Fall Down, Get Up, Get Off Your Ass: Michael B. Harris' Journey
This is the EWN Podcast Network.
Cathy Worthington:Welcome to late boomers, our podcast guide to creating your third act with style, power, and impact. Hi. I'm Kathy Worthington.
Merry Elkins:And I'm Mary Elkins. Join us as we bring you conversations with entrepreneurs, entertainers, and people with vision who are making a difference in the world.
Cathy Worthington:Everyone has a story, and we'll take you along for the ride on each interview, recounting the journey our guests have taken to get where they are, inspiring you to create your own path to success. Let's get started.
Cathy Worthington:Hi there. I'm Kathy Worthington welcoming you to our latest late boomers episode with my cohost, Mary Elkins. Today, we have an exciting guest to visit with, Michael Harris. He has great stories on how to really turn the dark moments of life into catalyst for personal growth and serving others.
Merry Elkins:And I'm Mary Elkins. Michael is a number one best selling author, trainer, coach, yoga teacher, and lifelong entrepreneur. We will hear about his book, Falling Down, Getting Up, and his many life adventures. Welcome, Michael.
Michael B. Harris:It's great to be here. Thank you for inviting me. I looked through your show, and you have some wonderful guests, and I listened to some of them too. And, like, Rhonda Britton, which was just on recently. She's wonderful.
Michael B. Harris:I've known her for a number of years. Oh. Doctor Christina Anderson in her book, Resilience, I actually helped her launch her book.
Merry Elkins:Really?
Michael B. Harris:Beate, Gillette. So you've had some great guests. And the fun thing that I liked about what you're doing is Santa's Secrets that you do at Christmas. I couldn't believe that you got Santa Claus coming out there talking about Medicare.
Merry Elkins:Yeah. Yeah.
Cathy Worthington:Yeah. Every year. Every year, we talk to Santa. Thank you
Merry Elkins:for taking
Cathy Worthington:this out. It was inevitable that inevitable that we talked to you now then because you know all our other people that
Michael B. Harris:we were talking to. Well, some of them. Yeah.
Merry Elkins:Absolutely. And we we feel so fortunate to have Santa actually come and talk to us.
Michael B. Harris:Yeah. Well, if I grew a beard and my hair out a little bit, maybe next year I could get there. I don't know. Yeah. Because I think I'd have a white beard.
Merry Elkins:Well, maybe we should have a casting call, Kathy.
Michael B. Harris:There you go.
Cathy Worthington:I don't think Santa would appreciate a casting call right now. He's kind of entrenched.
Michael B. Harris:Well, I'd have to use a fake belly, though, because I don't have much of a belly.
Cathy Worthington:Oh, yeah. No. That's good. Okay. I'm glad you don't have a belly.
Cathy Worthington:So, god, talk about your background a little bit, Michael, and what BlackBerry's had to do with being an entrepreneur?
Michael B. Harris:Where do you want me to start? Anywhere. Like, BlackBerry. Blackberries. Anywhere.
Michael B. Harris:Yeah. You know, blackberries, now they're calling them boysenberries a lot. You know? They kind of changed the the name a little bit. But back in the sixties when when I was a kid and my dad was an entrepreneur.
Michael B. Harris:He owned a number of gas stations around Oregon, and he always talked about, you know, providing something that other people want to buy. You know? And I thought, great. So, you know, I was a kid and out picking blackberries, and mom always made the best blackberry pies in the neighborhood. I mean, they were the greatest, and all my friends would come over and have missus Harris's blackberry pie.
Michael B. Harris:Then one day, I started thinking, and I said, you know, mom, why don't we sell these pies? And we came up with a deal. I went out and picked them, and she baked them. I went around the neighborhood and sold them for a dollar. She got 50¢.
Michael B. Harris:I got 50¢. We later raised it to a buck and a half, but I'm kinda convinced that the Girl Scouts stole my sales line. You know what the Girl Scouts sales line is? It's not do you wanna buy a box of cookies? It's how many boxes do you want to buy?
Michael B. Harris:Right? So I go around the neighborhood, and I'd say, don't you need an extra pie for Thanksgiving? It's coming up. You can freeze it. You know?
