How to Overcome Bad Habits and Embrace a Positive Life | with Sean Robinson

 Michael: Hey, what's up Unbroken Nation! Hope you're doing well wherever you are in the world today. We're excited to be back with you with another episode of my guest, Sean Robinson, who is the author of Going Dry. Sean, my man, what is going on in your world today?

Sean: Hey Michael, thank you very much for having me on your show, excited to be here. I actually just ran a 5K this morning, very outside my comfort zone. But it was something that I challenged myself to do and now I'm spending with my family.

Michael: Nice. Love it man. You know, so much of our life is in the challenge, it's in the getting uncomfortable, it's in the space of growth that we find who we are by doing hard things. And I think that for myself personally, that's been a huge part of my journey is like, how can I challenge myself to go deeper? Before we jump in and dive deeply into your story, I'm so curious, what's something about you that I would need to know to understand who you are?

Sean: I work construction, firefighting been doing that for 20 years, and I thought I knew who I was supposed to be. I thought that I was set everything about me was who I was gonna be, and I was just gonna maintain that for the rest of my life. So, my biggest thing was that I am who I am and there was nothing I could do to change it and then I had an aha moment that I can't even believe to comprehend what my life would be like if I didn't start to make some changes. 

Michael: Who is it that you believe that you were? Cause I think a lot of people kind of have that preconceived notion, maybe it's from school, maybe it's from parents, from your family like where does that come from? Who did you think that you were?

Sean: So, when I was growing up and my dad was a mechanic, I grew up in that environment holding the flashlight for him, never getting it in the right spot, never being quick enough to get tools. And while he taught me a lot of how to do my own work, it always felt like it was never good enough, never fast enough. So, as I grew up in that environment and then, got into construction myself, got around the fire department and just the toxic masculine environment, I felt like I had to carry myself a certain way when I was in those groups and who I thought I was with the people around me, I had to be macho, I had to be tough, I had to fix it myself, I had to, you know, not show weakness, not be vulnerable, never ask for help. Who I thought I was, was the person that was gonna fix it on their own and I didn't know any better, it was what I was brought up in and until I found some tools to get outside of that lane, did I learn that I could control these things, or I had the most control over my inputs and what I could change and how the people around me didn't have to dictate that for me I could change what I was.

Michael: Yeah. You know, I think so much of that is truly tied into those moments, especially in childhood. I mean, did it feel like when you were a kid you had pressure to be that way?

Sean: I think so because my dad lost his father when he was 12, 13 years old. So, he had older brothers, but he didn't have that father in his life growing up. So, I don't know that he had a hundred percent example to know what me and my two younger brothers needed from him growing up. So, I think there was a lot of assumption that we were just gonna figure it out because he figured it out. So, when we got to certain ages or, you know, holding that flashlight or grabbing the tools, like, I should know what the next step is, I should know what the next expectation is from me in that moment. And I don't think he did it on purpose, but I definitely think without knowing about it was what I took from that situation was that, you know, I had to figure it out or I was gonna get the frustration of, you know, in that example of the light being in the wrong spot or bringing the wrong stuff to 'em.

Michael: Yeah. I think that's interesting that as kids you don't know, right? I mean, you have no way of knowing anything ‘cuz you're learning in real time and a lot of times you're learning that stuff in under pressure like there's that feeling of like, I need to succeed so I can have love and admiration and kindness and compassion and especially with young boys, it's like we're laid into this path where we start walking it and we don't really know what we're doing, I assume this applies to women too, but I grew up a boy, so I don't know. But I always felt like there was this framework of this is what it means to be a boy, this is what it means to be a man and so much of that is just informed by the people that are in front of us. And what's interesting about the people who are in front of us, whether it's our fathers or our brothers, or the guys we play sports with, is none of them know what they're doing either. Right? And so, we get kind of trapped into this process of, it's like we all think we know what we're doing, but none of us actually know what we're doing.

