Transcript
Speaker: Do you ever feel like life's changes are holding you back from reaching your full potential? Are you eager to share your message and story with the world but unsure how to do it? In today's episode, our guest Michael Harris and I, your host, Sam Aiko, will discuss how to embrace change, overcome adversity, and harness the power of your message.
Speaker: Michael Harris is an author, coach, trainer, yoga teacher, and entrepreneur and the co -founder of Endless Stages. He considers himself passionately diverse and has a wealth of experience in various fields including yoga, coaching, and entrepreneurship. Michael's quick wit, deep insight, and dry humor will captivate and inspire our listeners.
Speaker: Michael is the author of a number one best -selling book, Falling Down, Getting Up, which chronicles his life through a near fatal water skiing accident, addiction and predictions of an early death due to vascular disease. The second part of the book describes how walking, healthy eating and yoga turned his life around and kept him alive and thriving. In addition to his own book, Michael is the co -author of two number one best -selling books,
Speaker: expert success solutions and pod match guest mastery. He is also releasing a book called Within May 2023. So don't miss out on our incredible Matrix mentors and follow our show and bookmark our podcast to stay connected. Michael, it's been fantastic to have you on the show. Can you tell us about your mission and passion in life? Well, first of all, Sam, I want to say it's wonderful to be on your show and to be back again and
Speaker: You know, I've said this to you before. I really love what you're doing. And I love the other guests that you have on the show. And every one of them is so dynamic. I know many of them. And they do really, really great work on getting their message out. And that's really been my focus. 2023.
Speaker: I'm not a big, you know, come into a new year and make all these resolutions and all that. But I told myself this year was going to be the year of the story and that I was going to help other people, you know, get their stories out. Well, little did I know that that also meant that I was going to put this new book together. I was going to have 26 yoga teachers from around the world talk about what it's like to go within.
Speaker: and help them get their story out, right? So right now, that's my main focus is really helping people get their message to the world because it's so important. Again, whether it's Nikki Bilyewitz has been on your show or Jason, you know, they both bring different dynamics.
Speaker: you know, in different parts of, I like to call it like the mountain, you know, like if I'm standing on one side of the mountain, I only see a certain thing, right? But then if I stand on the north side or the west side or another side, I see something different. So each one of the guests that come on your show are bringing these different incredible dynamics of what they are seeing, all for the purpose of helping each other.
Speaker: Thank you so much. I'm so happy that we share this vision and I really appreciate you seeing the love and dedication of the Matrix mentors on our show. And I'm so happy that we can connect on bringing a voice to the people and bringing like local education. Like there's a lot of times we rely on books.
Speaker: to learn from masters like you and a lot of our other matrix mentors, but to actually like hear your voice, hear your story, hear your tone, hear how it comes all back to you and how you guys translate it into the art of a story. That motivates me so much. Yeah. You said something there, the art of the story.
Speaker: And you know, it's a really interesting thing because on one side, stories are meaningless, right? You know, a lot of it is just like the stories that we have are perceptions and many of those perceptions are not accurate. Yet by also diving into your story and telling your story, it helps to get clear on what is real and what's not.
Speaker: So, I mean, I like the way that you said that, you know, that the art of the story and it's just like, how does that work? How can we mold that to really get closer to our truth and closer to what's real in the world and within ourselves? Absolutely. And listening to each other, like, and comparing our perspectives, that is the beauty of it.
Speaker: how we can all relate, how we all go through similar archetypes, but have way different verbiage for it. Like, it's incredible. Well, you know, even like the standard story methodology, I'll call it, you know, the hero's journey, you know, and the hero's journey, it's not about the storyteller, it's about the listener. And this is another
Speaker: dichotomy or contradiction or what whatever you want to call at least I see it this way I Get a little tired of the hero's journey story You know, and it's just like, you know, we all go through this stuff. We go through these challenges We go through these difficulties we get clearer on it. We tell other people you know and in all of this and
Speaker: You know, it's become the basis of personal stories, especially nonfiction books, but fiction books do. You know, a fiction book has a great hero in it, right? And you know, they go through that hero's journey. So what other ways are there to tell stories? So that's the question that I have for the listeners. How else can you tell a story? That is a great question.
Speaker: The first thing that came to mind when you mentioned the hero's journey was the movie Maleficent. I think all of us are curious to different journeys compared to the hero's journey. And for some reason, the villain era was a big thing in 2023 for my audience. A lot of them were talking about diving into the perspective of a villain, what makes a villain, what makes a hero and a villain different. And the core of it from what I witnessed was perception. Yeah.
Speaker: Absolutely. You know, The Matrix is another classic example of that. Yet, here's another example of it not really being a hero's journey. It could be, but normally it's not. So, Sam, you went to grade school, yes? And so do you remember, say, first grade, maybe even kindergarten, but I'll say first or second grade?
