Michael Dinneen, Valiant Living's CEO. A Journey to Recovery: Overcoming Addiction through Strength, Courage, and Limitless Expansion

Welcome to a conversation of strength, courage, and limitless expansion, as we sit down with Michael Dinneen, Valiant Living's CEO, a recovered addict who has bravely transformed his life. Through the power of the 12-step program and an intense spiritual journey, Michael has risen above his struggles to create a life built on understanding, clarity, and true happiness. He shares his raw and candid story of addiction, offering a personal insight into the fight for freedom from the chains of addiction.

Michael takes us beyond the surface, delving into the heart of recovery, by introducing us to the three pillars of healthy recovery: religion, treatment, and recovery itself. Through his unique perspective, he emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and a supportive network. He urges us to see our struggles not as obstacles but as enlightening experiences guided by grace. His journey reminds us that acknowledging our fears and resentments can lead to a life filled with joy and integrity.

As we walk with Michael through his journey, we also explore the concept of 'Limitless Expansion.' Here we challenge the norms of success defined by society and redefine it in a more balanced, healthier way. We discuss how cultural pressures can lead to unhealthy behaviors and how acknowledging our fears and resentments can pave the way for a life of true integrity and joy. Finally, we emphasize the importance of trust and support in recovery. Listen in as we join Michael in his transformative journey, shedding light on the path to recovery and offering hope for those battling addiction.

Transcript

Drew: 0:03

Hey everyone, welcome to the Valiant Living podcast, where we educate, encourage and empower you towards a life of peace and freedom. I'm your host, drew Powell, and I'm a grateful alumni of the Valiant Living program. Valiant Living offers hope and transformational change to men and their families struggling with addiction and mental health challenges. So on this podcast you'll hear from the Valiant team, as well as stories of alumni who are living in recovery. If you or someone you love struggling to overcome addiction or trauma, please call us at 720-756-7941 or you can email admissions at valiantlivingcom. We'd love to have a conversation with you, but for now, let's dive into today's episode.

Drew: 0:45

Man, I've been excited to kick this off with you, episode one of the Valiant Living podcast. What do you think about that? I love it. I've been wanting this for a long time. The challenge for us is you have so much and I'm not saying that it's a flatter you have so much knowledge and wisdom. We can talk for hours, right, and so just first of all, thank you. Thank you for being on and sharing some of your story and your why. I wanted to just start the episode, this whole podcast, with people here in your heart, your vision, your story, because you've got a very unique approach to what you've built here at Valiant that I've been a beneficiary of, so thank you. So let's just dive in, man, tell us a little bit first about you, your personal. How did you get here?

Michael: 1:31

Okay, yes, I had raised in Irish Catholic New York and dyslexic, add, some crazy, but I think it got hard and obsessed with sports and I found alcohol. I didn't know how much pain I was in until I found alcohol in girls when I was 14. And realized that you know, or at least I thought this is what I was meant to do with every second for the rest of my life. Everything became secondary and almost destroyed myself with the lifestyle I remember being starting at 14. Starting at 14, I was 16 years old and I was sitting by myself in 1978, volkswagen dash, or drinking a warm old Milwaukee after lacrosse practice and I was probably 17. Wow, and I realized there's no way I could ever be a dad or a husband, because when I put alcohol on my body I'm unfaithful to women and so obviously I couldn't get married and obviously then I couldn't have kids. So maybe I just go super hard for 10 years and die. But I didn't get that wish or that desire.

Michael: 2:47

I, at 23, I bottomed down, I jumped off a, I got drunk. I was in Massachusetts, so it was after I had graduated Boston College. It was 1991. I got drunk at a Portuguese Fest and then ended up on a ferry boat stitches in my head from getting a bottle broken over my face going out to Nantucket Island with these guys that I had went to college with and I ended up having a few on the ferry boat and kind of kicked in and I was basically drunk from the night before and I jumped. I literally just and it wasn't a suicide attempt, but I didn't value my life that much but I jumped off the side of this ferry boat while I was pulling in Nantucket Harbor and got arrested for disorderly conduct and had to go back for court and realized that the night before I went to the court date I'm sitting there and weird things are happening in my hotel room and I thought this couldn't be how a normal person spends their Sunday evening. It's like do they go to art shows? Do they go to church functions? They walk on the beach, I don't know what it is, but this ain't it. And so, yeah, so I go to this thing and get out. But then I thought I'm going to lose my job, I'm going to lose my life. I'd already lost my girlfriend at the time. I was broke even though I was making a lot of money for a 23-year-old, and I ended up having a spiritual experience on Route 9 in a Jeep in Boston on my way home on that Monday evening.

