How to Transform Addiction into Success | with Daniel Hauge

Michael: Daniel Hauge. Welcome to the podcast, my friend. I'm super excited to have you, your background as a high-performance coach, entrepreneur, and author. And as a man that I know has had just such a tumultuous journey of trying to figure out how to be themselves and this healing journey and becoming who you are. I just know we're going to have an amazing conversation. That's going to help a lot of people today. So first. Thank you for being on the show, my friend.

Daniel: Thanks for having me. I have no doubt we'll have an incredible conversation. I'm looking forward to it.

Michael: Yeah, me too. One of the things that I always think about when I'm interviewing people have really created a massive change in their life is trying to understand their background, right? Because so much of our journey to figure out who we are today, we have to understand and depth who we were. I was wondering. Tell me a little bit about the past. What was childhood like? What was growing up as Daniel like?

Daniel: Absolutely. So, I was born in a seemingly. Perfect family. I had the most amazing father, the most incredible mother you could wish for. I have my little brother and my childhood. And the first couple of years of my life was just like any other child or many other children, just playing and having a good time until my father got very sick. I was about five, six years old. He got sick with. With cancer and he was battling that Eventually he was written off as healthy, you know, he made it but it came back and he just got worse and worse And so from the time I was nine years old his cancer had really And so I would come home from school every day, basically to see my hero, my inspiration, my father figure, my father just scream and cry from pain the cancer that he had in his back. The doctors told us that was the most pain you could possibly have in your back as a human being. And he had that for years. And like I said, that's what I would come home to every day for years as a child. And he died when I was, I just turned 11 years old. And just this entire experience, these years of seeing him like that, I wouldn't hang out with friends or anything like that because if I brought my friends home and they would see my father like that, but also let's say he had gone 30 hours without sleeping because of the pain. And then he finally falls asleep, and a friend's playing waking up. So there was none of that, it was just pain and misery. And so, then he died when I was 11 years old, which we all thought. Which may sound very harsh, but he was himself every single day. He would just say, shoot me, so it was a relief for everyone, especially him when he died, but this experience and this, these years here they made me a very, let's put it that way. I didn't really show up to school when I did show up. I did. All right. But my problem was I never really showed up. I was there maybe three times per week and I'll show up late and I'll go home early. I just couldn't be bothered going to school. I would start hanging around older people that were also. Off track in life. And so this was very much a slippery slope from, I was 12 already my week and basically every day, definitely the majority of the week would consist of first alcohol and cigarettes. And then that would be Marana. And then later on, that would be primarily cocaine at a very early age. And sex with, older. Girls, even though I was just completely not in control of myself due to the substance abuse and all these things. So I was just very out of control and just progress. If you can say that just got worse and worse. I remember when I was maybe 14, 15, I started, people started coming to the parties that were like next level off track in life, like they would have the cocaine and they would be pretty big like a dealers outfit and I even remember some of the parties where people would show up with guns. And I know there may be some American listeners here thinking, Oh that got a gun big deal. We've all seen one in Denmark. The only people that have that are military police, some security and then top-level criminal. So, I knew what I was around. I wouldn't say I was getting involved in it at first, but I knew what I was around. And they would tell me stories of. Just a bunch of stuff that, that was not a good thing for a 14-year-old, et cetera to be a part of now through my…

Michael: Daniel, I want to say this real quick because I think this is so important and I want to bring this in a little bit here. One of, one of the things that I think of is this, and first dude, my, my heart goes out to you. That's so incredibly difficult. And as someone who grew up with no father and having no relationship with him and no father figure male figure in my life, other than an abusive one, we as boys, cause I went the same path as you, man. Like I was doing drugs at 12 years old, drinking at 13 and gangs, stealing cars, like breaking into houses, hurting people. And I thought it was brotherhood. And I thought that I was like, just connecting with people. And, one of the things that, when you look at adverse childhood experiences, a huge trauma gigantic trauma, especially for young boys, is the loss of their father. And so, when I hear this, my first thought is like all of this, while most people would say, Oh, Daniel might be this bad kid. I'm just like, dude, it sounds like you were just trying to have a family, trying to have community. What were you getting out of that? What was coming to you in terms of connection, community, like family, by being in that environment? Or were you just totally disassociated and trying to make the pain go away?

Daniel: Very good question. So, first of all, I'd like to say you're spot on with the Daniel is a bad kid thing. I remember I was definitely the black sheep in the class and in the, and I remember my mother would not feel ashamed to be my mother, but when she was at the class meetings with the other parents and stuff, it was very clear that it was like. Every other parent against her because her son was already drinking and maybe that was going to be a bad influence on their children and stuff so I think a lot of it honestly was some kind of escapism I was looking to just not think and not feel so and when you think about it, it was crashing cars. It was drugs. It was alcohol sex violence all these things are things that kind of would Pull me to the present. And so I wasn't thinking about pain. So I think a lot of it was escapism, but certainly you also spot on with community and you're in a community where you can have some respect and you can have some, you can feel you have some control and there's some adrenaline. There's some. Some reason to be alive and almost so it was yeah, certainly some of that as well.

