January 11, 2025 • 39 mins
Mike Shennan joins us to share his remarkable journey to sobriety and how it has laid the foundation for his fulfilling career in coaching. From growing up in a family culture where drinking was routine to facing the challenges of social drinking during his university years in Canada, Mike offers a raw and insightful look into his personal transformation. As he transitioned into marriage and parenthood, his commitment to being a present father starkly contrasted his own father's absence, inspiring a shift towards sobriety and emotional growth.
Listeners will uncover the profound shifts that come with overcoming alcohol dependence. Mike and I discuss how influential works like Annie Grace's "This Naked Mind" and Belle Robertson's "Tired of Thinking About Drinking" helped us transition from a willpower-centric approach to one focused on emotional change. Mike also discusses men who choose sobriety, and the strength it shows when these men do the work and make this momentous change!
The episode wraps up with an exploration of reclaiming power through self-awareness and energy management. We delve into the transformative power of silence and inner peace, reflecting on how mastering self-coaching can lead to personal growth. Mike shares his passion for meaningful coaching conversations and how they open doors to personal empowerment. Whether you're seeking inspiration for your own journey or looking to understand the dynamics of personal change, this episode offers a wealth of insights and heartfelt stories to ponder.
Mike Shennan:
Website: www.trailblazerlifecoaching.com
Insta: @trailblazerlifecoaching
MEG
Web: https://www.meganwebb.com.au/
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/meganwebbcoaching/
Unwined Bookclub: https://www.alcoholfreedom.com.au/unwinedbookclub
ConnectAF group coaching: https://www.elizaparkinson.com/groupcoaching
BELLA
Web: https://isabellaferguson.com.au
Insta: @alcoholcounsellorisabella
Bi-Yearly 6-Week Small Group Challenges: Learn more: https://www.isabellaferguson.com.au/feb-2025-challenge
Free Do I Have A Drinking Problem 3 x Video Series: https://resources.isabellaferguson.com.au/offers/JTFFgjJL/checkout
Free HOW DO I STOP DRINKING SO MUCH Masterclass: https://resources.isabellaferguson.com.au/offers/7fvkb3FF/checkout
Online Alcohol Self-Paced Course: https://resources.isabellaferguson.com.au/offers/fDzcyvWL/checkout...
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey guys, welcome to the podcast.
Today I am really excited tohave my friend and fellow coach,
mike Shannon, on.
Hey Mike, how are you doing?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm awesome, meg.
I'm really excited to join youtoday.
I always love talking aboutthis and I know you and I have a
lot in common in a lot of areasthat we can sort of talk about.
That are going to resonate withboth us and, hopefully, the
folks that are listening, so I'mlooking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Absolutely Well, can we start by you sharing your
story?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Sure, well, with regards to my alcohol story,
which leads into my coachingstory, which then leads into
where we are today, like a lotof people, I started drinking,
experimenting with alcohol, inmy teenage years, when I was in
high school, into university.
You know my parents both drank,they were both.
You know I came from a familywhere my parents were both
(00:53):
Scottish and that doesn't meanthat they that doesn't.
You know, it's not a reason,but it's a, it's a from a, just
from a clarification, from abackground point of view.
You know alcohol was alwaysaround.
Whenever they had parties,they've smoked, they drank.
That was just part of what theyin the world they grew up in.
It was just normal part for thecourse in the seventies where I
grew up and, um, and so when Iwent off to school and I got
(01:13):
older, I just assumed that whenI, you know, it's part of being
an adult.
So I was going to experimentwith alcohol in my teens and had
some really, you know, like alot of people, some really bad
experiences went off touniversity, um, when I was
actually here in Canada at thetime I was not, I live in just
North of Toronto in Canada, um,ontario, canada.
Um, when I went off touniversity I was 19.
And at that, at that point,that's the drinking age here.
(01:35):
So I turned 19 in July and wentoff to university in September.
And so I was.
I went off to university and Iwas legal.
I could go into bars, I couldgo into the liquor store, the
beer store, you name.
It Made me very popular with myfellow residence mates at the
time, but it also set me up for,you know, a real sort of
baptism by fire into the alcoholworld and socialization.
(01:58):
And you know I was awkward.
I was.
You know, I was always kind ofsocially a bit of an introvert
coming out of high school,didn't have a great high school
experience, and so went off touniversity and it was like party
on, and literally for the firstyear and a half that's what I
did.
My academics struggled,struggled.
I then went on to, you know,sort of pull my boots up a
little bit in my last two yearsof university, you know, got my
(02:21):
degree and in the process ofdoing um, you know, stumbled, as
I say, into a relationship withmy wife in my last year and who
, or at least the woman whowould become my wife, Um and, uh
, you know we started that,started our relationship off, so
going into university, kind of,you know, transitioning through
the social aspect of drinkingand then, you know, coming out
into the real world on the otherend of it, um, we got married
(02:41):
about a year after we graduatedfrom university, had no money,
very, you know, rudimentarybasics let's pay the bills,
let's get the.
You know we had, we had themortgages and well, first we had
rents and then we had mortgagesto pay, we had car payments, we
had insurances, my wife hadstudent debts to pay off.
You know, we, we didn't have alot of money and you know, money
is something alcohol is not.
(03:02):
Drinking is not an inexpensivehabit.
And so, you know, I used toalways joke that our big night
out was, you know, getting asubmarine sandwich, a 12 inch
submarine sandwich and a sixpack of beer, and we split that
and that would be the limits ofwhat we could afford.
And so, and that was, you know,pretty well, par for the course
for the next, you know, I'd say, five, 10 years.
And as my children came along,five years later, my first son,
(03:25):
um, about five years after wewere married, and another one
shortly thereafter, got intoparenthood, drank, you know,
didn't drink as much.
Right, I was responsible forthem, obviously, taking care of
them, but also I didn't have,you know, again, focus, and you
know we didn't have a lot ofmoney to spend on that sort of
thing.
And so, you know, I dove intobeing a very active father, um,
again, largely because I wascomparing myself to my dad, who
(03:46):
was a doctor and wasn't alwayshome when I was a kid.
And so I told myself part of myprogramming was I'm not going
to do that, I'm going to be veryactive, I'm going to be the
opposite of that.
And so I was a sports coach, um, you know, a scouts leader.
I was very I got come home fromwork early to take them places
(04:06):
and drive them all over theplace and do that sort of thing.
Um, and you know, once again, Ididn't, I wasn't drinking,
cause I was.
I was very responsible in thataspect.
And so, you know, fast forwarda few more years to their
teenage years.
Like a lot of parents, kids getless reliant on us, right, they
become more independent.
Um, I have more time.
I'm now 15 years into my careeror so, or, you know, moving on,
I'm successful in my career.
I was a research scientist for25 years, um, up until 2021,
(04:28):
when I stopped to become afull-time um, this naked mind
coach, but the uh, you know I, Iwas successful in my work and,
uh, you know I, just it got meto that place where, you know,
the my sons weren't um relyingon me to drive them places
anymore, and so I sit on thecouch at home and I'd have a
night off.
And you know my guardrails and Ithink you're probably the same.
You know we all have thoseinternal guardrails around.
(04:49):
I'm not going to drink.
I'm only going to drink onFriday nights and Saturday
nights.
I'm not going to drink on worknights, I'm not going to drink
on our school nights or whateverit might be.
You know, those guardrails kindof got weak, a little more
inflated, a little less guardy,to the point that, you know, I
went from drinking beer on theweekends occasionally to over
the next three or four years, upuntil, you know, in this case,
(05:10):
2014, 15, 16, up until I wasdrinking, you know, every night
of the week with beer.
And then, obviously, tolerancewent up.
Beer change, you know, beerchanged to something.
I went through a brief phasewith wine, because I'm not a
wine drinker, but it was heavierand it was easier and my wife
drank it so I could sort of hideit a bit.
And then I went straight tohard alcohol and that's when
kind of the gloves came off inmy mind and it became.
(05:31):
I remember having this.
I remember telling myselfyou'll know, you have a problem
when you're pouring yourself arum and Coke on a Wednesday
night, and that was, that was aguardrail.
I remember telling myself that.
But I went right through thatguardrail, right, I think of it.
I think of it like going off acliff, like a car going off a
cliff, through a guardrail, tothe point that I was drinking.
You know, at the end of it, whenI got to the, at the end of my,
my journey, so to speak, orwhen I knew I had to make a
(05:53):
change, I was drinking straightrum, right out of the bottle.
So there was no mixing,no-transcript middle, the middle
(06:54):
management was let go and I wasa senior scientist with the
company, and so those two thingshappening in rapid succession
caused me to really my an uptickin my drinking and really
caused me to, you know, to losecontrol, basically complete
control, um, and so you knowthat year 2017 was not a fun
year for me.
It was very.
I was struggling, I was lookingfor work, but I was also, you
(07:15):
know, rewarding myself for 20minutes on my of networking in
the morning with the bottle inthe afternoon.
And, uh, you know, that took meuntil the end of 2018, sorry,
2017, when I decided I had tomake a change.
