Empowering Students to Succeed Through Education, Inspiration and Mobilization with Michael T Brown the author of “A Beautiful Challenge”

I'm glad to have with us today, Michael T. Brown.

He works in the area of education, to help people to

navigate situations they have found themselves in

and helps people to be empowered and inspired

and mobilized. He teaches through his website

brownsleadership.com. He has some great things to

share with us today about he's had some success and

some challenges in his life. But Michael, welcome to Beyond Adversity.

Thank you, sir, I appreciate the invite, I look forward to our conversation.

It is awesome to have you with us, you have some great

insights and you've worked with some challenging situations

in your career. But other fields, you faced a few challenging

situations of your own, you may have had some adverse life

events or something that you've had some challenges with,

can you just share with us a little bit of something that you have

had to face in your life? That kind of led to what you're doing

now? Because I got a feeling what you're doing now in serving

others, was at least partly influenced by some experience you had in your life?

Great question, Dr. Brad, I appreciate that. I would, when I

think about my life story, I look at it really as a journey, journey

to helping others. And when I think about my role as a therapist,

as a challenger, as an educator, unless you're talking to somebody

about this the other day, I think one of the reasons I'm in this

profession, is obviously to help and serve others. But it's really to

help me focus on me to be the best version of myself that I can be

every day, and you know, life's challenges are going to hit all of us.

No matter what street we live on, right? Those challenges are coming.

And so whether it's been, you know, my personal challenges of

navigating a career in education and counseling over 20 years, no,

I'm gonna imagine your background as a pastor, I'm sure you can

probably relate to that, right? Where there may have been moments

where you had to minister but you needed to be ministered to?

Absolutely, yes, I've had moments where I've had my moments of

depression and other things that I've had to deal with and have

sought help in those areas. And so it sounds like has been a part

of your journey as well.

Absolutely. And, you know, but it never ceases to amaze me, you know,

what can happen when we're honest about our challenge, willing to be

transparent. And when we commit to personal growth, and oftentimes

that personal growth, you know, needs to come with a process or

with some help some assistance. And for some people is maybe

through therapy for other it's through, you know, spiritual major,

whatever it is that they see. But I think it's important that all of us,

you know, identify the areas that you strengthen, they'd be

willing to put to work.

Well, my goal is one of those areas, what can you tell us a story

about maybe one particular experience or a situation that you

had to face, that was a particular challenge for you that you had to deal with?

Yeah, personally, I would say, in the past couple of years, the

decision to leave being a full time school counselor, and moving

out to private practice. For years, and in my role as a school

counselor, which I, you know, thoroughly enjoyed, and was a

blessing to me, and I believe that I was able to be a blessing to

others, I felt a need for more a desire for more, and it was there

moments where, you know, I saw myself, you know, leaving the

role I was in, but not quite sure how to navigate what the next level

looked like, for me, and I think a lot of people can relate to that when

I talk to people about, you know, their careers, you know, they, we can

be grateful for where we are and appreciative for where we are you

feel led to more. And I believe, you know, my faith informs me that,

you know, I think we can be ambitious on one side, right to have

drive and want more and have to have desire to achieve more

and do more. But on the same on the on the flip side, we need to

also be thankful for where we are. And I think that's a good recipe

to help navigate getting to the next level that helped me personally,

to keep my antennas open for what it looked like, for me the next

level, professionally, but at the same time to be thankful for where

I was because all the things that led me up to making a decision to

make that leap into full time private practice. My career was

preparation, in many ways, it was a bit of a graduation and

navigating that, you know, had it's had its ups and downs. It's a

real challenge. But at a certain point, you know, as I was building

towards it, there comes a certain point where we need to make a

leap to step out on faith and that and I would say that was a

challenging time for me but but fortunately, we were able to

navigate it and and see some real success on those.

