Turn trauma into TRIUMPH | Trauma Healing Coach

What's up, Unbroken Nation. I hope you guys are doing well. I wanna talk to you guys about today is thinking about what it means to show up in your life in a way that is about you, it's about you coming into your power into your truth.

One of the things that I learned early on into my healing journey, that my therapist taught me that I wanna share with you today is this concept that change only happens when you make change happen. For so many of us, we wait, we sit, we hope we try to secret our way into success, but the greatest change that you're ever gonna see in your life is only going to come when you make this decision. And I think that's really difficult when you come from understanding and having a background where there's fear in being who you are, there's fear in showing up as your authentic self, because of the shame, the guilt, the potential ramifications that come along with living in a really showing up in authenticity and your truth.

So, I'll share a story with you about five years ago, actually, probably six years ago now, after I'd been going to see my therapist every week for years, every Wednesday night, 5:00 PM, go to my therapist's office and I would sit there and I would talk to him and then I would share all of the crazy shit that happened in my life. I would share my mother cutting my finger off. I would share being molested. I would share being homeless. I would share stealing food to survive. I would share stealing money from family members. I would share breaking into houses and stealing cars and running with guns and hurting people. I would share the abuse of having my face slammed into walls and being beaten to the point that I passed out. I would share the fact that my mother would overdose on pills and crash her car and try to kill my brothers and I, when she was having manic depressive episodes, I would share all these things. And one day I'm sitting there sharing these things and my therapist looked at me and I was telling him, I don't wanna be here anymore, not like on earth ‘cause I'd made a decision to live, not on earth, but I didn't want to be in his office anymore. I was tired of looking at it. I was tired of walking in that room every Wednesday for years and sitting down and drinking the same disgusting chamomile tea, and having these conversations about how much my life sucked, about how much I was so tired of always having it, rain on me, about how it was always the world against me. And he looked at me and he said, you know, I get it and he did get it. One of the things that I loved about my therapist, one of the things I loved to this day about that man, is that he does get it, cuz his background was just as crazy as mine. And so, when he talked to me like I related, you know, that's one of the things that I think people really fail to understand in this journey is that you have to be able to relate to the people that you're learning from.

You know, it doesn't do you a lot of good to go through learning through people who have never done the thing you're trying to do. That's why we created Unbroken Conference, because we want to be able to educate people who have gone through this and the speakers, we've had lined up for unbroken con are unbelievable. We're gonna start announcing those folks in October, but you can register for free right now if you go to unbrokencon.com. It's gonna be amazing transformative experience because what I realized in his office is the same thing that I'm trying to do now and that's to teach you, but to be in your path, you have to be willing to learn.

And so, I'm sitting in this therapist's office and we're having these conversations. I'm sharing the darkness, the pain, the suffering, the guilt, the shame, the hurt, all the things that I didn't share before ‘cause I was terrified cuz I was scared because I was afraid that he even would judge me in the safest place that he would judge me. And as I shared and I told him, I don't wanna be in this room with you anymore, man. I'm tired of looking at your stupid face every week. He said something to me, he goes, do you wanna change your life? And I was like, that's the whole fucking point I'm in this room, man. If I didn't wanna change my life, I wouldn't even be. He goes, yeah, I get that but do you want to change your life? And I was like, I just answered the question. And this is one of the things that a good coach does, a good therapist does, someone that is a mentor to you if they're good, they're gonna do this same thing he did to me, he asked me, again, said, do you want to change your life? And I said, yeah. And he goes, look. Change only happens when you make change happen. And in that moment, one of the things that I realized that became profoundly impactful and important in my life is that I was the person who was going to change my life. He was giving me the tools. My coach was giving me the tools, all the audio books, all the podcast, all the courses, all the seminars, all the education, all the conversations, all of the men's group therapy and AA and NA and all of the travel and the experience, all that was giving me the tools. But with that tool in my hand, I had to create something. And so, many of us don't create something. We take the tools and we sit there and we put 'em on the shelf and they get dusty and we dust 'em off and we go, oh, okay. It's all good. I'll get to 'em tomorrow. I'll build that thing that I want to build tomorrow. I'll create that thing I want to create tomorrow. And then one day, if you're unfortunate enough, you're gonna run out of tomorrow's and realize you never built the thing that you wanted to build. And so, I'm getting all this education, I'm learning all these things. I'm spending all of this time, effort, energy, and money.

You know, I actually put together the numbers one time. Cause I was curious. I was like, how much have I really invested in myself? How much has I really done here, over the course of the last 12 years since I made the decision to change my life. And I put together a spreadsheet and I realized I've invested over $270,000 in 6,400 hours of therapy, coaching, personal development and self-education because when I sat across from him, I realized that up until that point I'd been doing incremental changes, which you need, you have to have the incremental changes because incremental changes create momentum and with momentum, you create massive changes. But when I started this journey at 25 years old, heading into 26, my shoes cost more money than the entirety of what I invested into my own personal development.

