Latest / The Inner Wealth Podcast / Ep152. The Courage to Be Disliked: A Journey to Authentic Living and True Freedom.

Transcript

Ep152. The Courage to Be Disliked: A Journey to Authentic Living and True Freedom. · The Inner Wealth Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Do you ever wake up feeling like there's something missing in your life?
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Do you ever feel the need to escape your business?
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Are you running your life or is your life running you?
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: I'm Mike Kitko and I'll help you design and create a life so authentic and aligned with who you really are that you'll get excited just to wake up.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: I'll help you create real wealth, success and freedom from the inside out.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Inner Wealth Podcast, where we learn and choose to live inspired each and every day.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: You know it's been a pretty wild ride on this journey that you know, this adventure that I've been on since March 2016.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: And if you're not aware of what happened in March of 2016, I was terminated from my second executive level position in about 20 months and I was 300 pounds, I was suicidal, I was drinking at ridiculously toxic levels, I was physically, mentally, emotionally abusive to my family, our house was just full of toxic chaos and I mean I was not living a pleasant life and we had a good bit of money.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: So we thought that was everything.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: We were just chasing money.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: We were just literally just chasing money in the world, and that's the reason we moved from Baltimore to Oregon, from Oregon to St Louis because we were making big corporate moves and those corporate moves corresponded with big moves in the checkbook and the checking account.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: In 2013, when we made our final move to St Louis, when I was being recruited by companies, I went to Chicago and interviewed.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: I went to Southern California, down to San Diego, and interviewed.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I went up to the Northeast, to Connecticut and New Hampshire, interviewed in St Louis, interviewed all over and had my choice of positions.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: And we selected St Louis because it offered the highest quality of life, and what I mean by that is it was the best compensation package.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: The area was awesome.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: It's somewhere we wanted to live, but the benefits were phenomenal and when we were being courted from Portland to come to St Louis, we came out here for four days.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: We came to St Louis for four days to see if this is an area we wanted to move to and the company we were being recruited by put us up in the presidential suite at the Grand Renaissance Hotel downtown, and that hotel doesn't exist anymore.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: But the point is is we were being wined and dined and literally treated like royalty and we wanted to feel important, we wanted to feel wealthy and we were being courted, and that turned it into a yes, because the compensation was good, the quality of life was going to be good, it was a high level position, I had lots of authority, I had lots of direct reports.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, it was just an ego chase.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Everything back then was an ego chase.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Everything was being done out of insecurity and inadequacy and insignificance and trying to fill up some missing piece of who I was inside.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: And in March of 2016, after I got terminated a second time, I did a complete life reset, literally.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: I changed every single thing in my life and I went on a health journey.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: I launched a new career I guess you could say career, but it's really a mission and a business.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: I filed for divorce originally and then we rebuilt our family the.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: I had to get the opportunity to resolve and heal my addiction.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Angie, my wife, got the heal and heal her addiction and we we healed our family.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: We put our family back together and we're not perfect by any means, but we are a whole lot better than we used to be and there's no longer hostility inside our home.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: There's no longer chaos inside our home.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Are there normal arguments that families have?