What do you think were some of the action points for you that

you just said, "Okay, this is what I really need to do." You indicated

in our conversation about being kind of aspirational, wanting more

for yourself being thankful for what you've had, and yet there had

to be some point, the tipping point or the inflection point where

you said,"Okay, this is the actions I need to take, or go to the next

step for me." Can you think about maybe what one or two of those

actions were for you?

For me, it was being involved in, you know, staying committed to the

overall mission. And so with So, which is to continue to empower

individuals? Right. So if I stayed married to the mission, that was

a reminder, for me, that was an action point, to say, you know,

career paths may may alter and shift seasons of life may change,

but what are my anchors, so my anchor, my personal anchors is

my faith, right? You know, so staying committed to my daily

disciplines, re reinvesting into my, my spiritual walk, I call them

the big three, you know, our mental health, our physical health

and our spiritual health. So those are some really good action

points, I think. And that helped me to stay, to expand my

mind, my learning capacity, the reading, and you know, other

things that help our mentality mental health can help, therapy

can help, you know, physical health, taking care of our physical

bodies, you know, we're getting good rest working out, and our

spiritual health, that part of ourselves that we can't see. Now, for

many that may take on more religious or spiritual faith. But for

others, it can be the intangibles, our creativity, our imagination,

our intuition. So there were moments during that season where I

had to recommit to those things, to continue to invest in myself.

And as I did that, I was building as I went, some people may

be sitting on their job, and they have an epiphany, I need to

leave and go start a, a cookie company or whatever, right?

That wasn't my path. My path was, keep doing what you're

doing, and build as you go. And as you build, it can kind of is

to kind of grow and take

all of what you said about being married to the mission, the

mission doesn't always have to take the same exact form.

You mentioned, you are a counselor, I was so in a school

setting, like at a public

School counciler, I worked on all three levels over my 17 years

Elementary, middle school, high school, or college.

I worked at all.

Yeah

and spent some time.

There you go. So you worked with students in that type of

environment. And that's admirable in every way. And yet, you

know, you're still married to the mission, still doing what you're

doing. It just did. Now you're in private practice and your

consultant, and so on to help people on kind of a grander scale

or a more ambitious scale, perhaps, or aspirational, I would say.

And yet, you've mentioned something I think is so important

here, Michael, about how a part of this whole process for you

is you're married to your mission, but a part of your mission is

you're connected to a higher power, your spiritual walk. And so

let's go there for a second. How do you think and especially as

we think and reflecting for other folks who may be folks in UB

counselor may be listening to our voices here today? About what

is the role? What is the place of developing our spiritual walk or

spiritual connectedness, I like to say, in terms of your own

personal development, and then how can you that empowers

you to be empowering to other people? Tell us about that.

Yeah, really good question. I think, for people of faith, that,

you know, it's so important that we be a part of something bigger than ourselves.

For some individuals that bigger than themselves as a higher

power. For others, they may connect more through nature. For

others, they may connect more through, you know, connecting

with other human beings more of a moral focus, right? So when

I'm working with individuals, and I talk about mind, body and

spirit, the spiritual part of it, it's like we have a spirit the

question is whether or not we're going to invest in right.

You know, we I believe that we're trying beings, right mind,

body and spirit. So what are

we doing that's a choice you can choose to be developed

that or to let it grow to lay fallow?

That's right. And even if it's even if it's not a religious reference,

and for some people want to, they still think has an innate

desire in us right? To want to be a part of something bigger

than ourselves. Right, that it's not just about me in mind,

but how can I serve others? So I believe we recruit so for

me personally, I believe there's a creator who has created

us to be creative All right. So if the Creator has created us

to be creative, how can I create without being connected to

that source? So it's a constant reminder, right? To realize,

again, back to Mary to the mission, what is what is the mission,

if our mission is to just serve ourselves, then you know, that's

short lived, but when we invest in others, and that's part of

the mission is to inspire the next generation to help individuals

and meet them where they are, to live their best life.