Michael: 4:19

Once we got back to the mainland I just broke. I had an emotional breakdown and then called out to my creator and just said kill me or help me. But I just realized there was something in me that felt like there was no way I could ever become the person that I wanted to be. And everywhere I go, people get hurt. And so I came to the end of my rope of just deep sadness enveloped me and I called out to God and I had the desire to believe my body. I felt love. I knew that I was going to be okay. I knew that I was an alcoholic. I knew that I was going to get help. I knew that everything was okay in this world and that was going to be okay. And I went back in my body and then that kind of started my journey on all of it.

Michael: 5:07

I called my sister up crying when I got home. No cell phones and she had heard in a graduate school course the week before if an alcoholic or not, it calls you and they just tell them what to do lovingly, and then hang up because they're about to manipulate you. And so she just said, michael, there's not a whole lot I can do for you, I love you. And she said go to AA. And she hung up the phone and that's what started my journey. So I didn't even start my journey in the treatment field. I was kind of a pseudo business guy fresh out of college. In the 12 step world is where my journey started. So I went from one obsession to another. One day it's all about booze and fun and adrenaline and crazy, and the next day it's all about how do I stay sober, how do I immerse yourself in that world Full on. And it started my journey along the way of seeing that the alcohol was just one of the tips of the iceberg. That, yeah.

Drew: 6:09

Well, and I want to get into that with you in a minute, because one thing I loved about my experience here at Valiant was exactly that it was. It really in some ways didn't matter what the escape or drug of choice was. It could be a process of substance. You guys very intentionally treat a lot deeper than whatever the thing is that brought us here, and I've heard you say this before a lot of times if people relapse, it often can be on a different thing, because they haven't dealt with the thing underneath.

Michael: 6:40

That's great, the difference between. There are a lot of differentiators of the valiant method than others. But as we take relapse as our failure and not the client. So if you have a client come in and they've never been to rehab before counseling or therapy or 12 step, then we're going to have a fairly basic program. We're gonna try to get to some underneath stuff. But if we have somebody that's been around a little bit and had some starts and failures, we know immediately that there are hidden addictions, trauma, issues like anger and self-esteem and shame and sex and all these issues that will manifest or that are underneath, that are hijacking this person's recovery process. Their soul isn't able to breathe, they're not feeling the joy and love and peace, so they're going back to these behaviors. So if we're not finding out what those are, then we're not doing our job and we're not making it safe enough for that person to disclose all that so we can start working on it. So there's a reason why there's such a low rate of success in the industry In general.

Michael: 7:49

It's probably like they say between 20 and 30% that someone's sober a year later. We look at it as a little bit more, I believe, in light and view is we're not necessarily saying who's got the plug in the jug for a year. We're saying is their life getting progressively better? Are they getting if there is a failure, if they say they do look at porn or they do have a rage attack or something happens are they getting back to the solution? Do they have the right people around them? Do they have the sponsor? Do they have the therapist? Are they getting back to their higher power? Do they have the friends that they're confessing to? Are they forgiving themselves faster? Are they getting back into the solution at a faster rate? That's more of a definition of recovery. Healthy recovery is how fast do you rebound? Wow, is that's the measure of your recovery Is how fast do you rebound?

Drew: 8:41

Not Not perfection, or yeah, perfection, yeah.

Michael: 8:45

Because then it becomes religious, it starts to corrupt from the inside. Then there's pride, and well, I haven't done this behavior. And then, all of a sudden, there's spiritual pride, and then you think you're somebody. And then so it's either you're a piece of crap or you're the greatest guy in the world. Really, the truth is neither a truth Neither a truth, and we have to stay away from the extremes, and the only way to do that is to depolarize the inner process and help somebody to get to the middle and find that true humility, which is not necessarily thinking less of yourself, it's just thinking of yourself less, right? We've heard that news, and so I'm thinking about myself less because I have hope and I want to. I want to, I have a desire to connect with you, I want to help you. I actually am interested in your life. I know that it feeds my soul to be of service, but I'm also starting to realize I actually like this.

Michael: 9:35

So the reality is, when you get closer to the middle, if you ever meet somebody that is constantly cannot stop talking about themselves, their problems, their assets, their liabilities, they're just obsessed with themselves. They have someone with a toothache, someone has a toothache. They don't even really bother with their teeth or know that they have teeth consciously until their tooth is throbbing. Then they're tooth centered. All they can think about is their tooth right. And if you think about somebody that is aching with self, all they can think about is themselves. Of course they're gonna need to do something to not feel this pain of. All I can think about is me. What are you thinking of me? How is my life so? It's like when I'm self obsessed. So the key to this is how do we become self conscious, how do we become more childlike? How do we get back to this joy and this happiness? And when you get back to that joy and that happiness and that inner freedom, you start to think about yourself less. I love that.

Drew: 10:32

That's so good, isn't?

