Personal Transformation

Hello everyone. And welcome back to another episode of gay men going deeper. This is a podcast series where we talk about personal development, mental health, and sexuality. Your host today are Matt, Calan and me Michael collectively. We have over 40 years of experience in the personal development world. And if this is your first time listening to us, we want to welcome you.

We each have our own coaching practice, but in this podcast, we’re giving away all of our best stuff for free. So we’re happy to have you join us today. Fun fact, everyone not counting. I don’t know if you guys know this, but this is our 65th episode of the podcast, episode 65. And yeah, I know. Right?

Good job. And our very first episode of 2022. So this is the season of new year. New me. We’ve all seen the means. And so we’re going to be digging deeper on the topic of personal transformation today. We’ll be exploring questions. Like what does personal transformation even mean? And why is it important? What is the most challenging part about changing yourself?

And of course, what is the best advice for anyone who is serious about personal transformation? Okay. A couple of things before we dig into today’s topic for the audience out there, we want to hear from you too. We will be continuing these discussions on Thursday, January the 27th, where we’ll, where we will be hosting a zoom hangout. This is where we give you guys a chance to share your own thoughts on the topics we discuss here in the podcast.

So if you’re not already in the game, men’s brotherhood, Facebook group, please go there. It’s free check out the events tab, or you can RSVP to the zoom. Hank also reminder this podcast and YouTube channel is supported by listeners and viewers like you. If you enjoy these episodes and you want to help us continue making more and building our community,

please head to our Patrion page where you can support the show. The link is in the show notes. Also the gay men going deeper membership doors are open. So if you, if you’ve been waiting to join us and join in on more groups of them and go deeper with your personal development, please join us in the membership. We have a library now of over 30 coaching videos,

a six week course called healing, your shame, and many opportunities to connect with us and other members during groups and calls. We’ve got a lot of great programming planned for 2022. So please head over to gay men, going deeper.com to register. And finally, as we do, I want to read a review from one of our YouTube viewers. He left us this comment on the transforming,

transforming limiting beliefs episode with Matt and Andrew Rowe. And he says, Hey guys, thank you so much for your work. I have recently discovered your podcast and I find it very insightful. This episode piqued my interest fears and negative core beliefs. I’d like to know more about your experience with trauma being raised in religion. The energy between you two was beautiful.

Thank you so much for sharing this with our community. So that comes from Charles and thank you Charles, for your kind words. Okay guys, without further ado, let’s jump into today’s topic. So it’s the beginning of the year. You may be thinking about your personal goals. You may be doing things like setting goals, making plans, reading books.

I bought myself a new book, organizing the house, maybe creating a new diet plan and your exercise regimen. Maybe even you’re hiring coaches, which is great. There’s a lot of momentum around this time of year to want more for ourselves to want more for our lives, to work towards our goals. And it’s fun, right? There’s a lot of really good energy when you’re on the outside,

looking in when you’re imagining the possibilities of what your life could be and reinventing yourself. It’s a lot of fun, but of course, anyone who’s done this before knows there’s a hard truth that eventually sets in imagining is one thing. Executing. The plan is another thing all together. I love to use the example with my clients about learning, how to sweat.

You can read all the books about swimming. You can watch all the YouTube videos about swimming. You could listen to all the podcasts about swimming. You could give it a bit ticky. Leslie studied the best swimmers in the world, but once you’re in your bathing suit, standing on top of that diving board, looking down at the water below you, that’s when the real work begins.

And that’s because that’s when all of the self-doubt all of the fear, all of the resistance will like rise to the surface and try to convince you, you know, maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all. Yeah, I actually, you know, I actually don’t mind learn how to swim. Yeah, I’m good. Thanks. Or, you know,

another one I love is I’ll actually remember it. I’ve got other priorities that need my attention. So I’m just going to go back or I’m too tired, not feeling well. And the worst of all, I’ll just do this tomorrow. So what do we do? We go back into our comfort zone. We just slide back into the comfort zone. And that’s how that goes.

The truth is we have two oppositional desires, the desire to swim, or if you’re going with the analogy, the desire to change the desire to do something that you’ve never done before. And then also the desire to stay safe and therein lies the rub with why a lot of personal transformation doesn’t work core doesn’t last transformation requires an entire skill set that most people don’t have things like managing your mind,

emotional intelligence. We just did a podcast on that one, go check it out. Embracing discomfort, forming habits, having discipline focus. Self-awareness self-compassion. These are just a few, luckily for all you listeners out there, your host today are all pros and all of the above. And so we are here to help you out. And I want to start off by sharing something in my own life.

You know, I’ve undergone a few of my own personal transformations. Some of them very deliberately and others, I had no control over life just kind of happened. And I had to evolve with it. Also, what I do for a living is help people on their own personal transformation journey. So there’s one thing that I really need to reiterate before we start.

