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Send me a some feedback! How much of your life is organized around avoiding judgment, failure, or loss? Playing defense can keep you repeating familiar patterns while the experiences you want stay out of reach. Going on offense starts with getting honest about what you want and becoming willing to move through the discomfort of pursuing it. In this episode of the Inner Wealth Podcast, Mike shares his live Buyers Club talk, Stop Playing Defense, Go on Offense. Through stories about Marine Corps boot camp, skydiving, facing body shame, and rebuilding his marriage, he explores the courage it takes to be seen and create something different. He also answers audience questions about writing a vision, choosing the next step, and finding people who challenge you to grow. Key Takeaways Recognize the Patterns That Keep You Playing Defense. Avoiding criticism, hiding your wins, and feeling guilty about wanting more can shape your decisions. Mike calls these learned patterns adaptive protective programs, or APPs. Start noticing which ones show up when you’re about to do something unfamiliar.Practice Moving Through Discomfort. Mike’s stories about boot camp, skydiving, and confronting body shame show what going on offense looks like in practice. Notice what you’re feeling, explore what’s behind it, and give yourself room to respond. Courage includes taking a meaningful step while fear is still present.Get Honest About What You Want. Your wants and needs matter, and asking for them begins with knowing what they are. Mike shares the written relationship vision he created during a painful chapter of his marriage. Sit down without distractions and describe the life you want to experience, even if it feels far from where you are today.Use Your Vision to Choose the Next Step. You don’t need every detail worked out before you begin. Ask whether an opportunity moves you closer to your vision, and identify one small action you can take. During the audience Q&A, Mike also explores the difference between discomfort around growth and a choice that doesn’t fit what you want.Keep Your Vision Present and Build Support Around It. Revisit your vision daily and practice visualizing and feeling the life you’re working toward. Surround yourself with allies who encourage you, challenge you, and notice when you’re backing away from what matters. Keep taking action as your vision develops.Notable Quotes “We were born to go on offense. And it takes feeling things that you'd rather not feel, saying things that you'd rather not say, doing things that you'd rather not do.”“Courage is not the absence of fear. It's the presence of fear and the ability and the willingness to go into the fear.”“But at the end of the day, your needs and wants matter too.”“And in order to be different, in order to have different, you gotta do something different. Because if you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got.”“The vision is the greatest tool that I know of to get you out of defense. To get you focused back on to your intentions.”Go on Offense. Where are you ready to take up more space in your life? Grab a pen and paper, get honest about what you want, and choose one step you can take today. Give yourself permission to ask for what matters to you. Get the free Choose Your Destiny: Start Playing Offense video course: https://learn.innerwealthglobal.com/chooseyourdestinystartplayingoffense Explore the Choose Your Destiny Live Virtual Intensive: https://learn.innerwealthglobal.com/chooseyourdestinyvirtualintensive For private coaching, the Inner Wealth Mastermind, and upcoming events, visit InnerWealthGlobal.com or email [email protected]. If this episode speaks to you, share it with someone who’s ready to go on offense. Subscribe to the Inner Wealth Podcast and leave a rating or review to help more people find the show. 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: https://www.youtube.com/@mikekitko

Send me a some feedback! You get to choose what you want to experience, create, and become. That starts with getting honest about the life you want and putting that vision on paper. Choosing your destiny means giving your life a clear direction and becoming willing to move through the discomfort that comes with creating something new. In this episode, Mike shares his complete free course, Choose Your Destiny: Start Playing Offense, with a new introduction. Drawing on his own transformation, he explores defensive patterns, creating a vision for your health, wealth, impact, and relationships, and practicing visualization and embodiment. He also shares how daily action, accountability, and community can help you keep moving toward a life you’re excited to wake up to. Key Takeaways Recognize Where You’re Playing Defense. Playing defense means making choices around avoiding experiences you don’t want, such as failure, judgment, rejection, or being alone. Mike invites you to notice where avoidance is directing your decisions and get clear about what you actually want to experience.Name the Protective Patterns That Keep You in Familiar Circumstances. Mike calls these patterns adaptive protective programs, or APPs. Perfectionism, people-pleasing, and avoiding failure can influence your choices