Michael: Did you, obviously I don't know Denmark. I didn't grow up there. I grew up in the States. And here in the States, what happens with kids like, like us is everyone was like, you got to put this kid on these drugs, these medications, these therapies, put them in the special programs. I did all of those things. Did, were those kinds of interventions available to you? Did you have therapy? Did anyone talk to you about this incredibly traumatic experience you were going through with losing your father? Like what's the mental health scope for a young boy while this is happening?

Daniel: I was certainly offered some of those things I was offered like I was I called an English like consultations around grief and stuff like that and For some reason I just said no to all of it I think I'd just gotten to a point where life was not interesting to me. Like I truly, and this is how, this is what I felt like for a lot of my childhood and my teen years, life seemed like a bad deal. Like I just, it just seemed to be so full of pain and grief and everyone is just hurting each other and the world is just full of pain and there's not too much. Good in there at least not enough to make up for it. In fact, I remember telling my mother Years later because I was hiding all this pain from her when I was going through it, but I remember Years later telling her because she wanted to actually understand how bad I had felt and I said imagine there's this electric fence and it's very painful if you grab it for even a second, it's very painful Imagine holding on to that five seconds straight or 10 seconds straight. I'm holding on to that fence 24 hours, every single day, 365 days per year. And I'm doing it for you and I'm doing it for my little brother. If it wasn't for YouTube, I would be out of here, like I would be without a second of thinking about it. I would be, this is not for me. There's life thing, you guys go have fun, it's not for me, very fortunate to have had my mother and my little brother. Otherwise, there's just there's no shot. I would be here right now no chance.

Michael: Yeah. Dude, I relate to that so much. And, I've shared this on the show before, but when I was 14 years old, I had the same thought. Life was misery. I had no friends. I got kicked out of another school. My mom was just crazy chaotic. And I just took a bottle of pills one day and I was like, I'm done. I don't want to deal with this. And what I think is so interesting is people, they don't understand the pain that we're in and the analogy that you just use, like holding on to an electric fence every day and you're just feeling this tremendous pain. It's so incredibly true. What an incredible way to feel. And what's so difficult about that is that's reality for people. That's a big part of why I created this show because I was sitting and I was thinking to myself, there are people who are adults who are 30, 40, 50, 18 years old, 37 years old, 82 years old. And they are in that place right now and they're suffering and they still feel like that. And my thought has always been like, man, if I can just have conversations with people like you, and just show them the path. Like maybe they can let go of that fence, which I know we'll get into that a little bit deeper in your transformation. What was your mother's response to that? When you sat her down, you told her that, like, how does your mom take that moment?

Daniel: Oh, she just completely started bawling her eyes out like she just completely just broke down even now so many years later when we Touch on the subject in some way shape or form. She can just like completely break down and also what kills me a lot is she feels a lot of blame on her for not noticing how bad I felt and for not helping and for you know she would say things like how could a mother not know that her son was in that much pain? I try to tell her that was the point I didn't want it to, I didn't want to share it. I didn't want, I didn't want it to spill onto you guys. So, it's especially like my little brother who already lost his father. I'm not going to make his life even harder. So, I just, I don't know. I kept it for myself. So, it's certainly not her fault, but she does take some of that shame and blame and that, that kills me.

Michael: Yeah, think most parents do, especially when they don't know. Because like most, the average person's parent in that situation wants to know and they want to connect and they want to help and they'll never understand, right? And I, these moments where you're on the edge, it's like as much as it breaks my heart to say this has nothing to do with them. What happens from there? So you have this conversation with your mother. This is super intense. What transpires after that? Did you feel a sense of here's where I think about this a lot, right? If you hold on to your fear, your shame, your guilt, your anger, your pain, you keep holding onto that fear. It just takes away from you, but when you open up and you share that darkness, like it starts to lose some power. It starts to lose some control. What started happening in your life after you opened up? What did it look like after that moment?

Daniel: So actually the thing I didn't really tell her about all of these things. I didn't tell her about how bad I felt until I had already started going in the right direction. So, what would really move me towards the right direction was I was just seeing how my life was going to end very soon, very badly if I didn't. Adjust, I started, I had an OD and I had, I was just getting into situations where dude if we got caught there, that would, it would have easily been like eight years there or eight, eight or nine years there. And it was like, how you can be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was at all the wrong places. All the time. And so, it's actually a wonder that it never really went worse than it did. And many of the friends I hung out with back then, they're now serving 12-year sentences or they're dead or they are completely just owned by their drug addiction. And so, I don't know, fortunately it didn't end up badly, but anyway, I just realized if I continue down this route, it's going to end very badly, which I didn't care about that for my own sake, but I cared about it for my family's sake. So, I owed. So, turn things around. But my thing was, if I'm going to stay in this life thing, if I'm going to keep holding on to this life, even though it's so painful, I'm going to build a life that is actually worth living. I don't want to just be here for the next 80 years from my family. I want to actually build a life that I would like to live as well. And so that was the beginning of my journey towards personal growth and moving in the right direction.

