The Choose Yourself Channel

What happens when the person everybody knows isn't the person you actually want to be?

🎙️ In this episode of the Choose Yourself Channel, we sit down with John Borden, AKA Johnnie Be, founder of Get Psyched Fitness and author of Your Mindset Is Your Reality, for a raw, hilarious, and transformational conversation about addiction, identity, validation, conscious expansion, relationships, and choosing yourself.

🔥 From straight-A student to fraternity president to a lifestyle of booze, bags, and bodies, Johnnie spent years chasing acceptance while losing connection with himself. After years of destructive habits, a series of profound experiences challenged everything he believed about who he was and who he could become.

🦋 We explore Johnnie's personal experiences with psychedelics, the science of self-awareness, the loneliness of outgrowing your environment, and how establishing personal values helped him build authentic relationships, find love, and prepare for fatherhood.

Because sometimes the greatest transformation isn't becoming somebody new. It's finally having the courage to be yourself.

✨ Takeaways ⬇️

• 🧠 Validation vs. Values: Stop becoming who others expect and start living by what you believe.
• 🔥 Triggers Into Transformation: Recognizing destructive patterns can become the beginning of personal evolution.
• 🍄 Conscious Expansion: Johnnie shares how his experiences with psilocybin influenced his self-reflection and choices.
• 🌱 Environment & Solitude: Outgrowing your old lifestyle can feel lonely before your new community emerges.
• ❤️ Authenticity & Connection: Choosing yourself creates opportunities for relationships built on genuine alignment.
• 💪 Foundation & Fitness: Exercise, mindfulness, reflection, and consistent commitments help strengthen self-trust.
• 🌎 Creation & Contribution: Johnnie turned his transformation into a book, fitness movement, and mission to help others grow.

🐬 Johnnie went from chasing attention to living with intention, from searching for validation to establishing values, and from seeking the next high to discovering a higher purpose.

Are you becoming the person you truly want to be, or the person you think everybody else wants you to be?

"Just wait. You just wait. We're about to do big things." — Johnnie Be

🧠 Connect With Johnnie Be

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📲 Johnnie Be on Instagram

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A lot of people are still trying to be the version of themselves that somebody met three chapters ago. But what happens when you finally give yourself permission to turn the page?

In this episode of the Choose Yourself Channel, Jess Simonds of The Next Chapter 888 shares her journey through addiction, an abusive marriage, corporate success, motherhood, sobriety, and ultimately learning how to choose herself. For Jess, recovery wasn't simply about putting down alcohol...it became the first time she realized she had permission to make different choices for her life. Pasted text

We get into the connection between personal and business transformation, nervous-system regulation, boundaries, identity, recovery, and the uncomfortable in-between where your old life no longer fits but your new reality hasn't caught up yet. Jess describes how small acts of choosing herself built the confidence to reclaim her voice, while her personal transformation eventually became part of how she serves others. Pasted text

Takeaways ⬇️

• Addiction can become a form of escape when a substance or behavior begins consuming your thoughts, choices, and daily life. Pasted text
• You don't have to completely reinvent your life tomorrow. Sometimes transformation starts by doing one thing differently today. Pasted text
• Filling your own cup isn't abandoning the people you love. Jess realized that choosing herself allowed her to show up differently for her children and demonstrate a different blueprint. Pasted text
• Personal development and business development aren't separate. How you lead yourself can influence how you lead your business, team, and mission. Pasted text
• Your Foundation matters most when life gets difficult. Build your systems while it's “75 and sunny” so they're available when the storm comes. Pasted text
• Growth has an uncomfortable in-between: you're grieving the person you were while learning how the person you're becoming actually lives. Pasted text
• Boundaries aren't only about keeping people out. They're also instructions for how someone can remain in your life while respecting who you're becoming. Pasted text

Your story can explain how you got here without getting to decide where you go next.

You can acknowledge what happened. You can learn from what happened. You can even appreciate the strength it forced you to develop but eventually, you have to take the pen back.

As Jess explains, choosing herself started with leaving the life that had kept her trapped—and three years later, virtually every part of her reality had changed. Pasted text

Learn more about Jess, Next Chapter Solutions 888, her workshops, speaking engagements, recovery groups, and transformation work:

🌐 Explore Next Chapter Solutions 888

📲 Instagram

If you aren't going to write your story, whose life are you living? Pasted text

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Season 3 Starts Here: The Stories Change. The Process Doesn’t.

