Today is my 36th birthday. Welcome to my Ted Talk
Tomorrow I turn 36. I never expected to live this long.
When I was 4 my drug addict mother cut my finger off. I know what you’re thinking, what kind of mother could do that? The truth as a mother who had suffered her own pain and trauma.
At 6 she married my hyper-abusive stepfather.
I suffered tremendous abuse, had failing grades and a learning disability, was hyper-violent, wet the bed, and physically hurt my little brothers. I love my brothers dearly but we carried out our own violent behavior with each other because it was learned. Luckily my sister's father took her. I was never envious of her being away from the chaos but instead happy she didn't have to suffer alongside us though I know she had her own experiences to deal with. It saddens me that we still live in a world that allows such violence against children.
From 8-11 we were often homeless and in deep poverty. At one point I was alone for almost two months with no running water or electricity and no one knew until one day my grandmother just happened to come check on me. It wasn't uncommon for my brothers and I to get tossed around from home to home for months on end. At last tally I think I lived with 30 different families in those years.
At 12 my racist grandmother adopted me. I'll never say I don't have gratitude for her rescuing me from my mother and stepfather but I can't say with confidence that my experiences with racism as a biracial human didn't confuse me. Insert identify crisis.
By 13 I was getting high every day and drunk whenever I could. I was also popping pills. I thought it was about having fun and connecting to other kids and then I realized we were all hiding from the pain and hurt we felt in our homes. Being on the streets felt free. Being high felt like peace.
At 15 I got kicked out of school for selling drugs, but luckily got put into a last chance program.
Two amazing things happened during this time. First, I had a teacher sit down with me and tell me that I was not supposed to be in that situation to begin with and that if I made it out I would do great things. Second, I learned the most important lesson of my life after failing the one class I needed to pass, "I can't make it by in life on my charms and my good looks. If I want something I have to earn it."
When I was 18 I told my mother I'd never talk to her again. This was the hardest and most important decision of my life. I would not be writing this if I didn't make that choice. Sometimes it's our mothers who are in our way. I recognize that that is a very hard reality to have to reconcile. I would of course later come to understand that like my step-father their own abuse became mine and my siblings burden to carry.
After finally graduation high school late (basically they handed me the diploma and said get out) I was trying to figure out what was next.
I made the decision to make money legally. The legal part is very important. Many of my friends, family and peers have been in prison the majority of their lives and my three childhood best friends were murdered over drugs.
I have been both a catalyst for distraction and for healing so it’s not lost on me that by selling drugs as a means of survival I was actually Perpetrating the very activity that was destroying my family
Right before I turned 19 I became a general manager in training for a fast food restaurant and had a team of 52 people under me.
As I headed to 21 I landed a job with a Fortune 10 company with no college education. I set this goal and aimed to reach it by any means.
By 25/26 I was 350lbs, smoking two packs a day, and drinking myself to sleep. This is when I put a gun in my mouth. I thought money would solve my problems but it made my life worse because I hadn't done the work.
I spent the next couple of years in this chaotic ebb and flow of initial self-discovery. But it wasn't until I was 29 that change really started to take shape.
For the last seven years I have dedicated my life to simply being OK with the reality of my past, with the idea that if I can be different than even my own expectations that I can break the cycle of abuse, and if I choose to put myself first everyday that maybe I can reach my ultimate goal of creating a reality that no child ever has to have a story like mine.
Today as I reflect on the last few years I'm proud of these things (in no particular order):
Writing a #1 best-selling book
Being an award-winning international speaker
Coaching thousands of people around the world
Being a leader in the conversation around healing
Having a top rated podcast
Reconnecting with my siblings
Getting physically fit
Getting mentally in shape
Going to therapy
Taking personal development seriously
Creating a value system
Reaching and setting goals
Traveling the world and back again
Falling in and out of love and experiencing heartbreak and joy
Discovering compassion
Learning to push myself
Not making excuses
Asking for help
Going to therapy. Yes, I wrote this twice.