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, but there's no longer chaos in our life.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Now, in order to make a transition like that, it requires like.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Life is a team sport.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Life is a team, it's a team game.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, entrepreneurism is a team game.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: It's a team sport.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: You can't do it alone and you can't do life alone, and we were never meant to do life alone and we were never meant to build a business alone.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: We were never meant to just live a life, a self-serving life of things, just for ourselves.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: Life is a team sport and in order to live a high quality life, we need a high quality circle and a high quality team around us.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: And I've done podcast episodes before where I said I'm looking for allies, not friends.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Friends will waste time with you.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: They'll let you hurt yourself.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: They'll laugh as you go in little circles.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Allies will never, ever, ever let that happen.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Allies show up to encourage you and support you and inspire you and hold you accountable and continue to help you take steps forward and up in upgrading your circumstances in life.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: And I'm looking for allies, not for friends.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: I had a bunch of friends and that's why I was 300 pounds, suicidal and drinking at toxic levels.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: Now there's, there's something, there's a big shift that I made in 2016,.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: A big shift and I it's, it's my what I can look back, it's my secret ingredient to be able to transition my life.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Now, this secret ingredient you're going to hear it and it might sound delusional to you, it might sound like I'm just an asshole, it might sound like I am a self-serving, narcissistic asshole, but literally, when you really understand the underlying message of what I'm about to share, you'll understand that life is a team sport and it requires the right people around you, not everyone around you.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Now, this magic ingredient, this one shift that I made in how I show up in life every day, this one magic ingredient shifted everything, and that one ingredient is the courage to be disliked.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: See, I'm a recovering people pleaser and when I was at my absolute worst, I showed up to say yes to everybody, to give everyone what they needed, even at my own expense.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: I said no when I really wanted to say yes and yes when I really wanted to say no.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: I would do anything I could to make the people around me happy.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to be liked.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to be none of that stuff.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: It was self-serving and what I was trying to do is please other people so that I could get something in return.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: I wasn't doing these things out of the grace of my heart.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: I was doing these things to try to get the approval, the love, the validation, the acceptance that my ego at the time desired.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: And this is why I had friends in my life who would stand by me and watch me hurt myself and just be okay with that Because, like, even though it was a toxic friendship or even though it was a toxic relationship, even though my marriage was abusive, I was just trying to get everybody else to be okay by depleting myself for the benefit of everybody around me.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: And I even did this with my wife while she was taking four to 500 pills a month and while she was checked out literally for weeks at a time.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: I would still keep everything together, hoping that she would do something different.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: But really, what I was doing, I was enabling really really poor, really really dangerous, really really toxic behavior.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: And as soon as I stopped enabling that behavior, it changed.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: But I was doing it to be nice and I wanted to be approved of and loved and seen in a way that was nice.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Now, when I made this change and I really all I can say the best way I can say it is.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: I decided for the rest.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: I was 43 years old and I decided for the rest of my life that I was going to take my power back, that I was going to become confident in myself, that I was going to become courageous, that I was going to start saying yes when I wanted to say yes, no when I wanted to say no.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: I was going to start having healthy boundaries.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: I was going to start standing up for myself.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: I wasn't going to deplete myself for somebody else's best interest and I was going to create my dream instead of living everyone else's.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Now, when I reformulated my dream, I told my wife that I was going to start this business and she said the hell you are.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: You need a job.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: We need benefits.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Go back, go find a job, go get benefits.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Go get three, four weeks vacation a year.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Go make money for this family by having a job.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: I don't care if you like it or not, you need a job.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: We need you to have a job.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: And my response was to file for divorce, because that part was no longer like.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: I would not entertain that anymore and that filing for divorce was the first time in my life I ever truly stood up for myself.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: In the past I had just been a yes man.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: I just did what everybody told me to do.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: It was the conditioning and the programming of a home environment where it was chaotic from my childhood, where it was chaotic and there was constant conflict and constant arguing and constant battling about money and about time and attention and all this stuff, and it was just.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: It was a chaotic environment and I just wanted everybody to be happy and stop fighting.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: And then I brought all that chaos into my family and at that time I just wanted everybody to stop fighting and I tried to give everything to everybody so that they could be okay, in the hopes at some point that I could be okay.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: I could be okay, and the only way in reality that I could be okay was to decide to take back my true power, to decide for myself the life that I was going to live, to choose for myself, to put myself first, to practice healthy selfishness.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: I had to decide that I was no longer going to be nice.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: I was going to be kind, but nice meant shrinking myself for the benefit of others and being kind meant filling myself up and serving from that place.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: Being nice meant telling other people what they wanted to hear.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: Being kind was telling other people my truth, regardless of how they perceived it.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Being nice meant compromising who I was, opting out of who I was and choosing to be who somebody else wanted me to be, when they wanted me to be where they wanted me to be and how they wanted me to be.