Ep245. The Courage to Be Loved: Moving Beyond the Surface and Into Your Full Expression.

This episode marks a powerful evolution in the Inner Wealth journey as Mike reflects on the shift from surface-level living into deeper self-exploration and meaning. What once centered around external success and achievement has expanded into something more profound—helping high performers navigate identity shifts, embrace their full expression, and step into a life rooted in depth, truth, and internal freedom.

The truth is, most people aren’t unfulfilled because they lack success, but because they’ve been chasing outcomes without addressing what’s underneath. In this episode, Mike breaks down how identity crises, emotional drivers, and suppressed parts of ourselves shape our experience—and how expressing those hidden parts creates the freedom, connection, and meaning we’ve been searching for all along.

Key Takeaways

1. Identity crises are part of growth.
   They signal expansion, transformation, and stepping into a new version of yourself. 
2. External success doesn’t resolve deeper questions.
   Even with wealth and achievement, many are left searching for meaning and fulfillment. 
3. We chase emotions, not outcomes.
   What we truly want is the feeling we believe success or material gain will provide. 
4. Hiding parts of yourself creates pressure.
   Suppressing who you are builds tension, while expression creates freedom. 
5. Depth creates real connection and purpose.
   Understanding yourself and sharing that truth allows for genuine connection and fulfillment. 

Notable Quotes

•  “If you haven’t experienced a few identity crises during the course of your life, then you’re not fully living and evolving, you’re just surviving.” 
•  “We never want the thing. We always want the emotional outcome we think that thing will provide.” 
•  “The more I express all these things that I’ve hidden away, the more freedom I feel.” 
•  “If they never really get to know the real you, they can’t fall in love with the real you.” 
•  “It takes courage to be loved.” 

Call to Action

If this episode connected with you and you’re ready to move beyond surface-level living into something deeper. If you want to explore what it looks like to fully express who you are and build a life rooted in meaning, freedom, and depth…

Email Mike directly:

mike@innerwealthglobal.com

You’ll connect directly with him—no assistant, no gatekeeper—just a real conversation to explore what’s possible.

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

Mike's Media:

Website: https://www.innerwealthglobal.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mikekitko
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mike_kitko
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mikekitko
Subscribe to my YouTube: / @mikekitko

