Break the Belief Barrier | with Lion Goodman

Michael Unbroken: One of the ways that we get most limited in our lives begins actually with the way that we think and the idea and concept of limiting beliefs while not being new, is something that we have to take into consideration in our journey because sometimes it's actually us who are in our own way.

And I'm so excited today to have a conversation with my great friend, lion Goodman, to talk about this and how ultimately through our stories, our journeys, through this healing process, we can actually go and build and have the success that we want to have. And I know what you're thinking, Michael. You've talked about limiting beliefs before, but guess what?

Not like this. So this is an episode you're absolutely going to want to stick around and listen to very. We get lost so much in our own identity that we forget that it's okay to shift. And so Lion, I'm super excited to have you here today. My first question for you really is why should anybody listen to us today?

Lion Goodman: First, thank you for having me on. Michael I admire you and all the work you've done in this field. So thank you. Why someone should listen today is because they want to understand their own mind. And beliefs are at the core of the mind, not just your mind and my mind, but everybody's mind, mind itself.

And so by understanding how mind works, we can actually change it at the core, at the fundamental foundation of thought, of emotion, of belief, of action. So many people feel, and I'll speak for myself 'cause I've had this feeling even in this journey, right? These moments where, here's how I'll put it. I see the vision, right?

Michael Unbroken: So let's walk this path for a moment 'cause I think this will really help people kind of jumpstart in this episode. They see the vision, here's the vision, this is what I wanna accomplish, this kind of lifestyle, this kind of career, this kind of health, this kind of whatever. And then here you are where you are today.

And in that space, of course we have the gap and we have the journey to like all these things. But I, I have felt, and I've talked to many people over the years who have this feeling that there is just like a blockage, there is a wall, there is a darkness, there is an inner, there is something that even though they have clear vision, they can't seem to overcome themselves.

Right? Where do you start the journey of like looking at limiting beliefs and understanding the role that you are playing in your own lack of success or in the role of your success? Like where do you start to actually reconcile and understand that? I like to start at first principles. What's underneath that?

Lion Goodman: What is the underlying principle? Beneath that blockage, beneath that resistance belie beneath the problem that appears at the surface. There's something happening deep underground, and I like to call beliefs, the infrastructure of the human mind, similar to neurons or the infrastructure of the brain utility pipes underneath the ground are the infrastructure of the utilities that we use in our, in our house.

If all those utility pipes were brought under the surface of the street, we couldn't drive, right? Because there's a lot of infrastructure. And until we look into the infrastructure of the mind, the mind is going to be operating on its own principles, and those principles are based on. What it's made of, the infrastructure it's made of, and from my point of view after 50 years of study is that beliefs are the infrastructural elements.

They're the Lego blocks that we use to create a mind. And so by understanding how the Lego blocks work and fit together, we can then understand our own mind. We can understand why we think, what we think, we can understand why we feel and react the way we feel and react, and we can understand what's in the way and then clear it out of the way because we understand what it's made of.

Michael Unbroken: What don't we understand about the infrastructure of the mind? Like what are we missing? The first piece is that most people believe that beliefs are a mental construct. They're similar to a thought. And so I believe in Santa Claus, I believe in the less government or more government. I believe I'll have another beer, you know, whatever that belief is.

Lion Goodman: It is a mental idea, but beliefs go much deeper than that. They're actually multidimensional constructs. They're how we put our mind together from the very beginning even before birth, while, while developing in the womb. So, a friend of mine, Jeremy Lent, calls it the patterning instinct.

It's the deep instinct to look for patterns, understand the patterns, identify them, and then use them for whatever's next, for perception, for action, for strategies. So we have to go down below. the thought process and recognize that these are multidimensional structures. So, for example, right now, you are experiencing vision.

You're seeing me on the screen, you're hearing whatever. You're hearing my voice, you're sensing, you're smelling, you're knowing, you're intuiting, you're, you're connected to spirit. All of those things are happening at once. Your entire experience is multidimensional and beliefs are made out of our experience.

So beliefs must also be multidimensional. They're not just mental and most people who treat beliefs are treating them as a mental construct. Well just change your beliefs. Just change how you think. Just say something different to yourself. And the reason it doesn't work in many cases is because it's also embedded in the body.

It's also embedded in the emotional body. It's also embedded in the spiritual sense that we have about ourselves connected to something greater. It's embedded in our relationships, and it's embedded in our environment. So until you approach them as multidimensional constructs and clear them multidimensionally, they're gonna still be there.

You can clear your mind, but the body does the same thing. You can clear the thought, but you react to the person the same way. So that's the thing that. I've discovered that makes a difference.

Michael Unbroken: And that's why your beliefs become your habits. And your habits become your life, right? Because you sit in this so often and it's the same reason why you're like training for a marathon and it's a week out, and then you're just like, I don't wanna do it anymore.

Or you self-sabotage, or you get into a healthy relationship and it's finally the thing that you wanted, and then you find a way to destroy it, or you get financial success and suddenly the next thing that you do is you go overspend. Right? Now sometimes it's the opposite too. Sometimes my back is against the wall.

