The Conscious Investor
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The Conscious Investor
Ep515 From Cystic Fibrosis and NFL Stardom to Inspiring Resilience: Mike Pawlawski Journey of Overcoming Adversity
Celebrate an awe-inspiring milestone with us as we welcome Mike, a former NFL star turned motivational powerhouse, on this special episode of the Conscious Investor Podcast. Mike's journey from a childhood defined by cystic fibrosis to an 11-year career in professional football is nothing short of extraordinary. Hear how a seemingly simple moment at six years old, watching Wonder Woman, sparked a resilient spirit within him and set him on a path of continuous personal growth. His story reminds us that our early struggles don't have to define our lives; instead, they can fuel our determination to achieve greatness.
From redefining his identity through sports to transitioning into a successful post-football career, Mike's tale is a testament to the power of perseverance and adaptability. Discover how he navigated the world of professional athletics despite the odds, eventually producing an outdoor TV show and writing a deeply personal book that connects with readers on an authentic level. Mike’s insights on the importance of personal connection and the impactful role of parental guidance provide valuable lessons for anyone seeking to overcome adversity and achieve their goals.
But Mike's journey doesn't end with his athletic and professional successes. He opens up about his battles with PTSD, anxiety, and severe physical injuries resulting from his football career. Learn about his philosophy of living "Everyday Great" and how intentionality and purpose can transform lives. This episode is not just about celebrating a podcast milestone; it's a call to support one another and share stories that inspire and uplift. Join us in amplifying the power of our community and let Mike's story be a beacon of hope and resilience. Cheers to your health, mindset, and wealth!
Hello Conscious Investor and welcome back. I'm your host, julie Hawley. For over four years, I've paired my background in real estate, investing, education and coaching to create powerful content for you each week. This podcast is where we take a holistic approach to investing by focusing on three ingredients to a life of personal freedom health, mindset and wealth. We'll talk about everything from passive investing through syndication and how to use your retirement accounts to boost your investing, to mineral balancing and gut brain health, and into topics that cultivate your inner strength and resilience so you can thrive regardless of any of life's current events. And yes, those are all episodes currently available and linked in the show notes below. Join me each Monday for a mindset episode and later in the week for an interview with expert investors and health professionals, so that you can experience your greatest health, strongest mindset and build the wisest wealth. Mike, I am absolutely thrilled to have you here on the Conscious Investor Podcast.
Speaker 2:First off, let me start by saying 500 episodes Are you kidding me? That is massive. So congratulations to you. That's fantastic, it's huge, and so I love that. I love the fact that I can come on because I love your message and I know, having talked to you offline, I know how much you care about your audience, I know how much you care about people and about giving back, and so I just appreciate the fact that you feel that I'm worthy to share with your audience, and so thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. Your message is a message that when we connected up and had lunch at book camp, I knew in that moment like, oh my gosh, conscious, investor, you are going to deeply value and appreciate Mike's message and you're going to go down to the show notes and you're going to see Mike has this like a massive pedigree behind him that you're just blown away by. And what I love so much, mike, is that when we met, sometimes you meet people and that's what they lead with. They lead with well, I was a rockstar quarterback and I still hold records at Cal and sometimes people who have achieved such great success as you have. They lead with that and it's almost a protective mechanism for them, for their life, for their and that's their identity.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that really resonated with me was just how you know grounded, how human you are and how your message. It's not limited, it is an unlimited message and your life has been braided together. And while I have a normal first question, I actually would like to ask a different question and, knowing you've had such a variety of experiences, but something that really struck me as we had lunch was your experience started when you were really young, like you have been I think achiever isn't what the word I would say an overcomer who became an achiever. Like you started with odds stacked against you and, a lot of times, conscious Investor. We can feel that way at different points in our life. We could feel that our marriage is not headed the direction we want it to go, or our career isn't, maybe our kids aren't, or maybe we don't have those things and it's other parts of our life and we feel stuck and we feel we have to overcome. You faced that really early on and I'm curious if you'd be willing to share that experience with us.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Thank you for the question, um, because people look at you, know your professional football player. Like you said, people identify you by your occupation or by your past successes and obviously I have, you know, my football jersey in the background for anybody watching on video and I've got my football stuff in my room. But that's not who I am. That's not my identity. I am always a work in progress. I have been from day one. I'm still a work in progress right now.
Speaker 2:I don't have all the answers, but I found some of them that really helped and it stems back to when I was a kid you mentioned it. I was actually born with cystic fibrosis, which is a severe form of lung disease and you get more mucus. It makes it really hard to breathe and in the time that I was growing up in the 70s, it was, prognosis for somebody born with cystic fibrosis was really bad. Life expectancies were short and kids were. They were held back and they were held in. I was in an incubator right after birth and so I was kind of struggling to breathe. The thing that most people take for granted in that you know you can breathe and breath is life. I had to fight like hell for my entire life. And so from that moment through 13 years old, I was in the hospital every single year with lung disease.
Speaker 2:There was one time in particular I talk about it in my book where I was seven years old or six years old, sitting in front of the TV watching Wonder Woman. It was brand new. It was out Linda Carter's playing Wonder Woman. It was one of the first big DC comic book comics after Batman, and I just had to watch it. But I had been sick all week long.
