Sense of Soul - Prioritize Mental Fitness For a Positive Mindset

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

Today on Sense of Soul, we welcome Michael Blumberg. In 2023, Michael made a seismic shift from the corporate tech industry to realign his priorities, focusing on how he wanted to show up in the world as a father, husband, helper, seeker, and guide. This wholehearted transition led him to launch a practice that combines over two decades of leadership coaching, managing, and mentoring with his personal passion for energy work, spirituality, and continuous self-improvement. His mission is simple: to coach and mentor men who are ready to actively participate in their healing journey from depression. Through Michael’s coaching program, Imperfect Action, he shares tools to navigate life with strength, confidence, and energy, helping individuals rise with the tides and flow with the lows, no matter what challenges they face. Among Michael’s tools is Positive Intelligence, a set of breakthrough, research-based techniques that strengthen the part of your brain that serves you and quiet the part that sabotages you. This approach helps you handle life’s challenges with a more positive mindset and less stress. In his newly released children’s book, The Value of a Stick: An Outdoor Adventure, explores what happens when families venture into nature without technology. What’s a child to do? Playing outside is great exercise for the body and the perfect time to exercise the imagination too! Order Michael’s book here—just in time for Christmas! (isbn 979-8218455071) https://shop.ingramspark.com/b/084?params=BjbEcnIcy0DQe3C1uDxFilXW4YhTAbLN5QWSGID4K77 https://a.co/d/2L7uy8R Visit his website: https://www.imperfectactionllc.com/ www.positiveintelligence.com Learn more about Shanna & Sense of Soul: www.senseofsoulpodcast.com

Hello, my soul-seeking friends. It's Shanna. Thank you so much for listening to Sense of Soul podcast. Enlightening conversations with like-minded souls from around the world, sharing their journey of finding their light within, turning pain into purpose, and awakening to their true sense of soul. If you like what you hear, show me some love and rate, like and subscribe. And consider becoming a Sense of Soul Patreon member, where you will get ad-free episodes, monthly circles and much more. Now go grab your coffee, open your mind, heart and soul. It's time to awaken. Today on Sense of Soul, I have with me Michael Bloomberg.

Michael went through a major transition from the corporate tech industry to realigning his priorities and how he wanted to show up in the world as a father, a husband, a helper, a seeker, and a guide for those who want to become the best versions of themselves. Michael put his whole heart into this shift, combining over two decades of leadership, coaching, managing, mentoring, and his personal passion for energy work, spirituality, and continuous self-improvement. He was on a mission to coach and mentor men who are ready to be an active part of their healing journey and created Imperfect Action, a coaching program where he shares tools to navigate life with strength, confidence, and energy to rise the tides and flow with the lows, no matter what you're handed.

Michael, among his many tools, works with positive intelligence, breakthrough research-based tools which strengthen the part of your brain that serves you and quiets that part that sabotages you so that you can handle life's challenges with a more positive mindset. Michael is a dedicated husband and father, and he has a passion to see parents and their children prioritize a healthier mindset. In his newly released children's book called The Value of a Stick, an outdoor adventure explores what happens when you go out into nature with no technology. I've been fortunate to make many friends who are listeners of Sense of Soul, and Michael is one of them. I appreciate his support of this podcast and for being a part of our community.

I know this will be a great conversation because Michael and I have shared many conversations about synchronicity, the wonders of the world. He's a seeker, much like me, and to hold this space for him today is such an honor. So please welcome Michael Bloomberg. Hello. Hey, how are you? I'm good. How are you? Good. This is awesome because I think that all the things that we experience, that we talk about, synchronicity, and I think it's important to normalize it. I agree. I can't tell you how often, even in a work setting, when I was back in the corporate life, when you have to do your annual reviews and accomplishments and interviews and brag about yourself, so to speak. And I always thought about why was it so hard for me? And it was really because whether you're a guru or a CEO, or I think the difference between one of the main differences, it's like I tend to think of myself

as a child, not as a 47-year-old adult who's had life experiences that are worth sharing. But as a child, I know nothing. I'm open to the world. And that's kind of that part of me. That's great. That's how we should be when it comes to experiencing things. But it also means like I am insecure about the things that I want to share. And I like what you said about normalizing it making a part of common conversation

means that we respect where each of us are on our journeys and you know that it's okay to talk about and more and more people are talking about it these days too which is incredible incredible and i think partly because of technology, the age of Aquarius is here. But, you know, I was thinking about when you said you were, you know, if you go on interviews and you're or you're just trying to explain yourself to somebody. It's like we're trying to put ourself into a box when we do that, too. You know, like what's going to make me look successful? What's going to make me look intelligent, what's going to make me look intelligent, you know, wiser and all these things. But yet for me, this journey has truly been coming out of that box and just being more authentic, you know, and really seeing somebody I think is

far more important than hearing all of their accolades or is that the right word? Accolades. Accolades. Yeah. You know, anybody can make anything up. Being honest about war is something that you don't see many people embody. So I think it's important. You have a lot of experiences that you've shared with me and you have an amazing blog, which I truly appreciate. And you're very vulnerable. I've been like that most of my life. I remember, you know, growing up, my, my mom would say that, uh, you're too trusting.

You put yourself out there too much, that kind of a thing, but it's just always who I've been. It's allowed other people to open up to me. And I've literally had friends tell me that the reason they like hanging out with me is because they can just be themselves. I don't have to be pretending to be anyone else. So that's a nice feeling when somebody shares that with you. So yeah, I decided that in my journey with depression throughout my life, it was time to actually put myself back out there and share that experience so other people maybe don't feel so alone. And if it brings hope, if it brings healing, anything like that to others, then great. My journey is my own. And I feel like when I said this on the blog, that the best thing

I can do is share it with others for that reason and hope that maybe it does help somebody. So I hope folks will check it out. I mean, you know, depression and anxiety and other labels of mental illness and stress is a lot more common, a lot more commonly talked about now, where back in the day, it was like a shame thing. There was like all this shame and not wanting to share or tell anyone because you think you're alone. Right. That is 100% true. I think, like you said about technology, is it that there's more cases of it or just that more people are talking about it now

because we have the technology to be able to communicate and in some cases communicate anonymously about it and open up, you know, we're seeing a national hotline now in the United States. You can dial 988. The more resources that we can put out there, the more we can make sure people don't feel alone and that even in their darkest hour, there's always somebody who can lend an ear. There's always somebody who can listen. Be present with people around us. Even if you don't know what to say, look at a homeless person. You know, you can't, we need to stop with the judgments and just really treat each other kind. You know, maybe look somebody in the eye when they're talking to you or when they ask you

how you're doing, give them an honest answer or smile, you know, at people that smile at you. I mean, or if you see someone sad or sense in your body, we need to be more connected to our bodies so that we can sense the world around us. And that's how we make a difference. I mean, I should go on record probably by first and foremost saying I am not a psychiatrist.