And that's when I consciouslydecided that I had to stop, and,
you know, it sounds like Istopped cold turkey.
It sounds like I just woke upone morning and had this moment
(07:36):
of clarity and, ah, I'm justgoing to stop.
But it was, you know, two orthree years, or five or six
years, as I said, of lead up toa morning where I ultimately
just said I can't do thisanymore.
I just can't.
And so, the way I tell my story, I basically, you know I had
left a bottle the night beforeon the kitchen counter that I
used to be high, I used to be ahider, I used to hide all my
(07:57):
alcohol.
I left it on the counter and mywife was up the first.
She was the first one up in themorning and she came downstairs
and found it sitting there andshe, she didn't do anything,
didn't say anything.
She went any other room andwe'll get her breakfast and was
watching TV, um, with a cup ofcoffee or something, and I came
in and I looked at it and I went, that's it, the gigs up Right,
and I walked in and I said rightto her that I'm going to, I'm
(08:19):
stopping drinking right now andof course, you know, as you can
imagine, her response was uh-huh, okay, okay, we'll see what
happens.
But yeah, I mean, last time Ichecked that was, you know, over
2,500 days ago.
So, um, without with a couple of, you know, like a lot of people
experience when they stopdrinking, occasionally somebody
will accidentally serve yousomething.
(08:40):
But other than that and youknow that's been it, um, but I,
that in a lot of you know that'sbeen it um, but I, that was the
first six months were me doingit myself and kind of putting
together, you know, quit lit andreading books and trying to
discover things, um, and then inthat process, about six months
in um, I discovered this nakedmind, um, annie grace, the book.
At that point it said right onthe cover control alcohol, which
(09:02):
was exactly what I had, becauseI was, I was six months sober
but I wasn't alcohol free.
I was still thinking about itevery single day in those six
months and I was starting to getwobbly.
I was starting to feel like Iwas heading down a road towards.
You know, I can't keep doingthis.
You know my, it's likewillpower.
The muscle was starting tofatigue a little bit.
Um, and then I read the book andyou know the mindset shifting
(09:25):
that came with that, the.
You know, wait a minute, Idon't you mean, I don't have to
do it this way, I can do itanother way.
Um, and that opened the door tothat way of sort of more
emotion-based behavior change asopposed to behavior-based
behavior change.
Um, and it just kind of tookoff from there and you know,
this is where I kind of used myfor people that watch Seinfeld,
the old thing, yada, yada, yada.
(09:46):
I then went on.
I then, you know, from that, Iwas so empowered in my own world
to sort of want to share thegift that I had discovered
around, the freedom that thatbrought me of this, the peace
that came with that mindset.
And so I reached out and wasvery fortunate to become one of
the very first certified coacheswith this naked mind in August
of 2019.
(10:06):
And I've been doing it eversince and it started out as a
side hustle.
It started out as sort of thething I would do on the side,
because I said I had a full-timejob as a research scientist but
with COVID and with thepandemic and just the world I
was working in was not a funplace to be, with plexiglass and
masks and everything I just gotto a place where I thought I'd
(10:29):
give this well, this is, I coulddo this, you know, virtually,
in addition to doing it inperson with some people.
And so I was able to, you know,transition in a very short time
, in a couple of years, to aplace where I thought I'd make a
go of it of myself.
It's just as a with myone-on-one private coaching
business, in addition to workingin contracts with this naked
mind and yeah, and so I did thatin 2021 and you know, I've been
(10:52):
doing it ever since and Iabsolutely love what I do.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
That's amazing.
There's so many similarities.
I, you know I meet a lot ofpeople, but yours is the
tolerance as it grew for you andyou went from beer to you know
I had the same thing.
I was probably three yearsbehind you and you know a few
things happened to me and it wasjust right, I'm just going to
(11:19):
drink that away.
So I totally, totallyunderstand.
And then I did the same thingfor six months, quickly did my
own sort of program, um, andsame as you it was.
It was um, the thoughts werestill there.
You know I love that.
You said you were, you weren'talcohol free.
It was that the, the thinkingabout drinking.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, yeah, I was.
It's exhausting, I mean, I know, and it's, and it's funny
because the very first book Iactually read was a book called
tired of thinking about drinking, and it's a book by an author
named bell Robertson.
Um, and she has.
She had a coaching programwhich was entirely email, like
the email, like pen pal sitetype based, where she would
basically email people, kind ofone-on-one coach them, but via
(12:04):
emails, as opposed to like livecoaching, kind of like what we
do now.
Um, but that book resonatedwith me because she was Canadian
for starters, um, but she never.
You never saw her face.
She was.
It was very cryptic.
I'm not sure it's, I'm not sureit's, I'm sure it's not her
real name, but she had a book.
That book basically describedthe first hundred days and it
went through what you're goingto experience in those first
hundred days and she had thisconcept of the voice in her head
(12:25):
which was, she named Wolfie,after the two wolves, parable
right, the good wolf and the badwolf, and the little boy and
his grandfather, which are,however it's performed as you
know, which one do you feed?
Oh, you know, the good wolf andthe bad wolf.
The one that you feed is theone that's going to, that's
going to persevere, um, and soshe named this, this angry voice
, as the bad wolf, kind of likeWolfie, right, and she would
talk to it and and a lot of theother things.
(12:45):
You know reward, rewards alongthe way, and you know counting
days and all of the things thatwere in that really got me
through those first hundred days, which for me was, you know,
three to four months in um andkind of gotten handed me off to
the next part, but that conceptof tired of thinking about
drinking, much like.
Ironically, the cover of thisnaked mind has a big old word,
control on it.
And again that word, and it'son, I think it's on the.
(13:06):
If you look at the spine of thebook too, it that's what word
is like bigger than this nakedmind.
It's actually the word thatgets a lot of people um, to
really, uh, to really go to that.
And you know that's what thishas been about for me.
It's it been a journey of, Imean control has a negative, was
the, was the fact that you knowthe predominant methodology, or
(13:43):
you know community, that wasout there, um, one of the
primary drivers and one of theprimary um steps in that process
was give your.
Give your power to somebodyelse, was give it up to a higher
power, and in my head it waslike I don't have any power left
to give.
I'm you know the concept.
I mean not rock bottom, but I'mexhausted, right, because I've
been, I'm thinking about thisfor so long and it's just, it's
(14:05):
wearing me down and I'm just,you know, I just don't have the,
I don't have the fight to sortof, you know, and if I give it,
if I give anything else, I'mjust going to be, I'm going to
be a puddle on the floor of well, what's the opposite of that?
Well, if that's not what I wantto do, then when I want to go on
a journey of self-empowermentand that's, you know that that
wasn't conscious to me in thebeginning, but I think now it's,
(14:28):
particularly after I got, youknow, I got my legs under me a
little bit and got a year or twointo this journey I really
started to elevate that andstarted to spill it off into
relationships and you know a lotof different areas of my life
and but yeah, that you know thatthe fatigue and energy I mean
power and energy are the twobiggest drivers for me and the
most almost everything I do nowand you know, recognizing who
(14:51):
has it and who doesn't and whatkind of energy you have, and you
know is it, is it somethingthat's you know toxic and is
going to, is going to be reallynegative, or is it like a more
enlightening right, because Italk about energy vampires and
energy generators in my coachingright?
There are people around us andthings around us that suck our
energy, and there are things andpeople around us that provide
(15:11):
us with energy, right, and wecan be those things too.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
So yeah, yeah, definitely.
Oh, there's so much because Iread the Snake of Mind as well
and I have learnt so much sincethen about myself and,
interestingly, part of it waslearning how to how control was
a part of my life and how toactually let go of that.
But when you spoke about BelleRobinson, I just lit up because
(15:38):
she was the first person.
So 2018, I had my first breakand she had one minute messages.
I don't know if you know aboutthem, but her I have all the
little cards.
Oh, honestly, I want to go findher now because she changed my
life like that.
Those messages every day,hearing her voice, wolfie, all
(15:59):
of that, oh my God, absolutelyamazing.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Yeah, and I know she, cause she had the.
She had little mail out cards,little like laminated cards that
you could, that she mailed outand so and it'd be, and
basically you'd look at one eachday and it was the same idea.
It was like the one minutemessages, but it was just
motivational.
I have them in a drawersomewhere and I have like a
little stack of them.
Same same thing again.
That was that was me pre.
This naked mind for me, likethat, like this.
(16:23):
Obviously, this naked mind iswhat really sort of got me, but
without her I wouldn't havenever, I wouldn't have gotten to
the point where I was ready forthat.
And so I have.
I have a huge um debt to pay toher, even though I don't know
her and I don't know.
And if I was to approach her asa this naked mind coach, I
don't know how she wouldapproach, how she would take
that or whatever, because youknow I don't know how she would
approach, how she would takethat or whatever, because you
know, I don't know, I have noidea, competition wise, how
these things work or whatever.
But um, yeah, she's absolutelybeen a huge part of my journey.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Yeah, yeah, same, and one of the pioneers, you know,
leading the way because therewasn't.
I'm just grateful that therewas.
There were people like her outthere, but it was earlier days.
So, yeah, I feel very gratefultoo.
