Knowing Yourself is the Greatest Gift

[00:00:00] I’m building real bonds with real foundation and real, just real love and acceptance and judgment. Free and safe zones and boundaries, healthy boundaries. You know, I’ve never had this stuff in my life before. I’ve never acknowledged it, right? I wake up every morning, I do my routine, I exercise, I meditate, I pray.

I write my gratitude list. I read different inspirational stuff that motivates me. Everybody’s creating these alter egos of what people want us to be. Yeah, so why can’t we reverse this and say just be you. Find out who you are because none of us even know. Mm-hmm. Until you start doing that work, we have no clue who we are and what we like and what we want to be involved in.

Like we can think we’re the happiest people in the world, but until we do that deep work, we don’t even know who we are. Like we can think we’re happy working this job for 25 years, and one day just wake up and kill ourselves because society says we failed. Right, like, I mean, [00:01:00] it’s all these little things and at the end of the day, society needs to change.

Welcome to the Onward Podcast. I hope you’re having a great 2021 so far today. My guest is Michael Patran, and I met him through a mutual friend. Michael’s core purpose is to elevate humanity through knowledge and understanding. If you’re on LinkedIn, you should follow him. He’s always on there. In fact, just over the holidays he did, I think it was 13 or 14 days of videos every day to let people know that they’re not alone, and I was honored to be one of his guests on the 2nd of January.

You’ll see in this interview that Michael’s just down to earth. He is. Staying at an Airbnb with his kids as he goes to a custody issue, and so you’ll [00:02:00] hear his kids sometimes in the background. He’s really a good dad, very patient with them. Michael’s been through a lot. He’s been homeless three times. He had a house fire where he lost everything.

He’s drowned. He says he’s clinically died 12 to 13 times. He knows he is still here on earth for a reason. His purpose is to elevate humanity through knowledge and understanding. And boy does Michael share a lot of knowledge in this interview. Listen and learn how Michael was finally able to tell himself that he loves himself, how what Michael was finally able to figure out who he is and to be comfortable being with himself.

As Michael says, finding yourself is the greatest gift. Mike, welcome to the Onward Podcast. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Yeah, we met through a mutual friend, uh, mutual point of [00:03:00] contact, Russ Barnes. In fact, today is, what day is today? November 4th. The day after the election. Yeah. And I’m editing Russ’s episode to go to the editor, so I wanna have his episode published on Veterans Day since he’s a veteran.

Normally, I don’t post on a, publish an episode on Wednesdays. It’s usually every Monday, but I just listened to his again. What a great guy he is. Yeah, I mean, that’s a special, that’s a special day for a special guy. I mean, he’s, yeah. He’s really on top of it. He sees things for what they are and he really wants to help people.

He, he’s on a mission, so Yeah. Oh, definitely. And we met through him cuz I guess you were talking to him. Uh, he knows about my son’s sober. My son just, uh, celebrated his four year anniversary as being sober. You’re at, what, 14 and a half years? Yeah, I’m, yeah. I’m a, I’m almost at 14 and a half years. It’s uh, it’s been a long time.

Yeah. Really. Will you wanna just delve right into it? Tell us what you’ve been through. Sure. I was verbally and physically abused as a kid. I was adopted at birth. My [00:04:00] adoptive parents are who my adoptive mother is really who abused me because she just had issues at the time and my father worked a lot. So it was really left to her devices.

They weren’t able to get pregnant. And then four years after they adopted me, four and a half years after adopted me. They had my sister, uh, which was actually them getting pregnant. And I never felt like I fit in. I always felt like I was an outsider. I’m an empath, a true empath. So the family I grew up in and my adoptive family never understood what that meant.

So it was always, you’re a little bit out there, you’re a little bit different, you’re a little bit crazy. Let’s go to therapist, let’s go to psychologists. Let all these different things. I mean, I went to bed till either nine or 11 years old. I would cry in class cuz I was extremely sensitive. I still am.

And you know, in the eighties growing up, that wasn’t something that was really accepted. A male that was sensitive and my parents growing up in Brooklyn, not even women come out of Brooklyn sensitive. So it was definitely a different type of childhood, not in bad ways. I mean, my parents really tried their best and they did love me and they do love me.

