The Inner Wealth Podcast

Ep172. Living on Purpose: The Shift from Survival Mode to True Fulfillment.

• Mike Kitko

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In this episode, Mike Kitko shares a powerful story of discovering his true purpose. After years of living in survival mode—pursuing security and trying to “fit in” with societal expectations—Mike experienced a pivotal moment that helped him shift from simply surviving to fully understanding his purpose. He dives into the distinction between living out of fear and living from purpose, describing how true freedom, joy, and fulfillment come from discovering why you were born. For anyone feeling lost or disconnected, this episode is an invitation to explore your purpose, understand your unique gifts, and transform the quality of your life.

Key Takeaways:

  1. Purpose is the Key to Fulfillment
    • Mike explains that true satisfaction and freedom in life come from understanding and embracing your purpose, not from accumulating achievements or possessions.
  2. Life is Always Guiding You
    • Challenges and crises aren’t random; they’re signs pushing you toward your true path. Recognize these events as signals from life, encouraging you to realign with your purpose.
  3. Survival Mode vs. Creation Mode
    • Many people live in survival mode, driven by insecurity, inadequacy, and fear of loss. Shifting to creation mode, where you live by purpose, brings a sense of peace and fulfillment.
  4. The Transformative Power of Self-Reflection
    • Self-awareness is crucial. By examining your desires, strengths, and values, you can shift from asking “How do I live?” to “Why was I born?”
  5. Elevating Global Consciousness
    • Mike believes that when one person steps into their purpose, it lifts global consciousness. Finding your purpose isn’t just about you; it has a ripple effect, positively impacting others.

Notable Quotes:

  • “Purpose isn’t just about getting what you want; it’s about contributing to something greater than yourself.”
  • “Challenges and obstacles aren’t setbacks; they’re redirections pointing you back to your true path.”
  • “If you’re not sure you’re in your purpose, you’re not. Purpose brings clarity, direction, and a sense of peace.”
  • “You’re not a coincidence or a mistake. You’re on time, and you’re here on purpose.”
  • “Discovering your purpose doesn’t just change your life—it changes the lives of everyone around you.”


Music Credit: "What's Left of Me" by Wes Hoffman & Friends

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Mike Kitko is an executive self-mastery coach, speaker and author. He found external success through powerful titles, incomes, and material possessions. He ultimately fell into depression, toxic abuse of alcohol, and the near collapse of his family before he began a journey of internal happiness and success.


Speaker 1:

Do you ever wake up feeling like there's something missing in your life? Do you ever feel the need to escape your business? Are you running your life or is your life running you? I'm Mike Kitko and I'll help you design and create a life so authentic and aligned with who you really are that you'll get excited just to wake up. I'll help you create real wealth, success and freedom from the inside out. Welcome to the Inner Wealth Podcast, where we learn and choose to live inspired each and every day.

Speaker 1:

Something really clicked for me today when I was out on my run and I love to run a few times a week. There's so much freedom for me out on the asphalt, and there was a time where I hated running in the cold, but then I just started putting on layers and even that became enjoyable. But anyway, I love being out there and there's something so freeing and maybe this is true for you. There's certain places that you derive extreme inspiration. Like exercise is especially running is. It provides an extreme, like, I guess, space and an opportunity for new inspiration to come in, and especially when my feet are hitting hitting the asphalt. And that was true for today and the the words that I want to share with you today are probably the, the, the things and the concept that has created more freedom and fulfillment in me than any other thing, and the word that I want you to connect with is purpose. All right, now, this isn't the first time you're going to hear anything from me or anybody else about your purpose, simon Sinek. Find your, why there's. You know, having a purpose and discovering a sense of purpose in this world is so, so impactful, and that's why so many people talk about purpose right Now. I don't believe we just have one purpose. I do believe we have two, and I'm going to go into more depth, but the one that I'm going to talk about today is more, probably more, impactful in freedom and fulfillment than anything in my life.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I am in August of 2024, I turned 52 years old Now. If I go back to March of 2016, my entire life fell apart. Now it started falling apart back in 2014. So, august of July of 2014, some stuff happened in my, in my marriage, in August of 2024, I got. I got fired from my first or August of 2014. I got fired from my first corporate gig after like I said many times before, when I've told the same story after a long successful run in corporate, I got terminated from my first executive level position in August of 2014. I was rehired by another company. I was hired by another company in January of 2015. I lasted about 16 to 18 months in that position and March of 2016,. I was terminated from that second position in about 20 months or so.