That's back to but your Have you the Creator, and you were the

created, and then you created the new craft creation. But none of

it really happens without connection, you got to be connected. If

you're disconnected to the higher power, then you really do not

have a resource, you do not have a source of energy and you on

your of your own accord, you will lose energy you'll you'll burn out

and as many people do,

and some people have burnout, let's face it. Some folks are burnout

on the religious setting. And the complications that come with that.

Right, you hear a lot of times the question is, you know, Are you a

person? On my assessment that I, when I interviewed when I assess

folks in counseling? I asked them a question, as a part of the

assessment. And the question is this, "Is spirituality or faith a

part of your life? And if so, how?" And it's interesting that the

responses I get back from people, a lot of people, you know,

will say, Well, you know, not particularly, I don't prescribe to a

particular faith walk or religion, but I see myself as spiritual,

right. And I want to, I want to include everybody here, right?

Because I want to be respectful, everybody is not necessarily

going to fall into a religious perspective or their faith, their faith

may be in their fellow human being, their faith may be in their

own work, so their own morality, so I'm not sitting in judgment

of that, right, we may have our own personal walk. But so for

those who might not be able to religious perspective, they

may they still think there's a desire to want to be bigger, it's

big to be a part of something bigger than themselves. And for

some, they'll connect through humanity, they want to serve

humanity. So whatever it is, right, this is a note, from my

perspective, a no judgment zone. But if there is a spiritual

part of ourselves, and I believe there is that we find what

that is invest in. So that we can be so we can show up for

ourselves. And for those connected to,

I want to go with you on the investment piece in just a second

here. But I just wanted to kind of, clarify with you that the situation

is that for many people, they equate spirituality with religion or

something like this, or ritual or process or attending church or

synagogue, or mosque or whatever it would be, or something

connected with their, their parents or some heritage or something

like that, where true spirituality, what we're talking about here

has to be a very personal, intimate thing in there in and having

rope purpose. And having been, you know, a leader had been

empowered has to do with that. And I think that's where you're

going here with us. And we have to be Jinora be your best

form of ourselves, we have to invest in this area. So I'm a

real big believer in, people need to try to identify or come

to terms with whatever they has them stuck in, I'm sure if

you especially if you've worked with students, you have

some who are motivated and go getters and others who

are stuck. And I'm sure the people you've worked with

now or that way as well. But you got to kind of get off

the Schneid and take action. And you mentioned that

and you got to connect with something greater than self.

You know, that's why a lot of people get involved with

groups and are not it's not necessarily healthy, whether

they be, you know, political or whether they be cultish or

any number of things, or

criminal, whatever, right?

criminal or just gangs or just a group that drinks their drinks.

Community

table that they are looking for community looking for something

bigger than itself, and people crave that they need that. And so

but the idea here, what we're talking about here is finding some

healthy ways that you're and then so and that, to me, that has

to go a little bit to the cognitive piece, how you make the

emotional, you know, all the emotional and all the painful

pieces that we've talked about here now kind of reacting to

that, then how do we do something about it that's constructive

by the cognitive piece. So tell them a little bit about about any

process that you have in your teaching, or about disciplines,

habits, ways of doing stuff, practices, that either you do or you

teach or you advocate and help people then to take all this

the emotional stuff, we've been talking about spiritual stuff,

and getting into an apical piece that we can apply to our lives.

Now. Thanks for that question. I would say two, two pillars really

stand out for me in the therapy world and one being Cognitive

Behavioral Therapy. In many ways, I'd say it's a best practice

when it comes to the counseling world. And I believe that

because it's just so effective, you know, cognition, how we

think really mattered. Our thoughts impact our emotions,

our emotions impact our behavior. So what we do, and

therapy from the CBT standpoint is dealing all three areas,

let's improve our thought, like, "Am I willing to change or

challenge my thinking?" Only the ones that need to be changed,

obviously, right? So hopefully, I'll feel better and behave better.

So what do we do with that emotional part of ourselves?