Speaker: And there was what they called show and tell. Did you ever have show and tell? Did you ever bring anything in for show and tell? Yeah. And what did you bring in? Can you remember? I don't remember to be completely honest. Like I could probably like make something up, but I don't remember. Well, I happened to have this rock here.
Speaker: Gay Hendricks, which is a friend of mine and some of the listeners may have heard of it. I was down at his house in Southern California a few years ago and he had this basket of rocks out there and he said, you know, why don't you take one? And you know, they were all nicely little painted rocks and it's here a lot and I like to like just like rub my hand on it and you know, and if I showed it, you know, like here,
Speaker: like look at all the magnificent colors and you know it's just like smooth and it's just like a really nice kind of almost like a soothing rock I could say you know you know it's just like I can rub my thumb on it and not even I mean I'm doing it right now but you can't even tell because it's below the screen right so that would be an example of show and tell but we're not telling a hero's journey with it
Speaker: we're just describing something. So like the hero's journey is going through those struggles and coming out on the other end. And then like a show and tell is like, hey, let me show you this, right? So we're not going to the hero side. I want to mention something else about show and tell because I know a lot of people get nervous about speaking.
Speaker: Yet we all know how to do it because we, in show and tell, was really a tricky way to teach a first or second grader how to do public speaking. How to get up in front of 10, 20, 30 other kids and tell a story. So we already have everything that we need to do to do quote unquote public speaking. It's just really learning how to use it.
Speaker: Absolutely. And managing the emotions that come up when we do it. Or just allowing that to come up, allowing that to be okay. Whatever that is, whether it's tears, or smiles, or maybe frustration even sometimes.
Speaker: Amen. I think that's the best approach. We don't have to be consumed by how we feel, but we should hold enough space for ourselves to go through it and experience the emotion. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that's maybe when we get through our own personal hero's journey and we get in touch with ourselves, then we can be ourselves, right?
Speaker: I love that you brought that up. When I was reflecting on the hero's journey in the beginning of my podcast, and I was trying to find my niche. I was trying to see how am I going to show up for the world? How am I going to bring value? How can I be a piece of that? And in the beginning of my hero's journey, I was so fixated on the idea of a hero's journey.
Speaker: Then another conversation inspired me. It could have been our past conversation because when we spoke about the monkey brain and how to stop feeding it, that really impacted the way I looked at life. And I realized that if I'm going to do the hero's journey and play the role of the hero, I have to forget that I'm on a hero's journey.
Speaker: and figure out how I'm going to show up and serve other people. And to be a hero is to be kind, is to be a good listener, and to hold space for myself and others. So I noticed that when I was pursuing the idea of the hero's journey, I wasn't acting very heroic. I was looking for the reward of the journey. I want to feel like a hero. This imposter syndrome, where is this coming from? And then I realized that
Speaker: taking that part of the hero means that it's time for us to get our hands dirty. And it's all about the work we put behind the journey that gives us the views and the lessons that we're looking for. And it reminds me of our conversation about the stone Buddha. Now it's coming back to me. Do you know the story of the stone Buddha? I do, but why don't you say it anyway so the listeners can hear.
Speaker: Thank you. So the story of the stone Buddha, there was a young man who wanted to was in pursuit of enlightenment. And he went to the Buddha, he found him in the woods, he was searching all day for him in the mountains, and he finally found him. And he's like, Buddha, I finally found you. I want to ask you, how can I reach enlightenment? And he's like,
Speaker: Well, you have to embody a Buddha. And he's like, all right. So he sits down, he meditates for a week. And he goes back to Buddha and he's like, it's not working. I don't feel enlightened. I've been meditating for a long time. I'm emulating you. And I'm not getting the results that I thought I would. And Buddha says, because you're being a stone Buddha, you look like a Buddha, you act like a Buddha, you're meditating like a Buddha, but you're like a stone because you're not embodying what it is to be a Buddha.
Speaker: And so that's the story of the stone Buddha where we can have an idea of ourselves and try to emulate what the idea is. But actually living through that idea, embodying that idea, and becoming that idea is the true journey. And it feels very different. Yeah, absolutely. And to add something to that, you know, I teach yoga, I've been teaching for a long time.
Speaker: practicing for 35 years, 36 years now. So I was only four when I started. I'm a little older than that. But, you know, every time we come to the mat, especially as adults, because as adults, we tend to either live in the future thinking about something in the future, or we live in the past thinking about things that have happened in the past.
Speaker: And practicing yoga brings us to our mat to help, you know, bring us to a point of being present, right? It's how present can I be at this moment? You know, and I didn't say the word mindful because mindfulness is one of those things that it gets over complicated. I mean, have you ever driven a car? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: And I invite the listeners to think about this too. When we're driving down the road, it's the biggest lesson in mindfulness that we could possibly have in everyday life. We have to be aware of the lines. Are we within the lines? We have to be aware of stop signs. We have to be aware of letting other people know what we're going to do by using our turn signals or our brakes or our headlights or whatever tool it is.
