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June 11, 2025 19 mins

What if everything you've been desperately chasing success, validation, worthiness was already yours by birthright? This mind-bending revelation emerges as the central breakthrough in part two of my conversation with Brian Muka, a former Navy bomb disposal tech turned Freedom Sherpa who spent years trying to outrun his fears through extreme challenges.

Brian's story reads like a cautionary tale for every high-achiever trapped in the validation hamster wheel. "I was trying to prove I wasn't a coward by surfing 10-foot waves, jumping out of airplanes, doing half Ironman races, CrossFit, special operations all of it," he confesses. But the pivotal moment came when he realized this approach was fundamentally flawed: "I can't prove that I'm fearless. It's like the invisible one next to the X in algebra."

This breakthrough shattered everything Brian thought he knew about courage and self-worth. Instead of fighting fear, he learned to dance with it. Instead of proving his value, he discovered it was never in question. Through breathwork, plant medicine journeys, and deep therapeutic work including confronting his relationship with his father Brian made the difficult decision to leave relationships and situations that no longer aligned with his authentic self.

The most powerful moment comes when Brian shares a spiritual metaphor about being asked if he could run the universe keeping the moon at the right distance and every electron in place. This humbling realization led to his life-changing epiphany: "I am already what I seek. I was the whole time, and so are you."

Author of "Your Secret Superpower: Taking Fear to Thrive," Brian candidly shares how his understanding evolved far beyond what he originally wrote. For anyone exhausted from chasing external validation, struggling with imposter syndrome, or trapped in the need to constantly prove themselves, this conversation offers a radical alternative: the recognition of your inherent worth.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back.
This is part two of whateverepisode.
This is because I can neverremember.
I'm again here with Brian andwe shared how he rose from the
ashes last time, or went down tothe ashes, met the devil, had a
relationship with the devil,came back and we're now looking
at his new self, his freedomSherpa, the stress to success.

(00:25):
Before we get into where youare right now, I've got a
question I want to ask you howcan people find their own power
through fear, not necessarilyyour method, but their own light
within themselves, becauseyou've discovered that yourself,

(00:47):
that's the key to it all.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
I wrote a book.
My intention was it to be alittle more story-filled than a
field manual, but basicallyhere's the FM on how to survive
life's avalanches Prescriptivebreathwork, visualization,
prayer, those things.
Where is the book located?
Is it on Amazon?
Yeah, just type Brian Mucha andAmazon will come right up.

(01:12):
Your Secret Superpower TakingFear to Thrive.
I did write this for you and Ididn't know that other people
weren't wired the way that I'mwired.
So if you grew up and you're onstage a lot with terrible stage
fright and parlayed that intobeing able to jump out of
airplanes at night and thengetting fired from what you

(01:34):
thought your dream job was, andthen going through a divorce
right at the most inopportunetime at the launch of a dream,
done those things.
The book is perfect.
It's going to work.
Turns out it was an N of one.
I'm glad I wrote it and it's acool snapshot into a really
vulnerable part of my life.

(01:55):
Footprints on the sand, if youwill.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
I love that one.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah, and as I look back on it, like I learned it
for me.
I tried the me process on otherpeople.
It doesn't work, so I don'teven try.
And that breath work'simportant.
But breathing in the way thatyou were meant to breathe, not
the way I breathe, no, I'm in afear state.
Great, just say it out loud.

(02:23):
Just acknowledging that fear ispresent is way more courageous
than admitting it doesn't exist.
That's a David Dana.
It's a man who is aware of hisfears is far more trustable than
a man who pretends to not be.
And then I get to know it.
You know this term from ourmarksmanship days, dope Dana.
On previous engagements, thefear showed up.
What did I do?

(02:43):
Oh, I breathed through my moutha bunch in a panicked state of
breath.
That didn't work.
I guess I should change theexperiment.
Yeah, so starting to listen,this framework of using an after
action review, I had this blowup fight with my partner.
How did it happen?
It actually happened threeweeks ago.
There was resentment and wedidn't resolve it, or I wasn't

(03:04):
sleeping or any of the numbers.
So, as a bomb technicianlooking at the improvised
explosive device, okay, here'swhat it was.
Here's what we did.
Here's what we learned?
How do we prevent this fromhappening in the first place?
So all three levels of theafter action review applied to
fear and it's minions.
So you're like I'm not afraidof anything.
Cool, cool story bro.

