The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Overcoming Depression: Mike Wood’s Journey to Healing and Helping

Episode Date: May 25, 2025

Overcoming Depression: Mike Wood's Journey to Healing and Helping About the Guest(s): Mike is the Chief Operating Officer of a $90 million-a-year construction company based in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also a mental wellness advocate who has developed a 10-week program aimed at helping individuals overcome anxiety and depression. Mike's journey through personal struggles with disability, anxiety, and depression led him to create "Learn to Love Being You," a course designed to help participants take control of their thoughts, emotions, and heal from past traumas. Driven by a passion for mental health, Mike offers this transformative program to anyone in need, regardless of their financial situation. Episode Summary: In this enlightening episode of The Chris Voss Show, host Chris Voss engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Mike, the COO of a major construction company and mental wellness advocate. Having battled personal demons, Mike shares his profound journey through anxiety and depression, revealing the inception of his transformative 10-week program, "Learn to Love Being You." The episode dives deep into understanding the subconscious mind's influence on mental health, offering listeners a roadmap to peace and joy. Throughout the episode, Mike explains the mechanics of the subconscious mind, its role in shaping behavior, and its unintended impact on mental health. He shares actionable steps that individuals can take to reframe negative thought patterns, transform past trauma into a peaceful present, and ultimately escape the depths of anxiety and depression. With a blend of personal anecdotes, expert insights, and humor, this episode serves as a beacon of hope for those grappling with mental health challenges. Join Chris and Mike on this educational rollercoaster as they unravel the mysteries of the mind and illuminate pathways to healing. Key Takeaways: Mike’s journey from depression to creating a transformative mental wellness program called "Learn to Love Being You." The subconscious mind's role in triggering anxiety and depression through its protective mechanisms. The importance of reframing negative thoughts and past traumas to foster mental peace and joy. Effective strategies and exercises to help individuals separate their identity from intrusive thoughts. The significance of dedicating daily time to mental health practices to achieve long-lasting benefits. Notable Quotes: "The subconscious mind is supposed to protect us, but doesn't know the difference between physical danger and things we identify with." "We can transform past traumatic experiences by reframing them with love, compassion, and forgiveness." "Negative thoughts physically alter the chemicals in our brain but can be shifted to positive thoughts." "You have to be ready to heal and face your fears; it takes daily practice and dedication." "If you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of anybody else." Resources: Learn to Love Being You Email Mike at [e-mail]

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries and motivators. Get ready, get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Cause you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain.

Now here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm host Voss here from the Chris Voss Show.com. When there are at least things that makes a fish welcome to the big show. For 16 years, 24 episodes. We bring the Chris Voss show because we, I don't know, we've been slumming and unemployed for 20 years. We had to do something.

So we did the Chris Voss show. So for, what a weird ramble that was. Go to Goodreese.com, Ford says Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Ford says Chris Voss. Chris Voss won the TikTok and Facebook.com, Ford says Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Voss. Chris Voss won the Tik Tok and Facebook.com, Fortress, Chris Voss. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Voss show. Some guests to the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. We have a wonderful young man we're going to be talking to today about some of his insights,

his experience in life. He's a gentleman who's controlled it, or created a 10, he probably controls it too. He's created a 10 week program that helps people with anxiety and depression. Wow. That's pretty much 57 years of my life. It's designed to help people take control of their thoughts and emotions and heal from their past pain and trauma. I need something that will heal me from my future pain and trauma, because people keep bringing it. Anyway, that's a different story. I teach people how the subconscious mind works, and he teaches them, I don't,

and how to make it work for you instead of against you. Because that subconscious mind, that ego mind, that can really work against you sometimes. It's pretty evil sometimes. You gotta keep it in line line or else it makes trouble. You have the 10-week, he has a 10-week program called Learn to Love Being You. Some of you I've learned to hate, but that's a different story. And it's a program where you can take and talk about different topics.