You cannot struggle yourself and to change, you cannot beat yourself up into changing. And even if you do this works for some people, even if you do, you will feel fucking terrible and you’ll be even worse off in the new me than you were today. So any transformation that we talked about, I think must be balanced with compassion and self-acceptance, and I know you’re thinking self-acceptance and transformation.

These things are counterintuitive. How could that possibly be? But like I said, Matt Callen and I are here to guide you. So let’s start. The first question that I have for you guys is what does personal transformation mean? And why is it important? And today we’re going to start with Callan. I knew it. I was like, you gone start with me because I have no idea what I’m going to say.

First of all, I just want to say, yay, happy me, everybody. I was so glad and like 65 episodes. I’m so proud of us because so like, this is just a Testament to us and what we’re talking about, transformation doing this hasn’t necessarily been easy, you know, but we’ve committed to it and we keep going with it and we’re seeing that things continue to keep building.

And I think that that’s one of the things that we need to talk about today around personal transformation is that when you do something once and you don’t see reaction, or you don’t see a change or you don’t see the thing you want to get back, you’re going to quit real fast. And some people think, oh, it’s a month or two months.

We’ve been doing this over a year. What’s it’s like, you know, coming up closer to a year and a half. And like, we’re just now starting to really see traction with listenership and that kind of a thing. And it’s not even like that insane. It’s just kind of like some people listen and it’s great, but like it’s taken a lot of time and commitment and dedication.

So that’s definitely something we need to talk about today, which we will probably jump into. But what does personal transformation mean and why is it important for me? Personal transformation means a shift in perception of what I was thinking. That’s what I kind of bring it down to. I kind of bring it down to, I don’t know if people, if listeners are familiar with a course of miracles,

it’s Louise hay talked a lot about it. Gabrielle Bernstein talks a lot about it. Marianne Williamson, who I love talks a lot about it. And so of course in miracles talks about the shift in perception being the miracle. And so when you can have that shift in and perspective, that’s to me personal transformation, because we can all get really comfortable in our lives and get really chill and just keep doing what we’re doing and be like,

oh no, this is okay. This is okay. We get complacent with the level of achievement we’ve gotten to, or the level of, you know, the way somebody is treating us or what we expect from others. We kind of get complacent in that energy. And then when you have that epiphany or that inspiration, or that moment where you can change the perception and look at things and go,

you know what, this isn’t okay. Or, you know what, I don’t deserve to be treated like this, or, you know what? I want to completely change my surroundings so that I feel like there’s new energy so that it can move into this transformation. That to me is what personal transformation means. It’s not even following through yet with all of the stuff.

It’s just the beginning, the trigger point, because if you can do that all the rest of it is kind of just building habits and learning and kind of figuring out how to continue on the path. But that first little switch is the most important part to me. So that to me, I would say is like personal transformation is so important because if you don’t have that epiphany,

none of the other stuff will happen. And sometimes you can, sometimes you can learn your way into it. Like Michael was talking about how you can read all the books and do all of the things. And that’s one part of it. But then the jumping off the diving board is the other part of it. That’s where it’s just like, oh,

I’m in the water now. And theoretically, I know how to do this, but this feels so much different, but I thought it was going to be, and that’s the same for everything. Relationships, you know, starting a new job, doing all of the new things. You’re not going to be perfect. Even if you’ve done all the studying,

sometimes you just need to jump off the bloody diving board and learn as you go. But the best part is, is you don’t have to do it alone. You can have friends in the pool off to the sides who are waiting for you. So that there’s the security blanket, you know? So when you jump in and you’re like, oh, I gotta get a drown.

You have your friends come over and save you. You know, you’ve, you’ve done all this study, you’ve done all the theory. You tied into what you’re doing. And then you have the other people around you to help support you, to get you to the side or to get you to the other side of the pool. And that to me comes in the form of relationships and community.

And that was one of the parts I was missing for the longest part of my life is that I was at the edge of the diving board about to jump in. And I had nobody on the sidelines because I hadn’t built that community. So yeah, of course, that’s going to be way scarier to do by yourself. I’d had the epiphany’s, I’d done the change,

but now it’s like, okay, now it’s time to jump off and have another perception shift, but it didn’t really happen until everybody else kind of came into the boom went, no, we’re here with you. It’s safe. You’ll be fine. That’s when I was like, okay, I feel safe enough to jump off. So that’s my, my two-parter answer for personal Transformation.

And I’m very curious, Matt, what about you? Yeah, this is, this is kind of the meat of what we do, right? Where you gave us these questions. My clothes like, wow, this is it’s making me think because I never really thought about it in like a definition, like how it actually define transformation. But so I started thinking about like my own transformative journey.

