Michael Todd
Appearances
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
So I would say to you, because I know there's thousands of people watching this that feel that exact same thing. You need to examine the pattern.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
man that's so true because if this is a pattern of you continually getting hurt because you do not heal then it might be better for you long term to do the work to heal so that you can cut the cycle yes i think about um um rest in heaven kobe bryant when he when he um tore his achilles and He said he could come back and play before he was fully healed. He was ready.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
I mean, and he would have probably been better than nine out of 10 people on the floor. He could have fooled everybody. But he knew he wasn't his 100%. He wasn't his best. He was not his best. So if it came down to the last minute when he really needed to be his best, he wouldn't have what he needed to have. So they took the time for him to actually heal.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
What I'm saying is you may be fooling everybody. You made your Instagram is popping. Your business is successful. You got the bag and the body and you got all the different things, but you know, deep down in your soul, your mind, will and emotions, you know, you're still hurting. And so what ends up happening is you come in limping to love. you limp into love. Wow. Instead of leaping into love.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Right. You should be able to go a lot higher, but because you're still aware of the thing that you need to be healed, you don't go. And so what I'm saying is, if this is a pattern, if this is, if it's been the same, it was John and then it was Joey and then it was Julio, then it was Jaquan and then it was Jared.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Like if it, if it's the same thing, you might want to step back and get a new perspective because the pattern is the same. And a season is, of discipline can produce a lifetime of freedom. Come on. And that's where I just my encouragement. I've counseled too many people. I've been around too many people. I've helped so many people get through this hump in their life.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
And what they realize is what they're scared of. They need the most. that intentional time with themselves, that intentional time with God, that intentional time with community, that intentional time in counseling.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
They need that because if you discover you, if you find out who you were made to be and walk in your purpose and get confident in that thing, then you actually will attract what you really wanna love. And most people are attracting to their insecurities. Ooh, man, that's true. You're attracting based on your trauma, not on the healed version of you. Right.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
And so you're looking for somebody to play savior and they can't. They've never been able to have that ability in this life. And so I would just encourage those people, I know it's hard, I know it's frustrating.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
I know you probably even tried before, but as someone who can identify with you, like as someone who did not want to face their trauma, did not want to talk about the bad stuff that happened, did not want to even block stuff out. Like, like, no, like I'm not going there. Like the journey that I've gone on, to actually take everything that has damaged me and say, you know what?
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
I may be damaged, but I'm not destroyed. This thing that was trauma, it actually can be fuel to make me triumph. I learned that the value was still in me. And then once I learned the value was in me, then I could give and add value to other people. And so I'm telling you, it may be hard, but it's going to be worth it. Wow. You've been married for 14 years now? 14 years. 14 years.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Together 21, is that right? Yeah, this is my high school sweetheart. Met her when I was 15 years old, and she's still the finest woman I've ever seen in my life. I love her.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
No, I was a boy. I was still messing up.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
This is this is what I do. And for everybody that's listening, you have to go get my book Relationship Goals. This is not what we're talking about, but it will help you. It's how to win in marriage, dating and sex. And you really need to get that. And my answer to your question, Lewis, is yes. Overwhelmingly. Yes. Two broken people.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
who make a decision to do something are way more powerful than a broken person who decides, I don't wanna try. Like trying turns into training And training can change your destiny. And so I've seen it in my life. I've seen it because in the reason I say get the book, because I tell you all the stuff I did. Like I messed up. I jacked up. I lied. I did. I had months of insanity.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
I did all that other stuff. But this is my motto. Progression, not perfection. If somebody sees that you are moving forward or making attempts, statistics tell us that their ability to have grace for your mistakes grow exponentially. Wow. Many times people are frustrated by the immobility of somebody or the paralyzation of somebody or the nonchalant. I don't care. I'm not doing nothing attitude.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
But when somebody sees somebody trying, their grace goes up significantly. What I'm saying is it can't be one sided. But if two people come together and say, you know what, we've been jacked up, we've been messing each other up. I trigger you. You trigger me. This turns into all of this stuff. We've made mistakes. We've made mistakes. We've jacked up. We've cheated. We've hurt each other.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
We spent money that no people didn't know. Let's be real about it. Like I went on a vacation with my girls and you had no idea what was happening or where were you really out with your boys watching the game or were you come on like like real stuff. I have seen all of those things change when people have made a decision. And this is what I say.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