He's the COO of a $90 million a year construction company in Nashville, Tennessee. And he struggled with diabetes, disability and anxiety and depression his whole life. And, and now he's overcoming it. He's on a mission to help others find peace and joy. Welcome to the show. How are you, Mike? I'm great, Chris. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming. We really appreciate it. And it sounds like you have quite the journey story to tell. So we'll get in the load out of it. Give us your dot coms wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs. Learn to love being you.com. That's my website where you can find the program that we'll be talking about today.

And so give us a 30,000 overview of what's, what you do there and how it works. I guess right now, you know, my day to day day to day is I'm working on this program trying to develop it and try to market get it out to the world. I've spent the last two and a half years creating it taking people through it and it's evolved over the last couple years but it's it's just been an amazing thing for me to to be able to not only overcome anxiety and depression myself, which was a great thing, of course, for me, but to be able to help somebody else do the same thing has been life-altering.

And I've had a handful of folks go through this program, and I've just been blown away about their response and how they've reacted to really the same process that I went through. It's all obviously been changed. A lot of theft from Buddhism and a lot of deep mental work on the subconscious mind and just learning how to break it down into simple procedures and simple understanding of it because it is extremely complicated and most people don't realize how our subconscious mind controls our lives. Oh yeah.

Tell us about how it controls your lives. What's that mechanism originally for? What is it supposed to do that's supposed to be helpful? That's a great question because it's supposed to, it's designed to protect us. Yeah. It's designed to help keep us alive. So if I was a two-year-old little boy walking along the edge of a pool and I fell in it would be if I got saved and pulled out of there and I realized that

I almost suffocated and died the subconscious mind would hold that memory as a fearful negative memory and it would store it at a high level. So the next time that little two-year- old was walking along the edge of the pool, it wouldn't forget. Yeah. And fall in again. That's what it's designed to do. The problem is, is the subconscious mind doesn't know the difference between your physical self and something that we identify with. If I identify as a COO and somebody tells me I'm a shitty COO, I probably would take offense to that, have a physical response, because my subconscious mind

is trying to defend me the same way it was trying to help protect the two-year-old. And those two things don't, they don't equate. So I think we're evolving as a human species beyond this mechanism. And we just have to learn how it works now to just make it work for us instead of against us in so many scenarios. And I think you correct me if I'm wrong, cause you're the pro in research on this, but I've suffered some depression.

I think that's kind of one of the factors of depression where it can really beat us up. Like I've had times in my life where I had to go get medicated twice for anxiety, ADHD, and depression. And my ego mind was just beating the shit out of me. And I just wanted to leave me alone. I think a lot of people self- or, or self exit themselves because they're, they just can't get that mind to shut up. And it, it can, if you let it get out of control, it could beat the crap out of you. And I could tell you exactly where that stuff was coming from. And I could help it actually go away.

And that's the amazing thing about the subconscious mind because It is literally beating you up because something happened to you when you were a small child typically Happen in the in your teenage years early 20s whenever it could happen today Reprogram your subconscious mind, but typically it's when we're young adolescents and something got you in an elevated emotional state and in that state when you get emotional that opens up the subconscious mind to be programmed just like the little two-year-old that I described there's four major things that get programmed in there and they're

leaving you feeling either ugly stupid unlovable or unworthy. You just described my whole Tinder profile. Yeah, a lot of people's I'm guessing. But the great thing about the subconscious mind is once you understand it, everything happened in the present moment. So when you were five years old, I bet if we talked long enough We can go back to a specific moment in your childhood where you experience trauma Then you still have those random thoughts when you think about it from time to time It just doesn't go away something happen in the past you try to shove it down

But it just keeps bubbling back up and you can't never really make it go away Because it happened in the present moment make it go away. Well, because it happened in the present moment, the subconscious mind has no concept of time. So it's still the present moment. It's still happening today, just like it happened when you were five years old. And sometimes it can trigger that fight or flight response, right? Absolutely. If you fell in the pool, just to use that two year old analogy and you fell in the pool and you almost died. And now every time you walk by a pool, you're terrified of that pool. We can literally take you back to when you were two years old, reframe that entire situation