I'm not a social worker. I am a certified coach, but I don't have the credentials to, let's say, work with somebody who might be working through suicidal ideation. What I can tell you is that I've had people close in my life that I've seen take their own life, attempt to take their own life of all ages and genders. I've seen children, I've seen grownups, I've seen men, I've seen women, I've seen transgender. Some went through with it, some did not. But ignoring it, ignoring the signs, ignoring the cries for help is the worst thing we can do. Being kind to others is the best thing you can do because

we don't even know what that person in the supermarket or in the airport or at the drive-thru or whomever that you're dealing with, talking with out in public, you don't know what's going on in their life. There's nothing wrong and everything right with just being kind to each other. And it's one of the simplest things we can do, but it's also getting lost in our own shit that we deal with on a daily basis is also very, very, very easy. So we can say it's easy to be kind, but you know what? Sometimes for some people it might take practice because when you're dealing with your own shit too, it's much easier to just snap at somebody else that maybe didn't get your order right. What did that person ever really do to you? We also live in an age where inconvenience and mistake is treated as

the end of the world. And that's got to change too. Quick little anecdote. I was on the phone with customer service about an issue that I had with a product. And the person at the end of the call thanked me for being so nice to them. I bet. Because I was probably the person going off on him before. But think about that. This is the world we live in where people are taking time to say thank you for being nice to me because it is so unseen these days. Just standard out-of-the-box kindness and respect is so rare these days that now people in these customer service positions are taking the time to say thank you for being kind to me what does that say about what that person typically deals with on a regular basis the kind of crap the kind of attitudes because what your cable went out for a

few hours or you know the the dry cleaner broke a button things that we go to defcon 5 about like or defcon 1 whatever the order is we just go from zero to to explosion very quickly and and we have to learn to to respond not to patience we learn the pause you know this is something very real that the world is dealing with now um this morning, my daughter had told me this. She had told me about this weeks ago and actually was even on the news. And, you know, the school had sent us warnings that there was rumors going around that her school specifically was going to have a shooting today. You know, thinking back, I mean, Michael, you and I, we had fire drills that we practiced. We had maybe tornado, I don't know, in your area, but we didn't have to deal with

learning what to do if there was a school shooting. And I was, you know, I told Kensley, you absolutely don't have to go to school today. That's very serious. She was like, no, I guess all my friends are going, but there's a lot of people that aren't either. And that's very real. And that's traumatizing for these children to have. That's what they have to practice for. politicized now too to make it even worse right because of the whole pro-gun anti-gun politics and you know this isn't a political show we're not going to get into the weeds but what i will say is that when i was a junior in high school uh was my first experience of school violence like that and you know we're the same age and it was unheard of back then you hear about fights breaking out outside of school and so i mean i feel like in some way shape or form that's kind of always been a thing but yeah my junior year i was in uh maybe pre-algebra or algebra i forget forget what class. No, pre-calc. Something like that. It was a math

class. And some kids from a rival school came right into our school, went into the classroom above me, and stabbed a kid to death. So school violence is no joke. It's a mental health issue that we need to address efficiently. I will say that was with a knife. And unfortunately, Jason lost his life that day. But we see it now with guns coming into our school, the fact that they're so accessible to kids. If you're pro-gun, you need to be pro-gun responsibility. And that's kind of, I guess, the most political I'll get about it, right, is that there is nothing wrong with gun control. There is something wrong with people who do not control their guns. There is nothing wrong with gun control. All that means is responsible gun ownership.

And if you can't have a gun responsibly, you shouldn't have one. Just like if you can't drive a car responsibly, you shouldn't have one. That was another thing that my mom drilled into me from a young age was a car is a killing machine just as much as a gun is so when you get behind the wheel of a car you're driving a loaded gun and something that you could hurt people with you know again you see so many kids these days driving like idiots i just drove back from philadelphia the other day and people on the road that just don't belong on the road and i could feel my react instead of response just kind of that that road that just don't belong on the road and i could feel my react instead of response

just kind of that that road rage just start building seeing all these idiots the way they were driving on the road motorcycles going 130 come out of nowhere like yeah it's very scary i just had my one of my very good friends her son 22 years old just died in motorcycle accident uh heartbreaking i just went to her son's funeral a few weeks ago, just heartbreaking. But I too experienced Chuck E. Cheese, which kind of made national news. And one of my friends was killed. And the killer, Nathan, was one of my friends. I was very confused. I was 17. I still truly, I feel like sometimes I must have something deep down that I haven't really connected with that still needs to be healed.

Because every time I talk about it, I just, my whole body feels a little off and there's something that just doesn't want to really go there. So I'm sure that'll come up sometime in my journey. But I was just looking, I mean, Michael, just in 2024, there's been so many mass shootings. It says as of August 31st, a total of 527 people have been killed and over 1,700 people have been wounded in 432 shootings. So yeah, what you're saying is true. Gun control is a big issue in this country. And for our children's future, that they don't have to fear going to school like my daughter did this morning. Or for a parent.

Right. You know, she feels safe. Right to go to school safely far outweighs a person's right to own a gun irresponsibly. Sorry. Amen. It's written in the Constitution, and we can, you know, I'm happy to debate with anybody what's written in the Constitution. But take that document. It's a wonderful document.

Just put it to the side for a second. And if we think about it from the sake of a humankind perspective, we get the chance to write our own rules about what it means to be good to each other. That part of the Constitution is there as a means of defense, not to protect a kid's right to walk into a school or a mall or a movie theater and shoot the place up. It is not there to protect the person who is disgruntled at work and walks in and shoots the place up. It is not there to protect those people. We have had more legislation about making cars safer than we have had about making guns

safer i'm not talking about taking away guns so let's put that aside i'm but what he's taking away anybody's guns what have we done to make it safer legally to make sure that these kinds of things don't happen safer you wonder why there's so much depression, anxiety, and all of these things. It's like, look at the world around us. It's not really supporting that. We live today in a constant state of fight or flight. That's what it is. And when you're in a constant state of fight or flight, you're reacting.

