What Holds · Sep 8, 2026 · 49 minutes

Surrender, Acceptance, and What Happens When You Stop Fighting Your Own Mind with Mike Oglesbee

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Show notes

Mike Oglesbee founded Maximized Mind in 2011 and spent years helping people work through anxiety and depression before writing about his own in his book Fight Back. His central question is not how to escape pain but what to do while you are inside it. He asks clients what the gift is, and he means it literally.

Mike talks about the year he calls his great awakening, when he stopped trying to control the outcomes of his life and let go of the path he thought would get him there. He is direct about what it cost. The estrangement from his family came after the awakening, and he makes the point that the difficulty did not end when the insight arrived. He also describes living for years with anxiety, depression, OCD, and suicidal ideation, and how acceptance rather than resistance is what finally moved the intrusive thoughts.

Partway through, Carla and Mike disagree. He holds that your circumstances are a product of your choices. She does not, and says so, naming rape, drunk drivers, and children who could not have chosen any of it. They stay in the disagreement rather than smoothing it over, and both of them say on the record that this is the point. The regard between them holds, and the conversation is stronger for it.

What emerges is a conversation about surrender as a practice rather than an event, the difference between blame and accountability, the second arrow of suffering, and what it means to choose who you show up as when you cannot choose what arrives.

Timestamps
00:01:00 What Mike built and the question he asks clients to sit with
00:02:00 The years between opening the practice and writing the book
00:04:00 The 2017 awakening and the moment he quit fighting
00:07:00 Letting go of control and stepping into the flow of life
00:08:00 Carla on safety, and why neither path felt safe to Mike
00:10:00 Surrender as something you keep doing, not something you finish
00:11:00 Choosing uncertainty over a certainty that hurt more
00:13:00 The animals, the drought, and what they know that we have forgotten
00:15:00 Faith as a knowing rather than a belief
00:18:00 Estrangement from family and the pain that came after the awakening
00:19:00 Carla on gurus who promise the elixir without naming the cost
00:20:00 Why do some people change and others do not
00:21:00 Whether everyone is meant to wake up
00:26:00 Life happening to you instead of through you
00:29:00 Why we give ourselves grace for some struggles and not others
00:30:00 The second arrow
00:31:00 Mike on circumstances as a product of choices
00:33:00 Carla disagrees, and they stay in it
00:36:00 Two people who can disagree without leaving the room
00:38:00 What you resist persists
00:40:00 Accepting the intrusive thought instead of fighting it
00:42:00 Carla on decades of depression and the analysis spiral
00:47:00 Who do you want to show up as

Guest bio
Mike Oglesbee founded Maximized Mind in 2011 and has spent more than a decade working with people on anxiety, depression, and trauma. He is the author of Fight Back, published in 2020, which grew out of his own transformation rather than his practice. His work centers on a single question he asks people to sit with instead of running from their pain: what is the gift? He teaches a structured approach to turning struggle into strength.

About Carla
Carla Royal works privately with a small number of founders and leaders whose decisions carry real consequence. Most of them already have excellent advisers. What they rarely have is someone who knows the person carrying the company and can stay with the questions that cannot be answered inside it. She works underneath performance, where judgment, timing, and steadiness are formed before they appear in the room. Carla Royal, M.Ed., is a Certified Integral Master Coach™ with more than three decades of experience spanning psychology, coaching, and long-term private work with founders and senior leaders.

Links
Mike Oglesbee: https://mikeoglesbee.com
Carla Royal: https://carlaroyal.com

About the show
What Holds is a podcast about the work that holds what founders and leaders are building. Each conversation looks beneath performance, self-sufficiency, and success into what people carry, what it costs, and what becomes possible when they are no longer carrying it alone.

CTA
If this conversation brings someone to mind, send it to them.

This episode includes discussion of suicidal ideation, anxiety, and depression. If you are struggling, help is available. In the US, call or text 988.

Read the transcript

0:00We're not in charge. There are there are things that we have control over, uh, but those are typically internal things. They're not external things. And that was the year that I surrendered, that I realized, you know what, I've been fighting this my whole life, and it's not getting me anywhere. I built myself up just a crash, and it's this perpetual loop that I was in that I couldn't seem to get out of. And I've I finally was like, you know what? I'm done. I quit. I'm not doing this anymore.

0:34This is what holds conversations with founders and leaders about the weight people carry and what becomes possible when they are no longer alone in it. I'm Carla Royal, your host. My guest today is Mike Oglesby. Mike founded Maximized Mind in 2011 and spent years helping people work through anxiety and depression before writing about his own struggle with both in his book Fight Back. He's since built a broader practice around a single question he asked clients to sit with instead of running from their pain. That question is, what's the gift? Welcome, Mike. I'm super glad you're here.