Speaker: We also have to be aware of the other people around us. How close are they? Is somebody driving too fast? Are they going to hit me? Is a drunk driver coming through the stoplight? So there's all these things that are happening that we have an opportunity to practice our mindfulness. So it's not as complicated as sometimes it's made out to be because we do it all the time.
Speaker: It's just recognizing that we're doing it and being able to use those same things and whatever we're doing. And I wanna go back to yoga for a minute because when teaching kids, kids live in the present, right? Especially younger kids, you know, five, six, seven, eight year old kids are primarily living in the present and not living in the past or in the future so much. But as adults, again, we're living in the past or the future
Speaker: and work on getting to
Speaker: joyful comes up like maybe their favorite show or their favorite food and the tears are gone smiles and laughter again and one thing that I noticed is like for adults to go into what you said with the past past future thinking the child can move on from the pain
Speaker: because they're living in the present. What I notice with myself and other adults is maybe something bad happened in the morning and we dwell on it. We dwell on it. Oh, I got thrown off. Oh, I had a bad moment. And for some reason, we plague ourselves at reliving that moment over and over again.
Speaker: And it's more foreign for us to return to that childlike state and say, oh, hey, I could listen to my favorite song. Oh, hey, I'm an adult. I could take myself out for maybe a dance or a movie. So why do you think that adults struggle with moving on and
Speaker: being present versus like a child in an emotional sense. Like why do we sabotage ourselves obsessing over things that don't go our way? Well, I don't know if you've ever heard this, but I heard this growing up by, you know, my well -meaning parents and teachers and other people, you know, they say quit acting like a child. And it's just like, what?
Speaker: Quit acting like a child. And so I think we start to stuff it. So like if we have feelings or emotions that come up, we suppress it. Because we're told that that's not the way that we can be. Why can't we be childlike? Not childish, but childlike?
Speaker: why can't we have our emotions come up when they come up? And to be able to be clear and clean with them without, I mean, sometimes it's like when we enter into emotional states, especially frustration or anger or something, we suppress it. We don't even talk about it. We just shut it up. And then that gets inside of us. It gets in the cells of our body. Then we start to get issues in our tissues.
Speaker: And then we come into yoga and then we bend right and bend left and go, oh, my hip hurts. Oh, my shoulder hurts. Right. But then, you know, there's also that opportunity to release it. So coming back to the question, I think we are taught to suppress those ideas, those emotions, those feelings as we grow older, because we're told it's not the way that we should be, that we should be.
Speaker: I could definitely see that behavior being perpetual in our society, like act right, fake it till you make it, things like that. So now that we have more awareness around how we got these pent up emotions, how do you think we can take this knowledge home and start addressing this emotional bondage? Yeah.
Speaker: Well, let me mention, I don't know if the listeners have heard of something called the ACE study. And it's called the Adverse Childhood Experience Study. And it was really started in the 80s, a doctor started looking at
Speaker: Morbidly of these people that were coming to him, you know four or five six seven hundred pound type people and you know The traditional way of doing oh you've got to eat last you you know You got to use willpower and all this and then the thought occurred to him that maybe he should start to ask him about their lives and he started to ask them about their lives and he realized that every single one of them had indicators in their life from childhood and
Speaker: that caused them essentially to become obese. Things like alcoholism in the family, financial issues, divorce. And there was this whole scoring that he did around that and realized that everybody that was morbidly obese had these particular, what they call ACE scores. So then they took that from the 80s and in the 90s did a much broader study
Speaker: on pain in the body, headaches, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, all sorts of different things and started realizing that the people that manifested these different ailments also had certain ACE scores.
Speaker: You know, maybe their parents were alcoholic or maybe their father was incarcerated and all these different things. And they were able to predict it with a child that had these experiences, what was going to happen later in life. So it's become a pretty well -known study now and is used a lot in medicine today.