I think I can figure it out sometimes. It's all these different layers, but it all comes down into these core of who we are. And this, the space of being embedded, I think is so fascinating because personally, I've had people over the years say to me, man, you're so resilient. You're so confident. Like it's amazing that you've been able to come through what you have been able to come through and lie.

And what I always come back to is like, I don't have a choice, right? So it's so embedded in the journey and the experience of what I came from where it just feels like that's who I am. Like you, I couldn't not be confident if I wanted to. I couldn't not be driven if I wanted to, right? Because it's what I come from.

It is my embedded experience. But those same embedded experiences that can be so powerful for us that can change our lives, that can make us, overcome most of the things can also be the reason why we're stuck. Right. And you talked about clearing this multi-dimensionally. What does that look like? 

Actually, I have a great example I'm gonna use, I won't say their name, but I have this friend who I've known for a very long time, and they are absolutely amazing, but they are trapped in this belief that they're never actually going to be successful. And we were having this dinner one time and they said to me, and, and I was actually shocked by it because.

This person, if you saw them because of a lot of the things that they've accomplished in their life, he'd be like, man, you're already successful. But even though he has all of these things, like, he goes, I just am never gonna be successful. And I don't know if he's measuring the table, I don't know if he's measuring something that's going on, but that there's something embedded at that.

Maybe it's even, no matter what happens, he's not enough. So how do you, how do you clear this, right? We're talking about clearing multi-dimensionally. Whether it's a limiting belief in one space or the other, I'd have to believe the approach is kind of the same or at least adjacent. So, how do you start that path? How do you start clearing these beliefs that are actually in your way?

Lion Goodman: Let me start by, by taking you back to your, you're saying that you are resilient and you're confident. You were not always resilient. Confident.

Michael Unbroken: Absolutely not.

Lion Goodman: I've heard your story and so I know that you were a mess for a lot of your life. And something shifted in you that caused you to become who you are today. And that if we go back to that experience, whether it was your mentor or your decision, like, I can't do this anymore, whatever that bottom place was that you sprang from, that experience that caused you to shift, changed your identity.

Who I am, I am no longer going to be that. I'm going to be someone else. Identity is just what we believe about ourselves. So you had a vision that enabled you to move forward. Your friend who believes that they will never be successful has a deeper belief, which is, I'm not successful. That's the identity level.

So he's saying it as, I'm never going to be, that's a future projection. But the truth is, is that he believes he is not successful. That is not part of his identity and he would have to change it at the identity level. 'cause we can change our behavior, we can change our thinking, we can change our emotional reactions, we can change our strategies.

But if we don't get to the identity level of the I am, who am I? I am successful or I am not successful, and that belief, I am, I am not successful, came from childhood, from childhood experience probably, you know, a mother or a father who said to him, you'll never be successful doing that. And he took it in as a statement of truth about his identity.

I will never be successful. I am not successful. I can't be successful. So until we clear it at that core level, and the core level comes from the experience in childhood where he was told that either once or repeatedly, and he grabbed onto it, he grabbed that pattern either to belong to his family or to agree with his parent so that he didn't get thrown to the wolves.

There was some reason why that statement became part of his identity and he integrated it and no matter what he did may have caused him to strive and achieve things in life, but the identity never changed.

Michael Unbroken: What do you do about what you don't know? Because we hear all the time, you don't know what you don't know.

And I think that a lot of people, and I actually know this from experience now, having coached thousands of people over the years, that a lot of people actually have no idea why they behave the way that they behave. And a lot of times they can't find, you know, kind of that anchor, like where it began.

And that's one of the things that I've come to find. You know, obviously there's ways to work through it, but what do you do with that? Like, if I come to you Lion, I'm like, Hey, let's play a little game here if you don't mind. So let's say I come to you and I say, Hey, I'm struggling deeply with, oh no! Let's say intimacy with my husband, with my wife. I can't seem to perform. I have massive anxiety, it's been this way my whole life. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, and I can't seem to figure out why. How do we unearth something like that, this deep core thing, and they go, I just believe I'm never gonna be a amazing lover.

Right. How do you navigate that if you don't know where it comes from?

Lion Goodman: Well, first of all, I teach 12 different methods for finding core beliefs in my training and clear beliefs coach training. So I would start with you and say, well, what's underneath that? And cause you to actually look inside and look underneath the problem. And what would you respond to that?

Michael Unbroken: So many, well, you know this, the answer 95% of the time is, I don't know.

Lion Goodman: Okay. And what's underneath? I don't know.

Michael Unbroken: And then, I don't know. It's tough 'cause we're roleplaying not me.

Lion Goodman: Let me try a different, let me take you to different tack. I'm gonna switch techniques. So feel what it feels like to not be able to be intimate with, with a partner. 

Michael Unbroken: Just feel lonely, or let's call, let's say it feels shameful.

Lion Goodman: Okay. Got it. Now, shameful and lonely, these are all emotion words. And as soon as we use those emotion words, we're up in our head. So I want you to sink into your body and actually tell me what the sensation is in your body. Where do you notice the shameful feeling in your body?

Michael Unbroken: Let's say, tightness in my chest.

Lion Goodman: Okay, good. So I'd like you to put focus on the tightness in your chest and imagine it's an object because all sensations have shape, size, temperature, pressure, like that. So what is the length, width, and depth of that sensation in your chest?