Like her out there, but it wasearlier days.
So, yeah, I feel very gratefultoo.
And, like you said, for peopleon the outside it can look like,
(17:06):
you know, maybe you just wokeup and said this is it, but
there was all that laid up and Ithink it was all so important
to get us to where we are now.
And you know I say that.
And then I drank on and offthrough COVID and when I heard
you say that you could do onlinethings through COVID, I was
like, oh, that would have been abrilliant time.
Unfortunately, I was on theother end of that, still
(17:28):
drinking, so my drinking gotworse in COVID.
But yeah, it's just, it's sogood to hear your story.
And so who do you work with now, mike?
Speaker 2 (17:41):
So good to hear your story.
And so who do you work with now, mike?
Well, right now, a lot of theclients.
That, because for me there's areal vacuum when it comes to
this kind of work in men.
I think a lot of men.
I grew up in a world where boysdon't cry, suck it up, shake it
off.
You know a number ofconcussions I had as a kid was a
kid when I was playing sports,where you know I got my bell
(18:02):
rung, as they said, and they'dsay, just sort of you know,
getting to see stars at thewhole thing.
And now they used to have, youknow, they used to have the
little cartoons where somebodywould get hit on the head and
the stars would come up and itwas funny, right that, going
back in like just you know, justthat, that mindset and you
don't, you know, you don't askquestions of yourself.
Okay, you just kind of go pushthrough a lot of that um.
(18:23):
So I do work with a lot of men,particularly particularly um,
I'm very passionate, um, becauseof and this is this is where
the emotions come up for mebecause of my upbringing and my
dad and his you know him notbeing around and also, but also
the he.
He passed away in 2019, um,from coronary disease, which was
brought on by by drinking a lotby alcohol, and so I know the
(18:46):
impact that can have on a family.
I know the impact that can haveboth from being the son of
somebody and also now I can lookback, look down on my own two
boys who are 26 and 24 andrealize when they stopped I
stopped drinking when they were19 and 17, and so you so so that
I have a real emotional drawtowards the, the power of these
changes, and it's never too late, right, I'm, I'm fully
(19:09):
confident that you know modelingwhere I am now and model, you
know, over the last seven yearscoming up, it's coming up on
seven years for me, you know, tonot only my kids, but to their
friends and to their parents andeverybody, and the ripple
effect around that the familysystems aspect of this I'm
really passionate about, but alot of, a lot of, just because
(19:30):
of my own personal story and,you know, being a man, you know,
and predominantly I mean thisnaked mind is, you know, annie,
as, as you know, annie Grace isnot a man, um, and her story
resonates with sort of women,working women, moms, et cetera.
So the preponderance of notonly people that go through her
programs but also the coachesthat work in her programs are
(19:51):
are women, and so I look a lot,I kind of take some of that
myself and I.
So I work a lot with with men,but I also work with women,
because this is this to me, thisisn't gender specific at its
core.
The foundational concepts thatwe work with, that you and I
both work with, you know, aroundthis, around emotion-based
behavior change.
It's now Andy calls it affectedliminal psychology now to sort
(20:13):
of bring it into a moregeneralized state.
You know this is, you know,evaluating our thoughts and our
beliefs that drive our emotionsand realizing that when you turn
off the tap of to our emotions,we're not going to have the
behaviors that are arising fromthose emotions, and you know the
control that we have withinthat.
And so, coming back to youroriginal question, I mean,
(20:33):
pretty well, you know I workwith a lot of different people
over the course of my coaching.
You know I have had times whenI focused primarily on men's
groups and sort of men that havecome to me, and I've had, you
know, I did a podcast interviewwith Scott Pinyard, who used to
be a head coach at the Snake inMind, and we kind of went down
that road of you know that thisis a void.
(20:54):
There's a place here thatobviously you know, and opening
that door to have people comeand talk to me around that I'm
always willing to do that.
And again, I have a real passionfor other men who are willing
to get in touch with theirfeelings, so to speak, right and
not not in that, not in kind ofa woo-woo way, but just in a in
a foundational way that we haveso much more control here and
(21:15):
we're taught this bill of goodswhen we're, when we're, when
we're younger, right, that we'renot supposed feel this way,
we're not supposed to have theseemotions.
And there's reasons for that.
There's obvious reasons forthat.
There's societal benefits tothat.
There's, you know.
And if we're athletes, there'ssporting benefits to that and
there's things like that.
But at what cost at the end ofthe day?
And so, yeah, so it is.
(21:35):
You know, anybody and I have avery analytical, sort of
scientific mind around thislogical way of looking at things
.
So people connect with me onthat level, so I don't really
like to drive it to a specificgroup per se.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
But I have coached those groups.
For those reasons I just I lovethe perspective for men because
even on my podcast it'spredominantly women and that's
not because we chose that it'sbecause there's predominantly
women and that's not because wechose that it's because there
are more women.
I think in the self-healingjourney you know it's more
acceptable socially and so Ilove that you're talking about
(22:13):
it and I think I know for me onthis journey the strongest men
I've ever met are the ones doingthis.
So we need to take away thatstigma because there is so much
strength in doing this work andthere's courage, like it's a.
If you look at the way societylooks at men as you know, strong
(22:33):
physically and yeah, we don'tcry, and that actually it's kind
of the opposite, and so I lovethat.
That's what you're talkingabout.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah, and I've discovered that, and
particularly in you know thingsthat I've worked through in the
past several years around.
You know what is power like,looking at empowerment, and you
know, sometimes we assume thatwe have to be aggressive,
especially from a maleperspective.
We have to be aggressive toshow power when, in actual fact,
(23:03):
some of when I, when I think ofthe people that I really
respect, I think of that, arereally empowering to me.
Most of them, you know, I meanyou can, you can go back in
history and you know, dependingon where you are in the world,
there's always going to be thosepeople that people migrate to
and a lot of them are not thebiggest, toughest.
You know they're not the.
You know the.
You know the.
You know the the body buildersof the world, and you know
(23:23):
there's.
They can be, obviously, andphysical strength is a component
of it.
You don't want to be, but someof them are.
You know you can go to MahatmaGandhi if you have to, right, I
mean you can.
You can go to people like thatthat are, that's, some of the
most powerful people that justunderstand these concepts.
And you know there's an aspectof stoicism in this and there's
an aspect of you know, justlogical, analytical thought to
(23:45):
this, and you know the peacethat comes from you know, and
the positive energy that you canbring to something right,
whereby you know, you just showup in a different mindset and
you bring.
You know, sometimes sayingnothing is way more powerful
than getting into a conflictwith somebody, right, and
(24:06):
sometimes it's the things youdon't say that, actually, and
the way that you respond whenpeople, you know whether,
whether it's somebody sayingsomething to you, know, at you,
to you.
This is where I'm, you know,this is where a big book for me
right now is the Mel Robbins,the let them theory.
Yeah, yeah, um, which is, uh,you know to me, is you know it
is this is that.
This is the thing, right, thisis what it is it's about.
You know, people can scream andyell and stuff, but they don't
(24:28):
have any power until you respond, until you give them something
that you have right, and sothere's a when you so and then
they're and they're going togive you their power.
So, when you're talking aboutstrength and power and peace and
quiet inside your own body,yeah, I think you know,
sometimes the quieter you are asopposed to the more bombastic
(24:51):
or loud you are, the morepowerful you become, and again,
this is something that iscompletely counterintuitive to
everything I was taught untilabout five years ago, and I'm
now 55.
So I spent a half a century onthis planet in a completely
different mindset place, butit's never too late to figure it
out.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Yeah, yeah, well, I'm .
I'm loving let them, the letthem theory as well.
And just yesterday I waslistening and she said you know
most people she was talkingabout men, I think and most
people won't do this kind ofwork, but the ones that do.
I'm so excited because evenjust working on ourselves, it
does change things.
(25:30):
You know, we respond, we don'treact.
There's a whole lot of thingsthat will have that ripple
effect, but it's definitelysomething I'm enjoying.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
And again, to me, it's not, I mean, it's
perception, right, if you're, ifyou're, you know, I, I, I ask
people, when I coach them, I askyou know, if there's a word
that is that keep coming out forthem and they keep getting hung
up on it.
You know what is strength towhat is?
How would you define strength,right, when somebody, when you
(26:02):
close your eyes and say, whenyou know, sometimes when they do
that exercise, they'll, they'llcome up with you know, they'll
think of wrestlers.
And you know the rock and Ionly mentioned that because I
noticed Mel Robbins the otherday, like freaked out when the
rock followed her on Instagramor something.
But you know, maybe somebodylike that, right, we think of
like the physical, but then wealso think of the.
You know, to me, like the, youknow the, the really strong
(26:26):
intellectual people, the peoplethat are just, don't take any
guff from anybody some peoplewho figured this stuff out.
I think of somebody like markmanson, right, he wrote the
subtle art of not giving a blankum, I don't know if I can say
the word on your, on yourpodcast or not, but this is a
lot of not um, but he, you know,there's somebody who I really
admire because of the fact thathe's like, he's mentally really
strong and there's so many otherpeople like him.