Michael: Yeah, that, that's so important because there, there's something about becoming of service for other people that Helps you snap out of your own bullshit like as hard as that sounds and you're like, but wait a second, it's my life and my life sucks and my problems and my this and my that It's go and be a good person for other people to start with and watch how your life transforms. Cause when I was 26, my little brother told me, never talk to me again. You're not my brother. And that was like a holy shit moment for me because there had been drugs and alcohol and women and cars and money and all of that stuff. And I lost all of it and none of it impacted me. None of it. Held as much weight as that moment. I want to go back a little bit more here when I think about the transformation journey Unfortunately most of the time you need that rock bottom moment you mentioned that you had this od this overdose what was that the moment?

Daniel: Nobody was certainly. A part of it, but the real moment I would say I was at this vacation house, summer house thing with some of these people that I hung out with and we were drinking and doing drugs and there were women and everything that was wrong with my life right there was in that vacation house. And one of them came up with this little game, this little fun idea. That we should try and guess how old we were going to be. And someone said, I think I will be 85 and another one said, no, I think I can make it to 90. And it was all fun and games until it came to me because I just, with a cold face, I just said 21 and everyone was like, come on, Daniel, come on. How old do you think you're going to be? I said, there's no way. I'm making it past 21. It does. It's not going to happen. There's no way. And I think that scared me a little bit. I think that kind of woke me up because I realized, okay, so what I'm saying is my mother is going to lose a son. And my brother is going to lose a brother. Is that what I just said within the next few years? And that's about, that was the wake up call I would say.

Michael: That's tough because it's I had the same thought, I did not think I was going to make it past 20 years old. And what was really weird is when I did, I just didn't know what to do anymore. And when I made it to 25, I was like, dude, I don't know what to do. And then I made to 30. And now as I approach 40, I'm like, actually, I still don't know what to do, but at least I'm headed in a direction. And I think that so much of it is you have to be honest with yourself. Because what's so interesting is if you had an overdose and that wasn't enough, it was your honesty with yourself that became like, Oh man, I got to recognize the role that I'm playing here. But you're so deeply embedded in this life at this point, right? This is your life. I recognize this, right? Because it was my life. So many of the lives of the people who maybe they're listening or maybe they've experienced or maybe someone in their family is going through the same thing where it's like the drugs and the alcohol and the sex and the gambling and the porn and the video games and all the addictions to make their life numb. And it's that's not living. Okay. So, you have this moment and you're looking at your life and you're like, I'm not going to make it past 21, which by the way, at that age is such a huge recognition. To be that young and to be able to articulate. I'm gonna be dead in a year or two like that's an intense moment but to actually do something about it that takes a lot of courage It takes a lot of bravery and I think when we're young we're arrogant and stupid like you don't understand like when you're like I'm gonna change my life Like what's in front of you? And it's incredibly difficult because I had that moment too. And I was like, Oh, I know I'm, I can do this. And I'm just curious, what did step one look like? So you're sitting at this beat, this vacation house, you have this moment. Now, what are you thinking?

Daniel: So I think actually as anti-climatic as it may sound, I think I honestly Googled something along the lines of how to build a successful life or how to become successful or something like that. And very quickly, I realized that reading was going to be a huge part of this journey. And so, what I did was I started. Wishing for my birthday and Christmas. I started wishing on personal growth books and I just started gaining an understanding of what does it take to make change? And the very first thing I learned and the very first step and which is still the first step of every pursuit, I would say, even to every person listening to this, I think the first step is clarity. So, if I say I would like to build a life worth living, the first step, in my opinion, would be to identify what exactly a life worth living would be. So, in the examples that you gave with the video games and the porn and the. And the alcohol, a lot of people will tell these people to stop doing that and stop doing that and stop doing that. And that can be very difficult because then where do they go, right? If they don't do that, I think if you have something that you're aiming for or something you're building, then some of these other things will be reduced or maybe even forgotten about or eliminated on it. So, I'm not saying addiction is that easy, obviously. And you said about the OD that wasn't even enough. I was ready again, like three days later or something like that. So I, it is very difficult to get out of addiction, obviously, but I, what worked for me was to have a very clear picture of what I was trying to build. So what kind of career do I want? What kind of health would I like? What kind of finances and the pictures that you paint today, you may adjust it tomorrow, but as long as you have something you're moving towards, I think that's a very important first step. So just clarity is, I'm a huge fan of that.

Michael: Yeah. What was the, was getting sober? Was that like one of the first clarity pieces? I think a lot of people do, struggle with addiction. I'd love to know what did that journey look like for you?

Daniel: Absolutely. So, for me I really truly focused less on not doing things like cocaine and more on what I wanted to do. So, when I started working out, I started learning a little bit about nutrition. I started getting a job. I started doing these things. I just. I just wanted the drugs less and there was less time for it. And it just became very clear to me that, okay, I want to go to the right. And doing drugs is going to the left so it became instead of drugs being the pathway to giving me everything that I wanted which was escapism and confidence and all these things now drugs became the opposite the 180 opposite direction of everything that I’ve just Identified that I wanted to build for myself, but more importantly at that point for my family so I really truly think I just you I don't, I didn't just but what I did was I ground it in things that matters to me, I think.

