Joe Quattrone 00:33
Gentlemen, we just got off with Michael Padurano, author of the path to growing forward experience. What was your take on our interview with Mike, quite an interesting story?

Kary Youman 00:44
Yeah, I would just say that, you know, you hear about people hitting rock bottom. And, you know, sometimes they bounce back, sometimes they don’t, but just hearing how many times he’s touched the bottom and to be at the point where he is today, I just think that there’s a lot of resilience. And anyone who listens to this who might be in a rough spot, I think this story is definitely going to put a little bit of fuel on their motivation just to keep pushing.

JM Guthrie 01:07
Yeah, I mean, what an inspiration, right. And I think what a great profound example of exactly what Carrie said, hitting rock bottom for some of us that are fortunate to have not found that place. Just how lucky he was wearing a grateful shirt and how grateful I am for the ability to find this path with you guys. Having not had to find the bottom or these number of Near Death Experiences that he referenced as well. grateful for that, but just really fascinating. Guy’s really motivating and inspires me to continue to do what we’re doing here to try to be better for, as he mentioned, the 8 billion people on the planet.

Joe Quattrone 01:50
Yeah, you know, I thought it was a really inspirational conversation. And obviously, there’s rock bottom, we always talk about this, this invisible barrier to life called rock bottom, but there’s rock bottom, and then there’s like the basement underneath rock bottom. And I feel like that’s a place where Michael has been a couple times in his life, which is ultra scary to me, right? And somebody that’s got multiple kids. You know, you try to keep your mind away from those types of scenarios. But I think he does a really good job of showing you why life is important, regardless of what happens to you. And I think he’s a really exemplary, you know, kind of figure when it comes to what we’re trying to do with this Mito lifestyle. Another thing that I’m conscious of is, you know, we have to, we have to showcase stories of all different types of people and their bouts and battles with alcohol. And sometimes we have people that, you know, barely struggle at all, but they recognize that they need to overcome it. And then sometimes we have people that struggle quite a bit. And this is one of those stories where you’re waking up in ditches, there’s smashed up cars, you can’t remember what’s going on, you know, the night before and stuff like that. So, for those of you out there in the audience that have had severe dealings with alcohol and drug abuse and stuff like that, stay tuned to this episode, you’re going to want to listen to it. Michael Pat Aronow, a living embodiment of transformative growth and inner balance, stands as a testament to the journey from extremes to equilibrium, all while embracing his definitive purpose to elevate humanity through knowledge and understanding. In his unwavering commitment to living by example, Michael navigates the path of radical self awareness, extending his guidance to empower others to embark on their own journeys of self discovery. Michael paronto defies conventional roles, rejecting the title of a mere coach. Instead, he’s a creator navigating a life without limits within a universe brimming with infinite possibilities. Grounded in his objective truth. Michael shares his vulnerability as a means of guiding others towards their own answers, solutions and healing. He recognizes that within each person’s unique perspectives, lies the key to self discovery, a truth waiting to be unearthed with the right guidance. Amid the chaos of our fast paced lives. Michael invites us to pause and reflect on a crucial often overlooked aspect, the inner luminance with profound insight he encourages us to cherish the inner light that defines our individuality, beauty and capacity to radiate positivity and love. Michael PETRONAS philosophy centers on the belief that his inner luminance is a potent force within each of us. A force that once acknowledged and nurtured not only enriches our lives, but also creates a ripple effect of positivity and love that extends to those around us. Welcome to the fuzzy ish podcast, the kind of sober Show I’m your host, Joe McHugh. Along with me today are my co hosts JM Guthrie and Carrie human. And we’ve got a special guest today, Mike Potter Rando. Mike said hi to the fuzziest audience. All

Michael Padurano 04:59
right. for the theater audience, how are you doing? Quite the pronunciation? I’m not a you know, that’s a fish for English. Yes, the

JM Guthrie 05:08
fuzzy. I mean,

Michael Padurano 05:10
I get it, I get it. I lived there for a long time. I thrived in the fuzzier.

JM Guthrie 05:15
Yes, amen.

Joe Quattrone 05:16
We try to consider ourselves that gray space, right? We’re not exactly, you know, people that went to AAA to try to get sober from alcohol and stuff like that. We’ve got our own kind of ways of dealing with things. Kerry’s been, you know, the the longest standing tenured member of the meat total movement having 12 years under his belt, I’m at about five and a half and JM JM, didn’t you come across 28 months or 30 months recently, something like that

JM Guthrie 05:46
a number of months, three years in August, 20 100 days and some 868 60 Some days, it’s creeping

Joe Quattrone 05:53
up. It’s creeping up.

JM Guthrie 05:54
It’s weird, you know, now when I look at it, it’s 2030 days more, it’s not every single day, like one two, you know, it’s slowly but surely going a little bit faster.

Joe Quattrone 06:04
Yeah, I think that’s just kind of like an anecdote on life in general, like having these years stack up of being free of alcohol. It just reminds you how fast life goes by so my country

JM Guthrie 06:14
grandmother, rest in peace. Macon, Georgia used to say, the days are so damn long, but these years, they’re so soft, they’re so fast, and you’re gonna and I didn’t really believe that until recently, when my third kid turned four started sleeping through the night is when it really hit me. And it’s like, man, now I can see how these years are gonna go by fast because these last nights with kids are gone by super slowly until just the last six or seven months.

