Thriving despite EXTREME ADVERSITY 🎙️ with Mikael Avatar by @jeroseland on 3Speak
I'm joined by Mikael Avatar--a man who essentially shouldn't be here, let alone breaking records. Born clinically dead for 45 minutes with cerebral palsy, doctors didn't expect him to walk, yet he ...
Tags: #podcast #interview #mindset
You need a reality check on the relative state of comfort of your life. We all do. If you're listening to this podcast, you exist in a state of historically unprecedented material comfort. Food prices might be a little high, but you've never actually had to worry about starvation. You have a roof over your head that doesn't leak. You're a biohacker, so you probably don't suffer from a debilitating, paralyzing health condition. You're not being forced by a petty tyrant to go off and fight and die in a brutal foreign war. You don't need to break your back for plus eight hours a day, in a field or factory to put enough calories on the table. You don't need to worry about your drinking water poisoning you half to death, or a gangrene infection from a paper cut. If you're a woman, you have a very decent semblance of human rights. You are not agency-less property of a man. made to suffer through childbirth without pain relief medication. Your modern life is actually incredibly comfortable. The gift this reality check should give you is gratitude. The fact that you can even pursue, health, personal growth, prosperity, beauty, metapolitical liberty, and a meaningful life, is a tremendously lucky role of the cosmic dice. So, quietly offer up a prayer of gratitude to whatever you believe in for that. I'll give you a moment. That feels good, doesn't it? To drive this reality check home, I'm joined by Mikkel Avatar, a man who essentially should be here, let alone breaking world records. Born clinically dead for 45 minutes with cerebral palsy, doctors didn't expect him to walk. Yet, he went on to set a Paralympic world record in The Long Jump. After spending 40 years trapped in chronic pain, he cracked the code to becoming pain-free, and now spends his time dismantling the performance masks of high-achieving... leaders, helping them move from the empty pursuits of status to genuine, lived freedom. Before we dive in, I should mention, Mickle has cerebral palsy. He's a powerful and profound communicator, but you may find him a little difficult to understand at first. Stick with us, though. And you'll want to listen to this one at normal playback speed, not 1.25 or 1.5x speed. Yeah, you should de-chipmunk me now. And you might want to watch this on one of the limitless channels, as opposed to just listening to it. as it's always easier to understand people if you can see their lips moving, and I forgot to introduce myself, because I was so excited to talk to Mickle. I'm Jonathan Rosent with Limitless, and something you might appreciate about this conversation. It's not interrupted by ads. I'm not going to interrupt Mickel's powerful story with DOM ads for VPNs, energy drinks, random supplements, etc. And that's how all our interviews are. If you appreciate that, you can support Limitless by taking just a few seconds now to... Signal Boost, this conversation, upvote, comment, subscribe, five -star rating plus review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It takes you just a moment, and it means the world to us here. Thanks. Let's get back to the interview. Michael, welcome to Limitless. Thank you, Your Honor. Thank you, so. First question. You have a wild story, and we're going to get into it, but I'm curious about your metaphysical views. You were basically born into the third chapter of Job. That's the book of the Bible about the guy who had all the terrible things happen to him in his life. And there's this... carmic view of life that is very popular and stylish, even among Westerners these days, that if you're born into unlucky circumstances, that that maybe had like something to do with past lives or soul contracts that you chose. And this kind of seems like a self -defeating mindset to me, even as a spiritual person myself, believe in the evident randomness of the universe. But Michael, Mikkel, I'm trying to pronounce that in the correct Swedish way as opposed to anglicizing it. But I bet you have thought much harder about this metaphysical question than most people. What's your take on it? I think I build him like a form. before I was born. So I was born this way, and I needed 45 minutes more to think, should I really come to this product? That's one way of seeing, and other way of seeing it, is like I'm a undercover agent, because with this celebrate policy, I'm not a threat to anybody. When I'm coaching people, I can get much more closer than if I wouldn't have a policy. So you can have many different angle from this. But the most important, whoever you are, whatever you are doing, pick one. Pick one. that lose you and conquer the world from that perspective, and you will be fulfilled with whatever happiness you're only that you can achieve. What do you think about that? Okay, undercover, Undercover Agent, and, okay, so you subscribe