Um, but he wasn't always.
(26:48):
And you know he, like a lot ofus, was a hot mess at one point.
And you know to be able to pullyourself to a place where now
and it's not about you knowimparting wisdom on people,
because you know you can preachand preach, and preach, and
preach and preach, and peopleget sick of being told things.
But when you live your life acertain way and it becomes so,
other people are drawn to you.
(27:08):
Right?
That's how you gain power,right?
It's not by telling everybodyhow great you are, or you know
imparting your power on people,or you know pushing your power
out on people.
It's bringing yourself to aplace where people want to be
around you and want the energythat you're bringing.
And that's why I said power andenergy are connected.
And once again, the scientificmind of me, you know, do we talk
(27:29):
about the?
You know there's, there's,there's a concept called the
first law of thermodynamics isthat energy cannot be created or
destroyed.
It's only its form can change.
And I think about that as, likethe world we live in kind of
like a currency, like energyexists.
We can't create it.
We can only manipulate it and,you know, change it from one
form to another.
And if we're living in a reallylow energy state, you know we're
(27:50):
going to need to acquire itfrom other people.
But when we ourselves aresomebody who is in a higher
energy state and we're feelingmore confident, we're walking
around.
You know things aren'tbothering us as much.
You know we're choosing whereto give, you know where to place
our bets each day on what we'regoing to care about.
Right, we're going to have amuch more residual.
You know we're going to be, youknow, a much higher sort of
(28:10):
resonance from an energy pointof view, and you know, and
people are going to migratetowards us and generally, then
you know that's going to raiseour energy level.
And so we become like thatbeacon for people.
And I think for people and Ithink of people like that, that
I am drawn to in my currentstate, in my current mindset,
because if I'm drawn to peoplenow, I know that, because you
know there were people I used tobe drawn to that I can have
(28:32):
seen through.
Now, right, and now I see a lotof people who have leveled up
and I'm sort of migrating tothat.
So energy, power, all of thatstuff, it's just it's.
And one of the things I'vereally discovered more recently
is there's so much peace in thepower when you look at it
through that lens, when it's acleaner energy, when you're
looking at it through a morepositive way of looking at the
world, not toxically, not likeeverything is awesome, but
(28:55):
through a, you know, just havinga mindset that's, you know you
feel almost bulletproof to whatpeople can say to you, to do to
you, because you can process itright, and they're just words,
and you can disempower words bybreaking them down into letters,
and you can disempowersentences and thoughts into
letters and words and it's justa thought, right.
And again, we do that a lot ofwork.
(29:16):
For that work and the work thatwe do as coaches you and I both
as Certified this Naked Mindcoaches, you know is to explore
thoughts and beliefs andchallenge them and put up an
alternative and just ask thequestion is it, is there an
alternative that's equally aslikely?
You don't have to believe it,but if you can just come up with
a, you know, an alternativethat sort of seems reasonable,
(29:37):
it's you're like huh, itdissolves.
It dissolves or diffuses thepower of the first one, and
that's you know.
And then you can start to stepback and, you know, go about
your day.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Yeah, yeah, oh, there's magic in that.
You know we've both done that,that work, and it's certainly,
you know, it's changing yourthoughts is such an important
part of it, and that's whatwe've learned and that's what we
can teach and help other peopledo, which is very powerful.
So I'm still learning, like Ihave a big belief we work on
(30:10):
beliefs, you know that or a bigstruggle when things aren't fair
, and I am consciously workingon that.
But one thing I have noticed inmy journey is that I truly am
at a point where I'm not worriedwhat people think of me anymore
.
That's been massive for me.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yeah, yeah, and not doing it through a lens of sort
of just whatever, not doing itthrough or through a sort of,
you know, defeatist kind of.
You know, because to me that'sacceptance Right, but it's not
resignation, it's not, you know.
You know kind of deflecting itas if like whatever you know,
because you know to me that'sacceptance right, but it's not
resignation, it's not, you know.
You know kind of deflecting itas if like whatever, you know I
don't care, um, because we docare anything, that anything,
(30:52):
anytime somebody brings negativeenergy towards us, it's going
to rattle our cage a little bit.
But the difference is when youcan get to a place where you can
quickly do a quick.
You know a transformation or aturnaround in our mind, and you
know we talk about this in ourcoaching around.
You know that's not thatalternative.
Like you know a transformationor a turnaround in our mind and
you know we talk about this inour in our coaching around.
You know that's not thatalternative.
Like you know, all you have todo is just come up with an
alternative.
Like maybe there's, maybethey're having a bad day, maybe
this isn't about me at all,right, just sometimes that
(31:14):
little thoughts like that, whensomebody says something to me,
you know, or comes at me or ordisrespects me, or maybe it's
just an oversight as opposed toit's something personal, when
you because, when you candepersonalize it in that moment,
right, the meaning and this isthe big part of you know, a lot
of the coaching we do is aroundwhat we're making things mean.
In that moment, when you candisarm the meaning, it takes it
(31:37):
back to it's just words, it'sjust a thought, right, words,
words, words in any way.
And I have a little.
I have a little thing, a littleactivity I do with some of my
coaching clients where I say,you know, right now, you know
what's what's bothering youtoday, and they say, and they'll
come up with, well, this, this,this, this, this.
And I say, ok, I want you todissect each of those down into
a single word Right, maybe it'smother-in-law, right, and I
(32:00):
always hate throwingmother-in-laws under the bus.
But here we go, you knowmother-in-law, and maybe put her
name down, right, and then lookat it and then close your eyes
and say, okay, what are youmaking that mean right now?
Right, and then take, turn thepage over and write the first
letter, capital or small,depending on how you want to do
it of her name.
How does that make you feel?
Right, you may still have aslight association, because it's
(32:22):
you're, you're thinking, you'regoing through those little,
you're breaking it down, butmaybe you know what.
If it's, you know, it's just,you realize it's just a letter,
it's just a name, right?
Can you think of some anotherperson of that same name that
you don't think the same way?
Right, we're associating ameaning in the moment, in the
context, in the situation, and,and we can break those down.
(32:44):
And you know that to me, youknow when you can do that in
real time, and that's the.
Obviously this comes withrepetition, right, one of the
one of the key foundationalconcepts that we coach around.
You know, repetition buildsmastery.
You want to do it over and overand over again, right?
Well, confidence comes last.
You have to build up thosemuscles, but when you do that,
somebody can say something,somebody can do something, and
(33:04):
you can almost and I think of itas self-coaching, right, you
can self-coach yourself aroundthat.
Is it true?
Is it really true?
Is there an alternative truththat I can explore that'll make
me that I may find believable?
And when you can come up withone.
You're like, okay, yeah, I cansee that possibly being
something that may not be true.
I'm going to move on to the nextthing, and it's just, you'd
slide through it and sodisarming those words, making
(33:26):
those words.
You know, and I'm sureeverybody has a name or a word
or something in their mindthat's dominating their thoughts
all day long and they'rewalking around all day long with
this name in their head,whether it's a friend, whether
it's a person you see on TV, youknow, a person on the news,
whatever it might be.
When you reduce it to thatlevel, it's really empowering,
(33:48):
or just right, disempowering forthem, but really empowering for
you to realize that it is justa word, right, a sentence is
just a sentence is just.
You know, it's just a string ofwords.
A word is just a string ofletters.
As I like to say, letters arejust 26 little little chicken
scratches on a piece of paper.
Everything else is the meaning,right?
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yep and predominantly our thoughts are stories we've
made up.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Yeah, yeah, but they come from, but they come from an
honest place.
They come from our experiencesand our beliefs and our
foundations, and you know thingsthat are passed down to us, and
you know part of this.
You know the part of theconcept of the let them theory
is it's not really applicable tokids, because, you know, kids
are dependent on their adults togive them good vibes, so to
speak, to give them good ethics,to give them good morals, to
give them good information, andsometimes that breaks down.
And so, you know, we learnthese things when we're, you
(34:35):
know, five, six, seven years old, and then we carry them all the
way through unless they'redisrupted.
And so, you know, we make thesethings mean something because
there's usually a value in them.
Maybe it connects us to a groupor an associate.
You know we have like, whetherit be you know, things like
religion, things like politics,those things there's benefits in
.
You know sports teams, whateverit might be.
(34:57):
You know we grow up in acertain place.
We're going to support acertain sports team.
That's just the way.
It is right Generally speaking,and it's it can be disruptive
to support their arch nemesis ifyou live in a certain city,
right, so, but you can do thatif you want to challenge it and
if you see a reason for it.
But, yeah, a lot, a lot of these.
You know a lot of the beliefsthat we have and these stories
as you mentioned, you know thereare stories, and owning them
(35:19):
and accepting them and realizingthat each of the little
decisions, each of the microdecisions we make on a daily
basis lead us to where we are inthis moment in time and that
was another foundational partfor me was realizing I'm going
to own that.
And when I own that regret, anamazing thing happens regret
disappears, because they're alllearning things, they're all
(35:39):
learning opportunities.
Yes, I did something.
You know, I can say I canreframe a mistake as something I
did with the best intentions orthere was a reason in the
mindset.
