Become Truly Unbroken | with River Faire

Michael: River Faire, welcome to the podcast, my friend. How are you today?

River: I'm well, thanks for having me on the show, Michael.

Michael: I'm very excited to have you on. You and I had a bit of a conversation as the lead up to this and your story, your journey is really remarkable. But before we get into that, I'd love to know if you were to describe your childhood in one word, what word would that be?

River: Confusing.

Michael: I think that probably holds true for many people. Can you go into that for us? I'd love to know how you landed at that word.

River: And we may not find our way to that in this session and it's on some level irrelevant, but I am what the word that I would choose to use most often now is, intuitive, insensitive. I don't like those clunky words of clairvoyant, clairaudient, but as someone who has pretty much their whole life seen energy and paranormal events that other people would not consider real or in my childhood did not corroborate that made that very confusing. These things that I see or feel or hear, nobody else apparently sees. And so that put me into a place of I either need to censor this or, and not that kids don't get that a lot in general, but my reality as a sensitive was clearly different than other people's. So that was something to navigate. Like, my mom used to tell stories is it took her a while to figure this out, but I would describe people. It's the color I was seeing around them, the red man the yellow man. And that didn't make sense to anybody. They had vision tested that he's colorblind. I'm like, no, he's just seeing energy. So confusing is the word that I'm choosing for childhood.

Michael: Yeah. That's fascinating. And empathic, not having words for it then obviously was, and having some really outer world, outer. Body experiences at a young age. I actually resonate with that a lot. I've shared this story before, but I would see ghosts as a kid and they were as real as the day as long. Now that's something that people who've never experienced that ago. Oh you're crazy, or it must've been childhood trauma. And I'm like, no, I know what I saw like at a 100 percent with certainty. So, I actually appreciate that. One of the things that I think about a lot in this journey is sometimes those ideas about confusion, those ideas about what people tell us is right or wrong or true or false can shape our narrative and our understanding of who we are, which in a lot of ways is not always necessarily for the better. So, you know, being in this position where you're, is he colorblind or what is happening here or whatever that thing might be, how did you navigate that as a kid? Like, how do you, how does a child who has this intuitiveness and this ability to see the world in ways that most people do not? Like, how do you navigate the confusion?

River: I think you mentioned the word for yourself, empathic, and that goes part and parcel with being a sensitive or an intuitive or whatever word we want to use for that. And as a highly sensitive child and still being. I just learned to morph. It's okay, this is not acceptable or approved. So just mute that. We don't talk about that. Also, what you just said we in our family of origin, I happen to be adopted, so it doesn't matter if it's your adoptive family or not, our family of origin, we really quickly. We assimilate the messages and the teaching and everything else of what it means to survive in this family or get love in this family or be approval. And all of that forms our initial identity. So, in navigating something that other people aren't seeing or isn't real to them, okay that doesn't fit with this map of the world and this family. So, cancel that, censor that, and just pretend. Pretend to be normal, which is, what most people are trying to do through most of their life. Although normal, what is normal? It doesn't exist. The myth of normal.

Michael: Yeah, so true. It doesn't exist. And I think the more that you try to put yourself into that box of normal, the more difficult life is going to be for you. One of the things that we share as a commonality as well as being adopted my scenario was, 12 years old, my grandmother came and found me an abandoned house and she ended up adopting me. And that in its own right caused a tremendous amount of problems in my life. Looking at life as a lack of worth as a lack of validity that I didn't matter, that I wasn't important, that I didn't deserve love was a really interesting thing to navigate. What was it like for you?

River: Just hearing you speak, of course that forms, I'm going to speak for you and then I'll answer the question for me, the belief that forms around that, I think mine is the same, but different earlier pre verbal is that I'm broken. I'm unlovable. I'm unfixable. I'm not wanted, et cetera, whatever the story is that we create about that. And that becomes our map of reality for the rest of life until we essentially rewire that map. For me being adopted at like 13 days, a similar map, even though his pre verbal, I happen to know that I passed through several foster homes before being placed with my family, but for pre verbal infant there, that's still capital T-trauma, micro trauma or micro trauma. I, you were never breastfed. You're just moving from one place to the next. And even though that's pre verbal, some part of you forms a map. These, and I didn't discover this till much, much later in years of therapy, the pre verbal map is, wow, I must be really broken. I must be unlovable. I must be, something must be so horribly wrong with me. So, my strategy in life then was to be perfect. If I'm perfect in every way, the good little boy, if I excel in everything, maybe I won't be given up. I'll be worthy of love, and again, these are our childhood maps, but they run the show until, somehow, we have enough awareness later in life, hopefully to say, what if that isn't really true? Or what if that doesn't serve me anymore? And then how do I go about rewiring this map that is really out of date?

Michael: And that is a, especially at such a young age. If you look at the research, babies who are not held die. Babies who are not taken care of and nurtured, they die. And sometimes you get just enough to survive, but then what happens and, I'm not putting words in your mouth, but going down this path of seeking perfection for love, for support, for stability, that becomes a really interesting Not only kind of golden handcuffs because at one in one way, it makes you excel, but in the other way, it destroys your life, but it creates a false sense of self love and worth. For me, it was the kind of the opposite. I was like, how much more fucked up can I be in the hope that you'll pay attention to me?