[00:05:00] Uh, my mom passed about nine years ago, which I was able to fix that relationship before she did. Thank God. Me and my dad are still working things out. It’s better than ever, but it’s, we don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, so it’s different. It’s a different world. Yeah. Well, how were you able to fix that relationship with your mom?

Because you said she’s the one that verbally and physically abused you. How does one go about. Fixing a relationship like that? Well, I got sober before it happened, so thank God for that because doing my four step doing the rest of the steps definitely helped me do it right. It it making amends and owning my side of it and sitting down and having those honest conversations.

In 1994, when I was about 15 years old, my mother got diagnosed with something called scleroderma, which is a chronic disease, and they gave her a very short timeline. She lived till 2011, so fortunately I was able to, Get past my drug and alcohol use, which I started drinking at nine, started doing hardcore drugs by the time I was 11 or 12, and it just spiraled from [00:06:00] there because at some point some of it was to hide.

Some of it was to run from who I am and what I am being an empath, uh, because I never felt like I fit in. So I did figure out different calculations of how much. To use and abuse, to be able to numb that out. So I did it and I went from that to being the life at a party. And I went from that to being the center of everybody’s attention and world.

And you know, I was still able to have my abilities to some extent and be there for people and be the anti-bullying because I always stopped bullying. I just never, because I was bullied as a kid also until I outgrew the bullies and then I wasn’t bullied anymore. So at that point going forward, I started protecting kids that couldn’t protect themselves.

And there’s so much layered into this, right? Like it was so many things in kindergarten, they said I was slow to develop, so they put me into something called pre-first, uh, which thank God doesn’t exist anymore because that was a waste of a year of my life. And then by fifth grade I was put into gifted classes.

Sixth grade, they put me into honors classes, AP classes. By the time I was in eighth grade, I was already taking high school [00:07:00] math, uh, seventh grade actually, I took high school math, which I failed year over year because I wouldn’t show my work. I wasn’t a great student, uh, because I didn’t like, I didn’t like doing homework.

I thought it was pointless. It didn’t make sense to me, right. I wasn’t, I’ve never been good at following directions, which is probably why I didn’t go into the military ever. It wasn’t a consideration in my life because it wouldn’t have worked out for me. Not Well anyway, I wouldn’t have conformed, so I, it would, it would’ve lasted about a day.

Where’d you get the alcohol and the drugs? At age nine. Okay. So the drugs didn’t come from my parents. The alcohol did. Uh, my parents were always throwing the, the parties, the 4th of July parties, the Thanksgiving parties, you know, it was a house that all the family came together, that all the, the whole neighborhood came together.

My dad did very well financially at that time in the, in the eighties, and he always bought all the fireworks for the neighborhood and, you know, so it was like the center of all that. My parents weren’t really drinkers at all other than those occasions, and they were social drinkers. So I figured out that, you know, water would.

Replace silver Rum or replace vodka, and that flat soda would replace [00:08:00] burgundy or brown rum. So, you know, I was always a little bit too smart for my own good and apparently mean pouring it back into the container. So it looked like, yeah, well I know that because that’s what my, my son did. Yeah. And, uh, I didn’t really know it, but he would like look at where the mark was and then he would drink, and then he would make, go back up to that level.

And then one night at the time, uh, his stepdad and and his dad were sat down to, you know, have a drink, which was very rare. And we’ll, and Tim’s like, this doesn’t really taste right. Right. Uh, so it got figured out, but there’s all these little tricks. But let me, so like, what, what does it look like to have that reconciliation with your mom?

Did you get into really in-depth conversations where you said, why did you verbally and physically abuse me? Or did you have discussions about that? Like, do you understand why, where she came from and maybe why she was that way? Or did you just kind of forget? Did you just like say that’s in the past? No use going into it.

I’m not gonna talk about it with her in lots of ways. I wrote [00:09:00] it off, right. She was many years into her disease at that point, and she was getting frailer and frailer and. Honestly, once she got diagnosed, she really changed as a person. She let over bitterness and what she grew up with generationally. So she let go a lot of that anger and she was never the same person again.

I think by the time I was nine or 10, she actually let go of a lot of her anger. She had a thyroid issue that was not diagnosed. There was her and my dad were fighting at end, my dad wasn’t around view. He was always working. So it was very challenging, right? It was a challenging time for everybody. I’m sure in some ways she felt less envious.

