Table of Contents
The Number One Mistake in Life Coaching
Mentally Masturbating vs. Taking Action
The Identity Crisis and the Six Pillars of Humanity
Navigating the "Snake Oil" in the Coaching Industry
Why You Cannot Read the Label from Inside the Jar
The Shift to High-Performance Leadership
## The Number One Mistake in Life Coaching from a Motivational Speaker
The number one mistake that people make when they assume that life coaching is something that's actually going to help them change their life is that they think that hiring a coach is actually the thing. What it actually is, is when you decide to hire someone to help guide you through your journey, whatever it might be, what you're actually doing is you're creating accountability for yourself.
And this is the thing that people need to understand. Like you can not get success in hiring any coach ever if you don't actually do the work. And I've had people over the years who have hired me, who've paid me, who have had a beautiful and incredible transformation in their life.
And I have people who haven't. And I can tell you after coaching over 3000 clients in the course of the last decade, the people whose lives actually change are the ones who show up and do the damn work. It's not easy.
And I get it because so much of our life and our journey is us trying to figure out well, how do we become the person we're capable of being? Like, how do you be that person? You have this vision and this idea of the person that you want to become, and yet you're just hitting this wall.
Mentally Masturbating vs. Taking Action
And then you go out into the world. You watch personal development videos, YouTube's channels like mine. You watch clips and reels. You read books and podcasts and you go to conferences and events and all of the things.
And yet you're looking at your life and like, why is my life still not what I want it to be? That's because most of you are mentally masturbating. What I mean by that is most of you are taking in all of this information and all of this data and you're learning and you're learning and you're learning, but you're not doing anything to prove to yourself that you are capable of creating and building the life that you want by taking action.
So that's why I'm creating this channel so that I can help you actually take action. How to actually create a change in your life starts with this right now in this moment, looking at your life and going, okay, how do I force? And this is literal.
How do I force myself to do the thing that I know I'm supposed to be doing? Having a coach creates some form of accountability first and foremost with yourself because especially with a good coach, you're going to have to invest a lot of money, but more so it's investing in yourself and saying, I believe in myself enough that I know that if I can get in connection with someone else, it will help me be able to pull myself into the life that I want to create.
And so as you hopefully hang out with me, I'm going to teach you how to do this. So if you don't know me, I'm Michael Anthony, also known as Michael Anthony Unbroken. I am an author.
I am a speaker. I am a podcast host and I am a coach. I started a company called Think Unbroken about nine years ago.
And since I started that company, I've helped thousands of people in their trauma transformation journey. And as I stepped into year 10 of this business, about a year ago, I made a decision that I wanted to pivot. I wanted to do something different.
The Identity Crisis and the Six Pillars of Humanity
And so I am here with you right now talking about this different element of the personal development journey through coaching, where I'm talking about it through the scope of leadership of high performance and most importantly, for people who are in roles that require them to be leaders outside of themselves. These are people who maybe you're an executive, maybe you're an entrepreneur, maybe you yourself are a coach or a mentor, or maybe you help guide other people in some capacity in your life, and yet you're finding your life is not what you want it to be.
There's places of stuckness, there's places of loss, there's places of I don't know what to do. And so now that I've coached so many people, I wanted to walk into this journey with people like you as I myself walk into the next phase of my journey. And one of the ways that I wanted to do that is I am just unlocking the gates to everything that I know about coaching, to everything that I know about how you actually transform your life and to everything that I know about what it means to ultimately get to this place where you can look in the mirror and be okay with the reflection on the other side.
So much of this journey that we are on is that. And I can tell you from firsthand experience, I am the kind of guy who learns the hard way. I have had so many mistakes, missteps, fallbacks, fall downs, let goes, let downs where you name it.
It's happened to me. And I'm going to get into my story a little bit today, just so we have some context moving forward. But I can tell you this as well. My life is incredible.
Not because of like the books or the podcast or the the coaching or money or travel or any of that. It's because I've gotten to this place where I've accepted myself and that's really hard. Even for me.
