From Soul-Crushing Sales to Soulful Service – The Awakening Journey of Michael Rosenberg

Brad Minus: Welcome back to another episode of Life-Changing Challengers. And with me today. Michael Rosenberg, who is a transformational speaker and coach. His URL is, wake up with mike.com and it's pretty special. The guy's been around the world, he's gonna tell us all about it.

And, and the amount of people that he's changed lives has been absolutely incredible. You can see in the background, my cat Maui's gonna hang out with us today. You've probably seen him in some other episodes, but today there he is and he is fully awake this time. 'cause most of the time you're sleeping.

 But we're gonna go on with that. So, Michael, how you doing today? 

Michael Rosenberg: Excellent. Excellent. And I've, I've been excited for this interview. I'm feeling good. I'm in a good flow. Thanks, Brad. 

Brad Minus: Oh, the pleasure is all mine. So, Michael, can you, why don't you tell us a little bit about your childhood. You know, like what was the compliment of your family?

Where did you grow up and, you know, what was it like to be Michael as a kid? 

Michael Rosenberg: Yeah, sure. Well, I grew up in Hamden, Connecticut. Believe it or not, I'm in my parents' house right now. Not the one I grew up in, but pretty close by. I had a good childhood. I was raised in a really good neighborhood, good values, good morals, raised as a young Jewish guy.

Everything was pretty typical, pretty standard. You know, you have your bit of family trauma, your parental stuff here and there. But, I always had a good childhood. My parents loved me. I was well looked after. Had one sibling grew up doing all the things, the sports, the school.

One thing I'll say that I feel like is at the core of my story is I was always the guy who never knew what he wanted to do when he grew up. Even when he was grown. Right. So like, it was always my big question and yeah, I could lead into like school and stuff like that because that theme continued 

Brad Minus: really.

Michael Rosenberg: Yeah. 

Brad Minus: So let's step back. Basically, you said that, you know, you basically grew up in a nuclear household. Mom and dad were around, not, not, you know, which is rare now, unfortunately. You had one, you had a sibling, a brother, 

Michael Rosenberg: sister, one older sister. 

Brad Minus: You close. 

Michael Rosenberg: Yeah. We did not used to be.

She used to. Hate me actually as a young kid, because I think there was a little bit of the favorite child thing kind of coming my way. She experienced a little bit more trauma than me. Later on our healing journey, I took this spiritual path and personal development path and started learning so much about myself where she started to go through things as an adult and a divorce and things of that nature, and then began to have her own spiritual awakening.

I was coaching her through that process based off of what I had learned through my own journey, and it brought us really close and we're best friends now. 

Brad Minus: Oh, that's fantastic. I love that story. And you said sports, so what kind of sports did you play and did you, were you in organized, sports in high school?

Was it before? What was your favorite sport? 

Michael Rosenberg: I was always an active guy. I love sports. I played everything man. I played basketball, I played baseball, a lot of soccer as a young kid growing up. And then when I got high school, football was my dream.

I was always a big NFL Miami Dolphins fan. And as a kid my favorite sport was football. This was just playing in the park with my friends and I was really good. I was super fast. I used to compare myself to Barry Sanders. I was probably the best kid on the field, very under size. You know, I'm like five foot six.

And when I got to high school, it was my dream to make the starting lineup and catch a touchdown under Friday Night Lights. And I had to convince my parents to let me play 'cause they thought I was gonna get hurt. 

Brad Minus: Mm-hmm. 

Michael Rosenberg: You know, a guy with a lot of heart undersized kind of everything, St.

Odds stacked against him. And it took me three years to get to that starting lineup. And by senior year I was named starting Wide receiver. And I said, wow, my dream is right here. I've finally achieved it. I've got this big stage, I'm gonna get the shine, catch a touchdown here. And essentially what happened is the pressure got to me in the moment and I dropped the passes that came my way.

They would hit me in the chest, hit my hands, bounce off under the big lights. I would come back with my hands on my helmet, wanting to crawl into a, a dark hole and not be seen by anyone. And I have to say, this was the biggest trauma of my life. 

It wasn't like anything like that. For me. It was as this young kid letting myself down knowing that I had the dream in my hands and not being able to show up for myself, letting the pressure get to me. I was ultimately benched replaced. And that's the way that the season ended. But it broke me in half.

I mean, it shattered my heart because it was the only thing I ever wanted to do that I was ever passionate about. I mean, I locked myself in my room, like for weeks. I was crying. My parents were worried about me. And that's the way my high school career ended. And it's a very important story in my life because it was then that passion was shut down within me.

I lost it. I lost all sense of purpose. My heart closed and then I went on in my life for the next couple decades through school, through college, and just started working jobs that were very high pressure. That I really hated. It was kind of like the lights went off and I just didn't know what passion or purpose was, but there was always this yearning in me to find a purpose, this yearning to find something I could be passionate about and plug back in into the world.

And this journey came full circle, which we can get into because it's through this, you could call it a spiritual journey that I began in 2015 is where I began to find passion again in learning about myself and going within. 

Brad Minus: That's an incredible story. My story is somewhat similar as far as high school goes, I never really shared anything on the podcast about that.

But I was kind of similar except that I literally had. No athletic jeans whatsoever, but I wanted to be an athlete. I wanted everything to be an athlete. I did 12 seasons of soccer, before I got to high school. So when I got to high school, I'm like, all right, I know I'm not the greatest one, but I'm gonna learn while I'm a freshman and I'm gonna get there when I get towards the end.

And, yeah, that I only played freshman year. It was like, I couldn't even see myself getting that good. And when I looked back at my other seasons, I realized that my dad was the coach. And no matter how many times he kept telling me, Nope.

He goes, I'm not playing favorites with you. Matter of fact, I'm gonna be harder on you. When I looked back at it, I go, wow, I probably had a lot more playing time than I should have had I finally had the discussion with him later on in life and he goes, yeah. He says, I know I said that, but.

Nah, you probably got a lot more playing time than you probably should have I mean, you were my son, so of course I'm gonna give you every opportunity. So, because I played so much, I thought I was better than I actually was. Oh. So then when I got to high school, and I'm on a different team, and these guys are like, a lot of the team that I had was Laotian and those guys, like live, eat, breathe soccer since they're three, you know?

And I just, you know, I couldn't hang with them whatsoever. And I realized it, it wasn't until later in life that I finally, you know, I started running and, ran my first marathon and I told 'em I would, I told myself I'd never do that again. And then 10 years later I did it again. And then I've done 37 since.

So, yeah. So I get what you're saying, like you're going and you're trying and you're trying and you're trying to get it done, and it just falls to the wayside. But, it wasn't. I would say for me it wasn't traumatic. Whereas, but I can see where I can see where you're coming from and you're, right.

There's people out there that, have gone through that stuff, which is what this is all about, right? This podcast is all about people, overcoming the trauma and adversity and stuff. And some of it's huge in some of it's maybe not so huge, but there's still common denominators of how people have transformed their lives and become out the other side better and, making themselves and the world better.

So when you say menial jobs, so you walked outta high school, did you go to college? 

Michael Rosenberg: I did, I ended up going to University of Delaware. I always had a hard time in school. I never felt like it was my thing. I felt like I was just doing it 'cause I was supposed to do it. And I had a lot of pressure to get the good grades, but I was probably a, a c average student and I never knew what I wanted to major in.