She wasn’t able to have children. Uh, and then my sister was like the miracle baby when the stress was off. It was not an ideal situation, and my parents weren’t very good for each other. They really didn’t bring out the best in each other in any way, shape or form. So since I was 27, when I got sober in 2006, I was already an adult.

I didn’t take responsibility for anything obviously, but I was an adult and. I guess by learning to forgive myself, right, for and taking ownership through the four steps, [00:10:00] I basically just wrote it off and the emotional damage I honestly didn’t deal with until this summer. I didn’t get rid of the emotional damage until this summer.

I released it finally, going through Brene Brown’s books and going through shaming, blaming, and guilting and all those things. And releasing it, right, writing it out, burning it, praying, meditating. I mean, I now have a whole new routine and in the last four or five months, my whole life is different than it was even when I first met you.

Wow. Wow. Like I’ve gone, I hear birds. Do I hear birds? Yeah, I’m out, I’m outside. I mean, you have two TVs running, two phones running, and a tablet running. So you’ve got a 10 year old, an eight-year-old, and three-year old you had to get away from. Yeah, I mean, because I took emergency custody of them cause they were being abused by their, their mother and her boyfriend.

Uh, March 6th and then March 17th, covid shut the world down and I’ve been stranded in Arkansas since. So finally had my first court date last week and now I have custody. [00:11:00] And then I have a final hearing in March, which I’ll hopefully get permanent custody if you, the JU judge saw that I was in the best interest of the children to be with me, so, wow, that’s really hard to see your kids go through what you went through as well.

Well, Being an empath is, is an advantage, right? Because I know what they went through. I can feel what they’re feeling today. I understand where they’re at. I’ve got them into therapy. They’re going through, I’m there for them. I’m always present. I’m always with them. They’re starting to trust and trust adults and really make progress, right?

And as I’ve gone through this transformation and I’ve changed, I noticed that they’re changing completely too. Cause as my energy is shifting and my personality’s shifting and everything I do is shifting. They’re shifting. Yeah. Cause they’re just getting more comfortable. Right. My whole life I was never comfortable with my own skin.

I didn’t say to myself that I love myself until I was, until August. It was sometime in August, the first time in my life that I ever said I love myself. Um, well, you know, I’ve been learning too, and you’ve probably learned this, that. Our lives [00:12:00] are a reflection of us. So your kids are reacting to the changes that you’re making, and that’s definitely helping them and being able to love yourself.

Then others can love you. Well, and yeah. And they’re all gifted also, right? They’re all EMPAs or some form or fashion. So they feel it and they feed off it, right? What you put out to others is what they’re gonna give you back. Yeah. So when I was in a bad mental space, when I first got them for the first two and a half months, they were more chaotic than when, when I first picked them up.

Because I was in a bad place. Mm-hmm. Um, as I started working my way through that, and it’s been a ton of work. I mean, I’ve done pretty much an emotional four step over the last three, four months. Did you have a counselor that you worked with or you just did this on your own or, I mean, I worked with, you know, Annie Lee is a huge credit to everything I do.

She’s a huge credit to who I am today, Sherry Luk, Andrea Summers. I have like this circle of trust I call it, of people that I trust with my life and. People that I’ve brought into my circle [00:13:00] that I have their back, they have my back, and I’ve formed these close bonds with them that. It’s my own soul family almost.

Right? Like you can call it that in a way. And it’s just this, I’ve never, I mean, I’m 41 years old and I’ve never been, I’ve never had an intimate relationship of any capacity. Mm-hmm. And this is coming from a guy with three kids. I’ve never allowed intimacy into anything I do. So now I’m learning about all that and I’m building real bonds with real foundation and real, like just real love and acceptance and judgment.

Free and safe zones and boundaries, healthy boundaries. I’ve never had this stuff in my life before. I’ve never acknowledged it, right? I wake up every morning, I do my routine, I exercise, I meditate, I pray. I write my gratitude list. I read, I read different inspirational stuff that motivates me to remind me.