Speaker 2:I had what they diagnosed later as the croup or whooping cough and I'm sitting in the lazy boy chair because I get to, because I'm sick. Right, I get away with murder and I'm watching Wonder Woman, and every week she gets in trouble. She somehow gets fooled by the bad guys and they trap her somehow. Well, in this one she gets trapped inside a cave and it has this plexiglass thing that comes down. And I'm sitting there watching the show and I'm coughing. Occasionally I sound like a barking seal as I'm coughing. But as I'm watching this, right, the plexiglass comes down, the lava is coming down the sides and I'm watching it and all of a sudden I realized that my chest is tightening and I can feel it literally like she's being suffocated by this lava inside the box. I'm I'm being suffocated by what's going on in my lungs and it was so traumatic and so powerful for me that I'm sitting there and I'm thinking I can't breathe and I literally couldn't breathe. I literally couldn't draw air, and it's one of those things that we just take so for granted. I just felt, if you've ever seen a fish when it flops out of the bowl, I felt like that fish sitting there trying to draw breath, and my parents snatched me up. They saw me I was turning blue and rushed me down the emergency room again, you know, for the seventh year in a row. And the doctors that night told my parents, if he makes it through the night, he'll probably be okay.
Speaker 2:Now. My mom was a World War II survivor from Germany. Her father was a medic in the German army. My dad was a member of the 82nd Airborne Military. They met on base and my dad was tough but incredibly loving. My mom was a survivor. She survived the war. She lived in seven different countries. She speaks a bunch of different languages. She was a refugee during the war. She lived in seven different countries. She speaks a bunch of different languages. She was a refugee during the war and so they decided they were going to do something about it.
Speaker 2:And the doctors told them while I was in there that sports might be a good thing for me because it would help strengthen my lung. Now they had done the salt sweat test, which is what you test for cystic fibrosis, but it was inconclusive. They didn't know what you test for cystic fibrosis, but it was inconclusive. They didn't know, they didn't have a certain diagnosis, that it was cystic fibrosis. Doc was like well, we're not sure, but maybe sports will make his lungs stronger. And so they put me into sports and it started with, you know, soccer and baseball and swimming and everything that they could put me into swimming and everything that they could put me into.
Speaker 2:And as a kid I started to learn that you could push through and you could fight pain. That pain didn't necessarily limit what you did, because I wasn't necessarily thinking that I wanted to strengthen my lungs. I was thinking I wanted to stay the hell out of that hospital bed because it was scary. When they put me in that bed, I was sitting inside an oxygen tent. I was separated from my parents. I was separated from the world, and I was.
Speaker 2:So I was in a place of what they call dorsal, vagal shutdown or freeze, where you have fight, flight or freeze. It was in freeze where I would literally disassociate inside that tent and try to remove myself from the picture, and I wanted to avoid that at all costs. And I knew that. And so I drove myself in sports and when it would hurt I would push through the next line and I would just make that negotiation myself Okay, I'm going to do this next thing, I'm just going to run this sprint, this time hard. I get to the end of that and I'd be like, okay, and then I'd say, okay, I can run the next one, one more, let's do that.
Speaker 2:And I literally kind of got through the initial pieces of training my lungs, of improving by doing one more over and over and over and over, and so initially I had to learn how to breathe just to breathe, as a kid, but in sports I was learning how to breathe hard, which became a metaphor for me in terms of being able to push through things, because so much you know the human experience.
Speaker 2:As you know, julie, we get scared of things, we get worried about things and we start to shut down. You know, julie, we get scared of things, we get worried about things and we start to shut down. And so at an early age I learned that I could push through things with sports, and so that love of getting better, of pushing through, of overcoming was ingrained in me early. I was, I tell people now I was really fortunate that I was born with cystic fibrosis, because it gave me that strength, it gave me that experience to push through things, and I think that's one of the messages that I teach people that I talk about in my book is that if you can look at these experiences as opportunities, as a benefit, it changes everything about them. They suck, for sure, but there's a benefit to it and if you can find that benefit, it's a superpower and it's a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1:Gosh it's. You know when we were talking remember we're, like you know, building our lunch at the, you know, at this event and you said something about CF and I'm, like you know you shouldn't have lived past teenage, early twenties at best at that point, with where medicine was, with CF. I remember as a child watching a um, a video like a one of those wasn't a Hallmark movie, but it was something along those lines and it was about this girl, alexis, and she had CF and I just so I remember the awareness of it was even coming on. What's standing out to me right now that's really fascinating, mike is that not only did you learn to work through and push your own limits, and that you and I talk a lot about life is, you know, driven from the inside out If you develop that internal resilience so early on.
Speaker 1:But now I'm realizing, as we were talking about identity and how you don't have your identity as I'm a, you know, amazing, you know, football player. I'm sorry, I'm thinking about all the awards that you've won and accomplishments. You've have just clouded my mind for a moment. I'm like gosh, how do you even like qualify Like it's? You're so amazing, so all that to say you didn't find it. You don't find your identity as a you know. Oh well, I'm a rockstar quarterback. I wonder if that has a tapped root in. Well, my identity isn't that I'm a CF overcomer. Some people can find their identity in different facets.
Speaker 2:Well. So your identity comes from every aspect of your life, and it's when you get into a fixed identity that you start to come. You find problems right there you go.
Speaker 2:I am a football player eliminates all the other things that you can be, and so, for me, part of my identity was I was that sick kid in the bed inside the tent that was running from my disease for sure. Right, I had a demon chasing me, and that was part of it. Part of it was that I also wanted to be an achiever. I wanted to not have to worry about these things anymore. I had a conversation with my dad Everywhere I've played, and I hate talking about myself in huge part, but I realize that this is what podcasts are about, right, yeah, this is what this is about.
Speaker 2:Lessons are in the stories, and so when I was eight years old, I had just won my first championship.