to the... filled out a form. Okay, so you subscribe somewhat to the sole contract view of things. Yeah, something like that. All right, and I think, did you ever read the book of Job by chance? Sorry, I'm not updated, sorry about that, but I understand that many people think, I have done something really bad or punished or whatever, but I believe that I chose to be like this. Okay. Yeah, you understand what you mean. I think that's a much, I think that's a much better mindset than the carmic, than the carmic view, because essentially the carmic view, you're accepting shame from a hypothetical, non-falsifiable past life where you did something bad that you don't remember, that you don't remember. doing. So it's like embracing a lot of shame. Yeah, I really don't like that. that, that, that, that, carmic view of things, and the, okay, the view of human suffering presented in the book of Job, which is, I think probably most Christians subscribe to this view, is, in the book of Job, there's this guy, and all this terrible, all these terrible things happen to him, and then... And he's a good man. He's a good man that bad things happen to, okay? And then at the end of the book of Job, he actually gets to talk to God face to face. And he says, God, why did you, why did all these bad things happen to me? And God basically says, says, there are things going on in the universe that you are just not going to understand. I, as God, have intentions, and I'm working in ways that you as a human being are just not going to understand. And so, yeah, so it actually, God actually doesn't give him a very satisfying answer at all. It's basically just, like, as a human being, there's, there's things you're not going to understand why it happens, which is, which is actually pretty, that's actually kind of pretty profound, because it, uh, reminds us that, it kind of reminds us of our, of our, of our place in, in the universe, and it reminds us that the universe is, that the universe, and even our own lives are like profoundly, Mysterious. But, okay, I don't want to get muddled in metaphysics so much. So Agent Avatar, give us, yeah, give us your, give us a concise version of your epic life story. Concise. If possible. I conquered the world. When I was 40 years old, I wanted to be a mounting climate. My mom told me, That's not possible. My hands was locked. I couldn't open them. But 20 years later, I was a rock climber instructor. So I think you can achieve whatever you want if you put the mindset to it. And that's what I have done for my life. I am to our world of the world. I have been a Paralympic. was record holder and all that stuff. But I believe every day is one choice to make your stomach tingling, make your eyes glow, make you whatever we need to beat is wow. And I believe that's a mindset. And sometimes... You have it for free. But normally, you have to practice. You have to see the world with different eyes, follow whatever thing in your heart, and create the best possible day every day. That's my motto. Kind of that. Rast up, really short. Okay. Tell me about a moment when you thought that life was hopeless for you. There is so many. The most pain situation in my life was when they threw me out for university, because they didn't want to help me there. The company sponsoring this university industry industry. Robot Technical Engineer, they just showed me out. So what happened with me then, I got really angry, I thought I'm going to show them, and then I'm going to have a really big press conference and confront them. There was big companies, but that didn't happen. Maybe that's why I had the power to train for the Palo-Lympic, because I have this anger in me. I need it. I want to create something really, really big to give a host of confronting with me, but I got more vice. I don't want to fight with people. It's no point. I have my record. I have my perspective, but that was really a low point of my life. Okay, so let's see, this sounds like you were probably like a younger man, because you were a university, and you were going to, you said, engineering school? Yes. Engineering School. This was around. I was maybe 18 years old. So it was like nine years before I was in the Paralympic since a long time ago. Okay, and they kicked you out just because you were, they didn't want you there. And... You had, you conceived kind of like a vengeance plot, like Captain Ahab. But that didn't come to any, that didn't come to any fruition, but you kind of took that anger, and you channeled it to athletic pursuits. Yeah, it's good description what I did. But it's more complicated because I was abused by my father. He hit my mother, so I was born before. So I had a lot of things in my body that was, but I used the sports to get control, to get it out of my system. And when you're coaching people or... meeting people, if you are angry, you can get nowhere. But if you're calm, lose, what lies, then you can connect much more easy with anyone, even if you have syllable policy, or whatever you have. Aha, okay, this is an interesting, and this is a... Forgive me, because I know this