And for me transformation, is it, it’s a desire. I think it’s fueled by desire. Like how you said that Michael, you know, an end up opposing desire, like when we have a desire to be somewhere other than where we find ourselves. And I think for people that are wanting to transform, they, they probably find themselves in some sort of suffering Discontentment discomfort,

unhappiness, and there’s a desire to want to be beyond that, to, to something like maybe more, more happiness, more inner peace, more contentment with who they are, more confidence. I think that’s a big thing for the three of us in what we see in this community is confidence. I think a lot of people are feeling insecure or, you know,

you look at the purpose of the brotherhood is to move from shame to authenticity, right? That’s the transformation that we’re offering people, you know? And, and I think it’s important because I think, I think transformation is it’s like the shedding of the skin, right? Like the snake, like we are constantly evolving and there’s new versions of ourselves coming forward.

And I think transformation gives us an opportunity to shed skin and then rediscover a new part of ourselves that we want to share with the world or that we want to learn to embody. And I think that really, for me, at least that’s what life is about. You know, it’s about finding joy and expanding, you know, expansion, self expansion.

And I think transformation is the, the vessel that we use to go through that expansion process. And I just love it. You know, like the transformation gets me so excited, but I have a very, I have a very different relationship with transformation now than I did say, you know, a couple of years ago. And I think for me being motivated,

you know, the, the motivation and the desire behind why you want to change is going to determine the journey. It’s going to determine whether you find joy on the journey or whether you’re, you’re being punitive towards yourself on the journey. And I think I’ve learned how to incorporate self compassion into my, and teaching people how to do the same thing, because I think I’ve I’ve for,

for the longest time I was, I was very punitive and I was, I was motivating myself with shame or desire to not be something versus to be something. I think those are two completely different ways of experiencing transformation. So I have a lot more to share on that, but that more bleeds into the second and third questions. So I’ll, I’ll leave it there.

Yeah. That’s awesome. Thank you guys. Both for sharing. Yeah. I think the way that I would see it is it’s it’s evolution, right? We’ve talked about personal transformation, but to your point, we’re always shedding that skin it’s always happening. So the way I defined it is, is it’s consciously nurturing your own growth and evolution. So we evolve,

we were born here and whether we like it or not, and things are going to change. Life is an Abbot to us. We are going to evolve. We could do it unconsciously, or we can do it consciously. So another analogy that I love to use is the garden, right? It’s like having a garden, we all have a plot of land,

a garden, and either we just let whatever grow, grows, weeds things. We don’t want things we do on a little bit of both. And we don’t really do much about it or, or you have a garden and you very deliberately purposefully plant the seeds of what you want of those desires. And then you water them very mindfully. Then you fertilize the soil,

you tend to, it, you take out the weeds, you don’t want that show up and you do this very mindfully and deliberately. So for me, that’s what it’s, that’s what it’s about. It’s just, it’s just another word for, for evolution of doing so consciously. And it’s important because like you guys said, it’s why we’re here, right?

Like I believe we are here to grow, evolve, expand in many different areas. And that can mean a lot of different things and it’s okay to have dreams for yourself desires goals. This is good. I think Matt, you made a really good point and I know we all believe in this, that doing so. It depends on which way you’re looking at it.

And it’s very, very solid point. And I think one of the benefits of the self-awareness work, the self development work is knowing when you’re, when you’re in the cars, you slide back and forth. At least I do. I go sometimes, oh, I’m deep into shame here. And I got to bring myself back. I think that’s one of the benefits of personal at work is knowing when,

where you are on that journey. But having these goals, having these desires, I think is such a gift to yourself to acknowledge them and even a greater gift to go after them. It is scary as fuck, but it’s it honors it honors who you are. At least for me, like I ignored the things I wanted. I ignored so much of myself for so long.

And then I was like, okay, you know, I call that hiding. When I was, you know, in this place of hiding, just hiding my light, hiding away was hiding my gifts, hiding my talents, not wanting to show up, not wanting to be for fear of all my fears. And then when I stepped out of that,

or it’s a gradual process, it’s not, it’s not as yes and no as I’m making it seem to be. But when I started to step out of those shadows and shine, shine my light a little bit more each day, it just felt so empowering. We talked about confidence and empowerment last month. That is one of the things that to me is the most empowering is to have a desire and then take action towards it.

And one of my, one of my favorite mantras is satisfied with what is an eager for more, that beautiful balance of, I love where I am. I love my life as it is. I love everything I have and don’t have, and I’m eager for more. And I think that’s a beautiful energy of again, having that balance of acceptance yet desire.