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: And this was nice, not kind.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Being kind comes at the expense of being nice and I am no longer a nice guy.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: And there's an awesome book called no More Mr Nice Guy.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: I would encourage everybody to go grab that book and read it, man or female.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: But you're going to be triggered.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: Everybody's triggered from that book.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: It's not a happy book to read.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: All the time You're going to be triggered.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: But that's the work that you get to do to stop being nice and to start becoming kind.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: And when we read that book in our Interwealth Mastermind book study at first people were pissed and people were triggered and people hated it, especially the ladies.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Good girl, and all it was was we have been conditioned and programmed to meet other people's needs, even when it's at our own expense, to be who other people need us to be so that they can be comfortable, and we're all walking around miserable trying to make everybody else happy, when making yourself happy is the only play where you can possibly be successful.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Nobody else can make you happy and nobody can say everything or anything that you need in order to make you happy.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: You get to choose whether you're happy or not, regardless of what they're saying, regardless of what they're doing and regardless of what they're being.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: And, of course, if there's physical abuse, then you've got to get.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: But the point is, if it's just somebody being themselves, then you got to take responsibility over your own life and stop trying to get them to change.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: My wife coined a term when you show up in a relationship and you're trying to manipulate somebody else to be somebody different than who they are through guilt and shame and anger, threats and blame, that's not a relationship, that's a manipulation ship.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: And one of the things, the first thing, that I needed to do in order to step into my power and my purpose and start to meet my true potential, is develop the courage to be disliked, because there's no way I can go through life, there's no way anybody can go through life chasing to be okay or chasing to be nice and be themselves and be okay.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: You either have a radar dish out looking to see how to make everybody else happy or you are yourself, and if you're just out trying to make everybody happy, you are literally compromising yourself and giving your power away.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Happy.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: You are literally compromising yourself and giving your power away where the only thing you can do your true responsibility in this world is to be you shamelessly, without compromise.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: But sometimes we like to think, for whatever reason, that if I'm the fullest expression of myself, then I'll hurt people and I'll be selfish and I'll only put myself like I'll only take care of my own needs.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: And it's just not true.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Now, when I made that decision to file for divorce instead of shrinking again for my wife, that's when we started to put our marriage back together and I no longer shrank and I no longer compromised myself.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: But I made this pivot and I was, you know, I was a good little boy.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: I would go to work and I really didn't have a social media presence and I would keep my voice down.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: And I didn't, you know, I didn't do a whole lot in the world.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: I didn't.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: I wasn't seen very much and I wasn't heard very much and nobody knew who I was outside of the plant that I worked in.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: But when I started this journey of the self-mastery journey and then this coaching and speaking and authorship and podcasting journey, I started speaking out and I started speaking up.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: And I started showing up and I started sharing who I truly was and you know what.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: You know what I found that when you speak your truth, not everyone will agree.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: When you show up as yourself, with your preferences, and speak your preferences, speak your truth.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: When you speak what you believe and what you feel strongly and passionately about, there's going to be other people that are in direct conflict and I don't care who you are and what you believe.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: No matter what you believe, there will be people in this world who disagree with you and there's no way to share who you truly are with the world and to get everybody to agree, are with the world and to get everybody to agree.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: And when I started this journey and I started sharing on social media and Facebook and TikTok and Instagram before they were really relevant, but Facebook was when I really started sharing myself on social media I literally had people who the fuck do you think you are sharing this stuff?
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Who do you think you are Like?
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: Who dubbed you, who made you like, important, significant, who made you, who gave you a license to talk on the things that you're talking about.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: You know what?
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: I never needed anybody's permission, but people kept coming back to my Facebook page and, in some cases, they started criticizing, they started tearing me down, they started, they started naysaying the things, the truths that were my truths, that I felt strongly about, that I felt passionately about.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: They started tearing and and they saying those on my platform and my algorithm started taking off and I started getting more visibility.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Now, in order to be yourself, there are going to be since there's over 8 billion people in this world when you are truly yourself, there will be people who are triggered by you just because you are you.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: There are people who your values are in direct opposition to theirs in some cases.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: I am not a religious man.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: I am a spiritual, non-religious powerhouse teacher, and I will tell you that I do not believe that God is outside of me exclusively.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: I am God, you are God.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Everything you can see is God.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Everything you can't see is God.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: God is everywhere.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: God is nowhere.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: God is all things.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: God is nothing.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: This, all everything is God, and that includes you and me.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: We are gods in a meat suit.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: There's one awareness in this world, and that one awareness is looking out your peepholes, just like it's looking out my peepholes, and that awareness is listening to this voice and this awareness is speaking this voice all at the same time and it's all God.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: So I stopped worshiping God and I started realizing and allowing God into my body, into my mind, realizing that my soul is the essence of God.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: I started, instead of worshiping God, merging with God, and I started teaching people to merge with God instead of worshiping God.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: And you know what?