Speaker 2:I played on the member of the Racers, the Yorba and the Little League T-ball and I was the team's leading home run hitter that year. Right, and I was in that league at that age. Right, the little guy in the mound is the one who kind of controls everything, cause you get most of the ground balls you handle. I saw I was the pitcher, but, um, we had just won and my dad had me in his car. He had this boxy blue Toyota SR five stick shift right, he was always a stick shift guy. And we're sitting there and we're going to pioneer chicken because I wanted fried chicken. That was my jam. We won, I got to choose. We're going to Pioneer Chicken. And so he said so what do you want to be when you grow up? And I told him, I said, oh, I'm just gonna be a pro baseball player, like that was just going to happen. That's what I was going to do. And my dad, being wonderful, looks at me and goes, okay, well, cool, if that doesn't happen, what do you want to be? And I'd literally just seen a fishing show that morning. It was Orlando Wilson, one of the great all-time fishing hosts bass guy who was hammering, hammering huge bass down on Lake Okeechobee, throwing these shiners that you know, which is a bait fish the size of my hand, and he, they were just catching these monster large mouth bass and and one of the things that that my dad and I always did together was fish. I'm like, oh, I'll just host a fishing show. And he's like, okay, that's neat that you want to do those things, but, super, let's just go get chicken Right. So we go and get chicken.
Speaker 2:Well, fast forward, and I play football, baseball, basketball, all the sports. But I sent her up in high school on football and baseball. I was the top rated catcher for the Royals coming out of high school in Orange County coming out. They sent out the whole scouting thing. They had me to try out. But I wanted to play football and so I got a scholarship to cal and they bring me on, uh, as a quarterback I learned the game. I was pretty bad when I got there. I gotta be honest with you, I wasn't. I wasn't great. I came from a wingtie offense that didn't teach me the finer points of playing. I love my high school football coach, john turrick. Fantastic dude, taught me a ton of life lessons. But the football was antiquated and so when I got to the college level I had to learn how to play football all over again, and so I did that.
Speaker 2:But then I started to excel and I started to see this is really the sport that I love. I love football, the combat, the. It gave me that gladiator's armor. I felt like you know know, I went from being scared of getting sick and having lung disease to throwing on pads and saying, oh yeah, watch this cystic fibrosis Right, watch this pneumonia. You can't I'm going to go out there and throw my body in the fray Like I was maybe overcompensating with sports. But it was a passion for me. I loved it and the entire time, because of my history as a sick kid, I was really interoceptive. I understood my internal, what was going on, I could feel it, I could sense it and I could. I had a sense of how to regulate myself a little bit, and so I learned that. But but I went and played football to kind of finish off the story I started with went and played football, got drafted in the NFL, played 11 years of pro football and then, as soon as I got done playing football, I started producing my own outdoor TV show because while I was playing football I knew that I wanted to go be an outdoor producer.
Speaker 2:So I started learning how to be on camera, how to do radio, how to speak in front of a camera, how to speak in front of a mic, how to edit, how to produce segments of television. And I started doing it in sports because that was a natural in for me Our broadcast. Who's a broadcasting legend Joe Starkey, one of my favorite people of all time asked me to come back and be a sideline reporter for the Cal games because the arena league was in the spring and college football was in the fall. So I came back and started doing that. I started at the lowest rung of the ladder and worked my way up and I knew it. I had to go over and pick up my own mic for games and I had to make all the connections and they didn't travel me to away games the first year. There's a whole bunch of slings and arrows that I had to get through, but I knew what I wanted to be. I knew what I wanted to do and so I learned the business and then, as soon as I got done playing football, I called up Outdoor Channel and said you need me, I'm on camera, I'm an ex-pro, I'm a producer.
Speaker 2:I was a guide in the off season while I was playing football, so I would guide fly fishing in Northern California. I'm like I'm a perfect fit for you. And so they said, well, let's do a joint venture. And we did. And the first show was phenomenal Caught eight steelhead on the Klamath River, had one of them wrap me around the anchor line. I'm passing my rod underneath the boat and doing all kinds of funky stuff. I talked about the hatchery, talked about the history, talked about the biology Like we got it all in in 22 and a half minutes, and so it was a really good show. They got the tape that same day. They signed me to a contract for a year's worth of production, which led to 20 years worth of production.
Speaker 2:And and I was sitting with my dad my son was just born. I'm carrying him around brand new baby boy, 11 days old, and my dad looks at me. He goes holy crap, you did it. I'm like huh. And he said well, you told me in the car, remember that day after you won the championship, that you wanted to be a pro baseball player and you wanted to host your own TV show, your own fly fishing or your own fishing show. You remember that? I go yeah, I do kind of remember that story. He goes you freaking, did it?
Speaker 2:Like that pride from my dad, like that connection which is another part that I really learned along the way, but part of the leadership piece, it's so important that connection from my dad was so powerful for me, like it was. It meant so much to me to see my dad beam and to have that that pride from him and that acceptance and for him to be in that moment with me, completely content and proud and like that. That made that just meant so much to me. Right, and that's why I love team sports, because you get that connection as well. But but coming from this is what I'm going to do when I'm eight to closing the loop and finishing it off was was a huge piece and it was just understanding myself and and being driven to do something without being denied along the way, driven to do something without being denied along the way.