Matt is another person. Wow, I can’t remember his last name right now. Oh, gag. Gag. Uh, Gagnon, uh, he’s another person. He’s helped me tremendously. Like he was there when I was at my worst, and [00:14:00] he’s a coach and he helped me work on my mindset. And it’s all the pieces. It’s the fact that all these different things came in at once, right?

Because I’ve been doing emotional work, spiritual work, physical work, and really changing my whole life. I mean, I’m down 35 pounds in the last four or five months, you know? Um, this would’ve happened if you hadn’t been stuck in ar stranded in Arkansas after you went and rescued your kids. If you would’ve been able to get back, if Covid hadn’t happened, you were able to get back.

I mean, I know it’s hard to know, but where do you think you’d be now? I’d be miserable. Nothing would be right in my life. Being stranded here is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. 20 20 20 is my best year of my whole life, and that’s weird to say, but it really is. 2020 is everything to me like I’ve changed for the rest of my life.

I mean, I’m only halfway through, right? I’m 41 years old. If I lived to 82, 87, 88, whatever it is in my eighties, I’m halfway there. I’m just getting started. Like, yeah. And, and I’ve done so much in my life and I have so much experience and, and I help others too. Like I spend so many hours a day helping others [00:15:00] find themselves.

How do you do that? Are you a coach? No. Nah. I, I would never call myself that, but I help them with spirituality. I help guide them. I help help them in business. I’m always reaching out to people to see how I can be a service to them. Right, and, and, and I just give back. I always give back. I love giving back and don’t misunderstand.

It’s not like I’m this fortune, right? Like I’m not sitting on a bank that I can do those things financially. I’m probably in the worst position of my whole life, but I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. It’s all gonna work out. It’s all gonna happen and fall in place and. I really just, I’m picking up good people and just lifting them to their best selves.

And for the first time in my life, I feel like I have the worth and self worth and value that I’m picking myself up also. Yep. Never. And that comes back to you. Yeah. That’s awesome. And I’ve never, I’ve never done it before. Right? Like the synchronicity and the way that the world works, serendipity and everything else that falls in place.

I can recall the exact conversation that changed my life. And it was with Annie, right? Annie [00:16:00] leave March 5th. Was the day before I got my kids and I was probably at the lowest moment in my life, wanted to give up on everything I was doing. Like just give up. I was sitting in Arkansas waiting 10 days for the paperwork to go through to get my kids after getting the, getting the evidence of the physical abuse that they went through.

So as a parent that had no contact with his children for five, six, no wait. Hang on. I didn’t speak to them since August, so about seven months. Right. It ripped my heart out. Right. And I’m an extra sensitive person and naturally just a sensitive person. So I’m not your typical father that you know, Hey, I love you, you know, good job bud.

That’s not me. I’m, I’m more like that mothering nature because I wanna be involved in every aspect of their life. And my soon to soon-to-be ex-wife cut me out completely. So how did you know that they were being abused if you hadn’t really seen or talked to them? Her family sent me evidence, her family.

And actually testified on my side, right? Because they didn’t wanna see the kids go through it anymore. My soon to be ex-wife has untreated mental illness and she’s always been this way and she’s getting worse progressively as she gets older [00:17:00] and. While everyone enabled her, including me, I enabled her completely too.

Everybody’s starting to see her for what she is, and what happens is as they start picking up on those things, she cuts them out of their life. Out of her life. Yeah. And then she keeps the kids as leverage. So she was using the kids for checks, for different checks from the government, different checks for different reasons, and like going in front of the judge and having this conversation and being on the stand.

And luckily I was very fortunate, you know, being in the deep south that he saw through it. Because being in a small town, in small town USA in the deep south, taking kids away from their mother is not easy to do. But it’s also a time where child abuse is so rampant that the law is stepping up and doing the right thing by the kids.

And there was many issues with that small town. Don’t get me wrong, there’s many issues and I had many issues with authorities there. Like I was the outsider. I was the guy that was doing wrong. I was crazy. I was just trying to harass her. I was trying to be in, you know, just make her life miserable. And she even had, you know, officers and local [00:18:00] people testify to that or give affidavits on that fact.

But luckily the, the lawyer saw, uh, the judge saw through it. What’s your relationship with your sister? Well, there’s a funny story to this. My, me and my sister get along very well now actually, considering that we have completely different personalities, different ways of living life and different expectations outta life, we get along amazingly, right?

