Unveiling The Mask - Halfass to Badass

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To talk to Satori, go to https://www.talktosatori.com/

3 Key Points:

Find out the what to say yes and no to if you want to achieve massive success.
Find out how how a highly successful coach got out of a client dry spell.
And see how Satori asks simple questions to solve difficult challenges.

Show Notes:

Skip to: 02:16 So I know by you listening right now, I know you’re committed to a Badass Life, you want more out of life, you want to take your life, your business, your health, your income, your marriage to the next level, right?

Skip to: 04:55 “I keep pushing and pushing and no matter how much I succeed, no matter how much I accomplish, I feel like something is missing.

Skip to: 07:25 People ask the question, “When is it my time…?” When is it your time? And I believe this is your time right now.

Skip to: 12:01 But it didn’t start this way… I remember sitting in my one-bedroom apartment, in Stockholm many years ago.

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Good morning, Good evening, good afternoon, whenever you’re listening to this… How are you doing? Really?! Think about it…

I’m asking because I’m here to inspire you to be self-aware… to have some introspection, to be present, to get a clear perspective and not just be on autopilot. Is this making sense?

I’m here to inspire you and challenge you because that’s where the growth happens.

That’s where progress lives. Yes?

Now, let me ask you, how many people do you know that talk a big game? Think about it. If you’re anything like me you probably see and hear this all the time, don’t you? Because we live in a world of mediocracy, our system is built on rewarding mediocrity.

I see people all the time that say, “Satori, I want to stop overdrinking”, “I want to lose weight”, “I want to make more money”, “I want a great marriage”, “I want a great business”, but they’re stuck, talking about it, they’re stuck, complaining about it, they’re stuck pretending. They don’t have the drive and hunger to follow through. Do you know what I mean?

So I know by you listening right now, I know you’re committed to a Badass Life, you want more out of life, you want to take your life, your business, your health, your income, your marriage to the next level, right? You’re not settling. I mean come on, you wouldn’t be listening to a podcast about being a badass, otherwise, right?

You’re investing your time, energy and emotions to be here with me right now. You’re choosing to be here right now, right?

You could be doing ANYTHING else, but you’re not. You’re listening to me right now. I don’t take that lightly, and neither should you. I appreciate you investing in you. So let’s take being present to a new level, shall we? Is that cool with you?

We all know we need to make decisions to invest in ourselves if we want to make real progress, make real transformation and growth happen, isn’t that true? So before we get deeper into today’s episode I just want to start by acknowledging you and say, I am really grateful that you’re investing in you right now. I’m grateful to be able to share this moment with you.

So acknowledge yourself for being here… come on you can do it! It’s not corny or silly.

If you haven’t listened to other Halfass to Badass episodes go back to episode one and you will know why I’m doing this…

Today, I’m going to reveal a secret, but before I do…

Let me ask you a question… and I want you to answer as honestly as you can.

Do you want more…? Really! I know you want more! You want more out of life. More out your business. More out of YOU?!

More energy. More Productivity. Better focus?

How about your relationships? You want to STOP fighting (arguing, being disappointed, or getting upset) and having conflicts with the people you actually love?

You want to be happier, more fulfilled?

Of course, you do or wouldn’t be listening, right? It’s healthy. It’s how you were born. It’s your design. To grow. To evolve.

People tell me all the time, “Satori, I want to make more money”. Or they say, “I’ve made the money, I have all the toys, why am I still miserable?”

“I want to find true love.”

“I keep pushing and pushing and no matter how much I succeed, no matter how much I accomplish, I feel like something is missing.

I am tired man, I’m tired of wanting life to be a certain way and not getting there.”

“I want to stop fighting with my husband.” “I want to stop arguing with my wife.” “No matter what I do, it’s never enough. I can never make her happy. I can never satisfy him.”

“I don’t want to be angry and frustrated with my kids all the time”.

But you know what? It’s like I said, most people just talk about it.

And I have discovered something REALLY important:

Wanting it just isn’t enough. The fantasy is NOT enough!Click To Tweet

If it was, we’d all be millionaires, billionaires…

We’d have perfect bodies, be superass happy.

