The Inner Wealth Podcast

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In this episode, Mike Kitko shares the belief at the center of nearly a decade of helping people grow: every person is born with an authentic dream, the desire to experience it, and natural talents and abilities to bring it to life. He explores how conditioning, self-doubt, and pressure to be practical can bury that dream, drain your desire, and keep you from recognizing what you have to offer.

Mike also shares how he once dismissed his own voice and struggled to see value in the very thing he loved doing most. Through that experience and his work with clients and leadership teams, he explains why reconnecting with your dream, fueling your desire, and embracing your gifts can change how you experience your life. This episode invites you to look at where you’ve been playing it safe and what you’re ready to give yourself permission to create.

Key Takeaways

1. Your Authentic Dream Deserves Your Attention
   Mike believes each person carries a dream that is uniquely theirs. Years of conditioning and pressure to be realistic can bury it, but reconnecting with what you truly want is where the work begins.
2. Dream and Desire Serve Different Roles
   You can know what you want and still lose the desire to pursue it. Your dream gives you direction, while desire provides the fuel to keep moving, remain patient, and stay committed through setbacks.
3. Your Natural Gifts Are Easy to Dismiss
   Self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy can keep you from recognizing your own abilities. Mike shares how learning to value his voice helped him embrace the work he loves and the contribution he can make.
4. Conditioning Can Teach You to Play Small
   Being told you’re asking for too much or that your desires are selfish can lead you into a life that doesn’t feel like your own. Recognizing those messages helps you see where you’ve abandoned what matters to you.
5. Reconnect With All Three to Move Forward
   Reawakening your dream, refueling your desire, and using your natural abilities work together. As you begin to embrace them, you can build greater self-love and self-respect while taking steps toward the life you want to experience.

Notable Quotes

• “And I believe that we all possess a unique dream, the desire, and everything, the talents and abilities to come here and complete our mission.”
• “When we give up our dream, when we abandon our dream, we start to morph ourself and fit ourself into a life that isn't truly ours, that doesn't feel like an expression of us.”
• “And commitment means you go all in and you're relentless and you're persistent and you're resilient. You don't let setbacks dim your desire.”
• “I didn't understand that my voice, that my delivery, that my speaking, that my empowerment, that my encouragement, that the thing that I love to do the most is a gift to this world because I didn't respect myself.”
• “But when you reawaken the dream, when you refuel your desire, and when you surrender to your uniqueness and the magic within you, that's when you can truly experience the highest expression of who you are and the mission that you chose and you inherited in this lifetime.”

Where have you turned down the volume on your dream? Where has your desire faded? What natural ability have you dismissed because you haven’t seen its value?

Take the free Choose Your Destiny: Start Playing Offense video course and begin creating a vision for the life you want to experience:
https://learn.innerwealthglobal.com/chooseyourdestinystartplayingoffense

If you’re ready to reconnect with what you want and begin moving toward it, explore Inner Wealth Global’s workshops, upcoming events, and Mastermind, or reach out to Mike about one-on-one coaching.

Questions about working with Mike?
[email protected]

No assistant. No gatekeeper. Just a conversation about helping you become the most authentic, powerful, and fully expressed version of yourself.

Mike’s Media

Website: https://www.innerwealthglobal.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mikekitko
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mike_kitko
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mikekitko
Subscribe to my YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mikekitko

Music Credit: "What's Left of Me" by Wes Hoffman & Friends

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What would you allow yourself to want if you didn’t need to know exactly how it would happen? Creating a vision for your life means getting honest about the experiences you want, the freedom you want, and the life you would be excited to wake up to. Fear, conditioning, and the need for security can influence what you put on paper before you’ve given yourself room to dream.

In this episode of the Inner Wealth Podcast, Mike shares how the vision he wrote during the collapse of his life in 2016 helped shape the life he experiences today. He walks through 10 ways people limit their vision, including needing to know the process, confusing a stepping stone with the destination, avoiding disappointment, and adopting someone else’s definition of success. He also explores belief in yourself, trust in life, and giving yourself permission to want what you truly want.