So you have to take all those things into consideration. She’s very traditional and she’s very, She’s the at home mom. They live with, they both, you know, the husband has a W2 job. I don’t believe in those things though. It’s a completely different perspective on life and how to raise children and all those things.

I don’t believe in that either. I believe in blunt honesty and truth. Mm-hmm. I tell my kids the truth. Right. Like Tuesday night, I said, tomorrow’s court. There’s a chance you’re going back with her, but if that happens, I’m not leaving and I’m not going anywhere until you’re safe. So I handle things differently than most people.

Mm-hmm. I believe in want honesty to the extreme right. Like, I will be in somebody’s face and tell them exactly how I feel, not to hurt them or cripple them, but so that I can pick, [00:19:00] help them pick up the pieces when it’s done. Because you can’t leave live in a facade. You can’t live not being your true self and be okay.

It impact everybody around you. Ironically, a few months ago, my birth family found me. I was wondering, I was gonna ask you that They found you, huh? A few. A few months ago? Yeah, like a couple months ago. It was my biological sister found me because of ancestry. So it was this weird thing where everything started coming together in my life.

I was making all these life transformations. And she found me. Oh, were you ever gonna look for your family for your. Birth family? No, it was never important to me. And I’ll, and I’ll explain because I started going to therapists and psychologists so young because they always thought something was wrong with me.

They would say, oh, it’s abandonment issues. It’s this, it’s that. And I learned how to neglect abandonment, like I just didn’t believe that was true. As an adult, going through Brene Brown, going through other people, going through all this work that I’ve been doing, I’ve realized that I always abandoned myself.

Right, and, and that I learned from Sherry Lewis. Who just published her book and [00:20:00] everything else, and she’s an amazing person. I should introduce you to her actually. You can. I’d love to meet her. I’d love to. Um, yeah, and I’m going through her group, her group therapy stuff, and I did one-on-ones with her. I did tons of stuff for trauma healing, and as I’m going through this 2020, which was this horrible year for the world, my year gets better and better every day.

Like I have down moments. And I was extremely anxious coming into this because I don’t know why I really don’t. Yeah, coming into this interview. Right. And, and I don’t know why, maybe this is the anticipation cause we booked it so long ago and Yeah. You know, I, I just didn’t, I was in a different place when we booked it and when we talked I was in a different place, so I wasn’t sure you know, what the expectations were and I didn’t know.

I guess I created self expectations at that point, right? How am I gonna live up to whatever I was at that moment? And then I, Annie reminded me that all I have to do is be myself. Yep. And that’s it. That’s all. It’s, and I need a movement on authenticity, so I support that. Yes. It’s tough though. It’s really challenging sometimes just to be yourself.

Right. So you’re, how did your birth family [00:21:00] find you? You get something in the mail or do you get a phone call? What happened? No, my biological sister reached out to me on, um, Facebook. Like one day I got a message and it said, I think you’re my brother. Can we talk? And I’m like sitting there and I’m like, it took me about 20 minutes to respond to these.

I didn’t know how to answer it. Yeah, it was. I didn’t know how to react. Right. It was just almost this, what do I say to this? Like, I don’t know. Right? And I just said, you know what, here’s my number. Call me. And we ended up talking for like four hours that day. Apparently she’s been looking for me, um, my biological option too.

And she been, no, she actually, she’s, I think she’s five or six years younger than me. So when my biological mother had, she had me, she was 15. Her father was abusive and so was her uncle, and she didn’t want to bring me into that house. My biological father doesn’t even know I exist, and that’s just kind of how that works.

They were from, Mississippi and the father moved them [00:22:00] down to Davey, Florida, which is where I grew up. Ironically, I grew up like right around the corner from where they lived, which was even strangers, right? Because it was just all strange, the whole thing, the similarities, and I guess the timing of it was amazing, right?

Because I don’t think any other time in my life I would’ve accepted it graciously. I wasn’t at a mental space that I could. It, it’s, it’s because I don’t think I was ever at a spot where I could have accepted it. Or I could have understood, and because I was doing all this work and I was reinventing myself and transforming and everything that I am today and continue to be each day, and the constant evolution, I was able to accept it graciously and in some way it filled this void that I never knew I had.