is probably a sensitive area for you. So you said your father had an anger issue, and he hit your mother, which caused premature contractions and birth. So if I'm understanding it, your father's anger was the cause of the cerebral palsy. Yes, it was. Wow. My mother nearly didn't survive, and I was born like one bath before I should be born. So it's really a tragic situation for a child be born, and when he comes to the hospital, they couldn't save me, so they put me among their dead babies and a nurse. came by 30, 14 minutes after, and it's for me breathing. So it's really a traumatic experience. Yeah. And that goes into your body, your muscle, your memories, all things. And if you don't cope with that, then you're really lost in drugs or whatever. a possible disease from... I'm not afraid today to talk about it, but before, I didn't understand this, how it could affect my life, so long. It took me really long time to come over this pain. Today, I don't care. Today, I think... It was meant to be because now I can use my knowledge, experience, and help other people. And I'm on an adventure in my own life so I can conquer whatever I need to conquer in my life. Okay, yeah, and we're going to delve into the mindset, but... Forgive me for my morbid curiosity here. Okay, so about, you said you were put among the other dead babies at the hospital. Are there that many dead babies in a Swedish hospital? That's what I have been told. Right, because I'm... Yeah, okay, so my wife and I, we've had some, we've lost some children during pregnancies, which is, like, worst days of my life, but I'm, like, Swedish, yeah, I'm trying to, okay, I'm a visual person, so I'm trying to imagine, I'm trying to imagine, like, that there's, that there's a department of the hospitals where they put the, they, like, pile up the dead babies, and luckily, a nurse was just walking by there and saw, saw, saw, saw your little leg twitching or something like that. Is, is that, that's the way this went? Yeah, kind of. That's what they have told me, but I, I, I order my journals from the hospital. And they couldn't even write how many minutes I was dead. But I was dead when I was born, 100% sure. So that's what they have told me, my mother told me, and people around. So, since I was so little, I don't know. Okay, okay, I think... I wasn't planning on talking about anger in this podcast, but my God, you make a strong case for mastering anger, because you said, you've turned, okay, you've turned a tragedy into triumph in your life, but this is your father's fault. This is his... his anger's fault. So this, okay, this is why before, okay, before I became a father, actually relatively early in my marriage, I had an anger problem. I wouldn't, okay, I wouldn't hit my wife. I've never been, yeah, I've never been real violent, but I would, like, I'd, like, break plates, I would yell some, and break, break plates. I've, uh, some, some furniture around here has gotten abused, okay? Um, but early in my marriage, my wife said, Jonathan, I really don't like that. That's not cool. Boundary. She said a boundary around the, around the anger thing. And so I said, I said, okay, uh, my own father, my own father had kind of an anger issue as well. I mean, it's a, it's a, kind of a consistent thing among men, because anger is actually a pretty useful part of the male ecosystem. Like, anger can do some practical things for us as men. So it's not, it's not something to be abolished, it's something to be yielded correctly. It's like the force in Star Wars, okay? So I said, I don't want to be angry father breaking plates and yelling at my family. So I delved, I delved into this, and I read a couple of books, and there was a very old, there's a very, who is this book by? Okay, there was a very old, book by a stoic philosopher. I'm going to link to the book and the show notes for the episode, and it was a book in Latin. I remember the name was called Deiere, which means like about anger. And it made the profound point that it made, among many points, was that anger puts a very high cost on small things. that they'll be, you get angry, you destroy relationships, you destroy things, you destroy people with your anger, and it's usually over relatively small things. You can think about whatever, whatever happened with your parents, whatever petty argument they were having in the eighth month of your... of her pregnancy and whatever petty argument and your father turned that into decades of suffering for you. That is a high cost on a small thing. And so, yeah, so if you're a man, like, you're supposed to be, you're supposed to be kind of economical and rational in your... calculus of your decisions you make. So as a rational, as the rational actor that we aspire to be, you shouldn't be putting this high cost on small things. And that's exactly what anger does. So that was kind of a mindset shift that helped with anger. And then I did, a lot of people do meditation for anger. And that's a pretty good, that's a pretty good solution for it. In my case, I did. brain training. There's a particular kind of brain training that