In this enlightening episode my guest reveals groundbreaking insights into achieving personal growth. If you're stuck, or at your plateau in life and you either can’t see what’s next or how to get beyond where you are, this is one you’re not going to want to miss.

Bryan May is a highly sought-after Breakthrough Consultant who helps individuals break through personal and professional barriers. He’s also a dad. Drawing from his personal experiences, Bryan now helps others overcome limiting beliefs, self-doubt, and life's inevitable plateaus.

To learn more about Bryan May or get coaching visit:

https://www.bryanisamazing.com/

Find Bryan May on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/bryan.may/

Create your podcast today! #madeonzencastr

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Transcription - Overcoming Life’s Plateaus

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In this enlightening episode of The Fatherhood Challenge, my guest reveals a groundbreaking

insight into achieving personal growth if you're stuck or at a plateau in life and either

you can't see what's next or how to get beyond where you are.

This is one you're not going to want to miss, so don't go anywhere.

Welcome to The Fatherhood Challenge, a movement to awaken and inspire fathers everywhere

to take great pride in their role and a challenge society to understand how important fathers

are to the stability and culture of their family's environment.

Now here's your host, Jonathan Guerrero.

Greetings everyone, thank you so much for joining me.

I have Brian May with me.

Brian is a highly sought after breakthrough consultant who blends business acumen with

spirituality to help individuals break through personal and professional barriers.

He's also a dad.

Drawing from his personal experience, Brian now helps others overcome limiting beliefs,

self-doubt, and life's inevitable plateaus.

Brian thank you so much for being on The Fatherhood Challenge.

Thank you very much for having me, I appreciate it.

Brian let's start with your story.

What's the story behind how you became a breakthrough consultant?

The story is this.

I am a couple of years ago I had a tragedy in my life and I lost my wife and so my son and

I kind of rebuilt.

He was only one and a half at the time and I was very spiritual beforehand and it took

me more onto that path.

When you have such a young boy, you don't want him to have negative feelings towards these

kind of events that are obviously negative towards us as adults, right?

Even obviously if you're a child, five in up, which he's five now, of course would be

very sad for them but at one and a half, it's a hard thing to deal with.

I didn't want him to have negative feelings towards it.

That's what kind of broke me out of this shell that I was in and really forced me to keep

living life if that makes sense.

Is it normal to hit a plateau in life or is there ultimately something wrong with us or

in us that is creating the plateau?

I think it's totally normal to hit a plateau, right?

I think we hit multiple plateaus depending on the areas of our life, whether it's going

to the gym and not being able to lift more weight than a certain amount, whether it's

not being able to make more money than a certain amount.

I think plateaus are super normal and with breaking through, with being a breakthrough consultant,

the whole point is to break past limitations.

The whole point is to break past those plateaus by gaining clarity, right?

We want that new level of understanding.

We want to turn that moment of an obstacle or a challenge and we want to transform it into

an opportunity.

As they say, it's the darkest before the dawn and we need to push through and sometimes

we get stuck because we run out of options of how to push through and sometimes people

don't want to push through.

For me personally, I don't take on clients that let's say they know they're in some kind

of a trouble, they know they hit some kind of plateau, but they don't want to push through.

It has to be someone that, hey, I really want to get to the next level but I don't know

how or I don't know what's stopping me.

But once you say, hey, I want to get past this, I want to get a Ferrari, well then your brain

can start thinking a little differently.

It is very important to understand that these plateaus are totally normal in life and we

have to want to break through that.

When you get to a point that you don't know how to break through, you need to seek help

just like you would if you were in the gym, you would hire a personal trainer.

It's just like that.

What you went through was often what's referred to as the dark night of the soul and oftentimes

for me, I've hit it twice in my life and every single time it's a terrifying experience

and I have at first tried to avoid it that tends to be the instinctive reaction you just want

life to go on and you don't really want to go into that dark night place.

There are bad consequences to be paid over a long period of time for avoiding that dark

night experience rather than just going through it.

Going through it is terrifying.

It is not a fun place to be but who you are coming out on the other side of it.

If you've gone through it well is often a place where you can find your identity and purpose

and it sounds like that's kind of like what you went through.

Absolutely.