You're not responding. You're not slowing down. And when you react, that means we put our power into other people's hands to control our reactions. Or even drugs and alcohol to numb us from all of it. And where do those things come from? There are industries behind those. We are putting our power into other people's hands. We're giving away that power and allowing other people control how we behave. That's, by the way, why late-night shopping is such a big problem because that's when we're the most vulnerable. And people just go online and they get Amazon amnesia. They don't remember what they ordered and all of a sudden a bunch of packages

show up. And then by the way, my credit card bills twice what it was. How am I going to know my life? So just to kind of circle back, right. Part of my journey with depression and going through a spiritual waking has been about slowing down. Not to be about slowing down. I remember, and this is the first time I think I'm kind of saying this out loud in mixed company, because I still don't know how I feel about it. when COVID hit, right, I had been very diligently working through my depression

for a few years at that point. But things were just going still way too fast. And I had like a stop the world moment. I just need the world to stop. I just need the world to stop. I just need to- Oh, so you caused COVID. Okay, I get it now.

That's why i didn't want to say it all up we all felt that way and then the world stopped in a very similar way that the world stopped after 9-11 i remember how quiet everything was and then everything literally and figuratively got quiet in this country americans came together when covet hit and things got quiet we went the opposite direction um yes families separated it was a lot. And it's still, I mean, I was personally affected

by a lot of it. I mean, yes, family separations and all that, but the political atmosphere at the time was at a fever pitch too.

And so that just compounded everything, right? Right. So, big difference between the two, but

kind of going back to the selfish piece of it was that when the world stopped during COVID, I mean, you heard people talking about animals were coming out from the forest. We had bears in our neighborhood. The earth started saying, okay, thank you everybody for stopping and stopping doing what you're doing because the earth needed a chance to, you know. The air quality got better here. It's a hard thing for me to talk about because I do stop and think about the millions of people who died. So yeah, so went through a number of traumas at that point as well, as did every family and out of those

traumas came the only way i can explain it as a spiritual awakening on my end and it's something that has the more i have embraced it the more i have seen my depression now also go away i'm off my meds now. I'm still talking to a therapist because I believe wholeheartedly in talk therapy. And I believe in medications. The reason why my doctor asked me this, why do you want to go off your meds? Well, then I want to go off my meds because if I don't have to take a chemical substance that, by the way, with SSRIs, they still don't know exactly which receptors are being turned off. And you go through the process of trying different medications and

you figure out which one works for you. And when I asked, why does this one work and this one doesn't? They're like, we don't know. Just works better for some people than others. So it's one of those, well, if we don't exactly know how it works, and it's helping, and it did its job, and that's good. Now my job is to strengthen those muscles again. And the only way you can strengthen those muscles is by removing the supports. So very gradually, and working with my doctors, open about it with my family. I've been open with my wife and kids from day one and my extended family too this is something that i've been open about because i want to

make it more of an acceptable topic of conversation too that depression isn't something that you it's a very personal thing but it's not something you have to deal with by yourself. So now I am fully off my meds, feeling great. And it's because I believe that I was able to prop up that third leg in the spirituality piece as it's on mind and body. I think in order to beat depression, really, don't get me wrong, still have my bad days, but the good days far outweigh the bad today. And so that to me is a win. That to me is beating depression in that because everybody has good days and bad days. And so I feel more like I'm in the normal cadence. And so to beat depression, I really believe you have to focus on all three it's not

just yeah not just a brain right all three yeah i think that's that's the key to anything with my anxiety which is a little bit different than depression but not not much. I mean, I just thought, take these meds, use these tools. But it was actually through the tools, like the meditation and going inward, really that's what was missing. That is really the power of overcoming it. Yes. If your goal is to overcome it, then I believe that medications serve a purpose and an assist. They can help you get through the hard parts. But if you then rely on the medications and not any work that you need to do for yourself, that you're never going to get, well, you're never going to get well. You're never going to get past the anxiety.

You're always going to be reliant on the medication. You have to do both. Yeah, get to the root. So one of the methodologies that I coach in is called positive intelligence. The way they approach it is that we all have saboteurs that stop us from achieving our goals and that these saboteurs were created as trauma responses to traumas we experienced when we were kids or at any point in our life really and there there's 10 of them and the goal of positive intelligence is to help you build it's a mental fitness program that's's how they deem it. And I absolutely love that because the goal is to help you build that strength back to when you see one of those saboteurs rearing its ugly head, preventing you from doing the right thing, the good thing, achieving the goal you want to accomplish.

We engage our PQ command muscles, and through that, call out the saboteur for what it is and what it's doing, and transition into what's called the sage mentality. And in that sage brain, there are five sage types. We are then able to accomplish that goal that we had set out for ourselves. And it's not you do it one time and you're done. The reason it's a mental fitness program is because like physical fitness, you don't just go to the gym once and then you're in good shape you have to work at it but what positive intelligence does is it teaches you how to do it in a way that is easy and sustainable um using things like micro meditations if you can't take two minutes out of a six hour period to do quick breathing and micro meditations then you know that's something that needs to be fixed because everybody

should be able to wake up, listen to something for two minutes, take a break mid-morning, listen to something for two minutes, close your eyes, do some micro meditations, right? And that's kind of how the program goes. Every few hours, you'd stop, you focus on a particular thing you're trying to work on for two minutes, and then you resume your day. And in that time, you're building up your PQ muscles, your positivity potion muscles. You're more present throughout your day, you are more grounded, you overwork to learn how to respond to situations as opposed to reacting to situations, right? Again, react is a fear response. Responding is a contemplative response. That means we stop, we take into account whatever else is going on, and then we learn to respond. So that's

what positive intelligence teaches you how to do. So very similar to your other guest in that understanding where those things are rooted. This focuses on how to get you from that saboteur reaction to a sage response. I love that. And I love the pauses throughout the day. I used to have them put in my phone because I liked Thich Nhat Hanh in Plum Village. They would have the ring of the bell. I think it was once an hour. I think it only lasts like a minute. And during that moment, everyone stops in the village collectively and just becomes present, mindful. It's not a big meditation. It's micro. But it just

slows you down, kind of like what you said. And when I look back on my life, even today, I mean, this past week with my daughter moving and me changing bedrooms, I was so busy. I forgot to eat. I forgot to drink. I was so exhausted the next day that I couldn't even work. It's hard when our children become older and you've dealt with that this year as well. Just a couple of weeks ago, we drove my oldest to school for her freshman year of college. And, you know, I've always been an emotional person. I think everybody thought that I was going to deal with it a lot harder than it was. But it's honestly because when my kids, both my kids were born, I made a promise that I would never use the phrase, I can't wait until, because that puts you out of the now.