Speaker 1:It's. It's, it's just so powerful and I love that. You are even transcending, like you're going into a whole another venue, right. So here you are, overcoming, you know, as a child, cystic fibrosis. You manifest, becoming a professional athlete and professional athlete and having your own show. And now here you are coming out with this amazing book, everyday Great and so much more with that. What's interesting to me is that when someone is choosing to write a book and you have chosen to write it, there's no shame. Some people choose to hire a ghost and you're you have chosen to write it. It's. There's no shame. Some people choose to hire a ghostwriter and have somebody else do the work, but there's internal work that takes place when we choose to engage the writing on our own, and it's painful.
Speaker 2:Amen, Holy crap. Is that the truth for anybody who has not written a book? There is so much that, oh, it's all that. You, but that was that boy. You just struck me right in a limbic system. Right there, you absolutely go through personal work while you're writing.
Speaker 1:It is an internal work and to me that's an extension of the arc, one of the many arcs in your life, of overcoming and to say I'm going to become that, put on that gladiator suit of sorts, you know, and I am going to go through the internal work necessary to produce and create this book so that I can, you know, impact and support people very deliberately, and I'm so excited about that book. I, um, I am curious, so I'm going to ask a couple questions, because I know you can handle this. I could ask 20 at once and you'd be fine.
Speaker 1:but I'm curious I could handle a couple questions that go with this. Why did you choose to write this on your own instead of? You're equipped you. You could find a really great ghostwriter, but you've chosen to write this on your own, and what is it you really want to? What's the outcome you really want for people from everyday? Great.
Speaker 2:Those are both fantastic questions, by the way. So the reason I chose to write it on my own is the exact point that you were talking about, in that these are my stories and I have learned my entire life that in order to really suck the marrow out of what you're doing, you need to fully immerse in what you are doing. I am a reverse engineer guy from the nuts and bolts. I love being able to take a problem to grab it, to be able to dismantle it, kind of rethink it, reframe it and then reassemble it into a position that makes sense and works for people, and I have always been that guy. I love that.
Speaker 2:I am a coach by nature my dad, so I don't give my mom enough credit. Let me say this my mom was the most loving, devoted, like mama bear ever. I love that lady to death. She's amazing, but I always talk about my dad and it's because my dad. They both gave me acceptance, but my dad gave me the acceptance and the push at the same time and he was a phenomenal coach.
Speaker 2:Like he was an amazing coach, he got voted citizen of the year in our town twice. Most people are lucky to get it once and we weren't. It wasn't like. It was a podunk town. I grew up in Yorba Linda, which is the hometown of Richard Nixon in Orange County and so it's big. His library's there. It's a pretty big town and my dad got voted citizen of the year twice. That's what kind of good dude my dad was, and so I was really fortunate to have that type of role model and he taught me that you do the work right, you get through, you engage and you connect, and I told the story my dad. Connecting with my father was so powerful and that's why being in teams is so powerful for me.
Speaker 2:I wanted to connect and so to come full circle on question number one why not a ghostwriter? Because I wanted to connect with my reader. I wanted to connect with people. These are my stories. Yeah, they're my stories, lessons, they're my experiences and I wanted that to come through.
Speaker 2:And as much as you can love a ghostwriter, I've read a bunch and I've got buddies who do it. I know a guy who's really, really good at the sports field. He's a friend, but I wanted to write this book myself. Will I do it again? Maybe, maybe not, I don't know. But this one I wanted it to be for me because I want to be a coach, I want to connect with people and I want them to feel these lessons. We all know when you pick up that book, that the author, you can feel their intent coming through the written word, through the page, and that's what I wanted to happen with this book, because it's powerful, right. These are the lessons. I reverse, engineer the human experience for people. I am outside of being an athlete. I went to Cal too, so I always joke like there's athletes and then there's guys who really study, who really do the work, who get it. And to survive at Cal, you have to have some ability in terms of cognitive skills and so.
Speaker 1:I'll say it You're smart Mike.
Speaker 2:You're really trying to humble brag here, so it's but, but you have to get through it, and so I love breaking it down and I want to bring that to people. That's. That's the answer Number one. I want them to feel that I have I've literally with my system. I connect at the level of your nervous system. If people get these lessons, if they get the clues, and once you understand that, once you get that raw base feeling and base understanding of what's going on inside your body, it changes your entire dynamic and your ability to overcome things in your life become easy. That's what God put me here for. That's what God gave me cystic fibrosis for. That's what God gave me my parents for and gave me professional football and getting cut five times playing professional football and all those lessons were so that I could bring it to people in this book, and so that's why I'm writing it myself, because I want it to come from me to them as a coach. That's what I do. Secondly, I want people to be able to take this information and then use it in their lives to transform the way that they see, to transform perception of what's going on in the world.
Speaker 2:We get so locked up in the feelings of the moment. They're called somatic senses, the things that you feel. Stephen Porges calls it neuroception. It's about your nervous system always monitoring, always deciding what's a threat and what isn't a threat. And so nowadays we're not facing daily threats, we're not in the midst of predation, we don't have things going on where a test is not a T-Rex right, a bad boss is not a bear. We're not facing that. But our nervous system doesn't know the difference. And when we feel threatened, our nervous system reacts and the limbic system kicks in and we start getting all these feelings, all these somatic senses, and your body's trying to get to what's called homeostasis. It's trying to get to a place where you can thrive and it also wants to protect you from danger. So if you feel something is danger, then you react with your nervous system. Well, there's so much stimulus to us now. Even Instagram and TikTok and Facebook and all these other things can become threats to our limbic system, can become threats to our limbic system, and so what we have to do is learn how to regulate that, and the first and foremost piece of it is to understand what it is right.