Sean: And to add to that, I just want to say the examples that we have set for us, if we don't know what we're doing, the people around us don't know what we're doing where I was, what I grew up, my parents didn't know what they were doing. Right. We figured it out as we go, they figured it out as they went. So, when we grow up and we get to a point where we think, or I think I am, who I am, it's because of all those examples that were set for me and if those people my parents and everyone else in my life didn't know what they were doing, I was inputting all the wrong information, I was believing everything I was absorbing to be true, and all of my attitudes, all of my person was created from the he wrong information.And to get to a point to start to change those inputs, obviously that's a hard transition to change everything that is about your person, to get rid of everything that you've learned to a point, to then make a decision for yourself to believe what you wanna believe or change what you wanna change, that was probably one of the harder things for me was believing that the example I had was so wrong for so long.

Michael: Yeah, I resonate with that a lot and dude, I remember these moments being young and looking at what I thought were the role models as far as men are concerned in my life and women as well and just being like, something about this, it feels a little bit off, but I can't question it ‘cuz I don't have any other data to support that there's something different that's plausible here and I feel like I spent an in my entire childhood just wondering, it's like, why do people behave this way? Why do people act this way? Why is the thing that people do when they come home is like, grab a bottle and drink wine, or have a few beers, or just watch the game. In the movies, I think the relationships that kids have with their parents, generally speaking, are very different, right? They're outside, they're playing, they're having fun, blah, blah, blah, but it's like often so, so vitriolic, and so I mean, really for a lot of kids, painful, it's like we want to connect with our parents, we want to connect with our fathers, especially the men in our life and it always feels like there's a big wall up and then you start tracing it back a little bit and you have our generation of fathers were raised by men who served in wars and men who were taught to turn off emotionally to protect the homestead and build and grow these massive empires and before them and before them. And it's like, what's interesting about, what I see changing in the world now, obviously having what I do with Think Unbroken and now working with thousands of people around the world, it's like we are stepping into emotional, really, I think, emotional intelligence in a way that we never have before. And it's like newfound territory, this is like freaking walking on Mars, right? And so, you're out here and you're trying to figure it out day by day, you said something really interesting at the beginning is like you didn't know that you could like it was so embedded and ingrained and implanted in you that this is like the boy to the teenager, to the man that you had to become. When you reflect on that, are there any lessons? Are there any moments that your father gave you that actually have really propelled you forward in life? ‘Cuz I think a lot of times in these kind of conversations, people like, yeah, my dad was like this, so I was just shut down and blah, blah, blah. But was there ever anything, where was the positive? Where are the things that he brought to your life that still hold true today that inform who you are as a man?

Sean: I think because he was so young when his father passed and he was very much fix it yourself and like you said, that generation that just naturally had to do that. Anyways, my work ethic, he's given me such a great example of a work ethic and a lot of the things that I've done, I didn't become a mechanic because of that experience as a child. So, being an electrician and getting involved in different things, he's taught me how to be proud of my work and show up, be consistent, put the work in and because that's his strongest suit was his work ethic, I've had to pick up other things, you know, the things I learned or dealt with as in our family environment. I've had to create my own habits or I've had to fix what I didn't like growing up to what I'd like for my children and my relationship with my wife.

Michael: What does that look like for you? What are some of those things?

Sean: Well, when I grew up, as I mentioned, I have two younger brothers, so it was a very masculine household. My dad who grew up this tough mechanic, fix it yourself and then transposing that to my two brothers. My mom, she was there, but very much had to be in with the boys, there was just that many. So, growing up with that masculine environment, we got what fathers, I think give their boys, it's tougher, just toughen up, don't cry, don't show emotion and having that, I always thought if they had a girl, if I had a sister or there was a little bit softer environment, it might have been or would've been a whole lot different, we would've probably grown up and not had it as tough from, you know, the discipline and a lot of the drinking environments that I relate to now and something that would've changed the way that they were my parents were to us if there was a girl in the environment. It's tough when you don't have to have that soft side and like I have three kids, my two boys, and then I had a girl, so I thought this my whole life that if there was a girl in the picture, it might soften it up a bit and I saw that in myself because I was acting out. I found generational the way that my example was, and part of my decision to make changes I was doing to my kids what I had to me, I was getting aggravated, I was yelling, my patience level was zero. And having the two boys, it was like the environment I grew up in, it was tough, a lot of similarities and it was funny, I thought this whole time that if my parents had a girl and then I ended up having a girl and I felt immediate need to be softer and to be more respectful of our family unit and what I was doing that I was used to in what I grew up with.