And it's easy to do when you're frustrated right you know baby's crying and and that you don't know what they need and so you say i can't wait till you can talk you know what that's taking you out of the now it's putting you in a situation where you're putting something onto this baby that they cannot do and so you're now no longer figuring out how to understand what this baby is trying to communicate, right? So whether it's a little thing or a big thing, the more you focus on being in the now, and that doesn't mean don't plan for things. You still should be planning for things because planning is one of the enemies of anxiety. But while you're in the moment, be in the moment, live in the moment. And so when we took my daughter to college, I was just in the moment. Of course, had my moment afterwards when we got home and everything like that and exhausted from the car ride and the asshole drivers and all that kind of stuff along the way. But in the moment, I couldn't have just been more happy for her. The smile on her face was just...

Bittersweet, right? Yeah, of course. Of course. And I don't think of myself as old enough to have a child in college, but here we are. I feel like I was just... I know. I mean, I truly miss the dynamic of the household now that she's gone. Someone had said to me one time, because I think I said something like,

I just wish they wouldn't grow up. And he said, do you really wish they would not grow up? Do you really wish they would stay small and never grow? And just imagine, like literally, if they really didn't. And I was like, no, you're right. Of course, you know, I want them to grow. They come and give you a hug when they're teenagers. You can feel them as babies again. Because they're coming to you for that hug.

They're coming to you. They're looking for the love that they know that you give and the support that you give. And it just, I don't know, for me, it just brings me back to when they were babies. That's when I soak it in. The same week, my youngest gets a boyfriend. Her first boyfriend. I'm like, too much too soon. Yep.

Yeah. Having daughters is interesting. We're kind of in the same place a little bit i think with with uh the the youngest ages um but you know with my oldest going away i'm also seeing my youngest now finding more of a voice finding more you know spreading their wings more um interesting okay instead of focusing on oh my my oldest isn't here in the household anymore i am stopping to enjoy and be there and support my youngest and now in their high school years, um, as you know, she's going through all her stuff, but there is now this, it's just us. It's just the three of us now. Right. And she's feeling more of the attention that she probably didn't feel because as the second child, you don't get all the attention that she probably didn't feel because as the second child you don't get

all the attention you have to share from the minute you're born but an oldest child or an only child never has to share that attention so so yeah i am trying to just be the best dad that i can be for her um and now it's just more about supporting my oldest from afar. Oh my God. Thank you for saying that. I can totally relate to that too. I think when you learn how to pause like you have throughout this program, that's what you'll see. You'll see what's in front of you. Yes. Now you were talking about synchronicities earlier too, and certainly have a lot of those to share. I call them the what the fuck in my life, like what the F just happened,

what the fuck just happened. Did that really happen, right? Those are those synchronicities or those coincidences that have some, you feel like they have some deeper meaning. I like to look at synchronicity as what happens when at the intersection of destiny and free will. When the choices that you're making align with a more universal destiny, let's say, you start to see synchronicities more. You start to have deja vus more. What used to be a much more skeptical version of me is now looking at those as signs. Those types of synchronicities, deja vus, those are signs that, okay, keep going down this path. You're on the right path. So I bring that up because as we're talking about parenting, I had what I think is pretty amazing parenting when recently since going

through the positive intelligence program. So I'm not just trained in it, but I went through it as somebody being coached as well, which is something that the way that coach shares designed the program. It's absolutely fantastic. And happy to talk more about that later too, if you want. But needless to say, when I was going through it, I was sharing about it with my family, right? And I was like, you should give this a try too. You should learn, you know, you find these things fascinating. Of course, when you have teenagers, you get eye

rolls. I mean, that's just a hazard of teenagers is you got to dodge the eye rolls because they will get you. So I would tell them about it, but, you know, you should really try this arbitrary assessment. That might help you in X, Y, or Z. Well, no. I mean, that's something that dad's doing, whatever, in one ear. So the other night, talking with one of my kids, and they're confiding in me. I've been lucky enough to forge a great relationship with both of my girls, and I couldn't be luckier as a dad, honestly, that they will come to me with their problems and the problems that normally you wouldn't think they would want to talk to you about. Sometimes I'm like, oh man, do I really want to be talking about this? And then I remember that,

you know, there's a blessing in this, right? Oh, okay. Let's go with it. See where we go. Um, so the other day I'm talking with one of my kids and they're confiding me about some things that are going on in their life. I'm not going to get into the details of it because that's their privacy. But my response was to try to do my best to explain the law of attraction. And so I'm talking to them about how, listen, I know this is something that you really want. The more you try to go after something from a place of lack, from a place of, I don't have it, so I need it and I want you to give it to me, that's actually how you push people away. So I was trying to explain, the more you focus on building up the best you, you can be through working on your mind body and soul you know those kinds of things

focusing on you not ignoring other people letting people into your life but you'll wind up letting the people into your life that are then naturally attracted to you and the person you are and the person you're becoming some of them may be good some of them may be bad, but I don't believe in this, whether it's jobs or whether it's boys or whatever the case may be. I don't believe you kiss a thousand frogs to find the prince. I believe if you can clearly figure out who you are and what you want, then you know what to go after. Then you'll know the prince when it comes to you. Yeah, that alignment, that resonance happens yeah exactly so you create that vibrational frequency that you want to be at that feels best for you and then people will naturally be drawn to that yeah but the more you push the more you

push people away the less likely to get it and And I was like, when you lose your car keys, when do you find them? When you're not looking for them. When you lose your car keys. Whenever you lose something, you know, some people pray to St. Anthony, right? We're Jewish, so we have a joke in our house. It's not really a joke. My wife prays to St. Anthony when we lose something. And we find it.