Okay, let’s jump into the next question. And I know there’s going to be a hundred answers for this, and I’ve challenged you guys to pick just a few, but what is the most challenging part of changing yourself? And we’ll go with the same order. So we’ll start with Callan. All right. So this one I’m prepared. I think the hardest part for me is I’m very like mind based,

very methodical, very logical. And so for me, I constantly looked for ways to like how to hack my own body and hack my own brain to like do the things I wanted to do. And so a lot of that kind of research brought me to habits. So, so, so much of what we do in our life is habitual. And we don’t think it’s a big fuel,

but it really is habitual behaviors. You know, something goes wrong and you want that comfort. You want that comfort food, or, you know, you wake up in the morning at the same time every day. And it’s kind of like, even if you want to sleep on, on the weekend, your body’s going to do it just because your brain is just hardwired for those habits to keep happening.

And so for me, the most challenging part ever about change is the habits that surround that. And so I always looked for ways to kind of sandwich my habits into like what this goes, I think is James clear, who does atomic habits? And so to kind of sandwich in the change part in the middle between the trigger and the reward that I’m getting.

So it’s like, well, what’s the trigger. That’s triggering this habit for me. What’s going to go on. And then what’s the reward that I get. And so things like, you know, if I want to start going to the gym, you know, when gyms are, when it’s easier and that kind of a thing, I go on a walk every day.

And so what’s the trigger for me. Okay. Well finishing my day at work and then I get ready and I go for a walk. So the trigger could still be the same. But then instead of going from a walk, I’m going to start going to the gym if, and when I choose to implement that, that’s the kind of thing. And I still get the reward of like endorphins going out,

feeling good, getting physical. And so finding ways to kind of like input the new stuff in between the old triggers makes that transition a lot easier. But habits for me is the hardest part. Sometimes you might notice I have a math behind me today. The guys definitely noticed right away, they’re like, what’s going on? I’ve moved my room because I wanted to create new habits for the new year.

I kind of wanted things to start off fresh and kind of wanted some different perspectives. And I wanted to, you know, get some things in different places. So I’ve switched my room around. It’s still a bit of a mess, which is why we are facing this way today. But I know that that habit switching is going to also help me switch mentally when it comes to work.

Like I’m going to have a dedicated workspace now and kind of implement that kind of a thing. And that’s going to create new habits in my life. But I’ve noticed it has not been easy for my body to adjust to this because physically my bed was in a different position. Physically. I still feel awkward getting in and out of bed because I’m doing it on the opposite side of the bed now.

And it feels uncomfortable and it feels like new. And I don’t like it, but my room has to be set up like this now in order for me to accommodate a desk in here. So it’s like, I know it’s uncomfortable and I don’t like it and I’m maybe not sleeping as well. And my body feels uncomfortable. And that’s the physical manifestations of that change of that habit changing.

And so even when it’s something like that, your habits are so ingrained that my body’s like, no, this is not the way it’s supposed to be going. And that happens on so many deep levels that habits really do dictate so much of your life. That if you can do the work around habits and learn how they really affect you in your life,

that has been the biggest opening point for me on switching to things that I wanted to switch in my life and how to do that with less effort and more ease. So that’s what I’ll say is probably the biggest challenge when it comes to changing for me. What about you, Matt? Okay. Yeah, I’m going to try my best to be brief,

but I got, I got a lot to share on this. Maybe I’ll be really brief on three and I’ll be really media young too, so, okay. Th you know, this, this is very close to home for me, this, this topic, because I, I grew up in an environment where I didn’t have an opportunity to develop self-esteem I didn’t develop a strong sense of self worth,

not even really a strong sense of self. And I think being gay was a big trauma for me. I had very, very terrible cystic acne when I was a kid and or a teenager, I should say. So there was this, the, all these little things that were kind of working against me. And I started working out when I was about 18 and I became obsessed with like body.

My mom was a bodybuilder. My dad was into training as well, and I was exposed by it all the time. So like the, the visions that I saw growing up was around to not be okay with what is, and to always be, to be something other than what you are. And I internalize that message a lot. And I got on this pursuit of,

of worthiness through my body. And that was a really big, big thing for me and my healing around that came about three years ago. And I’ve told this story before, so I won’t go into Intuit into too much detail, but moving to Asia, kind of stopping, working out, stopping, weighing my food, stopping, eating super rigidly, and I just let go of it all.

And I had a massive realization that my transformation up to that point, all my transformations were to try and fix Matt, to try and fix my brokenness, to try and fix my defectiveness. And I was on this massive pursuit. It was motivated by shame. And I literally had to starve myself out of all the things that I was trying to use to try and change who I was and the,

the, the biggest one of them, the biggest culprit was perfectionism. And it kept sending the message to me that something was not right with me. Something was wrong about who I am. And, and as I learned more about shame, I started to realize that this was a really, really deeply ingrained shame wound that I had inside of, of,

of, for who I was. And in the last while I’ve completely changed my view on transformation. And I think it’s important to note that I’m speaking about people who are rooted in shame, or who have shame wounding. I think the transformative journey needs to look differently for these people because when we, you know, if you’re, if you’re on these personal development pages that are really gung ho and,

you know, they’re all about like, you know, work, you know, 10 to 12 hours a day and you will be successful. And you know, all these messages around, around transformation, I don’t think they’re helpful for people who have shamed wounding. I really don’t because they keep us stuck in the notion that we have to work to be acceptable,

but we have to work to be worthy. And I think that is one of the most harmful beliefs that we can attribute to our sense of self and the one that will keep us stuck in the shame cycle. So what I’ve been learning, my, my transformative journey has been about discernment between action and inaction or doing this and being this and allowing myself to allowing myself to just be right.

