Get Ryan Hawk's new book: The Price of Becoming: The Compounding Practices of High Performance

There's a sentence most people never recover from.

"He gives us a better chance to win than you do."

That's what Ryan Hawk's college football coach told him, benching a highly recruited quarterback in favor of a freshman who would go on to win two Super Bowls and a Hall of Fame induction. Ryan calls it one of the luckiest things that ever happened to him — because it installed a question he asks himself before bed every night since: what did I do today to add value to someone else's life?

In this conversation, Michael Trainer sits down with Ryan Hawk — host of the Learning Leader Show, author of The Price of Becoming — for a wide-ranging exploration of what actually compounds a life. Not just money. Not just skill. Relationships, proximity, and the rooms you choose to sit in.

They get into the uncomfortable underside of Ryan's own thesis: if consistency compounds, what happens when you're consistently investing in the wrong people? Ryan doesn't dodge it — he talks about outgrowing friendships as a marker of growth, not disloyalty, and the discipline of choosing rooms that force you to level up rather than settle in.

From there, the conversation moves through Ryan's answer to what love actually is — curiosity, full stop — the tactical, specific ways he and his wife make people feel seen (down to remembering someone's favorite bourbon), Jim Collins' definition of leadership as "the art of getting people to want to do what must be done," and the four-book journey of learning what it actually takes to launch work that spreads.

This is a conversation about the architecture of a well-lived life — told through a man who has spent eleven years and 700 interviews studying exactly that, and is still, by his own account, trying to live it out one morning at a time.

"We learn who we are in practice, not in theory."

Michael Trainer has spent 30 years learning from Nobel laureates, neuroscientists, and wisdom keepers worldwide. He's the author of RESONANCE: The Art and Science of Human Connection (March 31, 2026), co-creator of Global Citizen and the Global Citizen Festival, and host of the RESONANCE podcast.

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To attract someone honest, you don't need to be honest. You need to be a space that can hold honesty.

That distinction — the match, not the mirror — is one of a dozen reframes in this conversation that will quietly rearrange how you think about love.

Adam Roa is a poet, artist, and coach whose spoken word performance "You Are Who You've Been Looking For" became the most viral poetry performance in history — over 250 million views. But the man behind the poem spent years unable to express emotion at all, raised in a home where feelings weren't safe. His new book, Crazy Love, opens his actual journals from nearly two decades of searching for love, finding it, losing it, and putting himself back together.

In this episode, Adam and Michael go deep into:

— The mechanics of masculine and feminine energy — and the two karmic wounds ("I am not enough" / "I am too much") that every relationship will eventually force you to face

— Why the Gottman Institute found that couples together fifty years are still fighting about the same things they fought about on their first dates — and why that's actually the key to lasting love

— The "goddess time" problem: what to do when your partner's relationship to time (or anything else) triggers you — and how to build agreements instead of resentment

— Why your triggers in dating are rarely about the thing itself — the body count, the lateness — and how to gather the data that actually matters

— Creativity as life force: why your unique frequency is the most healing thing you can offer the world, and how to find the clues your soul has left you

— The practice behind the virality: how showing up to create, over and over, without needing to know where it leads, is what makes you ready when the moment arrives

Adam also performs two poems in full — including the one that reached a quarter of a billion people.

"Vulnerability is the gateway to connection. If we are seeking connection — to each other, to ourselves, and to life itself — we have to be willing to be vulnerable through the authentic expression of our creative energy." — Adam Roa

Adam's book Crazy Love is available now. Find Adam at adamroa.com and on Instagram @adam.roa.

Michael Trainer has spent 30 years learning from Nobel laureates, neuroscientists, and wisdom keepers worldwide. He's the author of RESONANCE: The Art and Science of Human Connection (March 31, 2026), co-creator of Global Citizen and the Global Citizen Festival, and host of the RESONANCE podcast.

Featured in Forbes, Inc, Good Morning America.  Follow on YouTube
 

Something is wrong, and most of us can feel it without being able to say exactly what it is.

61% of Americans now identify as lonely. Anxiety and depression are at historic highs. We've never had more mental health professionals — and we've never had more mental health crises. We are more "connected" than any generation in human history, and more isolated than any we have ever measured.

In this conversation, author Michael Trainer (Resonance: The Art and Science of Human Connection) and Mark Groves go deep on the question that most of the wellness industry won't touch: what if this isn't a personal problem? What if we are biological beings — with nervous systems built for fire, proximity, and tribe — being asked to function inside a machine specifically designed to exploit every vulnerability we have?

They cover:

— Why your gut feeling about a person is not a hunch but precise physiological data — and what the HeartMath Institute's 40 years of research says about who gets to tune you

This is not a conversation about self-optimization. It is a conversation about remembering what we are.