River: Different strategy, but acting out of that same sort of, yeah. What feels like the core wound or what arguably is the core wound?

Michael: Yes, absolutely. And what's so interesting about those core wounds is they also shape everything that we understand about the world, how we appear to other people, how we appear to ourself, how we navigate conversation and conflict, love, health, wealth, relationships, and here's the most difficult part about this, and I don't know if this was true for you, but it wasn't until In the depth of doing the work and the realization of the pain of that whole of that wound was it was, I came to understand how much, not only did I need to go down a healing journey, but how much that wound was keeping me from so much abundance in life. In your journey of that healing and you brought up therapy what was the transverse of that experience of recognizing that wound and then walking down the path of healing?

River: I have a curious upbringing. I was placed in a really loving family, even though that fractured at about five years. My adoptive mother actually then became a psychotherapist and married another psychotherapist. So I grew up in California with two therapists as my parents. And I got to get a longer show that doomed me to any sort of normal upbringing. Wow, why can't my stepdad just be a therapist? Be a dentist, right? Or my mom just got to analyze me every day. I'm not analyzing. Yes, you are. And it wasn't until I was really an adult and they were both gone that I realized what a tremendous gift that was actually to grow up in a household with that sort of awareness, but because they were therapists, I always had a therapist from early age and they were, of course you can't talk to us. You don't want to talk to us. And all of their friends were therapists and my friend's parents were therapists and that was my Southern California world. And I thought that was normal until I went off to college and the people like, you have a therapist. What's wrong with you? What do you mean you don't have a therapist? What's wrong with you? Where I was going with that is that from a very, adolescent age, and at the same time, also trying to figure out my sexuality and realizing, Oh, wow, I think I'm gay and all these other things, I always had a therapist. And so, there was from a really early state, apart from just being an empath and sensitive, a lot of self-awareness going on. The caveat, I will say. What I always say with my coaching clients and in videos and my own podcast is we have to have. Like self-awareness is the key ring that holds all of the keys. You've got to have the self-awareness and yet awareness, and I'm sure you know this from your own journey, awareness itself of the core wound of the story doesn't shift it. I can talk about my story forwards and backwards and bullshitted and inside out and upside down and through. And if I wanted to bullshit my way through a therapist session early on, I could, the awareness of the story doesn't shift it, it's useful, it's a first step. We've got to have that awareness, okay. This is the map, and then we have to figure out ways or get tools. How do I shift the map? How do I update the map? I use that term map is I think it's the best description of how we form reality in that family of origin, and it determines really everything until we start to see, Oh, this is like looking through a certain pair of glasses. And what if I changed the glasses? There is no reality other than how we perceive the world. But when we're perceiving the world from that place of seeming brokenness. And I'm very deliberate about that word, our seeming brokenness, because in my view, we aren't broken, but we definitely feel that way. And most of my experience my whole life was, wow, I'm broken, I can mask this really well. I'm a highly functioning individual and super smart and very articulate and all these things. And I can mask this but deep inside I'm really broken. And that's what I'm. That part of that awareness just came from the unique situation I had growing up, right? You get put on a self-awareness path very early, and it put me on a very different trajectory. And I realized that it is a very different journey than most people are on.

Michael: Yeah, I actually relate to that a lot. Minus the whole having parents thing. I had to get yeah. At that, I found myself in therapy at a very young age after having some sexual abuse in the church at very young age. My mom, even though we never publicly, we never talked about it, but immediately she just threw me in therapy and we never had a discussion about anything that ever happened, but I would find myself in this therapist's office for, it might be one of the few redeeming moments of my childhood in correlation with my mother and in connection with her because it got to the point where at seven years old, I was so violent, like I was fighting other, like I, I remember this vividly. I stabbed a kid with a fork in school and you're like, that's not normal seven-year-old behavior. And I found myself in that thing. And you talk about this, the shift that starts to happen through awareness, even at those young of age, like I remember being aware of who I was and what I was, the circumstances, the situations. But what's really interesting to me, and the reason I'm bringing this up is that I started to dumb down that awareness because of intelligence, because of the ability to navigate the world in a different way than these other kids. There's a very weird thing that happens when you get bullied for being smart. You actually learn how to like dumb yourself down. And so I did that for a long time. And then you add in drugs and alcohol and partying. I go look at my life in my twenties. Now it's a complete disaster, even though I'm successful in business, ‘cause I'm a high functioning, crazy person at 26 years old. And what I found was there was this shift, and I think there's an inevitability that takes place when you decide to remove the mask. Because you said that self awareness brings to your attention, but it's not the thing that shifts the story. I think the thing that shifts the story is your willingness to assess and acknowledge the role that you play in your own life. And it's almost like a Ouroboros. And in fact, what I believe it comes and closes the circle of self awareness because now you're looking at your life, what shifts had to happen in your life? And what is the before and after of like these masks that you wore? What did that, that look like in that transition?