Michael: Here's a thought I have, I don't have children, but I think about this quite frequently. We live in a time where men are becoming more emotional, which I think is very, very important but we're also in this weird time where it's almost the pendulum is swinging too far where we are losing some of our masculine traits, where we're not able to stand in our power and our truth and what it means to like really be a man. How do you balance that for yourself, like to come from this hyper-masculine environment to now wanting to be this more emotionally in depth man like how do you find the equilibrium in that?

Sean: I think the biggest thing for me was understanding about generations, and I know you can relate to Tony Robbins and his content. He mentions a lot about generations in finance and generations in people and when he talked about the fourth turning, I picked the book up I read it, and learning about how generations and the phases of generations and how relating it to my parents, my generation, my kids' generation, we can't raise people in our generation. We have to adapt. I had to adapt from what I thought to be true about the way my family was brought up to the way I was, brought up, to the way I should bring up my kids in the same manner. And while it may seem like we're losing some of that masculinity, I think we're also getting stronger because we're handling it much better. We're talking about mental health, we're cognizant of the breaks we need or the resources we need, and the more we get that out there, yes, we move away a bit from the tough masculine environment, but we create different strengths, different things that speak to the next generation and the following generation. And just like the fourth turning and the cycles, I think, we create, it's a little bit less masculine, but I think that would create a bit more masculine generation. We kind of adapt and deal with the moments that we're living in or what we've created.

Michael: Yeah, that's a really interesting point and that makes a lot of sense to me because I look at a lot of the tendencies like that, I grew up with that are very either different or entirely removed from my life, I look at the same really being how my brothers raised their children, how my sister raised her kids. And it's very different but there are some similarities and I think one of the biggest differences, you know, I look at the relationships that we have as men in bonding about and around things that are not just about drugs and alcohol and partying and things. And one of the things I thought really fascinating about the book that you wrote is, you know, in Going Dry, you talk about this concept of making this decision to go against the grain of what had been defined as manhood for you. Being around this concept and idea of alcohol, of partying, of drinking, of girls, of all those things, which many boys, we look at the world and it's like, Hey, you know, you wanna bond with your friend, kick back a six pack and this is how you do it. And you're journey through navigating that now into something different. And I think that there are so many people, and I won't even say exclusively just men, but there are so many people who they feel this call and this urge that only can be solved this connection, this embodiment of community through actually poisoning yourself, right? With alcohol, with drugs, with whatever that thing is. Tell me a little bit about this transition for you and what it was like for you to step into this new phase of how you're defining manhood and male bonding and growing into connection.

Sean: The drinking environment specifically was around me my whole life like I knew how to mix proper Ryan Coke when I was nine years old. And it was innocent because I wasn't drinking these things, I was in that environment. I knew how to do it because I was wanting to be helpful, it was to go to the cooler, go to the fridge and help that way. So the abundance of drinking was there for me from very early on and it became a rite of passage, I know it is that once I got to a point I was gonna have my first drink with my dad, and we were gonna do these things because alcohol and those dependencies we're celebrated that way. It's one thing to have that drink with your dad and then for me to have that drink with my son or like, it is a generational thing from my experience and then coming to the point where I created my own habits around drinking and an abundance, I was going, going out, you know, the partying life and then the circles working construction, it's almost like you come in on the Monday and if you don't have those stories from the weekend about moments you don't remember or about how sick you got, or you hang out with the same people so, if everybody's not sharing, you don't fit in. And in those environments, if you don't fit in, it's a lot more pressure to on the job. You might get laid off, if people don't like you or you know, like any group of people you wanna try and fit in and so that you feel that acceptance.

