November 13, 2025 • 28 mins
In this episode, Mike breaks open the truth behind emotional storage, nervous system release, and the real work of personal freedom: Shadow Work. This isn’t about coping. It’s about healing the unprocessed emotions that are still running your life from the inside. If you’re ready to stop reacting, stop holding it all in, and start releasing what’s not yours to carry — this episode is your how.
Key Takeaways
- Shadow Work Is About Releasing What’s Stored, Not What’s New
Most emotions aren’t new — they’re old wounds triggered again. Shadow work clears the internal pressure. - You Can’t Think Your Way Out of Stored Emotion
You have to feel it. Amplify it. Breathe through it. And release it with presence. - The Nervous System Stores Emotional Residue
Unprocessed experiences live in the body until they're moved through consciously. - The Drill Method Is the Tool
Drop into the body. Recognize. Inquire. Listen. Let go. It works because it goes beyond mindset. - Letting Go of Low-Level Energy Raises Your Reality
Peace, power, and overflow are on the other side of clearing shame, guilt, fear, and grief.
Notable Quotes
- “Shadow work will help you do that. You put yourself into the experience that you're trying to avoid. You visualize the experience. You feel the experience. And then as you feel and amplify, you begin to breathe and release all the emotion that you've just dredged up.”
- “Emotion is like an orange and a knife. The knife doesn't create the juice. The knife just reveals it.”
- “You don't reach for the higher levels. You let go of the lower levels.”
- “You just allow yourself to go deeper into it and explore and allow yourself to let it go.”
- “Every single time I do shadow work, something amazing happens.”
Call to Action
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Music Credit: "What's Left of Me" by Wes Hoffman & Friends
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Mike Kitko is an executive self-mastery coach, speaker and author. He found external success through powerful titles, incomes, and material possessions. He ultimately fell into depression, toxic abuse of alcohol, and the near collapse of his family before he began a journey of internal happiness and success.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:04):
Do you ever wake up feeling like there's something
missing in your life?
You ever feel the need to escapeyour business?
Are you running your life or isyour life running new?
I'm like here and I'll help youdesign and create a life so
authentic and aligned with whoyou really are.
You'll get excited just to wakeup.
I'll help you create realwealth, success, and freedom
from the inside out.
Welcome to the Inner WealthPodcast, where we learn and
(00:27):
choose to live inspired each andevery day.
There's a powerful tool, uhmindfulness tool, that when you
add it to your repertoire, itwill it will help you create
more freedom in your life,create more freedom in your in
(00:50):
your body, bring more peace,bring more inner wealth to your
your nervous system, and helpyou release like all of this
pent up, raw, toxic, lower levelenergy, emotion that you know is
(01:10):
anxious and fearful and angryand regretful.
And it's so this tool is so sovaluable in the work to raise
our level of consciousness.
And today I want to introduceshadow work to you.
And I've talked about shadowwork from time to time, but I
really want to dive deeper intowhat shadow work is and why we
(01:35):
do it.
And we we do shadow work for avariety of reasons.
And you know, one of them in ourphysical experiences because it
helps us feel more free in ourbody, and it helps us feel more
energized and helps us see lifethrough a more optimistic and
positive and expansive lens inour body.
(02:00):
But also, also, it helps usraise our level of consciousness
and raise our level of frequencyand our raise our vibration.
So spiritually, we evolve and weare more connected, we become
over time more connected withour divinity than our the animal
(02:20):
nature and the animal instinctthat we have uh that we've been
born into in a lot of cases.
And shadow work has absolutelychanged my life.
So the story of shadow work forme started in 2016.
And I had a uh I had a coach,and I use I use the word coach,
and and I I do something very,very similar.
(02:42):
I'm very similar in nature tothe work uh that I'm getting
ready to or the teacher that I'mgetting ready to describe.
But I hired him as a coach andand a life coach, if you will.
And if you remember back in2016, if you've listened to this
episode, you you uh you've heardme talk about 2016 a lot.
That's the year that mytransformation started.
(03:03):
And I was moving from executiveFortune 500 leadership to, you
know, this entrepreneurialjourney.
But I was also trying to put thepieces of my life back together.
My marriage had fallen apart, Ihad fallen apart, my career had
fallen apart, my income streamhad fallen apart, my kids were
living in a freaking toxichousehold that was abusive and
(03:25):
just a just a nasty environment.
And I was looking to put theheel all of this stuff and to
put my life back together.
And one of the biggest issuesthat I had is I I had always
seen life through the lens ofthe lower level beliefs that I
(03:47):
had been exposed to.
And nobody taught me how, youknow, emotional intelligence
when I was a kid.
My parents weren't emotionallyintelligent, so they didn't,
they couldn't teach me emotionalintelligence.
And, you know, the beliefs thatI had grown up in, you got to
work hard, and you know, makingmoney is hard, and the the
world's a you know a dangerousplace, and people are uh the
(04:09):
rich people are out to get you,and rich people are greedy and
slimy, and money is the root ofall evil.
And I heard all this, and like Iwas living through this lens,
and I was trying to fit myselfin a religious box that I didn't
belong, and just I was I was nota very nice guy, and uh I was
very unkind and not nice, butinside of me was just a freaking
(04:32):
ticking time bomb.
And I was 300 pounds, I wassuicidal, I was I was blocking
out drunk regularly, and my lifejust wasn't there, was nothing
good about it.
So when I started putting thepieces together, I I hired a
life coach.
Uh, and and I didn't even knowwhat a life coach was at the
time.
I I learned when I needed somesupport and uh I didn't want to
(04:53):
go to therapy because you know II watched therapists, the the
wrong, not the not good ones,not the super talented
therapists, but I've watchedthem take somebody's life around
in a circle for years and yearsand years, and they got no
progress.