Michael Unbroken: Let's say it's size of a baseball or a moon, moon behind you, that is black. I mean, I felt run all the way through me. This is the core. This is something I've dealt with since I was a teenager, it was a problem in my marriage. It was a problem, you know, in dating, you know, it's something that has just always come up for me. I just, it feels like it's always there.

Lion Goodman: Okay. I get that. But just focus on the baseball, the black baseball for a minute. And just feel it. Just allow it to be there, all sensations are like messengers. They are like a messenger knocking on our door. If, if you don't answer it, they knock louder and louder and louder.

And if you still don't answer it, they take a sledgehammer and knock your door down. But if you open the door and say, what, what message do you have for me? They say, oh, here, sign here. You sign there, they give you the message, and they go away. So just put your attention on that black baseball in your chest and ask it, what message do you have for me?

And see what it says, might speak in your language, it might speak in sounds or pictures, or could speak in anything. What does it have to say?

Michael Unbroken: What if the message it's giving me is a message that I've been ignoring that I know is there?

Lion Goodman: Bingo. So, it brings it up from the subconscious mind to the conscious mind. So this process, we call Body Wisdom. It's a very powerful and impactful system of bringing person into a connection with their subconscious mind in order to speak to it directly. And we often find by this kind of digging process, as I call it, excavating, we find out what's really at the core, and then we take from that, that message and that experience, and we spiral back in time to find the originating experience that's associated with that belief.

And then we take, once we find that, then we can take a person through a process where that's cleared completely from the psyche.

Michael Unbroken: You know, one of the things that is. The embodiment of trauma in real time is dissociation, right? People get to this place where they can't even touch the idea of that sensation.

I was there for a long time. The amount of EMDR and Gestalt and CBT and name a system that I tried to just try to get my brain and body reconnected and, and what I recall now, God, it's been so long, so I'm gonna try to make it feel as familiar as possible, but I recall in these moments.

People would ask me these questions like this, sitting across from them trying to do the work, trying to understand my stuckness and my blockages, and it would just feel like just nothingness would come up. Emptiness. And, and you talk about it's this body wisdom. I'm gonna say this and I hopefully the right way.

A lot of people are ignorant of their body as in uneducated, not as in dumb because of dissociation, of being disconnected from the body for so long. , I mean context. There's a period for 15 years, I didn't cry. This is in the context of murder, of my friends death of family members, loss of relationships, careers, you know, all these things when I was younger and it's 'cause I was so dissociated from emotion, right?

Thinking I'm a sociopath, realizing that I'm just like this hurt little boy. So how do you. When I'm sitting, when you're sitting across from someone and they're like, I have these limiting beliefs, I hear you lion. Like I, I want to see the baseball, but like my brain and my body are so far removed from each other.

How do you kind of bridge that gap to get people into the awareness of self? First of all, these processes are, all integrated together and there's kind of a smooth flow through them, but the processes are designed specifically to get people back into touch with the things they've suppressed or dissociated from.

Lion Goodman: Dissociation is actually a, a sensation and we could focus there. Numbness is a sensation we could focus there. We work with whatever's present. And we continued the process until the person finds the thing that they can actually feel. And I've worked with thousands of people also, and I've never had this fail in all that time, including people who are highly traumatized in multiple ways.

And I've heard stories you wouldn't want to hear about, you know, period. So, it took me 40 years to put this system together and I took more than a hundred workshops and trainings over those 40 years to fix myself. That's what was my original intention, was to fix myself because I grew up in a family in which I felt I didn't belong, and that there was something wrong with me.

Those were my core wounds, and I felt alone. Almost all my life, when I found sexuality, I went, Ooh, I'm finally good at something. And so, so that became my life, but all along the way, I was interested in learning and I studied with incredible teachers philosophy, linguistic psychology, physics, chemistry, biology, neurology, and I was absorbing all of this information, trying to think if I could figure myself out.

Then I'd be okay. Now, fortunately, I did. I figured myself out, and then I realized I had put this process together, which could help other people. And now I train people all over the world how to do this process. We've got 650 graduates in 45 countries around the world. We just got done with a project in New Jersey working with people in welfare to help them get out of welfare more quickly, and so the process we know works and it works, I'd say 97% of the time, not every time. There are some people that are just so blocked and, and so apart from themselves that they can't find their way back. We send them to trauma specialists. Our process is trauma informed. We understand how trauma happens, how it, how it works in the brain and the mind, and how to unclog it, how to get the, the, the blocks and the barriers and the resistance out of the way.

Michael Unbroken: It's funny because the, the journey for me was I want to figure out how to not be me anymore and to be a different me. And that was so much of the beginning of this. And, you know, thank goodness for a rock bottom at 25 instead of 52. I think that has helped me a lot in my life. But what I find to be very fascinating is, if you're willing to start with yourself first and go and do this dark work, like there is this space where on the other side, you know, you may end up helping people. Like, I don't know about you. I never saw this path in front of me. I, I don't remember ever like having this vivid idea of like, oh, it'd be cool to go help people.

It was never that. It was just like, man, I'm such a fucking mess right now. Like, there's gotta be something here. So I'm curious because it is very ex experiential and it's very much our journey is that kind of shape was, and it's like, you set me up for this, but my next question was actually gonna be for you.