Michael B. Harris:So I would I would always say how many do you want to buy rather than do you want to buy.
Merry Elkins:That is really an entrepreneur story.
Cathy Worthington:Yeah. And, Michael, I have to tell you my little I'll just insert my little entrepreneur story because I was about Yeah. Seven or eight years old, and I started making potholders on a loom that somebody gave me. And I would go to the dime store and buy all the little loops and make these beautiful potholders, and I sold them around my neighborhood door to door.
Michael B. Harris:Wow.
Cathy Worthington:And I I everybody bought every single potholder I could make. And I'm Yeah.
Merry Elkins:They can do that again.
Michael B. Harris:I was thinking the same thing, Mary.
Cathy Worthington:I called them for 20¢. Yeah.
Merry Elkins:You you can raise the price, you know, inflation.
Cathy Worthington:It took a long time to raise $5, but anyway
Michael B. Harris:Well, see, if you make it on your own and sell it here, there won't be a tariff on it. So you keep the price low. Right?
Cathy Worthington:Mhmm. Yeah. No tariff.
Merry Elkins:Yeah. Absolutely.
Cathy Worthington:Depending on where the supplies come from.
Michael B. Harris:That's right. Yeah.
Merry Elkins:Yeah. Tell us a little more about your background, though. You know, what led you to where you are today?
Michael B. Harris:Well, the
Merry Elkins:Besides blackberries.
Michael B. Harris:Besides blackberries. Yeah. I I grew up as, you know, pretty much a normal kid. I, you know, I loved my life, and we go to Hawaii. I learned how to surf on Waikiki Beach as a kid.
Michael B. Harris:You know? You know, I'd be 10 years old chasing the 12 year old girls up and down the beach and, you know, just having, you know, a blast, you know, back in the, you know, mid sixties and just loving it. Dad had business over there, so we're over there quite a bit. And I was a bit of a hotshot water skier as well, and we skied around some lakes around Oregon. And I loved, water skiing, and one day, I hit the beach.
Michael B. Harris:And when I say hit the beach, I mean, I smacked the beach too hard. And, initially, we we went to it was actually on the Oregon Coast, the lake down there, and we went to the local hospital. And they said I was basically bruised up, and I would be okay. Well, the next day, we went back to Portland because I had been throwing up blood and went back to Portland and went to the doctor at the children's clinic at at the time. And he said, go to the hospital.
Michael B. Harris:Went to the hospital, and all as I know is I woke up about two weeks later. And they had taken out sixty percent of my liver, my gallbladder. I had six cracked ribs, a collapsed lung.
Cathy Worthington:Oh.
Michael B. Harris:And I woke up from the back end of a coma. That's where I regained my consciousness, so to speak.
Cathy Worthington:Wow.
Michael B. Harris:And so that was quite a an event. It took me a year to recover, you know, over a year, really, Several years. But the main healing happened in about a year. I was really lucky. I had 21 blood transfusions, and, you know, it was one of those twenty hour surgeries.
Michael B. Harris:I had a near death experience. I when I left my body the best I could relate this that it was at the end of my coma, and that's where I woke up when when I came back because when I left and there's what I call a garden of spirits or spirits around. And Mhmm. And as I was talking to them, and I don't remember everything that was said, but I do remember as I started coming back and I knew I was coming back, I said, I don't wanna go back. And they said, you're not done yet.
Michael B. Harris:You have to go back. And they said, don't worry. Everything is gonna be okay. That's fifty four years ago, and I'm still here.
Cathy Worthington:Yeah. That's that's amazing.
Michael B. Harris:That is Somehow they still want me here.
Cathy Worthington:Yeah. Yeah. Underneath.
Merry Elkins:Yeah. So that's really quite a story. Why do you think everybody's story is so important?
Michael B. Harris:Well, it's interesting because even in your intro that you have on your shows, you talk about everyone has a story. Do. It's it's so true. You know, even Robert Lane, which is the audiobook guy, he talks about that too. You know?
Michael B. Harris:Your book, your voice. Mhmm. And one of the things that didn't end up in the intro is I'm also a literary scout for Morgan James Publishing. And so I talk to people every day all around the world about books that they have submitted in their manuscripts and such and getting it written in. I get to do that.