with love, compassion, and forgiveness for everybody involved and take that memory from a fearful experience into a loving, compassionate experience and it'll take it out of the subconscious mind where the subconscious mind will hold on to it anymore to protect you. That's how the process works and all of a sudden it doesn't chase you anymore. I don't like to disparage typical therapy, but a lot of what happens in typical therapy is they walk you back to an old core belief like that,

an experience that was negative and filled with trauma, and then you just talk about it. And it doesn't really go away. You're not alleviating it. It's not going away but if if your parents treated you poorly if you went back to that situation that happened in the present moment and You reframed it with love compassion and forgiveness and forgiveness is the major part of this if you can forgive everyone involved And reframe it with love, compassion, it just goes away. The subconscious mind doesn't hold on to it anymore. It frees you from that moment that happened when you were five that's still haunting you

today because it's still the present moment. It's liberating. I learned how to do this by going to a guy in Nashville, and he helped me probably do it about 70 or 80 times. I've done it now probably over 150 times to myself. And along the process, I figured out how to do this in a writing exercise and created my own writing exercise. This is something that the Buddhists have been doing

for about 2,500 years, but it's just not in the mainstream. I could make some argument on why it's not, because typical therapy would go away, because it literally frees people from their past pain. That depression that chases you, that has all of a sudden, you don't know why you just wake up some mornings and you just feel like the world is falling apart. Your stomach feels horrible.

Your mind is racing with negative thoughts and you just want it to be quiet. It's coming from the past. Anxiety now, it's coming from the future. And that's relatively easy to make go away. The anxiety is relatively easy to go away, make to go away. But the depression, it's a path. It's going to take a couple years.

But if you dug in and rewrote a core belief once a week for the next two years, the depression that people have today, if it was an eight and a half, it would be down to a two or a three in two years. It just takes time. It didn't happen overnight. So it's going to take a long time to address those issues and get it back to something manageable. Pete Slauson And you help people do that through the work that you do. On your website, you've got a, let's see, it's a course. Tell us more about the course and how it works and how you interact with it.

It's 10 weeks. Yeah, absolutely. So the first three weeks are really tools that help you, it helps you learn where peace and joy is found. You know, we talk about the difference between a belief and a knowing and I try to make it a knowing. I don't want to just tell somebody and then say, hey I need you to believe this Chris, just because I said it. The course is designed to where people will have a physical experience just like we know we're talking here. We don't believe we're talking. We know

we're talking right now. We're talking? Yeah. I think we are. And so in week one, we teach them how to bring their attention into the present moment. And it turns off the noise of the future, the noise of the past, and in the present moment that is where peace and joy is found. And it's hard to maintain that because the mind is going to constantly want to pull you back into the future and pull you back into the past. But in week one you really just learn a handful of tools that bring your attention into the present moment. Week two, it shifts

into learning how to separate you from your thoughts. And it's a very powerful thing for a lot of people because most people think those negative thoughts that are intrusive in our minds are coming from us and they're not. We are the witness of our thoughts and if you know, I've got a basically something I learned from the Buddhist here a while back that you go into a meditative state and a guided meditation and when you realize that you're thinking about what you're supposed to be doing in the morning or something else when your brain starts to go and you come back to that meditation, if you hold on to that moment for a second when you realize you're supposed to be paying attention to the meditation but you also have that thought there now you have two things sitting there that you're paying attention to who's paying attention to both of those things yeah that's you that's the true self the witness you're the you're witnessing these thoughts and you start the more you focus on that particular moment in the meditation

it it creates separation between you and your thoughts and then you start to realize hey these thoughts aren't mine they're just coming from old past trauma and and then in the following week you learn how to basically grab those thoughts now that you've got a little separation between them and reframe negative ones with positive positivity because negative thoughts physically have a Chemical reaction in our brain they create Cortisol in our brain and if we just shift those negative thoughts into positive thoughts They'll start creating another drug called oxytocin that most people don't know about, but it's a love drug. And we can physically alter the chemicals in our brain

by the content of our thoughts, which is an amazing thing. And so by the end of week three, everybody that's gone through the course becomes extremely sensitive to negativity in their minds. And then it becomes sensitive around them like with their friends, their family, their coworkers and they have to physically start addressing it. Sometimes they have to push people out of their lives, sometimes they have to have difficult conversations with their spouse or their friends because the negativity is too much and it's

having a negative impact on their well-being and their ability to maintain a calm, peaceful state of mind. And then once you kind of get a hold of your environment and what's going on in your mind, there's some, the next couple of weeks of the program are really perspective changes that allow people to get familiar with the true self, really learn what it means to love being you. Most people have no idea what that truly means. What does it mean?