There’s nothing. Once I stopped working towards being something I settled into being who I was meant to become who I am now. And, and, and that’s when I started to realize my awesomeness and I started to develop confidence and worthiness when I stopped pursuing those things. So I just think it’s really important to be mindful on the transformative journey, like where you’re coming from.

What is your, why, you know, are you being motivated by shame or are you being motivated by love? And I think that’s going to be a big, it’s going to have a big determining factor on how you feel. Cause when you’re motivated by shame or when I’m motivated by shame, I was never happy. Right. I was never happy.

Like I was a physique competitor got on stage. And that was probably when I felt the worst about myself when my body looked the best. Right. Because I was so critical of myself. So it just shows like if I was motivated by love, I would have been happy and content with my progress, but I wasn’t, it just was never enough.

You know? So I just, I just don’t think it’s impossible. You can’t shame yourself into a version of yourself that you are going to love. Right. It’s, it’s absolutely impossible. You will always meet shame when you meet it with shame. Right. You’ll have, the end result will be more shame. So what I’m learning now is to,

to pause my, or even to, I wrote a quote and I actually posted it in the brotherhood. I said, take a break from trying to improve yourself and just be improved for awhile. And that was something that I had channeled through a meditation of mine where I was meditating, because I wanted a result. I wasn’t meditating to commune with spirit or to just be with myself.

I was trying to create transformation out of meditation. And I just don’t think that is, that is the best way to approach something like that. And I had that realization, like, why am I trying to pursue so much? Why am I always looking at the outcome or the result of what I’m trying to, to accomplish? What if I were to just stop and just enjoy what I am or,

or all the work that I’ve done and just be okay with being me for a bit. And that’s the energy I’ve been writing for? Well, I think I created that quote on my inspired to be authentic probably two months ago. So two months I’ve been in this real beautiful space of not trying to change anything. I’m just showing up and just being,

and it’s really cool because what a meeting is this real, authentic, convicted, righteous, like part of me that’s just existing as I am, right. Without trying to change something. So I, I do realize that the audience that I’m, that I’m speaking to right now, at least the majority of the audience I’ll say are people that have, you know,

growing up gay, they’d probably have shame. Wounding probably have some unresolved shame wounding. And I just think that a lot of us are trying to pursue something when it’s like, maybe we need to just stop pursuing and just be okay with who we are. And so, yeah, that would, that’s what I would say. The biggest challenge part of changing yourself is,

is when it’s coming from shame and it’s keeping you about this big, right. And not letting you actually expand because transformation is about expansion. But if it’s, it’s being motivated by shame, it’s going to keep you feeling about that big. So, yeah. Yeah. I think Matt, that that’ll resonate with a lot of people out there. I mean,

it certainly resonates with a bit of my journey as well. Again, towards the beginning when, when my evolution was more unconscious than it was conscious, definitely came from a place of need to keep up, need to be more right. And I think that’s where a lot of people start and it’s fine if that’s where, if that’s where you’re starting at.

Great. So if that’s the trigger that gets you aware that, Hey, there’s something here that I want to find out where now I don’t think we’re saying, don’t go for it. I think we’re saying there might be some, some things you, you want to do first, you want to tackle first within your yourself, which kind of leads into my,

my most challenging part of changing myself is that what happens is we tend to focus so much on the doing right, because it’s very clear to see when I do something, action creates the results. Very obvious. It’s very tangible. We see that action creates results. We don’t need to, you know, we don’t need to convince ourselves of that, but,

but there’s so much that creates results. That is not about action. Not at all. It’s about mindset and the benefits of doing mindset, work, hurdle, less tangible. So a lot of people make it a second priority or they don’t pay much attention to it with my clients. They get so frustrated when I’m like, no, no, no,

no, they action. Isn’t about doing right now. It’s kind of about looking at your beliefs, uncovering. What’s really motivating you and that stuff isn’t comfortable all the time. And we don’t see the direct result as we do with action, even worse. I think the benefit of doing energy work is even less tangible and mindset work. And so people don’t even pay attention to it at all.