helps with emotional resilience that makes us more in charge of our emotions, that takes our emotions from being like a flock of squabbling chickens and turns our emotions into like a phalanx of Roman legionaries that we're in charge of. And that's what dual and back brain training does, which I'm going to link to in the show notes. And so I got more serious about that brain training. Yeah, I read maybe two or three books on it and then did more, did some more brain training. And that resolved my... anger issue. And my anger issue probably wasn't as bad as your dad's, probably not as bad as some people's. Some people probably need to do a lot more work on a lot of men and some women. Maybe they need to do a lot of work, but maybe you don't need to do that much work on anger. Maybe you just, maybe people just need to read a book or two about it. And then... have a habit like brain training or meditation that they spend 30 or 40 minutes a week on to ensure that they don't put astronomical prices on small things. So, yeah, thoughts on that. Yeah, I have a lot of towards about that. My name, but I do also dry. So why it was he had drank? Yeah, he was a drunk, because when he was 10 years old, he drove the bus between Russia and Finland, between the German people and the Russian military and transported people when he was 10 years old. Why? Because he was the only boy, the village, that could drive the bus. 44. So he tried to cover that emotions with drinking. So combination drinking, angry, so you can spin a lot of that. But what I did, I don't let people get on my skin, because nowadays, if people can annoy me, that I get irritated. I know it's something I haven't gone through to see the right perspective in my life. There is a lot of frequency training, a lot of books, a lot of everything. But what I learned by my anger is about... It wasn't defined why I was angry. There were nothing defining. I wasn't angry at the people in the room. I was angry something that I didn't know. Maybe from the birth, maybe a habit I have trained up to be, but when I figured out... and was relieved of this anger, and now I rarely get even irritated. It was so, it's costing you so much energy to be that angry all the time. But now, when I don't feel that anymore, I'm so free. relaxed in my muscles, there is so many benefits of not being angry, really, and there is a lot of bunch of studies about it that you can research. It's very interesting. And most people who are angry, it's men. Seriously, it's men. All right, Agent Avatar, I want to get another story out of you. You had dinner with a member of the Swedish royalty. Why did they invite you to dinner, and how did that go? Yeah, it's a funny story. You know, when you break a world record. you get advised to all these crazy parties, but I was working with the city hall in a city, and all the VIP people coming to the city, they met me, and then there was this big gala at the King's Council, so they picked me to represent their city. So I went there, And it was like many more people like 3,400 people, maybe even 3,000 there. It wasn't just me. And when you came in the room, they had picked out two, three people that was supposed to speak to him. And I was one of them when I started to speak to him. They gave me three minutes with the king, and then after the queen came, and I got three minutes with her too, because a world record is something, very, very few people have done. If I knew what I know today, I should have used that knowledge 30 years ago. It's nearly 30 years. In three days, it's 30 years, I broke the world record. But I didn't. I thought it was something. I was disappointed because I really thought when you break the world record in front of 68,000 people. On the Paralympic, something magic should happen, something. Wow, but nothing happened. I was so disappointed. Really? By dim lighting to the king, and that's because of six seconds. It takes six seconds to break a world record in longer. Okay, so I'm curious, do you have a photo with a king or queen? No. Ah, they didn't take photos. They didn't take photos of the meeting. Bummer. I'd love to include. This was 97, 97, and so the internet didn't even appear. Yeah, you didn't have a smartphone to take a selfie. 97, so. It's 29 years ago. So, no, I have, I have the Swedish invitation card, but that's in Swedish. It's no point of putting nothing. Okay, so you wrote famously, I stood in front of 68,000 people and broke a world record. and I felt nothing. So, okay, so tell us about, okay, so I, I thought about this line, I was thinking about this line as I was going to sleep last night, and, okay, a lot of times, us human beings, we have unrealistic expectations. of the results of our achievement. We, okay, not all of life is like sex. In sex, in sex, the climax is the part that feels amazing. You work up to the climax, and…
@hivebuzz: Congratulations @jeroseland! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain And have been rewarded with New badge(s) Your next target is to reach 900 posts. You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word STOP