Michael B. Harris:I'm so lucky that I get to do that.
Cathy Worthington:Uh-huh. One
Michael B. Harris:of the things that I found so coming back around to your question, why do I think story matters? You know, there's a lot of swirling energy as I call it in the world right now. We we've got our planet. We've got this atmosphere. It goes about 30 miles up, and within that atmosphere, there's a lot of, like I said, swirling energy.
Michael B. Harris:There's a lot of things going on on every part of the planet right now within our country, other countries, all around the world. And part of it is creates a lot of division and, you know, you know, separation. And it's my experience that when we sit around and tell stories you know, think back to the the caveman days. They used to sit around around the fire and talk about, oh, I went and got this, you know, saber tooth tiger and you couldn't believe what happened, and I got him down, and now we got food, and da da da. And they would sit around and tell stories, and they would create connection with their tribe.
Michael B. Harris:Right? Mhmm. Even though many of us have different ideas and different thoughts and opinions, when we tend to sit down, you know, with each other, we tend to start to connect with each other. And I think that's what Stories does. It helps us connect.
Michael B. Harris:And, like, these your podcasts, you know, like, all these guests that you have on the diversity of guests. I mean, like, again, going back to Rhonda Burton, she has an Britain, I mean, she has an incredible story.
Merry Elkins:Ah.
Michael B. Harris:You know, her whole life story and, you know, what happened when she was a child. I won't get into it. But if you're listening to this and you haven't listened to Rod Rhonda's story, go back and listen to it. You'll be amazed. But you know?
Michael B. Harris:And she's taken her life experience and made something good out of something that was beyond swirling energy. Absolutely. At best, difficult, I think, damps it down even too much. You know? It's unbelievable.
Michael B. Harris:Mhmm. You know, it's unfamiliar. Unbelievable. Yeah. But so many of us have stories of that swirling energy, those difficulties, those challenges.
Michael B. Harris:And as we survive those things, we can help tell those things. So telling our story helps other people realize that they may not be alone. They may have something similar, may not be exactly, but it's just like, oh, I couldn't believe it. I was listening to Kathy and and Mary one day and their stories and the people that are on there, and it's just like, I feel so much better now because I heard that. I heard what that person said.
Merry Elkins:Thank you. That's what we aim to do. That's our mission.
Michael B. Harris:Yeah. Absolutely. I can I can tell from moment one? Right?
Cathy Worthington:Oh, good. Yeah. Well, you talked something about the law of attraction.
Michael B. Harris:Ah.
Cathy Worthington:I know you know about that. And how does the law of attraction get activated by the law of Goya? And I don't know what the law of Goya is.
Michael B. Harris:Yes. Most people don't. But, you you know, the law of attraction, and there's the book, the secret. A lot of people have heard of it. Most people have.
Michael B. Harris:Mhmm. My late brother, Bill, actually helped put that book together, and he's one of the authors in the book as well. And he was ten years older than me, so he was started studying, you know, the law of attraction way before I even thought about the law of attraction. Wow. You know, the secret a lot of people throw rocks at it.
Michael B. Harris:You know? It's just you know, you can sit around and get anything you want. Well, that's not the law of attraction. The law of attraction doesn't say if you sit on your couch for five years, you know, and Joan is gonna give you $10,000,000 and life is gonna be great. No.
Michael B. Harris:No. It says, yes, you have to consider what you want in your life, and I'll talk about that a little bit more in a moment about everyday law of attraction, but it only works if you do one thing. And, Kathy, that's the love Goya. Get off your ass.
Cathy Worthington:Get off your ass.
Michael B. Harris:Right. Right.
Cathy Worthington:I was wondering what that was.
Michael B. Harris:Yeah. So you actually gotta get up and take action. You have
Merry Elkins:to do
Michael B. Harris:something to get what you want. You just can't sit there and wait for it to fall from the sky.
Merry Elkins:Oh, I've been waiting. Well,
Michael B. Harris:I I related to this. Yeah.
Merry Elkins:I've been looking up at the sky waiting.