Or give us a tease out of what that means. Sure. You know, if you take your best friend, I don't know who your best friend is. I don't have any friends, no one likes me. All right, like my wife, my wife is my best friend. And if my wife is going to leave, you know, her body and my care, how would I take care of my wife?

Oh, no, I would I would work out for when I looked in the mirror. I would say she's beautiful, you know Okay, I would I would do I would fall I would chase her dreams I would I would do everything I could to take care of her life in the best possible way, but Am I doing those things for myself? Oh So is it the concept? Sorry to interrupt you. Is it the concept of you need to put your oxygen mask first on the plane before you help others?

I use that phrase in my, in the PowerPoints that I teach because that is, that is the truth. If you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of anybody. You can't share something if you don't, if you're a buckets empty. That's exactly right. If you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of anybody. You can't share something if you know if you're a bucket Something that's exactly right. So that's beautiful. Yeah, that's that that is basically A build-up to the to the later parts of the program where we actually physically begin to heal So then the it's the attachments that we have And I kind of described that in the beginning, if I'm a shitty COO and somebody attacks that,

that's something that we've, it's a manmade ego that we've decorated ourselves with. The subconscious mind is now gonna protect that the same way that it does the physical self. And so I did this, the first time I did this was about four or five years ago. And I took politics off myself, my Christmas tree. I took that ornament off my Christmas tree.

I took a sports fan. I still watch football and I still watch basketball, but I don't identify with a team because I'm not miserable for Wednesday every week. I'm a Raiders fan. I've been miserable for 20 fucking years But it's so much more enjoyable now to watch the Titans game because I don't care about the outcome It's an it's an enjoyable game I don't identify as being a Titans fan and it's a simple little thing to take off of there. But when I took politics off, that was such a big deal.

I stopped watching politics when I went home. I stopped arguing politics. I didn't care. Now when I seen a bumper sticker that went against my beliefs, my life just got better when I started taking things off. It probably contributes to depression a little by 15 years. Pete Slauson It absolutely does.

Pete Slauson Because you feel like you're losing, you know, like when the Raiders lose, I feel like I'm losing as a person. Pete Slauson Yes. Your subconscious mind thinks you are. Pete Slauson Oh, wow. That's a good point. I didn't think about that because it was subconscious to see what I did there. Yeah, but that makes sense. Tell us about your journey. How did you go, you know, how did you go through depression and some of the issues you were dealing with? When did it start? Tell us kind of the journey of your life, the story of your life. And when did you start having

the aha moments of recognizing some of the experiences you were having because of, you know, what was going on? You know, I grew up in a with a single mom, you know, I'm well aware in LA County and I have a rare form of dyslexia that made it to where I, I graduated high school with a second grade reading level. I learned how to read when I was about 25 years old and I still struggle with reading comprehension. Really? And that was a source of a lot of pain. So my subconscious mind was programmed with your stupid, a lot of it. You probably have some teachers or people in your family maybe that kind of treat you as a stupid sub child sort of thing.