Speaker 2:And so I go into the science of it, because I studied, I got the equivalent of a PhD or master's degree in this stuff. I have a phenomenal friend, dr Cio Hernandez, who, uh, we haven't even gotten into the anxiety piece of this thing yet, but the which was really the cue, the cue for me, um, but she, she is brilliant to the umpteenth degree, um, and she has taught, she, she has helped me to really find the threads to pull on that I can relate my lessons as an athlete, as a producer, as an on-camera talent, as a human being, back to people at home. And so I want the outcome for them to understand what it is that they're feeling, to have the perception that they can control all of that, that they are in control and that they can make the decisions and the changes in their life that they need to thrive, whatever that looks like for them, because I can't tell anybody what their idea of thriving is, but I can tell them that they have the potential and the power to thrive.
Speaker 1:Gosh, mike, conscious investor. I'm sure you can see exactly why I invited Mike on the show, because this is something we talk about so often and I know you can talk about it in so much more depth because of your research, you know, and the time you've poured in to learn about it. But it's like that knee-jerk reaction that we have to the world around us. It's so unnecessary and I love like we talk about this so unnecessary and I love like we talk about this like a bad boss is not a bear, like we don't have the same issues ancestrally speaking, and I love going into cultural anthropology. It's like these are not the same issues. But, yes, like just to you know, double tap on that point of yeah, we're responding to that angry person over on social media who you know posts whatever with that same level of intensity and it's so just a such a disservice to our lives. I'm curious if you can share with us you know what one of the elements of overcoming, of working through that is if we can give that conscious investor some support to say, and this is conscious investor, you're going to need to buy the book, you have to go pick up a copy of the book so that you can get the full scope and sequence here. I mean, I'm asking Mike a very high level question and basically it's jumping the gun on a lot of information that will be in the book. So you're going to want to go and make sure you get the book. But what do we do? Let's just say we have that because this is such a common thing for people.
Speaker 1:Some people choose to get off of social media and instead of learning how to regulate, it's like oh, I'm just going to eliminate XYZ for my life. We're going to pick on social media because it's like oh well, I'm just going to eliminate X, y, z for my life. We're going to pick on social media because that's a common one. Well, I'm just not going to be on social media because when I'm on it I get triggered. That's a common phrase people use. It triggers me, and really what they're saying is I see something on that social media platform and it aggravates my somatic system and I have this visceral response and I don't like that. I don't want that in my life. But how can we actually? What are some of the high level? How can we regulate that so that we can be present?
Speaker 2:Right. So the A. I love the question. It shows how deep and thoughtful you are about the topic Right. So the A. I love the question. It shows how deep and thoughtful you are about the topic right, and this is what I talk about when I talk about how much you care about your audience and how much you give back, like you can just hear it in the way that you frame the question, the things that you think about for them, and so it's such a powerful gift to give to them and I appreciate you for that. The in answer. Let me give you a long answer Cause, as you know, that's what I do. We've heard it right.
Speaker 2:So I played football. I played professional football for 11 years. This is the, this is the like. It's what I did. It's part of who I am, it's part of my identity, and I learned how to regulate myself in that regard. Players always feel fear in the tunnel, always feel fear in the tunnel. You can't play at that level and not feel the stress response, and so you learn to deal with it. You learn to push through it.
Speaker 2:When I was a junior, going into my junior year at Cal, there was a team psychologist named Dr Bill Koish and I love Bill Fantastic dude, but he's this mousy little dude who's out of New York and he gets a New York exit and he talks like this and he's really fast and he does you know the whole New York thing. And they brought us in and sports psychology wasn't even a thing at the time and he had three of us in there and we were all like what are we doing here? Like I don't really, I don't want to be here, looking at our watches, kind of thinking about the time. And we talked through it and it was like a group therapy session. And back then, you know, crazy people went to therapy, that's what it was. And you know, like I thought adults were supposed to have all the answers and here he was asking all the questions and so I'm like, well, I, you know, whatever I I'm, I'm about done with this and just kind of tuning out. And at the end of the conversation I get more depth in this in the book. But but he says uh, so, uh, anybody have any questions? And I look at him and I'm like, okay, well, I'm here, let's try not to make it a complete waste.
Speaker 2:And I look at him, I said look at him I said I yawn before games. It drives me crazy, like it makes me feel soft, like I'm not ready, and it and it and it. It frustrates the hell out of me. How do I stop yawning, right? So here I'm asking this question to him and he goes oh, that's your, uh, that's your fight or flight response. I'm like what he goes. Yeah, you know your fight or flight response. I'm like what he goes yeah, your fight or flight response.
Speaker 2:You see a T-Rex and all of a sudden, you need to run, so your body needs more oxygen. What you're doing is you're yawning, you're getting air in, you're getting oxygen. It's totally natural. I'm like whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait. The fact that I'm yawning is natural. He goes oh, yeah, it means your body's getting ready. It's like you're getting more adrenaline, You're getting more of this stuff. It's all coming in and your body's getting ready to do well, to do exactly what you're about to do. You're going to go play football. It's getting you ready to play football.
Speaker 2:I'm like, holy crap, mind blown. It just changed my entire perspective, like I call them, my creepy feelies. When you start to get that stress response and you feel the creepy feelies that come with it right, your, your skin gets the prickles on it and the breath gets shallow and you feel the heartbeat in your ears and your face gets flushed and your palms get sweaty and all those things that happen. That's a stress response in your body, your acute stress response, and what's happening is hormones are going into your body. You're getting adrenaline, or known as epinephrine. In your brain, you're getting cortisol, so the cortisol is pumping glucose into your blood so that you have more energy. Right, the adrenaline is dilating your veins so that you can respond better, so that you have more energy. All of this is geared to make you more responsive. It is literally performance enhancing drugs and your body is juicing you with it in the moment and I'm like holy crap. And so now I don't have to be nervous.