Because let's face it, right, that's the blocker. A lot of times,

oftentimes, we want to do the right thing, but our emotions,

or trauma, or difficulty or pain, is stunting our growth. So

through therapy, and through education, we learn to better

manage our first of all, be more aware of our emotions, more

in tune with our emotions. Why do I feel this way? Where are

these thoughts or feelings coming from, you know, to manage

our emotions, and to ultimately channel them into the right

direction. I like how one of my friends and mentors says is

the statement really kind of blew me away when he said,

he's a resilience trainer. And he said, you know, we can use

our pain and our problems as our best friend. And I used to,

when I first heard that it kind of took me aback like, why would

we use right? Our pain is our best friend. But I think I understand

what he was getting at that. Obviously, we're not signing up

for pain or suffering. But if we can manage it, if we can

navigate it, it can ultimately help us it can propel us into our

destiny, it will channel the emotion into a positive direction.

You know, Dr. Brad, I like using sports metaphors a lot.

And I think there's many ways you know, sports as a

metaphor for life, you think about certain athletes, right?

Some of them play with a chip on their shoulder, maybe

they've been slighted. overlooked, you know, told they

weren't going to make it. And instead of imploding or

self destructing, they use that emotion as fuel. And I

believe somebody's mate who's lifting us today needs

to hear that right? The pain you're going through, the

challenges, the adversity that you're facing, if managed

the right way, if navigated the right way, can ultimately

help push you into your destiny, in that third part to behavior.

So we got thoughts, feelings, behavior, and that's the end of

the day, we got to make better choice. So what we do is in all

three areas, improve our thinking, less toxic thoughts, more

healthy thoughts. And we know we can change the way we

think. Scripture puts it this way, right, you know, whatsoever

a man or woman thinks so as he or she. So we improve our

thoughts, manage our emotions, make good choices.

And when we combine those, they're going to help us reach our goal.

Well, that's awesome. I loved this is kind of really what the

purpose of what we are talking about the the Beyond Adversity

podcast was really all about, it's kind of this university of adversity,

if you will, or some people call it, the adversity advantage, that

you adversity is going to happen. That is a given. That is a given

that bad stuff is going to happen to us. Bad stuff is going to

happen to us, it might be a health issue, you might be losing

our job, it might be family, marriage, divorce, any number of

things that can happen to all you know, we sure you know,

we got a war going on Ukraine right now, bad stuff is happening

in the world. And it can happen to us. And it does, it will happen

to us. But how we handle it makes all the difference in source so

many people, they get devastated. I call it being in the ditch,

they get the ditch and they can't get out. You know, in order

to get out, you really got to struggle to get out. But if we

can take this as advantage, and then use it to our advantage

and come through. I've talked to lots of folks and maybe you

have to who say you have didn't leverage that bad point.

You mentioned sports, for instance. But I know other people

who say getting fired from my job was the best thing ever

happened to me because it forced me to start a new business.

I've talked to many people who said, Okay, it's stupid, but

I'm having a heart attack was the best thing ever happened

to me because it made me change my health patterns.

That's right.

Getting divorce was a good thing for me. Because my next

marriage became better because I learned better how to

relate to people. In sports, there's plenty of story that comes

to mind right now. And your name being micromanaged by

Michael Jordan, where he talked all through his career about

how you got cut from the middle school team High School, a

high school team or whatever it was, he got cut from the

freshman year to whatever it was, and he had leverage that

his whole career, the anger about that towards his incredible

success. That's right. So give us if you you've mentioned this,

you know, the cognitive piece here that I'm the kind of verbal

therapy, but give us a few examples here about maybe people

you've worked with or situations where people have actually

applied it. I'd like to be as specific as possible. You can maybe

some people you've worked with about how well, it's about

applied or maybe in your own life.