We’ve spent two seasons hearing stories from athletes, entrepreneurs, parents, creators, health professionals, and self-choosers navigating everything from heartbreak and trauma to identity, nutrition, money, faith, relationships, and purpose.

Now it’s time to connect the dots.

Welcome to Season 3 of the Choose Yourself Channel. In this solo episode, Hakeem looks back at the lessons from Seasons 1 and 2 and breaks down the framework underneath so many of these transformations: the Choose Yourself process. ..because the circumstances may change, but the process doesn’t.

We break down Trigger Points, Environment, Foundation, Investment, and Create & Contribute - from recognizing what life is trying to reveal through our triggers to changing the environments reinforcing old patterns, building commitments when nobody is watching, investing in the person we're becoming, and eventually turning our growth into something that contributes to others.

This isn't just a podcast... This episode gives an inside look at the Choose Yourself ecosystem—the weekly CYC GYM, online courses and webinars, in-person workshops, health resources, the book, and the annual retreat. Different entry points, same mission: stop simply consuming personal development and start putting it into practice.

Takeaways ⬇️

• Everybody has a story, but your story doesn't have to become your permanent identity.
• Your triggers can become signals showing you where there's still work to do.
• Your environment includes more than people and places—it's also your screens, food, conversations, relationships, and daily cues.
• Your Foundation is built through the commitments you keep when nobody is watching.
• Investing in yourself is about becoming different over time—not simply feeling different right now.
• Choosing yourself isn't about forgetting everybody else; it's about becoming capable of contributing without constantly abandoning yourself.
• The podcast gives you stories. The process gives you structure. The community gives you accountability. You still have to make the choice. cy-chann-season-31

The podcast might inspire you.

The book might educate you.

The workshop might introduce you to the process.

The retreat might put you in a completely different environment.

But eventually, you have to go home and that's where the real work starts because choosing yourself isn't something you listen to.

It's something you practice!!

Welcome to Season 3. 🐬

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Who were you before the world started telling you who to be?

In this episode of the Choose Yourself Channel, Sara Byram, spiritual teacher and energetic astrologist, joins us for a deep conversation about divine identity, spirituality, astrology, childhood conditioning, boundaries, self-worth, relationships, and the process of discovering who you are underneath years of programming.

Sara shares her experience growing up in a strict Catholic household with a military father, navigating trauma and fear, and eventually experiencing what she describes as a spiritual awakening in 2019. That moment sent her searching through spirituality, astrology, human design, spiritual principles, and other modalities as she began questioning what she had been taught about God, love, relationships, and herself.

But this conversation isn't about allowing astrology - or any belief system - to make your choices for you. We explore the danger of becoming dependent on external tools and why spirituality, religion, books, teachers, and astrology can provide information while you still have the responsibility to participate in your own life.

Takeaways ⬇️

• Childhood conditioning can create an identity that adulthood eventually asks us to question.
• Boundaries don't just keep people out.. they show people how to have a relationship with the person you're becoming.
• Astrology can be used as a tool for reflection without surrendering your free will to predictions or external circumstances.
• Self-worth isn't something money, relationships, achievements, or validation can permanently give you.
• Growth sometimes creates a “cocoon phase” where you're too grown for some old relationships but haven't found your new community yet.
• The goal line represents the things you want; the soul line represents the identity capable of receiving and sustaining them.
• Knowledge can create awareness, but wisdom requires actually embodying what you've learned.

“Always remember that you are worthy and there's nothing external that can change that.” - Sara Byram

🔮 Connect With Sara Byrum

Instagram & TikTok: @sbreeziii @celestialbridgeastrology

https://www.instagram.com/celestialbridgeastrology/

Connect with Sara to learn more about her readings, spiritual work, and how she uses astrology as a tool for deeper self-awareness.

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Heal Yourself Before You Try to Build Everything Else. Choose Yourself to be Chosen.

Some people spend years trying to fix their finances, their relationships, or their careers… without ever asking if the real problem is the relationship they have with themselves.

In this episode, we sit down with Kendenn, owner of Ultimate Nutrition Shop, coach, entrepreneur and bodybuilder.. for a powerful conversation about healing from the inside out. We unpack the connection between emotional health, gut health, sleep, hormones, stress, money, relationships, and the energy we bring into every area of life.