Speaker 1:

And, look, I got the opportunity to hit the reset on my life, because everything I had done up to that point wasn't working. And I'm talking about I didn't start making small changes. I started making transformational changes. I had nothing else going on in my life. I didn't have a job. I didn't have income. I didn't have. I had no other occupations. I had no other hobbies. I had no other anything. My marriage was in chaos. We were like I was 300 pounds. I was up to that point. I had been drinking a lot, like at toxic levels. I was suicidal, almost committed suicide before I hit the reset. The point is is like I went and embarked on a full life transformation, and that was when I was 43 years old.

Speaker 1:

Now you'll hear people talk about a midlife crisis. I don't feel like I had a midlife crisis. I feel like life was trying to get my attention that I was so far off of my purpose there's the word. I was so far off of my purpose. I was so far out of alignment with the purpose that I was here to serve in the world and I was so far off of the path that would create freedom and fulfillment in my life through serving my purpose. That life, through a pebble, a rock, a red brick, a cinder block, drop the boulder, hit me with a Mack truck and then hit me with a train and, like life, god, universe, source, whatever you want to call it I've even heard it called this week the sage. I love that. Like whatever you want to call that thing, when it's looking to get your attention, it's going to continue to increase the difficulty of your life until you open your eyes and that's called.

Speaker 1:

We like to call that a midlife crisis, but it's not. It's a midlife calibration. It's life trying to get your attention and show you where you're on your purpose or in your purpose or on your path and where you're not. And wherever you're not on your path and in your purpose, life's going to start playing games with you and start stabbing you and start creating crises and creating conflict and creating drama in your life to get your attention, to open your eyes. Now, some people don't go through this, I guess, violent of a midlife calibration. Some people need to make, get to make some subtle changes and some subtle tweaks, because they've already found their purpose and their path beforehand, because they were living from a place of inspiration and not fear. Some people, life tries to get their attention but all they do is go double down on exactly what they were doing before.

Speaker 1:

And in my case, I had built a life on fear. I had built a life based on inadequacy. I had built a life based on insecurity. Everything in my life was built to try to not lose something, to become something and to feel like I mattered. Insecurity, inadequacy and insignificance and if you've listened to any of the podcast episodes in the past, these are the three voices of survival mode Insecurity, inadequacy and insignificance. And up to that point, I had built a complete life based on avoiding loss, trying to prove something to myself and other people and trying to become something, and everything was so far out of alignment for me that life could be enjoyable in no way.

Speaker 1:

Now, maybe, if some of this is clicking, maybe yours isn't as dramatic as mine, but don't compare yours to mine. Just see where it's true for you and put yourself into this place, and then the rest of this episode, hopefully, will add some value to your life. But when my marriage, my health and my career were all upside down, that was not a coincidence. It's because it was all based on fear. Now, maybe for you your marriage is awesome or your relationship is awesome and maybe your health is awesome, but maybe this fits for you in your career, where you don't want to go to work every day. Maybe this fits for you in your career, where you don't want to go to work every day and you don't want to do what you do for income or for wealth creation and you work for people that you don't want to work for. You're doing things you don't want to do and your life is built on insecurity, inadequacy and insignificance in your career path. Maybe that's true for you. Maybe your career fits. Maybe your health fits you. Maybe your career fits. Maybe your health fits, but maybe your marriage you're trying to force something that was built on insecurity and adequacy and insignificance. Maybe it's true for you and your health. Maybe there's low self-worth and low self-esteem and so you don't in your health and in the value you place on your body and in the value you place on your, your own self care, and maybe your career's clicking, maybe your relationships clicking, but maybe you're just not taking care of yourself and you're treating yourself like garbage. Whatever is true for you, bring it forward through this episode.

Speaker 1:

When, when I, when I had this realization that the life that I had lived up to this point had been built on survival mode, I got the opportunity to hit a reset. I got the opportunity to understand what the hell I had done up to this point and why I had allowed my health to get away from me, my marriage to get away and my career. It gets so far down, like you ever heard, climbing the ladder. You climb the ladder and you climb high on the ladder, but the ladder is up against the wrong wall. That's exactly the story of my corporate career. I climbed the ladder and I climbed it high, but it was up against the wrong wall and, and for whatever reason, I felt like I needed to do those things in order to have any any sense, any chance at freedom and fulfillment. I felt like I needed to go someplace, that I didn't want to go and do things that I didn't want to do. I felt that I had to say yes when I wanted to say no and no when I wanted to say yes.

Speaker 1:

I hated everything about my career except for two things, and that was developing people and developing teams. Those are the only two things I enjoyed. Those are the only two things I loved. All the rest of it I despised. But you put me in a room developing people and developing teams and I'm masterful. I didn't know it at the time, but it's my zone of genius developing people and developing teams.