1:12Thanks so much, Carl. I'm I'm excited to spend some time with you.

1:16Yeah, me too. We had a good conversation a while back, and I think we have some interesting things to discuss here. Tell us a little bit about what you've built and what you're up to right now.

1:26So I have a message. Like many of us, I have a message to the world. And it's based on my own path, my own, my own journey of healing. What's the gift? That's really about being able to sit in the struggles because life is full of struggles. You're always going to go through struggles. You can't get rid of them. And it's about finding the power that's in those struggles, being able to use those struggles as opportunities to grow and to become better. That's really my message. And I have I have a practice of being able to teach people how to do that. I have an actual strategy of doing that. And so working up from 2011 up to this point, it's really been about teaching people how to heal from their traumas and how to heal on their journeys of anxiety and depression and being able to find their personal power through those battles and struggles.

2:18You started this work in 2011, you said, and Fight Back didn't come out until 2020. What happened in those years between opening the practice and being ready to put out your own story on the page?

2:32When you work with people, you learn. It's one of the greatest adventures of learning, uh, and also with writing a book. I started writing my book in 2016, I believe, or 2017. And in 2017, I went through a pretty big awakening period, a major healing period, uh, which is really the birth of my now, my structure, what I teach. And so in 2018 is when I sat down to start writing that book, because that's when I learned actually how to address the anxieties, the debilitating anxieties that stop you from doing what you want in life and the depressions and things like that. That's when I learned how to eliminate, right? Not manage, but eliminate those debilitating aspects so that you can actually live a good, solid, fulfilling life, even though you're going through experiences of struggle. And so in 2018, is when I sat down to start writing that book, uh, and over a course of about two and a half years, really delving into my theory and my practices and pulling out what actually works, what doesn't, getting rid of that, closing all those loops. And it was really my journey of healing, the very thing that I was teaching people and helping people understand in their own life, I was going through that transformation in my own life. And when that transformation, that particular point of transformation was complete, that's when I had the book, which was the guidance to offer people to go through their own journey and heal that stuff within themselves.

4:10Is there more you'd like to say about that 2017 experience?

4:142017, yes. That's I I call that my great awakening, right? And that's the year that I surrendered. And when I stopped fighting the results of life, when I started tuning into gratefulness, and I learned that you can't control what shows up in your life. Life is in charge here. We're not in charge. There are there are things that we have control over, uh, but those are typically internal things. They're not external things. And that was the year that I surrendered, that I realized, you know what, I've been fighting this my whole life, and it's not getting me anywhere. I built myself up just to crash, and it's this perpetual loop that I was in that I couldn't seem to get out of. And I finally was like, you know what? I'm done. I quit. I'm not doing this anymore. I said, God, you can leave me here in the valley. You can take me to the top where I've been trying to get time and time again just to keep falling flat on my face, or you can take me out because I refuse to keep doing this. And so I just surrendered and I stopped caring about the results of life. That doesn't mean I didn't have hopes and dreams. It doesn't mean I stopped doing anything. It wasn't a passive way of living. It was a very, very active way of living, but there was a shift in my philosophy. I realized that life was going to do with me what life wanted to do with me, and I didn't have any control of that. But what I did have control over was who I would choose to show up as, regardless of what showed up in my life. And so I think the majority of my work at that point in time shifted from trying to create the external results to going inside and saying, regardless of what happens in my life, who do I want to be? How do I want to experience this? What kind of man do I want to show up as in this world, regardless of what shows up in my life? And so that was my great awakening. And that took me from disempowered and anxious and broke and just a constant loop of struggling and striving, but never arriving to success and happiness and freedom and bliss. And it's a it's a hard life to describe. The only word that I've ever been able to find to describe the shift is magical. Because things start happening that defy logic. And I'm sure you know, and there's there are people like us that understand what I mean by surrender. It's not a, it's not giving up. It's a letting go of the part of yourself that actually prevents everything that it is that you want. And it's that asset of control that we're really, really giving up. And I think that that's that's the shift for me. I let go of control and I stepped into the flow of life. And I just started focusing on what I wanted and who I would need to be in order to live that life. And so that was the shift. That was the great awakening. I woke up within, and everything that I wanted outside of me started coming. And it's been like that for almost 10 years now.

7:28I hear a lot about surrender, and there are all kinds of books out there about surrender, and I think you're right that there are a lot of people who don't know what that means. And I'm not sure anybody can really know what it means until they do it, until they go through it. And my experience, both personally and professionally, is oftentimes surrender is not a one-time thing, but a many-time kind of thing. I think that we don't surrender if we can't find enough safety somehow, somehow. There's an idea, there's a sense of being safe enough. And once we're safe enough, it's not like we have to have ultimate safety, but once we're safe enough, then we can make moves that we couldn't before. I'm wondering if there was something that gave you that sense of s safe enough that you were able to surrender and have your life transformed.