Michael Trainer has spent 30 years learning from Nobel laureates, neuroscientists, and wisdom keepers worldwide. He's the author of RESONANCE: The Art and Science of Human Connection (March 31, 2026), co-creator of Global Citizen and the Global Citizen Festival, and host of the RESONANCE podcast.

Featured in Forbes, Inc, Good Morning America.  Follow on YouTube
 

Today is the global launch day for Resonance — a book six years in the making, written and rewritten three times, nearly lost to financial collapse, and finally cracked open in a four-month creative retreat overlooking treetops in Austin, Texas. In this episode, Michael doesn't perform triumph. He reflects on what the journey actually cost: the allies who didn't show up, the editor who quit, the gap between the wedding you romanticize and the marriage you didn't fully reckon with.

And then he tells you a story.

About a leadership training where he declared, in front of a room full of people, that he would sing "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in public — loud and proud — within a month. About a spontaneous flight to Buenos Aires with no plans and a freshly downloaded Airbnb account. About a border crossing no cab had ever made. About arriving in Chilean Patagonia as the sun set over glacier lakes.

And about the moment, in the middle of all of it, when the radio played exactly the song he had promised to sing — and he got out of the van, and he sang it.

What followed — gauchos, a sunset, fifty horses released to pasture, and a silence he calls the most beautiful of his life — is not a metaphor for resonance.

It is resonance.

This is an episode about what happens when you stop waiting to be ready and start singing your song.

Michael Trainer has spent 30 years learning from Nobel laureates, neuroscientists, and wisdom keepers worldwide. He's the author of RESONANCE: The Art and Science of Human Connection (March 31, 2026), co-creator of Global Citizen and the Global Citizen Festival, and host of the RESONANCE podcast.

Featured in Forbes, Inc, Good Morning America.  Follow on YouTube
 

There is a conversation most of us have had with ourselves — sometimes for years.

I know this person isn't good for me. I feel it every time I leave. I'm smaller after them than before.

But I can't just walk away. We have history. Maybe it's me.

In this episode of Resonance, Michael Trainer names something most of us have felt but never had the language for: the moment your body arrives at a conclusion your mind refuses to accept.

Drawing on Dr. Stephen Porges' Polyvagal Theory, Ohio State University research showing that hostile relationships heal wounds 60% more slowly, and the batteries and black holes framework from his book Resonance, Michael makes the case that your nervous system is not your anxiety. It is your most ancient and sophisticated intelligence — and it has been trying to tell you something.

This episode is not a permission slip to walk away from everyone who challenges you. It is an invitation to stop cross-examining the only witness in your life that has never once lied to you.

What you'll take away: The difference between growth-discomfort and damage-discomfort. The biological cost of chronic relational dysregulation. The batteries and black holes framework for auditing your relationships. And why letting go — done with honesty and love — is sometimes the most generous thing you can do.

"You are not curating a social circle. You are curating a nervous system. Choose accordingly."

Michael Trainer has spent 30 years learning from Nobel laureates, neuroscientists, and wisdom keepers worldwide. He's the author of RESONANCE: The Art and Science of Human Connection (March 31, 2026), co-creator of Global Citizen and the Global Citizen Festival, and host of the RESONANCE podcast.

Featured in Forbes, Inc, Good Morning America.  Follow on YouTube
 

You are an instrument.

Right now, something is tuning you — your phone, your feed, your anxiety, the fluorescent hum of a world that profits from your distraction. The question isn't whether you're being tuned. The question is by what.

In this episode, Michael Trainer returns from two weeks in Mexico — not for the margaritas, but for something far rarer: silence, stillness, and the deliberate work of unwinding a nervous system that had been running a six-year playoff season.

What follows is a meditation on what it means to come back home to yourself.

Michael weaves together neuroscience and ancient wisdom — the intelligence of the vagus nerve, the wisdom of a traditional Sri Lankan healer, the daily walks of Nelson Mandela, the voice of Young Pueblo — to answer a question most of us are too busy to ask: What actually brings me back into tune?

The answer, it turns out, isn't just personal restoration. It's the key to every meaningful relationship you'll ever build.

Because the people who make your heart feel seen and your nervous system feel calm? Those aren't accidents. They're resonance. And you can engineer the conditions where that resonance becomes possible — if you're willing to first do the harder, quieter work of finding your own frequency.

As Miles Davis knew: the music lives in the space between the notes.

This episode is that space.

http://www.resonance.biz

Michael Trainer has spent 30 years learning from Nobel laureates, neuroscientists, and wisdom keepers worldwide. He's the author of RESONANCE: The Art and Science of Human Connection (March 31, 2026), co-creator of Global Citizen and the Global Citizen Festival, and host of the RESONANCE podcast.

Featured in Forbes, Inc, Good Morning America.  Follow on YouTube
 

Episode Notes

The Wedding and the Marriage: On Creative Devotion and the Gift of the Slow Burn

What does it actually mean to be devoted to your work — not the version of it you imagined, but the version that wants to exist?