long after you learned them. Recognizing and naming those patterns gives you a chance to choose how you move forward.Create a Vision That Gives Growth Meaning. Write down what you want in your health, wealth, impact, and relationships, including how you want to feel. Give yourself room to dream without needing to figure out every detail of how or when it will happen. A clear vision gives purpose to the discomfort you encounter along the way.Practice Being the Person You’re Becoming. Mike introduces visualization and embodiment as daily practices for connecting with your vision. Picture yourself living that life, explore how it would feel, and use the Installing Future You meditation to support the practice. Then carry that vision into the choices and actions you take throughout your day.Build Support Around Your Vision. Accountability and community can help you recognize when you’re slipping back into defensive patterns and reconnect with what matters to you. Mike shares how coaching, the mastermind, workshops, and retreats support this work. You get to take the steps with people alongside you who encourage and challenge you to keep going.Notable Quotes “Going on offense means not allowing internal discomfort to control us, to manipulate us, to stop us, to prevent us from doing the thing, from being the person, from having the thing.”“When we're clear about exactly what it is we're looking to create, we give meaning and purpose to that discomfort.”“But again, I'm gonna encourage you, the what of your vision is your responsibility. The how and the when are not.”“And then after you see that for a while, drop into your body and start to feel that it's already complete, feel that it already exists and sit like that as long as you possibly can. Sit like that as frequently as you can.”“We don't allow it to master us, we master it. We name it, we sit with it, we realize it, but we move forward.”Choose Your Destiny. Take some time today to put your vision on paper. What do you want to experience in your health, wealth, impact, and relationships? How do you want to feel when you wake up each day? Get clear, sit with that vision, and choose an action that moves you toward it. Get the free Choose Your Destiny: Start Playing Offense video course, including the workbook and Installing Future You meditation: https://learn.innerwealthglobal.com/chooseyourdestinystartplayingoffense Explore the Choose Your Destiny Live Virtual Intensive beginning in November: https://learn.innerwealthglobal.com/chooseyourdestinyvirtualintensive For private coaching, the Inner Wealth Mastermind, and upcoming events, visit InnerWealthGlobal.com or email [email protected]. 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: https://www.youtube.com/@mikekitko Music Credit: "What's Left of Me" by Wes Hoffman & Friends

Send me a some feedback! There are experiences you’ve wanted for years, and it’s easy to keep telling yourself you’ll get to them later. A clear vision keeps those desires in front of you when fear, money worries, or discomfort start making your decisions. Playing offense means getting honest about what you want from this life and becoming willing to move toward it. In this episode, Mike and Angie share what a long-awaited European trip taught them about vision and the time we have. After 26 years of talking about Germany, they finally experienced Oktoberfest, then traveled on to Vienna and Prague. Their visit to the Bone Church became a powerful reminder of mortality and the dreams people leave unfulfilled. They explore old protective patterns, returning to your vision, and what it means to live without dying with your song still in you. Key Takeaways 1. Your Vision Can Outlast Your Timeline Mike and Angie held their dream of visiting Germany for 26 years. Angie distinguishes goals with deadlines from a vision that gives your life an overarching direction. Get clear about the experiences you want, and give them room to unfold. 2. Notice When Fear Puts You on Defense Mike describes playing defense as organizing your life around avoiding negative circumstances. He calls learned protective patterns adaptive protective programs, or APPs. Recognizing those patterns can help you see where fear is keeping you from experiences you want. 3. Use Your Vision as a Pattern Interrupt When money fear or self-doubt shows up, Mike and Angie return to what they want to feel and experience. Revisiting your vision gives you a pattern interrupt and a way to refocus your attention while you work through uncomfortable circumstances. 