I think there's multiple layers and I think what people have to realize, which they know,

a lot of times you push it to the side is that different people feel differently, people react

differently, right?

There's not just one trick for everyone.

You have to work with people based on their personality and based on their previous experiences.

I think that a lot of times we think that, "Oh, well, if I go through this dark night of

the soul, I'm never going to feel negative things again."

That's not true.

You can go through it and still feel negative emotions.

I'll give you an example.

This just happens to me.

Last week, Monday and Tuesday for whatever reason, I woke up Monday morning and I just

was not feeling well.

It was like sadness was just very heavy on my heart.

In May of this year, I lost my mother.

She passed away.

My father is, he's going through his own grieving process.

He wanted to remove some of my mother's clothing from the house and we ended up bringing

a lot of the clothing here and going through it.

I think it was a combination of that.

I felt very heavy Monday and Tuesday.

What I remind myself, even though I'm sad, I still am happy that I'm going through this.

I'm happy that I am experiencing these human emotions.

I try to enjoy it.

I try to enjoy those waves up and down and it's very important because listen, that's how

I connect to my late life.

That's how I connect to my mother and I have my little playlist on Spotify and I enjoy it.

I enjoy the sadness.

I rest and then Wednesday I woke up like a superstar.

Wednesday I hit the gym harder than ever and it was a great thing and I think one last

thing, you have to remind yourself and I think that remembering and reminding yourself,

people always talk about affirmations but just simply reminding yourself of things is

very important because the brain has a tendency to make us forget, if that makes sense to

you.

Through significant personal challenges, we've talked about the loss of your wife and then

we've also talked about the loss of your mother which I know what that's like when the death

of my mother really is one of the big things that sent me spiraling into my second dark night

of the soul.

Death just has a way of really waking up some things in you, questions that you may have

had and that's what sent me into that direction.

But you also have been through some health challenges as well.

How have all of those things shaped the way you coach?

Absolutely.

I mean, a lot of it is about resilience, right?

A lot of it is about getting knocked down and getting back up.

You know when you're a child, it's very normal when you start to walk to constantly fall

and it's normal when you start and learn to ski that you know when you, the first time

you ski, everyone knows they're going to fall.

And so the question is, are you willing to keep getting back up in order to get to the

black diamond?

Are you willing to keep getting back up in order to learn how to run?

And the only way to do that is by continuously falling.

You know, Michael Jordan has scored many, many points, but what's even more impressive

is how many shots he's missed.

I believe it's around 12,000.

And so the best baseball players have missed the most balls.

And so we have to really remember that failure is really a way to get success.

And so between health issues, I have Crohn's, which is a stomach disease, and I just wouldn't

let it stop me from living my life.

You know, I know people personally that have some kind of a stomach disorder and they just

stay at home.

They have a work from home job.

They play video games.

They never go out.

They don't have many friends that they see in real life.

And listen, their whole life is built around their conditions.

And now some conditions are more controllable than others, but for me, I just, I don't take

no for an answer.

Whether that's in sales, business, negotiating, and I like win, win, but it has to make

sense.

And you can't just accept that first now.

Talk about your successes for a little bit.

I think that's important given the light of where you've come from.

And for the audience to understand what is possible, you have Crohn's.

You've made a decision not to let it hold you back from living your life.

You've had two significant deaths within the last few years.

So brag about yourself for a little bit.

What are you doing with your life?

My previous life in New York was all real estate.

So I own property in Brooklyn.

I own property in Maryland.

I own property in Florida.

I've sold over 300 houses as a real estate agent.

I own my own office with partners.

We sold, you know, I've sold over $250 million worth of business collectively, the company

probably did half, you know, $500.

And we ended up working out a deal with one of the stars from million dollar listing.

And so he ended up acquiring the company.

I did a lot of flips in New York, you know, buy the house, fix it up, sell it.

And then, you know, after everything happened between COVID, my wife passing, moving to Florida

from New York.

And so I worked and I still do work with someone named Marshall Wilkinson who has, you know, he's

done $3 billion worth of deals.

He owned a construction company in New York that was bought out for $100 million.

And he's my mentor plus I work with him on his projects.

I like the lifestyle.

It's nice freedom, right?