(03:28):
Yeah, to fear.
And it's minions.
So you're like I'm not afraidof anything.
Cool, cool story bro.
Yeah, like my favorite trick,I'm working with the alpha ceo
types.
You got anything on your to-dolist that was there yesterday?
Yep, is that the only time youcarried it over from?
No, I delay this all the time.
Cool, you think it's love?
No, it's fear of unworthiness,fear of it being too hard, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah.
So fear's there Studying thissince 2011,.

(03:52):
Diligently, having done theterror stuff since prove that I
wasn't a coward by surfing10-foot waves, jumping out of
airplanes, doing half Ironmanraces, crossfit, like special
operations, all of it.
I was trying to prove I wasn'ta coward and I realized, like it

(04:16):
was never going to work.
I can't prove that I'm fearless.
It's like the invisible onenext to the X in algebra.
So how can I dance with it?
That's what I learned, that'swhat we're, that's what we're
talking about.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
So the book was the cornerstone, the catalyst,
essentially for your realizationof who you're becoming now.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
No, it wasn't actually.
Really, it wasn't.
No, I had that.
I had remember when we talkedabout the unworthiness from my
dad, right, yeah, cool.
So just imagine the scene for asecond.
Like my girlfriend's there,this beautiful Reiki master, my
parents came down from NewJersey, we're at West Point,
virginia, and we're about toskydive.
So I rented out the hangar.

(04:59):
I have a table set up.
I did a 90-minute how toharness your fear talk with
books there.
55 Millers and Shakers inRichmond were there and my dad's
running credit cards.
I'm signing autographs.
I can hear the turbopropspooling up.
It's time and the captain of theairplane not the captain, but
the pilot he goes.

(05:20):
Hey, Mr Arthur, your plane'staken off, cool.
So they did the jump masterinspection of my sports shoe on
the way in.
But before that happened, mydad looks at me and he goes.
You know I love you, right?
Yes, dad, I'm like fuck,where's this going?
He goes.
I read your book.
Uh-huh, wasn't that good, great.

(05:43):
So I jumped in the plane prettybeautiful skydives.
My editor and I jumped out of anairplane.
She did tandem, I jumped withher and we had planned that for
two years.
Awesome.
And I fucking nailed thelandings in front of my friends.
That was like the coolest partof the whole day.
Like I stuck the landing, likethis guy's legit, and I just I
walked up with the parachuteover my shoulder, like I did it.

(06:05):
I don't care what you have tosay, I fucking nailed it today.
But I let that little whisperit wasn't that good germinate
for years and I had to do storywork around that.
Yeah, it wasn't that good interms of it's not a New York
Times bestseller.
So if it's not a New York Timesbestseller, what's the point?
So I didn't show it to anybody.

(06:26):
It wasn't until I startedaddressing the relationship with
my dad that this stuff reallystarted to unravel, because I
did the things.
I had zero sales experimentswhen I left the Navy and in my
fourth year I won salesman ofthe year at a major medical
sales company.
And then when I was in CostaRica, I'm like I can't do this.
I just finished surfing.

(06:46):
I was issued a Mont Blanc penthe day before I was thinking
about calling it Fear Sherpa.
I looked down at the pen I'mwriting my TED Talk with and I'm
looking at Mont Blanc, thetallest peak in Europe.
That's not a fucking accident.
It chills like thesynchronization.
That's when it started.
I started coming out and Idecided I'm not walking somebody

(07:06):
else's path.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
I love that.
That and that's why I likehaving these interviews with
people like you, because yourealize at a pinnacle point that
you're not conforming to thenormality of what society wants
to give you or your parents, andthen judgments you take in the
form of a book, in from yourform of your father, in the form
of stage work, whatever it is,drives that forward.

(07:32):
Yeah, what happened after that?
Or can you condense it?
Because obviously a lot startedthat way.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
I had two more years of like hell to suffer through,
of course.
So I had that realization 2018,june 1st.
So, coming off my seven-yearanniversary of not being owned
by the military or a company,june 1st I submitted my letter
of resignation.
That's quite a June 2nd, I soldDirty Head's play and my
favorite song, vacation.