And it wasn’t about like, oh, great, I have two families now. It wasn’t. Great. I have people, you know, more people around me. I mean, there is those advantages, but for me it was these deep rooted, never fitting in and never feeling like I belonged anywhere in my life. And then finding out that my biological family is all empaths and finding out that they all had drug [00:23:00] issues, finding out that it all made sense.

It just made me feel like I belonged somewhere. Yeah. And so she was her mom. Your mom and dad. Are her mom and dad, or did she, were it just no different, different dad. Same mom. Same mom. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. It, it’s so, it’s so unorthodox. It’s just like, it’s almost like one of those tragic stories how that, how my biological family happened.

But that’s, it is what it is. Right. And we have the same mother and we communicate regularly now. It, it’s, it’s awesome. It’s just a very unorthodox and wow. And I have a half-brother too, so I think I’ve had a good year too in 2020. And it’s been doing that inner work, like you were saying, like the meditation, the get, you know, surrounding yourself with supportive people.

Developing meaningful relationships, just doing all that work, understanding yourself spend. I’ve been like being less busy, busy, busy and more time with myself and the quiet time and that has helped [00:24:00] so much, but it was so hard for me to do because I had some stuff I had to overcome as well, and that’s my, being busy was my way of avoiding it.

And it’s hard work, but it’s so worth it a hundred percent. I went from being, you know, an addict to everything, to being a workaholic uhhuh. And my, my and my cop out was, you know, because I didn’t deal with the emotional baggage for 14 years after being sober. And I mean, I went through hell in those 14 years and I still stayed sober.

I had business partners steal million of dollars from me. I was, uh, worth millions of dollars on paper and then homeless three different times I had a house fire that I lost everything. How’d you go through all that and not drink? I don’t know. God, it’s the, it’s the only explanation, right. God or my higher power, whatever you wanna call it.

Mm-hmm. That’s the only way, you know, when I quit, I, when I finally quit drinking, it was, or doing drugs and drinking, right, because it was both. When I stopped, I made a pack with God and I said, God either kill me right now or help me face over. Because I don’t wanna live another day like this anymore. I [00:25:00] just don’t.

I never wanna live like this again. You know? I mean, I had a DUI in 2004. I fell asleep on the train tracks in my car. They had to reroute. They had to reroute, I think seven trains. You know, I was parked up on the platform down into the train tracks, like I was ready for, you know, I was ready to be a meal for that train and they had to reroute trains, and I was across the street from this sheriff’s office, and they didn’t even see it like it was Mike.

There’s a reason you’re still here. Oh, there’s many reasons because I’ve voted many times. I’ve drowned. I’ve done tons of stuff. I, I, last count was I was clinically dead between 11 and 13 times. From all different reasons. I’m definitely here for a purpose and I’m gonna fulfill that. Do you know what is it?

Yeah. I’m here to elevate the world. To touch as many people as possible and help them be their best selves and at the same time, be my best self and use my experience and my knowledge and my God-given gifts to make an impact and be able to elevate humanity because the systems in this order broken. Do you do that for a living?

What do you do for a living? I create companies, build companies, [00:26:00] help others, build companies. I do all sorts of fun stuff. My main company right now is an education company. I want, I wanna redevelop the global education system. Yeah. From scratch. And that’s my, that’s one of my companies. And you know, we’ve been working on it for over three and a half years now.

And after the election we have a few huge meetings to start moving things forward. Like there’s many things going on in the background and I work, I own seven different companies and I’m a part of five others. And like I’m doing so many different things. But now I take the time out to be me and do me and be present for my kids.

And I gotta say I’m happier than I’ve ever been. Yeah. Like. Like, I had a phone call with this woman yesterday and in an hour on the phone, she’s like, I only had 15 minutes. I said, okay. So we stayed on the phone an hour and, and, and by the end of the call she’s like, again, you’ve changed my life. You’ve just changed my life.

And I told her, I said, look, last time we talked, I said, reach out to you and you need, and you never did. So if you keep doing it that way, then we’re gonna keep having these conversations every once in a while. It’s not about, I don’t charge people for my time, I don’t do [00:27:00] any of that. It’s not that I think it’s a bad way to earn a living, it’s just not who I am.