Like, where did this really start for you? Like, what was it? Because I often get the feeling. Now having done this for a very long time, but sometimes as people listen, they go, oh, that's for those people. They figured it out. It's for him, it's for her. You know, it's for Michael, it's not for me. I'm listening, but you know, it's probably not gonna work for me.

and I'm just curious, Ryan, like what was your journey like? Paint us a picture because I think that if we can humanize this experience a little bit more in a time where people feel disconnected through our own journey, I think that'd be beneficial. So I'm just really curious, like, talk me through the, okay, I've gotta fix my own life.

This is the path that I'm going to just see what's on the other side of. I did not grow up in poverty. I grew up in a middle class household in Denver, and everything appeared to be okay, except that there were certain things that clearly did not work. Like my parents didn't talk to each other very much.

Lion Goodman: They would stop talking to each other for weeks at a time. And I knew there was something wrong, but I didn't understand it. I knew that I wasn't connecting with my pa my siblings, or my parents or other kids or, or even my dogs. It's like I was this sort of mind that was moving around isolated. And so my conclusion, as I said was, there must be something wrong with me.

And I thought, if I could fix it. I'd be okay. And that got me interested in the mind and the brain. Very early, like at 13, I also got interested in spirituality and, and past lives, reincarnation other religions. And so by the time I got to college, I was kind of an avid learner and I studied everything I could.

And I had wonderful teachers who pointed me back to the brain and to psychology and said, we know a lot, but we haven't figured it all out. But this is where it's located. This is, this is where we have to look to find out why we do what we do. One of my teachers was in World War II and he asked the question.

Why did I have to kill my brothers and sisters? He was over there in Germany killing, killing Nazis, but he saw them as his brothers and sisters, and he came back and he asked these questions. He then passed them on to me, and so I now pass them on to others. This inquiry that we're talking about, this self-inquiry is the key to evolution.

We can evolve ourselves, we can heal ourselves, we can awaken ourselves if we investigate ourselves, if we look inside and find the core and the source of whatever we're experiencing. Because we do create our experience, we create our reality. We don't create external reality, but we certainly create our internal reality.

And so if you're experiencing something you don't want to experience. Look within and ask, what do I believe about this? What do I believe about myself in this situation? What do I believe about others? What do I believe about the world? What do I believe about life? Because the answers are there. How I treat people is how they treat me.

How I relate to people is how they're gonna relate to me. How I work in my work environment is how I'm going to be rewarded. What are the rules of the game? You know, how do I function? How can I function? And why do I react the way I react? It's always something in the past. Because we grew up putting our mind together from our experiences.

And so if we have a belief, we came to that belief, either because somebody told it to us, it was indoctrinated into us, or we came to our own conclusion about it, or it came from the past. There are inherited beliefs. There's beliefs we get while in the womb. If our mother is feeling fear because she's being beaten, we're gonna feel fear and we're gonna come to the conclusion.

Life is not safe while still in the womb. It's not a verbal mental process; it's an experiential one. So our experiences are forming into these patterns which we then use to think and feel and experience, and communicate, and it's all sourced in the same place in the mind. We can talk about the brain, but I've preferred talking about the mind because we don't experience our brains, we don't experience our neurons or our amygdala firing.

We experience fear. We experience our experience. So that's my answer is that anybody who wants to heal can heal the, the more trauma you have, the longer it will take. But if you're dedicated to it, you will heal.

Michael Unbroken: So you walked into this self-inquiry of this idea of the belief that I don't belong, and I think that's something that holds true for a lot of people. It certainly held true for me when I was younger and. You know, sometimes asking that question can lead to this place where the reality is we're scared of what's inside of the answer to that because sometimes it's like, actually I don't belong and I don't wanna live here and I don't want to be in this place and I need to leave and I need to find myself.

And then sometimes I'm not accepted for who I am, and then it goes deeper. And then now it's because am I am gay or do I have a tattoo? Or do I think this way? Or is it because my hair's that way? Or, you know, all these things, all these ideas and notions start coming up. And then we get into this sometimes-vicious rumination cycle. But to ask the question requires the willingness to accept the answer. What do we do with the answers that we get?

Lion Goodman: That's a great question. I've been a seeker all my life, so for me, this is like a sandbox or it's like a, a big pile of clay I can create out of, so I try to help people understand that this, this self-inquiry and this depth excavation is the key to healing so that you can live your life fully self-expressed in good relationships with a good job, if that's what you want, or good creativity, if that's what you want.

So I believe that this is the path forward into whatever you want to create. And you do have to be willing to look inside and see some ugly shit because there's a lot of ugly shit in life and there's trauma in life, and there's people who are mean, and there's people who take advantage of you. And there's people who betray you and your parents who were supposed to love you, didn't love you the way they were supposed to 'cause they weren't loved.

And some of this is generational. It goes back to many generations where it's familial or it's cultural, or it's social, all of the religious for that matter. All of these beliefs that came into you formed who you believe you are and therefore who you are. And by changing those core beliefs, you can change who you are, just as you've experienced in your own search, just as I've experienced, just as thousands and thousands of people have.