And so, I'm sitting there across from him and he's asked me, do you want to change? Do you want to change? Do you want this? I'm so like, yeah man, I want it. That's why I'm here. And he said to me, one of the most important things anybody's ever said, he said to me, change only happens when you make change happen.

If you're listening to this and you're paying attention to, I want you to sit in that, change only happens when we make change happen. And it can be scary to change. It can be scary to transform. It can be scary to let go of the old narratives, the limiting self-beliefs, the ideal the person that we think we should be because other people told us that we should be it. It's scary to do that, but you have to do it anyway. Because if you don't then inevitably the thing that will happen, my biggest fear, the thing that has driven me probably more so than anything on planet earth is I don't want to die with regret. 

And so, many people on this planet are going to die with regret because they're terrified of the transformation, because when you look at the understanding that where you're at now, doesn't have to be where you are, but you have to get new tools that you actually use to get to where you want to go then you have to close a gap. And when you're closing that gap, you're learning, you're growing, you're not only learning and growing externally, but, and more importantly, internally, you're learning to love yourself, you're learning to show up in your boundaries, your wants, your needs, your interests. You look at those tools that you've gathered over the years, all the conferences, all the personal development, all the YouTube, all the self-education, all the books. And then you realize if you want to be the person that you're destined to be, you have to build yourself. You have to create yourself.

When I wrote, Think Unbroken, one of the parts of the book starts with create you because that's how this works. If you want change in your life, you want transformation in your life. You want healing in your life. You want to live into the potential of those dreams that you have at night that you think about all of the time where you're like, oh my God, what if you can have it, but you have to make a decision. You have to take an action. You have to show up for yourself. And most importantly, you have to be willing to do it with other people. One of the biggest mistakes that people make is they think to themselves, I will figure this out on my own. Well, let me tell you this, after 6,400 hours of coaching, personal development, therapy, groups, anonymous groups, and over 200 and $50,000 invested in myself, literally my life savings to the point where I sold shit that I owned just to go to therapy where I borrowed money to pay for rent so, I could go to coaching. Let me tell you this, when you make those decisions to show up for yourself and not make excuses, everything about your life can be different, but my friend change only happens when you make change happen. And ain't nobody coming to save you, nobody's coming to give you that dream that you have, of being the person who is healed, who doesn't carry shame, who doesn't carry guilt, who loves themselves, who can look in the mirror and be okay with the reflection. The only person who's gonna give that to you is you. And the only way you're going to give that to yourself is by making a decision and by choosing to show up for yourself. And these are just a small, small, small portion of the ideals, the tools, the actual executionable actions that you are going to learn during the Think Unbroken Conference, it's totally free to watch live.

And so, if you have not signed up yet, go to unbrokencon.com to join us this November. Just today, I got confirmation from one of the leading trauma experts on freaking planet earth that they're gonna come and be a part of this and help us because ultimately, we're all in this together.

And so, if you can watch live, it's totally free. Go to unbrokencon.com and make a decision because you see change again, only happens when you make change happen. It doesn't do you any good to watch this, to listen to the podcast, to get on the YouTube if you aren't gonna do anything with it, because you're just wasting your time. Don't even sign up for the conference if you ain't gonna show up and do something about your life because you're taking a spot from somebody else who wants to be there. But my hope is that you'll show up that you'll be there, that you'll live into your authentic self, you'll come with vulnerability and you'll leave with courage and strength and transform your trauma into triumph.

My friends, let me tell you this, I'm simply one of you. I have been there. I've been at rock bottom. I've seen the worst of myself. I've seen the worst of humanity. I've done things that I don't even want to get into right now ‘cause there's not enough time and I might go to prison cuz I don't know if the statues of limitations have been raised, but the one thing that I do know is that life is very different from where it started, from being that hurt loss little boy, from being abused, from being abandoned, from being an orphan, from not graduating high school, to being 350 pounds overweight and smoking two packs a day and being $50,000 in debt and putting a gun in my mouth. Life is very different because I made a decision. And I'm not sitting here preaching from the pulpit, talking down to you, I am standing across from you talking to you as my friend, as my peer, as my brothers and my sisters and letting you know the fucking truth that you can have the life that you want to have, but only you can give you that life.

And so, I hope you'll come and join us out Unbroken Con. It's gonna be an amazing transformative experience. It's online, it's virtual. So, if you don't have an access to a plane or a car or a boat or a train, doesn't matter, you can watch it wherever you are. So, come and join us out unbrokencon.com.

And until then, my friends.

Be Unbroken.

I'll see you.