Have amazing kids that always do what we want and the love of our lives right next to us.

The truth is…. Most people are NOT.

After working with hundreds of thousands of people from more than 80 countries, to be specific

I can tell you with absolute certainty that…

Most of us are unhappy, dissatisfied, unfulfilled.

Stressed

Depressed

Angry all the time

Disappointed

Addicted to food

Alcohol, sex

Smoking, coffee

Maybe other less obvious drugs…

Anger, control, power

With NO IDEA, how to escape the pain.

WHY are most of us not where we want to be?

And is not the first time we ask that question

And it’s not the first time we look for a solution either

To feel happier, right? To be more successful.

Because we all want to feel more…

More fulfilled and find a deeper meaning in life.

And I’m NOT talking about the fleeting moment that feels like happiness,

But isn’t. The one that comes from sex, alcohol, shopping or other forms of entertainment or addictions.

I am talking about what creates that SUSTAINABLE long-lasting genuine fulfillment that just keeps growing and expanding – EVEN during tough times.

People ask the question, “When is it my time…?” When is it your time? And I believe this is your time right now.

So what’s missing? And when I ask that question a lot of people get bothered because they are confronted with a primary fear that life will never be what they’d hoped for. And we’re constantly comparing our lives for significance.

Think about it… We work so hard to show others how perfect our lives are—how special we are. It’s so conditioned into our culture. It drives me nuts, how insane it has become on social media.

Who has the biggest mansion, the most expensive car, the hottest wife, the perfect kids? “Oh, you have that… just look what I have. I have a private jet and look how fun my life is”.

Nothing wrong with having these things. It all depends on which lens you put it under. People get so sucked into it.

Marketers use it all the time to position themselves. Magazines, commercials, and people all around us love to show off this perfect family or lifestyle – that we have our shit together.

But most live in an illusion, trying to paint a fantasy that is not real...Click To Tweet—

for one primary reason—so that others will like us, appreciate us, respect us and think we are great and worthwhile.

We work so hard hiding who we really are, how we really feel and defend that image until the end.

We want to live the life we see in magazines, on Instagram, on social media, period. And when it doesn’t happen we get extremely disappointed. It’s a trap!

I’m going to tell you something, most people I work with are not like everyone else. They’re searching, they have this gnawing feeling that there’s something else, that there’s more. They have this entrepreneurial mind, but they don’t know how to break out of the mold, to remove the facade. There is a difference between how they appear and how they live. Who they are. Do you know what I mean? You know what I’m talking about?

They want to break free from the chains of their past. They’re tired of wanting their life to be a certain way, but not feeling they are getting there. But they know there’s a next level for them. If you’re like many people I know you can relate, can’t you?

I wasn’t always the most sought after and highest paid turnaround guy, mentor, consultant, and advisor; helping people to go from a Halfass Relationship to a Badass Relationship, or from a Halfass business to a Badass business, simply put,

I wasn’t always the guy taking you from a Halfass mindset to a Badass mindset.

I’ve been blessed and had the opportunity to help over a million people from 80 countries around the world with my message and at this point in my life I would have to be an idiot if I didn’t see patterns in human behavior and the pain so many people live with, but pretend doesn’t exist.

As many of you may know I have been fortunate to have Tony Robbins hire me to increase revenue and helped build his brand, and I helped spread his message around the world for many years.

I’ve also worked with many other experts and thought leaders behind the scenes, who I thought had extraordinary principles. I even moved my whole family to Georgia one time so I could drink the knowledge straight from the well. That’s my level of commitment and dedication to you and all the people I have the opportunity to serve at a deeper level.

Unfortunately, a few months into it was revealed to me he was not living the way he was teaching and he wanted to control everything I did. Not very productive, and also not possible when one of my highest values is freedom. So I packed up the car and a U-Haul and drove my family across the country and to California, which has been my primary home for the last 25 years. And it taught me an important lesson,

even the gurus we put on pedestals have flaws. So don’t put them on pedestals.

But it didn’t start this way… I remember sitting in my one-bedroom apartment, in Stockholm many years ago. I had just come out being locked up in a mental hospital for two months because my friends and family thought something didn’t seem right. I was talking about things they’d never heard me talk about. And of course, when you get locked up, they work hard to keep you there.