Yeah, something really comes to mind. And I think, you know,

I think about you know, doing some couples counseling. And,

you know, a few couples come to mind that I have my five stages

of recovery that I noticed that help individuals work through pain

or trauma just over the years I've have come up with these dates

is that you know, help us navigate difficult and I'll walk through

them real quickly. The first phase is the awareness phase, the

second phase is coming to terms. Third is forgiveness. The

next phase is healing and then moving forward. Awareness

is the what happened to me phase right gather all the facts

run brutal, honest, brutally honest about what happened.

Whether it was you know, right, an individual is going

through a divorce, bankruptcy, health issue, grief loss,

whatever it is a setback. abuse, trauma, whatever the pain

is that we wrap our try to try our best to get as much facts

and information as we can out and deal with it in confronted,

even lament some minute, then move to the next phase that

can I make peace with it? I call it the wrestling phase coming

to terms. So think about? I'm thinking about a couple right now.

You know, who's who, who. Not everybody gets divorced

because they wanted it? Right? Somebody may have left.

And with that being the case, right? To say, Okay, this is my

reality now. Is it's not a good thing, but can I use it for good?

Can I make peace with it? Can I come to terms with it? It

happened? And I'm gonna face that monster down. Straight

up, right? It happened. If we can, if we can make peace with

it might not ever be okay, right? I might not ever be cool with

it. But I need to hopefully make some peace with it. It has the

abuse the trauma, now can I forgive? And that's the elephant

in the room. The choice to forgive but because I've heard it put

this way and Dr. Brady probably to this right, you know, the

price of unforgiveness can be too heavy.

The way I like to put this particular situation here, Michael is

you choose whether to get to stay bitter or to get better, it's

good. And I just tried to put it in that kind of, you know, a

dichotomy. They're better or better, which way you're going to go,

which is a choice,

which is a choice.

We can choose in those situations am i

Many people want and choose, you know, call it the kind of the

malaise or maybe mediocrity where you choose to stay stuck.

You know, you want to be in that misery in a way you choose to

be there instead of taking the difficulties of getting out of the

miserable situation to have freedom and success and delight

and all that good stuff.

That's key that you say freedom. You know, Scripture says that

right? And you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.

You can't be free, it's harder to be free until you at least know the

truth, even a painful truth. And if we'll if

we'll free the freedom, the freedom comes from forgiveness,

accepting that we are forgiven people and then also turn that

around, and forgiving others including people who have hurt us

and cleaning people who still have bad intentions toward us. And

may the ongoing you know maybe an ongoing situation, and you

still forgive them. That doesn't mean you could become a patsy

and get walked over you could still choose to have you know, a

take a different pathway you can still choose to extract yourself

from bad influences, you know, difficult people and situations.

And I think there are people who need to do that I'm certainly

not a believer, that people need to forgive and then stay in

healthy or our relationships or anything else that spirals to

oblivion. You need to get better, get better means you need

to do whatever you

and sometimes we need help. In order to get better. Sometimes

the pain may be too hard. We might not know how to forgive,

we may have to ask God help me to forgive. Because forgiveness.

Let's say unforgiveness like it's like drinking poison and expecting

the other person that died on forgiveness corrodes the container

that carries it and every day we get to choose, you know, can I

forgive? Well, you might say why don't feel like forgiving. It's and

that's where the choice comes in to say, You know what, and

here's the principle, right? Do the right thing. Let the emotions

catch up later, as one of my clients put it in, I like as he said, she

said, you know, do the right thing and the heart will follow. And if

we'll forgive, then I believe healing can come and as we heal,

we can move forward into our destiny. Now we may flow in and

out of those five phases where you may say, Well, you know, I

thought I healed but then some more stuff came out you

retriggered me, right, you know, and we know forgiveness

does not always mean reconciliation, but it could mean I got clarity.

Sure.

and I can make choices but make better choices moving forward.

Just because you heal doesn't mean you're not gonna get

hurt again. That's right. And sometimes you can be hurt by

the same people the same situations again, you just got to

heal again, you got to keep going.