It's really hard. Like accepting yourself is so difficult because we all have these proclivities and these intricacies about who we are. And while some of those intricacies are built in the foundation of really your upbringing, your parents, your community, your school, your education, and what your childhood was like.
Some of this also is about accepting who you are in the evolution and of the growth of who you are in this moment. And I don't mean just in some ways, I mean, in all of the ways, like I look at the world through this scope of this idea of there are these six foundational pillars that create who we are. There's mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, financial, and sexual.
These are the six pillars of what it means to be a human, at least in my opinion. There could be another one, I'm sure there is, but this is just the way that I see the world. And until you get to the place of accepting yourself in all six of these areas, it doesn't matter what you do.
It doesn't matter if you hire a coach. doesn't matter if you come to events like mine or read books like mine or listen to podcasts like mine or walk down the path of every personal development coach and quote unquote guru in the world. It doesn't matter.
Nothing in your life is going to change. This journey begins for all of us at acceptance. Looking at your life in this moment as who you are and saying, yes, this is me.
This is me mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, financially, sexually, this is my identity. Now, one of the really difficult things, especially if you happen to be an American is identity is something that we are not allotted when we are growing up. You don't get the space to have identity in this country because identity in America is so tied to success, accomplishments, finances, job title, spouse, and we have totally miss the mark and my opinion completely about what it means to be a person in this country.
I think that a big part of the journey that we're in and I see it happening more and more is people having the ability to freely express who they are and hopefully owning that in the process, but not doing it in this way that isn't real for them, but doing it for a way that is. And when you can get to that place, that level of ownership and self-acceptance, is really where you have to start this journey.
I've seen it time and time again, the difficulty in climbing the hill of who it is that you are and becoming that person begins the moment that you decide, this is who I am. I'm deciding this is who I am. But in that decision making process, the thing that also has to transpire is tomorrow when you wake up, you have to make that decision again.
The Gut as Your Second Brain
There's this concept that we talk about a lot in terms of following your gut. Your gut is ideally your second brain. There are many people who say that your gut actually carries more information and data about survival and success for you than your brain does.
I would agree with that because if you think about this, you have never once in your life said, damn it. I wish I would have trusted my brain. But I guarantee you said countless times I knew I should have trusted my gut.
And that's the thing that we have to get to on a daily basis. Like how do I trust myself to be making the right decision on the daily basis day in and day out? What does it look like for me to say I'm going to take this risk?
I'm going to bet on myself and my vision of who I believe I am and I'm going to do whatever in my power to be and become that person. If you want to create an amazing life, that's where it begins. And people have made this wild misconception because they believe, hey, the coaching industry is full of these snake oil salesmen and nothing's going to work.
Navigating the "Snake Oil" in the Coaching Industry
And even if I hire them, I'm just getting ripped off. I will tell you, because I have been ripped off as someone who has hired coaches over the years, that's going to happen. It's kind of the same as you go to the restaurant that looks like it has great reviews and you get there and their food is trash.
It's the same as when you buy a car and you're driving off the lot and you're like a year later looking up the car and thinking to yourself, man, this thing barely works. I spent all this money on maintenance. I'm getting ripped off. It's going to happen.
That's life. Sorry guys. Hate to break it to you. And because coaching is unregulated by any government agency at whether it be the state or federal level, anybody can be a freaking coach and that's just true.
And the hard part is your responsibility as someone who is seeking coaching is you have to vet that person. Now, most people, because a lot of coaches are good salespeople, we can sell you because we'll find the path to get you to make the decision that you believe is best to change your life. That's part of our responsibility.
I want you to invest in yourself because I also know that no one's life actually changes until they do. Because I was that person when I was 350 pounds smoking two packs a day, drinking myself to sleep, partying day and night. I can damn well assure you that I was not investing in myself in a positive way.
The second that I made a decision to put my wallet on the line and get someone to help me in my journey, everything changed. And so we want you to be able to come down this path of saying, Hey, this person has been where I've been. I think that they can help me.