I was at the time and now I'm,you know, now I'm, now I'm, I'm
going to own that and say, yeah,I could have done this, I could
have done that.
Not, I should have, I couldhave done this, I could have
done that.
I chose this journey and thisis where I ended up.
(36:01):
As a result of that, when youactually can and when you can
like where you are right nowmakes that a lot easier too.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Yeah, definitely so awesome.
Well, I love that, mike, somuch, so I'm sure there are
people listening that would loveto reach out.
So where can they find you?
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Sure, yeah, well, I have my coaching company, which
is generally the easiest way toget me is.
The company which is generallythe easiest way to get me is
Trailblazer Life Coaching.
So at Trailblazer Life Coachingon Instagram, at Trailblazer
Life Coaching on Facebook, orMike at Trailblazer Life
Coaching on email, and I'malways open to you know, to have
conversations and to open upthose new doors.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Amazing and I will put that in the show notes so
people can find you.
But thank you so much forcoming on and speaking.
It's been amazing to speak withyou and hear you talk.
Thank you so much for sharing.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Oh, it's been a pleasure, Meg.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks for having me on.
Hey guys, welcome to the podcast.
Today I am really excited tohave my friend and fellow coach,
mike Shannon, on.
Hey Mike, how are you doing?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm awesome, meg.
I'm really excited to join youtoday.
I always love talking aboutthis and I know you and I have a
lot in common in a lot of areasthat we can sort of talk about.
That are going to resonate withboth us and, hopefully, the
folks that are listening, so I'mlooking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Absolutely Well, can we start by you sharing your
story?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Sure, well, with regards to my alcohol story,
which leads into my coachingstory, which then leads into
where we are today, like a lotof people, I started drinking,
experimenting with alcohol, inmy teenage years, when I was in
high school, into university.
You know my parents both drank,they were both.
You know I came from a familywhere my parents were both
(00:53):
Scottish and that doesn't meanthat they that doesn't.
You know, it's not a reason,but it's a, it's a from a, just
from a clarification, from abackground point of view.
You know alcohol was alwaysaround.
Whenever they had parties,they've smoked, they drank.
That was just part of what theyin the world they grew up in.
It was just normal part for thecourse in the seventies where I
grew up and, um, and so when Iwent off to school and I got
(01:13):
older, I just assumed that whenI, you know, it's part of being
an adult.
So I was going to experimentwith alcohol in my teens and had
some really, you know, like alot of people, some really bad
experiences went off touniversity, um, when I was
actually here in Canada at thetime I was not, I live in just
North of Toronto in Canada, um,ontario, canada.
Um, when I went off touniversity I was 19.
And at that, at that point,that's the drinking age here.
(01:35):
So I turned 19 in July and wentoff to university in September.
And so I was.
I went off to university and Iwas legal.
I could go into bars, I couldgo into the liquor store, the
beer store, you name.
It Made me very popular with myfellow residence mates at the
time, but it also set me up for,you know, a real sort of
baptism by fire into the alcoholworld and socialization.
(01:58):
And you know I was awkward.
I was.
You know, I was always kind ofsocially a bit of an introvert
coming out of high school,didn't have a great high school
experience, and so went off touniversity and it was like party
on, and literally for the firstyear and a half that's what I
did.
My academics struggled,struggled.
I then went on to, you know,sort of pull my boots up a
little bit in my last two yearsof university, you know, got my
(02:21):
degree and in the process ofdoing um, you know, stumbled, as
I say, into a relationship withmy wife in my last year and who
, or at least the woman whowould become my wife, Um and, uh
, you know we started that,started our relationship off, so
going into university, kind of,you know, transitioning through
the social aspect of drinkingand then, you know, coming out
into the real world on the otherend of it, um, we got married
(02:41):
about a year after we graduatedfrom university, had no money,
very, you know, rudimentarybasics let's pay the bills,
let's get the.
You know we had, we had themortgages and well, first we had
rents and then we had mortgagesto pay, we had car payments, we
had insurances, my wife hadstudent debts to pay off.
You know, we, we didn't have alot of money and you know, money
is something alcohol is not.
(03:02):
Drinking is not an inexpensivehabit.
And so, you know, I used toalways joke that our big night
out was, you know, getting asubmarine sandwich, a 12 inch
submarine sandwich and a sixpack of beer, and we split that
and that would be the limits ofwhat we could afford.
And so, and that was, you know,pretty well, par for the course
for the next, you know, I'd say, five, 10 years.
And as my children came along,five years later, my first son,
(03:25):
um, about five years after wewere married, and another one
shortly thereafter, got intoparenthood, drank, you know,
didn't drink as much.
Right, I was responsible forthem, obviously, taking care of
them, but also I didn't have,you know, again, focus, and you
know we didn't have a lot ofmoney to spend on that sort of
thing.
And so, you know, I dove intobeing a very active father, um,
again, largely because I wascomparing myself to my dad, who
(03:46):
was a doctor and wasn't alwayshome when I was a kid.
And so I told myself part of myprogramming was I'm not going
to do that, I'm going to be veryactive, I'm going to be the
opposite of that.
And so I was a sports coach, um, you know, a scouts leader.
I was very I got come home fromwork early to take them places
(04:06):
and drive them all over theplace and do that sort of thing.
Um, and you know, once again, Ididn't, I wasn't drinking,
cause I was.
I was very responsible in thataspect.
And so, you know, fast forwarda few more years to their
teenage years.
Like a lot of parents, kids getless reliant on us, right, they
become more independent.
Um, I have more time.
I'm now 15 years into my careeror so, or, you know, moving on,
I'm successful in my career.
I was a research scientist for25 years, um, up until 2021,
(04:28):
when I stopped to become afull-time um, this naked mind
coach, but the uh, you know I, Iwas successful in my work and,
uh, you know I, just it got meto that place where, you know,
the my sons weren't um relyingon me to drive them places
anymore, and so I sit on thecouch at home and I'd have a
night off.
And you know my guardrails and Ithink you're probably the same.
You know we all have thoseinternal guardrails around.
(04:49):
I'm not going to drink.
I'm only going to drink onFriday nights and Saturday
nights.
I'm not going to drink on worknights, I'm not going to drink
on our school nights or whateverit might be.
You know, those guardrails kindof got weak, a little more
inflated, a little less guardy,to the point that, you know, I
went from drinking beer on theweekends occasionally to over
the next three or four years, upuntil, you know, in this case,
(05:10):
2014, 15, 16, up until I wasdrinking, you know, every night
of the week with beer.
And then, obviously, tolerancewent up.
Beer change, you know, beerchanged to something.
I went through a brief phasewith wine, because I'm not a
wine drinker, but it was heavierand it was easier and my wife
drank it so I could sort of hideit a bit.
And then I went straight tohard alcohol and that's when
kind of the gloves came off inmy mind and it became.
(05:31):
I remember having this.
I remember telling myselfyou'll know, you have a problem
when you're pouring yourself arum and Coke on a Wednesday
night, and that was, that was aguardrail.
I remember telling myself that.
But I went right through thatguardrail, right, I think of it.
I think of it like going off acliff, like a car going off a
cliff, through a guardrail, tothe point that I was drinking.
You know, at the end of it, whenI got to the, at the end of my,
my journey, so to speak, orwhen I knew I had to make a
(05:53):
change, I was drinking straightrum, right out of the bottle.
So there was no mixing,no-transcript middle, the middle
(06:54):
management was let go and I wasa senior scientist with the
company, and so those two thingshappening in rapid succession
caused me to really my an uptickin my drinking and really
caused me to, you know, to losecontrol, basically complete
control, um, and so you knowthat year 2017 was not a fun
year for me.
It was very.
I was struggling, I was lookingfor work, but I was also, you
(07:15):
know, rewarding myself for 20minutes on my of networking in
the morning with the bottle inthe afternoon.
And, uh, you know, that took meuntil the end of 2018, sorry,
2017, when I decided I had tomake a change.
And that's when I consciouslydecided that I had to stop, and,
you know, it sounds like Istopped cold turkey.
It sounds like I just woke upone morning and had this moment
(07:36):
of clarity and, ah, I'm justgoing to stop.
But it was, you know, two orthree years, or five or six
years, as I said, of lead up toa morning where I ultimately
just said I can't do thisanymore.
I just can't.
And so, the way I tell my story, I basically, you know I had
left a bottle the night beforeon the kitchen counter that I
used to be high, I used to be ahider, I used to hide all my
(07:57):
alcohol.
I left it on the counter and mywife was up the first.
She was the first one up in themorning and she came downstairs
and found it sitting there andshe, she didn't do anything,
didn't say anything.
She went any other room andwe'll get her breakfast and was
watching TV, um, with a cup ofcoffee or something, and I came
in and I looked at it and I went, that's it, the gigs up Right,
and I walked in and I said rightto her that I'm going to, I'm
(08:19):
stopping drinking right now andof course, you know, as you can
imagine, her response was uh-huh, okay, okay, we'll see what
happens.
But yeah, I mean, last time Ichecked that was, you know, over
2,500 days ago.
