The Inner Wealth Podcast

Ep189. Never a Finish Line, Just This Moment – Living as Your Soul, Not as the Ego.

• Mike Kitko

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In this episode, Mike dives into the liberating truth behind the ego’s illusion of "arrival"—the seductive idea that peace and fulfillment lie just beyond the next milestone. He opens with a raw recounting of his own 52-year chase: from yearning for middle school to enduring Marine Corps boot camp, from corporate climbs to building a purpose-driven business, only to find the goalposts forever shifting. With a nod to a Buddhist maxim—that our struggles are so universal we’d laugh at their lack of originality—Mike blends personal stories with spiritual wisdom from Eckhart Tolle and his own awakening at 43. He challenges the ego’s carrot-on-a-stick game, showing how it traps us in unconscious living, and offers a soul-centered alternative: surrendering to the now. This isn’t about abandoning dreams, but about finding freedom by releasing the delusion that “someday” holds the key to joy.

Key Takeaways

  1. The Ego Drives a Never-Ending Chase
    • The promise of “okayness” after the next goal is a lie that keeps you running—peace is already here.
  2. Arrival Is an Illusion
    • Your last breath is the only finish line; the journey itself is where life unfolds.
  3. Surrender Unlocks True Freedom
    • Embracing the present, not fighting it, floods your life with joy and ease.
  4. The Mind Craves, the Soul Rests
    • The ego hungers for more, but the soul finds wholeness in what is, not what’s next.
  5. Conscious Living Is Soul-Led
    • Step out of the ego’s chaos and into your soul’s calm by choosing the now over the “then.”

Notable Quotes

  1. “If we all sat around a campfire and told our deepest, darkest secrets, we’d laugh at each other out of lack of originality.”
  2. “The ego throws up a smokescreen to keep us chasing more… it’s the carrot you can never catch.”
  3. “There is no arrival… and if that deflates your ego, good.”
  4. “The mind wants to want more than it wants to have.” – Eckhart Tolle (shared by Mike)
  5. “Take back control from your ego and live as the soul. That’s who you really are.”


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 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:

There's an old Buddhist maxim that says if we all sat around a campfire and I'm talking about all 8 billion of us on this planet if we all sat around a campfire and told our deepest, darkest secrets, we would all laugh at each other out of lack of originality. Now, I say this a lot when I'm teaching and when I'm coaching and when I'm creating content. I'm creating content. I say this a lot because it keeps making sure that people feel normal in their beingness, in their humanity. All right, there's none of us on this planet that have everything figured out. Now I know a lot of really, really wealthy people and a lot of successful people. I get to work with a lot of wealthy and successful people, and I know that nobody has it all figured out. Everyone's, everybody's overcoming a challenge, an obstacle, their struggles in life, everyone's dealing with something, everyone's working through something and no one, no one gets there. All right, and I think that's important, it's an important way to start this episode. No one gets there. We're all working on something and I think the human dilemma, the ego dilemma, let's say that the ego dilemma is that as soon as we have this thing, as soon as we become this thing, as soon as we experience this thing, then we'll feel this sense of freedom and liberation and fulfillment for the rest of our lives, like there's this magical destination, that as soon as we cross this line, that everything will be smooth sailing for the rest of our life.

Speaker 1:

And that is a 100% ego delusion. It's an illusion that the ego throws up as a smokescreen to keep us chasing more, to keep us moving forward, to keep us. It's almost like the carrot right. Like you know what I mean when I say there's a stick and you put. You know, at the end of the stick, right. Like you know what I mean when I say there's a stick and you put. You know, at the end of the stick. You put a string and from the string you hang a carrot and then you know that carrot is maybe. You tape that carrot to your back and then you start running and the carrot's always in front of you and you can never catch up to it. That's what the ego does to us and this is what it's called to live unconsciously.