I think I told you earlier, it applies to so many areas of your life. When you make a decision, your decision changes into a discipline. You have to do something that's a discipline. OK, we're going to go to counseling once every two weeks. Or we're going to meet with another couple that's older than us and ask them how the hell they didn't kill each other.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Or we're going to you know, we need a discipline. We're going to take walks together. We're going to talk. We're going to make a discipline. But once you get that discipline somewhere around the consistency being all the time, even when you don't want to, it turns into a desire. Yes. You literally go from a decision to a discipline, to a desire. And that desire continued will change your destiny.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
You can apply that to any area of your life. You can apply it to relationships, money. You can apply it to what we were talking about earlier, health and working out. But I'm telling you, this is the formula for life. It is a decision. I don't want to, but I'm going to do it. That turns into a discipline. I don't feel like it, but I'm going to do it, which then one day turns into a desire.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Man, I actually want to do this. and then it changes your destiny. And if you can apply that to any area of your life with consistency, You will take every trauma situation and it has to turn into triumph. Every single one of them.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Yeah, I was a little fluffier, bro. I was a little more packed on.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
We're on the School of Greatness podcast. I'm going to be hot, humble, open, and transparent. The truth of the matter was I was an emotional eater. If we won, I ate. If we lost, I ate. If somebody died, I ate. If somebody had a baby, I ate. It was like, what do you do that you are in control of that makes you feel good? Cookies and cream ice cream, Blue Bill. I mean, burgers with cheese.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
And it didn't matter what time of night. I'd find myself two o'clock in the morning, like, what's open? Ice cream, let's go. And I was an emotional eater. I never addressed it. I never even thought about it. when I begin to gain another level of success, responsibility, all of these different things, now it gets magnified because I'm feeling it all the time.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Like I'm responsible for this many people's livelihoods and people are depending on me to be inspired and be drawn closer to God and all this other stuff. And you start feeling that pressure. And what do you do? You need to release.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
I would have unhealthy habits that would jeopardize everything. Really? Oh. Well, it's how the human nature is. If you're not healthy, but you still are making great impact, What ends up happening is that great impact starts to affect you differently because it becomes a harder pressure because you do not have the vehicle or the, yeah, vehicle. The container.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
The container to do what you need to do. So you need to find ways to medicate. To numb, to medicate, to whatever. To release all of those words. And that's when people start making stupid decisions. Oh, man. What is the decisions that most people make? Oh, I mean, it's been the same since the beginning of time. It's the girls, the gold. It's the greed.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
It's like you start taking more than you're supposed to. You start... investing in relationships that have no actual benefit for your life. You start you start becoming full. You got into it with the right motivation and now the motivation is just money. And so it changes the heart and the content of what you're doing, because it's not about actually helping people.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
It's about how many people can help me like when motives change. The ways that I release change. And then, I mean, we haven't even talked about the substance abuse. Like, I can't tell you how many athletes and people that I mentor and pray for and help that they're literally inebriated more than half of the day. Like smoking, alcohol, drugs, mushrooms, whatever.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
They're literally not remembering the life they prayed for. Wow. They were in some locker room or somebody's mom's house praying that they could get into this situation. And now they are so overcome with their past traumas and their current pressures that they are literally numbing themselves and saying, bro, I don't even remember.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
So you're living the greatest moment of your life and you don't even remember it? And it's because this is what we do as humans, because I don't believe that God created our bodies to be able to handle that kind of stress and trauma. And so we have to figure out a way to keep going because we want the results of it. But we can't really keep going because it's killing us. Wow.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
And so we try to find ways to do it. And that's why I say the safest way to get into the place that you need to be is you need to deal with your past issues so it can change your present situation and it can prepare for you a great future. Yes. Do you think we are ever able to run away from our past or our traumas? No. your body keeps the score. It does.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Like, I mean, people act like not saying it does something. No. Your body is a computer that is taking all the information and it's storing it. Mm-hmm. stress, hypertension, all of the... I mean, we have people dying of heart attacks at 32. Crazy. Like, there is so much information coming to us every day, all the time. So many ideas, so many opinions.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
All of those things were never a part of the core creation DNA for a human being. So you think about processing all of that and then processing processed food and then taking on all the digital information and then worried about everybody's comments of you and how skinny and how like think about the stress.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
That your body and your mind and your emotions is under, not to mention that the real life stuff happens. You have a miscarriage. You lose a loved one. COVID happens and your business has to shut down. Like that? means that something has to be prioritized and that something is not anything external. It needs to be us.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
We need to deal with the issues, the lies, the hurts, the layers that have made us into this person, but maybe the very thing that's trying to take us out. And so for me, I mean, I just know that part of my issue, even with food and weight and emotional eating, I need to delay. I need to talk about some stuff. I needed to. What did you need to talk about? What are you talking about?