Michael: Yeah, when you did that and that starts becoming the path did you have moments of battling yourself? Were there moments of because here's what happens I think like people make up their mind and then they make it an hour, and then a day, and then two days, and then they fall back, or they make it a week, and they fall back, and they make it a month, they fall back. What was it like for you in that transition period?

Daniel: Yeah. So, I certainly had that as well. So sometimes friends or even on podcasts, people will be confused because I'll say at this time, I decided to turn my things to turn my life around. And then I'll talk about a later date. Where I was, where maybe I had DOD or maybe I had a different violent experience or something like that. For me, it was definitely not like in the movies, you make a decision and now everything is perfect forever. I certainly had some back and forth and then, I'd been out of it. For a while. And then I see all my friends and they ask me for, if I'm going clubbing with them and they have, they'll provide everything we want to have and all these things, so I definitely wasn't perfect in that, okay, now I'm not going to do it anymore. So now I'm not addicted anymore. That's certainly not, but it just became less and less over time. And I think something that works a lot for me with drugs, but also with like bad foods and just a lot of bad things in life that I want to eliminate or I want to at least drastically reduce if I have systems for what I do. There is not going to be any decision. And if there is not a decision, then I can't make the wrong decision, right? So, if you put a piece of cake and you put a salad in front of me and you ask me, Hey, which one would you prefer? I'll have stuffed my face with the cake before you even finished your sentence. The reason I don't eat that much cake is because I'm never really in that decision because the way I eat is dialed in. So that's the same thing with drugs. I tried to be in as few positions as possible where I had to make the decision. Do I snort something right now or do I not right? Do I abuse something right now or do I not? So yeah, I just try to eliminate that position as much as possible and you do that I for me I did that by associating less with the people that would get me into that. Position Listening to the music a lot less, you know there's some music where if I hear that I still to this day. I'll immediately my first thought would be You know So I tried to reduce that music. And so just try to put myself in a situation where there's not that decision.

Michael: Yeah. I think a lot of it is that, removing yourself from those spaces, so that you can actually show up as who you want to be. And that clarity, I think one of the things alongside with clarity, that you really need is a bit of a value system, like you need to have this space in which you know who it is that you want to become. And when I started, like initially, cause I'm, I'm 26 years old and my life is basically rock bottom. And I'm looking at it and I'm like, okay, wait a second. Who do I want to be? And it was just this question I kept asking myself and I was listening to this podcast or they weren't even podcasts back then. ‘Cause you know, that was like 13 years ago, but it was like a internet show. And it was Gary Vaynerchuk and he was talking about values. And I was like, I don't have. Any idea what the fuck this guy's talking about, I'm like, what is a value white? What are we doing here? And I know that a big part of your journey has been like leveraging values and creating those in your life. So What I’d love is for you to explore that conversation here and talk about Not only the values with clarity, but how you figure them out Because I know this is something that you help other people do?

Daniel: Absolutely. So like I said, I needed to paint a picture of what the ideal life looks like. And then imagine you have a tabletop and the tabletop is your quality of life. It's your overall life. And then the legs, the table legs are your values or your pillars of your life. So, what I've done and what I've done with clients a lot is we identify what are these pillars. So, for me, some of my pillars in life are freedom. I want to have, I want to have confidence slash self-respect. I want to have an impact on people. I want to have my health. So, these are the things that matter a lot to me. If you ask my mother, for example, confidence for her, it doesn't really matter. She cares way more about people, loving Talking to her, whatever it is, but she has her own values. And but confidence is important for me. Now, some of these values, a lot of us will share. So having your health in order is probably something every person will value, but then there are other things that just matter to some people more than others, but then what I do is I dive deeper. So, let's say I dive deeper into the freedom value. And I asked myself, what are the ingredients of freedom? Me having freedom. What does freedom mean? Is that a freedom of time? Is that a freedom of location? So, for example everything I’ve done today I could have done from a cafe in Istanbul or a hotel in Tokyo because I’ve designed my life that way because I know Freedom of location is important to me. Is it freedom of making decisions? So, when I was working warehouse jobs, I couldn't make any decisions. I couldn't do anything That was tough on me because I wanted to, try my ideas and stuff. So, what exactly does freedom mean? And what freedom means to you might be very different to what it means to me, the same thing with confidence and the same thing with all these values. So I just got very clear on this kind of, it looks like a spider web when you look it out, when you put it out, but so now, What's important to you and then what you can do is you can look at the weak link, right? You can look at, okay, my health is doing all right, my freedom. I don't feel like I have freedom, okay. Which one of these ingredients are you currently lacking? And then you can work on that. And every time you work on one of these layers of values or these ingredients or these table legs, you will increase your quality of life. You will increase the meaning of your life. And that's very important. How do you identify these? There are many ways to do it. One of the ways that I leverage a lot is asking questions. I think questions are very important. So obviously if I'm working with someone, I'll just, I'll ask a ton of questions. But also, I've also asked my, I've always asked myself a lot of questions. So, if I'm annoyed, I'll ask myself. Why am I annoyed something similar happened to me yesterday, but I took that I handled that completely fine but now it happened again, and now I’m annoyed what's different between today and yesterday? Oh, it was the tone the way he said it or it was because I was tired or it was because anyway, ask yourself a ton of questions and really get to know yourself in the sense of why did that make me jealous? Why did that make me angry? Why am I so excited to wake up on? Tuesdays and Fridays, but not on Wednesdays. Why do I why am I looking forward? To this date here, but not this day, right? So really ask yourself a ton of questions. So understand what drives you and what doesn't drive you. That's a very important thing that I think every person can benefit from actually.