Speaker 2:Well, come 20 years later, dr Allie Crum she's a Stanford psychologist comes up and gives a TEDx talk about the stress is enhancing mindset.
Speaker 2:And when you understand that stress enhances you, enhances performance, enhances cognition, if you can get through the somatic senses, it changes your physiology so that you can perform. And so when we feel that stress response this is what I talk about I like to come under everything. What is the base? Where is the beginning of this? How do I change this at the source to affect my nervous system, and when I understand that stress enhances me, that stress is enhancing mindset, helps me change my physiology to be better? In the end, that's my goal. I want people to be better. I want to be better, I want to be able to affect people better, and so in my book I go into the ways to use your acute stress response, or the ways to use physical things, doing the work, making a decision, all the things that you have to do in your life in order to modulate that stress response, to optimize performance, so that you can become the best version of yourself.
Speaker 1:I love this so much, mike, and what's interesting is that, although we have a lot of experience in Conscious Investor, you and I have a lot of stressful experiences in our lives. There's another level of stressful experience when you're on the line and this is going to be me trying to make a really, really good football analogy here but you have a stadium packed with, you know, thousands of people, you've got millions of viewers online. You have all of this pressure like and you did this not just I mean, you played professionally for 11 years, but you were at Cal. You had it's, it's decades long of engaging on on that level, with that pressure, but then in so many other parts of life, and so I can't think of somebody more qualified to be able to say I've lived with this, I've learned how to work with this, I've learned how to leverage it, and now I know the science behind it and now I can support you in really making every day great. I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's the point. So to get to that point and here's what tied it all together for me and I appreciate the fact that you asked the question in that way, because this is really this is the life-changing moment for me Not that they all aren't, every moment in your life is life-changing but when I got done playing football right, so I'd won the world championships, I've got the ring, I had great teams around me. There's a great story in the book. At one point in my career I finally realized that I wasn't playing for the ring. Right, you always drive. You think you're playing for the championship. You think you're playing for that. I realized I wasn't playing for the ring and it was amazing. But you're going to have to buy the book for that one.
Speaker 2:But that said, the injuries from football, the kind of repeated trauma to my body, meant I had 29 surgeries or procedures injections in my spine, full spinal surgeries, I have four replacement discs in my neck, I've got knee replacements, all this thing and I say that I would do it all again in a second. So I have zero regrets about playing, but it took its toll on my body and at the time, with health insurance, uh, preexisting injuries were a disqualifier Couldn't get health insurance which from a business standpoint I totally understand. That Right, and I had no more health insurance because I wasn't playing anymore and so I couldn't get health insurance. The doctors, uh, and I was. You know, I was paying for my own stuff out of pocket as it went. But the doctors were prescribing me meds in the form of anti-inflammatories and pain meds for my injuries and although I hated the pain meds when stuff was bad, I had to take them.
Speaker 2:Well, it gave me diverticulitis. The combination of the two gave me diverticulitis, a severe infection in your intestine. It was really bad and it got to the point where it was ongoing for two years and they kept trying to hammer me with antibiotics so they're killing all my gut bacteria and then it would stop it for the duration of the antibiotic and then it would come back, and then it would stop it again and it would come back. It probably went on 10 cycles of antibiotics during that period of time and the doctors wouldn't do a surgery to fix it because the insurance company wouldn't cover it and workers' comp said they weren't going to cover it and I couldn't get health insurance. It was horrible and so it got so bad to the point and my doctor, who was my doctor for the diverticulitis side, said this is clearly related to the meds that you're taking for football. This is clearly a workers' comp thing, right, but they could deny everything here and just put you in court forever. So I literally had to threaten them to go to court that I would do a documentary. And I rounded up 20 football players who were all being denied by the same insurance company and I said I'm going to do a documentary with all these guys who are being denied by you and if I die, it becomes more powerful, because that's how close I was. The doctor told me I was really close, I was septic, my body was bad, it was horrible. So finally that I sent it, I got it to their board of directors and, miraculously, the surgery was approved.
Speaker 2:Well, I got the surgery recovered from that and, as post-traumatic stress does, it affected me. And as soon as I recovered in that healing phase, the PTSD kicked in for me and I got the worst anxiety, to the point where I literally thought I was having a stroke sitting down editing one of my documentaries and I had a panic attack which led to other panic attacks which led to anxiety, because the inability to overcome that for so long put me in that same position that I was in as a kid in the hospital bed, in the oxygen tent, where I was in that dorsal vagal shutdown, and so I froze. And that's really what anxiety and depression are about are about, and it's the misregulation or dysregulation of your nervous system in that you go into that edge of that fight or flight but you really get into freeze. It's what Marty Seligman called learned helplessness. And so you get to that place where you feel like you have zero control and so my anxiety was bad. And here's a guy who won world championships. Here's a guy who could broadcast.
Speaker 2:I worked for NBC, I worked for Fox, I worked on national broadcasts. All the time I was doing pro games, college games. I have zero fear of getting on the air and talking. I have zero fear of standing up in front of a crowd and talking. I was scared to leave my house talking. I was scared to leave my house. I got agoraphobic because my anxiety was so bad and I went through this off and on for 10 years. It would get a little bit better and then it would get worse, but it was always that specter in the back of my mind. I could always feel that dysregulation in my nervous system and so move forward. It's feeling pretty good for about 10 years.