You may have to remove yourself or distance yourself from

that person, like my dad has always said, he said, Son, sometimes

you gotta love people with a long handled spoon. I love you,

but I need some distance from it.

Yeah. I love it. I might have to use that as a metaphor there.

Yeah, there you go. Well, if you've been here, one thing, I really

want to come around to you. What's kind of one more thought

here. One more approach here. You mentioned how we need

others to help us sometimes Yes. And you seems to me like

you've chosen to be one of those people. What I mean by

that is, I think another part of a person who has has navigated

adversity is they then choose to love others regardless. But also

choose to serve out of love is one of the elements of my

teaching idea. You, you have to intentionally serve and it

has to be out of a you know, something altruistic, it has to

be out of love for others, that tells me about somebody,

you may have served a person or a student or something.

I'm looking to looking for testimony here, Michael. Is

someone in your life who you've served, and you've seen,

okay, there's an aha moment, there's a transformation there

that's gone.

I think of a gentleman I'm working with here recently who I've

had the opportunity to help him navigate a difficult divorce.

But now he's thriving and flourishing. And I'm meeting with

him and his significant other, helping them to prepare

for marriage, to see that spectrum of the pain and

disappointment and anger, and some trauma that we

helped him work through to now be in a position to see

him thrive and flourish. And, you know, is is it's powerful,

and it's impactful. And but that that young man made a

decision, he made a decision, to not give up on love and

not give up on himself. Just because a person hurts us

does not mean that everyone's going to hurt in that

optimism, I call it real realistic optimism. And I can't say

I came up with that term, that term came from a book.

Maybe before then, where I heard it was from a book

called Better Under Pressure. And it's a book about, you

know, a gentleman who went out. He interviewed folks,

you know, in big companies, and they decided what made

great leaders, right, so as a study on leadership, in many

ways, these big fortune 500 companies, what are some of

the principles that helped them be great leaders and one

of the principles was realistic optimism. Okay, optimism, right?

I need to see the glass half full. But I see it for what it is realism.

Right, you know, where does a good healthy balance there

where we should be happy warriors, I call it right to have that

happy warrior mentality that we're going to have to fight.

So there's gonna be some challenges. But let's do it with a

smile. Let's do off grace. As one of my mentors, one of my

friends said, he said, you know, he said, Mike, always remember

this, the greats are gracious. And we write that to think about

service. And you I think, you hit it on the head brand, right, that

service through love. That's a great definition for leadership in my book.

It is what you're describing there as maybe you've heard the

term the Stockdale paradox. It comes from the writing good

to great. Author Collins talks about the Stockdale paradox

basically from Vietnam era, Vietnam era of prisoners of war,

and people had to have in order to those who survived

North Vietnam on Vietnamese prison experience, were ones

who face the brutal facts and still move forward with faith.

And you can't be a pie in the sky type of thing and you can't

be also just give up. You got to, you know, face your reality

and hope and have have hope and that Viktor Frankl talked

a lot about that right in his book Man's Search for Meaning.

Holocaust survivor. Yeah,

absolutely. And very important, very good stuff. You're a man.

But you've got a couple books out there. You've got a website

with lots of resources. If you've got some great stuff here, you've

shared some great great insights here today. Michael, how can

people be in connection with you if they want to know more

about what you're about and how maybe you might be helpful

in their life? Yes, sir.

They can go right to my website, brownsleadership.com.

They can see what we're doing. Reach out, got my book

information out there if anybody's interested in Yeah,

love to hear from folks and connect I do workshops and

trainings and and therapy here in this local DMV and all

of its in DC, Virginia area and across the country so yeah,

look forward to hearing from brownsleadership.com

brownsleadership.com Well, you've been a fascinating guest

here today on Beyond Adversity, and his website is brownsleadership.com.

We'll put connections to all the things that he's all about at our website,

drbradmiller.com. And we thank you yesterday on the Beyond Adversity

podcast with Dr. Brad Miller. Our guest today Michael T. Brown.