Or it’s not even, it’s not even part of their plan to do the energy work inside. And if you think about it, action requires energy, right? Thinking is an expenditure of energy. And so is emotion. They’re all, it’s all about energy. It boils down to that. So I think that that’s, that’s one of the biggest challenges is we want to skip ahead to the action part,

but really there’s so so much that’s, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s so much more to do it. And doing that inside work is hard. It takes time. There is no instant results. And that’s another thing we just want this instant gratification. We want to take that long. You just going to take this course and I will be fine.

That’s not how that works is three coaches here, guys. We were telling you as much as we wish that worked. That’s not how that works. You take the course to support you, but it also takes time and you have to be very patient with yourself. They’re all needed at the end of the day, thinking, feeling, doing the energy work.

And of course the hard part is we don’t know how to think or feel no one really taught us that, but we know how to do so. That’s what we do. We know we do what we don’t give you an example. So yeah, let’s say that there’s a lot of internal shame or a lingering belief, a limiting belief that maybe you’re not worthy of your success,

or maybe not worthy of a relationship, love money. All of these things are, we’re not good enough. Right? And if that exists, usually it exists somewhere in the subconscious we don’t, we’re not really aware of, but if that exists, we will subconsciously perpetuate that belief that we have that limiting belief and that’s called self-sabotage. So, so many people will say,

oh no, but I’m doing it. And I’m doing all the action. I’m doing all the things that I need to do, but for whatever reason, I just keep procrastinating. Or when I get so close to the result, I fuck it all up. And that’s why it’s so important to do that inner work. So I would say that’s the challenge is,

is focusing on the energy work, the thought work, the emotional work, all those at the very beginning, I would set a bunch of skills like emotional intelligence, embracing discomfort. It’s not fun to do that work, but it is part of the process. Okay. So this leads us very nicely into our third question. And I know we’re going to have more than one piece of advice.

So if we were to pick one, you can give more than one, but tell us your favorite. What is your best advice for anyone who is serious about personal transformation? Okay, go ahead column. Right. So I think I’m going to bring this back to something you were both just touching upon and that’s the ebb and flow of transformation now is talking about the being and then the doing.

And that to me is one of the most important parts of transformation is that realization that yes, you can come and take a course. Like you can come it and you can take the healing, your same course that we have, and you can do the thing. And that will give you the tools and the language and the knowledge, but then there’s the being part of it as well,

where it’s not just like, okay, now I’m going to do more and more and more and keep going. There is an ebb and a flow to it. There’s that integration part that you need to have afterwards. There’s that like sitting with yourself and, and really being with those questions. And I know for me, a lot of the coaching I do is allowing the space for my clients to sit in that space comfortably because that’s the part that’s the hardest for a lot of people is how to sit in that space comfortably and allow themselves to be there.

Because a lot of the things you don’t necessarily like about yourself or the things that you discover about yourself, that you didn’t know were there, those will come up and you’ll start to beat yourself up about the mayor, start to get upset about it. And it’s like, ah, like being your worst enemy, isn’t going to help you move further, like beating yourself up about something that you had no control over,

that you didn’t know about before, isn’t going to help you move forward. So sitting in that space and being comfortable with it and being like, okay, this is where I am. I now have this knowledge. I now have these tools. I now have this language, what am I going to do with it? And so allowing that space to kind of integrate it and sit with it and revisit it.

It’s not about just doing it one time. It’s like, okay, do it one time and take the thing that you need from it. Cause we only retain like maybe 10% of what we ever actually learn and then maybe doing it again and taking something different from it. And in between those times, you sit with yourself and you go, okay, what did I really learn?

And take away from this time journal about it, give yourself the space to explore that. And you’re the only person in your mind, you are the only person seeing this, unless you’re working with a coach or something like that, give yourself that space, that mental space to be with it, to sit with it and really sink into it and let yourself integrate it.

Because that’s when really real, like real big change happens. That’s when real crazy shifts happen is when you really let yourself go with it and be with it and sit with it. So that’s probably like my biggest advice in regards to like transformation. That’s the number one I am going to add in a couple of other like extra boobs. And that’s like doing a course and taking something that helps you go in whatever direction you want to go in like myself,

I’ve taken Amy Porterfield’s digital course academy in order to learn how to make digital courses. Cause I knew that that was how I was going to be able to help people on a larger scale than just myself. I can only one person. I can only help so many people. I want to have a big impact. I want to help a lot of people.

How can I do that? And so I had to do that work, but I’m still integrating so much of that learning. And it’s like over a year and a half year, year and a half later and I keep revisiting it because they keep learning more and I keep, you know, doing the work. So courses, they help you go somewhere,

but then you have to integrate the work. And then having a support system like the game and going deeper membership that gay men’s brotherhood, Facebook group, having a support system of other people that are moving in the same direction. And it doesn’t even need to be personal development. It can be like a games group or whatever, because if your thing is you want to be more social or you want to branch out a little bit more,

that is still helping you move into the direction that you want to go in. But having a support system is like huge, like a community of like-minded people who are challenging you to think outside of your normal thoughts, because you don’t know what you don’t know, you need relationship in order to challenge you in order for those things to come into your awareness and then also to help like hold you up as you’re going through that.