Michael: Yeah, we don't have any guidebook for life. There's no handbook for navigating the world. Cause if there were, I think people would probably have very different outcomes and be in different places than they are right now. If somebody would have pulled me aside at 12 years old and been like, Hey, you should think about the kind of person that you want to be. Maybe I wouldn't have done so many drugs and gotten in trouble so much and done all those things now of course, there's always the conversation that without those I can't be here today with you, right? We all know this right but what I'm always thinking about is your life is a movie life as a movie, and I know that's like such a hard thing for people to understand, but if you take a step back and you look at it a little bit in a nuance and you make this, what is really effectively a rational decision and you look at your life and say, I'm going to choose what my life looks like you become the director of the movie. Now, what happens as the director of the movie is you need a script. And without a script, you can't make a movie. So, in the script, Oh, wait, you're also the writer. And so now you're writing the movie. So, you're directing the movie, you're writing the movie, and then guess what? You need an actor in the movie. And what you do is you become the actor in the movie and what it is, all of a sudden you're looking at your life and I know this sounds crazy for people who don't understand what I'm about to say, but when you start doing this, when you make a decision to become an actor in your own movie, you get to choose which whether you're the villain, the victim, or the hero. And that requires clarity. That requires values. That requires so much of this. And one of the things that happens though is people get trapped in building values and they put a lot of energy into it, but then they don't do anything. Maybe they write the script, but they don't start taking action, which is the directing, and they don't become the thing, which is like, becoming the actor. How do you transition into the action taking phase of this? Because obviously, we sit down, we look at values, you go, okay, I want it to be freedom, or family, or love, or courage, or passion, or joy, or whatever that is, and then it's Then what? What do we do when we have that value figured out?

Daniel: Absolutely. That's a great question. So, what I like to do with myself and with people I work with is we look at in this area right here in this level of location freedom or this case, this area of your health, whatever it is you want to work on right now, what would you like that to look like? So that's the clarity part. And then. Where are you right now? So, we all know with a GPS, a, you need to have a destination, but you also need to put in your starting point. Otherwise it won't be able to make a route for you. So you understand where you're trying to go on a thing where you are right now. And then we identify what I call bridge the gap. Activities. That's not very original because that's just activities that would bridge the gap, right? But these activities are everywhere. We have more information accessible than we've ever had. So, if you want to have more muscle mass, you can Google 8,000 ways to do weightlifting and they will help you with the muscle mass. If you want to have leads or whatever, there are the information. It's there. So, find an activity where you know that doing this activity will get me from where I am to where I would like to go. What I like to do then is we systemize that. So, you take this activity and instead of it being, I will do this once in a while, right? We see this a lot with going to the gym. A lot of people will go to the gym when they have the energy and the time, the stars align perfectly on the sky and once they switch from that to going, I will lift weights for 40 minutes on my way home from work on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. That's a system. So that's when you become dangerous. That's when you actually start seeing stuff happen. I've seen people in three months produced the results that the random people I call them, the people that doing it on random occasions will achieve in years. And so that's the system. And once you have that dial in now, we can scale, right? That's what I like to say, which some people may disagree with, but once you have something that's dialed in. The easiest thing in the world is to scale it. So if you've been reading five pages of a good book every night, you can probably read six. You can probably also read nine, right? If you can go to the gym for 40 minutes, you can probably go to the gym for 45 minutes. So once the system is dialed in, you can scale. And then you can start leverage momentum and stuff like that. The important thing I would recommend to everyone is starting small and that doesn't sound sexy you know that has never gotten anyone wet saying I’ll start very small and be patient all these things But once you've gotten started and like I said once it's dialed in you can scale that baby to the moon if you want. So it's not a problem just the problem is people don't really get started And so I would rather instead of telling you right now to read five pages tonight before you go to bed you read one. And if you still feel yourself procrastinating a little bit, just read a sentence. Literally just read one sentence tonight. That's all you got to do. If you do that, I'm happy and I'm proud. And the next day, maybe you read two lines. What happens oftentimes is you just tell yourself you'll read one line in the book and you end up reading 15 pages because you get started. So that's really the gist of it. Identify an activity that moves you forward. Make a system around it. Start extremely small, and then we dial that in and scale. This goes for business. This goes for your job. This goes for your fitness. This goes for a lot of things in life.

