We were lucky to catch up with Michael Bryan recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Michael, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
I’ve always loved the word ‘resilience.’ The pure definition is “…the ability of an object to spring back into shape; elasticity.” I learned firsthand about that on the day I was born.
I was diagnosed with something called Failure to Thrive as an infant. It’s where a baby doesn’t want to eat or be held — in other words, live (hence the name). I was told that at about three months, it was like a light switch went off, and I was a happy, ‘normal’ baby. I laughed, ate, and decided to live. That moment has influenced every waking moment of my life since.
I was born to a mother who suffered extreme mental health issues and ultimately took her life. She abused me, and for a spell as a young gay kid, I was homeless. My parents kicked me out when they found out I was gay. Eventually, they took me back in, and I finished high school and college. My father was a psychologist, and he raised me with all the great metaphysical and spiritual works and classic psychoanalytical ones. The irony isn’t lost on me that he was a therapist and didn’t stop my mentally ill mother from abusing me.
When I got older, I suffered extreme depression, suicidal tendencies, and wild-as-hell anxiety. After years of inner work, I healed and became whole. Because of that extreme childhood, I’ve learned firsthand what works and what doesn’t in the world of genuine healing. I’ve also learned that there is tremendous darkness in the world.
We can’t be naive and think that embracing positivity and surface self-help is the answer. It’s not enough to think new thoughts and have some inner ‘faith’ that life will work out, money will come to us, and we will live the life of our dreams. We have to do more than change our unconscious belief systems, particularly if our early life was wildly traumatic and horrifying.
The trick is interlacing radical realism with thoughts, emotions, and whatever we call spirituality. It’s tricking the body into a different reality. It’s honoring that if we were abused, our bodies are accustomed to pain and distrust pleasure. It’s a very complex system of somatic bodywork and embracing wildly vacillating emotional states. While the self-help movement is great, it’s often surface and afraid of some of the deeper core issues of identity, ego, and how we live in today’s world. I work with very affluent people in power. I have an enormous ego that I’m constantly having to tame, so I work well with narcissists and toxic people in power. I help them embrace their dark inner lives and use them for good.
Thanks, so before we move on, maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I was born and raised in a small town near Seattle. In my early 20s, I moved to New England and attended Emerson College. Then, I moved to New York City and, a few years later, attended New York University. I ended up living in NYC for 30 years and moved to Los Angeles a few years ago. Like all of us, the pandemic realigned me with where I felt instinctually I could best serve people and live the life I had always wanted.
I never thought I’d be someone who healed accelerated individuals. When I was younger, I thought I was too much of an emotional mess, but then I realized the truth: surviving and then thriving after a shocking and abusive past was the perfect education to help others. I wrote a three-part memoir about my life to make sense of what I knew. It won a contest with Simon and Schuster, and something else happened: I changed. I could feel it. I healed in a very deep way.
The process of writing a narrative that was both the truth and one with the ending I felt I deserved liberated me—and started me down the path of wholeness. I then adapted it into a TV series based on my life that is now being read and considered in Hollywood. I use it as a template to mentor and heal others today.
From the ‘90s through the late ‘00s, I worked in corporate in Manhattan. I was behind the scenes, collaborating with very powerful and influential celebrities, C-level executives, CEOs, and Founders. I saw firsthand how they showed one face in front of the camera…and a whole other face when the cameras turned off. I saw how it was tearing some people apart. They were in an extreme battle with their egos.
I knew how to speak with them and aid them in navigating very public, fast-moving lives because I’m one of those people. I know my dark side, and I’ve learned to make it work for me. I know how to talk in a way that influential people can hear me. I’m blunt, no bullshit, and I also know a game must be played. I was fired from many of my jobs in the past because I didn’t understand how life worked. How work-life truly operated. I was terribly naive.