Joe Quattrone 06:42
So yeah, so what, we try to espouse Mike, and I’m sure you’ve listened to a couple of episodes of the podcast in preparation for this, but we’re really mentioning the word meet total at the top, you know, this, this idea of excellence to temperance. But tell us a little bit about you know, let’s get into your backstory, like, there’s a reason why I brought you on the show. There’s a reason why you reached out to me, I know you’ve got a lot of stuff cooking right now, with the book release and stuff like that. And we’ll get into all that stuff a little bit later. But let’s set the ground table for the listeners of the show. Talk to us a little bit about your backstory, me and you met through LinkedIn. So like, I understand you from a professional perspective. But let’s talk about that professional experience. And kind of, you know what changed in your life, what kind of experiences led you to this career and whole life pivot that you’ve got going on right now.

Michael Padurano 07:34
So I’ve been fully totally sober for over 17 and a half years now. So undulations. I started drinking and using hardcore drugs very early. So I stopped early, right, like, I mean, that’s just the way it works. I was either going to have it stopped or I was going to stop. And that’s just just the odds playing against him. So I mean, if you want to go back to the personal backstory, career wise, I was in the stock market and got sober. Once I got sober I walked away from being a wholesale market maker, I traded for a hedge fund off books, I was a day trader, I did a whole bunch of different stuff. I was a training manager for a day trading office. But I was a train wreck. I mean, one of my bosses figured out that the magic was to let me sleep at my desk, sleep off my hangover from the night before, work the first two hours of the day and send me home. And it worked. I mean, I made unbelievable results and unbelievable returns, because my attention span was so delayed that I did make the reactive decisions. So I made more conscious decisions, even though I was hunched over who because I wasn’t just reacting, reacting with my ADHD and just jumping all over everything. So what he noticed is that I started skipping a lot of the mistakes. Because mistakes, usually in daytrading, at least at that point in time where I’m at 2000s, two dozen, three, the 2006 the time back then in those swings that the markets were going in, it was you know, reactive behavior, and just getting out too soon, or getting into late or any of those different things. But what the hungover mentality did was it slowed me down to be able to absorb what was really happening around me. And it made me have much, much larger returns, until I went out one night after work and got a DUI. And if it was only on alcohol, that would have been great, but it wasn’t. So it was a mess. And I had no idea what I did, and to check the receipts in my pocket to even understand where I wasn’t before because I had no clue what was going on. So it’s really, you know, it’s taking the space to understand, and I still didn’t get sober. I mean, it was 2014 I got my DUI and it got over until June of 2006. So I actually remember going to pick up my car from the impound lot and being drunk driving at home. Like it didn’t matter. Nothing stopped me because I was on a mission to numb the pain and that was really the issue. It had nothing to do with Drinking, it had nothing to do with drugs. It was all about numbing the pain that was underneath it all and escaping and running from it. And even after I first got sober, I didn’t do the emotional work until years later, I just became a business Holic, gambling Hall exec, solid, food, everything. I mean, I went through the whole gamut of

Joe Quattrone 10:17
it. So you just replaced the addiction, alcohol with an addiction to something else, whether it be

Michael Padurano 10:21
100% And stay dry, and stay dry. Because it wasn’t until 2020 20 or 2018, when I decided to start working on myself, and then 2020 where I really did the deep emotional work, where I was basically forced upon me.

JM Guthrie 10:35
So that’s your question. So you had the DUI so that was like the moment of like, real clarity of the problem. And those two more years until you stopped? Was there another bottom moment? Was it just sort of clarity that it wasn’t right for you what ended up being the impetus to and to actually put it down?

Michael Padurano 10:53
So it was Father’s Day 2006. I woke up and hungover as usual, because I was doing cocaine and drinking and shit on the night before. And I woke up and I looked at my car, when outside I looked at the car because I smoked so I went outside to go look at my car, or I would just go outside to smoke. I saw my car, and half of it was old, damaged, old crud. I had no idea what happened the night before, no idea where I was, no idea how I got home. I blacked out basically all night. So I started calling my parents and I’m like, I can’t go out for Father’s Day. And I hung up the phone. I didn’t give them any answer. I didn’t give them anything. And as the day went on, I started calling hospitals and police printing stings to see if I killed anyone. Like that was my first concern. Like Did I kill somebody else? Like it’s one thing to have a death wish for myself, but God forbid I hurt somebody else. I don’t know what I would do with myself and every police station, every hospital no one’s had any. So based on the roads of Boca Raton, Florida because I was in Boynton and but I was out drinking in Boca that night before. I probably sideswiped one of those canal bridges or canal overpasses where they have the huge medians on the side. And that’s what I assume happened to this day, I still don’t know what happened. I’ll never know what happened. I just know that. I couldn’t live with myself anymore. I couldn’t live that life anymore. I went from being worth millions to being worth zero to being worth millions to being worth zero. And I just couldn’t do it anymore. I just couldn’t live that life. My life became so unmanageable. I literally got down on my hands and knees and I begged God I said, God keep me sober. And if I ever use it again, kill me on the spot. And that was the last day I used anything ever again. The night so it was last night.