Speaker: somebody that I know well, Dr. David Clark has an organization called the PPDA, which is a psychophysiological disorder association. It's a fancy way of saying the mind body organization. And he's also associate director of ethics at OHSU and Portland, Oregon Health Sciences University. So he brings a lot of credentials to him. And what he realized too,
Speaker: being aware of this study and all these different things that have happened, how we manifest all these ailments in our lives as a result of our childhood experiences. So how do we let go of those sex? Oftentimes you go to somebody like
Speaker: like Joe Dispenza. I mean, he talks a lot about it and he does terrific work. Another guy named Dr. David Hamilton, which is a PhD guy that used to work for AstraZeneca designing cardiac and cancer type drugs and drug protocols. And he realized, and he realized too that the pharmaceuticals knew this, that most of the ailments had a mind body
Speaker: component to it and that oftentimes even with these really difficult situations was that the placebo effect was more powerful than the drugs. And so he left AstraZeneca and his mission now is to talk to people about this. So how can we change it? Sometimes it's just a matter of changing your mind. And it's not that difficult, it's just like
Speaker: Oh, okay. And I've seen it happen. I've seen people with back pain go away. I see there's a friend of mine that had cancer and she just said, I don't want to deal with this. And it wasn't like out of ignorance or denial. It was, I want this to leave my body and I left her body. Right? So I think that we're more powerful than what we really think we are. And I'll mention one more thing. You know, the cells of our body,
Speaker: Each cell of the body has 0 .7 volts of electricity around each cell of the body. Well, when you do the math, and you can do the math, anybody can go online and see how many trillions of cells we have, and then you divide it by a Tesla. Tesla generates 350 to 400 volts of electricity. So again, when you do the math,
Speaker: The amount of voltage and electricity in our body is equal to about 10 million Teslas. There's only been about 3 million built. So each human being has more voltage than 10 million Teslas. That's how much power we have. Again, it's going back and learning how to use it. I mean, that's a lot of power, right? Maybe Superman was really real at one time. We don't know, you know?
Speaker: Huge possibility yeah all that energy And that brings me back again to the movie The Matrix it explains a lot like We have to harness our energy before our energy harnesses us. Yeah, you know and you know the thing about a grandmother at 90 years old being able to lift up a car because their grandkids stuck underneath in Normal thinking that would never be possible
Speaker: But when you don't think about it, you just do it. Oh, I have to do this. And where does that energy come from? It's certainly not a muscular thing. Because a 90 -year -old grandmother does not have the muscles to pick up a car. Even a foot off the ground. So there's the power and the energy that is within us.
Speaker: that somehow gets tapped. Have you ever personally tapped into energy that you didn't know you had? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Where should I start? You know, when I was a kid, you know, I had this water skiing accident and to make a long story short, I ended up in the hospital a couple of days after the accident. And then I woke up 10 days later
Speaker: They had removed 60 % of my liver, my gallbladder, half a dozen cracked ribs, collapsed lung, and 21 blood transfusions. And during the coma, I had left my body. And in leaving my body, I found myself in a group of spirit. I don't call it heaven, but I call it a group of spirit. It was certainly a feeling like I've never had before or since.
Speaker: And when I came back to my body, I didn't want to come back to my body. And I reached out to him, I said, I don't want to go back. And they said, well, you're not through yet. Well, let's see, how many years has that been? That's been 52 years ago, and I guess I'm not through yet, right? But I became, I'm making kind of a longer story short, I became angry at God because I came back, I didn't want to come back.
Speaker: started getting into alcohol and drugs and then in my late 20s in 1986, shortly before my 28th birthday, I was diagnosed with atherosclerosis. They would get cut off my legs. My right leg was 100 % blocked. My left leg was 65 % blocked.
Speaker: So they did a surgery I had some blood clots a month later six months later They want to do more surgery because they said my legs had re -blocked. So this is getting to your question, right the power I Don't know what it was Sam I still don't know exactly why and I didn't know really anything about any spiritual realm stuff or that kind of stuff very much a little bit But hardly anything at all. I knew I couldn't keep having surgery
Speaker: So I signed out AMA against medical advice. They wheeled me to the door and I got up out of the wheelchair with my cane because that's how I had to walk with the cane. 28 years old now, walking on a cane with an old man's disease. Fast forward a couple of months. I ended up at the Pertican Longevity Center in Southern California in Santa Monica.
Speaker: And the doctor there told me something different. The other surgeons had told me, oh, when it hurts, you can't walk. You got to rest. You got to do all this. And that doctor at the Perticon Center gave me a different message that I brought in immediately. He said, just get up and walk. And I went, well, it hurts. He said, yeah, I know. Get up and walk. And it was on the boardwalk at Santa Monica.
Speaker: And he says, just go out, walk as much as you can, stop, walk, stop, walk, stop. Well, as much as I could was about 10 feet on my cane to start, right? Within two weeks I was walking two miles. And again, essentially he just said, don't worry about it. Just get up and walk. I later heard that from one of my yoga teachers, Biggest Lesson in Yoga, don't worry about it, forget about it, just do the yoga.
Speaker: 12 years later, I still had a little bit of pain, and it was just like, don't worry about it, forget about it, just do the yoga. And within two weeks, all my pain was gone. I then heard Dr. John Sarno, which wrote a book about back pain, and his whole thing, too, is stop worrying about it. Forget about your back pain. You don't have a structural issue. It is a mind -body issue that's manifesting as pain, right?