Michael B. Harris:Looking up at the sky. But, you know, I I
Cathy Worthington:used question is how does it get activated by
Michael B. Harris:that? Well yes. Yeah. How does it get activated? I'll give an example.
Michael B. Harris:Imagine you want an orange. And everybody as soon as you think that you think of an orange in your head, there's that picture of the orange in our head. Right?
Cathy Worthington:Mhmm.
Michael B. Harris:Well, you don't have one at home, but you wanna attract one into your life. So you get off your ass, get into your car, drive down to the grocery store, pick out an orange, go through the line, exchange some some money, some karma for that, go back home and eat your orange. So you just attracted an orange, and you got it by taking action. Mhmm. And we do that all the time.
Michael B. Harris:I think some people look at the law of attraction as something difficult and complicated. It's not. We do it all the time. You you wanna get a a nice new sweater. You want a pink sweater or whatever color it is, and you think I'm gonna go down to the store and get it.
Michael B. Harris:And, lo and behold, there it is right there. Right? And you exchange that money, that karma energy again, and you've got your new sweater. So we're doing this all the time. So why can't we do it in everything that we do?
Michael B. Harris:We kinda do, but we don't really realize we're doing it.
Merry Elkins:That's true. And you you I love the way you express money as karma. Yeah. Talk about that a little bit.
Michael B. Harris:Well, you know, the root meaning of karma is action. Right? And for the most part, we have to take action. We have to do some work. We have to do some type of activity to get paid for, whatever it might be, whether it's working in a gas station, whether it's being an actor, whether it's being a podcaster, being an author, whatever it might be, you actually have to take action, that karma, to receive this money.
Michael B. Harris:You know, I I worked at one time in the nineties raising money in capital and investment banking, and I worked with some people. I learned a lot about money that I'd never thought about before. And if you think about it, you know, money is nothing more than symbols on this inside inside of a cell on a spreadsheet. Right? Think about, you know, if you go to the bank, you use your QuickBooks or Quicken or whatever you're using, and there's these symbols.
Michael B. Harris:And there's, like, you know, 724 6 1. Right? So that gives, you know, 7 what was that? $721. We had a certain amount of energy around that.
Michael B. Harris:Now you add a zero to that, and now you've got $7,271. You add another zero, just a zero. You got 72,000. Add another zero, 720,000. Another zero, you know, 7,200,000.0.
Michael B. Harris:So money is nothing but a bunch of symbols on a cell in a cell on a spreadsheet that we give power and meaning to.
Merry Elkins:Wow. That is Yeah. That's interesting and very powerful. Pivoting a bit Sure. Back back to when you had that terrible accident, you didn't really go into how you learned to walk again.
Merry Elkins:Would you talk a little bit about that, what you went through?
Michael B. Harris:Yeah. Well, the walking part really happened with something else that we haven't talked about that happened in my twenties. So, you know, I started healing from my water skiing accident as a kid. I didn't start school until January. I had a tube in the side of me for a drain tube, and I went from the captain of the teams to the last person being picked because I couldn't do much.
Michael B. Harris:Right? So I had a lot of self esteem issues. I really struggled at that point with connecting with other people. And within a couple of years, I was a teenager that had all the parties and drank too much and did all these things that I shouldn't do and getting in a bunch of trouble. Well, by my late twenties, my my dad died when I was 26 years old.
Michael B. Harris:He he died of a heart attack, you know, in his fourth heart attack. He was 58. And then at 28 years old, I ended up at OHSU, which is Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, and they said the artery in my right leg was a % blocked, and the artery in my left leg was 65% blocked. Oh. I was 28 years old, had vascular disease, atherosclerosis.
Michael B. Harris:You know, I had a lack of a better term, an old man's disease at 28 years old.
Cathy Worthington:Woah. And
Michael B. Harris:they did bypass surgery on both my legs. It's called a fem pop, and, you know, I won't get into all the detail, but it helped restore my blood for a couple of months. And then it had re blocked again, and they wanted to do more surgery. And I had been on a cane. I mean, literally walking on a cane at 20 years old, I could walk maybe 10 feet.
Merry Elkins:You know?