Yeah, we do. But to me, what is that? I know I've lost this. Now I'm giving it to the universe to help me find it but to me what is that that's i know i've lost this now i'm giving it to the universe to help me find it it's a form of surrender and when you surrender that's when things find you so we're having that conversation right then they're on their phone for a little bit and i'm on my phone for a little bit and we're still next to each other we just kind of like somebody got i forget what it was somebody got to text something we wound up both being on our phones for just a second and then she says to me hey dad what is the word vigilant mean do you remind me me of what vigilant means? I'm like, oh, that just means you're aware of everything around you.

Okay. So what's hypervigilant? Oh, well, hypervigilant is when you are so aware of the world around you that you can't focus on anything else. That you are overstimulated by everything and you have to be on alert at all times. And then I'm thinking to myself, wait a minute, why don't hypervigilant? That's one of the saboteurs in positive intelligence.

Just out of curiosity, why do you ask? And they're like, well, I was curious how I might be sabotaging myself. So I just did a quick Google search on saboteurs and then this quiz came up. So I decided I would just take this quiz. And I'm like, hey, kiddo, what's the website you're on? And they're like, let's see, it's positiveintelligence.com.

And I'm like, so you know that's the methodology that I trained in, right? Really? Like, you really haven't been listening, have you? I'm like, yeah, that's... Wow. Like, you should go and take this quiz and everything. It's like, oh, that's what this is? I'm like, yeah.

And then we just started laughing. I'm like, can I just say thank you to the universe for the assist on this one? Because I was just trying to explain to you the law of attraction and not forcing things. Because when you force things, you push it away. But when you create the environment that you want things to be attracted to, it comes to you. I haven't talked to you about taking this quiz in a long time. But here you are at this moment when we're talking about the law of attraction, finding it and bringing it to me.

And how saboteurs can negatively impact our ability to achieve our goals. At the same time, it was like the perfect win. So, yeah. That's a good one. That's synchronicity, right? Those are the coincidences that mean something. I mean, there's a huge difference between synchronicity and coincidence. You could feel the difference. It's when it feels like

that's almost impossible. And don't ever underestimate that feeling because it may feel that way to you and the other person might be like, oh, I don't get it. You know, synchronicities are personal to you. Yes. And sometimes when you tell somebody a synchronicity, they don't even think it's as great as it really was because they don't, you know what I mean? Because they're not in it. Because it is so personal. It's your personal experience. And if you do tell somebody, they're like, oh, yeah, cool.

Wow. But I'm like, are you kidding me? It was freaking amazing yeah you know if that happens right forget about that other person's reaction because it means something to you it's talking about you get on there yep it's nothing to do with that other person which is why they don't get the same things through the epiphanies right yes true epiphany about something. Man, it hits you like a ton of bricks.

And you can turn to another person and they'll be like, well, yeah, you didn't know that. That's so true. Yeah, it is good and very important, I think, to have a community. I think we've talked about this before. And I think that that's part of what right now in this moment we're missing. I'm not really sure, like, is that the difference between 9-11 and COVID where community was not a thing? And I think that even churches, they're getting more empty because, well, I mean, honestly, there's a lot of judge shame and, and rules that are ridiculous within many of them that were created by man.

But, you know, I think that we need to get back to community. I think it's so important to be able to, you know, talk about this stuff with people and be supported and support. Yeah. I think the biggest difference between then and now is personal accountability. That is something that I have seen sharply decline over the last 20 years, the concept of personal accountability. When 9-11 happened, we still were afraid. That fear was there. When's the next attack going to hit?

I know people who lost loved ones on that day. I have a friend who passed away in one of the towers that was hit. After all of that, none of the politics mattered. We came together and we were there for each other because we wanted to feel safe again. And how do you feel safe again? You don't feel safe again by becoming reclusive. You feel safe again by building community. Yeah. We did not do a good job community building during COVID because the politics and the lack of accountability was at

such a fever pitch that it completely muted any attempts to actually try to have conversation, try to put aside differences. Huge, huge difference between then and now, but that being said, I need to say thank you to you because in my time of need, when I was going through my spiritual awakening, I didn't have anybody really close by to be able to talk about this with, I was raised Jewish and certainly happy to, to talk about that a little bit, um, but I'll But I'll just summarize by saying I never found comfort in my Judaism. I always found more questions, and that's almost in a sense what Judaism is. The name Israel means wrestles with God, right? So I have always felt that understanding the nature of the universe has always been more of a fight to understand it than it has been a knowing. And I never found that in the way other religions and dogmas describe the universe either, at least not through their man-written dogmas, right? I have now adopted some personal views that I guess you

could say come from Buddhism and the wise sages that have preceded us in every religion. I don't think that wisdom exists only unto one religion itself. I think there is wisdom in all of them, but then there is or in greed that corrupts it all at the same time. So amongst trying to find answers, who did I turn to? Well, I started listening to podcasts, yours being one of them. And I mean, again, in the belief that there are no coincidences, I don't believe you didn't think about the fact that Sense of Soul is also an SOS. I don't believe you didn't think about the fact that Sense of Soul is also an SOS. I have to believe that that was something that you thought of. But for me, what I needed at the time was help. And I literally saw Sense of Soul. Okay, I read about it.

You were podcasting with Mandy at the time and started listening to you guys. And I'm like, oh, these guys are torthic. I got started. So you became a regular. And at one point where I felt like I just needed more answers, I needed to know that I wasn't alone in a community. I reached out to you. I reached out to a couple of these other podcasters

just to introduce myself, say, hey, this is what I'm going through. Any advice? And you responded back. And for that, I am forever grateful. Well, I think I was on a similar journey and I think that that's one of the reasons why, you know, I, I kept going even after Mandy, you know, um, took her sabbatical. I don't, I, I'm hoping she'll come back one day. I don't know, but you know, I, you know, being curious and you're right.

I've learned that about my 11%, 12% Jewish too, you know, because, you know, I felt it like lighting up in me to know it, you know, and to understand it. And I found that it really is, it's for seekers, you know, I mean, it's to be know it, you know, and to understand it. And I found that it really is, it's for seekers, you know, I mean, it's to be curious and, you know, and to kind of explore. And I love that about it. I don't like dogma and all that other stuff. And I don't like things being so finite, right? This is how it is. It's black and white. I don't like things being so finite, right? This is how it is. It's black and white. I don't believe that we are black and white. It boggles my mind that across all of these different dogmas, there is so much more that we have in common, yet we find the stupidest things to go to war over.