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
I needed to talk about insecurities. OK, so I'll talk about it in the book, but I'll just I'll just sum it up right now. I had this revelation that I. Had become allergic to being good. I could only be great. I was in a situation when I was young where I was good at playing the drums at 12 years old. And I mean, I was really good.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
And I was in our church back at the house and I was better than the drummer that played for our main service. Like the adult. Like the adult service. You know what I'm saying? And all I wanted at 12 years old is to play drums in the big church. That's what I called it. Playing drums at the big church. And the guy who was over all the music, he was like, you are really good.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
And they were always giving me props and all the other stuff. But he would always let this older guy play that was not as good as me. And I would come every Tuesday, the only kid there for their rehearsals. And I'd be there with my sticks. I would come early. I'd make my parents drop me off. I know all the music and everything like that, but they would never let me play. And I did this for months.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Like, months. I knew all the music. I knew all the songs. I was hoping that he would just fall dead and just fall off the thing, and then I was able to catch it. I mean, this is in my 12-year-old mind, you know what I'm saying? But, like, I knew I could do it if somebody would just give me an opportunity, and they never let me play. And I remember being on that maroon chair.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
And see, this is how subtle trauma can come into your life. And this is why we have to evaluate it. I remember sitting on a maroon chair in the back and I decided that being good was not good enough. I had to be great at everything. Because if I was great, they couldn't deny me. Like if I was great, there's no way they wouldn't let me do that.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
And from that day on, at 12 years old, my engine changed. I couldn't be good at anything, okay? No, I'm not playing the game unless I'm gonna smash you. And now, this now seems like at that age, it seems endearing. It's like, wow, this young man is, wow, he's proactive and he's gifted and he's moving, he's hungry. And so now I'm getting attention from it. And now I'm getting accolades from it.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
And now I'm getting, so it's like, oh, this is great. I made the right decision. Like I'll never be good. Nothing good is good. I will only be great. So my car had to be great. My business had to be great. My wife had to be great. My family had to be great. My everything had to be great. And this served me for almost 20 years.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
until I reached this level of success and everybody wants me to come speak and everybody wants me to do this. And we found out that my only son had autism. So now my wife is broken. She's depressed. I'm confused. I'm the guy that's supposed to have crazy faith, but I can't do anything about my son. He's no longer looking at us. He's not saying any words. His younger sister's developing past him.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Like he's peeing and pooping on himself every day. What's going on? And now my motor is I have somebody here that looks like me that's not great. And it's not even good. I don't know how to process this. So now I'm going to go and I'm going to make more money. I'm going to da-da-da-da-da. But my wife needs me.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
I have the person I've loved for my whole life sitting here saying, I don't care if we have any more money. I need my husband. I need you to sit with me. And I'm like, well, you sit there, but I got to like, because now my motor to be great is no longer what's going to help me. If I would have taken all the dates, if I would have kept going, I would have lost my wife and my family.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
I would have lost my legacy. I would have lost the thing that meant the most to me. And this is the culmination of me having to deal with like, where did that come from? And so I was sitting with my mentor outside of Oklahoma City in a crackle barrel. And he was he's listening to me talk. And he just he's sitting there. His name is Tim Ross. And he has this huge pile of eggs that he's eating.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
He loves eggs for some reason. And I just remember seeing the eggs. And he says, so when did you have. When did you decide that your standard for this life was greater than God's? And I was like, what are you talking about? And because I'm a person of faith, we look at the Bible as principles and practical things that we can use to live our lives by.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
He said, remember in creation, it said in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and the star. And he told the ocean how far it could come and created land and did all of these things. And he looked back at his work and he said, it's good. He created the solar system and the galaxies and all the animals. And then he looked back at it and said, that's good.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
And he does all this creating on the sixth day, he creates man and woman. And he looks at him and said, this is good. He said, if God's standard is good, why is your standard great? And something inside of me was like, whoa, I can't keep living and not even appreciating all of the good that's around me because of the trauma that happened to me at 12. Ralph. And now I don't even like good.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
I don't even appreciate good where people would love to have good. I can't have good money. I have to have great money. I can't be good in my relationship. My relationship hasn't been great. I'm literally missing the essence of life and what's right in front of me. I can't even be grateful for what people would kill for because of the trauma that happened on the maroon chairs when I was 12.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
And this is part of what led to me going through this healing journey and transformation so that I could really, really live life to the fullest.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Yeah. So so the fruit was now I'm a very successful workaholic, excellence expecting perfectionist person, Mike Todd. But the root was I was an insecure little boy who felt like nobody saw him. So I was going to make sure you saw me. So now everybody will look at the fruit and be like, yay. Like, wow. Like, that is phenomenal. But the root was trauma. The root was damage.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
The foundation helped you get there in a sense. Yeah. It was motivated negatively. But if you never stop and examine it, it would have been the same thing that destroyed me.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
And this is why I'm telling everybody who's listening right now, it may be time to stop and evaluate. Just because you're doing good doesn't mean you're doing good.