And there's many ways to get there. I've just always looked for the most efficient ways, and so the system I put together to me is the most efficient way to get from here to there from, I don't know why I'm feeling this way to, oh my gosh, I could actually change how I feel so shortcuts.

Michael Unbroken: What do you think is the, the biggest mistake people are making on the journey? What marker they really missing as they're trying to walk this path? I think it's not looking deep enough. It's not recognizing that they are source in the matter, that they're either blaming the outside world or they're blaming other people, or they're saying the problem's out there somewhere.

Lion Goodman: Instead of saying, I am the source of my experience. if I'm the source, then I can change what's true. I can change my reality. I can change, maybe I can't change other people, but I can certainly change how I respond to them. I can say, no, that doesn't work for me, or I can leave the room. so it gives me more choice actually.

Once I recognize that I'm the creator of my reality, then I can change my reality by changing my beliefs. And so when people are externally aimed, when they're look, when they're pointing outside at the world or other people for the issues, or they're pointing inside, but they won't look inside, those are the mistakes that people make. Anyone who's consciously wants to change, there's many, many methods to do that.

Michael Unbroken: So then what about the person that is consciously continuously destroying their life? Like it's not even at the subconscious level, like they know, right? This is the, the, and I'm not even talking necessarily like an addiction, right?

Because I think that we can look at addictions like heroin and drugs and things like that, and sex, and we understand where those addictions lie. But what about the person who's like, they're sabotaging the promotion. They're slowly poisoning the relationship. They know that whatever it is, the thing that they're doing, they know that they're doing it.

They're consciously aware that they're doing it, and yet they can't stop doing it, right? It's like. This is why Lion, I do not have sugar in my home. There is no candy, there's no gummy bears, there's no brownies, no cookies. No, I don't, I don't even have honey because I know, like I do not have self-control.

And so, believe it or not, I have no self-control when it comes to that. And so I do what's required, but for a long time I didn't. And I'd be like, dude, why am I gaining weight? Oh, I don't know. 'cause you ate f*cking chocolate cake for breakfast. And I'd be like, that's fine. It doesn't matter. And then the next day, chocolate cake for the next day, chocolate and all those things led to me being 350 pounds, right?

That was in my twenties. Now I'm a lean, like 215 or 220 because I put in parameters and controls. However, that said there was this huge period of time. I'm talking about years. I'm not talking about weeks and months. Years where consciously I'm like, you know what to do and you're not doing it. Or you know what not to do and you're doing it anyway.

And so it's like for those people where consciousness is at the forefront and they can see it, they're like, I know not to text the guy when I'm in a relationship I know not to like hang out with the coworker and have a beer. Right? 'cause they know where this leads on a long enough timeline. Like how do you navigate that part of it?

Lion Goodman: Okay. Really important principle. Again, I like first principles. We have tens of thousands of beliefs in us, and many of them are contradictory. Many of them are conflicting. We can have two beliefs at the same time that are opposite to each other. And whatever you resist persists. So when you push against it, it pushes back, okay, you believed that chocolate cake was not good for you. Another part of you believed chocolate cake, good, yummy,

Michael Unbroken: I agree.

Lion Goodman: Very childlike. So those two beliefs are conflicting and that creates tension, right? Tension will always resolve some way and it tends to resolve in the way of the old pattern. That's a natural phenomenon. So you have to understand both sides of the equation.

You need to understand, wow, I have a desire to eat chocolate cake right now, and I have the desire to be healthy, and so I could clear both beliefs because neither one are true. In fact, here's a fact for you. All beliefs are limiting. There's no belief. That's not limiting. Belief is a, is a construct that brings together a small part of reality and says that's true.

So is chocolate cake bad for you? Not in moderation. Is chocolate cake good to eat for breakfast? Absolutely. And if you don't recognize that both are there and probably there's five or 10 or 20 beliefs involved in that cluster, then you get a cluster fuck, right? You have to take apart each of the components that are making up that behavior pattern and clear them one at a time, and pretty soon it just isn't there anymore.

Now you have a choice. I'm going to eat healthy and I'm not gonna eat chocolate cake for breakfast anymore. But that you've had to clear each of the pieces. Mommy ate chocolate cake when she was pregnant. Daddy, wouldn't let me eat chocolate cake. You know, you go on and on and on and there's many threads to experiences in your life that all come together into must eat chocolate cake for breakfast.

So it takes some time to unwind those things, but we have beliefs cluster together and reinforce each other and we can consciously know that it's bad for us, but subconsciously there's all these other threads going on. You asked a question, you know, what do you do with someone who's just in self-destruction?

My cynical answer is, well, life isn't for everybody. But my more serious answer is, there's a lot of reasons. And they have to be taken apart. One by one, I worked with a woman who was so traumatized she couldn't leave the house as an adult. And it took two years to get her, to get all those hundreds of beliefs cleared out and the patterns cleared out and the establishment of new beliefs and new understandings.

And two years later, she was starting a business out in the world. So it takes time, depending on how much trauma there is, it takes time to unwind it and unwind it and unwind it and want it, but it can be unwound and you can free yourself from it.