When I got out my dream of becoming a professional musician is gone. I have no job. I’m getting money from the government. My girlfriend left me. I don’t want to touch my guitar. My go-to source for comfort is my black leather couch, watching daily re-runs of Laura Ingalls’ Little House on the Prairie and Dallas, eating ice-cream like there’s no tomorrow and gaining 25 pounds. I can’t sleep.

You need to understand, this is the early nineties. No internet. No iPhone. No YouTube. No social media to occupy my time…only three TV channels and a VCR for entertainment.

I am so miserable, I am planning to commit suicide. I go to the doctor tell him, “I can’t sleep” (which is true), but I’m not taking the pills. I’m just gathering them for the day when I am going to make it happen.

And that day comes. I’m sitting on my couch, I call my dad. “I don’t want to live anymore. I have nothing to live for, and I’m going to kill myself.”

He goes, “Do it; I can’t stop you. If you think this is going to end your misery, go ahead.” Not what I want to hear. I am pissed, also because I blamed him for putting me in that hospital.

The truth is, I wanted connection. I wanted to feel understood. I wanted to be seen. And I wanted to know I mattered. I wanted to be loved.

I’m sitting there crying, snot all over my face, scared, thinking, “What if I fail and end up a vegetable and can’t move and things become even worse. I mean, come on…then I wouldn’t even be able to eat my ice-cream and watch the Ingalls family, right? Or worse, what if I succeed and end up in eternal pain without a body and not being able to impact anything. Just watching everything and have no control.

My self-worth is so low; I feel I have no worth.

An old friend of mine, Tommy, calls me from Hollywood, California. He is one of the friends that had been around the same night I had gone into the hospital.

“What are you doing man? What’s going on?” I tell him about everything that has happened, and he tells me he’d moved to the US that same night I went into the hospital.

He tells me, “Just come over here, I know you’ll like it. You can stay with me.”

I send out an audition tape to Musician’s Institute in Hollywood, and a month later, I’m on a plane to L.A. The moment I put my feet on American soil, I feel I am home for the very first time in my life. This is the place I had dreamed of since I was a kid.

But there is a problem…I have no desire to play the guitar. The dream of becoming a rock star is gone. One thing I know is that I am not going back to Sweden. I am here to stay.

I have this new, brilliant idea of what I am going to do that could make me famous and make me a lot of money. If I can’t be a rockstar, I am going to become…a porn star!

What a concept, huh? Listen, when you feel like you have no options, you get creative.

I never end up pursuing the idea of being a porn star. Instead, I decided to get my life back. I start training Karate again after several years of no training, and on Dec 17th, 1994, nine months later, I become a world champion in Karate. I go on to open and run a successful Martial Arts school for years, teaching hundreds of kids, adults, and families.

I realize, after listening to thousands of students, most of them didn’t come to me because they wanted to learn how to kick and punch (even if that’s fun and makes them lethal). They wanted more focus, more discipline, to feel more centered, to be more confident. They wanted to remove the mental blocks holding them back from being more successful in life and business.

That’s when I realize my real calling. I shift my direction (even though I love Martial Arts and its power) and focus on elite mental performance to optimize my clients’ lives. I become the turnaround guy. If you don’t have the right signals from your brain, you’ll make poor decisions, be unproductive, lose money, and destroy key relationships.

For many years, no matter how successful I was—no matter how many people’s lives I changed—I fought to feel worthy of being here…to feel “good enough”, always pushing and pushing to succeed but still feeling empty.

I see the same struggles in many of my clients; high performing athletes, CEO’s, business owners, celebrities, entrepreneurs and experts in many fields.

Even though I love L.A. and it was the first time I felt at home, I still had lots of challenges. Picture this, I’m homeless living in my car, illegal because my visa had expired and I’m making $30 dollars a day putting up flyers around the streets of L.A. for movie-extras by foot or on my bike because I didn’t want to all my money on gas. I’ve basically lived all over L.A. Sometimes now when we’re driving, I tell my wife, “Ah, I lived here”. She asks me, “Is this where you parked your car or was it an actual home?