Transcript

Welcome And Connect Online

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Welcome to the Inner Wealth Podcast where we learn and choose to live inspired each and every day. This morning I made a post on Facebook. And if you don't follow me on Facebook and on TikTok and with my YouTube channel and all the different in the in the uh comments below in the show notes, you're gonna find um the links to all of my social media and my website. So I would encourage you to go and and just connect with me in all of these different avenues and all these different approaches of connection. And I would love that. And follow along because I share a lot of a lot of things on a daily basis, a lot of uh reels and a lot of posts and a lot of stories on Facebook and Instagram. Go connect with me. So let's we we can we can we can draw each other closer. And that that's really what I want is to draw you guys, the people that are most interested in the work that I do, draw you closer to me so that we can we can jam and we can grow together. But if you're not connected to me on these platforms, go grab it. But today this morning I shared uh a powerful insight. And if I look at if I look at my life, oh that there was like the first 43 years, then there's been the last decade. And the last decade has been like living 10 different 43 year segments. And I it's hard to explain, but the first 43 years is pretty fixed. It was a pretty, it was a pretty fixed path. But the last 10 years, there's been a lot of uh changes of pace and uh seasons and chapters and just over and over, lots and lots of change and lots of transformation and lots of death and rebirth. It's been it's been a fascinating journey. It hasn't always been easy. This this spiritual evolution, spiritual growth is not always easy, but it is fascinating when you step back and you look at the grander picture of like what what God universe life is uh is pulling us through. Anyway, the the post that I made is if you if you haven't experienced a few identity crises, crises, that's the plural for crisis, if you haven't experienced a few identity crises during the course of your life, then you're not fully living and evolving. You're just surviving. And lately, I there's I've been a little bit unclear and living in a little land of confusion, I guess, that you know, that Phil Collins or that Genesis song. Um, been living in a little land of confusion, of there's so much that I want to share, and I I share so much. And they're not always connected, and they don't, they don't, they don't always seemingly connect, but they do share this underlying existential element of really, really understanding ourselves and life at a deeper level. And I love exploring the existential, the deep, deep existential meaning of life, understanding our ourselves, our own design, our own purpose, our own destiny, why we were born, what life is really all about. That those pursuits are my favorite pursuits. And I find myself lately craving deeper depth than I've ever experienced. Now, this episode, we're we're a few minutes in. This episode, if if you play at the surface level of life, all right. And what I mean by that is I've spoken in, you know, in large rooms where everybody was after wealth. And there was 250 people there, and 250 people, they were there to learn how to make money. And I uh I was there, I was a guest speaker, and I was helping people unlock the very, very best of themselves and unleash the real self, their real selves in the world, and get into the a deeper understanding of why they are craving the wealth, what they're really after. And I I jammed and out of a room of 250, I had a couple people come up and approach me and and and discuss and maybe do some work together, attend a workshop, attend a training session, maybe join my mastermind. But overall, most of that room was there just to make money and just to learn how to make money. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. But that is playing, that alone is playing at the surface level of life. It's it's literally just about rearranging the circumstances outside of you, not diving into the meaning of yourself, the meaning of life, the meaning of all of your insecurities and anxieties and the stories that are inside of you, and and unlocking the true potential of your design and your purpose, the deeper things, the more meaningful things, the things that'll create real freedom in your life, the pressuress, pressureless productivity that comes with getting into alignment with who we really are, not just chasing external circumstances. Like I don't know how to express it any better. It's just getting a just a deeper glimpse of life and life itself and ourselves and how we relate with life. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with wanting to make more money. And I don't, I'm not trying to give that that image, I'm not trying to project that. There's nothing wrong with it. But what I've learned from working with private clients that have incredible amounts of wealth and that do have the fortunes, and that do have the materials, and that do have the options and the and the availability of whatever they want. And I mean, literally, some people that I work with can can literally go out and get whatever they want and buy whatever they want, they they're still left with all these questions inside of them about what it's all for and and what what's the meaning of all of it. Because after they have what they thought was gonna bring them true meaning and true significance and and this true fulfillment in life, once they have everything they thought was gonna unlock every answer inside of them, they they they were still left guessing or they were still left wondering with a lot of a lot of doubt. And that is when oftentimes, with folks like that, after they exhaust the chase for money and for wealth and for material abundance and for an awesome, abundant, wealthy life, after they reach that, they start asking the questions. And it's because there's there's so much more than just the material side of life. And and I'm not saying, and I never want to give, never want to give the energy that it's not fun to create higher levels of circumstances or attain material wealth and abundance, but what you're after oftentimes with those things are the deeper questions that you haven't taken time to really answer. What is it all for? What am I really after? What am I, what emotion am I looking to experience? Because we never want the thing, we always want the emotional outcome, the emotional payoff that we think that thing will provide. And that's that's existential stuff. We need to understand the existential reality of our body, our mind, our spirit, our soul, our design, our purpose, all of that. And if we're not asking those questions, we're leaving a lot on the table. And a lot of people, most people on this planet, are just surviving until they die. And it's just about the chase for things outside of them to try to, I don't know, sometimes ignore those internal yearnings for more of who they really are. And lately, I've been putting out a lot of content that seems disjointed and discombobulated and all over the place. Some of it about expressing the full self that you are and expressing all the sides of you, and and I'm sharing more in my stories about my love of cooking and and you know how much I love cooking and taking care of, you know, taking care of people through food. I share uh my mine and Angie's uh animals. I share the fact that, you know, some of my favorite music and some of my favorite books