Speaker 1:

Now, when I had the chance to hit the reset, I started making tremendous changes and I started doing some self-exploration to try to understand, with my awareness, what allowed me, what I did, why I went so far down the path, and I started building a new belief system and I started building a new mental framework and I started, you know, analyzing and getting a better sense of self-awareness and my I guess, my mental imaging of myself and my self-concept shifted. My self-concept changed and from that place I filed for divorce, but that allowed us to start putting our marriage back together and I started taking care of myself on a regular basis. So my health came back in the line. But then a big question came up for me, and this is where you get to kind of like dive in and see what's true for you. I realized I spent the first 43 years of my life, the first 45 years of my life, trying to figure out how to live, just how to live, how to survive, how to get by, how to pay my bills, how to keep the lights on, how to keep things together, how to be able to wake up tomorrow. I lived the first 43, 45 years of my life in complete survival mode, just trying to figure out how to exist on this earth. And it was a very confusing, conflict-oriented, drama-filled, catastrophe-filled, sometimes violent decades. And then I started doing some deeper work. And then I started doing some deeper work and the quest in my life shifted from how do I live on this plane to why was I born, why was I even materialized?

Speaker 1:

See on a continuum of materialists who only see like, who only live in the material world, who are only after external rewards and external circumstances in their life, and in some case, if you're a hardcore materialist, you refuse to believe that there's anything beyond what you can see. But the other end of the continuum. The other end of the spectrum is a spiritualist and that's where you believe that 99.9% of everything that occurs you can't see. There's so much happening in the invisible force fields and in the auras, in our auras, and in in the unseen and in the unknown and in the uncertain, and there's so much, there's so much wisdom in what we can't see and there's so much depth in what we can't see. And if we just dive into what we can't see and dive into the wisdom of the unknown, then we'll begin to unlock higher level secrets, higher level insights, higher level, higher levels of awareness and consciousness that most people, especially when they're materialist, that they that can't tap into, they won't tap into or they won't harness.

Speaker 1:

And from that I am a spiritualist and from that spirituality I've realized that everything is on time and on purpose and there are no coincidences and no mistakes in this universe. Nothing's happening to you, nothing's happening to me. It's happening for you and for me, it's happening through you and through me. When I started to realize this and I realized that I'm not a coincidence and I'm not a mistake and I'm on time and I'm on purpose especially that last piece I'm on purpose I started wondering what is that purpose?

Speaker 1:

Why was I born? What is the purpose of my life? It's not just to collect stuff while I'm here. It's not just to experience stuff while I'm here. It's not just to experience things while I'm here, it's not just for my own needs to be taken care of and it's not just for my accumulation. It's not just for me to enjoy life. It's not just for me to get what I feel I want or for me to get what I feel I need. There's a deeper purpose and a deeper sense of duty that caused me to put on a meat suit with a supercomputer at the top of my spine, and I realized that I have a mind, I have a body, but I am the spirit within, I am the soul in control. And that soul chose to put on a meat suit to experience what it was like to be human and to unlock and unleash a purpose in this world world. And I'll tell you what I've discovered is that you have a useful purpose, a valuable purpose, a meaningful purpose in this world, and you also have the desires. You also have the tools, you have the, you have the talents, you have everything you need to successfully carry out this purpose in this world, but only only if you make the shift from trying to figure out how to live to trying to figure out why you were born.

Speaker 1:

Now I gave some insights earlier, a little earlier, about what I loved in my corporate career. I loved developing people and I love developing teams. But I want to take it a step further, because I want to. I want to, like, tell you what it's like to be in, in, in, in the body and live the life of my Kitco. I love going to the grocery store. I do. I don't know. There's, there's a part of me that that's a nurturer and I love going to the grocery store and buying food and I love cooking for my family, cooking for my family.

Speaker 1:

But when I'm at the grocery store, I'm empowering people. I ask them how they're doing and if they say, oh, I'm okay or it's good, I'm like, I want to dive into that with them and I ask them only good, tell me more, only okay, tell me more. Like, what's on the table, what's not clicking? Tell me more, let me help, let's dive in. When I'm, wherever, it doesn't matter. I went to a concert with my wife, angie it was a Tool concert with her friends and I was diving into she's out with people socializing, and I'm sitting in my seat next to some people and I started asking them you know, what do you do? What's the quality of your life? How are you Like? Where are things clicking for you and where aren't they clicking for you? Aren't they clicking for you? Getting really curious about who they are and trying to figure out a way if they're open to some support, trying to figure out a way to empower them to higher levels.

