I have found over the course of my life that there is a truth to the reality that it takes as much effort and energy to destroy your life as it does to build your life.

Welcome to the One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy or fear.

We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living.

This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.

I'm Dana Schwartz, host of Stealing Superman, a new iHeart original podcast about the most unlikely art heist of all time. It was Nick Cage's own personal, national treasure.

At a 1999 New Year's Eve party, someone snatched Cage's priceless comments. But who? Listen to Stealing Superman on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows.

Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Michael Unbroken. He's the host of the Think Unbroken podcast. And he's also an entrepreneur, best-selling author, speaker, coach, and advocate for survivors of child abuse.

Today, Michael and Eric discuss his book Think Unbroken, Understanding and Overcoming Childhood Trauma.

Hi, Michael. Welcome to the show. Eric, it is my pleasure. My friend. I'm very excited to be here with you, man. Yeah, I'm excited to talk with you. We're going to talk about your book Think Unbroken, Understanding and Overcoming Childhood Trauma. But before we get to that, we'll start like we always do with the parable.

In the parable, there's a grandparent talking with a grandchild. And they say in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love.

And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second.

Looks up at the grandparent says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you, what does that parable mean to you in your life and in the work that you do?

Yeah, I mean, it's so spot on. I believe that inherently we all have the ability to create the life that we want to have. And I have found over the course of my life that there is a truth to the reality that it takes as much effort and energy to destroy your life as it does to build your life.

And in that, I mean, it's so much about which wolf are you feeding? And for many of us, we don't know which one to feed because we don't have clarity or worse. Like in my case, you're set up for failure. And so you find yourself in this position of just being like, is this who I am? Is this what I'm supposed to be doing? And you kind of get lost in that.

I know when you can get to this place in your life where you make declarations about who you are, you'll find that you are choosing which wolf that you feed.

I love that. And I want to go into some of what you just hit on there, which is the not knowing and how childhood neglect and trauma often you say it screws up our GPS. So I definitely want to hit that.

But before we do, let's give listeners a little background. The book starts, I don't know if this is the first line or if it's in the early part, but it says it was November of 2013 that I decided to change everything that was happening in my life.

I was 150 pounds overweight, cheating on my girlfriend, sick with a bacterial infection from drinking too much, smoking almost two packs of cigarettes a day and getting high from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep.

So what was it about that day that caused you to decide to make a change?

Well, I was just tired of my own shit, man. You know, I think that the truth about this experience is at some point you have to recognize that your life is bad because of your choices.

And that's where I was. I had been set up for failure. I mean, I come from an incredibly traumatic background and I'd let everyone else always dictate who I am.

You know, you're not good enough. You're not strong enough. You're not capable enough. And I started to believe it. And then I started to act like it. And then that became my reality. And you had to be sitting 350 pounds, smoking two packs a day.

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