So, for me to continue to do that, I mean, it was what I wanted to do, but when I was, you know, 19, 20 in, like my prime of drinking, the bars were fun, I knew a lot of people and it was the same thing every night on the weekends and through the week. So, I feel like once I got older, I was still trying to chase that fun moment that I thought I remembered and I'd be drinking an abundance just to try and catch up to that point and wouldn't slow the pace down. So, I would continue on and then well surpass it and my wife would be trying to get me to go home and so function's over and it's like, well, I'm gonna try and sneak three, four, or more of these in because she doesn't really mean it yet she doesn't mean that she's ready to go. For me to change that was everything I knew from such an early age was, you know, being around drinking and then creating my own habits, getting to a point where I didn't know how to be different. I didn't know how to not do that. It was like my subtitle in my book, you know, the habitual element of drinking was this is what I knew about drinking was how to continue in this lane and to change that seems so unknown to me and so difficult. And then when I was like 17 and 16, that's all I knew was you needed that in your life to carry on, you needed it at your social functions, you needed it to celebrate, you needed it ‘cuz it was Friday or whatever, it was just what I knew.

Michael: It's so funny that you used the word need in that, and I think that societally, especially in North America and it's funny, I was listening to Dr. Jordan Peterson talking about like in Canada, like of course you drink, it's freezing cold, there's nothing else to do. Right? And so, you know, I remember hearing him say that and I thought that was really interesting because they say the same thing about the Midwest here in America or about the East Coast or about the South, or about the UK and it's like, okay, wait a second, maybe that's not actually factual, maybe you don't need this. And I remember, its funny, dude, because I also would make drinks for my grandmother when I was at her house as a kid, like eight, nine years old. I took my first sip of beer when I was probably like seven, I bet and obviously it was disgusting I was seven years old and she was like, yeah, that's cuz this is for, and she let me try it. She's like, that's cuz this is for grownups, right? And I was like, okay, I can see that right in some capacity. I have kids so please don't hold me to that, I'm sure I would change my mind, but I look at my teen years, I mean, I started drinking heavily at 13 years old, like after school when we would go, like camping anything like the guys, we would get together, ride our bikes down to this little creek and start drinking. Our parents drank, we had a teacher actually in high school he got fired because he had one of those old green thermoses, like real old school style, and he kept vodka in there. And one of the kids one day like took a drink out of it and the kid was got drunk or something. So, I mean, it was really crazy and it's like, that's so normative. And you walk down this path where it's like you are looking at your life and for me, I looked at the way that I drank in my late teens and my twenties, and it was the same thing. How much fun did we have last night? Because we don't remember. One of the things that I recall really distinctly is like friends would just cheer it on, come on man, do another shot like let's drink, let's go party and it's like, but why? Why do we need this? Why do you actually have to have that? And I think that it is social, it is normative, but I don't think it's a need. I don't think you need to have to do this, but it's so programmed in our mind. So how do you start to transform that? How do you move to this place where it's not a need? And even if you necessarily don't go to AA or you don't consider yourself an alcoholic or you don't have to fully quit, but how do you just change the thought process of this from, this is something that I need, because that feels like a demand on yourself, it feels like a responsibility it feels so much heavier than anything. Like I think you need oxygen and food and shelter and love and compassion, but you don't need to get fucking blackout drunk.