So, um, without with a couple of, you know, like a lot of people
experience when they stopdrinking, occasionally somebody
will accidentally serve yousomething.
(08:40):
But other than that and youknow that's been it, um, but I,
that in a lot of you know that'sbeen it um, but I, that was the
first six months were me doingit myself and kind of putting
together, you know, quit lit andreading books and trying to
discover things, um, and then inthat process, about six months
in um, I discovered this nakedmind, um, annie grace, the book.
At that point it said right onthe cover control alcohol, which
(09:02):
was exactly what I had, becauseI was, I was six months sober
but I wasn't alcohol free.
I was still thinking about itevery single day in those six
months and I was starting to getwobbly.
I was starting to feel like Iwas heading down a road towards.
You know, I can't keep doingthis.
You know my, it's likewillpower.
The muscle was starting tofatigue a little bit.
Um, and then I read the book andyou know the mindset shifting
(09:25):
that came with that, the.
You know, wait a minute, Idon't you mean, I don't have to
do it this way, I can do itanother way.
Um, and that opened the door tothat way of sort of more
emotion-based behavior change asopposed to behavior-based
behavior change.
Um, and it just kind of tookoff from there and you know,
this is where I kind of used myfor people that watch Seinfeld,
the old thing, yada, yada, yada.
(09:46):
I then went on.
I then, you know, from that, Iwas so empowered in my own world
to sort of want to share thegift that I had discovered
around, the freedom that thatbrought me of this, the peace
that came with that mindset.
And so I reached out and wasvery fortunate to become one of
the very first certified coacheswith this naked mind in August
of 2019.
(10:06):
And I've been doing it eversince and it started out as a
side hustle.
It started out as sort of thething I would do on the side,
because I said I had a full-timejob as a research scientist but
with COVID and with thepandemic and just the world I
was working in was not a funplace to be, with plexiglass and
masks and everything I just gotto a place where I thought I'd
(10:29):
give this well, this is, I coulddo this, you know, virtually,
in addition to doing it inperson with some people.
And so I was able to, you know,transition in a very short time
, in a couple of years, to aplace where I thought I'd make a
go of it of myself.
It's just as a with myone-on-one private coaching
business, in addition to workingin contracts with this naked
mind and yeah, and so I did thatin 2021 and you know, I've been
(10:52):
doing it ever since and Iabsolutely love what I do.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
That's amazing.
There's so many similarities.
I, you know I meet a lot ofpeople, but yours is the
tolerance as it grew for you andyou went from beer to you know
I had the same thing.
I was probably three yearsbehind you and you know a few
things happened to me and it wasjust right, I'm just going to
(11:19):
drink that away.
So I totally, totallyunderstand.
And then I did the same thingfor six months, quickly did my
own sort of program, um, andsame as you it was.
It was um, the thoughts werestill there.
You know I love that.
You said you were, you weren'talcohol free.
It was that the, the thinkingabout drinking.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, yeah, I was.
It's exhausting, I mean, I know, and it's, and it's funny
because the very first book Iactually read was a book called
tired of thinking about drinking, and it's a book by an author
named bell Robertson.
Um, and she has.
She had a coaching programwhich was entirely email, like
the email, like pen pal sitetype based, where she would
basically email people, kind ofone-on-one coach them, but via
(12:04):
emails, as opposed to like livecoaching, kind of like what we
do now.
Um, but that book resonatedwith me because she was Canadian
for starters, um, but she never.
You never saw her face.
She was.
It was very cryptic.
I'm not sure it's, I'm not sureit's, I'm sure it's not her
real name, but she had a book.
That book basically describedthe first hundred days and it
went through what you're goingto experience in those first
hundred days and she had thisconcept of the voice in her head
(12:25):
which was, she named Wolfie,after the two wolves, parable
right, the good wolf and the badwolf, and the little boy and
his grandfather, which are,however it's performed as you
know, which one do you feed?
Oh, you know, the good wolf andthe bad wolf.
The one that you feed is theone that's going to, that's
going to persevere, um, and soshe named this, this angry voice
, as the bad wolf, kind of likeWolfie, right, and she would
talk to it and and a lot of theother things.
(12:45):
You know reward, rewards alongthe way, and you know counting
days and all of the things thatwere in that really got me
through those first hundred days, which for me was, you know,
three to four months in um andkind of gotten handed me off to
the next part, but that conceptof tired of thinking about
drinking, much like.
Ironically, the cover of thisnaked mind has a big old word,
control on it.
And again that word, and it'son, I think it's on the.
(13:06):
If you look at the spine of thebook too, it that's what word
is like bigger than this nakedmind.
It's actually the word thatgets a lot of people um, to
really, uh, to really go to that.
And you know that's what thishas been about for me.
It's it been a journey of, Imean control has a negative, was
the, was the fact that you knowthe predominant methodology, or
(13:43):
you know community, that wasout there, um, one of the
primary drivers and one of theprimary um steps in that process
was give your.
Give your power to somebodyelse, was give it up to a higher
power, and in my head it waslike I don't have any power left
to give.
I'm you know the concept.
I mean not rock bottom, but I'mexhausted, right, because I've
been, I'm thinking about thisfor so long and it's just, it's
(14:05):
wearing me down and I'm just,you know, I just don't have the,
I don't have the fight to sortof, you know, and if I give it,
if I give anything else, I'mjust going to be, I'm going to
be a puddle on the floor of well, what's the opposite of that?
Well, if that's not what I wantto do, then when I want to go on
a journey of self-empowermentand that's, you know that that
wasn't conscious to me in thebeginning, but I think now it's,
(14:28):
particularly after I got, youknow, I got my legs under me a
little bit and got a year or twointo this journey I really
started to elevate that andstarted to spill it off into
relationships and you know a lotof different areas of my life
and but yeah, that you know thatthe fatigue and energy I mean
power and energy are the twobiggest drivers for me and the
most almost everything I do nowand you know, recognizing who
(14:51):
has it and who doesn't and whatkind of energy you have, and you
know is it, is it somethingthat's you know toxic and is
going to, is going to be reallynegative, or is it like a more
enlightening right, because Italk about energy vampires and
energy generators in my coachingright?
There are people around us andthings around us that suck our
energy, and there are things andpeople around us that provide
(15:11):
us with energy, right, and wecan be those things too.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
So yeah, yeah, definitely.
Oh, there's so much because Iread the Snake of Mind as well
and I have learnt so much sincethen about myself and,
interestingly, part of it waslearning how to how control was
a part of my life and how toactually let go of that.
But when you spoke about BelleRobinson, I just lit up because
(15:38):
she was the first person.
So 2018, I had my first breakand she had one minute messages.
I don't know if you know aboutthem, but her I have all the
little cards.
Oh, honestly, I want to go findher now because she changed my
life like that.
Those messages every day,hearing her voice, wolfie, all
(15:59):
of that, oh my God, absolutelyamazing.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Yeah, and I know she, cause she had the.
She had little mail out cards,little like laminated cards that
you could, that she mailed outand so and it'd be, and
basically you'd look at one eachday and it was the same idea.
It was like the one minutemessages, but it was just
motivational.
I have them in a drawersomewhere and I have like a
little stack of them.
Same same thing again.
That was that was me pre.
This naked mind for me, likethat, like this.
(16:23):
Obviously, this naked mind iswhat really sort of got me, but
without her I wouldn't havenever, I wouldn't have gotten to
the point where I was ready forthat.
And so I have.
I have a huge um debt to pay toher, even though I don't know
her and I don't know.
And if I was to approach her asa this naked mind coach, I
don't know how she wouldapproach, how she would take
that or whatever, because youknow I don't know how she would
approach, how she would takethat or whatever, because you
know, I don't know, I have noidea, competition wise, how
these things work or whatever.
But um, yeah, she's absolutelybeen a huge part of my journey.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Yeah, yeah, same, and one of the pioneers, you know,
leading the way because therewasn't.
I'm just grateful that therewas.
There were people like her outthere, but it was earlier days.
So, yeah, I feel very gratefultoo.
Like her out there, but it wasearlier days.
So, yeah, I feel very gratefultoo.
And, like you said, for peopleon the outside it can look like,
(17:06):
you know, maybe you just wokeup and said this is it, but
there was all that laid up and Ithink it was all so important
to get us to where we are now.
And you know I say that.
And then I drank on and offthrough COVID and when I heard
you say that you could do onlinethings through COVID, I was
like, oh, that would have been abrilliant time.
Unfortunately, I was on theother end of that, still
(17:28):
drinking, so my drinking gotworse in COVID.
But yeah, it's just, it's sogood to hear your story.
And so who do you work with now, mike?
Speaker 2 (17:41):
So good to hear your story.
And so who do you work with now, mike?
Well, right now, a lot of theclients.
That, because for me there's areal vacuum when it comes to
this kind of work in men.
I think a lot of men.
I grew up in a world where boysdon't cry, suck it up, shake it
off.
You know a number ofconcussions I had as a kid was a
kid when I was playing sports,where you know I got my bell
(18:02):
rung, as they said, and they'dsay, just sort of you know,
getting to see stars at thewhole thing.