JM Guthrie 12:37
That’s incredible. Do you think that you think it was the realization that you could have killed somebody? Obviously, that certainly plays it? But was there also meaning around the fact that it was Father’s Day and sort of the family aspect of that too? You know, what do you think it was? Or was it the cold combination?

Michael Padurano 12:55
For me at that point in time, I absolutely despise myself. So it had to be the fact that I could hurt somebody else. Because I didn’t care what happened to me I had a death wish for the last 20 years I was using, so it didn’t matter. I mean, the whole time I used it was really dreaded kill myself, I Odede, seven or eight different times. But I kept going and escalating the amount and it just didn’t take me out.

JM Guthrie 13:14
Yeah, I think the fascinating thing about this, and going back to the conversations we’ve had with others over the past several months, is everybody kind of finds that moment, we had a we had one conversation where a guy was literally about to kill himself, and thought about his family, and what the result was going to be for them. And so that was it. And he even used the example that would be like killing them too. It’s interesting when people hit the bottom and carry talks about this too. It’s the other people that you ultimately pull you out of it and not even yourself. I think that’s such an interesting piece of this that we haven’t necessarily clicked too far into. But really, really powerful stuff. And thanks for sharing

Joe Quattrone 14:04
for those of you that are interested, fuzziest podcast.com Episode 10 Dave Alban, walking on fire and breaking free is the gentleman that Jim was talking about who almost pulled the trigger, but then started thinking about stepkids. And that really was, you know, a similar pathway that we’re talking about here with Mike on today’s episode. So thanks for bringing that to the forefront. JM.

Kary Youman 14:26
Yeah, speaking of path, Joey. Michael, really appreciate you sharing that. You know, you released the book 1212 2023 which is just those numbers alone. I’m curious, but you wrote a book called The Path to Growing forward. I’m just curious, you know, it sounds like you’ve had some ebbs and flows. And you said 2020 was actually the year where you did some personal inventory. It looks like you’ve worked with some coaches and shamans and priests rabbis, like how did all of those experiences kind of, you know, shape this growing forward? And can you maybe dive in a little bit deeper And to this concept of like self forgiveness letters and journaling that as you know really helped you to connect on a deeper level with yourself. So