8:20It's an interesting understanding that security is one of those primary things, you know, fundamental to our existence and one of those things we look for. But I'm not sure that I felt safe enough to surrender so much as it was the pain of continuing in that direction, because neither path felt safe to me, but one had so much pain that I was willing to risk being unsafe. When I just kind of threw my hands up, I said, God, you can take me out of this system. I cannot live this way anymore. I would rather not live. And not from like a suicidal perspective, but from the the perspective of I I refuse to keep stepping into these levels of pain, knowing that that's what they bring. I refuse to do that anymore. I'll give anything up, I'll give everything up. I just will not do this anymore. And my whole philosophy, I think, with security has changed because I've learned this relationship with life, this cohesive relationship where how do I know how to keep myself safe? How do I know the events that are coming? I don't. And so I've I've practiced what I call faith in life that life will keep me safe, life will sustain me. And I had to let go of that. And you mentioned surrender is a is a recurring thing. It is, and I I I would say in my experience, surrender is probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life. But it's something that I continue to do, and life continues to give me opportunity to do that. And the more I do that, the better my life gets.

10:24You talked about there were two paths and both of them didn't feel safe. But it sounds like for you, one of them felt less safe. The pain, all of that pain felt less safe. So you chose the one that was not safe, but maybe slightly less unsafe.

10:45Yeah, it's ironic because typically that uncertainty is what gives us that anxiety and the feeling of not being safe. But I felt safer in the uncertainty than I did in the certainty.

11:00Yeah, and I think that's really interesting because many people do choose what's familiar, even if it's more painful. Because our brains love certainty. Our brains love black and white, and it's either this or it's either that. We've got our patterns and they're deeply ingrained in our neuropathways, and it's just easier than trying to think our way out of that or move our way out of that. So I think it takes a lot of courage to go into the uncertainty.

11:32Yeah, I totally agree. I always say life will help you. Life will will guide you. It will give you these little opportunities, and it'll never push you further than what you can go at one time. It'll push you to your limits sometimes. But when you do begin to live a life of surrender, and that's what it is, it's not just a choice, it's a life, it's a whole lifestyle. It will change everything that you are. And that's what it is. Because surrender is a releasing of a part of your ego that is so self-serving that it can't see a bigger picture much of the time. And letting go of your goals and your dreams and your ideals sometimes is the way that you actually get them. Because if we become too attached to them, we don't just become attached to the result, we become attached to the path that gets us that result. And so that was really what I released was not the desire to have these things that I wanted, but the need to have them and the need to control the path of how I thought it was going to happen. And nothing happened the way that I thought it would. Nothing.

12:43Does it ever, Mike?

12:45I mean, I haven't found that it does.

12:48It doesn't.

12:49Yeah, it really doesn't. There are a couple of threads I want to pull there. One is that life, I I think of life the way I think of it is life is living me. Life is coursing through me. I live in the woods. And when I watch the birds and the animals, I have five trail cams up, and I catch bear and bobcat and deer and turkey and all the things. And what I notice about them is that they are moving so comfortably through the forest. And there's been a terrible drought here in the mountains of Western North Carolina. And they just trust their innate knowing about what to do and where to go and how to handle it without all of the painful suffering stories that we humans tend to have, which is, why me? Why this drought? And they they don't. They just carry on. Now there's some of them are suffering. I can see that on the camera. It's not that they don't experience the pain of the drought, for example, but they so trust their bodies and their innate knowing and life coursing through them that they move with that. We can tend to get in the way of that. We are animals too. But we are so disconnected from our bodies now, and that we believe that the brain is everything and it is important, but it's not everything. So I really appreciate you saying that about trusting life.

14:10Yeah.

14:11I mean, why why wouldn't you? Well, I mean it doesn't make any sense not to.

14:16It doesn't, but when you look at all of the social media and the way that we have been disconnected in so many ways from ourselves and from each other, I I think it makes sense that we don't trust life because we don't we don't even know who we are. We don't even know who we are. But you're right. Ultimately, why why wouldn't we trust life?