Speaker: Then I read another book that was written. I'm not exactly certain when it was written. It was only one book of it, a guy named Walter Jermaine. And he wrote a book and he talks all about the mind body stuff back then. I think it was somewhere in the fifties that it was written. And he says in the book, the single biggest thing you can do is not worry. So coming back to the power, yeah, I haven't gone out and lifted up a car.
Speaker: But I believe I've tapped into that. Now, when I left the hospital way back when, I never, well, I shouldn't say I never went back. I went back one time about a year later after being at the Pritikin Center and being able to walk normal again. And they were blown away. So where did that power come from for me to heal and still be 35 years later
Speaker: still being healthy. Don't worry, forget about it. We get so caught up in it. So that power again is within us or coming through us and it's available to tap into. Thank you so much for sharing your story. I have a question for you. And then I have another question. So you triggered two thoughts for me. The first one is,
Speaker: What is the difference between worrying and acknowledging? Oh yeah, now the verbiage is coming to me. Earlier we spoke about how suppressing things can give us issues in our tissues. What is the difference between suppressing something and not worrying about something?
Speaker: That's a great question. Let me see if I can come up with something that makes sense. We all suppress stuff. I mean, we just do. It's just like the normal human condition to suppress stuff, right? If we're suppressing emotions, it's going to come out in our tissues in some way, in our organs,
Speaker: in our back, in our shoulder, in our neck. We're going to say something's a pain in the neck. Oh, I have a pain in the neck this morning. Well, take a look at what's a pain in the neck in your life, right? If we go skiing and we go flying down the mountain and hit somebody and break our leg, you know, I can get into mind body stuff with that too, but the leg is still broken.
Speaker: right, the bone is still snapped, right? And you have to acknowledge that. You need to go to doctor and get it fixed. You can't necessarily sit there and go, you know, well, no, I'm gonna be okay. There's some exceptions to that, but for the most part, you need to go get an x -ray, you need to go get a cast on, you need to acknowledge that ailment that was created, right?
Speaker: Again, Joe dispensing is an example of a broken spine where he didn't do that and he healed the spine. There are some exceptions to that rule, so to speak. So when we're suppressing things, I'm gonna go back to yoga because that's what I do. When you do yoga and you're bending right and you're bending left and you're twisting and compressing and you're pulling, you're affecting every system in your body.
Speaker: And you may have suppressed something that when you were seven years old, Jimmy at school made fun of you. But you don't remember that. You can't remember that Jimmy made fun of you because of your ponytails or beady glasses or whatever it is. Kids can be kind of cool. Yet maybe that
Speaker: emotion from that because we were hurt from it, gets stuck somewhere in our body. So we start doing yoga and we don't necessarily know that that's there, but it can still be released, right? Because the energy is moving through the body and vibrating on a certain level to release those suppressed emotions that we don't even know about, right?
Speaker: Now, some emotions and feelings need to be normally need to be acknowledged, especially, you know, sexual abuse type issues and, you know, really more profound issues where we may need support and help of a therapist or others to move through that. But we don't have to live in it. Right. So I think that there's different examples. It's a great question.
Speaker: you know, about the difference between the suppressing and the acknowledging because there is definitely a balance. And I think it's a little different for each person. You know, meditation can also help us release. It helps us tune into our station, you know, because we go around in our life and we're not necessarily tuned in. We get jostled by somebody that almost hit us in the car and it lasts for a couple of days.
Speaker: So how can we tune in and be more present and more present? And that tuning in also is a release, that letting go. Now, I want to mention the thing briefly about the broken leg.
Speaker: Oh, I don't know. It's probably been 15 years ago. You know, I live in the mountains near a ski area. And there's one day I was skiing the backside. It was snowing a bunch, which I love. And skiing the powder and all of a sudden smack, I had hidden a tree.
Speaker: Right? Now, was it an accident? Well, yeah, but the mind body component of that was that I had been thinking about a girlfriend that I was with at the time, and some of the stuff that we were struggling with at the time. So my consciousness was not there, it was elsewhere. So right in front of me, I didn't even see it, the tree was there. Now, if I had been present, would that have happened?
Speaker: If I had not been thinking about that, would that have happened? So I just can't call it a random accident. It was a mind -body interaction, right? My mind was one place, my body was another, and a tree was right in front of it. And I could have skied around the tree if I hadn't been thinking about that.
Speaker: So from what what I interpret is like the difference between suppressing and worrying is that instead of suppressing we show awareness and then worrying is like we obsess over poor outcomes. Yes. Oh my my back and then you got to tell everybody about your back and you know you you go get gas at the gas station you got to tell the guy at the gas station about your back and
Speaker: You know, it's like, I don't know about you. I mean, I get normal, what I call normal back issues or, you know, little pains and aches and pains. I rarely mention that it ever happens because when I mention it, it seems to grow more. And then then I can be a victim of this pain and I can get other people's sympathy by saying, oh, my back pain. Oh, Michael, let me help you.