Michael Padurano 15:07
I can’t give that part of the story without giving a background right? Like it doesn’t make full sense. So I was adopted at birth. My adopted mother had her own personal trauma that she never dealt with. And she physically and emotionally abused me from two to 14, well, physically abused me from two to nine, emotionally abused me until 14. So my childhood was very unforgiving in so many ways, and I really hated myself and despised myself. My first near death experience was when I was three and a half, four years old. I came back with all my spiritual gifts fully intact. All the Claire’s, clairvoyant, Claire, cognizant and clear, sentient, clear, all of them, they were all present. And I had no one to stand on my side and say, you’re okay. All I had was the same abuse every day that you know, you’re worthless, you’re a piece of shit, I wish I could return you, but nobody wanted you in the first place. You know, those are words that just stick out off the top. And then you know, those abilities and those gifts, I started using them to try and push people away, especially her. Now granted, looking back, hindsight is 2020. Right. So looking back, I understand that she had generational trauma that she never dealt with. And then that time period, that’s not what people really did. So it wasn’t 100% her fault, she didn’t have the support, the awareness, the understanding, to be able to know that she could break that pattern. So I have unconditional love for her and my father. And so if we skip ahead, right, I started drinking at nine doing cocaine at 12. I Odede, my first three times at 12 years old at school, and it became a spectacle because I would pass out and go to the ground foam at the mouth. 20 minutes later I woke up like nothing happened. So by the third day of this happening, I had the whole school watching me because they just couldn’t believe what was going on. And that was the last time I pushed myself to those limits in school because it was too much attention. I didn’t stop getting attention, I just stopped getting in that way. So it was , you know, understanding the limits of what I was gonna get away with from outside of me. I always had lucid dreams, vivid dreams, I was always being very clairvoyant, seeing things before they would happen, understanding the patterns, recognitions, and all those behaviors. But I never had any self worth or self love. So I got sober. I had a few business ventures that I created. I started working with the United Nations Development Program. I had government contracts with over 30 governments around the world at one point, I was doing amazing things and I just kept self sabotage. I had business partners steal millions of dollars from me. And I kept self sabotaging every direction. So I met this woman, got married, had our first kid, I got her pregnant and we got married and, you know, obviously the wrong direction, based on societal norms. And then we had our second kid . Before we had our third kid, she had a huge mental breakdown and ended up in a psych ward. Three times over the course of 105 days, she was in there for almost half of those days. And social services got involved and said she couldn’t be around the kids for more than five minutes by herself. Without me, I quit all my jobs. During that period of time, I was working two or three different jobs, signing a contract to go abroad and work with a big NGO at the time. And I had to cancel all that. So we ended up losing everything. And we were homeless, living in our car, hotel hopping all that fun stuff. And this was 2017. And she was pregnant with our third child at the same time. So at that time, I decided to go to New York and work at a company on Long Island. She went to Arkansas to live with mutual friends, because we thought she would be safe and she would be mentally stable and they would protect the kids. And I was very wrong about that scenario. But besides the point, you know, she went there, I went to New York and right about two weeks before my baby was new. My youngest Sidney was going to be born in 2017. I flew out to Arkansas and I said I would stay there for a year and work remotely with that company in New York. The birth in Arkansas is a little bit different than New York and a little bit different than Florida. Just a tad. They let you have your cell phones in the delivery rooms. They let you do all those crazy things because it doesn’t matter. And my boss at the time, the company owner at the time that brought me on as a consultant, called 17 times during birth. So by the time I met the last time he called the anesthesiologist he just looked at me and said answer your damn phone. I don’t want to hear this anymore. Answer your damn phone. I answered the phone. And I told him I quit and I hung up on him. So I ended up staying in Arkansas for a year. The first year of my youngest daughter’s birth. And I became so miserable. I was sober but I was miserable. I hated myself. I got to lows and depression again. And a friend of mine in Florida called and said if you want to take it you move back here. Get your life together. I have an extra room, stand the extra room and let’s get your life back together. Via she heard how miserable I was in it. Almost like a second mother to me, and I got so annoyed around Memorial Day of 2018. I said, Fine, let’s do it. And I said I need to stay till after my youngest birthday, or your birthday, but I will leave the next day and I left father. They have 2018. Ironically, a lot of stuff happens around father’s day for me, apparently. So now I’m back in Florida, my kids are still in Arkansas with their mother and living with that family. She meets a guy online and within three weeks takes my kids’ lives across the state. And we had everything verbally worked out in a civil divorce, civil custody, civil everything. And she took my kids and disappeared with them. And I had no access to them for five months and had no idea where they were. So I had to hack into it and find out where they were. And I started doing well visits to the police and then the police, the local police, this small town, little little town in Arkansas, which is extremely corrupt that I’ve learned down the line started telling me I was crazy because I was calling to see if my kids were okay. She blocked my number, she blocked everyone. That’s the number I knew she would let my family have access to my kids. No one had access to my game. A year later, I went to go visit with my friend because I didn’t trust myself to go with that by myself because I’d be too reactive. We went to go see my kids and we had to force our way to see my kids by me calling her mother to force her to allow me to see my kids. She had no interest in letting me see them. My kids were black and blue. They were unpaid. They were unkempt. They were not clean. They were not washed over and dirty ribs. They were skinny and scrawny and not healthy. My youngest had lice horribly at that point, covering her whole head, it was really bad. And when I told my son, I couldn’t take him with me. He looked at me and said, I hate you. And I can’t believe you’re gonna leave me here. And he started puking right on the spot because he was so sick to his stomach drumming. As soon as me and my friend got back to Florida, we both called Child Services to report them. And there were 11 total cases opened against them and they never even walked in the house to see if my kids were okay. The one time that they took my kids out of the house, they told my kids that they were dropping them off right after dropping them back off. What are my kids gonna say? They’re not going to tell the truth. If that was the case, they were getting abused daily, emotionally and physically. And I don’t know if it was worse than that. I have no idea based on some of their habits. When I first got them back, I can tell you, it wouldn’t surprise me if they were worse than physically and emotionally abused. So now we are getting to 2020, which is what we discussed, right? So I needed to give that little bit of backstory. So it makes sense. So at the end of 2019 I’m in Florida. I’m starting to try and figure out ways to fight for my kids because I know what they’re going through and growing through every single day. And my father takes me out to lunch for the first time in my life. Someone in my family sat me down and said I am sorry for the abuse you went through. Up until then I was the black sheep. I was a liar. I was their manipulator and their storyteller. Everything I said was BS and nobody believed anything I said, and that’s what my whole family, all my aunts, uncles, cousins, everyone believed. Nobody believed our word I said, so I carried that around with me my whole life. So December of 19, my father sits me down and he says I’m sorry for everything you went through. He goes, I don’t know the extent to how bad it was. But I know you went through a lot. So I told him, and he started crying at that table. And I started crying. Because I was never validated like that in my life through my family ever. Lo and behold, two months later, I got evidence, physical evidence of the abuse against my kids pictures and videos. From my ex in-laws. Her mother and her sister sent it to me, that’s how bad it was. And I got in the car and I drove Arkansas 1300 miles, but $3.76 in my bank account. And I drove to Arkansas. And my father said you’re actually going to do this, I’ll go hire a lawyer. I’ll pay for the lawyers where you are laid out for you. That’s not a problem. He flew up there. Two days later, we had a lawyer, February 25. It was March 6 Before my lawyer filed the paperwork because he didn’t think it was a priority. Even though my kids were getting abused every day, and I got emergency custody March 16 2020 of my children in Arkansas. Now keep in mind, I paid, I packed for eight days, I was already there for 11. And I didn’t have a pocket person. I had no money, I had no resources. I was owed money from the corporate companies I was consulting for. And then COVID happened. I ended up being there for a total of 19 months. So after crying almost daily for the first 30 days, I said I needed to do something and I opened myself up to the universe and said I needed help. I need help. And that’s when this onslaught of coaches and shamans and priests and rabbis started finding me because I was being vocal about what I was growing through. I wasn’t hiding. I was being extremely vulnerable, very raw. and very overwhelming because I didn’t have a balance of an extreme. So I attracted all these coaches and shamans and priests and rabbis, I started working with all of them, I worked with every single one that came my way, I didn’t care what it was, it was just me and my kids out there for 19 months. So I confronted my past because I wanted to support them the best way I could. Now the greatest gift from doing that I could never even notice foreseen until now. And that was they watched me go through a healing process to heal through a very similar childhood traumas that they experienced. So now today, my six year old looks at me and says, Dad, you’re off go journal, that you’re off, go meditate, that you’re off the right to self forgiveness letter. And that’s my six year old. So whatever I did to live, the example, is now their example of how they can live their life. What’s the greatest gift I received from the whole process? And that is when I started doing the emotional work. That was what forced me to do it.