14:39Yeah, and that's the faith, right? I grew up in religion for many years and and I always heard things like faith is just believing in something that you can't see. And and nothing ever really set right with me when it came to that, because I had a really difficult time doing that. Like, how do you just believe in something blindly? But through that transformation, I grew eyes to see, right? And and when you look around you, you can see it. Like you just talked about, the animals. They have faith. And it's not that they have this belief system, they have a knowing. They they just live with that knowing. And nature is one of the greatest things to study if you really want a life of surrender and you want freedom. So I learned over time my practice of faith is the practice of surrender built through daily reinforcement, which means every time that human mind wants to jump in and try to control, it's like, hold on, you don't know how to make this happen. You don't even know what you want. You don't even know what you are. Come to think about it, you don't know what anything is at all. What is life? Well, I don't know. I could, I could tell you the labels, I can tell you what people have told me, but none of that really means anything. I don't know what anything is. And so when I realize that, it's like, well, why am I trying to control something that I have no understanding of? Sure, I can read patterns, but guess what? Patterns change. Like everything is subject to change. It's one of the primary things in life, evolution. It's a constant unfolding. And I'm like, you know what? Obviously, I have no power trying to exert my own will upon how things are gonna happen. It's a total misuse of our power. And I felt that deeply. And so I just let go of that particular expression of power because it made me powerless. And I just invested in life. And I said, wherever you want to take me, I don't care where you take. You want to put me on the side of the road? Fine, put me on the side of the road. I'm not gonna fight you, I'm not gonna resist it, I'm not gonna run from it. And little did I know by by letting that go, letting the whole idea of how things are gonna happen go. I got far more. I mean, I remember going and looking at vision boards and a check that I had written out from the universe to myself, right? Doubled in a single year's time. A single year's time doubled what I thought was that that top-tier level of success. Doubled it. Everything got better.

17:12How many years did it take you to get to that experience, that 2017 experience? How many years did it take you to get to get to the success?

17:22Yeah. To the aftermath? One. In fact, it started six months.

17:26No, I mean how many years did it take you to get to 2017, to the experience that you had that changed your life?

17:34Oh well, I think I woke up in life in 2011. That's when my journey of healing started. Before that, I was kind of oblivious. Uh, but in 2017, I was, let's see. Oh goodness, I don't even know what my age was. That would be, what, nine years ago now. So I was 35, middle age, in 2017.

18:00Middle age.

18:00Yeah. Yeah. And that's when I started having the realizations about what was going on in my life and and what was really, really, really happening. And there was a lot of pain that came after that initial catalyst that woke me up. I ended up becoming estranged from my family. Just a lot of really difficult things. But I stuck with it because I was unwilling to fight life anymore. So I stuck with it and it just it did it for me. I had to do my part. It wasn't just a life, go out and make this success. I had to step up when life calls, you answer. But that's what I did.

18:39Right. I really appreciate the fact that you said you had that enlightenment moment. I don't think you used the word enlightenment, but that transformative moment. And it wasn't pain-free at that point, that there was difficulty that came after that. And the reason why that's important to me for us to say is because sometimes I feel like people present enlightenment or being super evolved or super spiritual or this magic pill or that magic whatever, and don't talk as much about the difficulty, the pain sometimes of actually getting there and the work that it requires to get there. I don't believe that there's a magic bullet out there. I believe 100%, and I know this from my own personal life and from my professional life, that healing is possible and happens all the time. But there's so many social influencers, gurus who are promising the elixir without really truly understanding people's pain and validating that for them and allowing them to struggle. And I'm also super curious. I've always asked the question, why do some people change and other people don't? I'm 60 almost 66. I have not yet come up with an answer to why some people change and some people don't. I don't believe it's because some people are willing to surrender and others aren't. I don't believe it's that simple. The question I wonder about is how is it that some people surrender if they want to? Because I know, I know I've been around people, I've known people who have desperately, authentically, truly, vulnerably wanted to surrender and couldn't, couldn't get there. You know, so I I'm just I I just I just don't want to leave those people out of the conversation, if you will. But I'm really curious why do some people change and why do other people not change?

20:42How could you ever know, right? But for me, it's kind of like, how do I reconcile that in my mind? To me, it goes back to a philosophy, right? What is your philosophy of life? Like, why was I chosen to go through what I went through and why was I chosen to wake up, if you will? I don't know. And maybe not everybody's meant to wake up in this life. Maybe, maybe some people came here to be to catalyst other people's changes. Maybe that's maybe that is their purpose. And the best you could do is guess. I think many people are looking for what is the golden answer? What is the, what is the right way, and what is what is life, and what is this? And I don't know that there is a thing, or if there is a thing, I don't know that our brain really has the capacity to understand it. And so the best that we can do sometimes isn't really about what is the right belief. It's more about what is the right belief and philosophy for you, what brings peace to you. And for me, maybe not everybody's meant to wake up. Because if I have the idea that everybody's meant to wake up, well then that means everybody needs to change. And it's like as someone who's worked. out into the world to create change, I've come to the realization that we we tend to say, oh, I want to go change the world. But there's nothing wrong with the world. The world is running as it runs. It just does what it does. And for me to look at that and say that it should be a different way is a judgment that I have no authority to stand in. I could come up with a really good conclusion. But the reality is I don't even know what life is to begin with to say that it needs to change. It's just a perspective. And so maybe maybe some people just aren't meant to rise to a higher calling. Maybe their calling in life is just simply to be a catalyst to push people into enough pain that they gotta move out of that place.