Key Takeaways

1. Get Clear About What You Want
   Describe the life you want to experience and what would make you excited to wake up each day. Give yourself room to dream beyond your current circumstances.
2. Let Go of the How and When
   You don’t need to know every step before you name what you want. Notice when a job, financial goal, or other stepping stone has taken the place of the dream itself.
3. Expand What You Believe Is Possible
   What you’ve experienced and seen others do can shape what you believe is available to you. Be open to possibilities beyond what you already know.
4. Recognize What Keeps Your Vision Small
   Fear of judgment, disappointment, or outshining others can influence what you allow yourself to want. Notice those fears without letting them write your vision.
5. Give Yourself Permission to Want It
   Let go of other people’s definitions of success and get honest about your own desires. Your vision doesn’t have to make sense to everyone else.

Notable Quotes

• “And in the process of creation and the process of going on offense, the what of your vision is your responsibility, but the how and the when are not.”
• “Because typically human beings only know what they've been exposed to. And if you only ever know what you're exposed to, then you're only going to live in the possibility of what that is.”
• “And we have to continue to just understand that we are here to experience something very unique and very significant and no one else has to understand.”
• “He knew what he wanted, but he couldn't make it fit into his current life. He couldn't please his business partner and his wife at the same time with what he wanted. He was going to have to disappoint one of them.”
• “But get clear about what you want, because as soon as you do, life starts to support you in your journey towards it.”

Go on Offense.

Take some time this week to put your vision on paper. What do you want to experience? What would make you excited to wake up each day? Notice where you’re limiting the dream because you don’t know how it will happen, you’re afraid of disappointment, or you’re worried about what someone else might think. Give yourself permission to describe what you really want.

Get the free Choose Your Destiny: Start Playing Offense video course:
https://learn.innerwealthglobal.com/chooseyourdestinystartplayingoffense

Explore the Choose Your Destiny Live Virtual Intensive:
https://learn.innerwealthglobal.com/chooseyourdestinyvirtualintensive

For private coaching, the Inner Wealth Mastermind, and upcoming events, visit InnerWealthGlobal.com or email [email protected].

If this episode speaks to you, share it with someone who’s ready to go on offense. Subscribe to the Inner Wealth Podcast and leave a rating or review to help more people find the show.

Mike’s Media

Website: https://www.innerwealthglobal.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mikekitko
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mike_kitko
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mikekitko
Subscribe to my YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mikekitko

Music Credit: "What's Left of Me" by Wes Hoffman & Friends

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What happens when you know what to do, but the feelings that come with doing it stop you? Asking for help, making your first offer, or sharing your work can bring up fear, shame, and uncertainty. Going on offense involves becoming willing to experience that emotional intensity in service of the life you want.

In this episode of the Inner Wealth Podcast, Mike shares his opening keynote from Gateway to Freedom, hosted by Rich Groves. Through stories about Marine Corps boot camp, skydiving, publishing his first book, and rebuilding his marriage, he explores how a clear vision helps you move through unfamiliar experiences. In the audience Q&A, he introduces his DRILL method for working with intense emotions and discusses staying committed without needing to control every detail of the journey.

Key Takeaways

1. Recognize When Emotional Avoidance Is Driving Your Decisions.
   You can leave a conference with useful strategies and still return to familiar patterns. Mike invites you to notice whether your choices are focused on creating something you want or avoiding the feelings that come with trying. Asking for help, making an offer, and allowing yourself to be seen are opportunities to practice going on offense.
2. Give Yourself Permission to Experience Day One.
   You cannot expect the confidence of your hundredth deal before making your first. Through his boot camp and skydiving stories, Mike illustrates how unfamiliar experiences can become more manageable with practice. Let yourself be a beginner rather than waiting to feel completely comfortable before you start.
3. Create a Vision That Gives Your Growth a Direction.
   A clear, detailed, documented vision gives you something meaningful to move toward. Include what you want to experience in your health, wealth, relationships, and everyday life. Return to it daily so your decisions stay connected to the life you intend to create.
4. Use the DRILL Method to Work With Intense Emotions.
   Mike introduces a practical process: Drop into your body, Recognize what you’re feeling, Inquire and investigate what it may be telling you, Listen, and Let go. Rather than automatically backing away, give yourself room to understand the emotion and choose your next step.
5. Stay Committed While Allowing the Journey to Unfold.
   Mike shares that it took a year to gain traction and get his first client after deciding to start his business. His experience highlights the patience involved in creating something new. Keep reconnecting with what you want, take inspired action, and leave room for opportunities and timing you could not have planned.

