I was terrified to give my first public talk. My meditation teacher had invited me to speak to 30-40 people, and I made every excuse I could think of. I'm not ready. I'm not qualified. What if I mess up? What if they judge me? But I finally said yes. And halfway through, stumbling over my words with my heart hammering, the door opened. A tall man walked in with wild hair and the biggest, most genuine smile I'd ever seen. He dropped down onto the floor three feet from me and just smiled. Like he was watching something holy. His name was Nick Good. And he asked if he could stay in my garden. Nick stayed for years. We meditated together every morning, sometimes for hours starting at 2:30am. And Nick wasn't like me. He wasn't careful. Wasn't planning. Wasn't waiting to be ready. Nick just did things. If he wanted to travel, he went. No plan. No safety net. If he wanted to try something new, he tried it. No three-month preparation period. He was free in a way I wasn't. One day Nick announced he was going to Hawaii with no money, no connections, no plan. Six months later, he was living in a two million dollar home on the North Shore of Kauai, doing exactly what he said he would. Years passed. We built programs together. Life pulled us in different directions. Then one morning I opened Facebook. A message: Did you hear that Nick died? Nick had literally messaged me that morning. The day he died. Reaching out for connection. And I'd been too busy. Too caught up in my head. Nick died suddenly. Unexpectedly. Just four days before his 64th birthday. I sat there in front of my laptop, the screen blurring. I couldn't breathe. It broke something open in me. I realized: We're all going to die. It can happen at any moment. We don't know how long we have. Despite all my success, I was still imprisoned. Still waiting. Still perfecting. Still playing it safe. Sitting there, tears running down my face for my wild, free, fearless friend, I made a decision: I would rather do things imperfectly and live fully than die with my gifts locked inside. We don't have forever. Every day you wait to be perfect is a day you'll never get back. Every day you don't share your gift is a day someone who needs it suffers without it. In this session, you'll identify three things you're meant to do—three gifts you're meant to share—if you had just five years left and no fear. Listen to this episode and let me know what hit you. Email me at success@awakenedacademy.com with your thoughts, breakthroughs, or questions. If you're an Awakened Academy student, join the discussion in our private Facebook group. Not a student yet? You're welcome to apply anytime at awakenedacademy.com.

You have something inside you that needs to be shared. A gift. A message. A way of helping people that only you can offer. You've known it for years. Maybe decades. You see it clearly sometimes—the vision of what you could create. The business. The program. The book. But here's what's actually happening. You're not doing it. You start something and then you stop. You get part of the way there and then abandon it. You think about it constantly but never finish. Or you don't start at all because it doesn't feel ready yet. Maybe you look at what you've created and think: It's not good enough. I'm not polished enough. I need to work on myself more first. I need more qualifications. More training. More clarity. More something. Who am I to do this anyway? Then you scroll through social media and see other people—coaches with perfect websites, authors with massive followings, teachers with TED Talks. And you think: They have it all figured out. They're so polished. So professional. So ready. And I'm not. So you tell yourself you'll start when you're more ready. When you have your own stuff figured out. When the timing is better. Maybe next month. Maybe next year. Maybe when things calm down. But next month comes and you're still not ready. Next year comes and you still haven't started. And meanwhile, there's this feeling growing inside you—a sadness, a frustration, a sense that time is passing and you're not doing what you came here to do. You have projects or notes from courses sitting on your computer that you've worked on for months, maybe years, but never finished. Emails you've written but never sent. Programs you've designed but never launched. Books you've started but never published. Because something's always not quite right. You need to tweak this. Adjust that. Make it better. Make it perfect. And deep down, you know what's really going on. You're scared. Scared of being judged. Scared of failing. Scared of being exposed as not good enough. So you protect yourself by not finishing. By not starting. By staying in preparation mode forever. You're trapped. Trapped in a prison in your own mind. A prison where the walls are built from perfectionism and fear and "not good enough" and "not ready yet." In this session, we face what staying stuck really costs—financially, emotionally, in our relationships, in our health. Not to punish ourselves, but to see clearly. Because you can't leave a prison you don't know you're in. Then we make a choice. A gentle, powerful choice to begin the journey toward freedom. Listen to this episode and let me know what hit you. Email us at success@awakenedacademy.com with your thoughts, breakthroughs, or questions. If you're an Awakened Academy student, join the discussion in our private Facebook group. Not a student yet? You're welcome to apply anytime at: https://awakenedacademy.com    

I created this journey because I was drowning in my own perfectionism. Fifteen unfinished books. Hundreds of unsent emails. Courses that could help people but weren't perfect yet. Despite a seven-figure business and 30 years on this path, I was still trapped. And I watched my students doing the exact same thing. Beautiful souls with gifts the world needs—stuck in the same place. Maybe you see yourself here too. You have real gifts inside you but you're not sharing them fully yet. Not because you're broken, but because you're carrying wounds and fears that got layered onto you from outside. In this session, we identify the "buts" that stop us—I'm not ready yet, I don't have time, it's not good enough, the market is saturated—and begin to see them for what they really are: programming that doesn't belong to us. This is where healing begins. Not with forcing. With gentleness. Listen to this episode and let me know what hit you. Email me at success@awakenedacademy.com with your thoughts, breakthroughs, or questions. If you're an Awakened Academy student, join the discussion in our private Facebook group. Not a student yet? You're welcome to apply anytime at awakenedacademy.com.

This is the healing work that comes before the action work. Before we dive into breaking free from perfectionism, you need to understand what this journey is and what it isn't. This isn't another how-to course teaching you tactics and strategies. This is about clearing the internal blocks that have been stopping you from using everything you already know. Simply listening and allowing yourself to shift is the work. No action required. Welcome to the back roads that lead to the highway.

Welcome to the messy beginning. In this first unscripted raw episode, Michael shares why this podcast exists - because life is messy, we're all doing our best, and it's time to stop pretending we have it all figured out. He gets radically honest about his own journey: 28 years of spiritual practice, a seven-figure business, thousands of students served - and still feeling trapped by perfectionism. He talks about joining a 12-step program for internet addiction, doing uncomfortable shadow work, and all the unfinished projects sitting on his hard drive. This episode is permission to be imperfectly you. To share your gifts even when you're still working through your own stuff. To stop waiting until you're "ready" and just begin. If you've been holding back your song because you're not enlightened enough, healed enough, or perfect enough - this one's for you. Put your hand on your heart and breathe. It's all going to be okay.