So I knew I knew a therapistwasn't for me.
If that works for you, then thenget after it.
For me, I just didn't want tojust talk about my problems.
(05:15):
I knew that there was somedeeply embedded issues in me and
I needed to extract them and Ineeded to get them out quickly
and aggressively.
And that's the kind of that'swhy you joined a Marine Corps
too.
So now I'm a marine vet.
But when I when I had thiscoach, I he said, basically
asked me a question, what areyou most scared of right now?
And I to get realistic, itwasn't losing my family, it
(05:40):
wasn't losing my house or mymoney, it wasn't losing
whatever.
It was losing my house forwhatever reason, my house had
become a very deep part of myidentity.
And I grew up in you know, lowermiddle class uh city uh of
Baltimore, or the lower middleclass section in the city of
(06:02):
Baltimore, and it was a rowhome, it was very small.
There was a bunch of us packedinto a pretty small house, and
we, you know, we didn't have wedidn't have extra.
We we just had enough and and wealways had what we needed, but
we never had a you know extra.
And there was there was nomargin in our lives.
But anyway, when you know Angieand I bought our first town home
in in Germantown, Maryland, andit was a it was a a row house
(06:25):
and corner, corner lot, and wewe rehabbed the inside, and when
we sold it, uh we sold it for alot more than we made it, and we
moved to uh we moved rightoutside of Portland, Oregon, to
uh Hillsboro, Oregon, and webought a uh an even better house
and a bigger house.
And we kind of did the samething.
We lived there for 10 years anduh a couple years before we
(06:47):
moved, we rehabbed it and wesold it for a lot of money, and
and then we we moved to St.
Louis, Missouri, and we boughtthis house that I never thought
in a million years when I grewup in that that lower middle
class area of Baltimore.
I'd never thought I'd have thisthis house and not not just not
just the size, it's not the it'snot a mansion, but it's just way
(07:08):
more than I ever thought that Iwould have.
And and I love the comfort and Ilove the spaciousness and I
loved the complexity and I lovedall of it of my home.
And I had fallen in love and itbecame intertwined and entangled
with my identity.
And when I told him I'm I'mafraid of losing my house, that
(07:28):
was the thing I worried aboutthe most with this
transformation or with thistransition.
And he said, Okay, here's what Iwant you to do.
He said, I want I was alreadyactively meditating.
I had a good meditation practicegoing.
And he said, Here's what I wantyou to do.
I want you to sit on ameditation pillow or sit down,
doesn't matter if you're on ameditation pillow, but sit in
(07:50):
meditation, and I want you toget really, really comfortable
in your body and bring to mind,bring in your visualization, you
being on a street corner with uswith ripped up jeans, with holy
shirt, with dirty, you have youhave nothing, you have a sign
(08:11):
that says, I have nothing,anything will help.
And picture yourself there anduh put yourself in this the
circumstance and and the theexperience that you have no
family, that you have no house,that you have no money, and that
you've basically lost it all.
And I was like, Holy shit, whatthe fuck am I doing that for?
(08:35):
Like, that didn't make any sensewhatsoever.
And in in this process, he alsoinvited me to feel what that guy
would feel, what that version ofMike would feel on that street
corner.
And I was like, this soundsdelusional.
And he said, and then as you asyou feel this and you amplify
(08:57):
all of this, all of thisemotion, wants you to begin to
release it.
And as you release it, find somelove for that version of Mike.
Find some love for that versionof Mike.
And at this point, I was like,man, what am I doing this for?
That doesn't make any fuckingsense.
I'll at that point I was sodesperate, I would have done
(09:18):
anything for relief.
But I'm like, what am I doingthat for?
It doesn't make any sense.
Explain it to me.
And he said, your identity isbuilt on your house and your
money, and your identity isbuilt in the material world, and
these emotions are buried withinyou.
He didn't say in your nervoussystem, and we've been talking
(09:40):
about the nervous system a lotover the last few episodes.
He didn't say that your theseemotions are buried in your
nervous system, but that'sessentially what what he was
saying and what he was pointingto.
And he said these all thistoxic, raw, pent up emotion, all
the fear, all the anxiety, allthe garbage energy, emotion is
(10:02):
energy and motion, is storedinside of you.
And the only way to start to getit out of you is to find it,
feel it, amplify it, and releaseit.
And shadow work, which is whathe was describing, shadow work
will help you do that.
But you you put yourself inshadow work, you put yourself
(10:23):
into the experience that you'retrying to avoid.
You visualize the experience,you feel the experience, and
then as you feel and amplify,you begin to breathe and release
all the emotion that you've justdredged up.
(10:43):
Now, what I didn't understand atthe time is the reason the
visualization and the embodimentwork, the feeling work, this
deep somatic work, the reasonthat it's it's valuable and
important is because emotion islike an orange and a knife.
(11:03):
If you take a knife and stick itin an orange and you wiggle the
knife blade around and you pullthe knife blade out, the juice
from the orange starts to comeout of the orange, right?
The knife didn't create thejuice, the knife just revealed
it.
The orange juice was already inthere.
The knife didn't create it.
(11:24):
And we like to think that youknow, our bank account goes down
and we get scared that the bankaccount going down caused us to
get scared, but that's not thecase.
The experience is theexperience, but it triggered
emotion that was already in you.
This is why nobody can make youangry, nobody can make you sad,
(11:47):
nobody can make you feelanything.
They're just they're just sayingthe thing, doing the thing, or
you're experiencing the thingthat's triggering the pain, it's
already inside of you, andyou're feeling it because it
exists in there, because it'sstored, it's been stored through
trauma and experiences and andlife and this energy in motion,
(12:12):
emotion, which at one point wasflowing through you, got stored
and stuck.