Michael Unbroken: So much of the human experiences, pattern based, right? I think about this a lot because And I think that you experience more the more people that you work with, the more that you're in the world, the more that you're connected to understanding this human journey at the conscious and subconscious level. And I have seen time and time again that we're just patterns and as patterns, we then shift into meaning making machines.

So we take all the pattern information, we make meaning of it. We do these Eva e evaluations of our environment and then we make a what we believe to be the best assessment for the situation to go and live. But you said something, and I want to come back to this and it's gonna make people uncomfortable.

And, and I think it needs to be said, 'cause I actually really, really agree with it. 'cause you said life isn't for everybody. Now let's be clear. I, I didn't hear, Hey, go jump off a roof. That's not what we're saying here. But it's true. Like there's a key element to this experience where it's like, there are people and Lion, you know this as well as I do.

There are people who for almost a decade have listened to every damn episode of this podcast. They've read all three books, they've done all the courses, they've showed up, like I know some of their names. And their life is the exact same today as it was 10 years ago. And there's something to me, I look at it like this.

If you guys are watching on YouTube, this beautiful picture you have behind you over your left shoulder of the waves and it looks like the, , a pier or something. And to me, I see this image of this person jumping off. They're going into the adventure of life. Most people aren't going to take the leap.

That's just the hard stark reality of it. And the hardest part about that reality is that if you aren't willing to take the leap, then you don't get a complaint about the things that you don't get. And there's, there's a level to this where what I think to be true is that at some point you, you almost like in a literal sense have to be like, okay, f*ck being this version of me, I refuse it.

I refuse it. I am not going to do this again because this is where the kicking down the wall comes into play. This is where the taking the leap into the vast unknown comes into play because if we are patterned humans who are meaning making machines who evaluate our environment, it's like, why do you think the same patterns that have the same meaning in the same environment will yield a different change?

Right? Definition of insanity. And so we sit here and we look at this and we go, okay, well life isn't for everybody. No, it's not. In fact, it's only for those who choose it. And that's the way that I look at it. And so my hope is that more people will choose to be like, you know what? F*ck it. I'm gonna walk into the breach.

I'm gonna walk through the breach and into the great unknown, and I'm gonna see who I am. But. This is where I'm,

Lion Goodman: that's anti survival instinct, right? So, our most based instinct is to survive. The ego wants to survive, and if it has patterns, as you said, it uses those patterns to survive. And then what we perceive through those patterns as well.

So these beliefs and strategies become lenses we see the world through. And so if you believe life is hard and you are looking through the lens, all you see is how hard life is. If you could switch out that lens and see life is joy, then you'd look around, you'd see joy everywhere. And so the problem with beliefs is they're always self-reinforcing.

No matter what you believe, you're gonna see evidence for it. We call it confirmation bias, but it's how beliefs work. They form. We form our, our beliefs out of experience. And then those beliefs form lenses we look through and it adjusts our experience. It shapes and colors our experience. So one of the reasons people don't change is because they see evidence for their rightness everywhere they look.

And if I believe I'm everybody's a piece of crap, including me, that's what I'm going to experience all the time. And I'm, how can I be motivated to change if that's true? So, we are pattern based. The brain is prediction based at what it uses predictions to see, to expect, what to see. That's part of the confirmation bias system.

And so, you know, we're here as far as I'm concerned, we're here to learn lessons. We're here, we came into this body to learn what it means to be human, to learn what it means to be happy, to learn what it means to, to have a good life. And life is hard in many, many ways. It's also great in many, many ways. And so if you choose the hard path, you may be here just to learn how hard the path is. And next time, better luck, you know, better luck, come back into a better environment. I happen to believe that we, that we reincarnate. And so, you know, I hope you have a better life next time because you sure messed this one up.

And so these are deep patterns. These are ancient patterns that we come into this life with. And sometimes we're repeating patterns that are thousands of years old, and still trying to learn the lesson. Like, what's am I here for? I'm here to learn what not to do again.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah. Right. No sh*t sometime, and look, and sometimes I'm still doing this shit or I'm like, oh my God, did you really just do that again? You know? And so the thing that I find though is if you can create a gap in time between doing the dumb thing you're learning, right. And so if I do the dumb thing every day, but then it's every month and then it's every year, and then it's once a decade progress, right?

Good progress and evolution, right? That's right. And I think people miss out on that part of it. Yes, dude, trust me. Sometimes I do sh*t. I'm like, God d*mn dude, did you really just do that again? , you know, one of the things that I think about in terms of this a lot is this idea of discipline, right?

Because if we're effectively trying to restructure who we are, , it's easy to fall back into the old pattern because it hasn't yet become disciplined to be the new version of you. How do we get to this place of being disciplined as the new version? Because so many people, you know, it's the same bullshit as like, I'm gonna go to the gym and then January 1st you go to the gym, and January 5th you're, you know, drinking beers at the Pub.

Lion Goodman: Well, we have to look, but we have to look at the root of the word discipline, okay? Because the root of the word is the same as disciple, right? It means following someone. And so, and when you, you ask someone you, have you been disciplined lately? They could think of you've been punished lately.