Joe Quattrone 26:01
At Ceph, what do you think at the moment, you know, when your ex wife had disappeared from the town in Arkansas, was there any resentment for you leaving to go to Florida at that point? Or did you never kind of uncover why she did what she did? I know there was another person that came into the picture like another man or whatever, do you think he was an influence in that?

Michael Padurano 26:22
No, because she hates herself. And at the end of the day, she has to have a partner, male or female. She was gay for half her life to half our marriage. She cheated on me with women and men. So I mean, she’s just truly mentally unstable, and has zero self worth. And her whole family just enables her to know when they just enable everything. So everything was compounded from her whole lifetime. And she was abused in her childhood, also never wanted to face it or deal with it. Never wanted to do anything. So

JM Guthrie 26:54
It’s really interesting. I’m sure you guys know, Joe and Carrie, we listened to the Huberman podcast from time to time or you know, pretty often and he had Goggins on for on January 1, and it’s two and a half hours, and I’ve now completed it. And it was fascinating listening to it. But there was a section of it that was actually what you just shared about all the various people that you talked to, which probably all had very different perspectives on how best to find healing, or how best to find the path forward. They talk about the fact that there’s not necessarily a specific type of communication, or some sort of like, specific plan or platform, or 30 days, or 66 days or whatever. It’s having to find it in yourself to fucking go, right. And so I’m interested, having gone through that with all those different people, and having both human and dog and say there’s, there’s really no motivation other than you just have to get after it for yourself. And obviously, the premise of our show is me total, which, you know, excellence through temperance Joe mentioned. But really, at the end of the day, what it means is, you can’t give up drinking, you can’t be a better dad, you can’t lose addiction, you can’t cheat on your wife, and you know, you stop cheating on your wife or your your husband, without making the decision for yourself, that you’re going to do that. And then staying committed to it on literally a fucking daily basis. Right? I’m curious, like, do you subscribe? Is that what you subscribe to as well? Do you? Or do you think there needs to be a plan or a mantra? Or was there a specific plan or mantra, they even heard from any of those people through your process that ultimately gave you that lift or put you over the edge specific to really moving in the direction that you’ve been so fortunate to move in now for the last few years.

Michael Padurano 28:49
So to oversimplify, there’s a few things I live by, there is no authority figure in your life other than you, you are the only one that can make a choice in a decision that can impact your life. I believe that there’s infinite ways and infinite possibilities to a healing journey. And you have to be open to trying and experiencing as many of them as possible to live into what works for you. You need to understand that it’s limitless, that there’s not one way to do anything. And just like in my book, I say it’s a way not the way there is no way. Anybody who spies speaks in finance, it says No way. The only way any of those things I disconnect I’ve gotten is I don’t continue the conversation. I walk away. Because you’re limiting the capacity. There’s 8.1 billion people on this planet, 8.1 billion perspectives, and they’re all true. They are all true for each of those individuals. So how can one person say that this works for 8.1 billion, it’s not the fact. What I can tell you is how to find your self worth and self love. Those can be consistent. I can help you heal through trauma if you’re open to healing through trauma. And that is what my book guides you through is healing through your life and Creating a new way of life called the growing, growing forward, which is the constant daily evolution of growth, and removing better words removing those labels because our mind goes in a scientific background, our mind has an average of 60 to 70,000 thoughts a day, about 95% of those are pre programmed in our subconscious, about 85% of those slants and negativity. These are all scientific studies done by UPenn and other universities. So if you go on that premise, and you’re constantly telling yourself, you want to be better every day, your mind is going to go to that ultimate negative and tell you they were worse yesterday. That’s not unconditional self love and acceptance. That’s beating up your past self. Well, how can you be a better version of yourself today, if you’re beating up who you were yesterday, you’d have to embrace all you are all facets of you. To move into unconditional self love, you have to love every flaw, every word, every hair, every every everything that you have in your life, you have to fully unconditionally love every aspect of yourself, and your weaknesses and your flaws become your greatest strengths. So I agree, but I also definitely agree that it has to be self motivated. But I also agree that sometimes you have to throw out the lifeboat and the life raft and be able to give somebody a sliver of hope, when they don’t have one for themselves so that they have something to grab on to what it’s ultimately selves.

JM Guthrie 31:21
Yeah, and it’s ultimately to establish the will to keep going on a daily basis, right. So Self Love is a great example. And certainly as a part of my daily journey is having enough self love to know that I need to keep going for all the people that I care about, including myself, hopefully, a reality, right? But the reality is, it’s this combination of things that helps to silence those negative energies and ultimately give you the willpower to go to the next day for all the reasons regardless of what it is that you’re trying to achieve, or the problems that you’re trying to solve for. So I’d love that, and I appreciate you sharing.

