything else? It's the little small baby shifts, along the road that gets you to where you want to go, and when you're operating in this place where you're taking into consideration, your values first and all of the decisions that you make, you start to understand the power that you have to live life on your terms.

So people often get confused or like, I don't know how to live, I don't know how to be who I am, but they've never identified their values, they never sat down and said, this is who I am, and this is what I stand for, and this is how I'm going to try to be to the best of my ability. Now, that's not to say that sometimes you don't get those values interrupted because it happens because we're human, we're going to make mistakes, we're going to have faltered, we're going to fall down like that's how this works. But in this, the big thing that I want you to think about is that anything, anything is possible. I want you to stay with that for a minute, anything that you want to have in your life as possible. And a lot of times where you want to go is just one step further from where you're at right now. We all start at the beginning. There is no such thing as an overnight success, no one's ever done anything where suddenly their life was different, doesn't work that way, think about getting in shape, right? Think about changing your lifestyle, think about starting a new job, everybody sucked at everything the first time they did it, the first time you rode a bike, you definitely probably fell down. I think the majority of people do right? I know some adults who still fall down right? But that's part of life, you're gonna fall down sometimes but you keep going. And in this process the measurement for success in your life is, are you willing to face the fear of doing the thing that, you know in your heart, your gut in your soul, and your spirit that you need to do?

Most people will not be successful because they will not face fear. You have to be willing to face this. Worst-case scenario, you died, that's the truth of it, that's like the worst-case scenario. That's absolute baseline cannot get worse than this, you die and then it won't matter anyway, what people are terrified of, and what I was terrified of for a very long time, was ridicule, was a shame, was guilt, was being judged by people whose opinions don't fucking matter anyway. And more, so judging myself and saying, who do you think you are? Why do you think that you're in this position of not being able to take care of yourself, of being morbidly obese, drinking yourself to sleep, because that's what you deserve, I would tell myself this? And so it's a roadblock, it's this mental boundary that is keeping you from success. On the other side of facing your fear is your true potential.

One of my biggest fears and I think ‘David Goggins’ really put this into words in a way that I think is practical, maybe not, right? I guess it depends on what you think. He said something along the lines of ‘One of his biggest fear is that one day when he dies, God, will pull out this big board and show him all the things that he could have done and that he would have done none of them.’ And what's really fascinating about that is in his hand, I have these parallels up blow my mind before I actually knew of David Goggins I recall having this memory that having this moment of thinking to myself, I want to face my fears because I don't want to die and have regrets on my deathbed. You guys have been hearing you say that for years, I don't want to have regret, I don't want to fear the what if, I don't want to fear the what if, I would much rather fail. I would much rather, everything just blows up in my face and everybody go I told you so, right? And if they want to find fuck'em, whatever, at least I tried, and in that every single day, you have to understand that fear is a part of your life. You may not recognize this, but just eating dinner, could be the last time that you take a breath getting in your car, could be the last time that you see your family, going to the gym could be the last time that you get the opportunity to move your body at any given moment. This whole journey is over guys, and any given moment you're dead and you don't get any choice in that, you don't get to control anything, except what you get to control, and in that, you must accept, what you get to control.

A-C-C-E-P-T , accept what you get to control, and in that, you get the freedom to let go of the things that you can't. I don't get to control of the weather, I don't get to control people's opinions of me, I don't get to control whether or not I get to do whatever that thing is that other people might have the key to. But that doesn't mean I'm not gonna try, that doesn't mean I'm not going to work really hard to make it happen, that doesn't mean I'm not going to write it down in my journal every day and move towards it with ferocious, ferocious energy. I don't know what the fuck that came from because that's the reality of it. You have to move with ferocious energy towards the life that you want to have, you're over here scared of people's judgments, you're scared that you're going to hurt somebody's feeling when you tell them the truth, you're scared that you're going to have to actually be able to live up into your potential and look facing that fear is going to be the difference between success and failure in your life. Because if you don't face that fear, then you're going to lie on your deathbed and the bio that you're going to write is going to be the one of an unlived truth, and then unlived truth is going to be all the things that you wish that you could have done. All of the movements you could have made, all the changes you could have created, all the impact you could have had, all the service you could have given to those who needed you.

