For the first 35 years of my life, I wasn`t living on my terms.  I would focus on other people`s wants, needs and expectations over my own.  Before I even thought about what was important to me, I would allow the perceptions of other`s to shape my actions.  As a result, I would drift through jobs, relationships and big decisions.  I never even knew the difference between “me” and my people-pleaser persona.

The hardest lesson?  If you don`t have a process for seeing and shaping how you see the world, it will be done for you.  Instead of acting you will react.  Every trigger, every loud voice, and every demand from others will pull you further from your core.

My own wake-up call was brutal.  Within the span of ten days I lost my job, my apartment, my health, and my girlfriend.  And then 2008 hit and I lost my savings.  Six months later I would receive an actual phone call shedding light into what had happened.  It turns out that the collapse of the company I had been working for was due to financial fraud on the part of my then CEO.  I was summoned to give testimony.  I was not a victim or participant in what happened, I was a witness to one of Norway`s biggest white-collar crimes.  My internal emails were being used to prove that the CEO did, in fact, know what he was doing.

He was convicted and sentenced to two years of house arrest in his summer cabin.  I spent the next decade trapped in a mental-prison of guilt and shame.  Finally, I would ask myself a question that changed everything:  How did I allow myself to get taken away from who I am?

From that day on I vowed to be a tool for good, rather than as a tool for amoral shareholders.  I became obsessed with how people see themselves in the world, before I knew there was a name for it: mindset.  I realized that how people talk to themselves determines the course of their lives. And with this realization came the ability to trust myself once again.

I would then spend four years conducting motivational interviews with thousands of people.  I was sharpening my own understanding of how people functioned.  I got to the point where I could hear people think.  The language people use tells you everything about them.

I was now ready to create what would become, Win On Your Terms.

No one can promise you an easy life.  But you can learn how to build a strong mindset that will result in having composure and resilience – no matter how hard life gets.  You, and your loved ones, will then be able to trust your words.

This is the training I wish I`d had before I needed it.  It`s for anyone whose has ever felt the pain of allowing life to lead them astray.  The beauty is, you are always one thought away from living life on your terms.

Again, no matter how far off course you have drifted, your next win is literally one step away.  And that is why you are capable of becoming who you are meant to be.

I believe in you.  And I know you are innocent because we are all doing the best we can, given what we have to work with.

Love,

Michael