Michael Padurano 32:00
So let me ask you a quick question just for because I’m curious, what’s the difference between a positive and a negative

32:07
alignment between

JM Guthrie 32:09
What do you label it? Yes, and to say the perspective

Michael Padurano 32:11
that you give. So if you’re constantly looking for black or white, or the positive or the negative, then you’re constantly separating yourself. If you start moving to a place of objectivity, and you say, this is just an experience, and from this experience, there’s a lesson that I’m going to learn and evolve, failed, doesn’t enter my world, I’ve had means $1 stolen from me, I’ve had the fire family and friends over 35 families that overnight, I’ve had to do all sorts of crazy things. But the word failure doesn’t come into my sphere, because I learned so much from those experiences. You know, I mean, those were the greatest gifts I could ever imagine. At the time, it was insurmountable at the time, but it was something I’d grow.

Joe Quattrone 32:50
Well, I can speak to some of the education I’ve learned from rearing several children, and my pet currently got a three year old right now that’s throwing tantrums left and right. And I have to constantly remind myself that to a three year old, there is no difference between positive and negative emotions, they’re the same thing, it’s just attention, all of it is attention, and they want it no matter what. So, so you have to kind of realize that at our core, that’s kind of how we are as human beings, like,

JM Guthrie 33:20
it’s just attention. It’s just, you know, you know, call and respond. And you know, you put something out, you get something back. And through our experiences, we label things positive and negative. And that’s the lens that we look through things as, and you can choose to be more positive, or you can choose to be more negative, but at the end of the day, it’s just calling response stimulus. I love the experience, experience is such a good word. Because in reality, you can’t pay for experiences either, right? Like some might ultimately put money in your pocket, some might steal money from your pocket, but at the end of the day, the way that that made you feel, and that experience is not something that you can even pay for. And so that goes across everything in our lives and ultimately ends up being the compass and the North Star specific to how best to handle the next situation to maybe either find the result in the same experience or obviously go the other direction to find a better result.

Joe Quattrone 34:15
Let me let me interject and take this in a slightly different direction right now, because I do want to save some time for a segment that we have at the end of the show. I’m a big science fiction guy. But one thing that I know about science fiction, at least that I’ve observed about science fiction over the past 40 years of my life when I watch science fiction movies or read books and stuff like that, is that it’s not always that far off from what the eventual truth comes out to be. And the reason I bring that up is because you’re a guy that you mentioned, you had near death experiences, you came back with some clairvoyant skills and life experiences and stuff like that. To most of our listeners, they don’t know what’s waiting for them on the other side of this earth in this world. And so I want to take a Little bit of a time here, because I realized you’d mentioned like if people are closed off to the idea of what you know, and basically say there’s only one way to do things, that’s probably going to leave them short of what your experience is when it comes to those near death experiences and what you believe is waiting for you in the afterlife. So, tell us a little bit about those near death experiences. And if you had a lot of them, what is your perspective on what’s happening to us after we die? Scientifically

Michael Padurano 35:27
proven we are energy, we are constantly in motion, how we react to that as our emotions, right? They play on words all the time to hide things in plain sight, we choose to acknowledge it or not. It’s easy to have mass religion, it’s easy to have control of populations based on differences in beliefs, cultural beliefs, and be able to, you know, separate and divide people so that the very few at the top can control the narrative. And the messaging that goes out. Near Death Experiences are very simple. Simply put, when you do something that your physical body is dying, and your spirit is not ready to go. So you go across a veil or a threshold, and you go into other realms, and you take your energetic field with you. So you will flatline and you will appear as dead because your energy is not present anymore. So if you just take that scientific concept, and leave everything else out of this matter what I’ve experienced on the other side at any point in time, right. So if your body is flatlining when your energetic field is not in it, when we die if our energetic field is not in it, the energetic and energetic field goes to the next place. So that’s what happens, whether it’s our soul, whether it’s an energetic field, whether it’s our vibration, whether it’s our essence, depending on what you want to call it, no matter what your belief is, it goes somewhere because energy doesn’t end, it just moves and shifts and transfers. So there is a full experience. And a lot of that experience is based on what your beliefs are. Because I can tell you my first couple of near death experiences were very different from the last ones. Now the background of it, the stories that are attached to it, are very similar to speaking to spirits. And you know, this whole concept that there’s something bigger than you out there that you’d have to go live into this purpose that aligns with why you’re here and there’s this path for you to follow. No, it’s not going to make sense to anyone else. So you’ve just got to live your life and just be okay with it and trust and have faith. But the way that it was communicated to me was based on my beliefs at those moments. So with my first near death experience, three and a half, four years old, it was Jesus and Gabriel and Archangel Michael and God and all these presences that came from very Judeo Christian Christian beliefs because that’s what I was raised in. As I’ve expanded my belief structure understood research to Korean research to Torah, researched all these different religions, understand more of the principal beliefs around it and then work with shamans, my whole experiences have shifted and changed the stroke was completely different because that was November 16 of 2022, I had a major stroke three places in my brain at once. I was actually driving at that time, and I passed out at a red light, my son said that he never saw anything like it. And as soon as the light turned green, he tapped me on the shoulder and said that you get delayed. Serena went right home when I woke up and drove home like nothing ever happened. 86% chance I’d be vegetables the rest of my life. And I healed myself through shamanistic practices that I was taught ordained it so you know, the energy healing and the spiritual healing and psycho, psycho psychological therapy and all these other all these other sites, psychiatric surgery and stuff like those, all these different things that I was trained in and taught and believe in in men managing the alchemy, between the dark and the light, creating the balanced eating internally in all aspects of my life, which is what my goal is, is I find that Yin and Yang and emotional, mental, spiritual, every aspect within me because it all exists, you just have to find a balance for yourself. So at the end of the day, it is real, I promise you and your energy just shifts to a new experience. Now whether that means you come back and reincarnate whether that means you go on to different existences, whether that means you stay as a spirit. These are all different perspectives that you have when you’re on the other side. It’s different. Sometimes you sign up for things, sometimes you choose things, sometimes you make the choice after the current experience is over. It all depends. So