The stupidest little differences, and we go to war over them. In this day and age, the fact that we are still thinking that killing people is a way to solve a problem. Solution, yeah. It's just idiotic. But what I found doing my own research about the different dogmas is that it's not in the dogma. It's not in the policies and procedures. Instead of calling it dogma, let's call it the policies and procedures, because that's really what it is. This is what makes it correct to worship following this belief system.

What do they all have in common at the end of the day? All of them. Belief in a higher power. Belief that the way to get in touch with that higher power is actually within you. Right. True. And through prayer or don't call it prayer call it meditation whatever you want to call it that is how we engage and actually create the energy that defines the world around us right? An individual can be well-versed in meditation and prayer and

never see what they consider to be an answer in their life. And so then the question there is, what is it that they're paying attention to? Who are they praying with? Because the power of prayer is an energy. It's an energy that you're putting out there so the more people you have focusing on something the more likely that something is to come about where attention goes energy flows good or bad so that is what they all have in common that there is ire that there is divinity within the individual, and that through prayer we're able to, or meditation, or through concentrating on that energy, we're able to create reality around us. You're so right. And that's exactly what we're trying to learn without all of the condition

stuff it but it's still the same energy that yeah that's very interesting michael i've never thought about it this way i mean i have but now i it just clicked even further just with your conversation with your daughter prior like this is all adding up to me i mean think of why do priests exist to be a bridge between the higher power and the common person so what's the difference the common person hasn't learned how to best converse with a higher power. And so then you throw greed and bureaucracy on top of it, and so now you need to create more leadership positions and all that. So that's where the dogma and the policies and procedures get you to. You need all of these things between you and God.

You only need them there, or source, or whatever you want to call it. You only need them there if you haven't practiced how to get there yourself. And for some people, that is becoming a monk. For some people, that is just meditating on the regular. For some people, that's going to church or to mosque. I'm not trying to take away anything from anybody who practices any of these religions. But what I am saying is that the more space you put in between you and God, the less likely you are to feel that spirit divinity within yourself. Or that you are part of that spirit. You are part of it.

You don't need all the levels. That's right. You know, the more levels you allow to, to exist between you and source, the more disconnected you become from source. Yep. So true.

And how, how much they have overcomplicated all of it when you know you just had a simple conversation with your daughter boom and because you were so present with it and she was aligning with you it's like source just popped right in and created a pathway to be able to see and receive. It was that simple. But there was lesson in it for me too. It wasn't just a lesson for her. The lesson for me was, no, don't push it.

Because if I push it, the lesson's going to get lost because of the law of attraction. The more I operate from a place of lack, I need you to understand this, the more shut down the other person becomes. Absolutely. And you know that if you talk at people, they close down immediately. So it's to let people really truly be on their own journey and to discover things on their own.

And you can't force people. You can't force people to believe and think a certain way. And that's what I think people have tried to do for so long. And so when you become present and pause throughout your day, it makes a huge difference in that because you become more contemplating with this, with, with yourself, with your soul, with your mind and, you know, all the things around you that are loud media, the media is worst, you know, all of this stuff, it fades away and acquires.

Well, everything that you put into your body and you don't just put things into your body using your mouth and eating food it is the food but it's not just the food it's the things that you listen to it's the things that you then turn around and say and put back out into the world because then you're listening to that too. And going back to accountability, then we're creating an environment where it says, it's okay to not be accountable. And then what happens? Well, it comes back.

Karma says it comes back around to you at some point in time. So the things that you see, what kind of movies are you watching? Or television are you watching? Or books are you reading? All the ways in which you ingest things into your body help to create your mood. But music, for so many, is one of the most powerful of all. So I had to eliminate the things that made me feel worse.

Because I did not have the mental fitness to be able to deal with them. It's not that these things are necessarily inherently bad. I love listening to grunge. I love listening to hard rock. I love listening to classical music. I knew myself listening to country music with my kids more often now these days. All these different styles have their place, but do we really pay attention to the mood that they're putting us in? It's like, what are you going to feed? You have energy. So where do you want your energy? And you have to be careful with that.

What are you feeding them with? So for me, I needed to overwhelm myself with positivity because the negativity was just. It's out there. You don't have to worry about that. It's there. Yep. We've got an abundance of that going around but you know when you are not conscious of this the world around you is actually leading you and you you're not in the driver's seat exactly well we're just talking about religion too. When you give away your power, when you allow everything else in the world to dictate what you're saying, you stop using your critical thought, you stop responding, and you start reacting. And when we're always existing in a state of fight or flight, we're going to react, we're not going to respond but the world unfortunately has gotten to a point where it feels like everybody is in this constant state of fight or flight fight flight fawn freeze

you know gut reaction is another way to put to it because things are happening so fast they're coming at you so fast that there's no time to feel safe in your own space. So you need to take that time to create the world around you that is going to foster healthy minds. In fact, my oldest is going to, we were talking about bringing her to college, she's majoring in interior design with a minor in psychiatric rehabilitation because she wants to create spaces that are conducive to healthy mindsets. Ooh, she'll love Marie Diamond. Yeah, that's what feng shui is about.

That's, you know, there's science of philosophies dedicated to that, 100%. And she was in the secret because what she proves and some call her the secret behind the secret your environment of course and this is also epigenetics brisletton talks about is what can change your neuropathways and how you react to the world how you know how you're receiving the world, your environment. And it's something that you have direct control over too. So if you're not taking the opportunity to create the immediate environment around you that feels conducive to being able to accomplish your goals, then that might be something that's worth taking a look at and prioritizing right and see that as your your room your house your yard your city your state your country your world and that's the one thing

that science and philosophy and religion can all agree on is that everything is energy. And so how you foster that energy around you makes all the difference in the world. Take accountability. Take your power back. Yep. That's one of the big things in positive intelligence. The main saboteur, there's 10 archetypes of saboteurs.

The main one is called the judge. And the judge is the part of you that puts blame or shame, right? It is always assessing yourself, assessing a situation, and assessing other people. God, it sounds like God.