River: I'm going to, it is a very interesting question and it, I want to find my way to integrity in a moment, but masks, I going back to our childhood and the, for all of us, that our family, the family of origin, the adoptive family same, our culture, our society, all the messages that we just take on through osmosis, what is it to be a good little boy, whether or not we align and obey those messages, but we are absorbing them, what is it to be in this culture or this subculture, and that forms what I call our provisional identity. It's not authentic, it's put together from what we need to survive to get love, to be approved of, or whatever our strategy is. And it's our provisional identity, and it's also the beginning of egos forming through all of that. Our initial self, beyond very small baby is, it's by its nature provisional, it's inauthentic, it is masks, it's our persona. This is what I'm playing to be, this is how I get approval, et cetera, et cetera. And most people, frankly, are living with those masks their whole life. They haven't done that deeper exploration of who am I underneath this? Do I really believe my family's story? Is this what I believe about God or religion or The bigger, deeper existential questions. Most people are living that provisional stage one. I call it the caterpillar self. You haven't yet evolved into the melt, the meltdown sticky of goo to become that more soulful, authentic person. And. They're living that till their midlife crisis and beyond most people are moving their whole life in that stage one, which is in my view, masks. And so, something has to happen along the way. And that can be a crisis that can be something existential, like soul. I think for me, it wasn't crisis. It was more some thing in my life. I'll just use that word soul. What is it that my soul needs to do? For me, that was things that were creative. That were things that was, I needed to be somehow tied to nature. I just a sense of had a very strong sense early on. If something doesn't align with me and that sort of sense of soul, like I'm not doing it. I'm not. That, no, that doesn't align with me. That does not resonate. So that, I guess there are multiple ways that we can, I think, get put on this journey of discovering the authentic self. What is that? And that is not something that happens overnight. That's its own journey. And like I had to run into a lot of dead ends. I had to burn out with drugs and cocaine at 21. I had to, hit bottom early. I had to hit it and hit it hard before I could start on a different sort of journey of wow, okay. I'm like you, I'm a very successful self-destruct person here. And I'm running from a lot of things and my mom's death and my sexuality and all sorts of other things, my own fear that I won't make it in the world. And I'll do all this sabotage here to self-destruct. But what I did with that is hit bottom early and put myself on a different journey and that became like, Hey what's the authentic bit here. And if we take away the crutch and the, all the other, the hiding and the get real about our self-destructive behaviors okay. I'm on a different journey. And for me, that also started to become a spiritual journey. Why am I here? And. So that whole, and that process was process, as I normally say, it was well underway by, yeah, by 21, I was sober. So that, and that sort of the spiritual journey that started for me in a 12 step program just became really the path for the rest of my life. I'm not sure I fully answered your question there, but we had an interesting little detour maybe.

Michael: Yeah, yeah. No. And I think it opens up a lot of different areas here because on this one hand I look at it and I'm in my head. I was just thinking to myself, I'm really glad you hit rock bottom so young. And the reason why I say that is because for me it was 25 and I look back at that and thank God I reclaimed potentially 75 years ahead and I'm so like, whenever people are like, I hit rock bottom and I was like 24, I'm like, good, because that means you're actually coming to awareness. And I think that's a part of rock bottom. That's just not talked about. And look, it's different for everybody. It's not always cocaine and drugs and stuff, sex and money, it can be a myriad of different things. And I think that in the acknowledgement of those things begins the path of not only true understanding and removing masks, but freedom. And I have found that not only in my own journey, but in those that I've worked with over the years is like freedom is what we're all seeking. And that freedom is to be us, to remove ourselves from the shackles and the indoctrination of childhood, to step away from the cultural norms that are not befitting, and it's funny because, River, one of the things that I do is I speak on these stages, whether it's, for businesses and corporations or personal development events, or even this podcast and for me, that, that word that you use that is so unbelievably important is integrity. And I can tell you with a hundred percent full trust in what I'm about to say, integrity did not come for me until rock bottom because until that moment I was codependent. I was willing to do anything everyone ever asked me to do. I was consumed with drugs and alcohol and sex and money and I would constantly find myself in these unbelievably precarious situations. And as you said, these two words, I was like, yep, that makes sense. And I was in this provisional identity. I was living, which many people do within the confines of what they believe it means to be a human being. And I believe, and this is why I'm taking this path right now. I believe that fear keeps people in that identity. And so, I'm wondering as you were in your journey and you're going from a caterpillar into the next stage of this cocoon what was it that drove you?