Enough about me, let’s focus on you and your life for a moment. Let’s make quick self- evaluation or assessment, ok? Let me ask you and be honest… and just answer yes or no

Are there times no matter how successful you are when you feel empty and unfulfilled?
When you question yourself and feel you’re not good enough?
Stress over or worry about what others think of you at times (some people don’t like to admit this)
Do you easily get irritable? Lose your patience?
Snap at your kids or partner and feel like people don’t understand or care about you?
Do you want more out of life? Want more success, more money, a better marriage, business?
Do you pretend (act as if) everything is great even though in your heart you know it isn’t?
Do you smile even when you don’t feel like it?
How about saying, “yes” to things you really don’t want to do?
Ever worry about how you dress in the morning, that you’re not looking good enough?
Feel like you have to have a positive mask or façade?
Do you deny that you do any of these things? If that’s you then pay extra attention because this conversation is especially for you.

Seriously, if you could relate to any or many of the things I just mentioned, you’re in the right place.

I’m sure you have listened to many experts, promising you more happiness, love, money, better health…

I know I have. I have read all the books, gone to all the seminars. I have shelves with education; DVD’s, online programs, I have a whole library with personal development and business building programs and courses. Some really good stuff and some really lousy and many based on trading and buying imitation love.

In other words, “If you are a certain way, behave a certain way, look a certain way, then you will receive the love, the respect, the status”. Are you with me?

Just like you, I have searched for answers, ways to create a richer more meaningful life—where I’m not just surviving—not just living—but actually thriving. I’m always looking for ways to constantly grow and expand. What a concept, right? I mean, who wants to just survive?

I’ve invested close to a million dollars and over 25 years to find the right way, the right way to a badass life and more fulfilling life—a meaningful life—where I can be myself, without apologies, without guilt or shame, without feeling stupid, without feeling I’m never “good enough”.

Never smart or intelligent enough

Funny enough

Wealthy enough

Good looking enough

Successful enough

Whatever enough!

Have you ever been there? Can you relate to what I’m saying?

Position my topic/transformation

With the knowledge you will learn today you will:

Learn to feel loved and appreciated for who you are—without having to please people or being someone you’re not.
Stop worrying about what people think of you… (at least start the process today)
Learn the secrets to feel genuinely fulfilled on your terms, really
How to handle conflicts

I don’t have that much time with you today, but I will give you the best I got during the short time we have together. And I have two gifts for you. The first I want to give in just a moment and the second before we end today. But before I do that, let me share something with you…

When I talk to large audiences and I ask the question, “How many of you like to feel genuinely happy and be loved for who you are?” Everybody raises their hand. When I ask, “How many of you if you’re brutally honest, can actually say you are genuinely happy and loved for who you are?” Only 1-2 % of the room raise their hand.

When I ask, how many want to wait for 20 years to get the results? Of course, nobody raises their hand, because we want to see fast results now, right? Not only that, we want consistent, predictable and sustainable results, we don’t just want something that’s going to fade away quickly—even if that’s how we live most of our lives—looking for instant gratification and quick fixes.

But what you’re going to receive today is completely different than anything you’ve heard before:

Today we are going to cover:

The source of why we feel not “good enough” and very often worthless.
Why we have such a hard time being ourselves and how we can stop worrying about what others think of us. Really. And I don’t mean just pretending like we don’t care to protect ourselves
How we can feel genuinely fulfilled, feel inspired from within.
Then I’m going to show you how you can take this important information and use it to create the Badass Life you want where you can feel genuinely connected and on purpose and make a real transformation in your life.

The second gift I will give you, is if you want to take this deeper and you see the value in it, and ONLY if you do, I’ll invite you to take this further so you can own it in your life which is through my signature event Halfass to Badass—life on your terms—How to have the business, the life, the marriage and family you want… How do you take command of your life and business and experience real freedom in the most authentic and pure way where you’re not being dominated by external circumstances and step into a life YOU love. I promise I will share more about that a little bit later.