Kendenn shares his journey through heartbreak, financial rock bottom, chronic pain, bodybuilding, and years of personal development that ultimately led him to realize something profound: you can have the physique, the discipline, and the habits but if you haven't healed your relationship with fear, you'll continue repeating the same cycles.

This conversation explores the importance of choosing yourself first, understanding childhood conditioning, healing attachment styles, building foundational habits, and optimizing your health before chasing external success. We also dive into whole-food nutrition, gut health, supplementation, inflammation, and why investing in your body today is one of the greatest forms of preventative medicine.

Takeaways ⬇️

• Healing your relationship with yourself changes every other relationship.
• Fear keeps us stuck; faith and action move us forward.
• Your energy attracts what your mindset sustains.
• Sleep, stress, gut health, hormones, and inflammation all work together.
• Whole foods and simple habits outperform quick fixes over time.
• Choosing yourself isn't selfish—it's the foundation for contribution.

At some point, we all have to stop asking...

"Why does this keep happening to me?"

...and start asking...

"What inside of me keeps creating the same outcome?"

Transformation doesn't begin when your circumstances change.... It begins the moment you become willing to change the person creating them.

"You can't heal the future while protecting the fears of your past."

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Authenticity Isn't Found, It's Revealed

Some people spend their lives trying to become someone else… others realize the greatest transformation comes from uncovering who they already are.

In this episode, we sit down with Ryan Billion - Olympic hopeful, performance coach, former Division I athlete, and mindset mentor - for a powerful conversation about identity, discipline, self-belief, and what it truly means to choose yourself.

From navigating life after collegiate athletics to rebuilding his identity beyond sport, Ryan shares how chasing an Olympic dream taught him that success isn't found in medals or milestones... it's found in the person you're becoming along the way. We dive into purpose, authenticity, boundaries, visualization, self-awareness, addiction, and why the strongest relationships are built after you learn to build one with yourself.

This episode explores the difference between external achievement and internal fulfillment, reminding us that confidence isn't something you're born with... it's something you earn every time you keep a promise to yourself.

Takeaways ⬇️

• Identity is built through daily commitments, not titles or achievements
• Self-belief grows every time you follow through on your word
• Authenticity is embracing every part of yourself—not just the comfortable parts
• Your environment quietly shapes your future through daily osmosis
• Replace destructive addictions with purposeful ones
• Visualization prepares the mind before performance prepares the body
• Boundaries create space for purpose to grow

At some point, we all have to stop asking...

"Who am I supposed to become?"

...and start asking...

"Who am I when nobody else is watching?"

The life you're chasing isn't built by waiting for motivation.

It's built through the quiet decisions you make every day when no one is keeping score.

"The only path to happiness is through the triumph of your principles."

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Some people spend their lives waiting for certainty… others take the risk before they have all the answers.

In this episode, we sit down with Abby Murphy - radio personality, creator, storyteller, and host of The Breakup Breakdown - for a conversation about self-belief, creativity, relationships, purpose, and the courage to build something before you know how it will turn out.

From chasing a career in the entertainment industry to moving cities, reinventing herself, and helping others share their stories, Abby opens up about the power of storytelling and why creation is one of the most meaningful forms of contribution. We dive into the difference between belief and delusion, the importance of trusting your intuition, and why some of the biggest opportunities in life require you to bet on yourself before you have proof that it will work.

We also explore the lessons Abby has learned from interviewing hundreds of people about breakups and relationships. From self-worth and boundaries to knowing when to walk away, this conversation highlights how the relationship with yourself sets the standard for every other relationship in your life.

Takeaways ⬇️

• Sometimes growth starts with a little healthy delusion and a lot of action
• Creativity is one of the highest forms of contribution
• Your intuition often knows the answer before your mind catches up
• Self-worth determines what you tolerate in relationships
• Great stories come from people willing to take risks
• Consistency matters more than inspiration

At some point, we all have to decide...

Are we going to keep consuming other people's stories—

or start creating our own?

The life you want isn't built in a single moment. It's built through hundreds of ordinary days where you choose to keep showing up.

"An overnight success usually takes ten years."

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You Are What You Consume - Food, Friends, Fear & Foundations

Some people consume content all day and still wonder why they feel lost… others get curious, take action, and build an entirely different life from it.