(08:03):
I love that.
I get to live that now.
And then on the 3rd, I workedwith Brandon.
I forget his last name.
He's the reason why at wim hofthings there's drumming.
He brought that to them.
Yeah, and I got to play icemule.
You know, at the time I thoughthe was the third or fourth best

(08:23):
wim hof instructor in the world.
He's going on to do coolerthings from that, and I remember
that night we left thebreathing event.
Mark, my language coach, hal,hosted us all at the farmhouse.
I was teaching guys how toshoot the AR-15 better, and my
wife at the time wanted nothingto do with it.
I was like, oh fuck, that wasJune, october.

(08:46):
I went to go meet with Wim Hof.
I trained with him for fivedays in Mount Hood and when I
came back, her only question washow are you going to pay for
this?
I'm like I don't know.
I put $65,000 in our savingsaccount as a runway.
And then I remember I finishedmy first click funnels in
December.
I was all proud of myself.
She's like it's about time.

(09:07):
I'm like I want a divorce.
She's like what?
Like yeah, I'm yep, I'd like adivorce.
She goes do you want to thinkabout it?
No, I have done a fuck ton ofplant medicine.
I have worked with my therapistfor the last three years.
I've kept a journal and all theshitty things I needed to work
through.
I've never been more certain inmy entire life.

(09:27):
And the next year was like, likeunfucking those roots right,
the narcissist thing was a gamewe played.
And then I moved to san diego,moved to san diego.
12 weeks later it happened andI was like I'm finally there,
right?
No, I didn't think I deservedit yet.
So I lived in my parents housefor a while.
I fell in love with thisfitness model.

(09:48):
I was doing the sunday breathfast and we ended up living
together during covid.
It was awesome, like I thought.
I thought I finally found myperson, but I could never rest
in it.
I hadn't earned it yet, likethe business wasn't making the
money I didn't feel like Ideserved there and I found a way
to like sabotage that.

(10:09):
And it wasn't until prettyrecently, like december this
year.
I'm like that's not it either,and so now living with yael here
in long island, like my life isabsolutely singing, but it cost
everything that was no longeraligned here.
Like I, I got rid of the demonshere and here to really

(10:30):
flourish and to allow myself tobe cherished.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
That's the journey you're speaking to something
that I know very well from myown journey and for the audience
and this is purely for theaudience and maybe the
relatability to it I could neverlike myself.
For a very long time I couldn'tnever mind love myself.

(10:56):
I didn't like who I was.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
Oh yeah, oh, that's that that lands so hard, hard.
I am married in 2028.
My my call sign was the fatensign, like 20 pounds soft man
I.
But I could run circles.
I didn't look hard and I didn'trealize how much vanity is in
the special operations communityyou know what you're speaking

(11:20):
to now is so relatable for a lotof people.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, and it's holy shit.
I've got all this outsidesuccess, and when you were
speaking about that, this phrasecame to my mind and I can't
remember who said it.
It wasn't, certainly wasn't meis when am I going to be good
enough?

Speaker 2 (11:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
And what you've just done, or in the process of two
years of reconstructing, dialingdown, et cetera, et cetera.
You just realized in thatprocess you are already good
enough.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
That's it.
I was trying to earn the thingthat was already my birthright.
It never was going to work.
Like amazing, I got to operateon a pretty fine edge and but
that doesn't last very long thatyou can't operate on that edge
100% of the time like I got todose it enough to know what
force feels like and to do itwithout the light, and you know

(12:15):
that better than anybody doingit without the light, and I
don't want to do that anymore.
I don't need to do it aloneanymore, I don't need to prove
that I'm worth it.
And when I was telling youabout my, I looked at my wedding
pictures, just made a pair ofboard shorts, a white polo.
I was like, holy shit, I wasfit, fuck those guys.
And like I'm in that shit now.

(12:36):
But during my medical salescareer it was like a nice hefty
238.
I was 208 when I was operatingthat's what I am now actually
and I couldn't take it in.
I was doing CrossFit six days aweek.
My massage therapist was likeyou need to take a day off.