Michael: 10:33

it, you know. So it's not rocket science, but it gets technical.

Drew: 10:38

Well, in this you're proving exactly why we wanted to do this podcast. Because I'm so. I want people to hear this stuff right, because it's you're right, it is simple when you say it Like. That's why I love hearing you talk, cause I'm like, yes, that makes sense, but it's can be difficult to live out right. And so this program that you've built here is and I'm biased because and I've changed the way I've talked about this One of your teammates here helped me say this differently, cause I'd always say, man valiant, has it saved my life and saved my marriage, which I really feel that, but there's a better way of saying it which is valiant gave me the tools I needed to save my life and to save my marriage.

Drew: 11:18

And that is even more meaningful for me because it takes you guys out of the that savior mode, right, right, but you guys set me up. You gave me everything I needed to live, not just a sober life, but a life in recovery, a full life, a life of adventure and fulfillment and peace and joy. So I love hearing part of your story. Well, no man, thank you. That's just unbelievable what you've been able to build here, and we're not even that old. You've only been at it for what? Five, six years now Coming up on six years this fall. Six years, wow. And I love to know what was it in you, like, that wanted to create this program? What was the driver behind this and the motivation to start something like this?

Michael: 11:59

This is not easy work, right, right, I think for me ultimately I mean it was a lot of luck I met a guy named Kyle Beard who was at a seminar I was given in Colorado Springs and he was a business guy that knew how to do startups and I was able to hook up with him and he was the business and I was more the visionary and could do the hiring and set the program up and really attract the clients, the referral sources. So I was more on the therapy and the marketing side to the design side and he was more on the business side. So I was lucky to meet up with Kyle and for me personally it was just seeing, seeing even in the 12 step rooms, how much people were limiting their capacity for joy. So it's just that whole Victor Frankal success like happiness and it cannot be pursued. It must ensue as an unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself. So happiness is a byproduct of how you live, how you think, and I was seeing people all over the place the lucky ones, yeah that weren't actually getting this other level of freedom that Bill Wilson talks about as emotional sobriety and Thomas Merton and other Christian mystics will call the true self, and there's a name for it in every spiritual walk and every religion. But I'm more attracted to that kind of Christian saint, mystic like Meister Eckhart or somebody that talks about deeper levels of experiencing God, deeper levels of freedom. So how do we get to that? Through a process.

Michael: 13:41

Well, I found out, like the trifecta or the whole eternity of all this was really healthy religion, meeting, healthy treatment, meeting healthy recovery. And what does that look like, what does that feel like? And then how does that all come together? And that's where you see the guys, that's where you see his soul be able to breathe, that's where they start thriving, that's when they thrive. And so how do we do our part, which is treatment? How do we introduce people to the recovery world, the lingo, get at some of the secrets, get at some of the behaviors, some of the core affects, states, some of the codependency, the substances, the behavioral addictions.

Michael: 14:21

And then how do we start coming alongside the family and educating and really teaching the spouses, the partners, about betrayal, trauma, not calling them codependence and not labeling them as enablers and starting to blame them and shame them. No, we call them trauma survivors or I love that, yeah, so if you call a partner like, let's say your wife. We get on the phone with her and we call her a trauma survivor, but immediately she starts to trust us, cause she's not. She's already blaming herself. Why didn't I see this? What do you do Like? Why didn't I? And so you don't need a group of experts coming in and then shaming the family. Yeah, right, and labeling.

Drew: 15:03

Right, right, and so they're in this trauma, yeah, yeah.

Michael: 15:07

So there's a method of the madness, but it's a lot about engaging the system versus the client. How do we engage the system, the referral source, the lawyer, the employer, the probation officer, the adult, children that have what we call a loving leverage? How do you get people involved that win that the part of that person that wants to sabotage them, that the smarter they are sometimes, the worse it is? The mind, outmaneuvering the mind when that person takes over, when that part of them takes over? How do we, how have we built enough of a system, a strong enough system, where we're all in lockstep with one another, where the disease, the illness, the compulsion doesn't win the narcissism? It doesn't win Because we can slow that guy down, cause all we have to do is make one phone call to the wife and she'll say, drew, the door's not open yet. When Valian says the door's open, and so then we can actually, then we can actually slow the guy down enough where all of a sudden he starts realizing, oh my gosh, what they're saying is true. And then, once he's slowed down enough, he's golden. He's golden Now. He's like, oh my gosh, I'm crazier than I thought. Absolutely, and it's a beautiful thing.

Michael: 16:18

I heard Mother Teresa once say something like I'm the greatest of all sinners, and I thought that is not true. Yeah right, but what she meant by it was as the closer, the more she opened her heart up and her soul up and the more she realized who she was. She realized how ineffective and how crazy she was, outside of the grace of God. That's right. Oh man, it's so good, isn't that true? So it's actually not a shameful thought to be like I'm crazier than I thought it's. Actually, if you do it in a healthy way, it's more of an enlightened thought. That's exactly right.