Notable Quotes

• “The difference between playing defense and offense is your willingness and ability to endure emotional intensity.”
• “They want the 100th deal, but they're not willing to sign the first one.”
• “A clear, documented vision is the very first and most important step to going on offense.”
• “I want freedom more than I want comfort. I want my dream more than I want comfort.”
• “But it's all about enjoying this moment as it turns into the next.”

Go on Offense.

Where are you waiting to feel comfortable before moving toward something you want? Write down the experience you intend to create, reconnect with why it matters, and choose one meaningful step. Give yourself permission to experience your own day one.

Get the free Choose Your Destiny: Start Playing Offense video course:
https://learn.innerwealthglobal.com/chooseyourdestinystartplayingoffense

Explore the Choose Your Destiny Live Virtual Intensive:
https://learn.innerwealthglobal.com/chooseyourdestinyvirtualintensive

For private coaching, the Inner Wealth Mastermind, and upcoming events, visit InnerWealthGlobal.com or email [email protected].

If this episode speaks to you, share it with someone who’s ready to go on offense. Subscribe to the Inner Wealth Podcast and leave a rating or review to help more people find the show.

Mike’s Media

Website: https://www.innerwealthglobal.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mikekitko
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mike_kitko
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mikekitko
Subscribe to my YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mikekitko

Music Credit: "What's Left of Me" by Wes Hoffman & Friends

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How much of your life is organized around avoiding judgment, failure, or loss? Playing defense can keep you repeating familiar patterns while the experiences you want stay out of reach. Going on offense starts with getting honest about what you want and becoming willing to move through the discomfort of pursuing it.

In this episode of the Inner Wealth Podcast, Mike shares his live Buyers Club talk, Stop Playing Defense, Go on Offense. Through stories about Marine Corps boot camp, skydiving, facing body shame, and rebuilding his marriage, he explores the courage it takes to be seen and create something different. He also answers audience questions about writing a vision, choosing the next step, and finding people who challenge you to grow.

Key Takeaways

1. Recognize the Patterns That Keep You Playing Defense.
   Avoiding criticism, hiding your wins, and feeling guilty about wanting more can shape your decisions. Mike calls these learned patterns adaptive protective programs, or APPs. Start noticing which ones show up when you’re about to do something unfamiliar.
2. Practice Moving Through Discomfort.
   Mike’s stories about boot camp, skydiving, and confronting body shame show what going on offense looks like in practice. Notice what you’re feeling, explore what’s behind it, and give yourself room to respond. Courage includes taking a meaningful step while fear is still present.
3. Get Honest About What You Want.
   Your wants and needs matter, and asking for them begins with knowing what they are. Mike shares the written relationship vision he created during a painful chapter of his marriage. Sit down without distractions and describe the life you want to experience, even if it feels far from where you are today.
4. Use Your Vision to Choose the Next Step.
   You don’t need every detail worked out before you begin. Ask whether an opportunity moves you closer to your vision, and identify one small action you can take. During the audience Q&A, Mike also explores the difference between discomfort around growth and a choice that doesn’t fit what you want.
5. Keep Your Vision Present and Build Support Around It.
   Revisit your vision daily and practice visualizing and feeling the life you’re working toward. Surround yourself with allies who encourage you, challenge you, and notice when you’re backing away from what matters. Keep taking action as your vision develops.