and some of my political beliefs and you know, some of the some of my perspectives. I'm trying to share as much about me as possible on Facebook because that is what creates real freedom. And what I've experienced is in the course of my life, I've hid a lot of things away from the world because when I thought about sharing it with the world or with people, it created all of this pressure and stress inside of me. And what I'm realizing now at 53 years old is the more I express all these things that are buried under pressure and stress, all these things that I've hidden away, I feel the freedom that I've always craved in my life. And the freedom, the feeling of freedom, the pressurelessness, the lightness that that comes from that feeling of freedom, that's really what we're after with all of this like external stuff. And and we can have the pressurelessness and the pressureless productivity now. We can we can experience that freedom now, but we just have to ask the right questions. We have to ask deeper questions, and we have to we have to build a bridge between people that are going the same place differently, and the same place being radical, rawness, honesty, transparency, trust, depth, love, letting others voluntarily evolve, letting getting to the deepest, deepest parts of ourself and sharing it with other people. And when we share it with other people, the right people will love you even more, and the wrong people will show you exactly who they are. And I toyed around with and played around with the concept of this workshop that I would I'm looking forward to putting on at some point when the time is right. And the workshop's called The Courage to Be Loved, because so many people in this world are chasing being liked and chasing approval and chasing being accepted and being just, I don't know, superficially accepted by the rest of society that they're really not loved at a deep, deep, deep level because they never really share who they really are with the world. And in order to really fully be loved, for someone to let others voluntarily evolve, to let you voluntarily evolve into the perfected form that you came here to experience, you must share all the messy, all the beautiful, all the perfect, all the imperfect stuff with them. And if you never really share all the stuff with them, then they never really get to know the real you. And if they never really get to know the real you, they can't fall in love with the real you. And if they don't fall in love with the real you, you will never feel truly loved. So it takes, it takes courage to be loved. My favorite, favorite memory in a coaching experience, and one of my coaching work uh experiences, it came through, and that's over the last 10 years. It came at a workshop. And this was going back around five, maybe six years ago, somewhere in that time frame. And I can't remember the workshop title. I remember where where it was. It was here in St. Louis or in St. Charles where where I uh where I live, right outside of St. Louis. It the workshop was there. There's probably around 35, maybe 40 of us in a room. And I was the facilitator, and every the student body was 35 or 40 people, can't remember exactly, it was somewhere in that range. But I remember seeing the room. I can put myself back there. And it was a three-day workshop, three-day experience. And it it this is the pinnacle and the high point of my coaching experience. And I'm in front of the room, and for three days I've been asking deep in deep existential questions and asking people to get deeper into themselves to understand who they are and what are they scared of? What do they want? What do they desire most? What what feeling, what emotion are they really after? What feeling or emotion have they has always been elusive? What state are they looking for? Like I'm asking these deep in existential questions. Why are you here? What do you feel your purpose is? What are you trying to, what are you trying to unlock in yourself and in the world? And some people are playing at a deep level and some people are playing at a superficial level because not everybody's meant to go that deep. Not everybody has the courage to go that deep. But after three days of self-exploration and digging deep and diving deep into each other or into ourselves and sharing with each other, on the third day, I asked a question. It's like, what has been the pattern and theme for your whole life, the thing that you've struggled with, a thing that you've struggled with the most that you've never seen to outrun. And it just has a cycle and pattern. And you feel if you could just shake this thing and just loosen the grip that this thing has on you, then you could you could finally be free. And this one guy that had been there for three days who hadn't said a word, he he raised his hand and and he said, I've never felt accepted. I've never felt like I belonged anywhere. And I've always felt like I was I was like a misfit. And all I've ever wanted was to feel accepted and like I belonged and loved and like I was part of something. And it was a beautiful moment. Beautiful, beautiful moment. I will never forget this. Because at that moment, because he was speaking my language, because that's how I felt for the first 43 years of my life. And it's still what not I battle every day, but it's still part of me that that I look to heal and resolve and make sense of on a daily basis as well. And it just doesn't have control of me like it used to. And I I asked him to come up in the front of the room and I put him on on my chair, the the the chair that I was sitting on at the front of the room, the stool, and I went behind the crowd. And I was so all of us are looking at at this guy, he was in his late 20s, early 30s, and I said, if you've ever, and I'm speaking to everybody, I said, if you've ever felt like you don't belong, like you don't fit in, like you're a misfit, like if you share every piece of yourself that you'd be rejected, like there's you've hidden parts of yourself away, like you've tucked them away, like you've kept secrets because you couldn't share all of who you are with the world. Because if the world really knew who you were, then then you would have no friends and you would be unloved, and nobody would be unlovable, and everybody would tap out of your life. If you've ever felt any of that or experienced it, raise your hand, and every single person in the room raised their hand. And and in that moment, that that guy that was at the front of the room, he bent over, he cracked open, and he started to cry the most, the most relieving, awakening, opening cry that you could ever imagine. And it's like decades of freaking grief and decades of shame and decades of brokenness and decades of hiding all started to release through emotion that he had buried so deeply and he had been running from his whole life, but he didn't know how to handle it or deal with it or release it or let it go or to relate with it. And he had tried everything up to that point, and the only thing left was to share in a room full of people what that depth was, what that darkness was, what that shadow was. And when he shared it, he saw that he was not alone. And there was many, many people walking around just like him, feeling the same exact thing. And he thought he was the only one. And when he saw that we all had the same thing in common, some people at different volumes than others, but we were all suffering from the same thing in some way, shape, or form, then he finally felt normalized and he finally felt validated. It didn't mean that he would never face