Drew: 16:58

I felt that here I mean one of the things that I've tell people all the time, from my experience and as I'm encouraging people to come, because I think everyone should give themselves the gift of 90 days. I mean, I think you know, or whatever it might be. It might be long, though, but this is out of your life. Take a period of time, a certain time, and focus on getting healthy. But I'll say all the time, man, I was way worse than what I thought, because I got here at first and I was like man, what am I doing here? I don't belong here. What am I like these guys? I'm not. You know all the stuff that you've heard a million times, right?

Michael: 17:25

Yeah.

Drew: 17:25

And by the end they're my brothers. I'm like and I'm saying I think I'm worse than it. I'm the worst one here.

Michael: 17:30

Right.

Drew: 17:31

You know, because I was worse than what I thought, but it was exactly what you just said. It was a comforting feeling. It wasn't? I didn't feel shame in that. Could you guys teach us a lot of self love and self compassion? It was like, oh wow, but there was more grace and more hope and more love than I thought too. There you go, you know it was-.

Michael: 17:46

There you go. That's and that, if anything, if we could distill, I just did a group of the guys and I said, guys like it or not, my goal for valiant, my goal for every group that I run, is you walk out of here feeling way more messed up than you ever realized you were and that you feel way more capacity for love, hope, direction, peace, herpes, an ability to actually that your best days are way in front of you and they are not behind you. And if you walk out of the group feeling that, like I don't want you swimming around in a sewer, you're going. Please give me my wife back, please give me my wallet back, please give me my license back, and that's all I want. But I don't want to get out of the sewer.

Michael: 18:32

I'm okay with swallowing. I just don't want to swallow crap and pee. I just want people to stop making waves. But this is comfortable, right? This is what I know. And the challenge is to say are you in enough pain and are you willing to get off the elevator and actually hop out of the sewer and have us hose you down now? It's going to shock your system, it's going to be super scary and it's the only way. It's the only way.

Michael: 19:02

Get out Right now. Yeah, someday you'll be thanking the universe for the DUI or more, the fact that you got busted and looking at that stuff or whatever it was, the precipitating event, the crisis that got you or your loved one to pick up the phone, right, but that's the actual good news. But that's not the thing that you want. Even the actual behavior itself. It's like, even if it's like, wow, I got sober, it's like, yes, but did that launch you on a trajectory? Right, that's the goal and I think that's the differentiator.

Michael: 19:34

One looks at the substance or the behavior and we're looking at, hopefully, we're setting you on a trajectory of the sky's the limit? Limitless expansion, yeah, yeah, is the goal is like, if you realize that I love that limit, you're already on it, you're already in it. You can't be stopped once you realize that this spiritual path, however you define it, is gonna lead you to a limitless expansion within inside yourself. It's sort of like the way I see it. I use movies or metaphors, but a lot of it is very much like Lord of the Rings. It's like you're just gonna start this journey and it's gonna get wild and it's gonna get crazy. I don't even know if you're gonna survive it. But if we told you what this is gonna do, you probably wouldn't have started the journey to begin with.

Drew: 20:25

Right.

Drew: 20:25

Well, something comes alive in me when you say that limitless expansion, because I got goosebumps when you said it, because a lot of us used or escaped or did whatever because we felt like we couldn't achieve that without the substance or the process, addiction or whatever it might be.

Drew: 20:41

But it's this counterintuitive thing that, like no limitless expansion happens when you embrace the peace and the freedom and all that stuff that comes through surrender Cause I know the longing in my heart was to live this big, full life, but I thought I had to do it through, you know, substance, process, sex addiction, whatever it might be. You know, and that's the thing I learned here, like you know, we would kind of half-heartedly joke and say, for some of us guys, like we're heroin addicts, we just hadn't had the opportunity yet, that's right, Like we were just addicted to anything that helped us get out of pain in the moment. But what you just said is so beautiful, because what we're offering to these guys is this limitless expansion, like what your life could be so much better. And how do you help guys get over that hurdle, though? Because we feel like I've heard guys say all the time well, I don't know if I'll even like myself, but I'm not using all that kind of stuff.

Michael: 21:33

That is risk and that's the fear and that's why most people turn back. Really, it's so much easier to define ourselves on. You know your gender or your ethnicity, or your religion or your denomination, or your zip code, or what college you went to or degree you have, or your position, or what country club you affiliated with, or who your friends are, or there's a litany of things that actually get you nowhere. They really do. I hate to say it, but I don't wanna over philosophize here, but the things that we define ourselves by and define other people by is a recipe for disaster.