Michael: Yeah, it's start with one. I think that there's a lot of conversation to be had and obviously I'm a huge fan of guys like Simon Sinek and this concept of start with Y. But I always think it's like, you can have your why and that's great, but it's really about starting with one, because if you don't take an action, your life will not be different and you can create all of the thoughts and the processes and write the spreadsheets and create the formulas and do all the things in the world. But if you don't take an action, your life just won't change. And that's, what's really interesting about our human experience is that no matter the environment that we're from, and I get it, right? Cause dude, you and I are from crazy backgrounds, right? And so are a lot of the people that are listening to this. And I would care to say that. You and I don't know anything that these people don't know. It's just that we took action and execution is ultimately the thing that changes your life. People ask me all the time, like how did I be 350 pounds? And then now I'm like, And I was like, dude, one day at a time, how'd I quit smoking cigarettes? One day at a time. How did I write a book? One day at a time. And most people, they spend a lifetime waiting to do something that they can do in 10 seconds. And that's why I'm a huge fan of Mel Robbins. And she wrote this book called the five second rule, which is really about just action. Like just do the thing. But people are so scared of doing the thing because they have imposter syndrome. They're so terrified of the idea that somebody is going to catch them, that they're going to get busted. And I'm just so curious if you experienced that, because I'll tell you the truth, man. I experienced that every day. I'm like, somebody is going to bust me. And they're going to be like, see, I knew you weren't that guy. And I'm like, But that's just part of the process. Even if you have imposter syndrome, who cares? It's just do it anyway. So, I'm wondering if that's a part of your experience and if, how do you battle those things in your head where you're challenging your own identity?

Daniel: It's a great question. quickly before answering that, I would just like to say you hit the nail on the spot when you said that we probably don't know more than the listeners. Perhaps I would maybe even say that in some ways, perhaps we know less. So, what I mean by that is I have certainly sometimes overwhelmed myself in information and then I've seen people that knew a tenth of what I knew just fly past me, right? And I see them in the gym, people will come up to me and they'll be like, Hey, what do you think of this YouTube video that talked about if you turn your arm a little bit like this when you do your triceps I have no idea. I just did my bench like I've always been doing and I you know, I have the results that, that he's hoping to have, but I just do the thing. And so, I think information is very valuable if it's intentional and it's, there's a direct problem-solving effect to it. But if it's just overwhelmed, I think it will actually hurt you more than gain you. So, to the imposter syndrome thing. I certainly feel that. I think I have moments where I feel like I'm the king of the world and I feel man, I just want to help everyone and I can help everyone and what I can give people is valuable. And it's just great, and then certainly I have times where I'm like, man, why should they listen to me? And maybe someone is going to like, like you said, someone's going to say. It caught you, right? You're not that, you're not that guy. What I try to do is what I am doing is I try to stick as much to the truth, or at least my truth as much as I can. So if there is something I'm bad at, or if there is something I don't know, I will let people know, and I'll say, I don't know It's a great question. I'll get back to you with a, with an answer. I can stand behind. So, I try to put myself in as few positions as possible where I would lie in bed at night and go, Oh, I think someone's going to catch me on that thing I said on that podcast or in that tweet or but you can't always do that. And so, I think it's just about truly just doing your best and then understanding that you'll be better tomorrow. Then you are today, but that doesn't mean that you should do nothing today.

Michael: You talked about, I think this would be a great way to bridge a gap here, you talked about values and creating that, having clarity, deciding, and then we look at this conversation where it's okay, maybe there's a possibility of imposter syndrome, self-doubt, negative self-talk. And the gap in that is like to continue to just be consistent and take action, we're humans. Like I think about this a lot, dude, I make horrible mistakes sometimes. Like I'm, I sit here, I got this giant podcast and I coach all these people and I write these books and I speak on these stages and I'm like, dude, I fuck up massively sometimes where I'm like, dude, I can't believe I did that. Did that or said that or treated that person like that or said that thing on that show and now it's on the internet forever, and it's like those things I think are part of the experience and I don't know about you, but I don't feel like I'm better than anybody. I feel like my whole journey and even where I'm at now is still figuring it out. How do I figure out my health? How do I figure out my wealth? How do I figure out my relationship? And to me it's like relationships and to me it's like at the end of the day, the most important thing, no matter what, you just don't quit and it's so difficult, right? Because people will start to argue with themselves and I have done this where it's dude, you just fucked up in business so bad. How dare you tell anybody about business or you just ruin that relationship? Like you can't talk to people up to dating or you like, whatever it is, right? I can make up a million different scenarios. But how important is it to just continue to go? Is it about consistency? Is it about being honorable? Like how do you continue to go forward even when you have those thoughts?