You, I did the whole process, got into college, but through college and high school, there was especially college, it was like a lot of, one nighters, cramming, burning out, like panic attacks, still getting the bad grades. I was like, what am I gonna do after college? I tried to get a go into communications 'cause I thought I wanted to do like sports talk radio or something like that. By sophomore year, I found out I didn't make the program, so I just chose English as a major. 'cause I thought it was the easiest, simplest thing that I could do and still get out in four years.

So I did. But when I look back on college, I don't really remember anything that I learned. I didn't do anything with my major. I actually went out to LA after college, jumped into the entertainment industry and became an assistant to talent agents. 'cause I secretly wanted to be an actor. So it was just like, but I got a great social experience in college.

That's really what it was about for me. 

Brad Minus: Well, I definitely wanna get into that story because, so I majored in communications and fine arts sa same thing. I actually was in the acting department, got kicked out of the acting department because they said I wasn't learning anything. Like you had a great audition to get into the program.

But you're not learning anything. So you can become general theater if you want, or just get a fine arts degree and just kind of have a little bit of everything and then, so I ended up with this gen ed, you know, communications and, and fine arts. So I'm right there with you, you know, I did, I was lucky.

I, in DC and a little bit down here in Florida, I had done some professional acting, but nothing, you know, kind of like, I would call it semi-pro 'cause there's no way to live on it. Yeah, yeah. So, but I was getting paid. So yeah, I get it. But I do wanna know about that whole, like, you know, you're the assistant to the talent agent thing, trying to get yourself into the talent agent.

How, so, how did that, how did you get in, jump into that? You said you moved to la Okay, great. What happened then? 

Michael Rosenberg: And God, you got to do the thing that I always wanted to do. So even hearing you say it was like, eh, you know, is that right? Or whatever. It kind of makes me feel a little bit better, but like I a little envious of you that you got to at least get in there and make it work.

I had a fraternity brother who was gonna go out and work in Beverly Hills because he had an uncle who was a talent agent. So he represented big time actors at big agencies. And he said, Hey, this is like a really cool industry. Maybe you should look into this.

And he gave me this book called The Mail Room, and it was all about starting in the mail room in talent agencies. In LA in Beverly Hills. And then it turns out that my uncle knew somebody out there, an agent at another agency and he made a call for me and he got me in. And I remember going out, I was like 22 years old and you know, first real job.

And I'm like, wow, this is Beverly Hills. I'm working here. I was so happy. It was, it was like fun for a while. Really cool stuff in the mail room, you know? And I got to drive around movie stars and take the agent's car and you know, be in front of cool people. I thought I was living a movie. But, essentially it was an absolute cutthroat business.

Very stressful. I mean, these agents are very stressed out. They work long hours. And as an assistant, I was like a phone monkey. I mean, I was there at least 12 hours a day with my headset on, with my agent in the other room. And it's like, I got him in one ear and I'm making dials to all his people. In the other, I'm doing all the clerical work.

I'm reading scripts. I'm sending out all the mail and all the stuff is very, very fast paced. And I worked for three different people and I really didn't enjoy anyone. I was just constantly stressed out. So again, I was like, where's my future? Do I even want to be an agent? You know, secretly I wanted to be an actor.

That's why I was there. But I never pursued it. I just thought if I got close to the actors, I could do it. And I made it to this one guy's desk. They call it a desk when you're working for him. And I got this opportunity to make $50,000 a year. At the time I was making 24,000 out of college. And I was like, wow, 50 grand.

And they were gonna send me out, with this guy Benny Medina. And at the time, this guy Repped Usher, Mariah Carey, Jennifer Lopez, like big stars. And I came in as his second assistant. He had like a main one, a second one, a driver, a mobile one. And this is the first time I'm saying this guy's name on a podcast.

It was the worst experience I've ever had. I mean, I got beat down, talk about someone who really did not respect his people. And I got to really see behind the scenes, I was just not treated well. I was in that office from morning to sometimes 10 at night, and there's this movie called Devil Wears Prada, and I always get Anne Hathaway.

Exactly. I was hurt, but I was just getting like, crapped on and beat up by this guy. Like, made to do things that didn't matter. I'd, I'd work all day on something. They'd be like, I don't need it, you know? I drive out to his house in my, my beat up car and I couldn't go in the driveway 'cause my car wasn't nice enough.

I had to set up his gym appointment in New York, like for the next day, like all sorts of crazy stuff. And I started to lose my health and one day I walked out. And I had a panic attack at lunch and I called my mom on the phone.

I couldn't breathe. I'd lost like 15 pounds. I was depressed. And I was like, ma, I can't, I can't work for this guy anymore. I have to go. And she's like, go. And I quit on the spot and I worked for one month for him. And when I got out of there, I found out he had 22 assistants in the past year in my position.

So talk about turnover. I don't even wanna be these people in the future if this is what they're dealing with. Like, I don't wanna be this stressed out tyrant, you know? So I said, enough is enough. And I had another buddy that got me into sales, you know, and I ended up selling shower heads at home shows across the country for like two, this was like 2008, for like a year, you know, until I migrated to Florida.

But I got outta the entertainment business. 

Brad Minus: That's an incredible story. Benny Medina is well known. And he's also well known for that. 

Michael Rosenberg: You're the first person that's told me that they know of him and that they know what he's known for. 

Brad Minus: Absolutely. You know, and as soon as you said J-Lo, I was like, oh, right. I remember this story. Yeah. You're not the only one. You're one of the statistics. 

Michael Rosenberg: And real quick, my friend told me he saw this J-Lo documentary. He said, I saw a Betty, and he comes off as this great guy in the documentary, and I said, it's probably one of those entertainment Hollywood kind of things where you see a persona, but behind the scenes how they are as a person to their people.

It was not like that. I mean, day one, my interview, I waited for two hours in his lobby, and he just walked out and said, come here, took me in the elevator from the second floor to the first floor. That was my interview. He said, why should you work for me? And then he just sent me on my way and he just said, come in tomorrow.

Brad Minus: Wow. Talk about an elevator speech. Yeah. That's the absolute, that's the absolute epitome right there, you know? Right. The 22nd out. That's fantastic. Yeah, that's, but yeah, just, just like Meryl Streep, like it was, you probably got the literal sense of it, where in the movie she was more like, she didn't say things, she just evoked it, you know, it was the, the lip pering and the whole bit, and you just like, but everybody wanted to be her.

Everybody wanted to be her assistant. Everybody wanted to be her. They wanted that, that her context and everything. Right. That's, and that's probably, you know, all those 20 people, and you are probably the one that was probably the most sincere because yes, you wanted to be an actor, but most people just wanted to get into the industries in some way.

So they all wanted to use him for that. And he probably just said, all these people just want to use me anyway, so I'm just gonna use him back. And kept, became jaded. Yeah. You know, I imagine that's what it was. So you went back home to Connecticut. 

Michael Rosenberg: Well, what happened is a friend of mine that I met out there, he owned like a showerhead company.

They sold luxury showerheads in person at these massive home shows around the country. And he is like, Hey, you can make money in sales. My family needs some help with the business. So I got on with him and we drove a trailer, a tractor, a trailer like pulling luxury shower heads up and down the east coast of the States.