Because discipline throughout history, throughout Western history has meant punishment. How do you get someone to do what you want them to do? You punish them. And so discipline has come to mean punishment. And when you say you should be more disciplined, I think you're outta your mind. Because I don't want to be punished. Right? It's punishment to be disciplined. Now you have to change the thinking because our language is a belief structure, right? And I've got all these associations with this word discipline. And when you say, you know, why aren't you more disciplined? I'm going 'cause I don't wanna be hurt. I don't wanna be harmed.

I don't wanna be whipped, I don't wanna be tortured. That's why I don't go to the gym. It's right. So we have to actually change the structure of the mind so that it, it understands something different. We might have to call it something else, like getting healthy, Hey, would you like to get healthy today?

Yeah. Okay, let's go to this gym. So, we have to include language as part of the belief structure and look at why people react to certain words. And that's, that's just one aspect.

Michael Unbroken: So, okay, let's say that we look at this differently 'cause I agree with you by the way, in fact, in my bathroom right now it says discipline or death.

I wrote it, it used to say, no excuses, just results. But I realized that discipline's actually the key to success in life and it fucking sucks. And it's the most annoying thing probably in the world 'cause trust me, dude, I'd rather eat chocolate cake for breakfast. but what I've, what I've discovered in that is and again, this is my mentality. This doesn't work for everyone. I'm not saying everyone go right, discipline or death on your bathroom mirror. So you read it every time you walk in there. That may not work for you. It works for me because that's just my nature. But there, there's something about defining.

What the words mean. One of the very first exercises I put through all of my clients is to go through and create definitions for the words that they've applied the most meaning to in their life. Because most people are using words that they have no idea what they actually mean. And this is why we live in this society of, of men who are toxic and, and women who are toxic because nobody has defined anything.

We find what we don't like and we just label it. And so if we're doing that in our day-to-day life, we, you get lost in it. And I came to realize, like, for me, discipline is this idea of, it is very simple. Show up and do what the fuck you say you're gonna do. It's that simple. There's nothing else to it.

There's not even punishment in it. It's just if you don't show up and if you don't do what you're gonna do, your dreams are gonna die. And then you're gonna be at your deathbed and you're gonna be like, why didn't I get what I wanted? I'm like, well, 'cause you weren't f*cking disciplined and you chose that, right?

Because then it's a conscious choice. This again, the way that I look at it now, that said looking at and understanding, maybe we change the root of this. On this one hand, we hold this idea notion of like, discipline, everything we're talking about right now. On the other thing, we have these beliefs. How do you marry these two things to create a change in your life for the better? Is it just simply defining them or is there something in terms of action that people need to take into consideration to actually have a shift transpire?

Lion Goodman: Well, again, let's look at how the mind works. If I make a, a commitment to myself, I'm gonna go to the gym every day. My mind's pretty slippery. All of our minds are pretty slippery, and it's pretty easy to have something else become more important than that the next day or the next day or the next day.

On the other hand, if I say, Hey Michael, will you, will you , meet me for lunch tomorrow at, at Sam's , grill? And you say Yes. Oh, great. Okay. So now I've made a commitment to you. I have to show up for you. To make sure I don't harm you or betray you. So now that simple external val external agreement has me change my actions and my priorities.

So, that's why buddies are so important in this kind of work, because if you make a commitment to someone else, Hey, I'll meet you in the morning and we'll go running, then you're gonna show up for that. But if you say it to yourself, your mind is way too tricky, way too slippery, and you, it will slip away in, in an instant because you don't have any external commitment to, to make it keep, make it, and keep it important.

So that's just one of the principles of the mind. And again, once you understand it, you go, oh, okay, just make it, you know, have a buddy and then it'll work, it's easy to say, just show up for yourself and your commitments, but you're highly disciplined over a long period of time. You are the opposite in your young life.

So what did it take you to become disciplined? Was it that absolute decision? I will never be like that again? Or was it an understanding of integrity? I have to keep my word in order to, create a better life? What was it for you that changed you? 

Michael Unbroken: Yeah,great question. , the reality is I sat and I looked at my life. I made a very stark assessment of it, and in that assessment I made a decision and the decision was, you have two choices here. One, continue living the life that you're living. Be everything everyone said you would ever be, die, having never lived, having never done shit, having never actually lived. Or two do the opposite of all that. And that's kind of really what it was. And in that decision making process, it wasn't as cut and dry, you know? 'cause people I think have this, this weird notion that decisions are made once and then people change forever. But that's not the truth. And you know this because we are slippery and I'm a slippery motherfucker.

And so like, I would, right? And so it'd be like, what I came to the conclusion of, which is actually kind of the cornerstone that changed my life, was this idea. If I can win the hour and win more hours than I lose, then I can win a day. And if I can win more days than I lose, I win a week. If I can win more weeks than I lose, I win a month.

If I win more months than I lose, I win a year, win more years than I lose. I win my life. And that's all it came down to. And so the, the disciplined element of it and the shift element of it. Was me sitting in the moment of like, this is literal. I'll never forget. I'll tell you a quick story even though I'm interviewing you, I'll tell you a quick story.

So I'm sitting in Portland, Oregon. I am deep in doing the work. I'm probably 32 at the time, maybe 31, 32. So this's a while ago. And one of the big things for me was like controlling my, , impulse of not going to the gym. 'cause not going to the gym was just as much of an impulse as going to the gym. Right.