River: Thinking of caterpillar and cocoon. But before that, I was thinking of what you said about fear. Fear absolutely keeps people from their authentic journey. The fear of the unknown, the fear of letting go of the rules, the fear of dropping the mask. We could have a whole podcast on how fear keeps us in a familiar, but very stuck place. That's anything but free. And in my own ways, even despite having a very high level of awareness, I was still stuck in various aspects. The thing that really propelled the cocoon and the meltdown was I toppled. And this was in my thirties. I toppled into a mysterious healing crisis and everything shut down for me. My work stopped because I was so disabled with chronic fatigue, it was all I could do to get out of bed. I certainly couldn't do body work or I could maybe do a coaching session. Maybe I couldn't walk my dogs, and that put me, my first book had just come out in the world, which was a men's book. And I was thinking all these doors were going to open for men's work. And instead, life just took this hard, sharp turn to the right and everything shut down and everything for me then had to be front and center about finding my way somehow back to health. And that was really a two year journey and that there's a piece about integrity that I'm hopefully finding my way to here. But that was, I sometimes joke with clients or my own podcast about forced evolution. That was, it's like you're going this way, whether you want to or not. And life or the universe or however we want to think about that. That was absolutely one of those cases of this is forced evolution river here. You're going to find your way through this and you're going to melt down into this sticky matrix of goo, just like the caterpillar. What I often joke about, it's such an amazing metaphor, what the caterpillar does and it becomes. But the key difference between us and the caterpillar is the caterpillar doesn't have a lot of say in it. It just does it surrenders and becomes this other thing. Whereas we tend to resist that process, okay. To the end, we're fighting it. We're sitting, we don't want to let go of the old things in our life that aren't working the roles, the relationships, the friendships, the you name it. And so, we're actively saying no, not right now. Not until whatever the kids are out of school, I make this much money, et cetera, et cetera. And I was resisting that on a lot of levels myself until everything just shut down. And so then. A really mysterious journey of, okay how it was a two year process later, I realized really of regenerating my body and brain. And that included working with healers. It included finding my way to being led to an ayahuasca ceremony. Numerous ceremonies, but that first one, which put me on a totally different journey. And that's actually where that word integrity began. In that session, and I had this huge judgment on those plant medicines, they were drugs and I, it was the irony that I would find myself having the most profound healing of my life in an ayahuasca ceremony, something that I had judged for so long life does that repeatedly. Oh, you've got a big judgment on this. Okay, you get to own it back here. And in that session, basically the medicine said, you have to become clear. You've got to get clear. You're not clear of your patterns, clear of your body. And that was, for someone with self-awareness, I had never heard get clear. How do I don't even know how to do that. What is that? And later my languaging shifted around that to be integrity. To me, that is what being clear is it's being an integrity on all levels from your lifestyle medicine to the work that you do to every interaction in life. That's like these days, I say I'm a radical integrity coach. I'm a radical integrity and holistic wellness coach because those are inseparable. But that whole journey came out of everything shutting down for me and a forced evolution and you're going this way river like it or not. And wow, what a journey it's been.

Michael: Yeah. And the universe is always going to give you what you need. That's right. Cause one of the fascinating parts of this journey. ‘Cause it truly isn't what you want. It's just not. Even when I look at my journey and these moments of healing, even still to this day, doing the work, showing up, having a coach, going down the path, constantly learning, putting myself in very difficult situations of struggle for evolution. At some point in the beginning, it was forced by the universe where it was like, dude, you're going to have five panic attacks a day until you get your shit together. And that's what it was from 26, 27, 28 years old, I was having three, four or five panic attacks every day. It was crippling my business shut down. My health was a wreck, the relationship I was in, which should have ended way earlier, was a nightmare. And I kept thinking to myself at the whole time, I was like, I think I'm just dying. And then it was, really interesting because as I was heading into the journey of a deeper healing, which had required me to leave my home, which I think is a part of this. And by home, the city I grew up in, I was given the opportunity to go to the Pacific Northwest, work with this very renowned childhood trauma therapist who specializes in gestalt. And this was Almost 10 years ago, right? When this conversation wasn't being had we're having it today and people around me were like, you're crazy. What are you doing? You're leaving this place to go there for therapy and people like, why can't you do this here? And it's yeah, Just, I have to trust the process. I have to trust the universe, even if I'm driving there with a rental car and 500 in my pocket, that's all I had to my name. And in fact, I had to borrow money from my girlfriend to get the rental. She was my ex-girlfriend as we were in that transition, but I had to borrow money from her to get the fucking rental car. And it was like that forced evolution and my trust that. In this process, I would find something not only tied me deeper to my own spirituality, but it helped me understand the truth about the universe and about each of our individual journeys. Struggle is chosen or struggle is taken. And what I mean by that is you can choose what struggle you have in your life, or you can take the struggles that are going to be given to you.