Yeah, like for eight months until the economy, you know, went down in 20 2008 and people stopped coming to home shows. And I had a lot of fun doing that 'cause I got to just like demo shower heads and pull people in and then I was like, all right, what do I do with myself now? And my buddy in LA who I work with at the agency, he said, listen, I'm, I'm from Miami and I'm going back there.

He said, you're a big Miami Dolphins fan anyway. You love the warm weather. Why don't you come to Miami, stay with me while you look for a job. So I did it. I went there and again, what am I gonna do? I don't know what I want to do when I grow up. I was like, sales, you can make a lot of money. I don't need a degree.

I started applying for sales jobs and then that's when I got into this 11 year sales career that absolutely sucked my soul. It was this constant like trying to figure out what to do with my life and feeling like nothing was ever working in my favor. Like life was working against me and I never felt good enough at my job.

I always had a hard time selling. I was not making money. And I got into these jobs again, super high turnover, young kids, I would be. Basically cold calling business doors all day, selling phone lines and internet. I'd have to hit 75 doors, come back with all the info written on my card, lots of rejection.

And you know, I worked different jobs over that time and by the end of the 11 years I was really with a great company, that I really did like, called Cintas. But yeah, so much happened in that time period and it was during that career is when I started tapping into spiritual stuff on the side.

And I started building this side life for myself. That eventually became my passion. Essentially what happened is, so I never thought I could figure sales out and I was always like, last on my sales team not making money, bosses just yelling at me like it's a high pressure performance environment.

You know, we used to have a little joke that if you didn't sell something by Friday, you'd be on suicide watch because you'd feel like terrible. They'd make you feel terrible if you didn't sell. If you did, it was great for a moment. Then I'd go and spend all my money at the bars trying to forget about it, getting drunk on the weekend.

You come back Monday, you started zero. And it was just, it was again, deteriorating my health with all this pressure. The more I began with the spiritual practices and this whole journey, it's like everything began to soften within me. And I started working less and more. Started coming my way. Sales just started falling in my lap.

And I was just being me and it was like the universe was like, okay, as you are doing the right thing and investigating yourself internally and finding out what you are passionate about, you know, the way I make it up is like, we're gonna reward you and start like giving you that abundance in life.

And by the time I left my job, I was number one on my sales team in my region I had a whole kind of thing that happened that sent me traveling. I was like, no, I gotta follow it through. So, that's when I sold everything. I cashed out my 401k retirement fund, everything.

I went all in to travel the world. 'cause I always wanted to travel. That was what I was most interested in. 

Brad Minus: Well, and we're definitely, we're gonna jump into that just in, just like two seconds. Yeah. But I do wanna know what were you selling Sure. The last, 

Michael Rosenberg: when 

Brad Minus: you left. 

Michael Rosenberg: The last thing I was selling was an industrial floor cleaning service.

So we had this quarter million dollar mobile cleaning plant on wheels that would come out with massive hoses and steam clean grout lines and carpet to clean it, to do like a quarterly deep clean in big buildings, hotels, hospitals, businesses, business parks. It was a rather simple sale.

I was horrible at it at first, and then I got pretty good and I was finally making money for the first time. But it was just still not really doing anything for me. But for the first time I was starting to be happy in life. And, I'm a big metaphor guy. In the spiritual sense, I take everything as a sign, like no coincidence. It's very on purpose. Like our life is always speaking to us with what we need through symbols, during this period, I was cleaning myself internally. I was doing the shadow work, I was facing the hard parts of myself.

I was doing transformational work and plant medicine and coaching and energy work and reiki and really getting into myself. And my title at that time was the Deep Clean Specialist, and I was like, oh, of course I'm deep cleaning myself right now, preparing myself for something. That's how I look at it.

Brad Minus: That's interesting. I'll give you a little anecdote myself. So I actually left college. When they, when they kicked me outta the acting de the acting part, the acting program, they kicked me out, said I wasn't learning anything. I'm like, I'm gonna show them. I'm gonna go to New York myself.

I'm gonna make a big actor and stuff. So I went home to figure things out and I got a job at a brokerage firm, which is basically telesales. It's boiler room put to the phone. And when you can get somebody to actually buy a stock, then you start making money.

And at first, it wasn't bad. It was kinda like beginner's luck. You know? I would start cold calling and people would be receptive at that point. And so I started making money I was scared to go to work because, at nine o'clock, the market's open and at noon, one o'clock, we'd all go in front of the board and our branch manager would call out our names and he says, how are you guys doing today?

And he goes, all right. And he goes through and he is like, all right, I got a buck on there, which means it was a thousand dollars. I got this. And then all of a sudden it was like, minus was like goose egg, you know? All right, you gotta get going minus blah, blah, blah.

I'm not, I don't need you in this fricking office if you're just not gonna, just gonna sit there and waste my phone bill and blah, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, it was like always a, a trying to get people, you know, trying to make something happen. And at one point I actually gave up my book.

And I gave it to somebody else and I said, I'll just be your assistant and I'll keep things going and you can just do it this way. And he was getting to a goal and he says, if you get, if you hit me to the goal, I'll give you half of it. And I'm like, all right, let's charge on. And then I realized that it wasn't for me, and I was like, I gotta figure out a way out of it.

So I just, my, my thing was, all right, go back to school and finish and we'll figure it out from there. 

Michael Rosenberg: Can I ask you, did it work on your self worth at all? I mean, did it have anything to do with how it shaped your identity and like how you believed in yourself and in the world?

Brad Minus: Yeah. Tore it down. Yeah. I didn't, kind of pathetic if you wanna know the truth. Yeah. You know, it just pushed me down. And so I had to go back to living with my parents and the way to get away from my parents was to go back to school, and that's what it was, is I actually had to, you know, I, I went to New York, and that didn't, you know, that didn't really work out as well, so I had to come back home. My parents were like, all right, well if you come back home, we'll help you go back to school and finish and at least get the piece of paper is what they kind of put it as.

And then things just when things went on from there. But yeah, no, no, no. I was, I was completely, I was flattened, completely flattened. I, I had nothing. I just had nothing left in me 

Michael Rosenberg: at that point. Same, we definitely have some overlaps here. I can empathize fully. 

Brad Minus: Yeah. My, so my journey came, in with the, with the military.

I. Okay, so when I got into the military, I kind of went through what your transformational, probably did for you, which, which was, you know, probably a lot, a lot grander than mine, but, I learned a lot and my self-worth went through the roof, for a couple different reasons. 

But anyway, I wanna know about that. So, all right, so here you are, you are. Selling this, you know, high ticket item 'cause it's mm-hmm. It's, it's about like quarterly cleaning, giant freaking office buildings and stuff. And then you finally were like, no, this is soul sucking. I got it outta here. 

Tell me about that, the opportunity that got you to start traveling. 

Michael Rosenberg: Yeah. Great question. Well, initially I went on this trip in 2016 to India by myself, and this is what planted the seed. I was in a sales appointment one day, having the worst day. I was on my third year anniversary working at this company.

I didn't even want to get outta my car. And I had arranged a trip with a, one of my best friends to go to Thailand's like the week before we were talking about it. He said, we'll confirm everything next week. I have not heard from this guy to this day. I know he is well and alive. 

And I never picked up my phone calls or texts after that. I was in this appointment in this Indian restaurant with this owner. I thought it was a horrible lead. Like I was like, I'm not gonna sell anything here. She was making me wait for the appointment. There was all these construction people in the restaurant.