Speaker: You know, I don't want to play the victim. I don't want to get the sympathy. And if I know that that pain is likely manifested as a result of a mind body issue, then why would I talk about it?
Speaker: This is why I love talking to you, Michael. You always bring enlightenment to the areas of life that go unnoticed. When you brought that up and you brought up sympathy, I recently learned something about myself and I invite Matrix members. If you find yourself enjoying sympathy,
Speaker: Look, in seeing that as affection, I'll let you into a little snippet of my life. I had two parents. I had one parent that was like, you fall down, get up, you're fine. I love that mentality. When we were with that parent, my sisters and I never cried. Then I had another parent.
Speaker: And she was the opposite. She was like, Oh my God, my baby, are you okay? She'll scare us. We're like, Oh my God, are we going to die? Because like her reaction was like so extreme and it came out of love. I noticed that as an adult,
Speaker: I now miss associated, but have an association with sympathy and love and affection. Oh, you're not worried that I'm going to the city alone as a young woman. You must not care about me. That story that's not real, but was like, I picked up as a kid from that over exaggeration of, oh my God, are you okay? So Matrix members, when I first started this health journey,
Speaker: I was in full body pain, full body. And I noticed that what made me miserable was how much pain I was in and how much I would let that be an excuse for not living my life. Once I'm aware I'm in pain and I'm going to address the pain, I haven't been in pain since. It's been like five years now.
Speaker: since I've been in pain from chronic injuries. And what you said earlier, I experienced that too. And I noticed that if we're addicted to sympathy, we're addicted to that kind of attention, because that was the main way we got attention, period.
Speaker: I invite this conversation to wake you up to that and ask yourself, am I looking for attention and affection with my pain, with my story of pain? And if you are, I invite you to break that
Speaker: break that narrative and let's start a new one. Based off of that segment, can you give some words of wisdom to our matrix members so that they can break the pattern of being addicted to their pain? Wow. There's a lot there. How many hours do we have? I love the way that you described the sympathy and affection relationship.
Speaker: because it's true, it is there, right? But also what is there is people that relate anger with affection, like somebody's angry at them so they must love them, so you're gonna give yourself to them. I don't necessarily mean sexually about that, you know, it could be in any way, but it's like,
Speaker: we are so addicted to emotions is probably the number one addiction. I mean, fentanyl addiction likely comes from emotional addictions that are triggered that somebody's trying to suppress, right? Oh, I totally agree with you. I want to let you continue. But like, when I was when I was in addiction, it was literally like I would drink and smoke
Speaker: to feel something in my control or just to want something. I would put myself in addiction. I would actually get clean and then relapse just so I can have something to want. That's how much I gave away myself. I just wanted to mention that because your words touch my brain so well. Yeah. You have a lot of self -awareness.
Speaker: One of my brothers, Bill, wrote a book about super awareness and about becoming more aware and the process of meditation and other modalities to help make that happen. And I don't know if we've talked about this. I can't remember, but I'm 34 years sober. And so letting go of those ways that I was living
Speaker: being addicted to substances to cover up my you know what was really going on emotionally inside you know and you know it's said that you know you can say alcohol or fentanyl or any other drugs but alcohol is but a symptom of an underlying condition and you work on that underlying condition that
Speaker: you know, sympathy for affection or anger for affection. You start working on those things and those needs for the substances to cover up that internal emotional pain becomes lesson. And the problem has been removed. You know, it's suggested that, you know, it really just says, how does that saying go again?
Speaker: We forgot about it and the problem was removed, right? That doesn't mean that you don't deal with it, but it's like, you know, briefly on the addiction, you know, every time I try to quit, give up, go in the bandwagon, swear off, I was drinking again. A couple hours, a couple of days, a couple of weeks later, always. But once I tapped into the power,
Speaker: the problem was removed, right? And it wasn't my power. It was like the universal power, God power, higher power, whatever you want to call it. So there's another example of power. I don't know if there's any wisdom in there. Thank you. So,
Speaker: I, the biggest thing that I learned when it comes to like turning off the monkey brain, and especially from our past conversation, was to stop feeding it. I think that was, that was the, but it's, and the discipline behind that. Can you, can you invite our guests, like with the technique to help them
Speaker: actually make their mind up because I know that all of, like you mentioned before, we'll swear, I'm done with this, I'm done with this, I know it's bad, I see it, I have eyes on it, but then where we will have a drink or we'll say, oh, it's just a little bit of time, make an excuse why to do it again. How can someone
Speaker: come to terms with what they want and kind of catch up with their mind. Sometimes I feel like the mind wants something and the body has to catch up to get there. So it's like we're making this decision to stop feeding the monkey brain. Now, how do we actually agree with ourselves and accept that, hey, I'm making my mind up? How do we get to that other side? Yeah.