And and the the Sanskrit wordfor this is samskaras, and I
write about samskaras and andshadow work in the inner world,
outer world.
Now, when he did this, uh whenhe told me to do this, I really
didn't like understand.
(12:32):
And I thought it was kind ofdelusional.
But my experience of this iswhen I went into shadow work and
I saw myself, I started freakinggrieving and I started crying,
and I started feeling all ofthis pent-up emotion and this
guilt and shame and anger andhopelessness.
And I started feeling all ofthis stuff inside, inside me.
(12:57):
And I started sitting with it.
I already started a meditationpractice, so I understood how to
sit with emotion.
And and as I was feeling it, itI amplified, I amplified the
emotion and dove dug down deeperinto it instead of shutting it
off or running from it, becausethat's what most people do.
As soon as they feel somethingthat's uncomfortable, they they
(13:17):
look for a way to shut it off.
And that's just avoidance, andthat's not healing.
That's just that's justavoidance, it's just shoving it
back down, and it's gonna livein there as long as you keep
shoving it down.
And when I did this work, as Ifelt it and amplified it, and as
I sat with it, and then when itwas at a crescendo, I started
(13:40):
releasing it and letting lettingit go.
And what I mean by that is Istarted breathing, and I with
each breath, I started releasingsome of this emotion.
And my my the intention was tolet this emotion go and let this
energy go the way my coach haddescribed.
And and I I started, and what Ididn't know is my coach, did I
(14:01):
say, he was more of a spiritualteacher and a spiritual healer
than he was a coach.
So ultimately that's what I'vebecome as well, because this is
the same work that I do withpeople that I've I've done for
years with people in mymastermind and in my coaching.
And as I as I sat with thisemotion, and as I as I breathed
(14:23):
and released and breathed andreleased and breathed and
released, and the tears werewere flowing, and the the the
emotion was there, my face wasred, and the pain was there.
As I breathed and released andbreathed and released, I started
to feel a level of freedom thatI hadn't felt in a very long
time.
(14:44):
And that single session ofshadow work changed my life
because it taught me to stoprunning from lower level
emotions and to start reallygetting into your body to
harvest them, to extract themand to release them to find
(15:05):
higher levels of freedom and andto elevate my level of
consciousness.
And since then, I regularly doshadow work.
In fact, a couple episodes ago,well a little bit, a little bit
back on on the podcast, probablya couple months now, there's an
episode called the drill method.
And and I I I've come up with awith a process for for teaching
(15:26):
this and describing this.
And the drill method is is verysimple to understand.
It's not always easy to dobecause it's uncomfortable, but
drill method stands for dropinto the body when you feel
something, right?
When you feel a lower levelemotion, drop into the body,
recognize what you're feeling,inquire into it.
(15:48):
Why am I feeling this?
What am I feeling?
What is it trying to teach me?
Listen to it, let it speak toyou because it will, and then
let it go.
And that's the release method.
That's that's releasing.
And when you you can do thedrill method in shadow work, or
just when life cuts you, whenyou're just going about your
(16:09):
daily, you know, your daily uhactivities and you feel that
rush of lower level emotion, youcan immediately stop, drop into
your body, recognize what youfeel, inquire into it, listen to
it, and then let it go.
And if you do this over time,because these emotions aren't
brand new, they're stored in thebody.
And as you do this, you willbegin to empty out the toxic,
(16:33):
stored up, pent up lower levelemotion that's in your nervous
system that's got control ofyou.
And and you're here to operateas the awareness and not the
meat suit.
You're here to operate as anawareness with a meat suit as
your vehicle.
And when there's so much storedup, pent up, toxic lower level
(16:54):
emotion in our bodies, weoperate as the meat suit because
it's so heavy and souncomfortable.
And when we start to releasethis stuff, we elevate and begin
to raise our level ofconsciousness.
And as we begin to elevate andraise our level of
consciousness, we begin to seelife at a higher level.
(17:14):
And when we begin to see life ata higher level, life begins to
rearrange outside of us at ahigher level, and new
circumstances start to open upand you start to experience life
in a more liberating, freeingmethod fashion.
And that's the value and thebenefit of shadow work.
(17:36):
Now listen, in I've got a chooseyour destiny live intensive
coming up in a couple days.
I've also announced the nextone, March 6th and 7th, 2026.
So if you can't get to this one,I'll put the links for both of
these in the uh in this podcastepisode in the body.
I'm also going to put the the uha free link for my meditation
(18:00):
bundle in this podcast episodebecause if you go and do
meditation number one in my inmy meditation bundle, there is
an element, the middle part isshadow work and it'll help you
get into this.
And then I've already in priorepisodes, I've already taught
about and talked about uh myinstalling future you uh
(18:22):
meditation.
And in meditation number one, inmy meditation bundle, which is a
45-minute meditation, it mightsound long, but just follow my
voice and it'll be short.
It it has an element of shadowwork, and then it has an element
of installing a higher levelfuture.
And with this, we can completelyrearrange and completely elevate
(18:48):
and upgrade the level of yournervous system.
And as you do that, you youelevate your the freedom you'll
experience, the quality of lifeyou'll experience, and your
level of consciousness and thecircumstances in your life.
Now, I'm gonna bring thistogether with a really cool uh
(19:10):
other teaching that I connectedwith a long time ago.
And that one of my favoriteauthors, his name is Dr.
David Hawkins.
And Dr.
David Hawkins died a coupledecades ago.
But Dr.
David Hawkins wrote first wrotea uh introduced this concept,
this uh a scale.
He called it the scale ofconsciousness, the the emotional
(19:32):
scale of consciousness.
And he he he introduced thisconcept in uh a book called
Power versus Force.