And now they used to have, youknow, they used to have the
little cartoons where somebodywould get hit on the head and
the stars would come up and itwas funny, right that, going
back in like just you know, justthat, that mindset and you
don't, you know, you don't askquestions of yourself.
Okay, you just kind of go pushthrough a lot of that um.
(18:23):
So I do work with a lot of men,particularly particularly um,
I'm very passionate, um, becauseof and this is this is where
the emotions come up for mebecause of my upbringing and my
dad and his you know him notbeing around and also, but also
the he.
He passed away in 2019, um,from coronary disease, which was
brought on by by drinking a lotby alcohol, and so I know the
(18:46):
impact that can have on a family.
I know the impact that can haveboth from being the son of
somebody and also now I can lookback, look down on my own two
boys who are 26 and 24 andrealize when they stopped I
stopped drinking when they were19 and 17, and so you so so that
I have a real emotional drawtowards the, the power of these
changes, and it's never too late, right, I'm, I'm fully
(19:09):
confident that you know modelingwhere I am now and model, you
know, over the last seven yearscoming up, it's coming up on
seven years for me, you know, tonot only my kids, but to their
friends and to their parents andeverybody, and the ripple
effect around that the familysystems aspect of this I'm
really passionate about, but alot of, a lot of, just because
(19:30):
of my own personal story and,you know, being a man, you know,
and predominantly I mean thisnaked mind is, you know, annie,
as, as you know, annie Grace isnot a man, um, and her story
resonates with sort of women,working women, moms, et cetera.
So the preponderance of notonly people that go through her
programs but also the coachesthat work in her programs are
(19:51):
are women, and so I look a lot,I kind of take some of that
myself and I.
So I work a lot with with men,but I also work with women,
because this is this to me, thisisn't gender specific at its
core.
The foundational concepts thatwe work with, that you and I
both work with, you know, aroundthis, around emotion-based
behavior change.
It's now Andy calls it affectedliminal psychology now to sort
(20:13):
of bring it into a moregeneralized state.
You know this is, you know,evaluating our thoughts and our
beliefs that drive our emotionsand realizing that when you turn
off the tap of to our emotions,we're not going to have the
behaviors that are arising fromthose emotions, and you know the
control that we have withinthat.
And so, coming back to youroriginal question, I mean,
(20:33):
pretty well, you know I workwith a lot of different people
over the course of my coaching.
You know I have had times whenI focused primarily on men's
groups and sort of men that havecome to me, and I've had, you
know, I did a podcast interviewwith Scott Pinyard, who used to
be a head coach at the Snake inMind, and we kind of went down
that road of you know that thisis a void.
(20:54):
There's a place here thatobviously you know, and opening
that door to have people comeand talk to me around that I'm
always willing to do that.
And again, I have a real passionfor other men who are willing
to get in touch with theirfeelings, so to speak, right and
not not in that, not in kind ofa woo-woo way, but just in a in
a foundational way that we haveso much more control here and
(21:15):
we're taught this bill of goodswhen we're, when we're, when
we're younger, right, that we'renot supposed feel this way,
we're not supposed to have theseemotions.
And there's reasons for that.
There's obvious reasons forthat.
There's societal benefits tothat.
There's, you know.
And if we're athletes, there'ssporting benefits to that and
there's things like that.
But at what cost at the end ofthe day?
And so, yeah, so it is.
(21:35):
You know, anybody and I have avery analytical, sort of
scientific mind around thislogical way of looking at things
.
So people connect with me onthat level, so I don't really
like to drive it to a specificgroup per se.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
But I have coached those groups.
For those reasons I just I lovethe perspective for men because
even on my podcast it'spredominantly women and that's
not because we chose that it'sbecause there's predominantly
women and that's not because wechose that it's because there
are more women.
I think in the self-healingjourney you know it's more
acceptable socially and so Ilove that you're talking about
(22:13):
it and I think I know for me onthis journey the strongest men
I've ever met are the ones doingthis.
So we need to take away thatstigma because there is so much
strength in doing this work andthere's courage, like it's a.
If you look at the way societylooks at men as you know, strong
(22:33):
physically and yeah, we don'tcry, and that actually it's kind
of the opposite, and so I lovethat.
That's what you're talkingabout.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah, and I've discovered that, and
particularly in you know thingsthat I've worked through in the
past several years around.
You know what is power like,looking at empowerment, and you
know, sometimes we assume thatwe have to be aggressive,
especially from a maleperspective.
We have to be aggressive toshow power when, in actual fact,
(23:03):
some of when I, when I think ofthe people that I really
respect, I think of that, arereally empowering to me.
Most of them, you know, I meanyou can, you can go back in
history and you know, dependingon where you are in the world,
there's always going to be thosepeople that people migrate to
and a lot of them are not thebiggest, toughest.
You know they're not the.
You know the.
You know the.
You know the the body buildersof the world, and you know
(23:23):
there's.
They can be, obviously, andphysical strength is a component
of it.
You don't want to be, but someof them are.
You know you can go to MahatmaGandhi if you have to, right, I
mean you can.
You can go to people like thatthat are, that's, some of the
most powerful people that justunderstand these concepts.
And you know there's an aspectof stoicism in this and there's
an aspect of you know, justlogical, analytical thought to
(23:45):
this, and you know the peacethat comes from you know, and
the positive energy that you canbring to something right,
whereby you know, you just showup in a different mindset and
you bring.
You know, sometimes sayingnothing is way more powerful
than getting into a conflictwith somebody, right, and
(24:06):
sometimes it's the things youdon't say that, actually, and
the way that you respond whenpeople, you know whether,
whether it's somebody sayingsomething to you, know, at you,
to you.
This is where I'm, you know,this is where a big book for me
right now is the Mel Robbins,the let them theory.
Yeah, yeah, um, which is, uh,you know to me, is you know it
is this is that.
This is the thing, right, thisis what it is it's about.
You know, people can scream andyell and stuff, but they don't
(24:28):
have any power until you respond, until you give them something
that you have right, and sothere's a when you so and then
they're and they're going togive you their power.
So, when you're talking aboutstrength and power and peace and
quiet inside your own body,yeah, I think you know,
sometimes the quieter you are asopposed to the more bombastic
(24:51):
or loud you are, the morepowerful you become, and again,
this is something that iscompletely counterintuitive to
everything I was taught untilabout five years ago, and I'm
now 55.
So I spent a half a century onthis planet in a completely
different mindset place, butit's never too late to figure it
out.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Yeah, yeah, well, I'm .
I'm loving let them, the letthem theory as well.
And just yesterday I waslistening and she said you know
most people she was talkingabout men, I think and most
people won't do this kind ofwork, but the ones that do.
I'm so excited because evenjust working on ourselves, it
does change things.
(25:30):
You know, we respond, we don'treact.
There's a whole lot of thingsthat will have that ripple
effect, but it's definitelysomething I'm enjoying.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
And again, to me, it's not, I mean, it's
perception, right, if you're, ifyou're, you know, I, I, I ask
people, when I coach them, I askyou know, if there's a word
that is that keep coming out forthem and they keep getting hung
up on it.
You know what is strength towhat is?
How would you define strength,right, when somebody, when you
(26:02):
close your eyes and say, whenyou know, sometimes when they do
that exercise, they'll, they'llcome up with you know, they'll
think of wrestlers.
And you know the rock and Ionly mentioned that because I
noticed Mel Robbins the otherday, like freaked out when the
rock followed her on Instagramor something.
But you know, maybe somebodylike that, right, we think of
like the physical, but then wealso think of the.
You know, to me, like the, youknow the, the really strong
(26:26):
intellectual people, the peoplethat are just, don't take any
guff from anybody some peoplewho figured this stuff out.
I think of somebody like markmanson, right, he wrote the
subtle art of not giving a blankum, I don't know if I can say
the word on your, on yourpodcast or not, but this is a
lot of not um, but he, you know,there's somebody who I really
admire because of the fact thathe's like, he's mentally really
strong and there's so many otherpeople like him.
Um, but he wasn't always.
(26:48):
And you know he, like a lot ofus, was a hot mess at one point.
And you know to be able to pullyourself to a place where now
and it's not about you knowimparting wisdom on people,
because you know you can preachand preach, and preach, and
preach and preach, and peopleget sick of being told things.
But when you live your life acertain way and it becomes so,
other people are drawn to you.
(27:08):
Right?
That's how you gain power,right?
It's not by telling everybodyhow great you are, or you know
imparting your power on people,or you know pushing your power
out on people.
It's bringing yourself to aplace where people want to be
around you and want the energythat you're bringing.
And that's why I said power andenergy are connected.
And once again, the scientificmind of me, you know, do we talk
(27:29):
about the?
You know there's, there's,there's a concept called the
first law of thermodynamics isthat energy cannot be created or
destroyed.
It's only its form can change.
And I think about that as, likethe world we live in kind of
like a currency, like energyexists.
We can't create it.
We can only manipulate it and,you know, change it from one
form to another.
And if we're living in a reallylow energy state, you know we're
(27:50):
going to need to acquire itfrom other people.