Michael B. Harris:I could hold somebody's arm and maybe walk 20 feet.
Cathy Worthington:Right? Yeah.
Michael B. Harris:So when they wanted to do more surgery, I said, well, why has this happened? They said, we don't know. And at the time, I didn't really know much about anything, so to speak, and about other opportunities to heal. And so I left the hospital AMA. They pushed me in the wheelchair, you know, out to the door.
Michael B. Harris:I got up. I had my cane, not having any idea what I was gonna do. I ended up at a place in Southern California at the end of Pico And Ocean, and it was called the Prudicum Longevity Center.
Merry Elkins:Oh, yeah.
Michael B. Harris:Not there anymore. I think it's a boutique hotel now. Yeah. It was called the Puritan Longevity Center.
Cathy Worthington:Mhmm.
Michael B. Harris:And, you know, I could barely get into the place from the car just to get inside. Inside of it was a huge struggle with my cane and, holding my mom's arm and trying to get into this place. And, I go downstairs. It was like the second day. I go downstairs and talk to the doctor, and we start talking.
Michael B. Harris:And he said, why don't you just get up and walk? I said, well, what do you mean? I says, it hurts. I can't. He says, oh, yeah.
Michael B. Harris:I know. He says, don't worry about it. Just get up and walk. So what did I do? I said, okay.
Michael B. Harris:And he said, when you do that, you build collateral blood vessels in your legs and restore your the blood to your legs. Where the surgeons in Portland, best surgeons in the world, technically, they know how to use the knife, yet, you know, they told me when it hurts, let's just stop and come in and get bypass surgery again. You know? This guy said, oh, no. Just go and walk on the boardwalk.
Michael B. Harris:And I think you guys know where where that is. You know, Santa Monica Pier, you know, down to all the way down to Marina Del Rey. And he said, just go out there and walk and then sit down. You know, there's the little wall between the sidewalk and the beach right there, and I started walking. And I'd walk 10 feet, sit down.
Michael B. Harris:I'd walk 12 feet, I would sit down. I'd walk 15 feet and sit down. And there was you know, I was a young man in the twenties, and there was lots of incentive around the beach area down there and lots of women in bikinis Mhmm. Rollerblading up and down the board walk there. So I didn't want to look like the ninety eight pound weakling.
Michael B. Harris:I wanted to stand tall. Right? So within two weeks, I ended up walking two miles. You know, I could walk from the pier to Marina Del Rey and back, and, you know, I would just do that all day long. And then I go into Prudhicken Center, and their food was all plant based food.
Michael B. Harris:You know? At the time, you know, this is the eighties, the late eighties. Nobody called it plant based, you know, so much. They called it more vegan, and it was kind of really woo woo at the time. Now there's a it's pretty mainstream now.
Michael B. Harris:Mhmm. Mhmm. But through the combination of changing my diet as well as walking up and down, the boardwalk really started to change that. Then there was one more thing. And this is a road we can go down, a long road on this one too is I'd never done yoga before, but they had kind of a little gentle yoga stretching class in the basement there.
Michael B. Harris:And so I'd go to these classes and, you know, I'm in my twenties. Most of the people that were there were 70 or 80 or something. Something. You know? I was the the young kid.
Michael B. Harris:Right? And I started doing the stretching, and I ended up falling in love with yoga. So I started yoga really in 1987. I've owned a couple of yoga studios. I trained thousands of teachers.
Michael B. Harris:I don't own any studios now, but I still teach about eight or 10 times a month. And here I am thirty eight years later still alive when they told me I'd be dead in six months.
Cathy Worthington:Wow. Right. Wow. What a great story about walking. Yeah.
Cathy Worthington:Because I think walking, keeping moving is so important.
Michael B. Harris:Yeah.
Cathy Worthington:Because I I have people that have friends that have had knee replacements, and it hurts like hell to walk on a new knee like that, but you have to. You have to move
Michael B. Harris:to make it
Cathy Worthington:to make it heal. And what would you say just switch subjects a little bit. What's the real secret to calming the mind? You're obviously good at this.