I was in the worst mood. She called me over. I started to sell. At that time I was selling hygiene products for the same company like soaps and chemicals. And we got into the appointment and something just changed. She started telling me about how the, theme for the restaurant was inspired by her travels in India.

And I started to get really interested and she started telling me this pilgrimage that she went up this sacred mountain in India. And she goes, yeah, you only go there if you're called. And I was like, how do you know if you're called?

And she goes, sweetheart, you already have been. And it was like, poof, like chills all over. My body sales was not even on my mind. And I had always, I was always like a spiritual seeker. I said, I've always wanted to take a solo spiritual trip.

And like my friend bailed, so a month later I went to India with just a backpack, no hotel reservation. I went for 10 days 'cause that's all I could get off from work. And it was the wildest, craziest ride, I mean playing survival, like this thing kicked my butt. When I got back I was like.

The bug is in me. I wanna travel more. I know what I'm capable of. In 2019 I was invited to go on a, trip with swimming with wild dolphins in Bimini, Bahamas. I love the Miami Dolphins, another symbol. I feel like the dolphin is my animal. I got my mind blown on this trip.

Seven days they take you out into the middle of the ocean, you find the dolphins, you jump in and you swim. And I just had like dozens of dolphins circling around me. You know, they came this close, you're like eye to eye and they're very high conscious creatures. And I feel like energetically they changed something in me.

I was just so blown open and, and so elated. I want more of this in my life, more of this feeling. And I came back to shore and I, I just busted down into tears. I was sitting there with one of my best friends at the time. I'm looking out at the horizon, and I had this, you know, I like to call it a moment of divine intervention.

I just, something changed and I said, I have to make a move. And I looked at my friend and I said, Lisa, I just decided right there. I said, I'm not going back to corporate. I'm gonna travel the world. I don't know how I'm gonna do it, but I'm gonna do it. And I came home and I said, let me give this two weeks to see if the feeling gets stronger or if it goes away.

And it just got stronger and stronger and stronger. So I took a year to just prepare. I started watching travel vloggers. I got a little GoPro. I was watching YouTube videos. I got rid of my apartment. I got rid of my awesome expensive car. I moved in with two people to save money, and I just kept like, burning the boats as I got a little bit closer.

And then in 2020, I leaped, I didn't know where I was gonna go. I just knew that I was interested in spirituality, energetic places, and I said, I want to travel the world and go to, like, vortexes and discover myself and have myself be opened up. And, you know, first place I went with Sedona, Arizona. And then from there, yeah, it ended up being four years.

Brad Minus: Wow. Okay. That's amazing. Yeah. Sedona been there. I lived in Phoenix for a few years, so of course made my trips up to Sedona. Amazing place. Yes, and now that I think of it, there was a certain energy there, especially, you know, around, did you see Snoopy while you were out there?

Michael Rosenberg: I don't remember a Snoopy, 

Brad Minus: a mountain range and it looks like Snoopy on the, when he used to, you know, this whole thing when lying on his, on, on his doghouse at the top? Yeah. And there's a formation and they called it like Mount Snoopy or Snoopy V or something. And it, because it looks like him lying on his, on his doghouse.

But you got around there into those, Red rocks and yeah, there was definitely something, there was something there. So, 

Michael Rosenberg: yeah. And when that energy's strong, like it, it brings up. Your stuff, like, you know, whatever you need to look at within you. And I, I took a girlfriend out at the time, which was kind of a mistake 'cause it was a brand new relationship and I was looking for freedom and, and like to be on my own.

And I, I took this girl with me and I mean, in the first three weeks in Sedona, it, something was just so intense that all we were doing was fighting and arguing. And I was like, in full anxiety. And after three weeks I sent her home and she's still a good friend. Like, you know, I, I love her. But, and then I fell free after that.

I was like, okay, now I'm gonna take my full sabbatical. Let's go. 

Brad Minus: Yeah. That's great. I find it interesting that you had went to India and the first part of your travel, you stayed in the States, what made Sedona the first stop on your list?

Michael Rosenberg: Yeah, that's a great question too, because I knew that I, it was gonna be so new to me and I was terrified. I mean, for a year I was like, am I gonna do this? Okay. It was the complete unknown. I'm like, I'm gonna cash out my whole retirement. I wrote a letter to God, to the universe before I went, and I read it out loud on my first YouTube channel and I said, God, I'm all yours.

I said, this struck me. Blow me up. Lead me around the world. Bring me all the resources, people, geographic, locations, everything I need on my path to find out who I am and my wish, my intention, my prayer is to connect me to my purpose or my calling on the other side of this. So it was really a test of faith and I said, if I jump, I'm really a deep believer in the creator, whatever you wanna call it.

It wasn't a religious thing to me. I said, this is kind of like my test to really dive into that. And so I thought if I started in the States, I could start slow. And I've always wanted to go to Sedona. So I started in Sedona, but I had no plan after that. And literally what happened is this stuff started popping up.

You know, a friend saw what I was doing and she said, Hey, I'm, I'm out on Lake Powell in Arizona. For a month and we got a boat. Wanna come stay with me for free and we'll travel around the lake. I was like, yeah, absolutely. So I did that and then another synchronicity happened and I went and camped on Mount Shasta.

And I went there for like 10 days and then I went to, crater Lake in, is it Utah? Is it Oregon? I forgot. Beautiful, beautiful crater lake. I went to the Redwoods, and I went to just kind of that Midwest western, national parks, mountains, nature. And I didn't know it at the time, but what this did for me is I fell in love with nature, I mean in love with hiking and camping and being in this peaceful serenity.

And I remember this is when Covid started, so there was nobody out there and I mean, people were still wearing masks as they're hiking, but it allowed me to start to melt and unravel the tightness and the anxiety and the always having to be productive from the corporate world. I'd just be sitting in mountains by myself and I was like, wow, I'm, I'm a mountain guy.

But what happened is I was going through my money fast in the states, through rental cars, Airbnbs, and I was like, this, this is not gonna last. So I did it for about four months and the nature gave me this like foundation for almost who I am now and the rest of the travel. And then after that I said, I gotta get outta the country and get to some cheap places where I can spread my money further.

I started in Costa Rica 'cause I thought there'd be some expats there and more English than not. And it would be like a nice ease in, but then it just took off. Like I start Central America, south America, all around the world. 

Brad Minus: That's, yeah. I was in Costa Rica. I did a race in Costa Rica.

Oh wow. And that's, I fought, I fought the same thing. I was like, oh, well at least we'll eat for cheap. It'll be great. Blah, blah, blah. Nope. It's Taurus trap. And, yeah, I was, I was so excited. Matter of fact, I thought it, w the first clue that I had that it thought it might be cheap was that when we rent to go rent a car and they're like $35 a week.

And I was like, $35 a week. That's fantastic. And I think it was a Hyundai, a Venza. And I was like, oh, that's perfect, because we got our bikes and we got all this luggage and there was like eight of us that were going. I was so excited.

You get to the car place, right? And we got all our luggage and we're like, oh, we're here to rent the car. We've already got a reservation, blah, blah, blah. Here's my 35 bucks. And they're like, yeah, $35. Except, well, how do you wanna pay for the insurance? And I'm like, I have insurance. I'm like, oh, not down here.

I'm like, all right, well fine. They're like 575 bucks. 

Michael Rosenberg: Ooh, for how long? 