Yes, absolutely. My first core memory that I went back to was my kindergarten teacher got pissed off and frustrated at me because I couldn't spell my name. And that was the first time I realized that I was different than everybody else. And you know, my, my, I go by Mike, but I went by Mike because my teacher, I couldn't spell Michael. And so she just said, just spell Mike, see if you can do that. I went from Michael to Mike because she sounds great. Yeah, she was frustrated, you know, but hey I went back to that moment

I forgave her with compassion love forgiveness and it doesn't haunt me anymore. I am from that moment That's good. Yeah, it is. It's it's really powerful and it's very healthy. It's liberating but that That's part of my journey. You know, I I struggled a lot with relationships and a lot of it was surrounding by a lot of that stuff. I had some other core beliefs, you know, looking up to my dad and my dad was, he loved big, but I shouldn't have been looking up to him. He had, he was married, had a second wife and strippers on the side kind of guy. He wasn't a role model, but I had some core

beliefs looking up to him that kind of led me down a bad road with relationships for a while. And I had to rewrite some of those core beliefs and really, you know, having the courage to go and face those, those, you know, look at myself and say, I was growing up and realizing that, you know, where's this coming from? Why am I making these unconscious choices? Cause that's how they felt. Sometimes you pick the wrong people too. When you carry trauma, your trauma bond with the wrong people. Cause they have trauma and you have trauma. And it's kind of, it's kind of two people come together going, Hey, I got a box of broken glass that I play with. And the other person, I had a box of razor blades. Let's see if we can make this relationship

work. And it exactly just by the tenants. Yeah. The yogis would say we're both on a low vibration with and the person I had a box of razor blades let's see if we can make this relationship work and exactly just by the tenants yeah the yogis would say we're both on a low vibration and that's what we're attracted to each other yeah you always want to increase that vibration because you know you're never going to climax without it wait what i don't know what that means i always think it's funny when you say that. We get a lot of applications to the show, like hundreds a month, and a lot of women like to talk about vibration because they're connected in a different way and they have a different style of applying their lives than men do. And so they're always in that vibration stuff and I'm always, I turn my head a little bit

and go, what'd you say? And I know what they're talking about. Chris Larkin The low hanging fruit. Dave Korsun It's good for a joke. Yeah. I hit all the low hanging fruit jokes on the show. That's pretty much the show. In fact, we should probably call it the low hanging fruit joke show at this point because

Chris will hit- Chris Larkin If you can't laugh, we ain't got nothing, man. Dave Korsun That's true in full entertainment. You make people laugh and you can't laugh, we ain't got nothing, man. That's true. Info entertainment. You make people laugh and you can get anything by them. So how did you first have that aha moment where you're like, I think I suffer from depression or I think I have some issues. I'm going to change. And what steps did you take?

We were building this company. We went from 12, I was the 12th employee. We were doing about two and a half million dollars a year and we were building this company. We went from 12, I was the 12th employee. We were doing about two and a half million dollars a year and we were on this massive growth curve. And right now we're doing about $90 million a year with 320 employees. And we're in the middle of that, we had a pretty rough patch where we had to just,

we were just getting too big, too fast. We didn't have systems. We were messing up contracts. We just needed to clean house. We were just getting too big, too fast. We didn't have systems. We were messing up contracts. We just needed to clean house. I dove in being a firefighter. I'm number two here at Jarrett. I dove in trying to fix all the problems.

Six months later, there wasn't anything else to fix. We had revamped the whole company and I just started looking inward and saying, how did I screw up? What can I do better? And I just went from this intense focus on the company to try to figure out how to make it right. And I turned it all inward. And I started meditating about two or three hours a day, started consuming about 15 to 20 books on Audible a month, and just got just consumed with trying to get better and be better. And I came across a guy, Chris Hancock in Nashville, and he was an energy therapist.

And at the time, I discovered if I put a crystal in my hand, it would make my hand vibrate and I could feel the energies in my hand. That's kind of cool or whatever. But the cool thing about it was when I would feel the energy in my hand vibrating My brain would turn off my thoughts would turn off that internal focus on my hand Make my brain stop so I would start using that as like a daily meditation and meetings and whatever I just carry a rock around and and pay attention to the vibration in my hand and it would quiet my mind So I started using that as a as a tool and so then I'm just

looking up, I don't even remember how I found it, but I found an energy therapist online and it was Chris Hancock and he's the guy who showed me the process of how to go back and reframe old past trauma and pain, reframe it with love, compassion, forgiveness, and then you can be healed from it. And once I started, I got about 20 in, I wasn't even the same person. I was experiencing life in a different way. And from there, life just, once you get a certain level of affirmation that you're on the right path and we're on the right path and run the right course

it's just it's It's amazing where probably oh My gosh man Chris if I could bottle up the way that I feel in my chest and my body Sometimes I'd be a billionaire if I can bottle up and sell it sometimes that doesn't last a hundred percent of the time But thirty forty percent of my days. I'm sitting in my chair blissfully Feeling the energies in my body and just the mind is quiet and and the here come the thoughts will come back And then if I just take internal focus and focus back it all just blooms and blossoms back out I just I just feel wonderful all the time. Yes, that's great It's such an amazing feeling that I just want to share it with the world