that again, but the journey of facing it had finally, finally been initiated and finally begun. I've been thinking about that experience all week and reflecting on that all week. And that's why I talked about potentially hosting a workshop called The Courage to Be Loved. It's for moments like that and freedom in moments like that. And yesterday I I called that that person and I said, Hey, I just want you to know that I've been thinking about you a lot today and a lot this week. And it was that was the high point of my coaching experience. And he said, Mike, it's one of the high points of my life. And it it initiated everything and started everything. And man, how liberating and rewarding is that. Guys, that right there is not playing at the surface level of life. Because before that, I think the I think the workshop was called like the the millionaire mindset, maybe something like that, millionaire mindset. And a lot of those folks came in for the money, look looking for ways to make money. And he was one of them. And he came in playing on the surface, and that's why it took him three days. But but then in that moment of vulnerability, in that moment of honesty, he got to the depth that was gonna, that was gonna restart the process of resolving the thing that he wanted all of the money for, because if he had enough money, then he would finally feel like he was valuable and accepted and acceptable and lovable and loved and like he fit in. And the money was never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever going to do that. The only way to do that is to share that with other people and help see that it's just a story, it's just a belief, it's not reality. And that no matter how unlovable, defective, broken, like a misfit, like you don't belong, no matter how much noise is going on in your mind and body, that If everybody is holding some element of that, it's obviously not true for anybody. And that creates freedom that most people think can only be found in rearranging circumstances. Guys, I'm on the lookout for people that want to do life at a deeper level. I've got three private clients, and I'm always looking to add now, I'm looking to add three more private clients that want to, that want to establish a relationship. These private clients are going to be, they're going to have some financial wherewithal. All right. They're going to have some level of material success. They're going to have some level of business success. They're likely going to be an entrepreneur. They're likely going to have the material abundance and the immaterial success, but they're still going to have those deep, deep inner existential questions that haven't been answered. And they know they're looking for something deeper, but they don't know that they're looking for something. They don't know what they're looking for, but they they hear the voice within that knows they want something deeper. I'm looking for mastermind students. And these are people that are coming in to play with other people and to do this work with other people and to be a community with other people, with other seekers seeking more depth, and doing some spiritual study, doing some existential study, doing some design work in the soul sciences to understand and gain higher levels or deeper levels of self-awareness. Reading material that's going to help unlock deeper, deeper questions and deeper answers in life. Studying new things, learning new things, sharing new things. Sharing themselves within a community, retreating with these people, forming bonds and alliances with these people. Not just playing at the surface level, but sharing really the depths of who they are. I'm looking for looking for more people to attend workshops where within a couple days, two or three day period, we start the process of unlocking deeper levels of understanding, deeper levels of of fulfillment, deeper levels of purpose, deeper levels of design, deeper levels of understanding of the layers of ourselves so that we can really start to share who we are in the world and stop playing at the surface and start playing in the depths of the depths of who we really are and not relying on external circumstances to give us that deep internal fulfillment that can only come from fully embracing your design, your purpose, and your ultimate destiny, which is to unleash yourself in this world. This is what I'm looking for. I'm always on a lookout. And with this podcast, whether you're listening on Apple, Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or you're watching this on YouTube, or you're just watching a reel on social media, if you think this will connect with somebody else, please share it. I'm trying to grow my impact. I'm trying to grow the amount of freedom that I make through my impact. And I'm trying to grow my community of depth seekers who are tired of only playing on the surface, who know there's deeper questions that need to be answered, but they don't know those questions, and they don't know really what they want, but they know they want to awaken something deeper in them. This is what I want. I want to serve you and I'm gonna continue to share myself on the Interwealth Podcast and keep showing up and keep making great content. And I'm asking for your help. If we mutually support each other, we're gonna go a lot farther because life is a team sport. All right. I'm gonna keep this going. If from what I understand, in the show notes, there's a thing that says text me. And it's called fan mail. Don't worry about the fan mail thing, but it says text me. And I believe now that uh that component in the past, you could text me and I I wouldn't, I I would get it, but I couldn't literally respond to it. But now I believe I can respond. Text me and let's see if this thing works and let's have an engagement with each other. That's a that's going to be available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and across other podcasting platforms. On YouTube, just send me an email. Mike at interwealthglobal.com. Anybody around the world, send me an email. Let's engage, let's let's connect. I'm not a super busy person. I don't have a super busy life. I don't have a full schedule. I love engaging with my community. And you will engage with me, not an assistant or a bot or anything else. You will connect directly to me. No matter what country you live in, no matter what continent you live on, I would love to engage and hear from you. Let me know you exist so we can start to form a relationship. Instead of me being a teacher and you being a student and us not really knowing each other, let's actually start to form community around this. All right. And from there, if we develop enough community, then maybe I'll launch like a Facebook, a free Facebook group where we can commune together. All right. But either way, let me know you exist. I want to connect directly with you because I want to get to those people that want more depth in life. I want you. You're seeking me, I'm seeking you. It's time to do some work together. All right. I love y'all. Thanks for uh tuning in to another episode. We're approaching the 250th episode, and uh I feel like we're gonna, we're gonna we're gonna do some really cool stuff between now and then. But I'm really looking forward to the quarter century mark on this podcast. It's a lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of effort that I'm putting into this thing. And I hope I hope it's making a difference in your life. If you enjoyed what you heard and you want to learn more, go to www.innerwealthglobal.com for more tools and reports.