But it's within you, Shannon. Right. It's within you. It's been within you this whole time. So the first thing you learn how to do is to put the judge at bay. Because if you can't objectively look at a situation and say, you know what? My bad, mea culpa. Then all you're doing is actually serving to exacerbate the situation. You're making it worse, not better. Mea culpa, my bad, isn't saying I'm blaming myself. It's saying I objectively acknowledge the part that I played in the situation unfolding or in my response to the

situation, right? No better have I've seen it personally exemplified recently than, you know, going to my kids' volleyball games and stuff, right? They lose a point or have a bad hit or something like that. They all huddle up real quick before the next point. You know, whoever missed it said, my bad, my bad. Everybody goes back. Next point, right? I don't know if you ever watched the West Wing. It was one of my favorite things when they're like, what's next? What's next? What's next? Because when something's done, it's time to move on to the what's next. And you can't do that when you are burdening yourself with blame and shame. That sticks with you and you carry it everywhere you go. But if you can learn

to put that aside for a second and tell the judge in this situation, you need to step back, allow me to look at this situation objectively, and then respond to it, the judge is what makes you react. You want to get rid of that reaction. You want to go into a more contemplative response phase. And so you do these PQ reps, what they call the PQ operating system, is about how you move from a response with your saboteurs, flexing your PQ command muscles through micro-meditations to get to your sage, and then your five sages allow you to respond to a situation. Like I was saying before, achieve whatever that thing is you're setting out to achieve. One of my saboteurs was having a victim mentality when I played the victim, right? Let's just say I have abandonment issues. If I say to one of my kids, hey, do you

want to play a game? This is such a simple but real scenario. Let's play a game. And they say, no, I don't want to do that. I want to be just doing my own thing right now. I may take that personally. Why am I taking that personally? They love me, right? I shouldn't be taking it personally, but it is those childhood traumas that stem from abandonment issues that come up and rejection and trigger that emotional response in me. So the first thing I got to do is get rid of that judge who's telling me that this is a rejection or that this is an abandonment. The judge is the one who's telling me that. And then by putting the judge away, you're able to then focus on the root cause of that

victim response and take yourself from there over to a sage response. Really, it's a pattern interrupt. The psychology behind it is that you're doing a pattern interrupt and you're able to do the interrupt by calling out the archetype that you're dealing with as if it's its own little entity. Then going through your PQ reps, get to the other side and you're ready to move on. So then you're moving into the sage where you're able to pause and step back and maybe see things from a different perspective. Then this helps you react consciously. And there's 10 saboteurs,

the judge and nine accomplices. I've already mentioned a couple. There's five sage powers that exist on the other side that you want to get to. And those five are empathy, exploration, innovation, navigation, and activation. Empathy is having empathy for the person maybe that you're judging, coming at it from an empath, not sympathetic, certainly not apathetic, but from a try to put yourself in their shoes and then imagine what that feeling must be like.

One of the exercises I remember doing was imagining myself as that little boy when that trauma, at least in one of those situations where maybe one of those traumas happened for the first time, let's say. And then having compassion for that child is huge because then when you put the two and two together and you realize, well, that child is me, it helps you to have that compassion for yourself where you're not reacting based on a trauma response, but you're instead now feeling empathy for that person. And with empathy comes understanding and comes a desire to want to help. I heard the other day, a little golden nugget. It was on a TikTok or something. This person put a picture of their younger self at that age and put it on the mirror so they could just throw love to him every morning.

If you're having a hard time with that to remind yourself, you could do something like that. Absolutely. That's a great way of doing it. For me, it was imagining the conversation that I might have with that kid now as an adult, knowing what I know, but what I say in that situation. Huge. Huge. Because the next sage power that you go to from that empathy is explore. And explore requires you to have the mind of a child. huge because the next sage power that you go to from that empathy is explorer and explorer requires

you to have the mind of a child to walk into a situation not with any kind of preconceived notions but to walk into it excited remember when you were a child and you'd actually be excited about something you don't see that as much anymore as an adult so you got to try to remember what that was like and it means you have no preconceived notions. You do away with the dogma. You do away with the things that people have told you this is how you're supposed to think, act, be, etc. Really approach it from a pure joy and exploration. And then innovation is all about creative thinking. I tried doing this in the past. Maybe I could try something different. Navigation is about how do you navigate through those choices and figure out what's the right thing to do.

And then activate is actually activating that choice. And I'm not ashamed to say that I've gone through this thought process in my head, getting out of bed in the morning, trying to get myself to go to the gym. And some days I'm successful and some days I'm not, but I'm not going to allow myself to judge myself for it. I'm going through the process. The more I do this, the easier it becomes because I'm building up those muscles, right? Mentally. And in order to get myself in the gym and rebuild my muscles physically, I need to go

through this process too and get better at this process. And that's okay. So, you know, I'll go through this whole thing and get to activation. And if the only thing I can activate that morning is my empathy for not being able to do it, okay. But the goal still needs to be to do it, right? You can't let go of the goal is to get to the gym on a regular basis, let's say. It's for things as simple as that, changing small behaviors that have big impact. Positive intelligence can be good for it too.

I think a lot of people who have been guests on my shows, you're searching for healing and when something resonates with you and it works, you're searching for healing. And when something resonates with you and it works, you want to share that with others. You know, like you wanted to share that with your kids. You went through the process of doing that program. And then now, which you haven't just done that. You've done many other things. You became a coach. You've learned Reiki. You've done many other things you became a coach you've learned reiki you've done lots of things and you are always speaking and investigating and working and you're one of the only people i can message if i happen to come across an article about a mummy that was found that's like a million years old whatever i'm open to it all conspiracy theories i know they're fun right i mean yeah it

is fun larger questions in the world that you definitely feel like you want to explore it's that childlike exploration yeah that's actually kind of the theme of the i wrote a children's book value of a stick and that's one of the themes of it is childlike exploration using your imagination. They don't have any electronics and they're hiking through the woods. And so all the different things that they can come up with using this technique. This is awesome that you made this spot. Why did you want to do that? The reasons that we were talking about earlier.

I was just talking to my sister earlier today and she was like, you know, my friends think it is the thing that burned me out. You have to find that balance. Otherwise, when I'm making it my life, it burned me out. And I saw I missed the value. I missed what it was like to be a kid, just hiking through the woods. And kudos to people who do that all the time. I think it's absolutely wonderful. I lost it, right? And then I do it again and put myself back out in nature. By the way, one of the most healing things you can do for yourself. So that's one of the reasons I wrote it, to try to reconnect people with childhood and to give parents, I mean, it's a children's book for kids birth to five, right? So it's to help remind parents, bring their kids to be in nature, reinforce imagination.