Right. Right. I’m, I’m gonna make enough money changing the world that I don’t need to make money off people in that way. And the people that I’m helping change will probably one day play a role in everything that I’m doing to change the world. And I don’t look for anything in return because it comes back in other ways.

Yeah. You know, I mean, what Annie Le did for me and what I’ve done for her is it’s given us this bond that’s unbreakable for the rest of our lives. Who’s Annie Le? Annie Le is, she is a very close friend. We have a deep relationship, a very deep bond, uh, almost unexplainable. She works for something.

Something new, which is the recruiting and advisory services to change the staffing industry basically from scratch. Completely revolutionized hiring people and changing companies and saving bottom line at the same time. Mm-hmm. But really putting people first, but then she also has her own. Health and wellness and detoxification business that she does on, on the side.

And then she also does a ton of podcasts and she’s just, you know, we’re [00:28:00] really close, really good friends and we help each other in, in many ways. And we’re there for each other. And we’ve both helped each other transform over the last six last, I guess it’s November now. So I guess, you know, let’s say since, uh, I guess since June, How you meet her, how do you know if somebody’s listening, um, to this and they’re like, oh, wow.

But I don’t know any of the people like that. Like, how did you meet her? How, how would you recommend that people reach out and meet people and get those, you know, find those people that they want to develop those close relationships with? For me, it’s just putting myself out there, right? You’re not gonna be real people until you’re real.

Like, you’ve gotta be real with yourself before you’re gonna meet any real anybody else, right? Like when I was at the lowest moment of my life, I said earlier that, you know, March 5th, The day before I got my kids, I put a video out, or March 3rd or whatever it was. I put a video out, she reached out to me.

We connected, we communicated back and forth, and it was a simple message that everything is going to be okay. And I was at my lowest moment, put a video out where? [00:29:00] On face, on the LinkedIn. On LinkedIn. On LinkedIn, on LinkedIn. And she reached out through LinkedIn. We connected and we were going back and forth, and that was the lowest day of my life, even after everything I’ve been through in my life.

That was the lowest day. It was day 10 of waiting for the judge to put through the order. It was being stuck in Arkansas by myself. It was not having closed because I packed for four days when I originally started this process. What the video say? What the video say that you put on LinkedIn. Cuz typically you put stuff that’s professional on LinkedIn.

Not me. I don’t believe in that. That’s crap. I was crying, I was miserable. I was talking about how bad everything was. I was just real. I was real exactly where I was. And it was as simple as somebody that I’ve never met before, sent me a message and said everything is going to be okay. And the next day I got my kids and.

Then we didn’t talk for a couple months, and then in May, at the end of May, we started communicating pretty much daily. And then we’ve just started building a relationship, a friendship, and we have this tremendous bond. To where I’ve got her back, she’s got my back, and we just go and [00:30:00] we’re helping people daily.

You know everything. Be yourself, and then you’re going to attract people that are real and that are themselves, and you’re gonna attract the people that you need to have in your life. If you’re not being real, if you’re not being yourself, if you’re putting on a facade, if you’re one way at home and another way on Facebook or another way on LinkedIn to just make an impression.

Then that’s not really you. Well, and okay, so here’s what I’m gonna say about that, right? Society raises us to be dli. Society teaches us be duplicitous, be one person at home, and then always show your best face to everyone else. Um, and it’s very sick and twisted. Now, I believe that’s why they say narcissism is on the rise, sociopath it on the rise, everything else, because everybody’s creating these alter egos of what people want us to be.

Yeah. So, Why can’t we reverse this and say, just be you. Find out who you are because none of us even know. Mm-hmm. Until you start doing that work, we have no clue who we are and what we like and what we want to be involved in. Like we [00:31:00] can think we’re the happiest people in the world, but until we do that deep work, we don’t even know who we are.

Like, we can think we’re happy working this job for 25 years and one day just wake up and kill ourselves because society says we failed. Right. Like, I mean, it’s all these little things and. At the end of the day, society needs to change. And that’s a huge, that’s basically what I say happened. What I feel like happened to me is, you know, at age 17, I made a decision to go into the military to go to the Naval Academy.