River: And for my own sort of evolutionary process. And through that, the first Caterpillar stage, I went through another cocoon just a few years ago, kay. I shut everything down, took everything down, basically disappeared for two years and went through another radical metamorphosis. But by then I had amazing health. So it wasn't a physical shutdown anymore. But one of the things that was an awareness that came to me, which is I think very in line with what you're saying, and it felt like at that time, the universe felt like it was breaking me. Okay, we're going to break you here. And if part of me was really universe, like after all of this, like this endless journey of self-awareness and saying yes and metamorphosis and I'm still being broken open here. It was just how it feels. I certainly did not believe this. But I was willing to entertain the idea, what if everything that's different than forced evolution, but what if everything that's happening to me is in my eventual benefit. And for my eventual awakening and awakening, and I'm not talking about enlightenment. I'm just talking about getting free of our patterns, getting free. What if, and I, and like I said, I, at the time, I couldn't espouse that. I could not take that to heart, but I was, I couldn't. Okay, but what if this feeling of the universe is just busting me for whatever reason? Obviously, there's still something here. I need to learn or many things and if I'm willing to say, okay This is like what you're saying with you take it, right? All right, all right something in this is for my eventual benefit and awakening. And so, I will say yes to it. I am not going to resist it. I'm going to say, yes, I'm going to lean in. I'm all in to this being broken, okay. Break me actually, and what I discovered in that is I can't be broken. Feels like it process definitely feels like it's breaking pretty much everything, okay. But I can't be broken, all right. And coming through the other side of it, all of that absolutely was. In my ultimate benefit and for my ultimate awakening and helped me get free of some things that I couldn't even see were still entangling me, I have this pretty big awareness and yet. Our beliefs, I often talk about the belief matrix, we all are in a matrix of our beliefs and even with very expansive beliefs, my awareness at the time would be like, I'm just a localized embodiment of cosmic consciousness, having a human experience. That's a pretty expansive belief. And yet, even a really expansive belief, still strangely, can keep you trapped in ways that you don't see. And so that whole, once again, meltdown caterpillar metamorphosis of sloughing off beliefs and willing to say, yes, okay, I'll take this. I will take this and say yes to this. And somehow this is for my eventual benefit and ultimate awakening. And that is now something I give clients all the time, like you don't, you absolutely don't have to believe this, but I'm going to tell you no matter what you're going there. If you would just entertain the possibility that there's a gift in it for you.

Michael: Yeah, it's life is happening for you, not to you. And that's right. But that takes, oh my God, like to get to that place. Not only is it a paradigm shift, but to even get to that place, you have to accept the reality that you live in, not the fantasy that you want to live in. And that is such a difficult part of the journey. I'm not saying don't be imaginative and go and create with your mind, ‘cause I fully believe in manifestation. I believe in working your face off too. Let's be clear. But at the, in the initial onslaught of it, it's looking at life. And, you said something here that's so interesting is this idea that you'd be trapped in what you don't see and you stay trapped in that paradigm until you open your eyes. Kind of like you, what you pointed to with your judgment of psychedelics. I had the same thing, all of my thought process. And even though here's the dichotomy in this, even though I sold drugs as a kid and even though I did drugs as a kid, there were only certain drugs that I would do. Even though I sold a lot, I would only do certain drugs, and my thesis was it's a plant, so it's fine. That's how I navigated that. And then when I was around people who would speak about psychedelics, dude, if you even told me, this is how crazy it is. If in my twenties, you had even mentioned to me that you had done mushrooms one time, I would cut you out of my life. Think about that Matt, that judgment that I was trapped in. And then lo and behold, psychedelics have set me free from so much suffering, so much pain, so much of stuckness and my willingness to walk down that path. And I think that This isn't a conversation about psychedelics, obviously, but what it is a conversation about is like the willingness to open your eyes because when you do that and you're paying more attention that moves you more towards this integrity. And for me, it's very much an alignment and integrity to be willing to partake in plant medicine in a healthy, therapeutic growth oriented way. I've never done psychedelics to get high, I've only ever done them to heal something but that was a paradigm shift. And there are people who, whether it's about psychedelics or about a type of food or the kind of person that they would date or married to, or have sexual relations with, how do you what are some of the things that people should take into consideration? To actually create a paradigm shift in their own life. Is there something formulaic to this? Is there a process? Is there steps? Because my thought is, for me, what happened is I just relinquished control. And I just said, I am going to let Jesus take the will to be facetious. I'm just going to allow the universe to bring me what I'm meant to have. And that for me has been a beautiful healing journey. But for people that maybe they, Okay. They don't have that level of spirituality yet, or they haven't tapped into that place. How in the world do you have a paradigm shift about ideations and dogmatic thoughts when you're, they're so indoctrinated and groomed into you?

River: There's, well, the short answer is, you have to be willing to consider a different idea. If you're not even willing to consider a different idea, then you're stuck. There's, there are many, I think, classic paradoxes in the universe and life. And here's one that the only thing that can be known absolutely is that nothing can be known absolutely. You can't know anything, absolutely. Except that nothing can be known, absolutely. And that is the trap of our beliefs right there. When we hold something that's the truth, whatever that is, whether it's scientific, quote, unquote, reality, objective reality or religious or anything. If we absolutely hold that is the truth, then there's no other possibility for a different possibility. And my own journey at it fairly recently in that passage 2021 of feeling, wow, okay, I'm being broken open here. At one point, really up against the wall is how it felt. What came to me and this is, my whole life, I've been guided by voices and energy and disincarnate entities and whatnot, things that most people would not consider real. What came to me is there's no reason to believe anything. I think, or here, there's no reason to believe that. And I won't get into the backstory of what kind of forced me to that place. We thought that, It's in some ways really existential angst. There's no reason to believe anything, I think. Not even super, super expansive. I'm a localized embodiment of universal consciousness, having a human experience. No reason to believe that either, the mind is continually creating its belief matrix map of reality, here's the next map. And the minute it's like those Russian nest nesting dolls, the minute you recognize something is a belief. Right there. You've got another one. So, the long answer, finding my way back to your question is for a paradigm shift to occur, the person, myself included, once upon a time has to be willing to even consider that another possibility might exist. And if they won't, if there's no other, then the paradigm shift simply can't occur. As I said, people, what if that's not true? You're limiting story that you're say unlovable. That you're broken and we will see everything that supports our story. There isn't a reality. It's just our reality is what we perceive. And whatever our story is, we'll find all the evidence that supports that. Here's all the evidence in my life. Why I'm a loser, why I won't succeed, why I'm broken, why I'm totally fucked up. Look here's all the evidence. See it. I see it. What if that's not true? And what if you open that question of there's no reason to believe just because that's your story doesn't mean you need to believe it. It's a story you've been living, it's a story you're pretty wedded to on all levels. But what if that's not true? What if something else is possible? What if the opposite is true? What if you are unbroken? What if you are lovable? What if you are meant for success? What if you are a radiant, luminous being underneath all of that illness and overweight and anxiety and trauma? What if you are that? So, we have, some little place has to be willing to even consider that another possibility can exist. And so in my podcast, again and again, I'll say to people, I'll say, what if, that's my favorite sort of little tool. What if this is possible? You don't have to believe it, but what if you can rewrite your life? Okay, so the what ifs are my tool for later people. Like just sit with it. Nobody's saying you have to espouse that or believe it or take it on or make it your new dogma. It's just another belief, Matt. But what if?