So even though maybe you’ve learnt the knowledge, you can ask that community and go, okay, I’ve learned this. I don’t know what to do with it. And then that community can come in and go, oh my goodness, I’ve been there. I’ve felt that I’ve seen that I’ve gone through that. This is what helped me or this is what helped me.

And then you get all these other people kind of saying what they went through and then you can see, okay, I resonate with this. Maybe I’ll go in that direction. Maybe I’ll look over there. So those are kind of my big pieces of, you know, what’s the best advice. If somebody’s serious about personal transformation is fine guides, courses,

memberships, whatever that is and find community and support and also integration. Allow yourself to sit with it. Those are my big three. So Matt, what about you? Yeah. I fully fully resonate with what you said. I think the community is like the biggest one. I think for me, allowing yourself to kind of be part of a community of like-minded people it’s like so huge.

Like I never really realized how much I was missing that in my transformative path. And like, so yeah, I fully resonate with that. So I wrote some things down and weirdly enough, they create the acronym ABC to make it easy for you guys. So the first one is authority a for authority, I’m a huge proponent of not giving your authority away and maintaining your own agency.

Because I think oftentimes we put people on pedestals and we allow them to dictate what our transformation should be. I did that a lot. It could be, it could look like giving your power over to a psychic or a coach or a therapist and taking everything they’re saying at face value and doing exactly what they say and not tuning in with your own body.

Right? We all are sovereign. We all have our own agency and it’s really, really important to connect to that. And I tell that to my clients too. I said, listen, do not give your authority to me. I said, I don’t want it. I said, you are your own authority and you need to really check in with yourself if fits in alignment to you and your highest purpose,

do it. If not, don’t do it. And I’m very, very, very clear about that with my clients, because I just think it’s so important, especially for people again, who are struggling with shame, which has been my journey. It’s very easy to turn ourselves over when we don’t believe in ourselves and say, okay, I’ll just listen to whatever everybody else says.

Right? And it, our transformed transformation becomes very codependent. The next one would be balanced. I think balance is key on the transformative journey because like Helen said, it’s the beingness that doing this? I think a lot of us tend to be more imbalanced and more in favor of the masculine, the gang, the mental energy. And we push our transformation forward with our mind.

And I think that that’s, that’s very valuable, but it’s limiting when we’re not embodied and we’re not connecting to the truth of what our body wants on the transformative path. So within balance, we need to segment right when to access mental energy, when to access body energy. And I think that not alone is going to help you really connect into and guide you to where you need to be.

Right. We talked in our last podcast about emotions, right? Emotions are in the body for not embodied. We won’t be, we won’t have our compass of our emotions guiding us in the direction of our transformation. And then C is consistency. So I think this is one of the ones that people struggle with the most. I did fitness nutrition coaching for five years and I worked with weight loss clients.

And this is so hard for so many people. And I think the biggest thing that I would always encourage people is to constantly find a way every day to remind yourself of your, why get clear about what your why is, and, you know, set little reminders in your phone, on the little alarms, put up sticky notes around your house of why you’re doing what you’re doing and make sure that your why is rooted in love and heading in the direction of where you want to be,

not necessarily what you want to get away from, because one usually tends to be motivated by Shane and the other one’s love. So yeah, authority, consistent authority, balance, and consistency I’ll say are my three, All the, all the ones that are as well. That’s good enough. So elegantly eloquently said, I love it. I think this,

I think this is going to be very valuable for a lot of people I’ll add. Of course, I want to plug coaching. Calvin talks about guides and courses, but like, let’s be honest here we are all three coaches. We know the value of coaching, so sure you could do your personal transformation on your own. I did mine on my own for quite awhile,

but I can say it was a lot easier, a lot faster and a lot more fun when I had someone guiding me, supporting me just a co a collaborator on my journey. So that’s my plug for coaching. I definitely recommend it. I stand behind it, obviously. It’s what I do for a living. So I’m fully passionate about the work of coaching besides that.

I mean, yeah. You guys said, you had said everything that I wanted to talk about. So well, but something that I see a lot of, a lot of people struggle with is this notion of confusion. I don’t know. Right. We get this a lot. Like, I don’t know. I don’t know. And I’d love to say confusion is just fear in disguise and it keeps us stuck.

And you know, I used to be very much of the, I don’t know, because I thought I’d get went back to my perfectionism. Like, well, if I don’t know the answer, then I’m not going to bother trying. And so something that I think has been a great tip for me that I think can help. A lot of people is don’t let yourself be confused about the path forward.