Speaker 1:

When somebody says that you're living with your eyes wide open, or if you're awake, it means you see through the ego illusion, the ego delusion, that at some point in this fictitious narrative, in this future state state that some point you will arrive and it'll all be okay. Now, this has been a recurring theme in my life and this has been our theme this week and it's something that I've had to. I got to actually teach and reflect on and I got to reconnect with in various coaching calls and teaching containers and even in my workshop a couple weeks ago, that there is no arrival, there is none. And if that kind of deflates your ego, good, as far back as I can remember when I was living unconsciously. And look, when you're in your young, formative years and you don't have awakened, enlightened parents, when you don't have parents on a spiritual path that that have the. You know that see the world through a different lens of truth and hear a different lens of truth or hear different sounds of truth. When you don't have those awakened people in your life, then you often live through your ego and your ego dominates you until maybe there's enough pain for your ego to start to relinquish control and authority and power and influence in your life. But as far back as I can remember, I'll start at elementary school.

Speaker 1:

As soon as I was finished elementary school and the school that I went to, elementary school was grades one through six, and seventh and eighth were middle school, but it was at a different school, all right, and grades one through six. You went to elementary school, then you went to middle school and then from there you went to high school. But it was like man, I just remember being in fifth and sixth grades, thinking, shit, I can't wait till this is over and I can just go to middle school and everything will be okay. And then I remember getting to middle school and I remember thinking, man, as soon as I get to high school, everything will be okay. And then I remember going to high school and it was even more brutal than I could ever imagine for me, my experience, and it was as soon as I graduate, everything will be okay. And then I got a first job right out of high school and I was making $5 an hour as a, as a draftsman. And as soon as I as soon as I got that job, you know, as soon as I graduated high school and I got that job, everything would be okay. And then, as soon as I got that job and that wasn't enough money then as soon as I got the next job, everything would be okay. And then I enlisted in the Marine Corps and, man, as soon as I ship off for boot camp, everything will be okay. And then, soon after that, I'm at Parasol in South Carolina and, man, as soon as I graduate boot camp, everything will be okay.

Speaker 1:

And then, when I graduated boot camp, then I went into the fleet Marine forces and I was a full-fledged Marine in training for combat. Then, man, when I realized that I wasn't going to be a Marine for the rest of my life, as soon as I got out of the Marine Corps, then, as soon as I was going to get transferred, me, angie, my wife Angie and our older daughter, we were going to get transferred to Portland Oregon. As soon as we got to Oregon, everything was going to be okay. Then, after that, as soon as I spent 13 years at that company, and as soon as I went to the next company, everything would be okay. I went to the next company, everything would be okay.

Speaker 1:

And then, after, after I spent a couple years with that company and and did a transformation in in the plant manager seat and I knew that we were going to move out, move from the West coast, and as soon as, as soon as I I got out of Portland Oregon, everything would be okay. And then we got to St Louis and we've been here for 12 years, but I had a job, a position that I couldn't stand, and then eventually, I lost that job. And as soon as I found another job, everything would be okay. And then, when I found another job and that one was miserable too I got fired from that. And as soon as I start making some money, everything will be okay. And this okayness as soon as I got my first client in my business, everything would be okay. And then, as soon as I got my first client in my business, everything would be okay. And then, as soon as I got my 10th client, everything would be okay. And then, as soon as I had my first mastermind, everything would be okay. And then after that, as soon as I and I hope you see that everything has never just all been okay.

Speaker 1:

Now this isn't a pity party on my life. My life is okay, but my circumstances are never exactly where I would prefer them to be all at the same time. And the ego keeps moving the needle. If I allow the ego to rule my life, to dominate my life, the ego keeps moving the needle. Maybe the ego says, hey, this sales number in our business will be great. And then as soon as you hit this, the target moves Maybe the number of students in our mastermind. As soon as we have that, then the ego moves the goal and as soon as we have this new number, then everything will be okay. And as soon as we have one speaking engagement a month, everything will be okay. And then, when we have that, as soon as we have two speaking engagements, everything will be okay. And this shows up everywhere in my life and when I wake up and open my eyes I can see that if the ego is running the show, I live a pretty miserable life. Now, luckily, I feel like I am somewhat awake and I see through this delusion.

Speaker 1:

But there's times that I still fall back in the patterns of the ego taking control and the ego guiding the ship and the ego kind of taking control of the uh, of the steering wheel for a little bit, until I realized, whoa, wait, am I? What am I doing? When, when I realize in in's instance, in maybe a bout of frustration, wow, I'm taking this whole thing way too seriously again and I have everything I need. But I'm living through my wants and I have oxygen, water, nutrition, exercise, rest, I've got a beautiful home that's safe and it's more than I ever thought I'd have when I was a kid. But the ego takes over and says that there's going to be a new destination as soon as we get there, we'll be okay and that there keeps moving.