22:46Maybe that is incredibly high calling to be the catalyst for other people and to come and do that, be willing to do that kind of work that is maybe not as attractive as some light shining out there brilliantly. That's a really interesting perspective. And I love how you say that your way may not be everybody's way and your way may well be many people's way. And those are the people that you can help are those people that that resonate with what you're saying. The other thing that that I really liked you were talking about faith. Faith is a word that can be super comforting for people and it can be super triggering for people. The word that I love that you said was a knowing it's a knowing and that's a word that that really resonates with me. And that's what I feel like the animals have is a knowing a knowing and a trust in life and in their bodies that we humans, many of us maybe have forgotten our connection to the to body to our body and and to life. So I appreciate you pointing to that.

23:49Yeah I think that we're conditioned and we're taught to disconnect from ourselves maybe thousands or however long ago we needed some of these senses more deeply to keep us safe but in today's world we simply don't. But I think that that has cause to disconnect in such a way that some people can't perceive the higher calling of their life because I think that that's really really led me into that higher calling and it's one of the things that I teach people now is how to tune in and to become one with life in that sense and recognize you're not in a system. You are the system. Like it to be in the system, oh I'm just in life well then that means you could be out of life. Well you don't exist without life you are life expressed. And so if you are life expressed then then that means this is you expressed in some way and you are the system you're not separate from it. And there is a way that when you learn the language of life it doesn't speak English and it doesn't speak Spanish it it speaks pain. It speaks struggle it speaks synchronicities it speaks to us. But when you have the eyes to see and the ears to hear and you you process through wisdom rather than what you know as knowledge captured by the brain, you can move a very different way in life. And I think if you study the masters people we call masters that that were able to do extraordinary things, they didn't rely on a on a knowledge they relied on an understanding and that's from the knowing.

25:27Yeah, I agree. And not just pain and struggle life is but beauty and awe and peace and it's all of it and yes that disconnection that you said that we've maybe lost some of our senses because we live in the kind of age that we do. I argue that we need them now more than ever all of those senses now to to your point reconnect with our wisdom the wisdom that I believe we were brought into this world with that innate wisdom that animals have that we as an animal have that we've forgotten that we have covered over with all kinds of beliefs and and things like that.

26:04Yeah and it's just a dormant muscle we can work it out. We can practice I agree.

26:10I absolutely agree it's dormant and I think it's really dormant and I think it is challenging to work it out. Many people aren't even aware that they have it and if they are aware they have it they're not aware that it's dormant. It takes a lot of intentionality and a lot of practice to do that. You've said Mike that you've spent much of your life feeling like life was happening to you instead of through you when you were experiencing that what was that like for you? How did you experience that life happening to you?

26:43I never really felt like I had any control. I tried to exert it I took the rebellious route pushed against created a lot of problems for myself and other people along the way a lot of unmet needs that I didn't know what to do with so my way was to lash out. It's a painful life it's a life of of suffering a life of struggle a life of being deprived feeling deprived to disconnect from the self and others the anxiety, depression, OCD, suicidal ideation I mean just a lot of struggle um but when I look back and and see the struggles I can see of course now on the other side of many of them I can see how life had been training me. But it was a it was a difficult life pain and suffering. I remember talking to my cousin one time and he's my mother's cousin and this was years ago and he was in his early 50s mid-50s and he said to me he said Mike if I could sum my life up into one word it would be struggle and I thought about that I said man me too I don't want to live that way I don't want to be able to sum my life up in a word struggle? God I don't want that there's gotta be more to life than this I just couldn't see it. But there is more to life I mean struggles don't have to be bad they can be catalysts for for greatness and that's that's what it's become for me and that's what I teach people to make the struggle their strength to to turn their pain into their power because it does exist yeah I think that's a a really important point about struggle it does exist and it's interesting how we allow ourselves certain kinds of struggle and not other kinds of struggle.