Michael: Yeah. And my thought is, and it's so funny you said that because I just wrote, what if it was true? Would it even matter? And I think that's a big part of the, that that's such a big part of my journey is, growing up in people like you're dumb, you're fat, you're lazy, you're never going to matter. No wonder your parents left you so on and so forth. And I, and for a long time I let the indoctrination of that shame and that guilt be the cornerstone of my identity. Oh, they're right, they're right. And so I'm going to be that. And then I was, you don't get to 350 pounds smoking two packs a day, drinking yourself to sleep without a tremendous amount of effort. I can promise you this. And then one day I just realized like, what if it was true? What if they're right? What if I am fat? Maybe I should do something about it. What if I am dumb? Maybe I should read. What if I am lazy? Maybe I should become disciplined. What if? And it's a cornerstone to where I'm at today. Was the willingness to just look at it and be like, What if it was true? Either A, I can use it as fuel. And go, actually, I don't like this about myself. I don't appreciate this about myself because to me, it's very simple. Like my equation for getting to self-love river is this do the things that move me towards my goal. That's it. That's my definition for self-love. Sometimes it's rest, sometimes it's therapy, sometimes it's coaching. Sometimes it's packing everything I own into a rental car and going across the country. Sometimes it's going to South America. Sometimes it's ending the relationship or closing down a segment of the business. Self-love is about doing the thing that is required. Not always the thing that you want people get this very confused and they're like, my favorite thing You know what? I really want to do all the time is get stoned and play video games but that's not what is required not to have the life that I want. And so, this idea of this openness and this willingness I Want your opinion on this because I believe this is what happens then. This is just my narrative when I made a decision to go and figure out how to become a better man, to be a man who could love himself, to be a man who could give love to the world, to be a man who could have courage and strength and honor and integrity. And not that I'm perfect because I assure you, I'm not. But when I made that decision to move down that path. I'm a better man. It actually created a space in which, in order to build the confidence of believing that was possible for me, I just had to do things that felt in alignment with a man who would be like that. And as I did that more, the willingness to be open to the consideration of another possibility. That's where it really began. So I think I would look at it like this. So if you took willingness and acknowledgement and they could parlay with each other, they're probably the same in a lot of ways, but then step two is action, is there a step in between a missing or did you see a parallel path for your journey?