Brad Minus: For the week. Oh my God. And I'm like, wait a second. It's $35 for the week to rent a car, but 575 for the insurance that I have to pay for. So that's when I realized, okay, it's not gonna be as cheap as we thought.

Michael Rosenberg: This is like how they get you in the states, but worse. 

Brad Minus: My God. Oh, yeah. But, but I will say one thing, but the, when you're out there and you're driving and stuff, there's two things you gotta be really, really careful about, and you probably can attest to this dogs mm-hmm.

And people on bicycles. Yep. And everything. Like, I watched, I watched like, it looked like a, like a family that was gonna drop off their kids at school and like the parents were going to work and they were all on one bike. Like literally it was father and then the wife was right behind. They had one child in the front, in the back, and one child in the front, and they're all like, Dr.

They're all like, and that's like going to work, dropping off the kids at school and the whole bit. And they're all on, they're on bicycles now. I'm here to do a triathlon, right. Swim, bike, run. All I thought about that time was like, these people, that's their normal way of to get around is a bicycle and it's not flat.

No. I'm like, man, we take one of these young guys. That's all he's done his whole life is ride bikes up and down these hills and stuff. If we gave him our technology, he would've cremated us on the fricking on the bike line. We're here. We are all like these finely tuned athletes, or at least we thought, but I'm thinking that's all I thought about.

It's like, you know what, these guys that lived this lived breathe that they're, they're traveling 30, 40 miles a day on their bike and it's a regular. You know, bicycle where it's not a, you know, it's a regular steel big tire, you know, one chain, one gear bicycle. And they do this every day. And I saw somebody like carrying a refrigerator, like a backpack on their bicycle.

Yeah. I'm like, this is insane. But I was totally engrossed in it, you know, but so I see where you went that route. 

Michael Rosenberg: Evaluate like where, where we are and like the things that we complain about sometimes. And sometimes I saw in some of these countries, like women that are like 80 years old or something, carrying tons on their back.

Brad Minus: Yep. When I was in Korea, they looked 80, 90 years old and they're like, got these big giant backpacks on and I saw some of them that their back, because of that life, they literally would walk at a 90 degree angle because they hurt their back so much. I'd watched numerous, elderly ladies and they literally, their hands would be like behind their back and they would, that's how they would walk.

And they were cute and they, otherwise they were healthy. But that's just how they walked because they had done all this stuff that really hurt their back to a point where that's how they could be comfortable. But it was amazing. So you, how much time did you spend in South America?

Michael Rosenberg: I always spent a minimum of a month in every country. I didn't travel too fast. I wanted to live places like I was, did not wanna do the tourist thing. I think I was in Costa Rica for two or three months, then I was in Guatemala for a month. And then I was in Bolivia for a month, month and a half.

So another thing that happened while I was traveling, I had a spiritual teacher, who I was already interacting with. I just said randomly in my head, let me see if I can travel for two years. She came to me at the same time. She said, Mike, I'm creating a mystery school online, which is really a modern day thing, like mystery schools, way back in the day, masters and Sages used to go through to test themselves, to cultivate their inner wisdom, their universal knowledge, and then they would come back out and help humanity.

So we were doing these classes every other week online, but she said, it's gonna be two and a half years long and we're gonna take four trips to major, activation centers in the planet, and we're gonna do ceremonies there. It led me to Bolivia. She's from Bolivia, and this is where things really started to take off.

I spent two weeks with my class there and we were out on Lake tit kaka and, and we work with plant medicine like Wachuma. It's a psychedelic. After she left, I would stay, the class would go home. I used it as my infrastructure and then she handed me off to her whole spiritual family 

work with like healers on mountaintops and more plant medicine and all this stuff. So I was really getting activated and opened and it was important for me to learn the culture and feel how people lived. Like this is what I wanted to ex, I wanted to learn about the world and around about people and how else I could live.

So I, after a couple months there, I had a stop in the states. Now what happened with South, south America is very special to me. I came back because I felt very connected to, shamanism and the indigenous culture there and mountains.

So after some time, I was like everywhere out there. I, I met them in Egypt. I was in Israel, I was staying with a desert nomad in Wadi rum, Jordan in a cave and all this stuff. And I started to get depressed. I had a friend in Peru who was living in community.

She's like, why don't you come back here? There's a community, there's expats. It's cheap. Your money goes a long way. There's nature. I ended up living on and off in Peru for two years. I would go travel in between. So I spent quite a lot of time in South America. I felt very called there. I'm a big, deep believer in past lives.

I felt that there was a reason why I felt so drawn there. I feel at home like Peru is like a second home. I was living in the mountains in a beautiful house there for a while, like waking up to this massive mountain every day. It was incredible. 

Brad Minus: That's, yeah, it, it, that's just the thought of you deciding to cut yourself off from the rest of the world, not actually the rest world, but from what, what you're, what you've known.

Mm-hmm. And the courage that it took to sit there and say, okay, I'm just gonna go travel. I commend you, I mean, to starting that you, that you started in the States. I think that was like an evolution. That's what it sounds like to me. You know, that was the evolution. You found your, your nature side of you.

You probably gained some skills too, right? 

Michael Rosenberg: Yeah, completely. It was like I gained some independence. I mean, you figure everything out on your own. Every day, like being like, where am I gonna go tomorrow night and how am I gonna get there? How am I gonna book a hostel?

How do I eat? How do I get from point A to B? What do I do with my day? You know, it's like you're always figuring everything out and you gain a real independence, you start to see what you're capable of. And some of the fear has started to dissipate. I gained a lot of courage 'cause it's like, oh, I could do this.

Oh, I can make it here. Oh, I am supported. Things like that. 

Brad Minus: Did you ever just like live off the land? Did you ever get, was there ever a point where you just had, was a tent and you know, forge for food or whatever? 

Michael Rosenberg: Not quite. That is actually something I still wanna do and I wish I did a little bit 'cause I always like.

I'm very interested in what that feels like. I mean, I did take some excursions where we did stay in some places like little cabins and stuff. Like the closest I did was when I was living in the desert in the Middle East and Jordan. And I was actually camping in a cave with, a Bedwin a desert nomad.

And during this time there's a website called Workaway where you can get free lodging and food and give a service. So I was helping this guy with his website and making some videos for him. I wanted to be like a YouTuber. I thought I was gonna blow up on YouTube and monetize that.

And I quickly realized that's a whole nother job. So I just started filming for fun. But that experience, the guy really knew what he was doing, so I was very taken care of. I wasn't alone. But yeah, we were sleeping under the stars. I mean, it was incredible.

Brad Minus: So. I gotta ask, since you were in Jordan and you had said you'd spent some time in Israel too, which is fantastic. Absolutely. You've already told us that you're Jewish, I am too as well. How did that play out? Or did you just kind of fly under the radar? Because a lot of people, you can kind of, pass for being not, but here you are in like the Muslim capital of the world, Jordan.

How did you get through that? 

Michael Rosenberg: Yeah, this was a highly educational time for me. One of the greatest lessons I learned traveling was that I got to see the world with boots on the ground in real time, not what the television tells you.

And so lots of people, everyone in the US people have this idea of the world based on what our news media gives us, but it is an agenda. It is tailored in a very particular way. Israel is one of the most confusing places I've been because I felt the full spectrum of emotions.