Notable Quotes

• “We were born to go on offense. And it takes feeling things that you'd rather not feel, saying things that you'd rather not say, doing things that you'd rather not do.”
• “Courage is not the absence of fear. It's the presence of fear and the ability and the willingness to go into the fear.”
• “But at the end of the day, your needs and wants matter too.”
• “And in order to be different, in order to have different, you gotta do something different. Because if you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got.”
• “The vision is the greatest tool that I know of to get you out of defense. To get you focused back on to your intentions.”

Go on Offense.

Where are you ready to take up more space in your life? Grab a pen and paper, get honest about what you want, and choose one step you can take today. Give yourself permission to ask for what matters to you.

Get the free Choose Your Destiny: Start Playing Offense video course:
https://learn.innerwealthglobal.com/chooseyourdestinystartplayingoffense

Explore the Choose Your Destiny Live Virtual Intensive:
https://learn.innerwealthglobal.com/chooseyourdestinyvirtualintensive

For private coaching, the Inner Wealth Mastermind, and upcoming events, visit InnerWealthGlobal.com or email [email protected].

If this episode speaks to you, share it with someone who’s ready to go on offense. Subscribe to the Inner Wealth Podcast and leave a rating or review to help more people find the show.

Mike’s Media

Website: https://www.innerwealthglobal.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mikekitko
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mike_kitko
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mikekitko
Subscribe to my YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mikekitko

Music Credit: "What's Left of Me" by Wes Hoffman & Friends

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You get to choose what you want to experience, create, and become. That starts with getting honest about the life you want and putting that vision on paper. Choosing your destiny means giving your life a clear direction and becoming willing to move through the discomfort that comes with creating something new.

In this episode, Mike shares his complete free course, Choose Your Destiny: Start Playing Offense, with a new introduction. Drawing on his own transformation, he explores defensive patterns, creating a vision for your health, wealth, impact, and relationships, and practicing visualization and embodiment. He also shares how daily action, accountability, and community can help you keep moving toward a life you’re excited to wake up to.

Key Takeaways

1. Recognize Where You’re Playing Defense.
   Playing defense means making choices around avoiding experiences you don’t want, such as failure, judgment, rejection, or being alone. Mike invites you to notice where avoidance is directing your decisions and get clear about what you actually want to experience.
2. Name the Protective Patterns That Keep You in Familiar Circumstances.
   Mike calls these patterns adaptive protective programs, or APPs. Perfectionism, people-pleasing, and avoiding failure can influence your choices long after you learned them. Recognizing and naming those patterns gives you a chance to choose how you move forward.
3. Create a Vision That Gives Growth Meaning.
   Write down what you want in your health, wealth, impact, and relationships, including how you want to feel. Give yourself room to dream without needing to figure out every detail of how or when it will happen. A clear vision gives purpose to the discomfort you encounter along the way.
4. Practice Being the Person You’re Becoming.
   Mike introduces visualization and embodiment as daily practices for connecting with your vision. Picture yourself living that life, explore how it would feel, and use the Installing Future You meditation to support the practice. Then carry that vision into the choices and actions you take throughout your day.
5. Build Support Around Your Vision.
   Accountability and community can help you recognize when you’re slipping back into defensive patterns and reconnect with what matters to you. Mike shares how coaching, the mastermind, workshops, and retreats support this work. You get to take the steps with people alongside you who encourage and challenge you to keep going.

Notable Quotes

• “Going on offense means not allowing internal discomfort to control us, to manipulate us, to stop us, to prevent us from doing the thing, from being the person, from having the thing.”
• “When we're clear about exactly what it is we're looking to create, we give meaning and purpose to that discomfort.”
• “But again, I'm gonna encourage you, the what of your vision is your responsibility. The how and the when are not.”
• “And then after you see that for a while, drop into your body and start to feel that it's already complete, feel that it already exists and sit like that as long as you possibly can. Sit like that as frequently as you can.”
• “We don't allow it to master us, we master it. We name it, we sit with it, we realize it, but we move forward.”

Choose Your Destiny.