Sean: I agree. It's such a socially acceptable tool or I don't wanna say tool, but it's such a element that we become accustomed to using it like you're going fishing, you need a fishing rod. You need, you're going outside, you put your shoes on you, you have alcohol or whatever in those moments, because you're just so used to needing it as part of whatever it is you're doing. So, like any habit, you've got a get yourself away from the feeling that I have to have this because I'm going to a wedding and I'm gonna drink all what they've got there, you know, the concept of open bar dangerous, you don't have to have it because it's available. But for me it was getting away from the fact that I needed to do it, I felt like I needed it and changing it with something else replacing that alcohol because I'm at the cottage or camping or because I'm with my friends or it's a Friday and putting something else in its place that still made me feel like I was in the moment, I was able to go to the function and then not forget it. When I started using dry January as a bit of a way to get started, having those 30 days to set me up as you know, I didn't know what else I was gonna do, but for 30 days I was gonna stick to this plan, I was gonna not have alcohol. And by the time I got through that first 30 days, I didn't know anything about James Clear and atomic habits, like I wasn't into getting, I didn't have my inputs changed to give me the tools that I ended up finding later because I thought I had to fix it on my own. So, I would learn so much later, but after the 30 days I needed more, I knew I wasn't ready to go back and I challenged again, dry February, it was another 28 days for me to add to that. And in that window, I found that I could be different, I could go to some functions, I could be around some people and even though people fell off from their commitment to dry January as I used to make it a week or two and I'm good, I kept up with it and no one around me could believe it. It was like, what do you mean? You made it a couple weeks, you were done January, you're good. Go back like, here, I'll get you one. It wasn't until I committed to myself to stay away from it that I found, I had the confidence to continue to be away from it and tell people that I didn't, and it was a challenge because, and I don't mean any, like I know everyone deals with abuse, substance abuse in their own way.

For me, it would've almost been easier if I had been mandated to not have it or if something traumatic had happened because people around me didn't understand, they didn't get that I was just gonna not have it anymore. And it was a challenge because the tools I didn't feel were there for the decision to just change on my own as they, if there was something problematic about where I was coming from, and I would learn much more later about how it was affecting me, but in that moment, there was just nowhere that people would understand that I decided to change.

Michael: Yeah. You decision, right? That's the word you decided. And in decision, it's like, okay, you have to choose. You have to choose yourself. You have to choose yourself, especially in the moments when everyone else is telling you, hey, come this way, and there's something that feeds us, I think intrinsically as human beings, where really for the most part, we want to go our own way, but also we need community, we need connection, we need friends and love and all of those things. But what is the price that you pay for it? That's the thing I think about all the time like what is the price that I will pay to have something outside of my boundaries, outside of my values, outside of my integrity? And I think one of the hard things is, you know, Sean, we get used to disappointing ourselves. Right? How many times did you start dry January? Right? It's like, how many times in my twenties did I quit smoking cigarettes? Like I quit smoking cigarettes every day for like five years, you know what I mean? And it's like at some point though, you have to make a decision, and I think on a lot of that decision, there's this element of self-love, there's this element of compassion. I think there's also this element of like believing in yourself because here's how I look at it. When I have gone through these different elements of this journey, a lot of it has been, can I just go through today? Can I just like be in this moment in this second and navigate these feelings, these emotions, the pull, whatever it is that I am having into what I don't want because like you're always being pulled into it. There's something almost subconscious about it where we're like, no, no, no, it's okay, you know, and it's like, no, no, it's okay. It's fine. You can do this time it's like you can smoke crack this time. You can go to the strip club this time, whatever that thing is, we all have the, this time. How did you find discipline in this journey for yourself? Because that's the place where most people fall off, that's why dreams get shattered, that's why families get disrupted, that's why, you know, we end up having a podcast like this because it's like, I know that if we can share the real truth about this, ‘cuz this is not easy, like we can create change. So, what led you down the path of discipline in this way that it became substantial enough in your life that you decided to hold your commitment to yourself?