Speaker 1 (12:52):
I'm like but I'm behind.
It's a mental thing.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
I think if I took two more days off a week in my
CrossFit career, I would havebeen a games athlete, but I
didn't take the time to rest,like an asshole.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
What did you realize in that?
This is all about learning andabout experiencing.
I want to share with you thejourney from what you're doing
now, all of that, the shit, thelessons, what did you take away
from it, and what's happening inyour life right now.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
There's an inflection point, yeah, in every life
where four stops working.
It's like this just used towork.
Yeah, and it used to work, yeah.
And here's what I foundeverybody has their own divine
way of breathing and and I likebreathing because that's the
insertion point for thespirituality, the epiphanies,
the next, the involution.
We all have our very own way totap into other energy sources,

(13:54):
like for me.
If you notice, in thisinterview conversation I'm doing
my Tai Chi Gong, figure eights.
I like the way that feels, Ilike to keep moving, isn't that?
And then the third thing I havea divine purpose being here, and
I didn't learn that until Irealized this is a fun story.
So I was having a conversationin my holodeck with a creator

(14:18):
Brian, I'm going to let you runthe universe in one second.
You think you can do that?
Yes, do anything for a secondslow down guy.
You realize you're gonna haveto get the moon just right, like
10 000 miles too close.
You're flooding all the coastalvillages.
That's gonna be on you.
2 000, the other way, all womenon earth are gonna get the
period.
Can you do that?
Yes, I can.

(14:40):
That's orbital geometry.
I got it.
Okay, you might be able to dothat, and I knew I was fucked
because there's a second part tothis.
He said in this 13.4 billionlight year universe, it's bigger
than that.
We'll call it that, for rightnow, do you know, there's not a
single electron out of place andall that.

(15:00):
I was like I'm so fucked rightnow.
No, I didn't realize that.
Cool, you think you can handlethat?
No, and the creator goes thenshut the fuck up.
I had it, I have it, I willalways have it.
Can you just rest, knowing thatI've got you Even better than

(15:25):
you can possibly imagine?
That's what I had to realize.
There was a plan for me.
When I about face and I look atmy life and the women that I've
been with, the father and mother, that I picked the career in
the Navy, what I did in medicalsales, what I did with Fear
Sherpa and now Freedom Sherpa.

(15:46):
To today it all makes sense.
Couldn't have seen it at thetime.
They're like steps, exactly thesame.
Bearing that, if I look throughthe lens of my heart, it makes
all the sense in the world.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
It makes zero sense in my logical mind None, but it
doesn't have to Exactly.

Speaker 2 (16:04):
That's the 64th jing key, or the 64th I Ching.
The path to enlightenment isSulaiman yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
I love that story.
If people were looking for younow and wanted to do breathwork,
work with you, even have aconversation, obviously there's
linkedin.
The links are below can youjust verbally say where the
people can find you and findyour services?
And have a conversation withyou yeah, easiest thing is a
substack.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
Brian muka on substack, read some of the stuff
.
Send me a message.
My stuff's on linkedin too.
I have a seven-day guest passfor your audience to take
advantage of.
Come to the EntrepreneurExperience Campus.
There's 11 other people like mein that space.
And, yeah, come hang out.
Come see if this is your vibe.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
To all the listeners now, people who are watching
this when this is being you'rewatching this.
Please go and have a look atthis, because I know I've
experienced it and I willcontinue experiencing Brian's
work.
It does change your life and itchanges your perception and
reality on what you're doing.
Brian, before we shoot off, isthere any things that you want

(17:14):
to say to the audience?
That many parting words,anything else you would like to
leave them with before we saygoodbye today?

Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, I would love to whisper this to you, as you're
listening, and I really neededto whisper this into the ear of
my 22-year-old self, so I'mgoing to go back in time, with
your permission, please.
So I invite you guys to do thesame thing.
I am already what I seekAlready.
I was the whole time and so areyou.

(17:42):
Just remember that it's allperfect right now.
I just breathe that in and justif you're looking at a mirror
or your phone or whatever, likeI love you.
Thank you, I wish I did that alot more often and certainly a
lot sooner than I started doingthat.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
Thank you.
Thank you, brian, you'reamazing my audience.
Please share, subscribe and youwill change someone's life.
I will see you very shortly.
Thank you, I will see you soon.
From this, this is Rice fromthe Ashes podcast, and thank you
very much, brian, for joiningme on this amazing interview.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
Thank you thank you for having me no, thank you, see
you soon.
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