Take some time today to put your vision on paper. What do you want to experience in your health, wealth, impact, and relationships? How do you want to feel when you wake up each day? Get clear, sit with that vision, and choose an action that moves you toward it.

Get the free Choose Your Destiny: Start Playing Offense video course, including the workbook and Installing Future You meditation:
https://learn.innerwealthglobal.com/chooseyourdestinystartplayingoffense

Explore the Choose Your Destiny Live Virtual Intensive beginning in November:
https://learn.innerwealthglobal.com/chooseyourdestinyvirtualintensive

For private coaching, the Inner Wealth Mastermind, and upcoming events, visit InnerWealthGlobal.com or email [email protected].

Mike’s Media

Website: https://www.innerwealthglobal.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mikekitko
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mike_kitko
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mikekitko
Subscribe to my YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mikekitko

Music Credit: "What's Left of Me" by Wes Hoffman & Friends

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There are experiences you’ve wanted for years, and it’s easy to keep telling yourself you’ll get to them later. A clear vision keeps those desires in front of you when fear, money worries, or discomfort start making your decisions. Playing offense means getting honest about what you want from this life and becoming willing to move toward it.

In this episode, Mike and Angie share what a long-awaited European trip taught them about vision and the time we have. After 26 years of talking about Germany, they finally experienced Oktoberfest, then traveled on to Vienna and Prague. Their visit to the Bone Church became a powerful reminder of mortality and the dreams people leave unfulfilled. They explore old protective patterns, returning to your vision, and what it means to live without dying with your song still in you.

Key Takeaways

1. Your Vision Can Outlast Your Timeline
Mike and Angie held their dream of visiting Germany for 26 years. Angie distinguishes goals with deadlines from a vision that gives your life an overarching direction. Get clear about the experiences you want, and give them room to unfold.

2. Notice When Fear Puts You on Defense
Mike describes playing defense as organizing your life around avoiding negative circumstances. He calls learned protective patterns adaptive protective programs, or APPs. Recognizing those patterns can help you see where fear is keeping you from experiences you want.

3. Use Your Vision as a Pattern Interrupt
When money fear or self-doubt shows up, Mike and Angie return to what they want to feel and experience. Revisiting your vision gives you a pattern interrupt and a way to refocus your attention while you work through uncomfortable circumstances.

4. Remember That Your Time Is Limited
Standing in the Bone Church, Mike and Angie reflected on the lives and stories behind the human remains. The experience brought mortality into focus and renewed their commitment to travel and fully live. Continually saving your dreams for later has a cost.

5. Move Through Discomfort Toward What Matters
New experiences can bring discomfort, and Mike encourages listeners to stay connected to what they want as they move through it. He closes with an exercise: look back at things you once wanted and have already experienced, then recognize how much has become possible.

Notable Quotes

• “And this isn't an exercise in impatience. Going to Oktoberfest was part of our vision for 26 years.” (Mike)
• “Without a vision, we can't fully know how to play on offense.” (Mike)
• “And the spiritual feeling that the church wants to evoke is memento mori. Remember that you will die.” (Angie)
• “Don't ever, ever pretend you don't have any emotions or feelings. And don't think you shouldn't have the emotions and feelings that you have.” (Mike)
• “Don't die with your song in you.” (Mike)

Call to Action

Take some time today to look back at the things you once wanted and have already experienced. Then get clear about what you still want from this life. What keeps getting pushed to later? What would it look like to start playing offense in that area and move through the discomfort that comes with it?

If you’re ready to get clear about what you want and start playing offense with your life, connect with me through www.InnerWealthGlobal.com or email me directly at [email protected].

Mike's Media

Website: https://www.innerwealthglobal.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mikekitko
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mike_kitko
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mikekitko
Subscribe to my YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mikekitko

Music Credit: "What's Left of Me" by Wes Hoffman & Friends

Send me a some feedback!

A clear and powerful vision does more than give you something to work toward. It gives meaning and purpose to the discomfort you’ll inevitably experience while creating something you’ve never experienced before. Growth requires unfamiliar territory, and unfamiliar territory creates discomfort. The question is whether you have a vision powerful enough to make that discomfort worth moving through. 