Your responsibility and your due diligence is to make sure that you are trusting your gut in that moment. And that the person that you're sitting across from, whether that's in person or online like this, you say to yourself, I trust this person. I can work with them.
Not in your head. If the buyer's remorse thing is always something that happens to people because they didn't trust their gut and they're driving off the lot in the car. They can't afford they're working with the coach who doesn't actually suit their needs.
They're in the relationship that doesn't have the longevity in front of them that they're hoping. And when you get to this place of trusting your gut, that's where the real work starts. This is the same thing about learning to be able to be okay with who you are and having acceptance for the person in the mirror.
You want to have an amazing life. Great. I want you to, but guess what? Nobody's coming to save you and no one is coming to rescue you and no one cares.
You have a moral obligation to yourself. It's like, okay, think about this for a moment. I'm 40 and I have been coaching people for a decade. Now to tell you the truth, I have so much respect for the people that hired me when I was 30. Cause I didn't know what I was talking about.
Probably right. The people when I was 33, 35, 37, 38 last year, last week today, I don't know my goal and my job is always to help guide people down the path that I believe is best suited for them because I get to see the thing that they don't see. But this process doesn't work if you don't execute the game plan.
Why You Cannot Read the Label from Inside the Jar
And this is where people always lose people like I hired a coach and it didn't work because you didn't do the work. The work works if you do the work. Trust me on this. Trust me.
I've seen it too many times. There's too many testimonials on my website. There's too many people that have sent me text messages were like, my God, the work that I did with you changed my life.
And it's because I get to hold you accountable to you. I need a coach. In my opinion, this is just my opinion, take it for what you will. I believe that every person on planet earth needs a coach because as human beings, we need guidance.
It is a forest for the trees. You cannot see what is around you if you are in it. This is not my analogy. I heard someone else say this, but you cannot read the jar if you're the label.
Wait, hold on. I messed that up. You cannot read the label if you're inside of the jar, right? And so it's like, cool, if you can't read the label because you're inside of the jar, maybe you need somebody to read the label for you and then help you figure out how to get out of the jar.
That's what coaching is. That's all it is to tell you the truth. And the people who have the most success come in and they show up and they do the work there.
And think unbroken. I created this very in-depth program, very in-depth, lots of work, lots of videos, lots of live coaching calls. And I can tell you unequivocally that the people who did that work, those are the people whose lives are different.
And the people who don't, those are the people who say coaching doesn't work. I got ripped off. Your journey and what's in front of you is on you, period.
The Shift to High-Performance Leadership
My hope, especially with this transition that I am personally making, because I want to work with high performers and leaders and executives. We have so much free content on Think Unbroken. You can go to that website right now and it'll change your life.
Thousand episodes of a podcast. My book is free. The podcast is free. There's coaching sessions on there that are free. There's all kinds of stuff on there, right?
But I will tell you as well that if you really want to create change in your life, it's showing up today in this moment and not doing the free thing. I did the free thing for a long time. And sometimes you do because that's where you're at.
And sometimes that's where you start. And that's where I started. And then one day you realize the free thing doesn't actually get you to where you want to go because you actually don't care about it that much.
There's nothing on the line for you. And so I'm going to encourage you and I'm not saying work with me, by the way, I don't give a shit because for me, it's up to you. This is your life.
What I am saying is as you're looking at the journey you're in front of, you should heavily be considering the fact that if you really want to change your life, you should invest in yourself. So that said, welcome to the Coach Michael Anthony podcast.
My hope and my goal is to sit with you through this journey and be a source for you on a daily basis where we're going to be releasing shows every single day, just like this, to help guide you on your journey. And you can learn more about this podcast if you go to michaelunbroken.com where you can learn more about who I am, what I do, why I do it, and most importantly, get access to all kinds of things that will help you on your journey.
That said, thank you for being here. I'm excited for the future of this show and what we are going to be doing together. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and until tomorrow, my friend, be unbroken. I'll see you.
Tired of "mentally masturbating" with information but seeing no results? Stop talking about change and start engineering it. Learn more about Michael's high-performance coaching here.