River: The thread that I want to pull out from that is the magic word. For transformation is willingness. And you said that again and again, I was willing to, consider another possibility. I was willing to make a change. I, a couple of months ago, I did a podcast called Willing To Evolve and that without willingness, back to, if you're not willing to consider even another possibility, then you're The paradigm shift isn't going to happen for you if we're not willing. And it's the magic word and it's hand in hand with risk to grow, to change, to evolve, to step out into the unknown, back to something we touched on earlier there, fear. To evolve, to grow, to become a better person, to go through that sticky meltdown that might last years, it's not going to be over anytime soon. And there might be this really long, drawn out sort of liminal space. You're not that old. Version one provisional Caterpillar self anymore, but you're not yet the radiant integrity, luminous, soulful dude yet. And you're a little of both and you're neither my, who knows how long you're going to be in that space. And that's a risk. And there's a death involved with that absolutely. And all those things, again, bring up fear. And so people like, I'm not willing, I'm not willing. And maybe what's underneath that is frankly, I'm afraid, the. I remember a guy, he was down in Peru, I've spent extended time in Peru working with medicines and shamans and not just ayahuasca, but other plant medicines. And there was a guy who had a really rough upbringing in Philadelphia and he was a rough dude and he was there for some profound healing. He had a major brain injury and he found really profound healing in that. But I, and I kept in touch with him after He was only there for about a week and I was there much longer than that. But he said, when he came back from that journey, first of all, his girlfriend didn't want him to go. And he knew that he needed to do this, to try this because nothing else had worked. The antipsychotics and the anti-seizures and everything, nothing in science, basically threw him aside, like you're effed up, dude. And the ayahuasca truly to this day, he would say absolutely healed him. It was rough going. When he came back, his girlfriend, essentially, first thing she did was break up with him. And she said, I, because you're changing and growing, that's essentially, that's showing me a mirror that I don't want to look at. And I'm not willing to do that work myself. And so fear comes up in all sorts of different ways. Somebody starts changing and too much relationship. Like I can't go there. I need you to be this person that I think you are, or I want you to be. And so, there's all sorts of reasons. We're just not willing. Your question was, is there a step between the two? I don't know that I think of steps, I definitely think of things as passages. Definitely, okay. This, and some passages are much more enjoyable than other passages in life. Wow. This passage is really rough, okay, or this passage is really beautiful, okay. This is great. Whatever it isn't going to last. There's going to be another passage. It's just like seasons. And I think that's part of our cycle of growth, but when we're willing. I had a client in my eight week coaching and every now and then I do it in a group format. And there was the last time I did a group format, there was a woman in there and in one of the modules they were invited to do this piece around breath work. And she had a really powerful response to this breath work exercise I was having them do. And when we were sharing in the group format, it's zoom so people can, join from all over, she, when it was her turn to share how did this go? She, and she was sharing this really profound reaction she had, and she's got a lot of trauma and all this stuff that happened in her throat. And I was on the edge of my seat, this is amazing. This is, you had, you've had this epic breakthrough here with this thing. And she was like, I'm not doing it. I'm not doing any more breathwork. I'm not going there because I don't believe in it. I was like, what? You've just had this amazing catharsis experience of your throat chakra and all of this. And you're shutting it down because I don't believe in it. Like, how can you not believe in it? You're having it anyways. And I, what I said is this reflected for a minute. I said, so you do realize that You're essentially just choosing to remain stuck because you're saying I'm not willing to do that. I don't believe in it. So there, okay, you are absolutely entitled to do that. And in so doing, you're choosing to remain stuck. I just want to point that out. And she, yeah, okay, all right, great. Moving on. I say to people again and again, my work is to give people just keys tools here. These tools work if you use them, but you have to be willing, you have to use them. They don't work if you don't use them. I can't do the work for you, but I have completely transformed my life from the inside out. I've rebuilt my body and brain. I teach people how to regenerate their body and brain. Here are the tools that will help you get free of that cage of being yourself. And yet, back to fear and willingness, people say they want to be free, but they're also deeply wedded to their limitations and what's familiar, and being stuck, and out of control. Back touching on plant medicines, that's something myself, I discovered through many of those journeys, wow. I'm here for healing. And yet I'm strangely wedded to these limitations. My, some part of me wants to keep them for some reason. One session, mother ayahuasca was like wrestling with me. She said, aren't you tired of this? I said, yeah. She said, then give it to me. And yet I didn't want to, I thought this is fucked. Like here I am for seeking healing and. I'm still hanging on to this thing. And that is most of us on some level, we say we want healing. And yet this is on some level that persona, or this is who I am, or I don't know who I would be without this. And that's back to fear and unknown and risk. So, willingness.

Michael: I love that. And here's what I think about too, that who would you be without this was whoever you want to be. That's right. And that's what's so crazy about it, man, where it's I sit here and I go back and I look at this life, I look at childhood, I look at my teens and my twenties, look at all of these experiences that have led me to this moment and living into expectations and beliefs of others. And it wasn't until I wrapped my head around. My own values, my own beliefs, my own non negotiables and boundaries where I started doing deep deep work where I realized. Oh, I can be me and that's freedom. And the people who, and look at all, I'm always doing the work. I subscribe to the idea. Once you sign on the dotted line for this is a rest of your life adventure. And so even still when I'm working with people and I'm coaching people and they have a lack of willingness, I just asked them a simple question and it's when you're on your deathbed, are you okay with the last thought before you have that final breath being regret? Cause if you are, continue to stay where you are. And if you're not, maybe you should be open to the possibility of something different. And, I look at your story and your journey and it's like, how do you take this young boy who suffered so much through being adopted and the chaos of life and drugs and alcohol and, traveling the world and, something we didn't really touch on, but being this trained chef in Paris to being a therapist, to writing a book, to all of the things, and yet still having the willingness. To learn, to grow, to change, to heal, to transform, to evolve. And I think that when I sit across from someone like you, the thing that I have is just a tremendous amount of gratitude because if you're willing to do that work, I know that you make my job easier. You make my mission as a human being and the thing that drives me on this planet so much more profoundly easier because it gives me leverage and I go, shit, he can do it. Why can't all these other people they can and why can't I can and how do we do that And I think about the work that must be done And here's what I've been sitting in this a lot, right? And so, I'm not going to go into my journey. I'm not ready to yet, but about 7 months ago, excuse me, 6 months ago, I did Iowa for the 1st time and went out to a very well-known facility. And I went through the experience over the course of 8 days. And the 1 thing that I took away from it, probably more profound than anything. is just this idea of the willingness to have peace. And so I'm wondering, as you continue to do your work and you open up and you create this container for yourself and for others, how will you know if this life has been successful?