28:41In other words like if you're learning a new sport of course you know that you're going to struggle as you're learning the fundamentals and the basics and all the things I mean not everybody gives themselves grace but there is a level at which you give yourselves grace or when you're learning any new skill oftentimes we will give ourselves grace but then when we struggle with life issues that aren't necessarily like sports, maybe emotional issues or whatever, for some reason we think there's a problem with having to work through or learn how to work with a difficult emotion or or whatever the case may be. And it's interesting that we do that because to your point we're never life is never totally free of struggle. I mean we have moments and and periods but the struggle itself could be something we could embrace just like we do when we're learning a new I'm learning a new platform for this pad podcast. I can either get frustrated with I don't know what I'm doing or I can go oh well this is something interesting that I'm learning about and as I make mistakes I'll learn more about it and I'll get better at it and then it'll be great. So it's it's interesting how we give ourselves grace with certain kinds of things, certain kinds of struggles and then therefore we don't suffer. The Buddha talks about the second arrow it's like you get hit with the first arrow but then you shoot yourself with the second arrow of suffering like why did this happen to me or why is everything going wrong or all these things and that spinning out is where we really start to suffer. I can be working in the garden and cut myself badly and I don't suffer. I hurt but I do not suffer unless I start blaming myself or telling myself I'm an idiot for cutting myself then I start to suffer. And I think that's what the Buddha means by the second arrow.

30:32Yeah and and you're right yeah I find that we struggle more with the fact that we're struggling than we do with the struggle itself.

30:39Right.

30:40Right. And it's it's funny because I'll sit with somebody and they're like you know I started to do this and and then this happened like I can't believe this happened and I'm like what do you mean you can't believe this happened? Hasn't life always thrown a monkey wrench in your plans at some point in time? Don't you realize by now this is how life works? What do you mean you can't believe this happened? Why couldn't you this is life it's the way it works. Right? And so we do. But here's the thing we choose our struggles. We're the creator of our struggles right and it doesn't mean that we created all the details but let's say let's say like you use the sports analogy if you are playing sports and you experience a struggle with that you own it because you feel like you chose it. But every pathway in your life is chosen your choices like your circumstances and this is this is a point of power that I really want people to understand. Your circumstances are a product of your choices they're not just there and then you make choices based on them. The reason you have the circumstances you have are because of the choices you make. It doesn't mean that you chose the the exact struggle but that struggle exists on the path that you chose. Therefore when you when you understand that you can take responsibility and say oh okay well this is coming up like if you have a relationship and you have a struggle in that relationship and maybe that person cheated on you. Well you chose to be with that person. That person couldn't have cheated on you had you not chosen to be with that person. Now I get that you didn't know that that person was a cheater. Totally get that. However if you really want to have the power in your life you take ownership and say you know what I made a poor choice. I chose someone who would cheat on me. I didn't realize it but now I realize it now I see what to look for. I see my faults where I went wrong or where where I put myself in a position and and to attract someone like this and now I can work on that. So now that becomes a catalyst if you want it to be for you to make different or more effective choices for your life. Your struggles they're products of our choices.

32:57It just are I would probably have a little bit different take on that. I don't believe that we are a product of all of our choices and that all of our circumstances you know I think of children who are raped or women who are raped or men who are raped or being hit by a bus or by a drunk driver when you were driving perfectly normally I would say that we have within us the capacity to deal with those things and we have a choice about how we're going to deal with those things. Even in the case of marrying someone who would cheat on you, I I would say we we don't know and that doesn't mean we made a poor choice. It may mean that that person changed or the relationship changed. Now we are responsible and we do have to your point the ability or the the responsibility to to choose how we're going to respond in the face of some of those things. And then yes of course there are many, many ways in which we make choices that are simply bad for us and that we suffer the consequences of those. But I'm not of that belief that everything that happens to us is a result of a choice that we've made.

34:06Sure and it's it's not it's not an understanding of that every consequence you serve in life is self-imposed. It's just an under especially when when you get to children, that's different because a child doesn't really have the consciousness to make the choices, right? They haven't gathered enough information, their brain hasn't developed in a way you know a six-year-old child they don't know how to go out here and interact in the world to keep themselves safe. They're still hanging on to others to take that place for them until they reach that age. But it's just a matter of take the blame away right and say okay well this is what I'm facing right regardless of why I'm here what am I going to do with this? And it's just about taking ownership. We don't choose our struggles because you can't choose what life is going to bring to you but you get to choose what you do with that. And it look it's radical you know some people they're gonna say oh well my boss did this to me and I didn't choose that not saying you chose that specific response but you chose to work there. Oh well my my spouse did this to me. You didn't choose for your spouse to do that to you but you chose that person as your spouse. And see here's the thing there's no power in blame no power at all in blame because that that always shifts the responsibility off at the shoulders of the person who's blaming but it's it's also understanding like I have a belief that there is no right or wrong there is no good or bad there is no positive or negative not universally right what's good for you could be bad for someone else. And it's not about good or bad. So it's it's not about what is and what isn't right or wrong. None of that stuff is real beyond the idea of it. Right?