And it's a very dense read.
It's very, very dense, it's veryheavy, it's very meaty, but it's
it's amazing.
It's like a metaphysical Bible.
Explains it's it explains likethe law of attraction and and
magnet magnetization.
(19:54):
Boy, that word.
It explains the uh the path andthe emotional path and the
emotional journey from shame toenlightenment.
And the emotional scale ofconsciousness, as we do shadow
work and as we release thislower level of emotion, we we
rise on the emotional scale ofconsciousness.
And as we rise on the emotionalscale of consciousness, this is
(20:16):
how we experience uh higherlevels and and upgraded levels
of life.
And the the emotional scale ofconsciousness that he laid out,
I'm gonna read it for you.
The bottom, the the the lowestlevel state that a human being
can can experience is shame.
And shame is when you feelbroken, shame when you is when
(20:36):
you believe that there issomething wrong with you, that
you are defective, all right?
When you reject yourself becauseyou feel like you are broken,
defective, and flawed, fatallyflawed.
That's shame.
The next level is guilt, thenext level is apathy, the next
(20:56):
level is grief, the next levelis fear, the next level is
desire, the next level is anger,and the next level is pride.
And any level from pride all theway down to shame is they're
very disempowering.
And this energy, the energy ofthese levels of consciousness
(21:18):
actually repel energy, repelthings in the world, repel
higher level circumstance orhigher level qualities of
qualities of life.
It's these are repelling forces.
These these levels ofconsciousness do not magnetize
goodness to them, they actuallypush them away.
(21:38):
Because like attracts like thefirst level of of consciousness
that's actually an attractivelevel, and it's actually
empowering is courage.
This is this is where theirs iswhere we move from force, the
lower level, to power.
(22:00):
Okay.
Courage begins the the journeyto power.
Courage, then neutrality, thenwillingness, then acceptance,
then reason, then love, thenjoy, then peace, and
enlightenment.
And Dr.
Hawkins has laid this scale outin many different books, and he
(22:23):
be but he begun with Powerversus Force, which is an
awesome book.
The book that I would encourageyou to read, if if you're not
gonna, if you're not, if youdon't like really heavy, dense
reads, the book that I of histhat I would encourage you to
read is a book called LettingGo.
And I'm holding it up to thecamera.
If you can, if you're watchingon YouTube, you can see it.
(22:43):
But it's called Letting Go, ThePathway of Surrender.
All right.
And it lays out the levels ofconsciousness, but it helps you
understand each level, and thenit invites you to let go of
whatever lower level emotionsyou feel.
And as you let go of shame, youmove to guilt.
As you let go of guilt, you moveto apathy.
(23:06):
As you let go of apathy, youmove to grief.
And that's how we move up thisthe scale of consciousness by
letting go of the lower levels.
You don't reach for the higherlevels, you let go of the lower
levels.
We can experience the higherlevels, but that's not how our
baseline is built.
Our baseline is built by lettinggo of the lower levels.
(23:30):
And as we let go of whateverlower level energy is building
in us, has been built, has beenstored.
As we let go of these, we ascendthe scale of consciousness.
And we rise, as we rise up thescale, we experience life at a
higher level from a higher stateof awareness and consciousness.
(23:50):
And this is called the spiritualjourney.
And that's why my coach was moreof a spiritual teacher and
spiritual healer, because he wasintroducing the spiritual path
to me that no one had evertaught me.
And now in my workshops, I Iteach I teach shadow work, I
(24:10):
teach emotional intelligence, Iteach emotional courage, I teach
letting go, I teach futureembodiment work, I teach uh
consciousness.
This is the work that willabsolutely set you free.
This is the work that if youreally like getting deep, if you
(24:33):
really like getting deep withinyourself, if you really like
getting deep in the experienceof life and the spiritual
journey, it this isn'tsuperficial level work and it's
not mind work, it's body work.
We got to get into the body tostart to scrape some of this
lower level stuff out.
(24:54):
And if you experience life, ifyou repeatedly experience life
from anxiety or or depression orfear or grief or anger or
jealousy or envy, if youexperience life from any of
(25:16):
these states, then it's time todive deep into shadow work, get
into your body and get thatlower level energy out there out
of there, because that is what'scontrolling your life.
And you do control what'shappening inside your body when
you pause and start to do thework of getting deep within
(25:37):
yourself to understand what's inthere to release it.
And one of my one of my favoriteways of navigating life or
teaching people how to navigatelife is to control what you
control, influence what youinfluence, but never try to
control what you only influence.
(25:57):
And you do control what's insideof your body, you do control the
meat suit, you do have authorityto rearrange energy and emotion
inside of yourself.
But if you're not doing that,then you're just being a victim
of circumstance because Iguarantee you you're trying to
rearrange the external world tofeel okay inside.
(26:19):
Control what you can control,influence what you can
influence, and don't try tocontrol what you can, what you
can only influence.
And if you're not controllingwhat you can control, then then
you're in some way, shape, orform, you're you're showing up
in a victim as a victim of yourwhat you can control instead of
instead of owning it.
And you do own what's in yourbody, and it's the it's your
(26:42):
most valuable asset.
And what's happening inside ofyou is either an asset in your
desire to increase yourcircumstance, or it's a
liability.
And if you're if you'reconstantly showing up in states
of disempowerment, disempoweredemotions, disempowered uh
thoughts, disempowered beliefs,these are stored in your nervous
(27:03):
system.
And you're the what's happeninginside of you is a liability.
Your nervous system is aliability in your experience,
and we get to release all ofthat stored up, top stored up,
stale, toxic, lower level stuffin you so that you can
experience life from a higher,higher plane, higher dimension.
All right, guys, I hope this ishelpful.