Michael: 22:07

The good news about addiction or infidelity or something that's gonna bring you to your knees is that you're almost forced to evaluate all this and you're once forced to say so. There's no grandiosity and it's like I took stock and I see what the meaning of life is. But the reality is is you're forced to look at it and you're like, oh my gosh, we all have suffered from guilt and shame and compulsion and promising yourself you're gonna change and then not. And then, or promising others, or the resentment or the self pity of people really knew, and like the internal process that the people with mental illness and I don't wanna leave out the mental illness piece. We're talking a lot about addiction, but the truth is they're all fused right.

Michael: 22:49

So the depression, the anxiety and the trauma and the codependency and the behaviors and the chemicals all start to have its way and they start to develop relationships with each other where it's like, how quickly can I get Drew to feel horrible about himself, right? It's like, oh, I could team up with him here. But the point is it's so scary then to say, wait, I had it all wrong, all my methods, all my, I thought, going to an Ivy League school and doing this, I thought everyone told me that this was the key. And then, when you have to actually get confronted with the fact that your formulas were incorrect to start with that, you were sold a bill of goods that you bought into and, even if you lived them out, it never got you where you wanted to go. Then, all of a sudden, it's so scary. It's where the suicides happen, it's where addiction happens, it's where divorce happens, it's where all of this lives, it's where and to have someone that's just in enough pain to say, maybe my formulas were all wrong, why don't I look at this?

Michael: 23:52

Now you're talking about we can introduce these concepts of the inside journey and this connection to self, others and the creator. And how do we get there and how do we get rid of all these things that are blocking us, like the dirt that's on the soul, like the resentments, the fears, the compulsions, the trauma, all the stuff that's in the way of our soul breathing? We start to say, well, maybe that was the issue, maybe it really was an inside game all along, and that once you start to feel okay about yourself and you start to live in integrity and you have this interconnection and your values meet your behaviors, then all of a sudden the other stuff comes to you. So the Victor Frankle thing is the happiness comes to you. It's I live this way and the inside, and it starts to happen on the outside. So, like you're a good example, it's like you've lived this way and now all of a sudden you're a valiant employee, yeah, full circle man.

Michael: 24:53

It's a full and it's just gonna get better. But you know what I mean. It's like you didn't even ask for it. You were hanging out with some people going. I just wanna say thank you and all of a sudden, you don't even realize it, but you were inspiring me. I'm sitting there going. Are we making a difference and am I making a difference? What's going on? There's always a struggle with money and finances. How do you keep this thing going? Okay, so you have all these concerns that start to weigh you down Totally. Thank you, third person earner, in my heart and in my head that I'm teaching the exact opposite. I'm teaching people that it's not about this, it's about the other, and I'm like hiding in my backyard.

Drew: 25:37

Well, jamie and I, just we, literally. This is the God's honest truth, you know, cause we had talked a couple of times when I was in treatment here, but you know, we wanted to sit down with you as a couple in person and look you in the eye and say, man, thank you, what you've built here gave us the tools that has saved our lives, saved our marriage in. And from that conversation we started talking. I had connection on, you know even what you just said to trifecta like the spiritual side, the healthy religion cause I came from some some toxic, you know religion backgrounds, you know but the healthy, you know religion side, with the therapeutics, well-served, those things coming together, man, that is, that is the recipe for success.

Drew: 26:16

And what I've seen is that people only have one or two of those three things. The look, you know, the likelihood of them failing is probably higher. Right, you have to have all three of those. So, man, yeah, absolutely Like what everything you're talking about and what you made me think just now is the self-love and the compassion comes in when we realize that we bought into a bad system, a bad program. Right, like that's what you helped us understand is like-.

Michael: 26:39

And the anger doesn't see. We don't want to blame. It's not like people are like I'm not gonna blame my parents and I'm not gonna blame society. Everyone did the best they could and so it's not about, it's not even about blame, it's just about truth. It's like what's the truth about why we ended up and it can't be. It's like when I first got sober in the early nineties, it was all about just taking a hundred percent responsibility and it was great.

Michael: 27:05

My first 10 years you take a hundred percent responsibility for everything and then you start to realize that sort of like okay, so maybe there was some dysfunctional things happening in that Catholic school in the 1970s when they'd stick in the back of the class, they had to shut up just because you had dyslexia and you couldn't read. It gets you like you should look into that a little bit. Maybe there was some like and it's not blaming the nuns, you're not blaming Catholicism, you're not blaming the school system and you're not blaming New York in the 1970s. You're just looking at what is, what's true and of course, a little six-year-old, seven-year-old, eight-year-old boy is gonna start to develop a self-concept of like there's something wrong with me or I'm stupid, and he's gonna make some conclusions about himself so it was his fault, but the truth is it wasn't that little boy's fault either, right, right, you know that he drew. So, like, that's what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to say we're not looking to point fingers, it's not about blame, we're looking to find out what's the truth, and normally it's actually not as bad as you think about you, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like you find out, like you were doing the best you could all along. I was trying to survive, and so was everybody else, and you start to have more compassion for yourself, which, in turn, actually helps you develop more compassion for others.