When it comes to questions I want you to write them down so you remember them, because I know you what it’s like to have important questions and then forgetting about them. So write them down and send them to [email protected]

Most of us—if we’re honest—have a gap. A gap between where we are and where we really want to be in a certain area of our lives. I mean, if your career is going great then very often your body is not where you want it to be, because you’re too busy. If you’re happy with your body, then very often your relationship is not where you want it to be. Or your intimate relationship is going great, but you have a poor relationship with your kids!

We all have an area of our lives, maybe it’s the spiritual part of our life that hasn’t gotten the attention it needs and we feel out of balance. In other words, in one area we feel strong and in others weak. Make sense?

I believe an outstanding coach or mentor is someone who has more skills, more strategies, and a different perspective to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be in life? They see things you don’t. And very often believe more in you than you believe in yourself. Also, they are not stuck in the loops you have going on inside your head. Does that make sense?

Many people wonder how I do what I do? How do I turn people around, how is it that I can make such deep and sustainable transformations with people from over 80 countries? I’m going to give you a clue. Write this down… it starts with the word, “patterns”. I have pattern recognition like no one else. What does that mean? I see things others don’t.

It doesn’t make me superior. But at this point in my life after 25 years of people and business turnaround, and studying what makes people do what they do, why they do it and how we can find deep meaning and fulfillment, how to maximize results and sustained performance, I would have to be an idiot if I couldn’t see the patterns that make us successful or completely miserable.

I’m not here to motivate you today. You don’t need motivation, I’m here to help you identify which patterns have helped you get to where you are today and which have and still can stop you in the future. This may feel a bit odd or strange. And if it does, it’s good, because it means that we’re about to grow and expand and become more here together today. When we stretch our comfort zone when we go beyond what it naturally comfortable and really challenge our thinking. That is what we will do today. So I hope you’re open and flexible to step outside your comfort zone.

We have thousands of these conditioned patterns, right? Some has made us successful. Other patterns on the other hand, still hold you back from getting to where you want to be in life—from being who you’ve always wanted to be and stop you from the business success you want, the marriage you want and the health you want. Is this making sense?

Not sure if you’ve put it together, yet, but I’m 100 % committed to you not just having but truly living a Badass Life. Now, if you commit to playing full out with me here, giving your best during our time together and not just listen to me passively… then this day, TODAY can be the beginning of a whole new quality of life for you. Is this making sense to you? So let’s go a bit deeper.

I’m about to give you the SECRET to a REAL sustainable Badass Life—a secret most people DON’T want you to know about. Most people will try to convince you of the opposite, they’ll try to minimize it, even argue with you that it’s even possible.

I know, it’s kind of stupid, but they don’t do it to be mean, they actually DON’T KNOW—they have never experienced what it feels like and their whole life they’ve learned to ignore it, they listened to the wrong information. The wrong teachers. They’ve been programmed by fear. They were taught that REAL fulfillment really doesn’t exist or it’s only for the few lucky ones.

They are wrong!!

But all your life you’ve been lied to… You’ve been sold a fantasy. Or protected from disappointment. It’s that feeling that makes you sick inside—worried and insecure, disappointed, frustrated, angry and alone—wondering

Why YOU don’t get to be happy like in the movies, or fulfilled and free inside like the commercial promised, which is the reason why we often ask ourselves, “What’s wrong with me? Is this all there is?”

Many of the people I get to work with, closer, very quickly start seeing how they’re not 100 % themselves with other people.

These are good people—not mean, BUT they notice how quickly they feel inconvenienced, irritated and annoyed with other people. Why?

It’s not like they wake up in the morning and go, “Hmm, I have all this love to give today, I feel so loving and grateful, but screw it, I’d rather be cold, inconvenienced, frustrated and angry with others. Nobody does this! But very often, we feel it’s out of our control…

We want to feel more peaceful.

We REALLY want to know who we are.

We don’t want to feel alone.

We want to be able to enjoy deeper intimacy, and not feel used, or rejected.

Most people wish they felt more confident then they do.

We don’t want to argue with our partner—fight about money.

Household chores.

Parenting.

Sex.

We don’t want to get into conflicts with our business partners or customers

We don’t want to resist solutions because we have to be right.