Which I didn't understand. But then I started to realize, and it was fucking, I'll never forget this, it was super rainy. 'cause it's Portland, it was like February, March. So it's cold and it's dark and it's Portland and the gym I live on 79th and the gym's at 56. If you know Portland, it's the Hollywood gym.

And so you're talking about, that's at least a 25 minute walk. It's raining, it's cold. I'm warm inside. It's the morning. I don't want to go to the gym. But lion, I made a commitment to myself. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, I go to the gym and it was that simple. I go, that is what I do. And so I put on my shoes.

I got my raincoat in an umbrella, and I walked to the gym and every se, I'll never forget this, every second of that walk, the only thing that my brain was doing was just go back, just go back home. Just go back home. Just go back home. And I'm battling myself. And what was a 25-minute walk? Literally took 90 minutes because it was like, I can't seem to get the next foot.

And I would just literally pause and I would get, I'd be like, what the fuck am I doing? And I get mad at myself, like, go to the gym and, and then I realized, and this was just such a pivotal moment, this is why I'm telling you the story. It was such a pivotal moment. 'cause I'm like almost there. I can see the gym, I can see the Hollywood sign.

It's like right there. And I was just like, oh, actually I'm doing this so I can move towards the life I want to have. And I've realized in that moment that life is either moving towards pleasure or moving away from pain. And moving away from pain in terms of the gym would be like, I'm not going to the gym today.

Moving towards pleasure is, oh, I want to feel healthier. I wanna feel sexier. My body, I want to not die young. And that changed everything for me. And so it all just this idea about discipline and the frame of creating and changing and shifting my life. Really just came to what you said a few minutes ago, and it was the lens that I chose to see through, and that's where it all shifted.

Lion Goodman: What I love about what you just said was what I think everyone needs to hear, which is this is not a simple once and done process. This is a hard one process that you, that you do every day and every day and every day, and every month and every year. And that it, that even inner work, this inner transformation happens over time with struggle, with difficulty with, oh my God, I gotta do this again.

I gotta face this shit again. And yeah, the answer is yes. Yes, you do that and that step by step, every one of those steps for those 90 minutes was a step toward your future. And it was hard. It was hard won. So it came to a conclusion. At that moment that you just described, it's like, I'm going, I'm moving toward my new life.

But think about all the steps where there was difficulty and inner battle. You were in the ring with yourself, with another part of yourself that said, you know better to not go than to go. All those beliefs, all those strategies, all those parts, they're fighting with each other inside. And it just took time and presence and repetition and keep going and failing and starting again.

That is the process I sometimes call what we do the machete process. Because if you're in a jungle and you can't see anything, you can't see where you're going or your destination. But if you have a machete in your hand, you can at least clear what's right in your way, and then you can take a step forward and then there's something else in your way and you clear that outta your way, then you can take another step forward and with just a machete, just one chop at a time, you can get all the way to your destination.

So it is a process. we are a process. Healing is a process. Awakening is a process. Changing your life is a process and you, and you gotta be committed for the long term, for that vision. What changes, mo people most of the time is having a clear vision like you did of what I want to be, who I want to be, how I want to be, what I want my life to be, and then a step, one step at a time.

Michael Unbroken: Yep. And you need a system to get there. And most people try to do this on their own, and it doesn't work. I've never seen it work on your own, just never have. There might be an outlier, but I don't know who they are. That said, I want people, and I want to encourage people to come and learn from you and learn with you and walk that process because the work that you've done is amazing.

The fact that you have built something that actually is practical, that has shifted and changes people's life is something that should be investigated deeply. Especially if you're someone who is stuck. You're in the stuckness, you're in your own way, your lenses are dirty. I want you to go and spend some time with lions. So that said, my friend, how can people find you and work with you and learn more about what you're doing?

Lion Goodman: First place to go is liongoodman.com. That's got access to all my materials, articles, and free eBooks. One of my eBooks is Clear Your Beliefs, and that has an exercise in there called Belief Self-Diagnosis, where it takes you through a process where you can actually bring your subconscious beliefs up to the conscious level. That's always the first step. Awareness is always the first step.

Michael Unbroken: Great, and guys, of course, if you go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com, look up Lion's episode. There will be that and more in the show notes. My last question for you, my friend, what does it mean to you to be Unbroken?

Lion Goodman: When I take all my beliefs off and I look at other people, I see light. I see shining stars, just like the stars out in space. I think each person is a star here to bring their light to the world. That is our essence, is that light. And then we get covered over by our beliefs and our structures and our strategies and our traumas and everything else.

And it's an unlayering process at the core of every person, no matter how broken they appear, there's an unbroken essence at the center. And that's what I tell everybody, that's how I see people. And then it's just a matter of how do we get that unlayering going so that you can shine your light in the world?

Michael Unbroken: I love that brilliantly said, my friend. Thank you so much for being here and bringing all of your insight today on Broken Nation. Thank you so much for listening.

If this brought any value to your life, share it with someone because I can promise you someone else in your life needs this conversation as much as you did today.

Take care of yourselves, take care of each other.

And Until Next Time My Friends.

Be Unbroken. I'll See Ya.