Joe Quattrone 39:33
just a follow up and tag onto that. So I see your sweatshirt says grateful on it, which is a mantra that I love espousing. It’s an affirmation that I constantly remind myself of, you

Michael Padurano 39:44
know that you’re, you know, the brand, you know, the brand really well actually. Yeah,

Joe Quattrone 39:47
yeah. So you got that for yourself as a gift after your stroke, right? Yes. One thing that I’ve seen that’s common from people that go through and ease is they don’t want to come back into their bodies. Did you feel that way, it sounds like you actually relish being on this earth. Even though you’ve had some pretty catastrophic things happen to you.

Michael Padurano 40:07
I wasn’t as resistant to it as I was in the past. But what it was I needed to receive messages that I could receive in human form. So that’s what happened. And I needed to get certain messages through me like the book that you guys are speaking about that program that I created the growing forward experience that came through a download during my stroke. It just took me time to heal myself, because for the first six weeks, I was half paralyzed, I had no X, no usage of the left side of my body for the first six weeks, going up and down stairs, and taking care of my three kids. So over time, as I healed myself, I gave my brain space to heal my body. As that happened, I started really digging into what the download was, and really creating. So now I’m back to creating and that’s a whole healing program that could work for anyone open to it, right? There’s infinite ways. It’s not the only way, it’s a way. And it’s a way that works for me. So

Kary Youman 41:05
I’m just curious, Michael, um, near death experience is something that’s always been pretty fascinating for me, my dad has spoken a lot about his own near death experiences. But I’m curious, you know, I think in life, there’s sort of this idea that like, we die every day, like in order to grow, it’s like we’re dying to a part of ourselves, or like the rise of the Phoenix, you know, there’s this spiritual death. And then there’s this physical death. And I’m just curious about you. You know, you said something earlier that really stuck with me. You said that you help people to grow through their trauma, when they’re ready to grow through that trauma. And again, just looking through your book and kind of picking up on some of your concepts, it seems like journaling, and this idea of a self forgiveness letter has really helped you. I’m just curious if you could speak more to sort of this concept of growing through trauma, I know a lot of people are living with trauma, whether they realize it or not. And it can be very intimidating to shine a light on that. So if you’d be open to just kind of speak into that, I’m sure our audience could probably grab something from it. So