It sucks, doesn’t it?

So the question I have for you is, are you done?

I mean, really done, wasting energy, wasting your focus on meaningless friction, overwhelm and painful experiences?

Are you ready to BE A BADASS? If you want to to not just have a Badass Life, but you want to OWN IT, and BE IT, without having to pretend, pleasing people or trying to be perfect?

I used to wonder why most people NEVER get to that place of sustained fulfillment, or happiness or joy or whatever you want to call it, even though they had been through years of personal development, business development, therapy, books, meditation and I wanted to know what I could do to never again having to feel I wasn’t good enough, how I could avoid being rejected and criticized.

Today we are going to go through the absolute first step to a real Badass Life. Really. I’m not kidding.

The absolute first step to being a Badass, a fulfilled Badass, really fulfilled, genuinely fulfilled is you feeling loved. Unconditionally loved. I’m not talking about the fluffy (fake) romantic kind of love you see in movies. I’m not talking about people praising you and telling you how great you are. I’m not talking about you standing in front of the mirror saying, “I love you, I love you, I love you” or forgiving your inner child. So the question is, how can you FEEL unconditionally loved and appreciated exactly for who you are—without being fake—smiling when you don’t feel like it, pleasing people just so they will like you, saying yes to things you don’t want, or trying to be perfect—by working harder than anybody else, achieving, avoiding making mistakes or looking as sexy and flawless as possible—in other words without buying and trading love with your behavior—which most of us have done all of our lives—even the ones denying it, they’re just blind. They’re not seeing it.

So we can start by defining unconditional love. What it means. Unconditional love is when I genuinely care about your happiness, embracing both the good and the bad in you—I’m caring about you—without any expectation or demands of getting something in return. Unconditional love, of course, is also when you genuinely care about my happiness, warts and all without any expectations or demands of getting anything in return. When I say expectations, I’m talking about, gratitude, respect, praise presents, sex, love, cleaning up and so on…

So how do we know if we’re expecting something back? The primary thing we go after for the purpose of this conversation is disappointment and anger, when you get inconvenienced or sad when you don’t get what you want. Most of the time, we are not even aware about it until after the fact.

I’m not talking about the type of love where I give you love as long as you do what I want you to do. That’s worthless. Any idiot can be loving as long as someone is doing what we want. That’s not even love. That’s just you fulfilling my wishes and when you stop doing what I want you to do, I also stop being loving. In other words, I actually wasn’t being loving, I was just satisfied as long as you satisfied me. That is just selfish and very often manipulative. We don’t do that because we’re bad people, we’re just so empty and afraid.

The problem is that we’ve hungered to be loved from the day we were born and we’ve learned from early age to buy love with our behavior. As long as we ate our food, went to bed without too much of a fight, brushed our teeth, made our homework, were not in the way or made too much noise, and as long as we smiled and were “good” we may have received a smile or a pad on the head, “I’m so proud you” You’re such a good boy, such a good girl”. “You make mommy so happy”. Those were the moments we got to experience it if at all. At least, we weren’t rejected or given the “look” that demonstrated we were an inconvenience.

But what happened when didn’t listen, didn’t do what our parents wanted—drew with crayons on the wall, came home too late, fought with our siblings, didn’t do our homework? That’s when they rolled their eyes, sighed impatiently and communicated how inconvenient and difficult we were. That’s not when mom and dad looked at us with love in their eyes and said, “I love you”. So right there and then as a two-year-old, or three or four we learned, “When we do what others want and are not an inconvenience, then we’re loved, appreciated and accepted. When we don’t, we’re not.”

Now, this didn’t just happen with our parents, but also with teachers, friends, and today with intimate partners, colleagues, in business and social media. Are you with me? Can you see this play out in your own life? This is one of the reasons your friends became friends—because you were doing what they wanted.

Why is this so important to grasp?

Because, you’ll never feel you’re enough—always feeling empty, angry, disappointed, frustrated—trying to buy love and fill the void by trying to please and be accommodating—trying to impress people by being intelligent, good looking, sexy, funny, successful, friendly or kind. Some people do the opposite. They walk around being hard, touch, indifferent and pretend like they don’t care, even though they do—which is not better. You know anyone like that?