Speaker 1:

When I'm out running, I make it my obligation and my duty and my responsibility to leave everybody that I run past or that I walk past better. I want to give them a really spirited hi, how you doing, good morning, let's go, and if they don't look at me, I scream it louder because I want to leave them better than I found them. I want to leave them with more energy in their body, whatever that means. I want to leave them impacted, positively impacted in some way. I often coach people sometimes who don't want to be coached, and that's a lesson for me. I ran into that this week Someone who was completely closed off to someone helping, trying to help elevate them and their spirit and their circumstances and they were completely closed off and all I did was trigger them. That's my lesson and that's my learning that not everybody's open to coaching and being inspired and being empowered. But but oftentimes you'll find me developing people like wherever I go, whatever that means. This podcast is is a testament to how much I love empowering people, angie and I. I told her look, if I ever perish, just make sure the podcast keeps living and people can continue to listen to my voice, not for my legacy, just because there's some good, liberating, freeing, fulfilling content on this thing. That is my gift to humanity the YouTube channel too.

Speaker 1:

I want to develop people and develop teams and always leave them better than I found them. I do leadership training with an executive team in a business, in a very nice, profitable business, and my goal there is to just help them level up in their leadership ambitions, leadership traits, leadership qualities, their leadership capabilities and capacities, because I've got a little bit of leadership expertise under my belt too, from the Marine Corps and from corporate America, so I work with that team to help them level up. I speak, I have a speaking engagement tonight, I speak in front of rooms and I've had feedback when I was one time twice now actually I was in front of like two to 300 people and someone came up to me afterwards and said I've never seen like two hundred and fifty people not pick up their cell phone at the same time and be so locked into someone. Moment of finding your authenticity, of living from an authentic center, an authentic ground where you monetize being you and you don't monetize. You don't have to worry about what you're doing. You monetize who you are, because when you are purposeful and when you find your purpose, you literally monetize who you are, and I've done episodes on Ikigai. That's exactly what that is. When you take what you're good at, what you love to do, what people need and what people pay you for, you're going to find a sense of purposefulness and that might be an element or a layer of your purpose.

Speaker 1:

I spent the first 43 to 45 years of my life just trying to figure out how to live and try to keep it all together. But when I made that switch to why was I even born? Understanding and realizing that I'm here to empower people, develop people, develop teams, lift them up, make them better than they are, open them up to new circumstances, open them up to new opportunities. I realized that what I do is I help them elevate their consciousness. And when I help them elevate their consciousness, I help elevate global consciousness, because when one of us gets better, all of us get better, and that is why my business is called Inner Wealth Global, because we have a butterfly effect on the world. When one person's state of consciousness, internal state of consciousness, improves, everyone's internal state of consciousness improves, and that is my purpose.

Speaker 1:

I found my purpose and I'm asking you, and I'm asking you, I'm challenging you, I'm looking to help you step into a place of finding your purpose, because once you do, it all makes sense All of the challenges, all of the obstacles, all the wins, all the failures, all the desires, all the everything, all the reasons, the, the everything, all the reasons, the things that you wanted to do and the things that you didn't want to do. When you find your purpose, it all makes sense and your life just makes sense, and when it makes sense, there's a sense of freedom and fulfillment that I can't even express, that exists. Life becomes so clear and meaningful and you live from intention. I'm challenging you to reflect. Do you know why you're here? Do you know why you were born. You're either in your purpose or you're not. And if you don't know if you're in your purpose or you're not, and if you don't know if you're in your purpose, you're not. But I'll challenge you. Start asking yourself that question.

Speaker 1:

Because when you do, like your whole focus, all of your perspectives and all of your intentionality in this world shifts towards that purpose, and that's when your health will improve, that's when your relationships will improve, that's when your wealth will improve and that's when your overall joy, happiness, fulfillment, freedom, peace, love, harmony it all improves. But first you have to crack the code on your purpose and only you can find it, discover it. But you know it, it's buried inside of you. You just need to get inside of yourself and your mind and body and start putting the pieces together, start putting the puzzle together.

Speaker 1:

Again, nobody can do this for you, but I'm calling you to action right now and if I can help in any way, let me know. Just reach out and I'd love to help ask some questions that might be able to surface your purpose. But you are purposeful. You're not a coincidence, you're not a mistake. You're on time and you're on purpose. Do you know the reason that you were born. If you enjoyed what you heard and you want to learn more, go to wwwinnerwealthglobalcom for more tools and resources.