Daniel: Yeah, it's a very good question. So, one part is leads back to what I was talking about in the beginning with having as much of what I do on a daily basis, be a systems. I would like the decision not to be there. So, this analogy that I like to use, because I do a lot of MMA and more time and boxing and stuff like that. I came up with this analogy, which is, I've seen a lot of fighters. Yeah. During my time in martial arts and I can tell you right now with a thousand percent certainty no fighter If you put him in the ring a hundred times per day, no fighter would win all hundred It's just it can't happen. Now if you're really good at fighting, maybe you win 70 of them Maybe you only win 30, but you're not going to win all of them even the ones you win would still be taxing exhausting and would take away your focus and whatever Anyway, what i'm saying is Most people or at least a lot of people, some people go through their days fighting themselves a hundred times. So they wake up and the alarm clock rings and they go should I snooze or should I not? I know I should just get up, but I want to be here a little bit more. Okay, I'll snooze. Five minutes later, you're fighting yourself again. Now you get out of bed and you look at your running shoes and you go, should I go for that run? I said, I was going to go on, but I'm also a little bit tired today. And should I go catch some crunch for breakfast? Or should I have an avocado and some eggs and some veggies. And before you know it, you're only two hours into the day and you fought yourself 35 times. So what I try to do in business and in everything else is I try to remove the decision because in my estimation, the only way you can win a hundred fights is if the opponent doesn't show up. If there's no decision. And you remove the decision when something is a system. And this is going to sound maybe a little bit motivational or a little bit cliche, but this is truly the situation for me right now. If I wake up tomorrow and I feel super motivated and I feel great and I'm the king of the world and I have no self-doubt and everything's good. And then the next day I wake up and I have imposter syndrome. I have doubt. I have all these things. I am not sure I should do it. Those two days would be identical in the input that I put in. I would still have the same workouts. I would still do the same thing work wise. Everything would actually be the same because my motivation levels or my levels of self-doubt would impact me if I had to make a decision, but I don't. It just happens. So I think that's a big part of it is automating as much of it as possible. And then also I've just found that the more I take action, the more I move and the faster I go, the less room there is for doubt and overwhelm and stuff like that.

Michael: Yeah, a hundred percent. And what I just wrote down here, cause I think this is great. It's like most people fight themselves a hundred times a day. That's do that. That's such a piece of gold because. If you stop fucking fighting yourself, your life will be better, and it is a decision-making mechanism. You do not negotiate with yourself. One of the things that I've shared that really transformed my life when I was 25 years old, heading to 26, I had this mirror moment where I'm looking at myself in the mirror and I'm 350 pounds. Cheating on my girlfriend. I'm smoking. I'm drinking. I'm eating shit. My car got repoed. I'm a disaster of a human being. Like I just am. There's no way around it. And I remember looking in my mirror and I was like, you got to stop fucking negotiating with yourself. And I literally said these words, I don't negotiate with terrorists. And I just started calling myself a terrorist. It was like this very action movie kind of thing. But it was so true because if you don't negotiate with yourself, there's no decision to be made. If you say I’m getting up at 6 a.m and then I’m gonna make my bed and then I’m gonna have coffee and then I’m going to the gym rain sleet snow hell God's Power and wrath coming down on you. I'm going to the gym, you go to the gym and then you're like, I'm going to eat healthy for lunch and you eat healthy for lunch and you're like, I'm going to work without distraction. Then you work without distraction and then you come home and you're like, I'm going to be a good husband or wife or partner or friend or brother. Then you do that and then you say, I'm going to go to bed at nine 45 after I meditate for 10 minutes and read a book. Then you go to bed at nine 45 after meditating for 10 minutes and reading a book. And that's the key. That's the system. That's the thing. It's not that what happens is people, and this is very much a business term, but people get decision fatigue. This is why you see businesses fell so frequently. Is because people can't fucking decide and it's make a decision, see it through the greatest entrepreneurs, the greatest high performance coaches, the greatest leaders, all of the people that we look up to, I'm sure some of the people who have mentored you and I, and the same way that we have become high performers ourselves. It's not the books. I promise this might be the greatest thing I've ever said on this show the greatest truth ever It's not the books. It's not the podcast. It's not the mindset shit. It's not yoga. It's not meditation It's not journaling. It's making a decision Free yourself from your own self. I'm so curious, what do you think is the greatest decision that you've made in your life?

Daniel: So, I think the big one was choosing to, to do this whole life thing. I really truly felt like it was a dilemma and I've, and I really truly felt I actually had to make a decision. It wasn't like, Oh, I have to turn my life around. It was really like, I have to make a decision now. Either I continue this way in a way where I'm pretty sure I'm not going to make it past 21, or I'm going to go all in on this life. And if I go all in on this life, let me be very clear. That is not to build a tolerable life. It's not to build something I can maybe, survive. If I'm actually going that route and I'm building a life, I'm coming for everything. I'm coming for the career, the finances, the health, the everything. I will build a life that to me is world class. That is that I truly want to be living. And so that decision of going either zero or a hundred, I think that will Probably maybe forever be the number one decision I will have made in my life.

Michael: Yeah, you should have everything. Here's what I think is so interesting we live in an abundance. We live on a planet that is spinning in the middle of a galaxy that is infinite. It is, do you realize how insane it is that we're even having this conversation right now? If you go back 50 years, go back 50 years. One day you're going to talk in front of a screen on what looks like a television across the world, and you're going to be in Vegas, and he's going to be in Denmark, and you're going to have this conversation about life. People will be like, you're fucking crazy. You know what I mean? And it's you the abundance of the universe allows the space for you to have everything. And that's just, people always ask me, what do you want? And I'm like, I want everything, man. I want the best relationship. I want the best health. I want to be the best podcast host, the best public speaker. I want to be rich. I want to be healthy. I want to, have intimacy, I want it all. And that's for me. It's not for you. It's not for comparison. It's not for anybody else. Do you agree? Do you think everybody can have everything? Or am I like so outside the box here, growing up as a homeless kid from the streets, who's now lives a great life. Maybe I'm just crazy, but I'd love to know do you think it's possible?