(27:24):
In the show notes, I'm gonnadrop, uh, I'm gonna drop the
link to the Choose Your DestinyLive Intensive, which in right
outside of St.
Louis, Missouri, which launchesFriday.
We've got a couple more seatsavailable.
I'm gonna I'm gonna drop the theregistration for the next one in
March 2026, and I'm gonna dropthe link for my my meditation
(27:45):
bundle.
I'm gonna give you a free linkfor my meditation bundle, and I
would invite you to register forthat, get into it, and
demonstrate and executemeditation number one.
Yeah, you just, if you do so,you just might get to start
experiencing a little internalfreedom.
And trust me, when I say thatit's the internal freedom and
(28:07):
the emotional payoff that you'vealways been looking for, because
that's the only place that peaceexists within you.
Your peace is in your body, notyour business or your bank
account.
If you enjoyed what you heardand you want to learn more, go
to www.innerwealthglobal.com formore tools and resources.
Do you ever wake up feeling like there's something
missing in your life?
You ever feel the need to escapeyour business?
Are you running your life or isyour life running new?
I'm like here and I'll help youdesign and create a life so
authentic and aligned with whoyou really are.
You'll get excited just to wakeup.
I'll help you create realwealth, success, and freedom
from the inside out.
Welcome to the Inner WealthPodcast, where we learn and
(00:27):
choose to live inspired each andevery day.
There's a powerful tool, uhmindfulness tool, that when you
add it to your repertoire, itwill it will help you create
more freedom in your life,create more freedom in your in
(00:50):
your body, bring more peace,bring more inner wealth to your
your nervous system, and helpyou release like all of this
pent up, raw, toxic, lower levelenergy, emotion that you know is
(01:10):
anxious and fearful and angryand regretful.
And it's so this tool is so sovaluable in the work to raise
our level of consciousness.
And today I want to introduceshadow work to you.
And I've talked about shadowwork from time to time, but I
really want to dive deeper intowhat shadow work is and why we
(01:35):
do it.
And we we do shadow work for avariety of reasons.
And you know, one of them in ourphysical experiences because it
helps us feel more free in ourbody, and it helps us feel more
energized and helps us see lifethrough a more optimistic and
positive and expansive lens inour body.
(02:00):
But also, also, it helps usraise our level of consciousness
and raise our level of frequencyand our raise our vibration.
So spiritually, we evolve and weare more connected, we become
over time more connected withour divinity than our the animal
(02:20):
nature and the animal instinctthat we have uh that we've been
born into in a lot of cases.
And shadow work has absolutelychanged my life.
So the story of shadow work forme started in 2016.
And I had a uh I had a coach,and I use I use the word coach,
and and I I do something very,very similar.
(02:42):
I'm very similar in nature tothe work uh that I'm getting
ready to or the teacher that I'mgetting ready to describe.
But I hired him as a coach andand a life coach, if you will.
And if you remember back in2016, if you've listened to this
episode, you you uh you've heardme talk about 2016 a lot.
That's the year that mytransformation started.
(03:03):
And I was moving from executiveFortune 500 leadership to, you
know, this entrepreneurialjourney.
But I was also trying to put thepieces of my life back together.
My marriage had fallen apart, Ihad fallen apart, my career had
fallen apart, my income streamhad fallen apart, my kids were
living in a freaking toxichousehold that was abusive and
(03:25):
just a just a nasty environment.
And I was looking to put theheel all of this stuff and to
put my life back together.
And one of the biggest issuesthat I had is I I had always
seen life through the lens ofthe lower level beliefs that I
(03:47):
had been exposed to.
And nobody taught me how, youknow, emotional intelligence
when I was a kid.
My parents weren't emotionallyintelligent, so they didn't,
they couldn't teach me emotionalintelligence.
And, you know, the beliefs thatI had grown up in, you got to
work hard, and you know, makingmoney is hard, and the the
world's a you know a dangerousplace, and people are uh the
(04:09):
rich people are out to get you,and rich people are greedy and
slimy, and money is the root ofall evil.
And I heard all this, and like Iwas living through this lens,
and I was trying to fit myselfin a religious box that I didn't
belong, and just I was I was nota very nice guy, and uh I was
very unkind and not nice, butinside of me was just a freaking
(04:32):
ticking time bomb.
And I was 300 pounds, I wassuicidal, I was I was blocking
out drunk regularly, and my lifejust wasn't there, was nothing
good about it.
So when I started putting thepieces together, I I hired a
life coach.
Uh, and and I didn't even knowwhat a life coach was at the
time.
I I learned when I needed somesupport and uh I didn't want to
(04:53):
go to therapy because you know II watched therapists, the the
wrong, not the not good ones,not the super talented
therapists, but I've watchedthem take somebody's life around
in a circle for years and yearsand years, and they got no
progress.
So I knew I knew a therapistwasn't for me.
If that works for you, then thenget after it.
For me, I just didn't want tojust talk about my problems.
(05:15):
I knew that there was somedeeply embedded issues in me and
I needed to extract them and Ineeded to get them out quickly
and aggressively.
And that's the kind of that'swhy you joined a Marine Corps
too.
So now I'm a marine vet.
But when I when I had thiscoach, I he said, basically
asked me a question, what areyou most scared of right now?
And I to get realistic, itwasn't losing my family, it
(05:40):
wasn't losing my house or mymoney, it wasn't losing
whatever.
It was losing my house forwhatever reason, my house had
become a very deep part of myidentity.
And I grew up in you know, lowermiddle class uh city uh of
Baltimore, or the lower middleclass section in the city of
(06:02):
Baltimore, and it was a rowhome, it was very small.
There was a bunch of us packedinto a pretty small house, and
we, you know, we didn't have wedidn't have extra.