Speaker 1:

Even I fall back into these traps and I've been on this spiritual journey for eight years and I still, I still fall into the ego trap of the ego subtly slips in to control and authority starts guiding the ship. Then I I feel my body racked with frustration. My body racked with frustration, racked with anxiety, racked with, sometimes, anger, and I get to wake up again and say well, that pesky ego slipped in and took control and took authority. And now I'm going to loosen the grip that the ego has on my life. The soul, my soul, this soul, the soul that I am, the am that I am, is going to assume responsibility and control and authority over this life Ego. I've got the steering wheel from here.

Speaker 1:

And then when I let go of the seriosity of life and I loosen the grip and the attachment that the ego has on my life and I start to approach life from a little more joy and a little more peace and a little more harmony, and things start to flow in my life again. Joy starts to flow, love starts to flow, peace starts to flow, because the ego is the anti-peace, it's the anti-joy, it's the anti-love, it's the desire, the deep desire, the deep attachment, the deep draw to higher level material circumstances at the expense of peace, joy and love. And this is repeated over and over for 52 years, actually 43 years that I was blind to it. And then, at age 43, when I started this spiritual journey, I got to open my eyes and see the chaos and the havoc and the struggle that the ego created completely unnecessarily that even when I had everything I could possibly need, there was still this doubling down of action and obsession and desire and craving and longing to multiply my circumstances at the expense of my peace, my joy and my love. I hope this is making sense and I'm trying to use my life as an example. That if we all sat around a campfire and we told our deepest, darkest secrets, we'd all laugh at each other.

Speaker 1:

For lack of originality Because this is what's been showing up in my life is that some of my students some discovery calls that I've had some people in workshops. They get lost from time to time in the fact that they have this vision of arriving somewhere and everything being okay and we never, ever arrive Because there is no arrival. There's only one arrival, there's only one destination in this human lifetime and that's your last exhale. That's the only arrival. Now there's a couple things, a couple spiritual things and a couple mystical things that we can recognize. To help us understand this, and one of my favorite quotes by a fellow named Eckhart Tolle and if you've never read the Power of Now, a New Earth, stillness Speaks is a great book of his. If you've never read these, explore some Eckhart Tolle, because one of the most profound quotes that he says in the Power of Now is the mind wants to want more than it wants to have, and in this context, the mind is the ego, the mind is the ego, the mind is the ego.

Speaker 1:

When the mind assumes control and authority over the direction of your life, then you live as the ego, and the ego will always create this gap in your okayness. The ego will always create dissatisfaction. The ego will always create insecurity. The ego will always create inadequacy or insignificance. The ego mind creates a problem and then it assigns material possession or a circumstance outside of you or someone else's behavior. It assigns the solution to the problem that it created inside of you to some circumstance outside of you and says as soon as we can get this external circumstance to look the way we want or to be the way we want, then this problem that we've created inside will go away.

Speaker 1:

Even though there is no problem, now here's a Mike Kikko quote. You have no problems. The only problem that you've ever had is you think that you have a problem. The problem that you have is that your mind created the problem and then your mind wanted to solve the problem as well. The same thing that created the problem wants to solve the problem.

Speaker 1:

You can look at this in terms of how people relate financially when they're broke. I know real life examples of this. When they're broke, they think they need $10,000 to be okay. And then when they have $10,000 in their bank account, it needs to be $100,000. And when there's $100,000 in the bank account, it needs to be a million. And when there's a million dollars in the bank account, it needs to be 5 million. And when there's 5 million, there needs to be 10 million. And it's a never-ending quest. Because the problem is that they think there's a problem when you have nothing and now you have $10,000, but the same problem exists inside of you. The problem is the perception of a problem. The problem is not the number. The problem is the gap, the longing, the disconnect, the story, the belief, the insecurity, the inadequacy, the insignificance that's inside of you. And the ego creates that and says, as soon as dot, dot, dot will be OK. And when you get close to having that, it just moves the needle. The mind wants to want more than it wants to have. In this context, the mind is the ego and the ego is the mind.