On one side, I felt this beautiful homecoming being around the Jewish people. I lived in Jerusalem for three weeks. I went to the whaling wall five times. I was taken in by people like blessed, like it was amazing. And I saw some things that really were not so good. You know, God in Jerusalem, I mean, there's a lot of animosity there, as you know, in the history.

And I went to the Rock of the Dome Jews aren't allowed up on this very holy place. This is like the Temple Mount. Exactly. They were coming out of the mosque, like Muslims and they were like, I couldn't understand the language, but they were yelling at us.

And it was, it was intense. We were being walked around by the military. You couldn't even get close. I literally started to cry 'cause like I could feel. Kind of some of the hatred and the animosity, but that was just one experience. Then I went into Palestine and I passed this very, Hasidic looking Jewish person, like right at the wall on my way in.

And he said, you're gonna go in there? And I said, yeah. He said, are you Jewish? I said, yeah. He said, you better not tell anyone. Your life's gonna be in danger. And I said, thanks, I'll, I'll find out on my own. And I went in, I was headed to Bethlehem, right? Like where Jesus was supposedly born and I had the most beautiful day.

And the people were amazing and it was so peaceful. And on their side of the wall, it's like you see the story of their repression. It's all spray painted and pictures and paintings. The Israeli side completely blank. And one thing I noticed is everyone I spoke to in Israel was like, they don't exist.

I mean, they had the worst things to say about them when I was on their side. I got to see like what their people have been through. And I went to, this museum accidentally, I was looking for this Banksy museum who's a big graffiti artist. So a friend and I went into the museum. Little did we know, we got, walked into the back and it was a whole, museum that opened up, that showed the Palestinian story from like 1948.

You know, when Israel settled and like how 750,000 people were literally removed from their land. Like they had videos of Israeli soldiers testifying of things that they've done. They had all this information that you would never see on the other side. And it was very emotional. I was like, this is horrible.

I was like, and I don't hear anything. And this was happening on the day of, it was a celebration of Israel's Independence Day that evening I was back in Israel and we were celebrating in the streets, like the independence. It was, it was very confusing, because there was two sides and it was like, there's something off here.

There's something I'm not being told. I was in Jordan prior to that and it was one of my favorite experiences traveling this Muslim, this bedwin was. Amazing to me. Like I loved it. I didn't wanna leave this place. I thought the Middle East was incredible. And even the places that I hadn't been to that I had heard about, like Iran, I heard as one of the most accepting, kind people in the world.

But when I came to Israel, I was living like with my cousins, and I would ask them and they would just be like, ah, it's all terrorists and they're terrible people and this, and I would say, well, how was your experience over there? And they said, well, we've never been, we would never go there. So it's this very like, and it's a sensitive subject, especially now with what's going on over there, but.

My travels showed me how beautiful the world are and how many great people there are. So many people were like, don't go here. Don't go there. It's dangerous there. It's dangerous there. You're gonna be in trouble. And I was like, I'll find out. 'cause the news just shows you the worst. And they make the Middle East out to be just this place of terrorism.

And like Israel is just this like innocent place in the middle. And I was like, this is not what it is. There's a much, much bigger picture happening here. It's extremely complex. It's extremely confusing. But I'm so happy that I got to have that experience and it was like, I, I really had all of it.

Chaos, peace. And during that time, I'll say this too, like. I got very depressed, very, very depressed. For, for many reasons. But that's what drew me to Peru is like I started to need community. I got very lonely and Israel's one of these places. 

I had this meeting with Krishnas, another story, but I got the most depressed I've ever been on my travels to the point where I was like actually concerned that I was losing my mind. Very scary. And then I moved to Peru where I found community and it saved me. And that's where I got to learn that I can't do life alone and that I need people.

And I was very welcomed. 

Brad Minus: Yeah. So that whole idea that we talk about as far as humans needing humans, like there's really no, you know, you talk about, oh, loners and hermits and all this other stuff, when really human nature is about community. 

Michael Rosenberg: Would you say that, yeah. A thousand percent. And I've always been someone who's been really good at doing life alone.

Like I'm kind of a loner. I love me some alone time. Some people like need people around all the time. I didn't wanna be around people, right? I was like, I'm gonna do this solo journey, all this stuff. And it started when I got to, I won't tell the whole story 'cause it really goes on and on, but I, I got to Portugal and I got like the worst depression that had ever hit me.

And I was just walking around the streets in the depths of my loneliness, literally crying. I mean, travel is gonna rearrange you wherever you go. There you are. It doesn't fix anything. It's just a classroom that you choose to learn about yourself. And a monk had stopped me in Portugal and.

Brad Minus: Know. 

Michael Rosenberg: Okay. My spiritual teacher, this is right. I told you I was like working on faith. This whole trip, speaking to God being led, I was in the States on a break. My spiritual teacher that had this mystery school, she gave all of us an assignment to research an ascended master.

There's like 30 of us. Everyone got someone different. Somebody got Jesus, somebody got the Buddhist, somebody got the Egyptian goddess segment, right? Like we all got different people. I got Krishna. I knew nothing about Kris. I was like, who's Krishna? This Hindu deity. No idea. Two weeks later I go to Portugal.

The worst depression of my life hits. I had no idea what was happening. I was like, I don't even know if I wanna be traveling anymore. I'm wandering the streets alone, my head down and a monk stops me in the street and tries to give me a book. And I'm like, no. I try to brush 'em off and I look and it's the Bava Gita that has Krishna on the cover, and I'm like.

I took the Bava Gita, I came back two days later and found the monk and I said, look, I'm sorry I was kind of a jerk. I was really depressed and I just want to thank you for the book. And he said, why don't you come and chant with us at our temple?

And I always wanted to learn chanting. I knew it was a powerful meditative practice. So I did. And then I started to meet Krishna Consciousness devotees in this place. And it took me on a trip all around Portugal. Like I rented a car, I did a road trip. I had to get outta Lisbon 'cause I was so depressed.

I'm like, let me go up to the mountains. This monk calls me a little like, I don't know, a week later he says, you should meet us at this other place, ENC chant again. I said, listen, I'm really far from, Lisbon. It's not gonna work. I'm not around you anymore. He sends me the address, it's literally in the town, two minutes from my hostel where I'm staying.

I'm like, okay. So I go, there we're chanting hot A Krishna, hot, Kris Krishna, Krishna, hot, hot. Like we're doing the whole Maha mantra, which is a very sacred mantra that opens you, your consciousness. And there he says, you should come to France with me in two weeks for my spiritual master's birthday. And I was like, nah, I can't.

One of the Krishna Consciouses devotees I met in this first temple called me and said, why don't you come stay with me? I know you don't want to go back to the hostels. So while I'm thinking about it, I, I go back and stay with this guy.

There's Krishna decked out from head to toe, all over his walls, pictures, beads, mantras, everything. Every morning I woke up with him at 6:00 AM and we chanted. He taught me how to chant. He taught me all about Krishna, and I'm like, my project's happening in real life. Everyone else goes online. They do the research, they make the PowerPoint.

I filmed me and this guy that I met, he just called me on my birthday last week. We're still friends. It happened in real life. I said, there's something that I'm being led to here. I just got a chill now. So I called the monk back, the original guy. I said, I'll do it.

I said, I'll come to France with you and meet this master. We booked a 24 hour bus trip overnight from Portugal to France and right before we left, he got covid and couldn't go. So I was by myself on this bus. I didn't know where I was going. I get there. And they all meet me, like all in their orange robes, the Krishna consciousness devotees.