Since moving to Los Angeles, I’ve started working with people who run PR firms and music management companies and work with talent in studios and various media. Shark-infested waters are exciting and thrilling, but you must know how to work with people, or you’ll be eaten alive. It’s ruthless at a level most of us have never seen. The work ethic of a person in corporate and at higher levels of power and influence is unparalleled. But the cost can be death.
Heart attacks, spiking blood pressure, divorces, and substance abuse. The worst is depression and anxiety. If our true sense of Self is wrapped in our work, we never feel complete or whole. At the same time, we love to work. We love making money and changing the world.
My years of standing side-by-side with Kings and Queens of media and visible industries have taught me how to heal extremely wealthy and busy people and aid them in feeling a sense of purpose and grounding if they’re willing to do the terrifying inner work.
I’m also a huge and loud advocate for people like me who had to spend decades healing after unspeakable abuse. I’m turning 60 summer of 2024, and there is very little literature or discussion about those of us who are in our prime at an older age. It’s as if we’re supposed to feel ashamed we didn’t get our shit together sooner. I hate that. It’s absurd and infuriating and stupid. Some of the older generation can get lost in regret and complaining but that’s not all of us. Some of us are fucking bulldogs older. We’re tough. Scarred. Ready for battle. It’s absolutely essential resources are there for the younger generation, but for those of us who are progressive and very fit and driven after 50, we need new ways of living and new, radical models that aren’t based on diminishment but on fearless growth.
Since I was a homeless gay kid, my other focus has always been to build a brand that inspires others, such as myself, to keep going and build a career after being homeless. No child should be homeless, and for gay kids, it’s a terrible and shameful thing to feel unloved simply because you’re gay. I was kicked out for being gay, and for a spell, I was a prostitute on the streets starting at 11. I stopped turning tricks when I turned 20, but the effects have lingered, and I still heal from it today.
Shame for gay people is a terrible and very secret thing. No one talks about it in a big way. I have dedicated my life to helping others heal in terms of giving back, putting my money into building foundations and centers for homeless gay kids, and reaching out to adults who are still learning to love the little kids they once were.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Devour all you can to figure out why you don’t feel you can take in love and deserve to be loved. Read the great philosophies. Find psychology books and consume them, not only Instagram people and trite sayings. Go deep. Then go deeper. Probe and have a deep relationship with your TRUE inner life. All else is crap.
Distrust reductive answers. Easy answers. The New Thought movement is in love with the idea of the ‘path of least resistance.’ That isn’t life. It’s a dream. Go for very deep and critical answers. Question it all. My favorite button I wore as a kid was “Question Authority.” Pissed a lot of people off. I love that we’re a society today that is living this questioning in a big, bold way.
We all deserve to be loved, and we all deserve to be financially and emotionally successful, but that means nothing until we FEEL that truth. We are successful when we know we are as perfect as we are. Perfect in our imperfections. I know that can sound silly, but it really is the shit.
I’ve long said if you come to LA to find yourself, you’re screwed. We don’t know who we are here, and I feel our job is to work very hard to know ourselves deeply, and hopefully, we can inspire others to do the same.
Find a mentor who has their emotional shit together. Find gifted mentors. Ones who call you out, who have your back. Who gives you answers. Who challenges the talk therapy model. Find someone who not only talks the talk but can PROVE to you they also walk the walk. Talk is cheap; action is all.
Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?
My favorite book as a boy was “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” I loved the idea of an eccentric man saving a boy from poverty and pain. I was Charlie. I came from pain and lots of poverty, and Willy was the eccentric and weird mentor I always wanted to be. And today…I am.
My favorite part in the movie adaptation is the line from Shakespeare when Willy tells Charlie after he shares a big secret with him: “So shines a good deed in a weary world.
We’re weary. We’re tired. We need to shine our light in this world and do good deeds for ourselves first, then others. That’s how we’ll change this world to the best of our abilities. That’s true progress.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.michaelcbryan.com
www.mcbhappier.com - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaelcbryan_mentor/
https://www.instagram.com/mikeycbryan/ - Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcbryan/