Michael: 28:20

So when you like, say, do a fifth step, and you do this huge confession and you talk about all your resentments, all your fears, all your secrets, and you do this, you actually walk away feeling not better than or less than anyone, and you actually, and so you treat people that way, right, and all of a sudden you're like you're sitting there and you know that this guy's a senator and you're not overly impressed, right, but you also know this other guy just got out of prison and you're not overly offended either. You're just sort of like, yeah, that's people, bright people everywhere, and so by doing that, you actually treat yourself that way too. You're not overly impressed with yourself and you're not underly. It's a beautiful. It's when you can get in that zone. It's a beautiful way to live. Yeah, that's so, and you start to, and what I'm really trying to say is you start to exude it so you don't even have to talk about it, cause people feel it so, like one of the guys downstairs today.

Michael: 29:15

I said ask me any questions about Valiant Living. And he said, well, what are your values and principles and core? And he started going off like he wanted my business plan and I said, well, one of the key things is I hire people here that have high intellect, that they have the masters or the doctorate and they're experts in what they do, but they also have huge hearts and care about you and actually like you. So that's true.

Michael: 29:42

A lot of times you deal with an institution, you go to a place and you're the subject, you're the patient, you're the client and you're being operated on, you're being, in some ways, you're just, you're kind of devalued in that sense, and what I want to say is we want every client to feel like wait, these guys are. They have a wisdom and they have a way and they have a path, but they're not looking down on me, that's right. And if that guy feels that, he'll sink in and then he'll start sharing stuff about it that he never thought he would share, which will put him on the path of oh my gosh, I didn't realize that I was trying to hide all this stuff and then, once I divulged it, you guys actually love me more.

Drew: 30:28

Right, right, that's so true. We learned that in here. Like hey it's. We thought they could be liked in our life. We had to be successful externally, manipulate, lie, hide, all those things. The opposite was exactly true. People like you more when you're just being honest Cause then they're like hey, me too, me too, me too.

Michael: 30:45

I'm dealing, you're more relatable too. I didn't realize that this guy had these issues too, and then all of a sudden you become a brother versus a guy. That I have to subtly let you know. I made a few bucks in my lifetime right. Like I've gotta let you know side of it, I gotta let you know who I know, or what I know. And the reality is is now there's like this, this you sink into this friendship. Yeah, I just like being around you.

Drew: 31:13

Well, I feel a brotherhood with some of these guys that if I wouldn't have gone through this, I probably would have never like. On the surface, we have almost nothing in common, but when we get below the surface we're so alike. Yeah, and I never would have known that if we didn't have this opportunity. To be honest, these are people that you know could call me. I could call them at any time. It would show up for me. That's right, but we had to get past that. All the all the external stuff that is projected out. I'm curious, though, for you like this is so. All this is so good man.

Michael: 31:42

I'm just curious why so value living is for men you say 28 and older is that the 28 and older, and the reason why we do that is cause a lot of like. There's a lot of good programs first of all, like J Walker, choice House, some type places that are gonna really do well with that 18 to 30 year old. That it's sort of like behavior mod meets nature, meets the 12 steps, meets a frat, meets brotherhood, meets intensity, right, so that a 20 year old coming off fentanyl doesn't need necessarily what we're giving. Like they need a lot of okay, we're going here, then we're gonna climb a mountain, then we're gonna go over here, and then it's a lot of intensity, right. And so they need to almost like live their way into a new way of thinking, where Valiant is sort of like an older version.

Michael: 32:33

It's like okay, so you've been around a little bit, your marriage is hanging on by a thread, your kids, your relationship with your kids is hanging on by a thread, and your bank accounts are hanging on by a thread, and your self, and it's like we need to go in and finally do some. We need to recreate. We're gonna help you recreate your life, even within your own industry. Like you have a skill set that we can leverage and help you redefine and find some life, find something that actually helps you breathe, and so it's a different.

Michael: 33:09

Our guy's a little bit down the line, he's like a little bit older, he's like he's in his 40s or 50s. For that reason, because we wanna do some of the higher meaning of life, recreating yourself type stuff. And if a kid, if an 18 year old kid coming on a fentanyl was like wait, what You're looking at porn and you're here, you're actually in treatment for porn, he'd be on the phone with his dad that night going there's some weird crap going on here, there's this one dude and he's here for porn and he's like but he's looking, the kid's looking at porn himself, but there's no way he's gonna get off that.