In this episode, we sit down with Caleb — “The Black Irish Realtor” — entrepreneur, food lover, athlete, realtor, and owner of Ideal Nutrition, for a hilarious and eye-opening conversation on identity, nutrition, business, culture, self-belief, and what it means to actually create a life instead of just consuming one. IG - @theblackirishrealtor

From growing up mixed race in Ireland and struggling to fit in, to moving to America on a rugby scholarship with no blueprint, Caleb shares how curiosity, risk-taking, and staying authentic shaped his evolution. We dive into food quality differences between Europe and America, preservatives, health, entrepreneurship, and why most people are overcomplicating success instead of simply taking the next step. Between stories about selling perfume samples at school, working bars, selling cars, real estate, dogs taking over couches, and learning business from old Irish hustlers, this episode blends humor with real perspective on building resilience and multiple streams of income.

This conversation is also a reminder that your environment matters. The people you surround yourself with, the food you consume, the content you watch, and the risks you’re willing to take all shape your future. Because choosing yourself isn’t just motivation—it’s learning how to create systems, routines, and opportunities that align with who you’re becoming.

Takeaways ⬇️

• Curiosity can become your career if you’re willing to act on it
• The food we consume impacts far more than just weight
• Your environment either expands your thinking or limits it
• Simplicity and consistency beat overcomplication
• Taking risks is necessary if you want a different life
• Real growth often starts when you leave your comfort zone

At some point, we all have to decide… Are we going to keep consuming life passively or start creating something meaningful from what we’ve been given?

Your story, your culture, your struggles, and your curiosity might be the exact ingredients needed to build your future.

“Keep it simple. Start somewhere. Figure it out as you grow.”

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Some people spend their whole life avoiding discomfort… others walk through the fire and learn how to become stronger because of it.

In this episode, we sit down with Joe Spector - ex-firefighter, speaker, emotional resilience expert, husband, and father... for one of the deepest conversations yet on trauma, identity, grief, emotional regulation, and what it really means to choose yourself when life completely falls apart.

From being a police officer and fire captain to losing his career after a traumatic brain injury, Joe opens up about the spiral that followed: financial stress, grief, loss, emotional shutdown, family tension, and ultimately reaching a breaking point that forced him to finally face himself. This episode dives into the dangerous illusion of “having it all together,” especially for men taught to suppress emotions instead of process them.

We break down the parallels between firefighting and life itself - learning how to prepare for adversity, regulate your nervous system under pressure, and stop bleeding unhealed pain onto the people you love most. From breathwork and therapy to parenting, faith, and rebuilding identity after loss, this conversation is packed with wisdom, humor, truth, and practical perspective for anyone navigating hard seasons.

Takeaways ⬇️

• You can be successful on the outside and still be suffering internally
• Choosing yourself is not selfish, it’s how you become dependable for others
• Emotional regulation is a skill set, not a personality trait
• Your children don’t just need provision… they need presence
• Everything you want in life is on the other side of your comfort zone
• Healing starts when you stop avoiding what hurts

At some point, life stops asking how productive you are… and starts asking how prepared you are internally when everything changes.

Because adversity doesn’t build character out of nowhere, it reveals the foundation that was already there... and sometimes the strongest thing a person can do… is finally ask for help then back it up with acceptance and accountability.

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“You can’t keep bleeding on people who didn’t cut you.”

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Some people think choosing yourself is ego… but it’s actually returning to the version of you that existed before the world started programming you.

In this episode, we sit down with Thanecha - creator, coach, and community builder whose story started in survival mode: homelessness, instability, and navigating life without a clear foundation... but what makes this conversation powerful isn’t just where she came from… it’s how she chose to rewrite what was possible.

From overcoming a poverty mindset to stepping into creativity through music, fitness, and community, this episode breaks down what it really means to stay curious, stay open, and build your identity through experience instead of expectation. We dive into spirituality, inner child healing, relationships, and the power of setting boundaries because growth isn’t just about doing more… it’s about becoming someone who no longer tolerates what once held them back.

Takeaways ⬇️

• Your environment may shape you, but it doesn’t have to limit you
• Staying curious is one of the most powerful tools for growth
• You don’t need to know the full path—you need to take the next step
• Boundaries are a sign of self-respect, not selfishness
• Healing your inner child isn’t weakness—it’s responsibility

At some point, we all reach a moment where we have to decide… Are we going to keep living from survival patterns or start creating from self-awareness?

You’re not just your story… you’re what you choose to do with it.

“You don’t need permission to become who you already are.”

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