Because whether I'm in my house, which I am right now, or I'm in Dominican Republic, which

I go to, I can still do these kind of things.

It's a lot of freedom.

And I like to give my clients a lot of attention, you know, even though we do have these weekly

meetings, if someone's having an issue, if someone's having a challenge during the week,

and if anyone's gone to talk therapy or any kind of therapy, if something happens, let's say

I'm just making up an example, you get into a fight with your partner on Monday.

Now if you're seeing someone, whether it's a therapist or a coach or a consultant on Friday,

that emotions have really died down from Monday.

Chances are you've already made up.

If you didn't make up, chances are it's less than it was on Monday.

And so you're not getting the full picture.

And so what I do with my clients is I like them to at least lead me a voice note, not a text

message, but a voice note.

So I could really hear the tonality of their voice.

I could hear the words they're using.

And that's how we define negative self-limiting beliefs, right?

When you're in that moment, because when something negative happens, usually you go back to

default.

So I like to use that.

So then when we do meet for our session, we could, we could really dissect that voice

note.

And I think that that's really, really important.

On this program, we've been a broken record about knowing your identity and purpose and

the consequences, what it can do to your life, how it can even destroy your life, if you

don't find it.

What role does knowing your identity and purpose spiritually play and helping dads get unstuck?

Well, it's for sure.

It's a big one, right?

I mean, there's no question about that.

Authenticity is something that I always speak about, right?

It's something where I look at it almost as like a comedian where I love comedy.

I love stand-up comedy.

And I'm sure that we've all seen a comedian on Netflix or HBO or in-person where sometimes

it just falls flat and other people are laughing and sometimes your hysterical laughing.

And so when we find our true identity, it doesn't matter what audience is in front of us.

We're going to be ourselves and talk like ourselves.

And still, of course, be respectful.

And identity and purpose is so important.

A lot of the clients that I have are older in their 40s, 50s, 60s.

They've made a lot of money and they're looking for a legacy.

A lot of these guys have made money doing very boring businesses.

And so one guy, he owns a lot of taxis.

So boring business, but he wants to leave a legacy to his family.

And so it's very important to understand identity and understand your purpose in life.

And really what it turns out is that most people's legacy and purpose are their children or maybe

it's charity, but it's leaving something to future generations, right?

The legacy is absolutely right.

It's a product of finding your identity and purpose.

So that becomes the next step that is on your mind to achieve.

And for dads, this is huge.

That is ultimately what every dad would want.

Totally.

You know, as we move on in life, we do need to change our identity.

And changing our identity doesn't mean we aren't being authentic.

If we were the same exact identity that we were in high school, that actually would be a problem.

And so if you think of it as a business term, because really I've done a lot of business

consulting, a guy that owns a company, let's just say an HVAC company.

He goes and he deals with air conditioning systems.

Well, when he first starts out, he just created a job for himself.

He's going to house to house.

He's fixing people's air conditioners.

And then as he grows, he needs to hire people.

He needs to buy more trucks.

He needs to do advertising.

And he needs to grow.

And so he changes his identity from a business operator to being a business owner.

Now if you take that and extrapolate it, when you deal with like a Fortune 500 company,

like Goldman Sachs, the guy who's the CEO of Goldman is very different than that guy

who owns HVAC company with let's say five trucks, even 10 trucks.

And so you have to switch these identities and people really do fall into certain identities.

There's men out there and women out there that can take a company from zero to 100K.

There's men and women out there that can take a company from 100K and turn into a million.

And then there's people out there that can turn a million into a hundred million dollar

company.

Those are all different identities.

And the same thing is true of fathers.

The identity that you need to be a father of a baby is different than of a teenager and

it's different of a 20 year old, right?

And so how we teach our children is mostly the way we do things ourselves, right?

Monkeys see monkey do.

I think that really raising a child is you raising yourself and giving yourself a second

chance at raising yourself.

I've said this many times, children do what they see their parents do.

It's another reason I think it is so critical to be solid with your identity and with your

purpose because if you have that down and you are active about leaving a legacy, guess what

your kids are going to learn how to do.

You know, this is like an easy metaphor to think about.

You have a father that's a drinker and he's drunk all the time.

He still works, right?

There's a lot of functioning alcoholics.