In this episode, Mike shares how his vision of becoming a United States Marine carried him through the pain and chaos of boot camp, how the nervous system adapts as unfamiliar experiences become familiar, and how Viktor Frankl’s work helped him connect meaning, purpose, vision, and our willingness to endure difficult circumstances. Ultimately, playing offense with your life means getting clear about what you came here to experience, create, and become—and becoming willing to move through the discomfort required to create it.  

Key Takeaways

1. A Powerful Vision Gives Discomfort Meaning
When you are deeply clear about what you want to create, become, or experience, discomfort becomes part of the journey toward something that matters. Vision gives you a reason to keep moving when growth gets uncomfortable.

2. Growth Requires You to Make the Unfamiliar Familiar
Your nervous system naturally feels safer in circumstances it already knows. Repeated exposure to new experiences allows your body to adapt until what once created intense discomfort becomes something you can handle.

3. Comfort and Growth Require Different Choices
Creating expanded circumstances requires doing things you haven’t done before. If you continually retreat when discomfort appears, you return to what is familiar instead of continuing toward what you want.

4. Meaning and Purpose Change What You Are Willing to Endure
Mike connects his experience in Marine Corps boot camp with Viktor Frankl’s observations about meaning, purpose, and the human will to continue through extraordinarily difficult circumstances. When you have something meaningful on the other side of the discomfort, the discomfort itself has purpose.

5. Playing Offense Requires Clarity and Willingness
Playing defense means organizing your life around avoiding negative circumstances and internal discomfort. Playing offense means getting clear about what you want to experience, create, and become—and becoming willing to move through the discomfort required to create it.  

Notable Quotes

• “A powerful and clear vision for who you're becoming, what you intend to experience, for wherever you intend, the quality of life you intend to create, for the, anything you intend to accomplish or accumulate. A clear and powerful vision will help you find meaning and purpose in all of the discomfort and pain required to experience it.”
• “The more familiar circumstances become, the more regulated your nervous system begins to feel in them and begins to experience them. So the same thing that causes discomfort on day one doesn't even move anything inside of you on day 90.”
• “What we need to do, is to find meaning, and purpose in that discomfort, so that you move into and through to discomfort, towards something unfamiliar, to something new, and to expanded circumstances.”
• “In order to master this, the creation process, in order to experience something brand new, something new, something expanded, something even better than what you're experiencing right now, you must be willing to face and endure discomfort and pain.”
• “The willingness and the ability to feel and move into that discomfort and pain is gonna separate someone who's playing offense in life from someone who's playing defense.”    

Call to Action

Take some time today and get clear about the dream that’s in your heart. What do you want to experience? What do you want to create? Who do you want to become? And what discomfort might you need to become willing to move through in order to experience it?

If you’re ready to get clear about what you want and start playing offense with your life, connect with me through www.InnerWealthGlobal.com or email me directly at [email protected].

Mike's Media:

Website: https://www.innerwealthglobal.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mikekitko
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mike_kitko
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mikekitko
Subscribe to my YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mikekitko

Music Credit: "What's Left of Me" by Wes Hoffman & Friends

Send me a some feedback!

In this episode, Mike Kitko breaks down one of the clearest differences he sees between people who create extraordinary levels of wealth, success, fulfillment, and impact and those who continually struggle to gain traction. After years of working with high-performing entrepreneurs, Mike has simplified it to two things: extreme clarity about what you want and the willingness, ability, and capacity to endure the discomfort required to create it. 

Mike explores why growth is inherently uncomfortable and why your nervous system often resists the very things you say you want. Through experiences from Marine Corps boot camp, skydiving, his own career transition, and conversations with private clients, he explains how unfamiliar circumstances create internal discomfort—and why learning to stay in that discomfort long enough for your nervous system to realign is essential to expanding your life.  