Michael B. Harris:I'm gonna go back to myself as a kid. I I remember, you know, one of the neighborhood bullies when we were growing up was, you know, hitting me and, you know, all this stuff. And I don't know exactly how old I was. I'm gonna say I was seven or eight years old. And I ran back home, and I was huffing, and I was puffing.
Michael B. Harris:You know, it's just, right, and all scared. And, you know, mom opens up the door and says, what's wrong? And I said, Todd's chasing me. He's beating me up. And so what does mom do intuitively?
Michael B. Harris:Says, oh, why don't you just take a breath?
Cathy Worthington:Oh.
Michael B. Harris:Just calm down. Take another breath. And so mother's intuition, whether they know about the science of breathing or not, is to help their kids just breathe, calm down. Right? Mhmm.
Michael B. Harris:So the breath is magical, really. I mean, even one breath. I mean, we all know it and, you know, for struggling, if something's happened, if somebody cuts us off in traffic and we just go, oh, we just pause. One breath can change everything. Changes the oxygen in our lungs.
Michael B. Harris:It changes our central nervous system, our autonomic nervous system, our vagus nerve. I mean, it just instantly, it happens. So to me, again, it's kinda like the law of attraction. It's always there. We always use it, and the breath is always there.
Michael B. Harris:And if we just learn that when we get in these situations which agitate us or trouble us, if we take a breath or two, you know, it's just like, wow. I feel better already.
Merry Elkins:We're breathing. Yeah.
Michael B. Harris:Yeah.
Merry Elkins:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Cathy Worthington:So that's how you teach people to calm the mind?
Michael B. Harris:Absolutely. So, like, when I'm teaching yoga, it's more about the breath than it is about the posture. You know? And you can feel
Merry Elkins:the breath going through all your your muscles and body parts Absolutely.
Michael B. Harris:With yoga. Yeah. But it's like regardless of whether it's an easier posture or a more challenging posture, you know, can we maintain our breath, you know, through the nose, not through the mouth? Because once you start breathing through the mouth, it changes the central nervous system. And, again, that's we can another pathway we could go down.
Michael B. Harris:But it it changes this. So, like, we're getting all this different stimulation. You know, we might be bending right. We might be bending left. We might be in triangle.
Michael B. Harris:We might be in cobra, and there's different sensations. Can we just breathe?
Merry Elkins:Interesting.
Michael B. Harris:So in many ways, it's like a breathing class while you move your body.
Merry Elkins:Yeah. I think dancers do that too where they Yeah. When they dance, they have to if they stretch their arms or legs or their back or do a certain dance position Yeah. They need to breathe into it.
Michael B. Harris:Yes. Absolutely.
Merry Elkins:I'd love to hear more about your being an entrepreneur and talk a little bit about that. I know you already did at the young age of delivering pies, but do you think everybody can be an entrepreneur?
Michael B. Harris:I think everybody is an entrepreneur.
Merry Elkins:What do say?
Michael B. Harris:I think even if you have a job, you're an entrepreneur. So part of an entrepreneur is, you know, learning to take care of yourself, learning to help others, learning to, you know, build your own business, learning to put marketing materials together, what whatever it might be for whatever particular company or job that you're doing. But if you go to work for oh, what's coming to me right now is b of a, Bank of America, and say you want a position there, you have to market yourself to them. You have to say this is the job that I can do for you that's going to help you and your business. So those entrepreneur skills are always there.
Michael B. Harris:You know, it's like law of attraction is always there. Calm of the mind. Who taught us? Mom. Who taught us to be an entrepreneur?
Michael B. Harris:By going getting a job. So I think that we do all these things, yet we don't always recognize what it is that we're doing.
Merry Elkins:You make
Michael B. Harris:it sound easy. Pardon me?
Merry Elkins:You make it sound so easy.
Michael B. Harris:What if it is?
Cathy Worthington:But, yeah, it's all about the recognition of it and knowing we're doing it. Mhmm. And we and that's what most people don't really feel that. They don't people that say, oh, I could never be an entrepreneur. I gotta work for somebody.
Cathy Worthington:They just don't feel it. They don't Right. Understand the stuff that they're doing.