And so you have two sons and one son never drinks because his father is an alcoholic and the

other son is an alcoholic because the father is an alcoholic.

And it's very hard psychologically to know why one child, because right, they live in the

same house.

Why one child goes to the one extreme and one child goes to the other?

And so really, we just have to do the best we can because we don't know exactly what

mutation of genes our child is going to be.

And for anyone out there that has three, four, five, six kids, I know the other day you had

someone on that was a father of six kids.

You know, you start seeing all the mutations of genes.

And so you have to be the best version of yourself to give your children a fighting chance

because it's not fair to say, well, I'm going to be an alcoholic or I'm going to do negative

things just because, okay, this way my kids won't want to be that negative person.

Like, it's too much of a gamble.

That's not the right way of doing it.

It should be, I'm going to do the right things and I'm going to teach my kids to do the

right things and then they will follow in my footsteps.

Can you explain how small consistent actions can lead to major breakthroughs in life and

why people often overlook this approach?

Totally.

The simple answer is it lacks instant gratification.

That's the simple answer.

To go to the gym, let's say lift one weight, maybe go to the bathroom, maybe take a shower,

maybe sit in the sauna for 10 minutes.

You're actually doing something.

You're physically in the gym.

You're not at home.

You've made yourself way to the gym.

Now you're not going to become Arnold Schwarzenegger by doing that.

At the same time by actually getting to the gym, there's a much higher percent chance that

you are going to do one extra exercise.

You're going to walk past the machine and just say, okay, I'm going to try that.

You're going to walk past the weight and just do one bicep curl.

And so the more you go, there's a higher chance you're going to do more and more.

And what a lot of people do, as we all know, by February, most people quit their gym membership.

They're like, I'm going to lose 100 pounds in the next month or I'm going to gain 100 pounds

of muscle in the next month.

They set themselves up for such failure that it's an all or nothing proposition.

Instead of like water hitting a rock for many, many years and putting a hole in the rock,

consistency is the most important.

So I always have clients really take whatever their goal is because I still want them to

dream big.

This isn't about lowering the goal.

It's finding out how to get there in a consistent manner.

And so doing these small, consistent steps, you get massive transformations over the long

haul.

So like a good metaphor that I like to use is, let's say you have a shovel and you're digging

a hole.

Instead of looking every single time you put the shovel into the ground of how deep the

hole is.

And instead of looking behind you to see how much dirt is behind you, just set a timer

for 30 days.

Go out there every day for 30 days and dig.

And what you're going to find is that after 30 days that hole is going to be massive.

And it's much easier on the brain than saying, I'm going to build this massive, massive hole

and then getting defeated right away.

So it sounds like the secret really is small, reasonable, realistic goals for where you are

coupled with very disciplined, consistent habits that you can easily follow.

Yeah.

I mean, really, what is discipline?

Discipline is really putting your emotions to the back burner.

Everyone is emotional based.

We are all triggered by emotions.

No one makes fun of each other anymore.

I was born in 1980 growing up, everyone made fun of each other.

Everyone had fun.

Now you make fun of someone and they cry.

They break down because they're weak.

And so we can't just say, I'm not feeling like doing X. I do a lot of sales.

There's many days I don't want to pick up the phone.

And a lot of people that are sales people that reach out to me, they don't reach out to

me necessarily for sales coaching or sales training.

They actually reach out to me for call reluctancy.

A lot of people reach out to me because they're like, I can't pick up the phone.

I'm scared of talking to people that I don't know.

And that's where it's fascinating, right?

Because we really need to understand that all this is about ourselves.

All of this is, what do I want best for me?

What do I want best for my child?

And the truth is that we have to put emotions aside and get the things done.

You often talk about the importance of reframing adversity.

Can you share some examples of how reframing a negative situation can turn into an opportunity

for growth?

Absolutely.

You know, NLP, neuro-leguistic programming and many modalities, you know, that's the principle

for it.

That's the job of it.

It's to reframe.

And I think that everything in life can be reframed.

And so, you know, for me personally, there's been many things, right?

But like, let's say, let's just say the loss of my life, I have reframed it that, hey, I

need to live my life to the fullest.

I need my son to live life to the fullest because who knows how much time we have left.