Key Takeaways

1. Clarity Is the First Requirement for Creating What You Want

People who create exceptional lives have intense clarity about what they want, who they want to become, how they want to feel, and what they are committed to experiencing. When you stop focusing on what you’re trying to avoid and give yourself full permission to want what you want, that clarity becomes a creative force that moves you forward. 

2. Growth Requires the Capacity to Endure Discomfort

Knowing what you want isn’t enough. Growth requires moving into the discomfort of something unfamiliar and staying there long enough for your nervous system to adjust. The people who consistently expand their lives aren’t necessarily experiencing less discomfort—they’ve developed a greater capacity to endure it. 

3. Your Nervous System Prioritizes Familiarity Over Expansion

Your nervous system is designed to keep you alive, and one way it does that is by attempting to keep you in circumstances it already recognizes. A new relationship, career, business, level of wealth, or version of yourself can feel unsafe simply because it’s unfamiliar. That discomfort doesn’t necessarily mean you’re moving in the wrong direction. 

4. Many People Retreat When They’re Closest to What They Want

Mike shares three recent examples of people who had the opportunity to receive exactly what they said they wanted but stopped at the threshold because taking the final step created uncertainty and discomfort. Sometimes the greatest resistance appears when you’re standing at the edge of becoming someone you’ve never been before. 

5. Growth and Comfort Cannot Coexist

Expansion requires entering unfamiliar territory. Whether you’re building wealth, changing careers, deepening relationships, or creating a completely different life, there will be moments when your nervous system urges you to retreat to what it already knows. Your willingness to continue through that discomfort determines how far you’re able to expand. 

Notable Quotes

•  “Not everybody has the same level of willingness to endure discomfort that growth requires.” 
•  “Growth does require discomfort because it’s unfamiliar. It’s territory you’ve never entered before.” 
•  “Everybody knows exactly what they don’t want and they wake up each and every day to avoid it. And very few people know exactly what they want.” 
•  “The second one is the one that’s most challenging, and that’s the willingness, the capacity, and the ability to move into and through the discomfort that’s required to grow.” 
•  “Growth or comfort, can’t have both.” 

Call to Action

If this episode hit home and you recognize that you’re standing at the edge of something you want but struggling to move through the discomfort required to receive it, let’s connect.

Visit innerwealthglobal.com or email Mike directly at [email protected]. No assistant. No gatekeeper. Just a conversation about where you are, what you want, and how we can expand your capacity to step into what’s next.

Mike's Media:

Website: https://www.innerwealthglobal.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mikekitko
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mike_kitko
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mikekitko
Subscribe to my YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mikekitko

Music Credit: "What's Left of Me" by Wes Hoffman & Friends

Send me a some feedback!

In Part Two of Unleash Yourself, Mike shifts from playing defense to going on offense. Most people have tremendous clarity about what they don’t want and spend their lives trying to avoid negative circumstances, consequences, and feelings. Going on offense begins by getting clear about what you actually want to create, experience, and express.

Mike explores the relationship between clarity, inspiration, creation, and receiving—and why having success, wealth, love, or freedom means very little if you cannot actually experience it within yourself. This episode challenges you to stop building your life around avoidance, reconnect with the vision inside you, and begin creating a life that leaves you excited to wake up and live it.

Key Takeaways

1. Everybody Knows What They Don’t Want
Most people have tremendous clarity about the circumstances and feelings they want to avoid, but very few have developed the same clarity about what they actually want.

2. Clarity Moves You From Survival Into Creation
When you have a vision for your life, you finally have something to wake up and create instead of spending your energy trying to prevent everything you fear.

3. Inspiration Is a Different Way to Create
Insecurity, inadequacy, and insignificance can keep you creating from survival, while inspiration allows you to create for the experience, expression, and expansion itself.

4. You Experience Your Life Through Your Body
Having money, success, love, freedom, or accomplishment does not guarantee that you will experience those things if you have not learned how to receive and feel them within yourself.

5. Going on Offense Starts With What You Actually Want
If the life you’re living no longer works for you, wipe the slate clean and get clear about the health, relationships, wealth, impact, experiences, and life you would choose if you were no longer organizing everything around what you’re trying to avoid.