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: It pissed some people off.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: It triggered some people, especially the fricking, dogmatic Christians who believe that you've got to worship God, especially people that believe that they are this little, helpless, fucking victim in this world and God outside of them is their puppet master in control of all things, and that God answers some questions or some prayers and doesn't answer other prayers.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: No, I don't believe any of that.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: So when I started sharing that truth, there were people who turned off the podcast.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: There were people that tried to tear me down on my social media.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: There are people that, like freaking, formed judgment and opinions against me, and that's where the courage to be disliked, really really came in handy and took effect.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: I am not a hustle whore or a grind guru there's plenty of them in the world but what I've also seen is that people graduate from the hustle, People graduate from the grind.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: When they outgrow it and you always outgrow it.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: And when you do outgrow it and you're ready to really embrace ease and joy and peace and love, there will be somebody outside of you that calls you motherfucking lazy, because they see inaction as laziness.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: They see lack of hustle and lack of grind as laziness.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: That's a value misalignment.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: That's a value misalignment when you talk about life.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: When I talk about life does not need to be hard.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: We make really really easy things hard and we make today harder so tomorrow can be easier.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: There's people that want life to be hard, that make life hard, and that's in direct opposition with what they say.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: So they're going to find a way to be in conflict with me.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: They don't want to agree with me.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean I shouldn't speak my truth.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: That doesn't mean I shouldn't be me.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that I shouldn't open up my mouth and speak my perspective, my philosophy and my basis of truth in the world.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Because no matter who you are, no matter what you do and no matter what you have, there's going to be somebody who disagrees with you, and the courage to be disliked is a superpower when it comes to living a truly authentic life according to your own values, your own compass and your own inner guide, your soul that knows what it's here to experience.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: I'm going to wrap this up and say when you finally stop chasing being liked, that's when you'll truly find the people who love you.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: And when you speak your truth and you finally get all the people who disagree with you to move aside, there'll be a few left that absolutely adore you, but without getting the other people out of the way, you'll never find those people, and you can only find them by showing up and shouting your truth and standing up for what you believe and expressing what you believe and being the fullest expression of yourself, even if that includes family.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: Get them to go away if they're in direct conflict with it, if they disagree and they actively fight you, they're no longer adding value in your life.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: If they get in the way of your peace, if they get in the way of your prosperity, if they get in the way of your joy, if they create chaos, if they create struggle, if they create drama in your life.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: They are not an ally, they are just I don't know.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: I don't even know if they're friends or family.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: But you've got to speak who you are.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: You've got to speak your truth.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Get those people to speak up who agree with you and get those people to speak up who don't agree with you.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: Discern between them.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Get the ones out of your life who are no longer value aligned, and get to the ones who really really connect with you.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: And that's where you'll find the people who truly have a meaningful part in your life.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: And those are the ones that you'll love deepest.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: You'll love hardest and they'll love you deep and they'll love you hard.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: And in order to get to those people, you got to stop being chasing, being liked, and you've got to start embracing, being loved.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: But you'll be loved by few and you only need those people.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Guys, the courage to be disliked is a superpower.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: I would encourage you to embrace it, because it sure has changed my life and the more courage I get.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: To be disliked is a superpower.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: I would encourage you to embrace it, because it sure has changed my life and the more courage I get to be disliked, the richer my life gets, not trying to be an asshole, but just trying to be and being myself and letting the people who are no longer valuable assets in my life let them show themselves.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: But you can't do that by shrinking your truth and hiding away.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: I love you guys.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: See you next week.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: If you enjoyed what you heard and you want to learn more, go to wwwinnerwealthglobalcom for more tools and resources.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Cheers.