And so, it's not about not being said, but it is about getting things done and doing the

best we can and enjoying life because this is what it takes.

And so, with reframing, listen, every negative thing, like to think about this, a guy, a make-believe

guy, he's working, he gets fired because of layoffs.

Now we all heard stories in the past of people like that committing suicide.

We've heard stories of people really going down into like the darkest hour.

And but what is it?

If you reframe it of now, I get that opportunity to start that business.

Now I get this opportunity of time because now I don't have to wake up at 4 a.m. and take

the train and work all day.

Now you can still have the opportunity to find another job, but in the meantime, you have

the time.

So with that time, becomes an opportunity or reframe to work on yourself.

Now you can get to the gym.

Now you can read that book.

Now you can take that online course to learn a new skill.

And so when you redirect it and reframe it as, okay, now I have the time to do these things,

you can catapult yourself into the next area of your life.

So I really believe that reframing is important because anytime something negative happens, you

want to ask yourself, what can I learn from this?

What is this that's causing that I can gain an opportunity from?

And the truth is there's an opportunity in all of these things.

And until we really look at it like that, you know, what happens with our brains is we have

a belief and so we find supporting data of that belief.

So right now, let's say, economy.

If people think the economy is bad, they're going to start looking for people that are doing

bad in their work.

They're going to start looking for people that are laid off, looking for people that are

losing their job.

They're going to look for news that's negative and they're going to reinforce that idea.

Now if the same person says, hold on, just because the economy might not be doing as well

as it was in 1985, there's still people out here making a lot of money.

There's still businesses out here thriving.

And then when you start looking at the road, all of a sudden you start seeing Ferraris,

all of a sudden you start seeing Mercedes.

All of a sudden you start hearing about stories about a guy selling his company for 100

million.

And so what happens is you start gaining these insights of, oh, I'm supporting evidence

that even though the economy might not be as well as what people are still making money.

Because misery loves company and it's very easy just to surround yourself by miserable people

to help yourself feel better.

How can dads listening connect with you, learn more about what you're doing or get your

coaching?

My name is Brian May, B-R-Y-A-N, Brian with a Y, and you could either go to my site, Brian

isAmazing.com or check me out on Instagram, Brian.May, B-R-Y-A-N-M-A-Y.

And just to make things easier, if you go to thefatherhoodchallenge.com, that's thefatherhoodchallenge.com.

If you go to this episode, look right below the episode description.

I will have the links that Brian mentioned posted right there for your convenience.

Brian, as we close, what is your challenge to dads listening now?

You have an excellent chance to re-teach yourself.

You have an excellent chance to redevelop yourself through your child, to raise your child

as you would want to be raised, and really be present.

And listen, we're all working, we're all hustling.

Make time, just like you schedule time to watch your TV show or you schedule time to go

to the gym.

You have to schedule time to be present with your child.

And so at least bare minimum, 30 minutes a day, really be present.

Really, I'm not talking about just watching TV with your child, but do the homework with

him or her.

Do an outside sport with them.

Really be present.

And as you're in that present moment, the biggest challenge that I can give you is start

giving your children affirmations.

Start saying, you are amazing.

You are loved.

You are strong.

You are confident.

And have your child repeat it back.

I am strong.

I am confident.

I am enough.

And if you do that every single day, just imagine the self-talk that that child is going to

hear.

Imagine how amazing that child is going to be.

And so I just, for example, when I'm walking my child to the bus stop, he's kind of kindergarten.

Every day we walk to the bus stop, I give him affirmations.

When we're in the car and I pick him up from school because he takes the bus in the morning,

I pick him up in the afternoon, I'm always giving him affirmations.

And the other thing is really praise based on effort.

You know, it's like, wow, you tried so hard.

It's okay to make mistakes.

Because once again, like we spoke about at the beginning, if you do enough failures,

you will succeed.

It's been an honor having you on the Fatherhood Challenge.

Thank you so much for all the wisdom and experience that you shared with us.

Thank you.

Really appreciate you.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Fatherhood Challenge.

If you would like to contact us, listen to other episodes, find any resource mentioned in

this program or find out more information about the Fatherhood Challenge.

Please visit thefatherhoodchallenge.com.

That's TheFatherhoodChallenge.com

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