I go into the streets with them and we're doing what's called haina. They go around and they're chanting and it's like incredible. I go back to their castle. It's this massive like 17 hundreds castle. Huge. It's their temple, and I lived like a monk with them for three weeks. I woke up at 4:00 AM every morning, chanted for two hours with them in their temple.

Went into service, learned all about Krishna, had these wild conversations. It tested my faith, my fear, all my beliefs, and it started to open things within my body. Energetically I had signals starting to go off, communication from places that I didn't know anything about. I was like, something is opening within me here.

And so the point is from that point forward, I have this deep fascination and connection with Krishna, and it was just wild. But I was telling you that because I look at everything from God and I said I was a loner, and I feel that God in his form of Krishna, whatever, was showing me, okay, you wanna do life alone, you wanna be a loner.

I'm gonna show you what the extreme end of that looks like, and then I'm gonna send somebody in or rescue and you're gonna find out what it's gonna be like to be with people. And people would show up and give me exactly what I needed in that moment. They would just take me in, you know, 

went to Israel, Egypt, Israel, and then to Peru, where it was this incredible community. And that's where I stayed on and off for two and a half years. And like now I'm all about the community. It's really a wild, wild lesson. 

Brad Minus: Wow. That totally reminds, that's that story that you hear, the guy that was, in a flood and he's on the top of his roof and the guy comes by in a rowboat and he goes, Hey, get in.

I'll save you. He goes, no, no, God will provide, God will send me what I, what I need. And he is like, okay. And then the guy comes, then, then another guy comes, comes in on a, on a speedboat. And he is like, come on, jump in. No, no, God will provide. Then a guy comes down on a helicopter. And sends down a rope and he says, jump on the rope.

I will save you. He says, no, no, God will provide. And then he ends up drowning, finally gets to the pearly gates. He looks at God and he goes, what happened? I thought you were gonna save me. I believed in you a hundred percent. Why didn't you save me? He says, what are you talking about?

I sent you a boat, sent you a speedboat, and I sent you a helicopter. What else did you want me to do? 

Michael Rosenberg: Exactly. It's one of my favorite stories. I tell people that all the time. Yeah, that's, 

Brad Minus: but I get that, that like, it resonates when you talk about that these people were just kind of at the times that you needed them.

Michael Rosenberg: Yeah. 

Brad Minus: No, that you were, that they were there at the exact time. You know, that you, you're depressed and all of a sudden you meet the monk and your, your counselor or your spiritual guide, she had told you to speak on Krishna. Here's the guy with the Gupta. And he is like, here you go.

And you're like, but you took it. Yeah. That was the thing is you recognize the message and I think that's a lot what's going on now. And we get, we get blindsided by news and by, events and things that happen to us that are very, very minute. And we take them as these big things, but really they're just the small things and they overlap what's really coming to us.

And I see that when I listen to your stories. I think it's something that you really need to dig down deep and really think about what is important. 

Michael Rosenberg: Yeah. It's one of my most important messages that I wish to bring to people is I feel that faith is more important now than ever before.

And I don't mean that in this dogmatic or like, you gotta do this or that, or believe in whatever. Like that doesn't work. Like nobody wants to be forced to believe in something that they just don't. But we all, as humans, have something, call it what you want, some kind of higher power working through us that's woven into us, that guides us in our life, that gives us exactly what we need, and even sets it up in such a way where the things that we think that are taking us down and our traumas and all these things.

Part of the teaching. And I've learned that in my journey. It's been my ability to say yes when the guidance comes, when I don't know what it's showing me or where it's bringing me, that brings me to that next step, that brings the next puzzle piece in. And it makes meaning of the whole thing. And it gives me what I need.

And it's teaching my soul something like, for instance, this huge lesson, Mike, you're not supposed to do life alone, so we're gonna lead you as stray a little bit. You're gonna feel like strung out and like everything's collapsing around you. And then if you follow and say yes, life's gonna give you exactly what you need, who you need, the opportunity.

And that's when it's our courage that comes in and our ability to say, maybe I can't see it, but there's something in me that feels like I should say yes. And, it's a beautiful, orchestration, you know, in life spiritually. So 

Brad Minus: it sends you the lesson. It teaches you something. And then provides you with the answer.

Michael Rosenberg: Exactly. Nothing's wasted. And this is what I'm telling people in personal development and spirituality. It's like people think they just got dealt a bad hand. It's like, no, simply the fact that you're alive, existing in this human body, you're a spirit and a human body. Like you're up to something big and special.

It's always directing you somewhere. And if you get too absorbed into the news and the events and all this stuff, that's got nothing to do with you, okay? And you go inward and you focus on like, what do I need now?

You know, what calls me? What lights me up? What's this thing teaching me the situation? If you start to realize that we're never in the wrong place, we are always in the right place at the right time, even if it feels wrong, there's gold there if you're willing to look for it. I have found in my entire life that when I tune into my life in that way, it really starts speaking to me.

Meaning comes from everywhere. It all starts making sense. And I'm like, ah, this is the journey my soul chose to have and I'm supposed to be going through these experiences for a reason. 

Brad Minus: Hmm. I love how you said that it's kind of like, you had mentioned that you were a loner, an introvert, and you like yourself alone time, and you learn this idea of community, but the idea that you are open to the external.

So we could be loners, we can be introverts, but we still need to take our lessons from the external. But I also loved how you said that faith and the higher power is woven within us. So I went on, I don't want to call it a spiritual junior, but you know, I grew up Jewish and I did have this intense attraction to Buddhism.

And, I read everything because I could get my hands on. And I started to resonate a little bit with it. And then the weirdest thing happened, Buffalo Grove, Illinois. I'm actually from Chicago, Buffalo Grove, Illinois. And I read the article, there was a rabbi who was Buddhist, a rabbi, and I went, huh?

I'm like, yeah, they don't pull apart from each other. There's nothing in there. It compliments it. Yeah. Buddhism, he's like, I don't even know if you can, you can call it a religion, but you can also call it a supplement. And I was like, and then I got pulled toward it there's Christianity Judaism, Islam, and there's always the top guy, allah, Hashem, God, Jesus, you're never gonna become God. You're never gonna become Jesus. The highest you can probably get is the Pope. If you're in Christianity, but in Buddhism, that's your strive. Your strive is to become Buddha. Buddha doesn't say that you can't become me. That's your goal. You might not get to it, but you're going to strive to get there and you can become a Buddha. And that's where I think there's this, separation, and that's the one thing that you said about weaving yourself through it.

So after I've kind of like went through this bit, then I've, I, I should say just prior to that, I had gone through this thing where I was like, religion is crap. You know, organized religion is crap. You know, we should, if we're going to freaking, if we're going to freaking worship somebody, you should worship yourself.

And this is where, when you said it's woven within us. And that's kind of what led me to the other way. And I, you know, my wife, she is a nurse. She's a, she's a pediatric oncology nurse. So we used to have to go to, once in a while we had to go to funerals and we'd go to this funeral and it's very anti-national.

It's not really, it actually was the wake, it wasn't the funeral. But you go through the receiving line and you're like, you give your condolences and you, you know, and the whole bed, and there's a picture of the child and the whole bed, and he, and you go in. But it was so interesting because some people just, they, everybody just filtered into the pews and they all just sat there, right?