If you don’t get this, you’ll always have doubts, worries, be overwhelmed, and fear not being loved unless you maintain the behaviors and continue doing what you’ve learned—which just leads to the illusion of love—people liking you and wanting to spend time with you. Meaning, you have to continue being funny, sexy, smart, successful, a good parent, to deserve love. This is not freedom my friend, it turns us into slaves. This is the cost of not feeling unconditionally loved. Not something I recommend.

It’s exhausting! And the cause to burnout, stress, anxiety, depression, suicide, divorce, addictions— to alcohol, food, smoking, sleeping pills, sex and cause of more Botox, boob-jobs and Gucci bags I can count to. I work with them, wealthy, gorgeous, hip, models that say, “I’ve never felt loved, I feel empty, alone”.

Why? Because nobody sees them.

All they see is an image, a façade, that they have to maintain in order to receive praise. The purchasing of love, praise, acceptance—for people to like us—is an addiction most people suffer from.

It’s not always easy for us to see this, because today when we feel uncomfortable, what do we do? We just take out our smartphones to distract ourselves and run from what feels uncomfortable and tough. It’s proven. We can always play Angry Birds, Wordfeud, Fortnite, watch some Game of Thrones, check our Instagram, Twitter or someone’s Facebook status, right?

The problem is, we see this as “normal” that this is just what people do, everybody is like this. But if we do what everyone else does, without thinking for ourselves we are in deep trouble. We have strong evidence for how extremely unhappy and unfulfilled we are as a society—and this is just from the people who have the courage to tell the truth and be open about it.

We’re not talking about the people who are way too busy keeping up the façade. Way too many of us are totally preoccupied with covering up and hiding and lying about how we actually feel, distracted with buying love, busy impressing others and fronting with things being “better” than they actually are. All in a fight to be accepted and liked, without the courage to tell it like it is. Most people are TERRIFIED, MORTIFIED to tell the truth. Most of us feel so much shame of looking defected. It doesn’t have to be this way.

So how can we do this differently? That’s exactly what I’m about to reveal right now. How we can do it together. So wherever you are right now take a deep breathe and sit up with some energy. Here are 3 critical steps you can start with right away on your path to a Badass Life.

The first step, drumroll, you’ve heard it before… but stay with me because we’re going to take it deeper…

Awareness: The first step to change or improve anything at all is awareness. You cannot stop or start anything that you are not present to. To give attention and focus to something you first need to recognize it. To understand what’s going on you want to relentlessly and deliberately observe and see yourself with precision. So there is not a chance in the world that you can feel loved if you’re not starting off from the awareness that something in your life is not working or if you see it as “normal”.

I’ve met so many entrepreneurs, men, and women, professionals that say, “Oh, my life is great, there’s nothing wrong with me. It’s just all these other people.” Most of us have walked around empty, dissatisfied, afraid and unfulfilled for so long—our whole life for most people, which I will demonstrate soon—that we have come to accept this emptiness as “normal”. Most people have no clue of how to close that gap.

Some have experienced moments of what they call happiness, but if we’re not able to duplicate an experience then it’s just luck. Some have bought into the idea that we must love ourselves. I was one of them, and it seemed to work for a while. But very often it’s a misconception of what that really means.

Very often, it becomes a self-protecting behavior, which I will explain in more detail in a future episode. I just spoke to a very successful entrepreneur and heart surgeon recently, we met at a dinner, and he’s like “I’ve learned more, become more aware in one hour of talking with you about how I function, why I almost ruined my marriage and business, than I’ve learned in over 48 years. I made the money. I was the king at work. I got all the prestige, I saved lives. People thanking me. But with all the success, I still felt empty. And I don’t want to teach my son to follow in my footsteps”.

You can see that this is not just about you but the legacy you leave to your kids and beyond, you understand why this is important, right? History repeats itself until someone decides to break the pattern.

What’s so horrible is that most walk around and don’t feel loved, many deny it and are too afraid to even see the truth and even more people don’t have the awareness that this is what is going on and they don’t understand why they feel so empty and frustrated.