Speaker: What you just said there's so many rabbit holes. I could go down. That's it's the question, but what you said Because we often are our minds are way in front of us Like we're driving down the street and we're thinking about we're driving to the store and we're thinking about what we're gonna get at the grocery store We're not being present when we do that but anyway Did I tell you the story about the monkeys in India? Have I told you that? Okay, so
Speaker: For me, what I've discovered for my life is that nature teaches us everything that we need to know. And everything is within us, because we're nature. The cells in our body is the same as the cells of nature. So being in India, I was in Agra, which is where the Taj Mahal is.
Speaker: And one of the things that they tell you at the hotel is to be sure to leave your sliding glass door on your balcony closed because the monkeys will get in. And I realized that so I was traveling with some friends and I was in one room and my friend was in another room and they had gotten in the shower and they had left their sliding glass door.
Speaker: Well, with the wisdom of the hotel, and I say that sort of sarcastically, jokingly, is, you know, they have a table there and on the table, they have a big bowl of fruit right in the window, right? Sitting right there. So the monkeys crawl up on the balconies. I mean, there are some guys with monkey sticks walking around the property trying to chase them away, but it's almost impossible. So monkeys got up on the balcony,
Speaker: The door was open. They came into his room. He came out of the bathroom and there were the monkeys and you don't mess with monkeys, you know, especially ones that are after food, wild monkeys like that. Right. And so he had to run back into the room, have a little into the bathroom, have a little bit of fear until the monkeys left his room.
Speaker: Okay. So then in my room, the monkeys were there too, but the sliding glass door was closed and they would jump up kind of against the window and try to get in, but they couldn't get in. So I could still be present. So one of the things that I realized from that, again, this is nature. Monkeys are natural. They want to have a banana. They want to have an apple. They want to have a mango. That's what they're doing. And they're going to where they think that the food is.
Speaker: So by leaving the sliding glass door open, exposed himself to those monkeys wanting to come in. Okay. With me, with my sliding glass door closed, I could still see the monkeys, but they couldn't get in. So in my mind, coming back to this idea about feeding the monkey brain, I realized that for so long,
Speaker: I was leaving my sliding glass door open and that bowl of fruit was sitting there and the monkeys would come in. And I thought that I was keeping them happy, right? Then I realized once all that fruit was gone, they would get upset and angry. Like, where's my banana? Where's my mango? So that would then generate my monkey mind, you know, my frustration, my anger, you know, all those things.
Speaker: So as soon as I closed the sliding glass door, they could no longer get in. As soon as I moved that bowl of fruit away from a window that they could see, they no longer came back. They went somewhere else because they knew that they could get the food somewhere else, but they can no longer get it from me. So what does that mean? How do we calm the monkey mind to make that happen?
Speaker: Again, it's nature. Go for a walk in nature. Sit and meditate. Do some yoga. Do some tai chi, whatever it is, to help calm the mind. And again, it's coming back to that addiction stuff about the sympathy for affection. I was giving those monkeys sympathy, oh, let me feed you. And they were going, yeah, feed me more.
Speaker: Feed me more! Right? Yes, that is such a fabulous story. There's just so many analogies there with life and
Speaker: I love that story. It's very grounding because it's so true. We enable a lot of the behaviors and people in our lives without realizing it, just thinking that we're being a good samaritan. And that reminds me of another story with Buddha, a couple with a yoke and an ox. Do you know about that story? Tell the listeners.
Speaker: I love this story. So one day Buddha is walking with one of his monk friends that he met. They were walking down a path and they see a couple with a broken down carriage. I think they called it a yoke. And they had the ox there and the goods behind them and they were in mobile and they saw the couple was arguing.
Speaker: Buddha looks at the monk and says, hey, we're people of God, we should help them. And the monk's like, well, I'm not going to help them. I'll watch you help them. And Buddha's confused. And he's like, you shouldn't help them. And he's like, but this is the right thing to do.
Speaker: So Buddha go over there, he helps the couple, he helps the man get the yoke back working on the ox, and they're about to set sail. And the wife says, look, my husband's so dumb, he needed the help of a monk to fix the yoke. And he looked at her, thanked the monk, and they were on their way. Buddha was feeling satisfied about his good deed. And when he was walking with his friend, his friend said, do you notice how you just stole the lesson of their karma?
Speaker: And he's like, what do you mean? He's like, well, you see how that couple was arguing? He's going to go home. He's going to beat her butt. He's going to go home. They're going to have a really bad fight because she embarrassed him in front of you.