Speaker 2:Uh, I got a divorce, my dad died, so there's a bunch of stuff that kind of fell on top of it inside of that that created that anxiety.
Speaker 2:Um, but I'm remarried, have an amazing, amazing wife now and it's got, you know, have my house, career set, everything is good. I coach quarterbacks that's part of what I do because I love giving back, I love teaching the game to young players and watching their confidence grow, teaching them lessons, and it's a bluebird day. I have one of my favorite quarterbacks and my anxiety is through the roof. I don't have bills that aren't paid, I don't have obligations that I can't fulfill. I don't have anything to trigger this and my anxiety is so bad I'm white knuckling it through a quarterback session. And so I called my friend, dr CEO, who I talked about a little bit and I and we've known each other since college. She was 19 when I met her and we have been really good friends. She's best friends with my wife. She's amazing. And I said, co, you have to fix me, I am broken. My guess is I am broken.
Speaker 2:Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1:I know that you can handle this. I can't do this with all guests, but I want to know what that felt like in that moment, to be at such a point where you understood and recognized I'm at this point in reaching out for help, like, how did that feel reaching out to this lifelong friend?
Speaker 2:like rock bottom lifelong friend, like rock bottom, yeah. So I was so frustrated because I got to the point where I thought I would have it handled. Okay, it's good enough, right, which I think is a place that we tend to stick ourselves oftentimes. It's good enough, it's good enough, I can get by, I can manage this, right. And so we think of managing things all the time.
Speaker 2:And it was pardon the language a fuck it moment where I was like I am over this crap, I don't want to do this anymore. And so it was really kind of a fork in the road for me. It was, it was I had had. I was never going to commit suicide, but with this thing I had had suicidal ideation Like it. It flashed in my mind. Not that, and that's in the book too. You can't control your thoughts, right? Shit happens, it flashes out there. You'd look for escape, you look for a way out. So I was. It was never going to. I was going to white knuckle it through the rest of my life. I had to, but I wanted it to change, like I needed it to change, and so I finally said I have tried everything else, and I've I've always been a guy who tries everything. I know that there is always an answer, there is always a solution somewhere. You cannot let circumstances talk you out of finding it. And so I didn't cross that line with Sio, because she is a friend, she is a dear friend and I didn't want to put on her. In terms of her professional capacity, she is amazing. She is so generous and so giving that. I knew that she would do it in a second, but so, that said, I called her up and I said you need to fix me, I'm broken. And she said come in right now.
Speaker 2:So as soon as I got done with that lesson, I literally ran down to her office and I told her what was going on. I told her how long I'd been going on and this has been 10 years at this point of this stuff and she said all right, well, let's do this. I'm like okay, let's do this. So she sits me down on her couch and she puts me through a session of EMDR. Now she's one of the instructors for EMDR on a national level. She's a brilliant, brilliant Um and her, her understanding of that, combined with her familiarity with me right, we'd known each other for a long time, so she knew a lot of my stories. She was able to literally walk me down the rabbit hole. She was able to literally walk me down the rabbit hole step by step by step, all the way back to that point.
Speaker 2:And EMDR is eye movement, desensitization and reappraisal, I think is what it is. So the eye movement left and right inhibits the amygdala which fires your nervous system, the desensitization. You go back to the trauma, whatever that trauma is. And then reappraisal you change the way you look at it. And when she did that, I had, you know, my little baby self in my arms right. She's like tell that baby, you know it's, it's going to be okay.
Speaker 2:I'm like and not only is it going to be okay, look what we did, like it's not just going to be okay. You became a quarterback and a gladiator and world champion and TV Like, look at what you, it's not just going to be okay, there's nothing to be scared of. But look at what you accomplished. And then, along the way, we picked up my dad, because losing him I never dealt with it, I never addressed it, I never dealt with that stress and he was my dude, like he was my guy. And so having those two things and putting them both together, it almost makes me want to cry right now. I've got to be honest with you so I can feel it.
Speaker 2:But having those two things together just changed me in an instant and anxiety was gone and I could feel joy again and I could feel which I hadn't felt in 10 years. And in that moment, right there, I knew it's the nervous system, it is the freaking nervous system. That's what is making this happen, and I just I had to bring it, I had to understand it, I had to study it, I had to find it, and that is what I want to bring to people. Is that understanding is that we can change things in an instant. You don't have to suffer any of this stuff. You don't have to suffer any of this stuff. You don't have to feel the fear and the stress and all of that, because it's within the nervous system. And so my book gives them the tools to be able to affect their limbic system, to take control over their emotions, to control their homeostasis, to decide what thriving is, and that's the power that I want to give people.
Speaker 1:Mike, I just I love and I'm a firm believer in it doesn't take years of therapy and years and decades of doing a lot of internal work to create change Like I I'm a living example of my own of creating like oh nope, I understand, boom, done, let's move on. Like life is so beautiful and if when you have that level of experience, it's it's a game changer. And and so I love that your book everyday great is going to really support people and being able to access that so themselves in the comfort of their homes, you know in their earbuds as they are walking about, you know just like living their best life and really stepping into thriving. Not just I'm with you and I never, never settle for good, ever Good is not great and we only do great Like. I just don't believe in settling in life Like we were not intended to settle. We were created and hardwired with our own unique DNA to do something extraordinary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's our, that's our human nature and I don't. I don't mean to cut you off, but that's the point of it and that's really the point of the title. Everyday Great is a double entendre. I love double entendres. It's crazy. I have a whole system in there. My system is a double entendre. But it's everyday great means I'm living everyday great, I'm doing the right things everyday, because my system, part of what I teach, is that literally whatever you do in life, you are training, you are constantly training yourself. You're training your nervous system how to respond, how to perceive, how to accept and how to proceed in life. And so every day there has to be intentionality about living great, living your best life not in a hip hop, tick, tock, woohoo. Live your best life way, in a intentionality about the things that we do and the understanding of what that does to our nervous system. But it's also about being an everyday great because you now become. Every day is great for you because of the intentionality you put into the little things in your life.