4. Remember That Your Time Is Limited Standing in the Bone Church, Mike and Angie reflected on the lives and stories behind the human remains. The experience brought mortality into focus and renewed their commitment to travel and fully live. Continually saving your dreams for later has a cost. 5. Move Through Discomfort Toward What Matters New experiences can bring discomfort, and Mike encourages listeners to stay connected to what they want as they move through it. He closes with an exercise: look back at things you once wanted and have already experienced, then recognize how much has become possible. Notable Quotes “And this isn't an exercise in impatience. Going to Oktoberfest was part of our vision for 26 years.” (Mike)“Without a vision, we can't fully know how to play on offense.” (Mike)“And the spiritual feeling that the church wants to evoke is memento mori. Remember that you will die.” (Angie)“Don't ever, ever pretend you don't have any emotions or feelings. And don't think you shouldn't have the emotions and feelings that you have.” (Mike)“Don't die with your song in you.” (Mike)Call to Action Take some time today to look back at the things you once wanted and have already experienced. Then get clear about what you still want from this life. What keeps getting pushed to later? What would it look like to start playing offense in that area and move through the discomfort that comes with it? If you’re ready to get clear about what you want and start playing offense with your life, connect with me through www.InnerWealthGlobal.com or email me directly at [email protected]. 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: https://www.youtube.com/@mikekitko Music Credit: "What's Left of Me" by Wes Hoffman & Friends

Send me a some feedback! A clear and powerful vision does more than give you something to work toward. It gives meaning and purpose to the discomfort you’ll inevitably experience while creating something you’ve never experienced before. Growth requires unfamiliar territory, and unfamiliar territory creates discomfort. The question is whether you have a vision powerful enough to make that discomfort worth moving through.  In this episode, Mike shares how his vision of becoming a United States Marine carried him through the pain and chaos of boot camp, how the nervous system adapts as unfamiliar experiences become familiar, and how Viktor Frankl’s work helped him connect meaning, purpose, vision, and our willingness to endure difficult circumstances. Ultimately, playing offense with your life means getting clear about what you came here to experience, create, and become—and becoming willing to move through the discomfort required to create it.   Key Takeaways 1. A Powerful Vision Gives Discomfort Meaning When you are deeply clear about what you want to create, become, or experience, discomfort becomes part of the journey toward something that matters. Vision gives you a reason to keep moving when growth gets uncomfortable. 2. Growth Requires You to Make the Unfamiliar Familiar Your nervous system naturally feels safer in circumstances it already knows. Repeated exposure to new experiences allows your body to adapt until what once created intense discomfort becomes something you can handle. 3. Comfort and Growth Require Different Choices Creating expanded circumstances requires doing things you haven’t done before. If you continually retreat when discomfort appears, you return to what is familiar instead of continuing toward what you want. 4. Meaning and Purpose Change What You Are Willing to Endure Mike connects his experience in Marine Corps boot camp with Viktor Frankl’s observations about meaning, purpose, and the human will to continue through extraordinarily difficult circumstances. When you have something meaningful on the other side of the discomfort, the discomfort itself has purpose. 5. Playing Offense Requires Clarity and Willingness Playing defense means organizing your life around avoiding negative circumstances and internal discomfort. Playing offense means getting clear about what you want to experience, create, and become—and becoming willing to move through the discomfort required to create it.   Notable Quotes “A powerful and clear vision for who you're becoming, what you intend to experience, for wherever you intend, the quality of life you intend to create, for the, anything you intend to accomplish or accumulate. A clear and powerful vision will help you find meaning and purpose in all of the discomfort and pain required to experience it.”“The more familiar circumstances become, the more regulated your nervous system begins to feel in them and begins to experience them. So the same thing that causes discomfort on day one doesn't even move anything inside of you on day 90.”“What we need to do, is to find meaning, and purpose in that discomfort, so that you move into and through to discomfort, towards something unfamiliar, to something new, and to expanded circumstances.”“In order to master this, the creation process, in order to experience something brand new, something new, something expanded, something even better than what you're experiencing right now, you must be willing to face and endure discomfort and pain.”“The willingness and the ability to feel and move into that discomfort and pain is gonna separate someone who's playing offense in life from someone who's playing defense.”    Call to Action Take some time today and get clear about the dream that’s in your heart. What do you want to experience? What do you want to create? Who do you want to become? And what discomfort might you need to become willing to move through in order to experience it? If you’re ready to get clear about what you want and start playing offense with your life, connect with me through www.InnerWealthGlobal.com or email me directly at [email protected]. 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: https://www.youtube.com/@mikekitko Music Credit: "What's Left of Me" by Wes Hoffman & Friends