Sean: I think what happened was everything, like always in my life, I was overweight and it held me back in so many ways because I never had the confidence to try out for certain sports teams or to be involved or to go out places because I was overweight and just yes, not confident. So, as I started to get towards the end of 2020 and I was 320 pounds and just felt absolutely miserable, I was negative, I tried to everything to bring everybody down around me, looked for the negativity and other people, couldn't be happy for anybody. And was just feeling miserably, mentally, physically got to a point where I knew that I needed something to change my relationship, we had just had my daughter, she was just a couple months old, and the stress of just adding a third child to life was around us, and my actions were not helping, I felt stuck because nothing I felt like I had done before, even if it was just a half effort, it didn't fix it, it wasn't going to do it. So, getting to a point where, like, I started journaling at the end of 2020 and journaling was like, I might better have taken my clothes off and went outside in front of the neighborhood like, it was so uncomfortable for me because I couldn't talk to the people that work construction or the firefighters like volunteer that I'm with. We weren't talking about journaling because men didn't do that. Men weren't gonna keep a diary. Little girls keep diaries and all the sh*t and abuse I would've taken from everyone around me if they found out this journal existed. And it just became a place for me to vent. Right. I was gonna outlet in this place where no one else was gonna be able to judge me for it. And that became great for me, for the resources I've learned since, like for why, but like, that was not something I'd ever done before. And it was almost like I was secretive about it like I didn't even tell my wife right away that I was keeping this journal and this journal became this book, it was me documenting this all along that, that just put this out there because I went through. But deciding to change and be disciplined was finding myself that miserable and trying things I'd never tried before, deciding to do dry January and keep documenting, it was something started to feel like it was working and holding myself to the 30 days aside from what everyone else around me was doing. And then the next 28 days and then a hundred days and once I got to a hundred days, it was like, what if I did this for a year? So, breaking it down into the smaller steps the way that I did and I know that there's literature that proved that, but that wasn't where, I wasn't open to that at the time. Keeping those small goals helped me stay consistent because it didn't seem like it was gonna be a lifetime of not having something, it was I'm only worried about these 30 days, I'm only worried about the next 30 days. And once I stacked those together, it became a lot, a more solid base for me to build on.

Michael: Yeah, the nuance is everything, right? It's like if you can just be in this moment, be in this day and look at the potential, I think so many people make a mistake when they change their life and they look at all the things that they're losing, right? I'm gonna lose my friendships, I'm gonna lose watching the game, I'm gonna lose this and that. But it's like that's not really true, ‘cuz you can still do those. And what I think is fascinating is when you make these decisions, you'll find out who your real friends are like in a real way, like in a f*cked up way where you're like, yo, I didn't, I thought you were my boy, you're not. I thought, you're my homegirl, you're not. Right? But when you look at it through this window of potential impossibility, the thing that I always have come to find is like, when I give something up, I gained something. I remember once I was talking with Grant Cardone and he said, you know, to get what you want in life, you have to give something up and it's like, well, what do you want? Do you want better health? Do you wanna lose 50 pounds? Do you wanna have a better marriage and relationship with your kids? Do you want to have a better career? Do you want to be able to look in the mirror and feel proud about who you are as a human being? The answer's yes, well give up the thing that's f*cking your life up. And that's the hard part because we get so comfortable in. Where we're like, Nope, this is just my life. It sucks. I guess this is how it's gonna be. If you were to give anybody just a single piece of advice to how to shift that mindset and look for possibility, what would you tell them?

Sean: I would tell them that we don't know what we're doing. I would say that they’re not unique because none of us know what we're doing, so that would help me point to some of the things that I've picked up since, and coming from our, all of our individual backgrounds and the things that we go through, coming to that realization that we need help, we need to open up to the resources. I wasn't there. Someone could have told me to listen to Think Unbroken podcasts and I'll get around to it, whether or not it was the most relevant thing for me and until I got to a point where I was ready to open up to that, it was the aha moment that I had. When we started talking, it was like, I didn't know that all of these things you talk Grant Cardone, I've listened to probably all of his books like he gets me jacked up as much as the next person, I think until you hear him and yourself and everyone say these things we don't know, we don't realize. When I'm in my habit and routine of work in construction and you're listening to the radio, you gotta listen to the rock music and have it loud and do that all the time, we're not listening to these things because we're not talking about these things. And until we open up ourselves to this content in this realm, we're missing the message. So, I would share is, is that we are missing the message and until we open up to what's available, we're not gonna get it. We won't have that aha moment where we we're able to fix what's not worked for us in the past.