We we just had enough and and wealways had what we needed, but
we never had a you know extra.
And there was there was nomargin in our lives.
But anyway, when you know Angieand I bought our first town home
in in Germantown, Maryland, andit was a it was a a row house
(06:25):
and corner, corner lot, and wewe rehabbed the inside, and when
we sold it, uh we sold it for alot more than we made it, and we
moved to uh we moved rightoutside of Portland, Oregon, to
uh Hillsboro, Oregon, and webought a uh an even better house
and a bigger house.
And we kind of did the samething.
We lived there for 10 years anduh a couple years before we
(06:47):
moved, we rehabbed it and wesold it for a lot of money, and
and then we we moved to St.
Louis, Missouri, and we boughtthis house that I never thought
in a million years when I grewup in that that lower middle
class area of Baltimore.
I'd never thought I'd have thisthis house and not not just not
just the size, it's not the it'snot a mansion, but it's just way
(07:08):
more than I ever thought that Iwould have.
And and I love the comfort and Ilove the spaciousness and I
loved the complexity and I lovedall of it of my home.
And I had fallen in love and itbecame intertwined and entangled
with my identity.
And when I told him I'm I'mafraid of losing my house, that
(07:28):
was the thing I worried aboutthe most with this
transformation or with thistransition.
And he said, Okay, here's what Iwant you to do.
He said, I want I was alreadyactively meditating.
I had a good meditation practicegoing.
And he said, Here's what I wantyou to do.
I want you to sit on ameditation pillow or sit down,
doesn't matter if you're on ameditation pillow, but sit in
(07:50):
meditation, and I want you toget really, really comfortable
in your body and bring to mind,bring in your visualization, you
being on a street corner with uswith ripped up jeans, with holy
shirt, with dirty, you have youhave nothing, you have a sign
(08:11):
that says, I have nothing,anything will help.
And picture yourself there anduh put yourself in this the
circumstance and and the theexperience that you have no
family, that you have no house,that you have no money, and that
you've basically lost it all.
And I was like, Holy shit, whatthe fuck am I doing that for?
(08:35):
Like, that didn't make any sensewhatsoever.
And in in this process, he alsoinvited me to feel what that guy
would feel, what that version ofMike would feel on that street
corner.
And I was like, this soundsdelusional.
And he said, and then as you asyou feel this and you amplify
(08:57):
all of this, all of thisemotion, wants you to begin to
release it.
And as you release it, find somelove for that version of Mike.
Find some love for that versionof Mike.
And at this point, I was like,man, what am I doing this for?
That doesn't make any fuckingsense.
I'll at that point I was sodesperate, I would have done
(09:18):
anything for relief.
But I'm like, what am I doingthat for?
It doesn't make any sense.
Explain it to me.
And he said, your identity isbuilt on your house and your
money, and your identity isbuilt in the material world, and
these emotions are buried withinyou.
He didn't say in your nervoussystem, and we've been talking
(09:40):
about the nervous system a lotover the last few episodes.
He didn't say that your theseemotions are buried in your
nervous system, but that'sessentially what what he was
saying and what he was pointingto.
And he said these all thistoxic, raw, pent up emotion, all
the fear, all the anxiety, allthe garbage energy, emotion is
(10:02):
energy and motion, is storedinside of you.
And the only way to start to getit out of you is to find it,
feel it, amplify it, and releaseit.
And shadow work, which is whathe was describing, shadow work
will help you do that.
But you you put yourself inshadow work, you put yourself
(10:23):
into the experience that you'retrying to avoid.
You visualize the experience,you feel the experience, and
then as you feel and amplify,you begin to breathe and release
all the emotion that you've justdredged up.
(10:43):
Now, what I didn't understand atthe time is the reason the
visualization and the embodimentwork, the feeling work, this
deep somatic work, the reasonthat it's it's valuable and
important is because emotion islike an orange and a knife.
(11:03):
If you take a knife and stick itin an orange and you wiggle the
knife blade around and you pullthe knife blade out, the juice
from the orange starts to comeout of the orange, right?
The knife didn't create thejuice, the knife just revealed
it.
The orange juice was already inthere.
The knife didn't create it.
(11:24):
And we like to think that youknow, our bank account goes down
and we get scared that the bankaccount going down caused us to
get scared, but that's not thecase.
The experience is theexperience, but it triggered
emotion that was already in you.
This is why nobody can make youangry, nobody can make you sad,
(11:47):
nobody can make you feelanything.
They're just they're just sayingthe thing, doing the thing, or
you're experiencing the thingthat's triggering the pain, it's
already inside of you, andyou're feeling it because it
exists in there, because it'sstored, it's been stored through
trauma and experiences and andlife and this energy in motion,
(12:12):
emotion, which at one point wasflowing through you, got stored
and stuck.
And and the the Sanskrit wordfor this is samskaras, and I
write about samskaras and andshadow work in the inner world,
outer world.
Now, when he did this, uh whenhe told me to do this, I really
didn't like understand.
(12:32):
And I thought it was kind ofdelusional.
But my experience of this iswhen I went into shadow work and
I saw myself, I started freakinggrieving and I started crying,
and I started feeling all ofthis pent-up emotion and this
guilt and shame and anger andhopelessness.
And I started feeling all ofthis stuff inside, inside me.
(12:57):
And I started sitting with it.
I already started a meditationpractice, so I understood how to
sit with emotion.
And and as I was feeling it, itI amplified, I amplified the
emotion and dove dug down deeperinto it instead of shutting it
off or running from it, becausethat's what most people do.
As soon as they feel somethingthat's uncomfortable, they they
(13:17):
look for a way to shut it off.
And that's just avoidance, andthat's not healing.