Leaving relationships that don't serve me
Holding true to my boundaries
Allowing mistakes to be data
Adopting a growth mindset
Having mentorship from amazing leaders
Cultivating self-belief
Create lifelong friendships
Being OK with being OK
Owning my story instead of it owning me
Being Unbroken
Life is this incredibly chaotic and convoluted experience filled with pain and suffering but also love and empathy, compassion and hope. I think in order to feel the full scope of the range of human emotions you must be willing to feel them all. Some experiences hurt really really bad and but all of them transformed me into the man I am today.
I once heard someone say "I'm happy about the happy things and I'm sad about the sad things." That often sits with me.
I think about the future a lot. I think about empowering people. I think about ending generational trauma. I think about love. I think about pain. I think about how we can better come together. I think about how I can be a better leader. I think about how one more conversation matters. I think about listening to intuition. I think about crafting my reality.
I want to give you this because it's important, I'm not special and I don't know anything that you don't. I'm not gifted and I'm certainly not privileged. If anything I get in my own way, I'm stubborn, and I screw up every day. So please don't interpret this as some kind of message that creates a response of "he's been through so much. My story is nothing like his." Why? Because that doesn't matter. We all come from something different. That's how this thing called life works.
As much as I know the sun will rise tomorrow, I know that I’m going to make huge mistakes, but I also know that I’m going to push myself to be 1° different from the person I am today, I’m going to make meaning of the situation that I’m in, I’m going to ask for help, and I’m going to write down goals that on a long enough timeline I believe that I can achieve because I’m willing to put in the work.
I want to leave you with something practical that if you adapt and you carry into your life it can radically transform everything that’s next for you.
And it’s this:
What you think becomes what you speak
What you speak becomes your action
Your actions become your reality
You have more power in your life than you’re giving yourself credit for. And until you make a declaration that you were going to allow yourself to be unlimited, you will not. This idea of mindset is everything starts with choosing to empower yourself with the belief that on a long enough timeline you can accomplish anything and that you can have the life that you want to have but...
there’s no Disney moment and no one’s coming to save you.
Change only happens when you make change happen.
I know that’s a lot of pressure and I know it’s unfair and I know that you wish, like me, that it wasn’t true but it is and when you acknowledge, accept, adapt, and take accountability for your life than that sentence of suffering can be a sentence of power.
Accept what you can control.
I have one simple ask of you if you’ve made it this far. I want you to take a piece of paper and a pen and I want you to write this down, and I want you to read this to yourself every day, and I want you to do that 1000 times a day until you convince yourself that it’s true.
Write this: "I am the kind of person who is kind to myself."
When you operate through a scope of kindness you will change everything in your life but that kindness has to start with you before you give it to the world. right now you’re saying things to yourself that if you said to another human being would get you punched in the face or even arrested. Think about that.
I believe that on a long enough timeline we all have the ability to change our narrative, to remove ourselves from the expectations of our ZIP Code, and to look at ourselves in the mirror with love, compassion, hope, trust, pride, and belief. but in order to cultivate those things you’re going to have to do incredibly difficult tasks and in doing these incredible difficult tasks you will discover what you are capable of and in that discovery you will choose to go even further than what you believe is possible today. But it all starts at step one. and trust me when I say that momentum is everything in life.
For some of us the hardest thing we will ever do is ask for help. As a trauma survivor I know how scary that can be to put your trust into someone else. But let me tell you this, when you rebuild and establish trust with other human beings you will discover that the world is not as dark as we’ve been led to believe it is.
I see greatness for you but you have to choose to see it first. And you have to trust the process, the guidance, the signs, your heart, and your vision of what you dream about at night. You can have everything that you want. I'm not saying it's east...I'm only saying it's possible.
There is no spoon.
Be Unbroken my friends,
@MichaelUnbroken
P.S. If you want to celebrate my birthday with me simply listen to an episode of The Think Unbroken Podcast. That would mean the world to me.
Thank you my being here. I love you.