Instead, what do we do? We use drugs, we self-medicate; pills, alcohol, sex, clothing, plastic surgery, control, power, make-up – anything we can get our hands on to run and prevent anybody from disliking and not accepting us.

I’m not saying these things are necessarily bad in of themselves, but when we use them as a substitute to hide, change those uncomfortable feeling, boredom or fill our emptiness, then it’s not just bad—it’s dangerous.

Of course, we also have other protective behaviors and vehicles we use when we don’t feel loved that are not as obvious, but still, hide it—control, anger, power, manipulation, lying, attacking, acting like a victim, we become clingy and run. When we have become insightful and gained awareness about how we think, feel and behave and how we use them, then we come to the most important.

Step 2. Which I subtly call OYS, meaning, Own Your Shit –which means taking responsibility for our individual choices and behaviors. In our Halfass to Badass programs, we spend a whole week on this one thing: taking responsibility. It’s so hard for people and they often think they do, but in reality they don’t. It’s an art and without taking responsibility for how we feel and our choices, we become victims. I will go deep with you step-by-step on how we take responsibility with our partner, with our kids, because we can’t possibly teach our kids to take responsibility for their choices, feelings and behaviors if we don’t do it.

Anyway, as I was talking about responsibility—it makes it possible for others to see you and for you to be seen, because when we take responsibility we are not blaming others, we not attacking, or lying and all of this makes it easier for others to love us and for others to feel less attacked—in other words, less scared—which makes it possible for others to feel loved as well. In other words, when WE take ownership WE make it possible for other to feel loved—everybody gets what they need.

Step 3. Truth Telling: Our ability to feel loved, be connected and experience belonging is in direct proportion to our ability to be authentic and tell the truth. In other words, our ability to feel loved is in direct proportion to our ability be vulnerable through telling the truth about our mistakes, flaws, weaknesses, fears and dreams. Without it , we make it IMPOSSIBLE to feel loved.

Everything else just becomes a façade—an illusion of feeling loved because you say, do or try to be somebody others wants you to be in order to be worthy of love and appreciation. There is a price of not telling the truth and being yourself—emptiness and loneliness.

Most people have NO IDEA of how, to tell the truth. WHY? We have never heard what it sounds like. We have no practice and we have learned to lie from the time we were small kids. We’ve learned in thousands of ways—no kidding—that when I do what mom and dad want me to, I’m loved when I don’t, I’m not loved.

To have the courage, to tell the truth is critical if we want to feel loved. Here’s the problem… We’re hard-wired for love, connection, and belonging, so anytime we risk losing or failing to achieve this we become terrified, blind and stupid—which means we say and do extremely dumb things when we risk losing love.

See, we are not afraid of love like many experts say, that’s complete bullshit, we’re afraid of losing it—terrified to not feel loved and accompanying that belief, of course, is “I’m not worthy of love”. Because when we’re not loved, what are we? Nothing. We’re shit. That’s why “shame” is fear of losing love and connection—the fear that I have done something or failed to do something or made a mistake that doesn’t make me “worthy” of the connection and belonging.

So I want to show you something really exciting. I want to show you how you can create your own Badass Life, life on your terms, without apologies, without keeping a facade (because that’s exhausting, right? I want you to feel confident to drop the mask and know you can be appreciated exactly for who you are.

I know people talk about that, “BE who you are. Be yourself.” But most people have NO CLUE what that even means. It sounds good, right? You’re smart, how are you going to be yourself without knowing who you are to begin with? It’s impossible. I just cringe when people talk like that. Makes for a cute Instagram post, alright. Listen, I want to demystify it for you. I want you to have clarity and get to the truth. A truth controlled by you. Really. No bullshit. I have better things to do than waste anybody’s time. And I do value my time a lot. So I don’t want this to just be a nice concept in your head, but really a place where you KNOW and can own who you are. So that who you are and the you who shows up in the world are one and the same.

Hope this episode was valuable to you, that you go back and listen to it again, take notes and you know what, share it. There are people in your life right now who can benefit from this message. You agree? And if you have some questions email me to [email protected] love to know how I can support you on your path to a Badass Life.