There's a certain aspect to this, where, to be honest with you, I think you're being selfish. I think you're being selfish if you don't face your fears because your voice could be the voice that people need to hear to create change in their life.

And I sit with that often, right? And I'm so grateful and I'm humbled by the fact that people reach out to me every single day and they go ‘Michael, you changed my life, you saved my life, you helped me be a better person, you help to give me tools that no one else would give me.’ But if ten years ago, I wouldn't have made the first step 12 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, I wouldn't have made the choices and decisions that I made, you wouldn't be listening to this now and I wouldn't be talking to you, I would have never written a book, I would have never spoken on stages, would never got investments from billionaires, I would never do all the things that I've done. But that all started with fear, sitting down to record a podcast, starts with fear. Am I going to say the right thing? I don't know, maybe, maybe not. Am I going to have food in my teeth? Maybe, maybe not. Is my gonna listen? Maybe, maybe not. But the truth is, I don't care about those things. The only thing that I care about is the fact that I did it, but I did the thing that I said I was going to do, and I hold myself accountable to that and in holding myself accountable to that, even if I don't reach the goal, let me put it like this. My goal and I just upped one of my goals the other day, I dropped one of my goals is huge now, it's unbelievable. It used to be I want to help 25 people, and then it was, I want to help 2 million people, today recently, I started looking at it deeper and I wrote it again on the road, again, I wrote again multiplying this week and now, it says, I'm looking at my journal right now, you can't see me, you can hear this.  I helped 25 million people, and I honestly think that's probably too low. It probably needs to be 250 million people, right?

And so, I'm going to change it to that, even right now is happening in real-time. I want to help 250 million people. Do you think I'm going to be able to do that without facing my fears? My fears of standing on stages in front of 10,000 people, my fears of writing the next book, the next podcast, the next thing that I need to do to create the change in my life. No, and neither will you, because the hard part about this, the part that people don't want to talk about the part that people are terrified of is the truth that are you not facing your fears means that you're probably letting yourself down, that you're going to find yourself on your death bed wondering, what if? And there's nobody who's going to do it for you?

I'm going to tell you right now; this podcast isn't going to change your life, listening to this isn't going to change a life, reading the book isn't going to change your life, coming to a seminar isn't going to change your life, none of that shit will.

The only thing that will change your life is the actions that you make in spite of fear or even perhaps despite the fear that you have while understanding that you must accept, A C C E P T – that you can only control what you can control and that you cannot control everything. And in that is freedom and in that freedom is the potential to create momentum and in that momentum, you have these very microscopic, granular, and incremental one-degree shifts, that create change in your life. But it starts first with action, as starts with making a choice, it starts with making a decision, it starts with what you think and giving yourself permission to be the person that you're capable of, and in that, you create action, and in those actions on a long enough timeline again, this word patience, you will have the life that you want to have.

So one day when you're sitting down and you're writing your bio, you'll look at a new go, holy shit! It is insane, the things that I've accomplished, even though I come from that darkness, even though I come from this place, where people don't believe in me, even though I come from not even believing in myself because I chose to build it by any means necessary. I chose to show up, day in and day out, and face my fears and do the hard things, I chose to not, listen to the fucking haters who are going to hate you, anyway fuck them, right? But that doesn't mean that one day you won't serve those people. That doesn't mean that one day those people won't go. ‘Hey, you know what, I'm sorry, I was wrong about you.’ Thank you for showing up regardless of the dumb shit that I said, right?

At the end of the day, your life is in your hands, you have control over this, you can write this beautiful, beautiful story about who you are, but if you're unwilling to face the fear, if you're unwilling to operate within your values, if you're unwilling to stand up for yourself, you will not have the life that you want to have.

And look, I wish it were different, I wish I could just hand you the life that you want, but I'm going to tell you right now is a person who's had to do a tremendous amount of fucking work and who still does, day in and day out, the truth amount this is, the road is not easy, the path is not easy, the journey is not easy, but the destination is worth it.

My friends, thank you so much for being here and being a part of the Think Unbroken Podcast and the Unbroken Nation, and being here and showing up and living your life.

I appreciate you

I love you. Have an amazing day.

My friends, please like, comment, subscribe, share and tell a friend.

And until next time,

My friend, be Unbroken.

-I'll see yah!