In this deeply personal episode, Michael reflects on the six-year journey of writing Resonance: The Art and Science of Human Connection — and the humbling gap between the grand launch he envisioned and the initiation the universe had in store. Recorded live from Tulum, Mexico, just weeks after the book's release, this is a raw and honest meditation on ego, surrender, patience, and what it means to stay in the work when the fanfare doesn't come.

What You'll Hear in This Episode:

Key Themes:

Quotes From This Episode:

"It's not about the night of the wedding. It's going to be about the years of commitment in the marriage."

"How can I listen to what wants to live — and become an instrument for that song?"

"Music is what lives in the space between the notes." — Miles Davis

"I wasn't positive how the ideas came together in the most poignant way. But I knew it was in there."

Referenced in This Episode:

Connect with Michael: 🌐 resonanceresonance.biz 🎙️ The Resonance Podcast — 335+ episodes

If this episode moved you, share it with one person who is in the fire of their own creative pursuit. That's how the slow burn spreads.

Michael Trainer has spent 30 years learning from Nobel laureates, neuroscientists, and wisdom keepers worldwide. He's the author of RESONANCE: The Art and Science of Human Connection (March 31, 2026), co-creator of Global Citizen and the Global Citizen Festival, and host of the RESONANCE podcast.

Featured in Forbes, Inc, Good Morning America.  Follow on YouTube
 

What happens when everything you thought defined you disappears?

In this powerful conversation, Amy Purdy shares how losing her legs at 19—and later facing another life-altering health crisis—forced her to rebuild her identity from the ground up.

We explore:

This is not just a story of resilience—it's a blueprint for becoming more you than ever before.

Connect with Amy Purdy 

Website: https://amypurdy.com 

Book: https://amypurdy.com/bounce-forward-book/ 

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GBZNYTGB 

About the Book Bounce Forward is a powerful guide to transforming adversity into growth, featuring 21 tools to help you build resilience, reconnect with your strength, and live beyond limits. 

Connect with Michael Trainer 

Website: https://www.michaeltrainer.net 

Book (Resonance): https://www.resonance.biz 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaeltrainer

Brought to you by MTE — More Than Energy, the performance formula designed for those who live life at full resonance.

Action Items

Practice daily visualization to reinforce goals

Cultivate gratitude to shift perspective

Lean into vulnerability to deepen connections

Use challenges as opportunities for growth

Chapters

00:00 The Power of Visualization in Achieving Goals

12:46 Resilience Through Adversity

16:03 Facing New Challenges

20:46 Tools for Overcoming Adversity

24:44 The Power of Vulnerability

42:09 Transforming Through Relationships

47:57 Bouncing Forward: Embracing Change

Michael Trainer has spent 30 years learning from Nobel laureates, neuroscientists, and wisdom keepers worldwide. He's the author of RESONANCE: The Art and Science of Human Connection (March 31, 2026), co-creator of Global Citizen and the Global Citizen Festival, and host of the RESONANCE podcast.

Featured in Forbes, Inc, Good Morning America.  Follow on YouTube
 

Brought to you by MTE — More Than Energy, the performance formula designed for those who live life at full resonance.

In this episode:

Resources mentioned:

Michael Trainer has spent 30 years learning from Nobel laureates, neuroscientists, and wisdom keepers worldwide. He's the author of RESONANCE: The Art and Science of Human Connection (March 31, 2026), co-creator of Global Citizen and the Global Citizen Festival, and host of the RESONANCE podcast.

Featured in Forbes, Inc, Good Morning America.  Follow on YouTube
 

My grandfather was six foot four. Always in a suit. Captain in the US Air Force. A man of very few words. Throughout his entire life, he never once told my father that he loved him. Not once.

That silence — the gap between what we feel and what we express — is the central wound of our time.

In this episode, I share the story at the heart of my book RESONANCE: what happened when my father decided to break a generational cycle of unspoken love, what my grandfather did with a napkin that said everything his words couldn't, and what I found in my father's desk years later during his final days.

I also explore what Dr. Matthew Lieberman's research at UCLA reveals about why this matters neurologically — how social pain activates the same brain circuits as physical pain, why the Surgeon General has declared loneliness equivalent to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day, and why the Harvard Study of Adult Development found that relationship quality predicts health and longevity more powerfully than diet, exercise, or genetics.

This is not about self-improvement. This is about the question most of us are afraid to ask: can you let someone all the way in?

RESONANCE: The Art and Science of Human Connection publishes May 5, 2026 with BenBella Books / Simon & Schuster. Pre-order at resonance.biz

Michael Trainer has spent 30 years learning from Nobel laureates, neuroscientists, and wisdom keepers worldwide. He's the author of RESONANCE: The Art and Science of Human Connection (March 31, 2026), co-creator of Global Citizen and the Global Citizen Festival, and host of the RESONANCE podcast.

Featured in Forbes, Inc, Good Morning America.  Follow on YouTube