35:57You take the idea away it doesn't exist or else it would be experienced by everyone and it's not nothing is truly experienced by everyone right there are very few things that are and so it's really a matter of saying okay well this is what it is what do I want to do with it yeah one of the things I appreciate about you Mike is and we talked about this when we had a conversation before is that we are comfortable we agreed that we would be comfortable with talking and disagreeing with each other. And I love that because I feel like there's so many people out here now who can't have discussions with people that they disagree with. And I think it's so important to show that we can be respectful of each other and and really disagree and it's okay. And that there are people who are going to really understand what you're saying and resonate with what you're saying and that there are going to be a ton of people who don't also I kind of believe with the right and wrong like I really appreciate some of what you're saying about that philosophically or mystically speaking for me it's like both and it's like yes there is no ultimate universal right or wrong but I believe right in my life in this time right here and now there is right and wrong. And while I agree with you that blame is not empowering, I do believe that accountability can be very empowering. And I and I believe that if my boss does something to me, I'm not going to take responsibility for that or for taking the job because I made the best decision I could. I do now have responsibility what do I need to do in the face of this and is there any accountability I can ask of that boss for me my belief is it's a both and yes universally I can probably get there that that there's no right and wrong. I think of the Rumi quote who says there's a field out beyond wrongdoing and right doing meet me there. There's something I love about that and I think is is is that universal truth. But here and now also if you hit me in the face I'm going to ask you for some accountability and if you don't take it I'm not going to witch hunt you down or anything but I will ask for accountability and I think that is very empowering. But I'm not going to sit there and go, oh my God, Mike punched me out which of course you would never do Mike punched me out and I can never whatever again no I can get up and I can move forward. I have another question for you Mike was there a specific moment when trying to think your way out of the anxiety stopped working where you could feel the strategy of trying to kind of get yourself out of anxiety giving way the interesting thing that I've gone through is the idea of getting out of something is a is typically a rejection right like oh I'm I'm feeling this way and I need this to stop.

38:52I want this to stop I need this to go away and what I've found in my journey of healing is that when you reject something you protect it. And it's like the saying what you resist persists and I've actually found that once awareness is achieved because I think awareness is the key right without it you don't really know what you're doing deliberately but with awareness you gain deliberate choice. And once you gain awareness the first choice that I have found in healing anxiety depression and things like this suicidal ideation, OCD I mean there's so many things the very first step is acceptance because if you can't own it you can't change it right and that could be that self-accountability as well that's also a product of the choice right when when you accept it it doesn't mean that you you fold right accepting it doesn't mean you just allow it to happen. It means you own the position you're in right back to like the boss the boss something does something wrong to you you can reject it but that's not going to change it or you can own it. Then you can apply that accountability both to yourself and to that person or whatever that is. But I found acceptance is the first step to change just about anything in your life. For example, suicidal ideation I remember walking around my office one day and something had happened that triggered that pattern. And there's my mind thinking all those intrusive thoughts like this shouldn't be this way and everybody'd be better off if I was gone and I thought about something for years I had wanted to live into my triple digits right and I talked about that. Maybe a hundred or heck 150 sounds nice if I'm healthy enough, right?

40:43If I'm healthy enough I am not interested I'm not I really am not and I've only got 20 or 30 years left I am not I'm not ready for that.

40:53And so I was like you know if if I live that long I still got at least a good 60 years in me. And this is just the way my brain thinks now I know I don't want to take myself out. I know that this is just my brain trying to escape something it doesn't know how to handle yet. And if I do live that long I don't want to fight my brain for the rest of my life so I just accepted it. Not accepted it like I agreed with it, accepted like, oh okay my brain's just thinking those thoughts again. Okay, and then I'd shift my focus back to what I was doing in the present moment. Now those thoughts still came up for a while but because I was no longer fighting it they started to fade on their own. I don't have suicidal ideation at all anymore. Not because I fought my mind, but because I stopped fighting my mind. And I found that that is one of the the major keys to getting rid of intrusive thoughts is to stop rejecting them and to accept them, to explore them, but to be able to step up in your power of choice in that moment because a thought doesn't mean anything until you do something with it. You have random thoughts all the time they don't mean anything. You don't bring a thought into this world simply because it exists. You do it by acting on it. Whether that's emotionally reacting on it or allowing yourself to indulge that's an action it's a mental action but I just said okay well this is the way my brain thinks this is just going to happen. And I just accepted it. And now I don't have suicidal ideation. Now I'm not saying that that's the the key I'm saying that that's what happened with me how it I got rid of it.