Michael Padurano 42:03
Based on study stasis exams, about 70% of adults in America have unresolved trauma, to give you an idea, and when you’re living in a trauma space, and you’re in a very reactive state, you don’t take the time to pause and respond, you always just react. And it’s not always to the benefit of those around you and what your intent is. And it happens in business all day, every day. And we’ve we’ve I’m sure we all have accounts of it and seen it firsthand. Somebody made a mistake, the boss just started screaming. And then at some point down the line, it’s, oh, that’s what you’re talking about. And then it’s like, well, how do we fix this, rather than just screaming about the mistake? Right? So this is the reactive state, we all get triggered. We all have bounces, we all have Taiwanese, little three year old tyrants, we run through them all the time, even as adults, right? So my process is simple. It’s mind, body and soul. And I start with the soul. I don’t care what your religious beliefs are, I don’t care what your beliefs are at all. It’s about your personal beliefs and your personal higher power. Whatever you call it, it is fine by me. I fully support your faith and your structure. But how do I help you get directly connected to it, so that you can start building self love and self empowerment. And that’s step one is learning how to directly connect to your higher power and not needing a conduit to connect to your higher power. You don’t need to go to a building, you don’t need to read a book, you don’t need to do any of those things you don’t need a person to look up to. You need to stop creating false idols to go chase. This person knows more than me. So I want to follow them. I want to emulate them, I want to be like them. It’s just a way you need to stop doing that and be your own authority. So your own direct connection. So that’s step one is the direct connection. Step two is self forgiveness. Because of the way the world exists today, and it is systemic, societal, generational, it is a world of codependency. And through that codependency, we carry a lot of blame, shame, guilt, fears, insecurities, self doubts, all these things and anger and resentments towards ourselves. So what I created, part of it was insightful from the fourth step when I got sober back in 2006. Then the other part of it was Brene, Brown, and then Dr. David Hawkins, and all these combinations of things. So I created self forgiveness letters, you acknowledge what was done to you, you write a letter to a person acknowledge what was done to you. And then on the bottom half of the letter you identically flip it and say this was my role in it, and I uncovered I forgive myself for the role in it. I forgive myself for this, I wrote about my kids, I’ve written about exes, I’ve written about my ex wife, about my parents, no limits, right? Because we carry so much baggage. And it’s all we carry versus yourself. And if the only thing we can reflect outward is what we carry versus ourselves. How are you going to be a compassionate human being if you hate yourself? If you have all this against yourself, so I create new self forgiveness letters And in the book, there’s blank templates. So that’s one thing that I made sure the book had. It’s a very short reading book. But it actually has the work in there and exercises to actually do the work if it helps for you. If it helps you write, I also put a short condensed life story in there, so that somebody can see if it relates to them what I’ve grown through. So once you get through self forgiveness, now you’re now your soul is more connected, your heart is a lot lighter, you’re starting to feel better, because you’re forgiving yourself, then we go deal with that monkey mind, because the mind is our worst enemy at first, right? When you first move into self awareness is this judgmental, miserable place where you just point everything out about yourself, and you can’t stand and you beat yourself up lower. So what I created was a way to identify the trauma Drama Triangle, the rescuer, the victim and the persecutor. And then I created a new role called the integrator, which is identifying the triangle from a more shield space without participating in it. And so what I created was a journaling exercise to really identify those roles. So you can step outside of the triangle at all times, and a new role for you to be in for me healed space, you don’t ever have to participate in the triangle ever again. And then the other part of journaling is understanding what is your perspective of truth, subjective and objective truth. Because we all believe ourselves, we all have our own version of the truth. It doesn’t mean that somebody else’s is wrong. We are so high and mighty on ourselves, that we like to believe that somebody else has to be wrong for us to be right. We’re all great. Because we all have our own perspective. We see it from our own lenses. 20 people could be standing on a street corner witnessing the same exact thing across the street, they will have 20 different accounts, because they all see it from their perspective.

Joe Quattrone 46:50
Love that love the trauma Drama Triangle, I think we’re gonna have to borrow that and use it in our everyday conversations with people. So, audience members, you’re tuned in to the fuzziest podcast that kind of sober show, check us out. fuzziest podcast.com. We’re talking to Michael path Toronto. Michael, is the author of the path to growing forward experience. Michael, where can people find and download this book?

Michael Padurano 47:20
Amazon has the paperback which has the blank templates in it built in. It’s a six by nine book. So there’s room to write in it. But then the ebook is on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and apple.

Joe Quattrone 47:30
Nice, gotcha. Nice. And is there a place on social media that you’d like people to connect with you if they want to learn more about you and what you’re doing as a coach and stuff like that? Instagram

Michael Padurano 47:40
or LinkedIn? Because I’m about ready to launch my corporate program. So I’m okay. And what’s that? I? Yes.

Joe Quattrone 47:46
What’s yours? What’s your social handle that you want to point people towards? Michael

Michael Padurano 47:50
better? No, it’s simple. Like, I’m the only Michael Patterson on the planet. So you’ll find me. My grandfather, when he came through Ellis Island, he was the only sibling that they put in our last name. So I’m the only Michael on that branch of the tree. Wow. Okay,

Joe Quattrone 48:04
sweet. Well, let’s move on to the final segment of the show that we call products and practices. What we do with this segment, is we like to talk about something in our life, whether it be a brand or a service, or something like that, that helps us take our mind, ease our mind, you know, point us in a different direction than having to think about using things like alcohol to cope with our trauma and stuff like that. So is there something I mean, obviously, you’ve got your own books that you’re developing and stuff like that. But are there other things in your life over the past 17 years that have really helped you cope and not have to go back to the bottle or cocaine or something like that?

Michael Padurano 48:45
Meditation, energy work, journaling, those have been the three enormous foundations, some type of physical movement on a daily basis. My goal is to wake up an hour before I wake up my youngest kid to get ready, which is a three and a half hour process. And every morning, I tried to get up an hour earlier, so that I can have my time in the morning to meditate, to exercise and to do energy work, and really stay into my ritualistic practices, and really honor myself for who I am. My cell phone number is all over public, public consumption straight out there on social media, I don’t hide it anywhere. Anybody wants to contact me, it goes directly to my phone. I’m here to support anyone in the world that wants it no matter what, how they want it. I’m here. I love that. I do live. I do live audio rooms on LinkedIn, also twice a week, three hours each time for a safe space for people to communicate. So it’s a space where everybody communicates the worst experience of what they’ve gone through. And they’ve never expressed it in public before and it’s on LinkedIn, but most people don’t know it exists. So it’s a beautiful experience for everyone involved. That’s

Kary Youman 49:52
Awesome. Well, you’re doing some incredible work. I really appreciate you spending some time with us today. Thank

Michael Padurano 49:57
you. I’m here to elevate humanity. So I’ve got a lot of work to do. I have about a billion left. So if I hit you three then I’ve got about a billion left. And that’s my goal every day.

Joe Quattrone 50:06
Well, we can work together and chip away. chip away, down here.