And as this receiving line's coming in, people are just coming in. There's no service that's gonna go on. There was nothing scheduled. But people are just going in and they're sitting. There's the stillness there, and some of the most amazing energy you could feel, you could feel is in this room. Again, yes, there's the symbols of Christianity, but that's it.

There's no priest, no service, nobody's talking about it. All you're doing is sitting and then there's this receiving line, and it's like all these people, the reason why they sat there was they're like, Hey, we have one of our own that is hurting. We need to send them our energy to help them out. 

And that's when I started realizing, yes, there is a higher power and it is woven within us, and we can choose to give or receive. 

Michael Rosenberg: Oof. Big chill, as you said that I think there's a lot of brilliance in what you just spoke into and, and in that situation, that's what I see as the truth of humanity and the truth of the spirit moving through all of us is that we are one, and the best way we can give ourselves is to come together for each other.

Right. And I feel like religion separates people more than it brings people together. I got away from Judaism for a long time. I came back in a sense to learn a little bit more, but my journey taught me to take a piece from everything. And when I look at these masters, like a Jesus or a Krishna, a Muhammad or whatever it is, I believe they're incarnations of God, but they're just teaching us that they are us.

Even the Buddha, I know religion and some of the scripts talk about it a little bit different. And I think, I just believe there's been some misinterpretations as making them like this, but I think that they, and this is what my teacher taught me, she's like, they're all telling you the same thing.

Be love. You have the abilities and you're part of humanity and, and they were leaders teaching you that they are with in you. One of the things I love that you said the most is that you were drawn to Buddhism, and this I think is one of the most important things for people to realize, is that you don't have to figure all this out because the peace of God or whatever we, if we come from creation, it's woven within us.

There's an internal guidance system. If we listen and tap into our intuition that is telling us where to go and what's for us. And for me, that comes down to your passion and excitement and interest. And if something pulls you and you don't know why, but you're just like, I'm interested, I don't know. 

It makes sense to me. That's the life guidance. If you follow that, it will open something up for you and then tell you. Where to go next. And that's really how I've lived my life. And as a guy who lost passion early on, I think that passion and following our highest excitement in the moment always brings us to our best outcome and closest to our most truly aligned path.

It gets confusing when it's like, well, can I make money from this? I gotta make the bills and I gotta support myself and I gotta do this and that. But like, it could be as simple as like, I just wanna go sit in the sun for a while 'cause that's what I feel called to do. And see what happens from there.

Brad Minus: That's, yeah, I wouldn't know how, I can't even summarize what you just said. It was so, it was said so well. So you have, you know, you talk about on your website, you know, remember this is Wake up with Mike. And you talk about, having a conversation with you.

And then you'll have a coaching. So what are the scope of your coaching and who are the type of people that come to you and what are they looking for and what are you providing? 

Michael Rosenberg: The people that come into my world are people that, whether they're consciously aware of it or not, they're looking for something deeper within themselves and within their lives.

They might not know it, but there's a part of them that's saying, what's more? Is this it? Maybe they're burnt out, strung out, stressed over it, like just done with whatever kind of life they're in, whether it's a job, a routine, a relationship. Maybe they're living by societal expectations of family, of what society tells them to do 

and they wanna feel a sense of life again within them. They wanna feel alive. I work with people to help point them and guide them to their own inner wisdom. I don't have anybody's answers. Everybody has their own answers. It's a matter of practicing and tuning in and going there and committing and getting quiet, and going on that journey to discover what's actually makes me, me, you know, why, why am I here now?

I'm kind of like, I help guide people by asking them the right questions, by seeing their blind spots, the most beautiful thing is when you can realize it for yourself and make your own decisions. Like, you know what?

Everything I've been choosing, it's not me. In fact, it's beliefs that I picked up along the way that weren't even mine. You know, it begins with an awareness. So I help people also find out what's important to them, how to live a heart-centered life and get more out of their head and into their heart and start making bold moves to create that kind of life that feels true for them.

I do this through one-on-one coaching. I've also created group programs. I just, last night wrapped up, my first program called The Rhythm of You. It was a six week course, where we had a 90 minute group coaching session with really cool homework that I call heart work in between that, gives you exercises to find out who you are.

And I call it the rhythm of you because we all have this beautifully unique rhythm within us that is not gonna look like anybody else's. So being that I come from this world in the corporate world in sales where it's like, do it this way and fit in this system, and everything's a box, and like you should, you know it.

It doesn't work for people like that. I think the world, God life is calling for us right now to find out who we are. And the main thing that I'm most passionate about is speaking, I just get passionate about life. About my story. And so I speak on stages and I speak about my journey in a way where, I can inspire and open up people's minds to ask themselves the deep questions, and create like an emotional connection that inspires people to take the actions for themselves and have their own breakthrough realizations.

Brad Minus: What we all need that. And some people seek it out. And you're somebody, you know, there's the people that can afford Tony, you know, Tony Robbins, you know, and, you know, they speak, they go that way. And then, so I.

You're providing a service that, whether people know it or not, I would say 90% of the people out there could use. And I think that that's something that people should be thinking about. And if you're listening to this, definitely think about some of the conversation that we had today, and then go on to wake up with mike.com.

Just like it sounds, just like it's spelled. And, take a look at his website, read some of the things that he talks about. He's got a lot of his videos are embedded on the page. 

Nixon's Naso. Yeah. Yeah. Naso. He's, first of all, he's hilarious. Yeah, he's absolutely hilarious. But he is so motivating. Yeah. It's crazy. You gotta see that video. And just to show you, it's kind of to show you. You have and what people are doing that don't have, and still living a purpose drawn life.

Yeah. So, but definitely take a look at that now, what I don't see on here, and I know that you've got some, is, you have, you're on socials. 

Michael Rosenberg: Yeah. I'm on Instagram. Same thing at Wake Up with Mike Facebook. Wake up with Mike or Michael Rosenberg, you know, TikTok, I think it's, I am Mike Rosenberg.

Brad Minus: Okay. 

Michael Rosenberg: Still getting the technology piece down to make it clear, you know, in one spot where I am, but I'm on all the socials. Yeah. 

Brad Minus: Okay. So I will, either find them, I'll ask your help and we'll make sure that those are in the show notes. You'll get all the socials, you'll get wake up with Mike.

And then right on there, he's got links to contact him and have a conversation. And obviously, as you can tell just by this conversation that we've had, that there's a lot there and that, you know, having the opportunity to unlock. Your potential and where your purpose lies. So definitely check that out.

If you happen to be watching this on YouTube, would really appreciate it if you go ahead and hit that like button to subscribe and hit the little notification bells. If you are on Apple or listening on Spotify, drop a comment on YouTube if you want.

If you wanna leave a review, I'd love that. And I don't even care if it's good review, because if it's a bad review, it just gives me more information and I can evolve the podcast moving forward. So please, I would really appreciate any kind of feedback you can give us there. Michael, thank you so much for hanging out with us, really appreciate all your insight you and I probably could sit here and talk 

for another four or five hours Very easily. I wish you all the luck in the world, and again, I think that you're providing something that we really do all of us need. Thank you. 

Michael Rosenberg: I had an absolute blast. Thank you for the opportunity, Brad. It was a lot of fun.

Brad Minus: I appreciate it. So for Michael and myself, thank you very much for listening and we'll see you in the next one.