River: I'm smiling because the, I have numerous offerings on my website. One of them is a monthly blog, and then I have my podcast that I've just mentioned. And this month's blog and the podcast that I just recorded that'll drop in two weeks or whatever are both about redefining success and what is success. And I talk about my journey of what is success and what I thought was success and what I was chasing and somehow to be relevant. And most of our ideas about success are frankly, pretty superficial, fame or fortune or visibility or influence. And they're all ego related for some time now because of my own healing journey, what most interests me, there we go, see if I can speak a little more clearly, is what is it to be a success as a human being? And that often is not aligned with our sort of mainstream notions of success. And I share in the podcast and the blog. I know a lot of people and I've worked with people who society would say, he's a success, she's a success, I know celebrities. I know political figures. And we, from the outside, most people, not me, look at them and say, they're a success. They've got money, fame, whatever. And yet in my view, they are not. Anywhere close to being a success as a human being, they're stuck on so many levels from relationship to physical health to anxiety and depression, a long list of places where they're stuck. What is it to be a success as a human being? And that absolutely is my journey. And to me, this is just my view, obviously, but to be a success as a human being means you're willing to evolve, you're will, you have the courage, you find the courage to surrender and step into the unknown. You are in service to something larger than yourself, you're willing to dismantle your ego, possibly, not possibly, definitely your practice, gratitude and kindness and empathy and graciousness. And these are all things in my view, like this is the mark of what it means to be a success as a human. So while the world may not say he's not a success, he doesn't have 30, 000 followers on Instagram or, whatever or whatever, some outside person might decide that. I'm not successful, my core feeling a thousand percent through and through is that my life couldn't be more successful. I, part of that is because everything in my life is in integrity. That's the one commitment I have. I don't believe in new year's resolutions or anything, but. The one ongoing commitment, and I just happened to renew it every January 1st because it feels like the thing to do is to be in total integrity in every aspect of my life at all times. So that's food, that's lifestyle medicine, that's self care, that's the way I show up for my partner and my work and my clients, everything. And in that I am absolutely a success, but it is the ongoing work. After a while, it's not work anymore. It's just because when you really step into integrity, when you really begin to embody that your life, and this is one of the reasons I say, if you begin to move, even move towards integrity, your whole life starts to become one of alignment and flow and ease and even magic. I would say not in a Harry Potter kind of way, but just as in synchronicity and serendipity and opportunities that come to you just seemingly out of the blue. My life, I say this repeatedly, my life is pretty magical, but it's also because I've done a lot of work and my total commitment is to just be an integrity and then everything shifts. Because I'm endlessly willing because I've had my ass kicked so many times, but it's okay. It's like the leap of faith leaps, the leaps, they get easier and easier or smaller and smaller. Okay. I, yeah, I could do that. And now it's just, yes. How do you say yes? Yes, to life. That's the word that goes along with willingness, right? Yeah. Okay. Yes. I am willing. All right. This feels uncertain, okay. I don't know what the outcome is going to be, but it feels right in my core, my body relaxes, there's a sense of, yep, okay yes. And the last thing I'll tack on, because you said it earlier about giving up control and being, let the universe the word that I would use for that essentially same is surrender. So, willingness and surrender to me are braided together, not they are braided together. I'm willing. I'm willing. And. I'm also willing to just surrender and go with the flow and let go of my expectations or agenda, or it needs to go this way, or that's all my stuff. Just drop it, the minute I drop it, everything goes much easier. Even if it might be, maybe I'm scared shitless to drop it. What if I, what if yeah. What if everything works out beyond your wildest dreams? What if?

Michael: Yeah. Could you imagine surrendering and dropping the dogmatic belief that you aren't worthy of love and what that would do to you? River, my friend, that's been amazing conversation. Before I ask you the last question, please tell us where we can find you and learn more.

River: Probably the best place is riverfaire.com. So that's F-A-I-R-E, although it'll be on Michael's website someplace there. And that's got my books and my coaching and free masterclass. And that's the best place. My podcast, it has its own site, Radical Being with River Faire. It's on Spotify. It's a video podcast, but again, every, my website is the hub for everything. I have a new book in the world and the book is also on audible and River Faire. com is the place. For all things river related.

Michael: And of course guys go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com for this and more. My last question for you, my friend, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

River: I absolutely believe that is the truth of it. We are unbroken. We feel broken. Often everything tells us are broken through our senses and we live in a world where everything is separate or we perceive it as separate. The ego tells us we're broken. But it's absolutely my conviction. We're not broken. Nothing is broken. If you get down to the energetic level and the quantum, nothing is even separate. Arguably, you don't even exist as an individual if we want to really go quantum and step out there. And in that, nothing can be broken. It just seems that way. And so, if you recognize that it isn't actually possible for me to be broken, that's one of those paradigm shifts that then opens the window to a very different possibility for your life.

Michael: And I hope people will open that window. My friend, thank you so much for being here. Unbroken Nation, thank you for listening. Remember that when you share this, you're helping others transform their trauma and to triumph breakdowns to breakthroughs and to help them become the hero of their own story.

And Until Next Time,

My Friends

Be Unbroken.

I'll See Ya.