It's one of the best tools you can give a child is to teach them how to use their imagination, use critical thought. And even with going back around to positive intelligence again, too, because, you know, I was just on a call the other day with the leadership team at Positive Intelligence, and they were talking about how we have physical fitness in our schools. We don't have mental fitness in our schools. Oh, my God. Can you imagine? let's say positive intelligence, but just mental fitness in general. I know. We, as adults, create a system in schools that's reactionary. When something happens,

we have to react to the situation. And then there's legalities in that reaction to the situation. And also the priority. We don't prioritize our mental health. Can you imagine if we taught basic mental fitness? Amazing. Michael, things have to change.

I would love to see it become, honestly, a curriculum in school. Whole subject. Higher day, packed back to back with everything. And then the sports and activities after, you know, in band and all that kind of stuff after school that there seems to hardly be any time to breathe. But isn't that one of the reasons we need it the most because we're creating situations for our children where they are anxieties are so big because they have to get their homework done.

They have these tests they have to study for. They have this game coming up that they have to practice for. They have these other things that are going on outside of that and family responsibilities at home that they have to tend to. of empathy and exploration and innovation and how to navigate the world and activate those choices that make a positive difference. We can do a better job teaching that than I think we'll start raising kids with a healthier mindset. If you ever think of a way that I can help in any way to put positive intelligence in schools, shoot, I'll do whatever I can. I'm on your team.

But there's a lot of healing for us parents too that we've had to go through and that we're going through. I'm a student for life, you are too. And what are you doing in your coaching program and how can you help if somebody wants to learn this? I appreciate the question. Yeah. So let me take a step back for a second to answer that. I was laid off from my job along with 150 other people. And when that happened, I took a deep breath and shed the weight and it's scary and it's hard to figure out what you're going to do. But it was in that moment that I thought to myself, okay, for the next 10, 15, 20 years, what is ago, I was saying to my wife, I do not want to die at my desk over some argument, have a heart attack because some important deliverable was missed. Or because I was working until midnight.

The have-to-do-more-or-less mentality that just squeezes blood from that stone over and over and over and over again. And it was in a place where I was sacrificing everything in my life for the job. So when I just was trying to think of what I wanted to do, I had to think about what were those things that I did experience in my life that brought me the most contentment and happiness. I coached kids at my alma mater for about 15 years. There's a coaching program that they do called the Coaching for Leadership and Teamwork program, where you're teaching incoming freshmen and juniors, for the most part, how to work on teams. You're teaching them organizational behavior strategies. You're teaching them how to do elevator pitches, right? And I say teaching, really it's coaching. They're learning, they're doing the work. You're giving them the tips and tricks and techniques to improve so that they can go through

their improvement process. And I loved coaching. There was three things. I wanted to start a coaching practice. I wanted to write a book because it's always been a love of mine. And I started with the blog and everything, like you said, but I wanted to write a children's book. This is actually the second children's book I've written, but the first one I've published. I have another children's book I've written that we're working on right now. And I bought a franchise and I'm going to open up a franchise called Pure Green here in town. This was started a few years back as a way to bring healthier food into communities. It was the vision of the CEO, Ross Franklin.

So I will be the first Pure Green here in New England when we open, and I'm really excited to bring it to the community. And that was my expression of healthy body, mind, and spirit. There you go. Three things, bringing it kind of full circle back to the beginning of our conversation about that holy trinity, body, mind, and spirit, coaching for the mind. The book was my spiritual gift, so to speak, to the world, that along with the other things that I've been writing and the body aspect comes from giving this restaurant to the community. So in my coaching practice, I don't have room for many clients, but the ones that I do bring on, I would love to be working with men with depression.

He has men have a very hard time vocalizing when we need something. And I'm generalizing. There's a lot of sensitive guys out there. I'm a sensitive guy and I don't have a problem saying what I need to say, but it's ingrained as part of our upbringing that, you know, men need to be strong. We need to be quiet about our emotions. Similar to a lot of the negative stereotype reinforcement around women that you hear, and children. We create the society in which we stifle each other,

as opposed to listening to each other and helping each other. But when I was at my lowest of low, two weeks locked away in my basement, my only saving grace was that my wife would have my kids come downstairs to wake me up and say good morning and come downstairs and say goodnight and kiss me goodnight. And that was my saving grace. They probably saved my life. But by the time I finally got myself to say, I need to do something about this. I found my reason to get help. I called around and three-month wait list. I'm like, I can't keep doing this for three months. So I practice a speech and I walked into different behavioral health centers because I didn't know what to say when I got in there. So I practiced a little speech. My name is Mike Blumberg. I am suffering from severe depression right now. I've been locked in my basement for two weeks

and I can't keep doing this. I need help. One of them actually looked at me and said, would you like medicated or unmedicated? Do I also want fries with that? I mean, you tell me, I don't know what I need. I just know know i need help and it was so beyond me how they were so ill-equipped to at a behavioral health center empathy no deal with somebody walking in saying i need help so i am not equipped to deal with somebody in that stage but when somebody has reached the stage where they are getting help and they are working to get better and they're coming up with strategies with their therapist, I, as a coach, want to be there to help you, using positive intelligence, navigate your way back to a

positive mental health experience. It's important to me that people be working with a therapist because I am not that. But I know from my experiences being in therapy that I didn't always have the easiest time figuring out how to work on the things that the therapist wanted me to work on. So having that added coach level is that value add that I would bring to the table. And if I can help anyone, but because it's so personal to me, if I can help another dad out

there who's choosing between taking their own life or taking a step to figure out how to make more sage decisions as opposed to sabotaging decisions, then that's when people can reach out to me. And if anybody feels like they could benefit from positive intelligence, then you can check out their website at positiveintelligence.com. Or if you want to reach out to me as a coach, you can find me at imperfectactionllc.com. Everything that you've learned, you just want other people to experience that joy and that freedom. Michael, thank you so much. I just appreciate you so much coming on and sharing and for being my friend and for always supporting Sense of Soul.

Thank you, Shanna. I really appreciate it. Thanks for listening to Sense of Soul Podcast. And thanks to our special guests for joining me. If you want more of Sense of Soul, check out my website at www.mysenseofsoul.com, where you can work with me one- one or help support Sons of Soul podcast by donating to my coffee fund. Thanks for listening.