Drew: 33:47

Right, doesn't he? Yeah, he's not even dressing that.

Michael: 33:50

No. So to differentiate ourselves, to say let the people that are really good at what they do do what they do. And then it also is a very we call it the Colorado model. It's like it lets everybody kind of drill down on their expertise. So I know these guys that own the other companies A lot of collaboration in this area. I don't want to yeah, I don't want to actually go into competition with them. I want to actually create a differentiator that says Valiant really hits this one thing and so you know absolutely kind of guy and in his 30s benefit yes, we've got a few, but my typical guys in his 40s awarding piece.

Drew: 34:29

Well, what I loved is when I was here, there was some guys in that were just workaholics, very successful, but losing everything because they just had to work and whatever. And so, you know, we would kind of joke with them too Like man, you don't have any problem, get out of here or whatever. But he was doing deep work.

Michael: 34:43

He's like no, I'm unhappy and it's leading to these other abuses and think about the typical American guy who has, like, been told that you know your value is money and how hard you work, american work ethic, all these myths around John Wayne and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, the self-made man. Okay, think about all these myths of our country and what we're built on and then take it to that guy who is sitting there, who can't even barely stop looking at his emails on vacation and he can't ever detox from this. And then what does his son do? I mean, you'd yearn for the days of the 1950s where he would leave dad alone and let him smoke his pipe and read his paper and then he's with the kids, like this. Guy's never present and he's like dad.

Michael: 35:26

You could have been in a bar the whole time, but you happen to be in a high-rising on Wall Street, right, and I never saw you. But you did it all for us, I did it all for you, I did it for the Vale House. This gave you the experiences. You could go to whatever college you want your trust. I did it all for the family. I don't know if you did it all for the family, right, because the reality is is that kid may feel like my dad was never around, which means he could have been in a bar, he could have been at work.

Michael: 35:54

And so I'm saying this because it's like I'm not trying to shame that guy, I'm just trying to say we get hoodwinked because, guess what you get applauded for in the religious world and in that kind of high-stress, high-money work-allism world, you get awarded Mm-hmm. Yep, you know, if you're still high-five for that, if you're smoking meth, looking at porn, no one's patting you on the back, going good job, you know. Six hours, right, six hours of that, that's something to be admired. But if you're pounding out and you're like I left two weeks of vacation time on the table, that's a badge of honor. Yeah, how sold In the investment banking world? Yeah, if someone says I left I was actually here on my son's birthday and I left two weeks of vacation time on the table that is actually something to brag about. Yeah, that's it. And so you can see, the culture we've built is like you're awarded for something that you probably should have never been awarded for, right, right. Or you're revered for something that maybe is dysfunctional.

Drew: 37:01

Yeah, and sometimes it takes a reset. It takes getting into a place like this for, you know, 90 days, sometimes more, to actually retrain our brain to think differently about work.

Michael: 37:10

This is something crazy. My dad I don't know if my dad ever remembers saying this, but he said you know these investment bankers on Wall Street. He goes they really have to make their money and be smart about putting their money away, because when they have their first heart attack around 40, they sometimes can't go back to work. Wow, and it just dawned on me. It was like wait, so these guys know there's almost a life cycle, so they sign up for it. They sign up for it. Geez, like they know the heart attack is pending, imagine. So you better make your money fast, get furious and like don't sleep and do whatever you gotta do to not sleep. Right, and it is a lifestyle and it's like but that's what all the top notch kids coming out of school we're signing up for. That's right. Like you wanna talk when we go into medicine? I don't think so. I'm not even gonna start making money until I'm 40 in medicine. Why don't I go into something that's gonna kill me, right?

Drew: 38:09

What do you say? I mean, it's just insanity that we do this.

Michael: 38:14

But I say that. But the truth is, I say it with knowing, if I was smart enough and driven enough, I probably would have been one of those guys. Yeah, right.

Drew: 38:23

Yeah.

Michael: 38:25

I say it as like a 55 year old man looking back and now treating a bunch of workaholics and realizing like what this can do to you and do to your loved ones. So I'm saying this in hindsight, but if I'm a rockstar, 22 year old, coming out of and I leave school, I'm probably I'm signing up for something that is a hundred hours a week. Yeah, yeah.

Drew: 38:51

I mean, we have so much more to get into and I know you've got a lot going on, but thank you for giving time to this to share, because and there's a lot more we're gonna get into over the next this is something we're gonna continue to do, so I just would love to hear from you about what you're thinking about. Well, a couple of questions to close. The first thing is if you know maybe you guys listening right now, or maybe it's a loved one, a spouse or a family member, a friend what encouragement would you give to them about making the decision to come to Valiant? And the follow-up question to that is what is your? What are you dreaming for? What's the vision of Valiant looking?