Speaker: But if you would have kept on the sidelines, if you would have watched them, the couple would have had to figure out the problem together, which would have encouraged their bond, which would have encouraged more respect within the relationship. And they would have gone home proud that they worked as a team instead of argued. But because you stepped in and you didn't let their karma, like they didn't let them go through their own karma, you stole their lesson. And now she's going to get beat when she gets home.
Speaker: And after that, like, Buddha was like, what is what is life? What? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's so true. And, you know, even the coming back to the idea of, you know, addiction or alcoholism, nobody else can save another person from that addiction. That person needs to, you know, discover for themselves that path
Speaker: that way out, you know, nobody can save them, you know, at all. And if they do, it's not going to work. Just like your story, you know. Yeah. This is a great conversation. Absolutely. I can't wait to put this one out there. So Michael,
Speaker: We're getting towards the end of our talk. I would love to ask you to tell the audience about your coaching program and about the book that you're going to publish soon. Yeah. Well, I want to go back to this idea of that this is the year of the story. And I have a feeling it's going to be more than a year. I mean, it's kind of always been there, but I put a term around that and I really
Speaker: have found over the years that I can be really helpful in helping people realize who they are and what their story is. You know, how to get on podcasts, how to write an essay, how to write a book, you know, how to use your story as a message. You know, a lot of people don't know that they even have a story.
Speaker: So it's just like helping them realize that they do, right? Helping them realize that they do. And just through the act of writing our own stories, we heal. And somebody else may need to hear that story for them to heal too, right? So that there's a whole bunch there. And I think it's almost our responsibility to tell our stories because we don't know who it's going to touch. We never know.
Speaker: who it's good to touch, right? It may just be that person in the grocery stores, we're going and, you know, getting our bananas, not for the monkeys, but for ourselves. And we have an interaction with somebody and because of who we are helps them and because of who they are helps us. You know, I could go way down that rabbit hole, but I won't right now. Maybe another
Speaker: So, you know, like when I wrote my first book, Falling Down, Getting Up, it was all about, you know, really the first 30 years of my life, my struggles, my accidents, my health issues, my addictions and all those things. But also when I came to that point where I recognized that I couldn't do this, that I needed help, you know, to heal, not help from other people. Yes, other people were there, but it was more about
Speaker: help from the universe and going within and recognizing who I am. So that was really my first book. And the book that we've just released is called Within. And the book Within is really about finding our journey
Speaker: and where it is. I brought together 26 yoga teachers from around the world, each one of them contributing a story. Now, it's not a story about yoga. We're not teaching anybody how to do a yoga posture. The book is really for anybody, but its story is how people went from one state to the other to create a life that they really liked and that they really loved to live.
Speaker: There are some various ideas and points in the story that really anybody can use that might trigger something in their own journey. So it's not a yoga book. It's not a spirituality book. It's not a meditation book. It's just really kind of a book of, I'll call it experience, strength and hope kind of book. And I think we need more of that in the world today. You know, there's some magnificent stories in there.
Speaker: And I won't dive into them now, but maybe another time we can do that. I would love that. Yeah. And it's really available anywhere. They can also go to our website, which is www .interpoint with an E, interpoint with an E at the end .com. And they can find the book there and everything else that we're doing as well.
Speaker: Awesome, Michael, thank you so much. I'm so excited to check out within. I love, I feel like it's gonna be a fantastic book of different archetypes and personas that we can all relate to. Yeah, it really is. And again, each story is a little bit different. Each essay is a little bit different. And, you know, comes from that place that we've all been, you know, in many
Speaker: times in our lives, like, okay, what next? What next? And I'll add one thing, and this is so true in so many different things, is when we're struggling, it's like, you know, boy, I don't know if I can do much more of this, right? You know, and we're living in this place of, we feel like this shit is piling all over us. But manure is one of the best fertilizers.
Speaker: right? So I believe we're not buried, we're getting planted and that fertilizer is helping us. A seed grows in the ground before it breaks the ground and goes into the light and I believe we do that too. We are in the ground in the dark like a seed covered up with all this fertilizer manure and shit before we start growing.
Speaker: Oh my gosh. I love that so much. I'm going to remember that for life. Like I immediately said that I felt like texting one of my loved ones that are struggling and be like, I know you're going through a lot of shit right now, but that's the best fertilizer. That is empowering. Yeah. Well, good. Thank you so much, Michael. I love talking to you. We have to do another episode again. It just feels right.
Speaker: Thank you, Sam. I appreciate it.
Speaker: Find Michael's new book and his new work at www .InnerPointWithAnE .com. We appreciate your feedback, which helps us serve our fellow Matrix members. Stay up to date with our Matrix mentors and what we have in store for you by bookmarking our website and subscribing to our podcast and YouTube channel. It was great to have you with us on the Organic Matrix show and we'll be seeing you on the next download.