You don’t need to know the path forward. We all have innate wisdom. We all have innate creativity, our society, and this is a bit of a tangent, but our society today, our education system is not set up for really letting that wisdom and creativity flourish. Okay. So it’s not our fault if we don’t know how to use it or we don’t use it very often,

all you need to do is be more committed to learning as you go and be willing to figure it out and at least try. Here’s the thing. When you don’t know fine, you don’t know, you’re not supposed to know. You don’t have to know the exact way. Right. Which is another reason why having a coach can be helpful because you’re not alone on that journey or community even.

But what you do is you, you try something, okay, I’m going to try this worst case scenario is it doesn’t work. And then you know what not to do next time. Best case scenario is it works. Oh, okay. Maybe I, maybe I like meditation. I’m going to keep doing that. If it doesn’t work for you, if that’s okay,

there’s other things. So if you’re, if you’re stuck in confusion, if you’re thinking, oh, you know, I want to know the way I want to know the answers don’t give into that. You don’t need to know all the answers, just be willing to try. We talked a lot about journaling, right? If you’re stuck on something, journal about it,

explore where your mind wants to take you. And also where your emotions take. You, you know, ask yourself, what am I, you know, go back to our other podcasts and what am I feeling? Why am I feeling this way? Where am I feeling it in my body? What is it trying to tell me the answers are there?

Don’t give into the, I don’t know. So, you know, th that invitation to go back into the comfort zone, I’m going to tie it back to the analogy at the beginning to sort of get off the diving board and go back into the comfort zone will always be there. It does not go away. Your comfort zone is always there looking really nice and comfortable and warm and cozy.

Doesn’t go away. And there’s always going to be an opportunity to go back into it. That’s fine. So this is where that, that motivation or that why I think Matt talked about the why, or both of you have talked about the, why have a strong ass compelling reason why this is important. That will be what picks you up when you fall and you will,

that will be what moves you forward. That will be the reason why you get up and try again. And that’ll be the reason you watch to overcome. So yeah, having that compelling, why is, is imperative and don’t let yourself be confused. Challenge. The, I don’t know with, I could figure it out. Yeah. I don’t know.

But I’m willing to try, or I don’t know when I’m willing to look for answers or I don’t know. And I’m just going to try this thing and see if it works. Right. That has been very important for my attorney personally. Okay. Guys, do you guys have any last words on the topic of personal transformation? I feel The mandate,

it’s a new year. Go for it. Like this is the time that everybody does the thing that like, oh, I’m glad to do that. They just rip off the band-aid and do it. Everybody else is kind of in that vibe. It’s in that energy. You’re amongst friends here, especially if you know, you’re hanging out in our community somewhere,

rip off the band-aid do the thing, be like, Kate, this is the year. This is the time this is what’s going to happen. And start taking the steps to just kind of figure it out. It’s going to be messy. You’re going to get things wrong, but just start. Yeah. What, and what a great way to start then to join us in the gay men’s brotherhoods free zoom.

Like, like we talked about, there’s so many people that come each and every week that are new or each and every month that are new. And I love it because they come in they’re new and you know, they’re nervous. And I always say, okay, whose first time is in a couple of hands, go up. And I’m like, oh my God,

we got new people. And they’ll always tell me the same thing. Oh, I’ve been wanting to come for so long. And this is the first time I did it. And I know someone is out there listening, saying, oh yeah, that’s me. I’ve been wanting to go to one of these for a long time. So listen to everything we just said on this podcast,

join us on January 27th. We have two times for you to go to. So we’re trying to, to match everyone’s schedule here. We’ve got a lot of people in the world to reach. So we’re doing our best. If you can’t make it, at least join us in the free Facebook community, go to Facebook type in gay men’s brotherhood. Join us there.

If you want to take things even deeper and take this personal transformation to a deeper level, go to the gay men, going deeper membership and join us there. Matt Kellen. And I share a lot of this wisdom that you’ve heard today in topics such as body positivity, self-confidence relationships and building communities. And we’re going to be taking you guys along the journey of the healing,

your shame course starting this month. So super excited about that. What else we got? So please also, if you are enjoying the content you’re seeing and hearing on our show, please go to our Patrion and show us some love, support us. We want to keep making this content for you. We love doing it super easy to just go to patron and give us some love there.

Also, if you are able to give us a five star review of the podcast too, so subscribe, leave us some comments in the YouTube. As you know, we are reading are our comments to you guys aloud each and every episode. So go into the YouTube sheriffs questions. We respond to, to the comments there, so you can find us there.

And that’s all I’ve got for you guys today. So thank you so much, everyone for tuning in have a beautiful new year. Oh, and thank you of course, to the lovely Matt and Callen for always sharing your wisdom. I had a great time this episode, and I’m sure a lot of people are going to resonate with what we have to share today.

Thank you everyone. Have a great year. Bye-bye bye.