Michael: Yeah, I mean, that's so true. I talk about this a lot, but I once had a roommate's girlfriend give me a copy of Eckhart Tolle, a New Earth, and I immediately threw it in the trashcan. Right? And so, you think about it's like if you're not in a place where you're open to anything to come in and change your life, it's not gonna happen. And I think so many people are not, which is devastating to me, it's like they're just not open, but they want their life to be different. And I'm like, oh, it doesn't work that way, you have to be open to the possibility that there is a plausible aspect that everything that you want in your life, you can have but it's only gonna start with you sitting in your truth. Like I imagine at some point, Sean, and here's what I think about a lot there is some dark energy sh*t that I think is really powerful. There is the usage of really these moments where you're tired of yourself that I think can play a huge catalyst in this journey. And you know, for me, when I was at my rock bottom 350 pounds, smoking two packs a day, drinking myself to sleep, I was like, dude, I am so done with myself right now, do something different. How do you leverage that energy while simultaneously loving yourself?

Sean: It's difficult. And in the beginning probably even through a lot of the one year that was the basis of this book, I didn't like, I was still miserable, but I was inching towards getting better. I became more appreciative of small things that I didn't notice before, and every time I started to pick up on it, you know, it was that little bit that kept me going was like, that's actually a really good point. And when I started listening to podcasts and reading books, it wasn't out of recommendation from others because like I said, I was trying to fix it on my own. So, I wasn't ready to talk about it, I couldn't handle what someone might tell me, which is the hard truths that we need like you said earlier, just get off your ass and go, we can't hear it like that a lot of the time, even though we should. So, when I started looking for podcasts, I was finding that I could relate to the sports people, the actors, the celebrities that were you opening up, like ---- Kevin Hart and Matthew McConaughey and the kind of celebrities that I was growing up watching. And these are people too, they have the same things at their level that I'm dealing with, that every, that we're dealing with. So, by hearing them talk about it, all of a sudden, I'm open to listening to Dr. Caroline Leaf and Mel Robbins and Gabor Maté and all of these other people because I felt more ready for what I should have heard in the beginning. But I didn't have that until I could relate to someone that I felt I was going through something similar.

Michael: Yeah. And think about how serendipitous it is that you would have that experience in the healing journey as you would the very similar experience of community as a child and as a teen and as a young man around the very thing that was destroying your life. Right. It's really funny how the world works like that because we are informed by our communities, by the people we spend time with, by the information we're bringing in. And I know it's just such a f*cking kick and a dead horse, but like, you really are the sum total of the people you spend your time with. And if you're, I go look at my friends 10, 12, 13, 15, 20 years ago, we all did drugs, we all drank, we all hooked up with people, we all were not taking care of our finances, we all partied too hard, we all were living on the edge constantly and that's what my life was like. My life sucked comparatively, especially to now but like, well, at least we have friends and we have family, and we have community, and we're building something. And then I look at my friends now and it's like, these are incredible humans who are changing the world, they are driven, they are powerful, they are showing up every single day in their energy and in their light and I get to do that too. And so, it's interesting how full circle that moment can be to go from, here's the community showing me the worst side of me, and here's my community, showing me the best side of me. So, I love that that has happened for you, Sean. My friend, this has been amazing conversation, before I ask you my last question, tell us where we can find you?

Sean: Okay, well, I am Shawn Robinson. My website, seanrobinson.ca has content, all my podcasts and all my YouTube stuff, I'm putting all a link to my website. And my book's available on Amazon, it's book Barnes and Noble, any of the bookstores, they're stocking it, so I don't believe it's on their website. I don't think they're in the stores quite yet, but hopefully, and my fa Facebook and Instagram at going dry it a lot, I post a ton of extra content and relate it all to my story. So, anyone that that can relate to what I've gone through, that's what I can speak to and that's what I try to put back out.

Michael: Amazing. And of course, guys, go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com where we'll have this and more in the show notes, my friend. My last question for you, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Sean: I think becoming unbroken, opening up a world that I thought was an absolute for me and changing the inputs to help give me the tools I needed to become better just becoming unbroken.

Michael: Very simple and succinct. I love it my friend. Thank you so much for being here. Unbroken Nation, thank you for listening.

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