Notable Quotes

“Everybody knows exactly what they don’t want. Everybody knows exactly what they wake up to avoid every single day. And for most people, that is their intention in life. They wake up every day to avoid the negative consequences that they don’t want to experience.”

“You’re in survival mode when you’re driven by insecurity, inadequacy, insignificance, but you’re in creation mode when you’re driven by inspiration. And inspiration and clarity go hand in hand.”

“When we have that vision, then it energizes us and we have something to wake up to create instead of just a whole bunch of stuff to avoid.”

“If you are successful, but you don’t feel successful, you’re not really experiencing your success. If I’m managing a $350 million operation and I feel like a fraud, then I’m experiencing life as being a fraud.”

“If you feel like the overall makeup of your life isn’t working for you, then let’s start getting clear about what it would look like to wake up excited every day, on fire for your life—not trying to avoid those internal conflicts, but to feel the inspiration of your life.”

Take the Next Step

If you’re ready to stop organizing your life around what you’re trying to avoid and get clear about what you actually want to create, experience, and become, reach out to me directly.

Visit https://www.innerwealthglobal.com/ or email me at [email protected]

Mike's Media:

Website: https://www.innerwealthglobal.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mikekitko
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mike_kitko
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mikekitko
Subscribe to my YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mikekitko

Music Credit: "What's Left of Me" by Wes Hoffman & Friends

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In Part One of this two-part series, Mike shares the opening training from his recent two-day workshop, Unleash Yourself, and explores what it means to play defense in life. Your nervous system tries to keep you alive by keeping you within circumstances that feel familiar—even when you consciously want something more.

Expansion requires moving beyond the familiar, and that means discomfort is inevitable. Mike explores why new circumstances can cause us to retreat or sabotage what we want, and why learning to work with your nervous system is essential if you want to stop playing not to lose and begin experiencing more of life.

Key Takeaways

1. Playing Defense Is About Trying Not to Lose
Defense organizes your life around maintaining what you already have and preventing negative circumstances and consequences.

2. Your Nervous System Prefers What’s Familiar
Your nervous system attempts to keep you safe by pulling you toward circumstances it already recognizes and knows how to navigate.

3. Expansion Will Create Discomfort
Moving into new and unfamiliar circumstances can create discomfort even when those circumstances are exactly what you consciously want.

4. Retreat Can Look Like Self-Sabotage
When unfamiliar circumstances create enough discomfort, you may unconsciously retreat, sabotage progress, or return to circumstances that feel more familiar.

5. Learning to Work With Your Nervous System Changes the Game
Growth requires developing the ability to move into and through the discomfort that naturally accompanies expansion instead of allowing that discomfort to continually send you back into defense.

Notable Quotes

“Your nervous system tries to keep you alive by keeping you in familiar circumstances. So it’s going to create discomfort so that you back up and ultimately retreat in life when something new and unfamiliar starts to show up.”

“Your nervous system is actually trying to serve you, but it doesn’t care if we’re wealthy or successful or happy or fulfilled. All it cares about is keeping us alive.”

“We’ve got to learn how to work with the nervous system and go into and through the discomfort that is eventual and constant in the expansion of our lives.”

“Most people are playing defense, and defense is all about trying to keep everything that you have together, trying not to lose, and trying to prevent negative circumstances and consequences.”

“Going on offense is the fun part of life. Playing defense is trying to keep everything you have together and not lose, where going on offense is about expanding and experiencing more of life.”

Take the Next Step

If you recognize that you’ve been playing defense in your life and you’re ready to understand what’s keeping you there and learn how to move forward, reach out to me directly.

Visit https://www.innerwealthglobal.com/ or email me at [email protected].

Mike's Media:

Website: https://www.innerwealthglobal.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mikekitko
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mike_kitko
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mikekitko
Subscribe to my YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mikekitko

Music Credit: "What's Left of Me" by Wes Hoffman & Friends