Speaker 1:I just I love this, I appreciate, I, I'm, I'm so deeply grateful that you have walked, that you've walked the path of your life and and even when you were talking about all of the surgeries and I know you showed me a picture of you know, the arthritis in your neck and I'm like, golly, like, do you even have a spine in there?
Speaker 1:Is this, this, all arthritis, like what's going on here? Like you've, you've earned, you've earned the right to be able to speak and talk on this, and that's because of living everyday great, even through a decade of struggle and hardship, through anxiety, because you were willing to walk through and to, as you put it, you can't let circumstances talk you out of solutions and your commitment to say I'm finding the solution. I'm going to do that, but not only am I going to find the solution for me, I'm going to find the solution for you, just like you were working with you know what insurance company. If you're not going to pay for this, I'm going to support myself and these other players. Like this isn't, and I deeply appreciate how your life is not just singular, it's. I'm going to win this for me, but when I win, everybody around me is going to win. That's such a powerful way to live and lead and I'm deeply grateful for that, thank you.
Speaker 2:That's one of the most powerful things.
Speaker 2:The final chapter of my book is the power of connection, and so I appreciate the fact that you point that out, because, for me, helping you win right, helping my teammate win, having shared purpose with people is quintessentially human. It's what we do when we are at our best is helping each other thrive, because that brings us to a point of safety, right? My amazing wife does that for me. I try to do that for her. Dr CEO did that for me. I try to do that for her. Dr CEO did that for me. I try to do that for her. I'm supporting her. She's got an incredible app that's coming out, that's out, that is helping people everywhere. She's amazing. Call the got this app. She's incredible. But being able to support somebody and watch their fulfillment, watching them thrive, empowers you in such a way, and that's why I love team sports, that's why I love football. But I appreciate that you mentioned that because it really is a powerful lesson.
Speaker 1:It's so powerful. Mike, I know like I appreciate you and your time. I could speak with you and I have so many more questions just because I love humans and connecting and stories that we are gifted with throughout our journeys, but I know that we do need to wrap things up. I'm curious what is the best way? I know, conscious Investor, you are drawn in, just as I'm drawn in, and you're like I don't want this to end, so one you definitely want to go pick up Everyday. Great, that's a thing, right, definitely go do that now.
Speaker 2:It'll be October and it's coming out during football season, of course.
Speaker 1:So we're going to do that. Okay, you can, we'll send you. Where can they? Is there a landing page that they can make sure they're on it? Where can we send the conscious investors so that they can stay connected with you and everything you're up to and stay up to date with? I'm ordering everyday great today.
Speaker 2:You can find me on LinkedIn, so find me there. You will get a lot of my messages, a lot of my content. If you're not on LinkedIn, which some people aren't you can find me on Facebook those two places. There will be a landing page here shortly. I'm not a great tech guy, I'm a creative, so it will be here shortly For the book. They can go pre-order all that stuff. But right now, find me on LinkedIn or Facebook and you'll get a lot of what I'm doing in terms of content, in terms of training, pieces of the book, podcast stuff for me as well, and you can find me there.
Speaker 1:I love it. And, conscious Investor, make sure you go and connect on those platforms. If you're on both of them, connect everywhere. That's a way of supporting, it's a way of saying wow, I gained so much from listening to your story and I want to support you and I want to continue to learn more and stay engaged, because this isn't you can see, mike, isn't just a one one. Oh, here's the moment in time. This has been a lifetime, which means that we still have years to come of just learning and growing together and having that connection and community. Mike, thank you so much for everything that you've created throughout your life and for writing this book and for sharing your time with myself and the Conscious Investor.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me on. I knew it was going to be great going in just for the moment that we shared back in Dallas, but seeing how much you care about your audience really and your success and what you do for people, there's just such synergy there and I appreciate that. I can feel that from you. I know your audience feels it from you, and so the fact that you would share me with your audience. Again. It's an honor to me to be here, so I appreciate you having me on.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's such a privilege.
Speaker 1:Now, conscious Investor, remember there is a way that you can support the show organically, and that is the best way for anything in life to grow.
Speaker 1:And so, if you have gained from this episode in any capacity, please take a moment it takes, you know, 30 seconds and share this with a friend.
Speaker 1:There's so much content in here that is going to support you and I know that you and I know friends and friends, of friends who are struggling, who are dealing with anxiety, who are feeling overwhelmed, who are dysregulated, and this conversation is one of those linchpins.
Speaker 1:That is a free way of providing support to someone and that's a way of connecting right. It's a free way to say I see you and I want to support you and I just love that we have so many resources available that don't cost us anything but it's our care, of attention and time to follow through 30 seconds at most to share an episode and if you'd like to just support a little bit further, take a moment, a little extra moment over on Apple Podcasts, scroll on down to the bottom and those little purple words say write a review. If you'd leave a review and just let Mike and I know what stood out to you. How did this support you? And that's a powerful way of encouraging us as well as helping the podcast spread and grow. I appreciate you. Conscious Investor, thank you for taking time to listen and remember cheers to your health, your mindset and your wealth.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