That's why I'm here today is because I I feel like I could share this with the world This is this is actionable items that you could you can take these are steps that everybody can take and Have the same type of success. I have everybody's pathway is different had the same type of success I had. Everybody's pathway is different, but these are very simple logical steps that are in this program that could help anybody help quiet their mind from the pain of the past that you were describing, that you went through.

That stuff is quietable. It is something we don't have to just live with. We can make that stuff go away. And probably being aware is probably half the battle. Being aware that this is how that works and the stuff you do in it and all that sort of good stuff. So what kind of client qualifies to work for you or what client-client do you typically work with?

Do they even need to have a minimum net worth, a minimum spend, all those sort of things as to how people can work with you, etc. etc. I'm getting to the point where my time is limited, so I'm not working with as many people as individuals. But I'll say this, my program is $500. But if anybody can't afford $500, if they'll just send me an email to mike at learn to love BU.com. I will work with anybody. Wow. You know, I work with anybody that that part of the of the deal is going to be put up on my website. My website's fairly new. I've only had it up for a couple weeks now and it's it's still evolving. But I definitely want to work with anybody. As far as working with me as an individual, if somebody wants to work with me personally, I would be happy to, but they just have to reach out to me at Mike at learntolovebeingyou.com. But the website, as far as somebody qualified

and somebody, the prime candidate, I'll say this, Chris, from the people who have gone through it and dedicated an hour a day of their life, it 100% helps everyone who's willing to dedicate that much time. But the life is, you know, it sucks portion of life when you get depressed. Like it has to really suck for you to want to work an hour a day. If you don't have that type of motivation, don't spend the money, because this isn't a deal where you can spend 500 bucks,

play around for an hour and you're gonna be good. It has to be a daily practice of an hour a day. If you miss a little bit, you can get back on that horse and you can keep the process going, but you have to be ready to heal. You have to be ready to put in the energy it takes to get this done. Pete Slauson Most definitely. Most definitely. So, good people,

the dot coms, how can they reach out to get to know better as we close out the show? Anything more we need to know as well, Phil? Phil Yeah, learntolovebeingyou.com is how you find us and willing to work with anybody who is trying. If you can't afford $500, please just send me an email at Mike at LearnToLoveBeingYou.com and I'm happy to work with anybody. I want everybody on the planet to have access to this. I don't want finances to be a hindrance. It does work for everyone. You just have to be willing to put in the work and have some courage to be able to face your fears.

Yeah. I mean, so there's a lot of people who self-harm themselves and commit suicide and stuff because the depression overwhelms them. That brain, you know, I've been almost to that point where I was in depression after my dog died and your brain is just whipping you so hard. The only out you feel is that you got to shut it off. You don't care anymore because you're just tired of being beaten up every day by your brain.

And so, yeah, depression kills and maybe some people turn to drugs or alcohol or other different remedies to cope, but that's not really the right thing to do because you're not coping with the problem You're just creating actually more problems for yourself usually. Yeah, people definitely want to You know work on that. So thank you very much for coming the show. We really appreciate it Mike. Thank you Yeah, absolutely. Thank you Chris. I appreciate the time Let me get this message out and appreciate you making me laugh as well. That's what we do. The low hanging fruit jokes. Yes, sir. I'm gonna, I'm gonna call myself the

low hanging fruit comedian. I think it's kind of catchy. Thank you for coming on. Thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, Chris Foss 1 on the TikTok, any else crazy place the internet. Be good to each other, stay safe, we'll see you next time. And that should have us out.