But when we ourselves aresomebody who is in a higher
energy state and we're feelingmore confident, we're walking
around.
You know things aren'tbothering us as much.
You know we're choosing whereto give, you know where to place
our bets each day on what we'regoing to care about.
Right, we're going to have amuch more residual.
You know we're going to be, youknow, a much higher sort of
(28:10):
resonance from an energy pointof view, and you know, and
people are going to migratetowards us and generally, then
you know that's going to raiseour energy level.
And so we become like thatbeacon for people.
And I think for people and Ithink of people like that, that
I am drawn to in my currentstate, in my current mindset,
because if I'm drawn to peoplenow, I know that, because you
know there were people I used tobe drawn to that I can have
(28:32):
seen through.
Now, right, and now I see a lotof people who have leveled up
and I'm sort of migrating tothat.
So energy, power, all of thatstuff, it's just it's.
And one of the things I'vereally discovered more recently
is there's so much peace in thepower when you look at it
through that lens, when it's acleaner energy, when you're
looking at it through a morepositive way of looking at the
world, not toxically, not likeeverything is awesome, but
(28:55):
through a, you know, just havinga mindset that's, you know you
feel almost bulletproof to whatpeople can say to you, to do to
you, because you can process itright, and they're just words,
and you can disempower words bybreaking them down into letters,
and you can disempowersentences and thoughts into
letters and words and it's justa thought, right.
And again, we do that a lot ofwork.
(29:16):
For that work and the work thatwe do as coaches you and I both
as Certified this Naked Mindcoaches, you know is to explore
thoughts and beliefs andchallenge them and put up an
alternative and just ask thequestion is it, is there an
alternative that's equally aslikely?
You don't have to believe it,but if you can just come up with
a, you know, an alternativethat sort of seems reasonable,
(29:37):
it's you're like huh, itdissolves.
It dissolves or diffuses thepower of the first one, and
that's you know.
And then you can start to stepback and, you know, go about
your day.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Yeah, yeah, oh, there's magic in that.
You know we've both done that,that work, and it's certainly,
you know, it's changing yourthoughts is such an important
part of it, and that's whatwe've learned and that's what we
can teach and help other peopledo, which is very powerful.
So I'm still learning, like Ihave a big belief we work on
(30:10):
beliefs, you know that or a bigstruggle when things aren't fair
, and I am consciously workingon that.
But one thing I have noticed inmy journey is that I truly am
at a point where I'm not worriedwhat people think of me anymore
.
That's been massive for me.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yeah, yeah, and not doing it through a lens of sort
of just whatever, not doing itthrough or through a sort of,
you know, defeatist kind of.
You know, because to me that'sacceptance Right, but it's not
resignation, it's not, you know.
You know kind of deflecting itas if like whatever you know,
because you know to me that'sacceptance right, but it's not
resignation, it's not, you know.
You know kind of deflecting itas if like whatever, you know I
don't care, um, because we docare anything, that anything,
(30:52):
anytime somebody brings negativeenergy towards us, it's going
to rattle our cage a little bit.
But the difference is when youcan get to a place where you can
quickly do a quick.
You know a transformation or aturnaround in our mind, and you
know we talk about this in ourcoaching around.
You know that's not thatalternative.
Like you know a transformationor a turnaround in our mind and
you know we talk about this inour in our coaching around.
You know that's not thatalternative.
Like you know, all you have todo is just come up with an
alternative.
Like maybe there's, maybethey're having a bad day, maybe
this isn't about me at all,right, just sometimes that
(31:14):
little thoughts like that, whensomebody says something to me,
you know, or comes at me or ordisrespects me, or maybe it's
just an oversight as opposed toit's something personal, when
you because, when you candepersonalize it in that moment,
right, the meaning and this isthe big part of you know, a lot
of the coaching we do is aroundwhat we're making things mean.
In that moment, when you candisarm the meaning, it takes it
(31:37):
back to it's just words, it'sjust a thought, right, words,
words, words in any way.
And I have a little.
I have a little thing, a littleactivity I do with some of my
coaching clients where I say,you know, right now, you know
what's what's bothering youtoday, and they say, and they'll
come up with, well, this, this,this, this, this.
And I say, ok, I want you todissect each of those down into
a single word Right, maybe it'smother-in-law, right, and I
(32:00):
always hate throwingmother-in-laws under the bus.
But here we go, you knowmother-in-law, and maybe put her
name down, right, and then lookat it and then close your eyes
and say, okay, what are youmaking that mean right now?
Right, and then take, turn thepage over and write the first
letter, capital or small,depending on how you want to do
it of her name.
How does that make you feel?
Right, you may still have aslight association, because it's
(32:22):
you're, you're thinking, you'regoing through those little,
you're breaking it down, butmaybe you know what.
If it's, you know, it's just,you realize it's just a letter,
it's just a name, right?
Can you think of some anotherperson of that same name that
you don't think the same way?
Right, we're associating ameaning in the moment, in the
context, in the situation, and,and we can break those down.
(32:44):
And you know that to me, youknow when you can do that in
real time, and that's the.
Obviously this comes withrepetition, right, one of the
one of the key foundationalconcepts that we coach around.
You know, repetition buildsmastery.
You want to do it over and overand over again, right?
Well, confidence comes last.
You have to build up thosemuscles, but when you do that,
somebody can say something,somebody can do something, and
(33:04):
you can almost and I think of itas self-coaching, right, you
can self-coach yourself aroundthat.
Is it true?
Is it really true?
Is there an alternative truththat I can explore that'll make
me that I may find believable?
And when you can come up withone.
You're like, okay, yeah, I cansee that possibly being
something that may not be true.
I'm going to move on to the nextthing, and it's just, you'd
slide through it and sodisarming those words, making
(33:26):
those words.
You know, and I'm sureeverybody has a name or a word
or something in their mindthat's dominating their thoughts
all day long and they'rewalking around all day long with
this name in their head,whether it's a friend, whether
it's a person you see on TV, youknow, a person on the news,
whatever it might be.
When you reduce it to thatlevel, it's really empowering,
(33:48):
or just right, disempowering forthem, but really empowering for
you to realize that it is justa word, right, a sentence is
just a sentence is just.
You know, it's just a string ofwords.
A word is just a string ofletters.
As I like to say, letters arejust 26 little little chicken
scratches on a piece of paper.
Everything else is the meaning,right?
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yep and predominantly our thoughts are stories we've
made up.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Yeah, yeah, but they come from, but they come from an
honest place.
They come from our experiencesand our beliefs and our
foundations, and you know thingsthat are passed down to us, and
you know part of this.
You know the part of theconcept of the let them theory
is it's not really applicable tokids, because, you know, kids
are dependent on their adults togive them good vibes, so to
speak, to give them good ethics,to give them good morals, to
give them good information, andsometimes that breaks down.
And so, you know, we learnthese things when we're, you
(34:35):
know, five, six, seven years old, and then we carry them all the
way through unless they'redisrupted.
And so, you know, we make thesethings mean something because
there's usually a value in them.
Maybe it connects us to a groupor an associate.
You know we have like, whetherit be you know, things like
religion, things like politics,those things there's benefits in
.
You know sports teams, whateverit might be.
(34:57):
You know we grow up in acertain place.
We're going to support acertain sports team.
That's just the way.
It is right Generally speaking,and it's it can be disruptive
to support their arch nemesis ifyou live in a certain city,
right, so, but you can do thatif you want to challenge it and
if you see a reason for it.
But, yeah, a lot, a lot of these.
You know a lot of the beliefsthat we have and these stories
as you mentioned, you know thereare stories, and owning them
(35:19):
and accepting them and realizingthat each of the little
decisions, each of the microdecisions we make on a daily
basis lead us to where we are inthis moment in time and that
was another foundational partfor me was realizing I'm going
to own that.
And when I own that regret, anamazing thing happens regret
disappears, because they're alllearning things, they're all
(35:39):
learning opportunities.
Yes, I did something.
You know, I can say I canreframe a mistake as something I
did with the best intentions orthere was a reason in the
mindset.
I was at the time and now I'm,you know, now I'm, now I'm, I'm
going to own that and say, yeah,I could have done this, I could
have done that.
Not, I should have, I couldhave done this, I could have
done that.
I chose this journey and thisis where I ended up.
(36:01):
As a result of that, when youactually can and when you can
like where you are right nowmakes that a lot easier too.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Yeah, definitely so awesome.
Well, I love that, mike, somuch, so I'm sure there are
people listening that would loveto reach out.
So where can they find you?
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Sure, yeah, well, I have my coaching company, which
is generally the easiest way toget me is.
The company which is generallythe easiest way to get me is
Trailblazer Life Coaching.
So at Trailblazer Life Coachingon Instagram, at Trailblazer
Life Coaching on Facebook, orMike at Trailblazer Life
Coaching on email, and I'malways open to you know, to have
conversations and to open upthose new doors.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Amazing and I will put that in the show notes so
people can find you.
But thank you so much forcoming on and speaking.
It's been amazing to speak withyou and hear you talk.
Thank you so much for sharing.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Oh, it's been a pleasure, Meg.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks for having me on.
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