Daniel: I think everyone can have everything. I think most people want. And the reason for that is the very first step, the very first step out of maybe 60, 000 steps, the very first step is clarity. And in my estimation, that's something like 3 percent of the population has. I know these numbers are numbers I'm pulling out of my ass in that example, that means 3 percent of the population has taken the first step. Let's say it's a video game has completed the first step out of a gazillion steps. And so I think most people are not going to get. Everything. I think most people are going to live a life they can tolerate somewhat and that's a shame and that's really what I'm what I want to do. That's why I do what I do. My ultimate nemesis in life is wasted potential. I even saying the word makes me want to puke. I, it's such a shame when I see someone I love or someone I care about, or even someone I don't care about. And I know you could have so much more of this and you could be so much more of that. But you're not and I don't blame you because you haven't been taught and you haven't been introduced all these things I don't blame you. Just know that my heart bleeds Because I understand what you could have done. And David Goggins has this little narrative where he says, or this little I don't, where he says, imagine when you're done with your life, you come up to God and he has this huge scoreboard or this huge board of everything. And it says, you're Daniel, how you've helped millions of people around the globe, and you've completely changed the generation and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I go, God, that's, I think there's been a mistake. I didn't do any of that. And he says, no, I know you were supposed to do those things. That's that just whether you're religious or not. I just, that analogy just completely gets me fired up. So that is what I want to do. I want to help people eliminate waste potential because there's so much of it out there.

Michael: And those people have to shed. The self-doubt, they have to shed the limiting belief, they have to shed the imposter syndrome, they have to shed what their parents told them, what society told them, they have to shed the mistakes, they have to shed the times that they were not the person they said they were going to be, and they have to just keep going. That's the only way this works. And you know what's interesting about Goggins that, there's 0 percent chance that dude does not still make huge mistakes. And we put these people on pedestals. We put, people put us on pedestals. I'm like, bro, I'm a nightmare sometimes. Like I just am. And that's the nature of it. And to sit here and pretend that's not true, I think is dismissive and dishonorable and not fair to the people who listened to us and who consume this. And the one thing I will tell you, whether it's me or Goggins or Daniel here This journey, it's constant learning. It's constant mistakes. It's constant fuck ups. But it's just just get the fuck out of bed and keep going, man. Keep going, woman. Do the thing you said you're gonna do, because on a long enough timeline your life will be incredible. Daniel, it's been a Awesome conversation, man. First, just so much gratitude for you for being here and congratulations on changing your life. And when I see you and it's such a reminder of myself and what's capable and I hope a reminder to people of what's possible for them. Before I ask you my last question, where can everyone find you?

Daniel: So I would encourage everyone to check out my Instagram @iamdanielhauge. I am doing my absolute best to post daily content on things we're talking about today and a bunch of other high-performance stuff so I can help you eliminate wasted potential. I often do this through optimizing productivity, optimizing energy levels, optimizing focus, habits, routines, stuff like that. And it all happens on Instagram. There will also be some free stuff for you there. Some free PDFs, some free videos, free stuff like that. And, of course, if anyone wants Chat with me. I'll look at your situation. I'll see if I can help in any way. And if not, I'll find you in the right direction, but it all happens. @iamdanielhauge in on Instagram.

Michael: Great. And guys, remember, go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com. Look up Daniel's episode for this and more in the show notes. My last question for you, my friend, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Daniel: So, I have one tattoo on my body right now. I may get more in the future, but right now I have one and it's here on my right pec. And I was thinking about it for years before I pulled the trigger because I wanted to be certain that I wanted it. And turns out I did. I did want it. I was certain. And so I told The artist, what I wanted, and as the young buck that I am, the young male, I wanted a lion on my peck, not very original, but that's what I wanted. And he asked for further detail. And I told him, I want this tattoo to make it very clear to myself. And to the world that I have been through a thousand wars And then so I wanted to have a ton of scars and wounds and all of that But then I wanted to have a smirk and a look in his eyes that goes I’m ready to do a thousand more and I think that's unbroken to me is being punched in the mouth and Still showing up the day after and the day after that and the day after that and being real about it and saying You I got punched in the mouth today, and it felt terrible, it really hurt, that's what happened, and it hurt me, and you still show up the day after, and then, perhaps tomorrow when you show up, either you're stronger, or you are faster, or you are wiser, or you are surrounded by better people, or you're just in one way, shape, or form, better equipped to handle things tomorrow, because you got punched in the mouth today, and that's unbroken to me.

Michael: Yeah, I love that man. Life is war. Like I don't, nobody I'm telling you, no matter what you think, nobody has it easier than you. Life is very hard. And it's get up. Could not agree more. Thank you so much for being here, my friend. Unbroken Nation, thank you for listening. Guys, please remember to subscribe, that if this helped you to share it with someone else so that we can help other people transform trauma to triumph, breakdowns to breakthroughs, and help people just like you become the hero of their own story.

And Until Next Time

My Friends, Be Unbroken.

I'll See Ya.