Yeah. And probably for the wrong reasons I made that decision or who know, who says they’re right or wrong, but I didn’t know a lot about the military. Right. And then it led to just the 38 years working for the Navy, raising my kids, being a single parent, just head down, couldn’t even like, Putting everyone first, and then it comes time for me to retire, eligible to retire, I decide to retire.

And everyone’s like, well, you should do this, you should do that. You should, you know, go and do this job. And I’m like, I. I decided I’m gonna figure out what I wanna do, and then a [00:32:00] month after I retired, I found out my, my kid’s dad was sick with cancer and then he died in December, this past December. His funeral at Arlington is Monday, and I just saw him on his deathbed and I thought to myself, I.

I’m not gonna be like that when I, when I die. Meaning he had, I know a lot of regrets and I’m not going to die with regrets. I’m not gonna dri die with a house full of stuff. I’m gonna make sure I’m organized and don’t leave my kids in, in this mess that he did. And he was, you know, he was somebody too that I like.

You said your mom got nicer when she got sick. He completely changed for those six months. He was the nicest. It was just so different. It was really nice to be able to have a little bit of closure with him, but that’s what I think a lot of people are struggling with. They don’t. I agree. They don’t know who I am because who I am isn’t the title of my job.

Yes, 100%. I mean, I, I’ve come to a point now where no matter what company I create, what company I run, what [00:33:00] company I participate in, I’m not gonna ever have a title. I don’t want a title. I’m done with labels, I’m done with titles. The janitor is just as special as the ceo. The chairman of the board is only as important as what decisions he has, the ability to make for the good of the people that work there.

And I refuse to allow myself to be labeled, and I never want my children to be labeled right, because the labels to me are just divisive nature of society and how we like to categorize people. We’re not a label. We are individuals. And I have adhd. I have many things in my life. I’m type two bipolar. Uh, I’ve been diagnosed with it, right?

I’m not a coach. I don’t have certifications. I barely have a G eed. We either got thrown out two high schools. I have life and I know who I am and what I’m here for, and I will help others find their purpose and find their reason for being here I, and help and help them find themselves. Because whether you’re 80 or whether you’re 20, it doesn’t matter.

Finding yourself is the greatest [00:34:00] gift. Again, what you were saying about regrets, right? Like people change when they see their mortality because they’re scared, right? It’s fear that forces them. Wow. I was a scumbag my whole life and I was never, I was never really a scumbag. I just love the shitty things.

But what I realized is I wasn’t living up to my potential either. And if I can spend the rest of my life, whatever it is, 40, 42, 43 years, a hundred years, right? Who knows? They, they put my head into a, a robot or something. But if I can live the rest of my life on that mission, others, and lifting people up, I’m all for it.

I’m happy to know you. Yeah, I mean, I’m so glad that we did this and you’re patient. I appreciate you because my kids are interesting at, at times, right? They’ve all been through different abuse and they’ve all had different issues and it’s trying to work with all three different personalities and all three different issues and just juggling it all really.

I can tell. So, but thank you for being on the podcast, Mike. No, thank you so much. And I’m telling you, I’ll always come back. Anything you need, let [00:35:00] me know and, and I’m always willing to come back. I highly recommend you follow Michael on LinkedIn. He puts some awesome videos out there. He’s just being real.

Other people on LinkedIn that I follow that are real are Annie Lib and Kelly Blackman, and I’ll put their LinkedIn profiles in the show notes. I plan on using LinkedIn Live to start getting my message out as well in, uh, calendar year 2021. I’ve been a little nervous about doing that, but I’m ready. I don’t know why.

Why is it easier for me to go on Facebook live than it is LinkedIn live? But I’m gonna do it. The start was the conversation I had with Michael on the 2nd of January. I’ll put a link to that conversation in the show notes as well. We were just talking about you are not alone. And there’s so many people out there that wanna help you out, consider joining the onward movement.

I’ll put a link to the Facebook group in the show notes, [00:36:00] and I’ll be talking more about the Onward movement on LinkedIn as well. I’m kicking off another round of my group accelerator coaching program. That program is all about learning how to discover your authentic self, how to release the fear of judgment, and how to create.

The life of your dreams. If you’re interested, send me an email or message me on LinkedIn or Facebook and we can schedule a conversation to see if the Onward Accelerator program is for you. Have a great day everyone. Thanks for listening.