42:30I appreciate all that there's something super important about that. I know for me with having depression and anxiety for decades it was that second arrow thing again which was I would wake up maybe feeling depressed and then I would start analyzing to death why are you depressed, what's going on, why do you keep doing this? What is wrong with you? And also judging myself. And when I learned at some point that I could wake up and feel down and go, oh, I feel down today. Have I had enough to eat or enough to drink? Did I get enough sleep? I go on a little like you said curious you get curious about it but not some deep rabbit hole of an analysis and then I let it go and then I just go about my day and then more times than not I'll look up from my desk or from my sessions or whatever and I'm like oh I feel fine. So when we know that the depression or the anxiety is not necessarily a problem it only becomes a problem when we're living there. That's the only time it's a problem. But anxiety depression these kinds of things are going to move through we're human and and like you said our minds just think up random thoughts. That is really true. What life are we going to give to those thoughts?

43:46That's it and just accepting it. Look pain and struggles suffering they're a natural part of life. I understand there's much of the there's these we can change these things right we can change how much we suffer. And really whether we do suffering that That's going to take a probably a lot of training to not attach some kind of stories, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible to try. It's like somebody says, Oh, I want to be more like Buddha. I want to be more like Jesus. Okay, you may never get there, but that's no reason not to try. That's no reason not to take these bits of wisdom and to step into your life in a different way and start practicing because you can alleviate a lot of stuff. But that was the turning point. It was acceptance. Okay, I got mental health issues. I've had mental health issues my whole life. Okay, let me go ahead and just sit with that. Let me go ahead and just swallow that and just sit with it and become okay with it. Now, what do I want to do with it? Because look, what it boils down to, your life will boil down to the choices you make, right? Because you get to choose your response to anything and everything you go through. When I really harness that, that's when the changes took place. That's that's ultimately when the changes took place, and you start realizing how much power you actually have, and you have the power to decide the quality of your life. Look, there's people out there in poverty that are some of the happiest people on earth. People in tribal nations where it's hard to get water, where there's a lot of starvation around them, and they are happy. They are happy. This is real. And then you got people out there that are billionaires, that are just happy, and you have all walks of life in between. People that are happy, and that's a choice. It's a choice. It doesn't matter where you are, it doesn't matter what you're going through. That's a big statement, right? Because you could be in pain, but you can find something in there. But sometimes that's gonna be really hard. Sometimes it's gonna seem impossible. But I believe that there is a gift in everything because I believe life itself is a gift. I believe we chose to come here. I believe we want to be here. I believe we don't understand the choices that we've made to come here. But when we can exert our power through our choice to say, you know what, maybe I didn't choose all this, but I get to choose what I want to do with this. I get to choose what this means to me. I get to define that. I think one of the greatest gifts we have is free will. And that's our ability to go inside and decide who we want to show up as in this world. Ultimately, I think that is one of the greatest choices we can make, is who we want to show up as.

46:35I really hear your passion, man. You have a lot of passion for your work and what you're doing and where you've come and all that you've been through. And I appreciate that and I respect that. And I love what you said earlier about acceptance. It doesn't mean you have to agree with what happens so much as it is that this is just what is. And there's a saying that if you argue with what is, you're going to suffer. Acceptance doesn't mean that you don't do anything, that you collapse in front of it, or you just give into it. No, you have choice about what you're going to do in this particular situation, whether you're going to stay with that boss and continue to work for him, or whether you're going to leave, or whatever it is that you might choose. We get to choose. I think one of the things that is difficult is that it can be difficult to choose. And it can be. Sounds so simple, and I know you're saying that it hasn't been so simple, and it's not so simple, but there's work that can be done and help that can be had that can help people get there. Mike, we're out of time at this point, but I'm curious what you might say to the listeners, just as a kind of a final send-off for our listeners that you would want them to know.

47:44I think that if you really want to change your life, first thing you have to do is stop trying to change everything outside of you. And you gotta look in the mirror and you gotta you gotta ask yourself one simple question. Who do I want to be in life? Who do I want to show up as? That question has the power to change everything if you choose to follow through with it. Choosing who you want to be in this life rather than just a product of your circumstances or a victim of the happenings, who do you want to show up as right now, in this situation, who will you choose to be? It's a very powerful question.

48:29It's a very powerful question coming from a very passionate man, which I appreciate. Mike, how can people reach you?

48:37Ah, simple. You can go to Mikeoglesby.com. I'm also on all the social media, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. I think that's it. But yeah, MikeOaglesby.com is is probably the place to go.

48:49Mike, I I have really enjoyed this conversation. I knew it was going to be interesting, and it it certainly has been. So thank you so much for being here.

48:57And thank you, Carla, for having me. It's been a pleasure.

49:00If this conversation brought someone to mind, send it to them. That's how a new show like this reaches the people it's for. I'm Carla Royal. I work privately with founders and leaders on the things underneath what they are carrying. You can find me at Carlaroyal.com. This is what holds. I'll see you back here next time.

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