Michael: 39:28

like before. Well, for one, I think it all comes back to something you started hitting on around that surrender. Anybody who was listening to this would be Whether you believe in anything or not, pray for the willingness to surrender, cause then doors will open Like it's amazing. I just went through this recently and it was an amazing experience that I wouldn't wish on anyone, but it opened my heart back up and solutions just came. Wow, because I was in enough pain and I was willing to surrender and I was willing to do whatever. And then, all of a sudden, it was just like boom, the answers are there.

Michael: 40:09

So I would say don't try to figure this out, don't maneuver. Don't say I gotta, you know, set, you know I gotta get to the boss misfit and I gotta do this, I gotta close out at that, I gotta do this, and then maybe I'll have time for this. Don't start negotiating. Don't start saying why you don't need. Don't look for the reasons why you're different, or you can do it on your own, or that you can muscle your way through it. Look for a team effort, like everybody gets to weigh in, like people that love you most, or that they get to weigh in Like I guess the way to condense it down. If you had to do one thing is, what would you say to your best friend when you think come to the Hell in or not? Do I spend this kind of money or do I make this kind of effort? Do I put my job in jeopardy or it won't be? I've never lost anyone a job because of FMLA and all sorts of things that you can do.

Michael: 40:56

But the point is, you know the fears that will come up, the rationalizations. Am I that bad and bypass all that and say what? Would you look your best friend in the eye or your child, your 18, your 30 year old child? You look at them in the eye and say what would you say to them? And then that's probably more of an accurate way to make this decision than you trying to operate on yourself and the fears and the sweat and the heart pounding.

Michael: 41:25

You're gonna make the wrong decision. You're gonna be filled with adrenaline, rationalization, justification, your bank accounts, whatever it is that's gonna scare you. It's gonna scare you and guess what? You're gonna make the wrong decision. It's like epic, it's Star Wars, it's. You know, fear will bring you over to the dark, exactly, and you have to learn how to detach. And the only way to detach is to actually bring other people in on the conversation and sometimes let your ego aside and just be willing to do it somebody else's way. Talk about humility is like, okay, I'm willing to do it somebody else's way. What do you think I should do, joe?

Drew: 42:00

And then boom, and then the it's like provisional trust you taught us about here. Yeah, you can't trust yourself right now.

Michael: 42:08

People around you. Trust that part of yourself, the part of yourself it's gonna outmaneuver you. Gotcha that always has that. You're good for a few days, you're good for a few weeks, everyone's off your back, you're feeling good and what happens? It's like any illness that goes untreated may look at times as though it's in full remission or it's not coming back where that it's healed. It never is. You can't treat an illness without treating it effectively and like getting rid of it. So sometimes it looks like it's getting better. It actually isn't Right. Right.

Michael: 42:40

The other thing I would say is the vision for valiant would be not to grow but to actually involve family a little bit more than we are. We're already doing women's groups and all sorts of things for the family, but we could even do more like fly people in for intensives and really kind of amp up the alumni program more for that annual semi-annual retreats and weekly groups and monthly events and really keep people in that sense of community. Yeah, so that would be something that I would like to see grown. I would like to just live in a more healthy. Ultimately it wouldn't be to grow, it would just be live at a healthy census. Sure, we've had a dirty dozen 12 apostles in at all times with digging on their lives. That's cool and we help them recreate their lives and just have that flow where the world knows about us.

Michael: 43:37

So the biggest thing is part of my vision is to get the word out yeah, it's this, we're actually. This is like the first step towards the vision, this conversation, because we're, yeah, the chip jobs and people hear about us and thank God. But think about it, think about how many men right now are suffering, think about how many men are off themselves today because they didn't know this existed Countless men. And so my hope is that the vision for valiant will be that we get the word out, yeah, and then I think we're, we're gonna add to the wilderness program. We're gonna constantly add to what's already there, but I think it's all kind of manifesting, it's all coming to life. Yeah, Beautiful.

Drew: 44:22

Well, man, we're doing it. Thank you so much for everything you do, for your leadership and what you've built here. It's changing lives and, man, I'm so grateful, grateful, for your time. Thank you. Well, we appreciate you listening to this episode of the Valiant Living podcast, and our hope is that it helped you feel educated, encouraged and even empowered on your journey towards peace and freedom. If we can serve you or your loved one in any way, we'd love to have a conversation with you. You can call 720-756-7941 or email admissions at valiantlivingcom. At Valiant Living, we treat the whole person so you not only survive, but you thrive in the life you deserve. And finally, if this episode has been helpful to you, it would mean a lot to us if you'd subscribe and even share it with your friends and family. You can also follow along with us on Instagram and Facebook by simply searching Valiant Living. Thanks again for listening and supporting the Valiant Living podcast. We'll see you next week.