That's just that's justavoidance, it's just shoving it
back down, and it's gonna livein there as long as you keep
shoving it down.
And when I did this work, as Ifelt it and amplified it, and as
I sat with it, and then when itwas at a crescendo, I started
(13:40):
releasing it and letting lettingit go.
And what I mean by that is Istarted breathing, and I with
each breath, I started releasingsome of this emotion.
And my my the intention was tolet this emotion go and let this
energy go the way my coach haddescribed.
And and I I started, and what Ididn't know is my coach, did I
(14:01):
say, he was more of a spiritualteacher and a spiritual healer
than he was a coach.
So ultimately that's what I'vebecome as well, because this is
the same work that I do withpeople that I've I've done for
years with people in mymastermind and in my coaching.
And as I as I sat with thisemotion, and as I as I breathed
(14:23):
and released and breathed andreleased and breathed and
released, and the tears werewere flowing, and the the the
emotion was there, my face wasred, and the pain was there.
As I breathed and released andbreathed and released, I started
to feel a level of freedom thatI hadn't felt in a very long
time.
(14:44):
And that single session ofshadow work changed my life
because it taught me to stoprunning from lower level
emotions and to start reallygetting into your body to
harvest them, to extract themand to release them to find
(15:05):
higher levels of freedom and andto elevate my level of
consciousness.
And since then, I regularly doshadow work.
In fact, a couple episodes ago,well a little bit, a little bit
back on on the podcast, probablya couple months now, there's an
episode called the drill method.
And and I I I've come up with awith a process for for teaching
(15:26):
this and describing this.
And the drill method is is verysimple to understand.
It's not always easy to dobecause it's uncomfortable, but
drill method stands for dropinto the body when you feel
something, right?
When you feel a lower levelemotion, drop into the body,
recognize what you're feeling,inquire into it.
(15:48):
Why am I feeling this?
What am I feeling?
What is it trying to teach me?
Listen to it, let it speak toyou because it will, and then
let it go.
And that's the release method.
That's that's releasing.
And when you you can do thedrill method in shadow work, or
just when life cuts you, whenyou're just going about your
(16:09):
daily, you know, your daily uhactivities and you feel that
rush of lower level emotion, youcan immediately stop, drop into
your body, recognize what youfeel, inquire into it, listen to
it, and then let it go.
And if you do this over time,because these emotions aren't
brand new, they're stored in thebody.
And as you do this, you willbegin to empty out the toxic,
(16:33):
stored up, pent up lower levelemotion that's in your nervous
system that's got control ofyou.
And and you're here to operateas the awareness and not the
meat suit.
You're here to operate as anawareness with a meat suit as
your vehicle.
And when there's so much storedup, pent up, toxic lower level
(16:54):
emotion in our bodies, weoperate as the meat suit because
it's so heavy and souncomfortable.
And when we start to releasethis stuff, we elevate and begin
to raise our level ofconsciousness.
And as we begin to elevate andraise our level of
consciousness, we begin to seelife at a higher level.
(17:14):
And when we begin to see life ata higher level, life begins to
rearrange outside of us at ahigher level, and new
circumstances start to open upand you start to experience life
in a more liberating, freeingmethod fashion.
And that's the value and thebenefit of shadow work.
(17:36):
Now listen, in I've got a chooseyour destiny live intensive
coming up in a couple days.
I've also announced the nextone, March 6th and 7th, 2026.
So if you can't get to this one,I'll put the links for both of
these in the uh in this podcastepisode in the body.
I'm also going to put the the uha free link for my meditation
(18:00):
bundle in this podcast episodebecause if you go and do
meditation number one in my inmy meditation bundle, there is
an element, the middle part isshadow work and it'll help you
get into this.
And then I've already in priorepisodes, I've already taught
about and talked about uh myinstalling future you uh
(18:22):
meditation.
And in meditation number one, inmy meditation bundle, which is a
45-minute meditation, it mightsound long, but just follow my
voice and it'll be short.
It it has an element of shadowwork, and then it has an element
of installing a higher levelfuture.
And with this, we can completelyrearrange and completely elevate
(18:48):
and upgrade the level of yournervous system.
And as you do that, you youelevate your the freedom you'll
experience, the quality of lifeyou'll experience, and your
level of consciousness and thecircumstances in your life.
Now, I'm gonna bring thistogether with a really cool uh
(19:10):
other teaching that I connectedwith a long time ago.
And that one of my favoriteauthors, his name is Dr.
David Hawkins.
And Dr.
David Hawkins died a coupledecades ago.
But Dr.
David Hawkins wrote first wrotea uh introduced this concept,
this uh a scale.
He called it the scale ofconsciousness, the the emotional
(19:32):
scale of consciousness.
And he he he introduced thisconcept in uh a book called
Power versus Force.
And it's a very dense read.
It's very, very dense, it's veryheavy, it's very meaty, but it's
it's amazing.
It's like a metaphysical Bible.
Explains it's it explains likethe law of attraction and and
magnet magnetization.
(19:54):
Boy, that word.
It explains the uh the path andthe emotional path and the
emotional journey from shame toenlightenment.
And the emotional scale ofconsciousness, as we do shadow
work and as we release thislower level of emotion, we we
rise on the emotional scale ofconsciousness.
And as we rise on the emotionalscale of consciousness, this is
(20:16):
how we experience uh higherlevels and and upgraded levels
of life.
And the the emotional scale ofconsciousness that he laid out,
I'm gonna read it for you.
The bottom, the the the lowestlevel state that a human being
can can experience is shame.
And shame is when you feelbroken, shame when you is when
(20:36):
you believe that there issomething wrong with you, that
you are defective, all right?