Speaker 1:

You can create and I would encourage you you can create a vision for your life. I want you to create a vision for your life. I would encourage you. You can create a vision for your life. I want you to create a vision for your life and if you've never done so, go on wwwinnerwealthglobalcom. Connect with my free Choose your Destiny course. There's 12 videos and a workbook and there's all kind of great work in there and I will teach you the creation process and I will teach you how. In that course, I will teach you the creation process and I will teach you how. In that course, I will teach you how to create a vision for your life and that will be the destination, the temporary destination, that you can shoot for.

Speaker 1:

I encourage you to have a destination in mind that you would love to get to, a destiny that you would love to experience, because that's probably your soul calling you to some higher level circumstances that your soul came here to experience. But please understand that that experience of those higher level circumstances will not solve problems. They will just help you experience a higher level way of being and a higher level experience of this world and of this worldly plane. And if you're like all the other 8 billion people on the planet and you create this vision and you start walking your life towards that vision. When you get about 90% of the way there, even if you wait that long, you'll recreate that vision and that vision will get bigger and you'll just continue to march towards that. And as you get closer to that one, then you'll just create a higher level vision and that vision will move and that destination will constantly move, because the mind wants to want more than it wants to have. The mind doesn't want to possess, it just wants to crave, it just longs for something new. So it keeps moving the target, it keeps moving the needle.

Speaker 1:

It's okay to march towards higher level circumstances. Just be awakened that getting somewhere is not going to bring any relief that you can't have right now. Create a vision for your future, but take action and be in the now. Don't live as the future is the only place you can be okay. Be okay now, because all being okay is is falling in love and surrendering to the present moment. That doesn't mean you can't take action towards a new future in the present moment. It means don't reject the present moment and don't delay your peace and love and joy of the present moment until you get to some fictitious place. That won't be okay either, because you'll move to target.

Speaker 1:

You've only ever lived in one place and you've only ever lived in one time. You've only ever been here, wherever that is, and you've only ever lived now. You've never lived in the past, you've never lived in the future. You've only ever lived now. And all time is now turning into the next now. Turning into the next now.

Speaker 1:

And if you've never allowed yourself to be okay now, what makes you think that you'll give yourself permission to be okay in a future now? So the goal isn't to settle for your existing circumstances. Your goal is to fully commit to surrendering to the present moment, knowing that by living in the present moment, by taking action in the present moment, by upgrading your level of choices and decisions in the present moment, you can upgrade the future. But it doesn't take rejecting or resisting the now. It takes surrendering to the now and doubling down in the now, being more powerful in the now, being joyful in the now so that the next now is joyful as well. And the next now is joyful, then the next now is joyful All the way up until your last exhale. The destination is an illusion. The journey this is cliche, but the journey is the destination.

Speaker 1:

And if you ever feel that disconnect inside of you that today is incomplete, today is you're in a state of lack, that today your circumstances aren't okay, that today and right now that you need something that you don't have, I want you to sit down, encourage you to sit down, close your eyes, breathe deeply in your nose and out through your mouth and ask yourself a couple simple questions Do I have the oxygen that I need? Do I have the water that I need? Do I have the nutrition that I need? Can I, can I attain the exercise that I need and can I attain the proper rest that I need Oxygen, water, nutrition, exercise and rest and if the answer to all five of those is a yes, that you have access to all five of those, you need nothing. You need nothing, but you deserve everything. But that doesn't mean that you reject and resist the present moment. It means you be present and powerful in this moment so that the next moment has a chance to be even more fruitful and beneficial. But you can't make tomorrow more powerful and more pleasurable by rejecting and resisting now, because when you get to that moment, you'll just reject and resist that moment too.

Speaker 1:

Guys, I hope this makes sense. There is no destination that's going to make you feel complete and satisfied. The journey is the destination. That is where freedom and fulfillment is the journey, not the destination. Enjoy every breath, not just that, the anticipation of the breath that you're going to have after your circumstances have upgraded. Enjoy each and every breath. Be fulfilled and free now. Live free and fulfilled now, and that'll allow you to truly experience everything that life has to offer. But reject no present moment. If so, you're living as the ego, and by living as the ego, you'll only invite more pain, more chaos and more suffering into your life. Take back control and authority from your ego and live as the soul. The soul in control. That's who you really are. If you enjoyed what you heard and you want to learn more, go to wwwinnerwealthglobalcom for more tools and resources.