When you reject yourself becauseyou feel like you are broken,
defective, and flawed, fatallyflawed.
That's shame.
The next level is guilt, thenext level is apathy, the next
(20:56):
level is grief, the next levelis fear, the next level is
desire, the next level is anger,and the next level is pride.
And any level from pride all theway down to shame is they're
very disempowering.
And this energy, the energy ofthese levels of consciousness
(21:18):
actually repel energy, repelthings in the world, repel
higher level circumstance orhigher level qualities of
qualities of life.
It's these are repelling forces.
These these levels ofconsciousness do not magnetize
goodness to them, they actuallypush them away.
(21:38):
Because like attracts like thefirst level of of consciousness
that's actually an attractivelevel, and it's actually
empowering is courage.
This is this is where theirs iswhere we move from force, the
lower level, to power.
(22:00):
Okay.
Courage begins the the journeyto power.
Courage, then neutrality, thenwillingness, then acceptance,
then reason, then love, thenjoy, then peace, and
enlightenment.
And Dr.
Hawkins has laid this scale outin many different books, and he
(22:23):
be but he begun with Powerversus Force, which is an
awesome book.
The book that I would encourageyou to read, if if you're not
gonna, if you're not, if youdon't like really heavy, dense
reads, the book that I of histhat I would encourage you to
read is a book called LettingGo.
And I'm holding it up to thecamera.
If you can, if you're watchingon YouTube, you can see it.
(22:43):
But it's called Letting Go, ThePathway of Surrender.
All right.
And it lays out the levels ofconsciousness, but it helps you
understand each level, and thenit invites you to let go of
whatever lower level emotionsyou feel.
And as you let go of shame, youmove to guilt.
As you let go of guilt, you moveto apathy.
(23:06):
As you let go of apathy, youmove to grief.
And that's how we move up thisthe scale of consciousness by
letting go of the lower levels.
You don't reach for the higherlevels, you let go of the lower
levels.
We can experience the higherlevels, but that's not how our
baseline is built.
Our baseline is built by lettinggo of the lower levels.
(23:30):
And as we let go of whateverlower level energy is building
in us, has been built, has beenstored.
As we let go of these, we ascendthe scale of consciousness.
And we rise, as we rise up thescale, we experience life at a
higher level from a higher stateof awareness and consciousness.
(23:50):
And this is called the spiritualjourney.
And that's why my coach was moreof a spiritual teacher and
spiritual healer, because he wasintroducing the spiritual path
to me that no one had evertaught me.
And now in my workshops, I Iteach I teach shadow work, I
(24:10):
teach emotional intelligence, Iteach emotional courage, I teach
letting go, I teach futureembodiment work, I teach uh
consciousness.
This is the work that willabsolutely set you free.
This is the work that if youreally like getting deep, if you
(24:33):
really like getting deep withinyourself, if you really like
getting deep in the experienceof life and the spiritual
journey, it this isn'tsuperficial level work and it's
not mind work, it's body work.
We got to get into the body tostart to scrape some of this
lower level stuff out.
(24:54):
And if you experience life, ifyou repeatedly experience life
from anxiety or or depression orfear or grief or anger or
jealousy or envy, if youexperience life from any of
(25:16):
these states, then it's time todive deep into shadow work, get
into your body and get thatlower level energy out there out
of there, because that is what'scontrolling your life.
And you do control what'shappening inside your body when
you pause and start to do thework of getting deep within
(25:37):
yourself to understand what's inthere to release it.
And one of my one of my favoriteways of navigating life or
teaching people how to navigatelife is to control what you
control, influence what youinfluence, but never try to
control what you only influence.
(25:57):
And you do control what's insideof your body, you do control the
meat suit, you do have authorityto rearrange energy and emotion
inside of yourself.
But if you're not doing that,then you're just being a victim
of circumstance because Iguarantee you you're trying to
rearrange the external world tofeel okay inside.
(26:19):
Control what you can control,influence what you can
influence, and don't try tocontrol what you can, what you
can only influence.
And if you're not controllingwhat you can control, then then
you're in some way, shape, orform, you're you're showing up
in a victim as a victim of yourwhat you can control instead of
instead of owning it.
And you do own what's in yourbody, and it's the it's your
(26:42):
most valuable asset.
And what's happening inside ofyou is either an asset in your
desire to increase yourcircumstance, or it's a
liability.
And if you're if you'reconstantly showing up in states
of disempowerment, disempoweredemotions, disempowered uh
thoughts, disempowered beliefs,these are stored in your nervous
(27:03):
system.
And you're the what's happeninginside of you is a liability.
Your nervous system is aliability in your experience,
and we get to release all ofthat stored up, top stored up,
stale, toxic, lower level stuffin you so that you can
experience life from a higher,higher plane, higher dimension.
All right, guys, I hope this ishelpful.
(27:24):
In the show notes, I'm gonnadrop, uh, I'm gonna drop the
link to the Choose Your DestinyLive Intensive, which in right
outside of St.
Louis, Missouri, which launchesFriday.
We've got a couple more seatsavailable.
I'm gonna I'm gonna drop the theregistration for the next one in
March 2026, and I'm gonna dropthe link for my my meditation
(27:45):
bundle.
I'm gonna give you a free linkfor my meditation bundle, and I
would invite you to register forthat, get into it, and
demonstrate and executemeditation number one.
Yeah, you just, if you do so,you just might get to start
experiencing a little internalfreedom.
And trust me, when I say thatit's the internal freedom and
(28:07):
the emotional payoff that you'vealways been looking for, because
that's the only place that peaceexists within you.
Your peace is in your body, notyour business or your bank
account.
If you enjoyed what you heardand you want to learn more, go
to www.innerwealthglobal.com formore tools and resources.
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