Michael B. Harris:Yeah. Yeah. You know, doctor Christina Anderson, which was on your show, She's a great example. You know? And I don't know.
Michael B. Harris:I didn't listen to the whole show, and I know her story pretty well. But and, again, if you're listening, go back and listen to her story. And she went through all these
Cathy Worthington:her story.
Michael B. Harris:Yeah. This is just just so much difficulty, and, you know, she ends up selling an airline at one point.
Merry Elkins:Yeah.
Michael B. Harris:You know? And, you know, she's a true entrepreneur.
Cathy Worthington:Tell us how writing a nonfiction book changes everything.
Michael B. Harris:Well, it's I was talking to an individual yesterday. He's a marine colonel, and he had submitted his manuscript to get published. He's retiring this year. And he said, you know, how did the book creation come about? He said, you know, I started writing just really for myself.
Michael B. Harris:I had these concepts in my mind, a number of different concepts that I just needed to get out on paper because I just felt like I needed to do that. And he says and here's this marine colonel, you know, attack helicopter pilot squadron lead leader talking about needing to write these things this information down and these concepts and these ideas and feelings and emotions to help him. And then he realized that it was a book. And he says, I realized that I could take this and make this a book. And he started writing it, you know, in a way and starting to get editing done to it to make it into a book.
Michael B. Harris:So that experience that this person had and has continues to have really was therapeutic for him to to write it out, and now it's becoming a book. Or it will be a book in about a year. It will be out of the market.
Cathy Worthington:And do you coach people sometimes how to tell their own story?
Michael B. Harris:Absolutely. Yes. Mhmm. You know, we tell our story I'm gonna keep coming back, Mary, to how simple this is. We tell our story all the time.
Michael B. Harris:You know, we go out to dinner with friends and we're sitting around and, you know, you know, hey, Kathy. What did you do today? Tell me a story. Hey, Mary. Tell me your story.
Michael B. Harris:So, like, we're telling stories all the time. You know, another friend of mine, who's done a fair amount of acting over the years, who's a child actor, who's done some Hallmark stuff lately and some stage work. And he says, you know, stage fright is really a misnomer. It doesn't really exist. He says, we know how to talk to people.
Michael B. Harris:We do it all the time. It's just recognizing again, coming back to that recognition that we're doing it all the time.
Cathy Worthington:Mhmm.
Michael B. Harris:And, like, when when I've done I've done a lot of work with people speaking, you know, and they talk about feeling that nervous energy within themselves. And I said, well, what if that same nervous energy gave you the power you needed on stage to really, you know, stand there and deliver what you want to talk about? And it's just like, oh, yeah. So instead of, you know, shaking in the nervous part, it's just like, wow. This is power, and it is.
Michael B. Harris:It's just shifting that energy.
Merry Elkins:Talk about power a little bit and and the difference. I believe you say that there's a difference between power and force. Talk about that.
Michael B. Harris:Power versus force. David Hawkins doctor Hawkins wrote the book, I don't remember, in the eighties, a long, long time ago. It's a it's a classic book. And if you're listening to this and you haven't got that book, I invite you to go get this book. Mhmm.
Michael B. Harris:But, you know, the idea of power versus force, you know, I like to tell these little stories. Right? So, you know, I help parent a eight year old girl. And those of us that know about kids, you know, sometimes it takes a a while to get them steered in a certain direction, so to speak. Right?
Michael B. Harris:Get them to do something that's important to
Merry Elkins:do. Right.
Michael B. Harris:So do we use power or do we use force?
Merry Elkins:Ah.
Michael B. Harris:You know, we can force that the kid or anybody for that matter, you know, to do something like, you better do this or else, you know, da da da da. Get over here right now. You know, that's more of a force type thing. A power thing is, hey. What if you came over and help me?
Michael B. Harris:Oh, you want my help? And they come running over and helping.
Cathy Worthington:Mhmm.
Michael B. Harris:You know? So that's just like one example, but there's so many examples like that. You know? It's
Merry Elkins:How to raise a child.
Michael B. Harris:Well, yeah. And I don't know if I'm ready to write that book. I've got another book in me, but it's probably not gonna be about child rearing.
Merry Elkins:How to raise an adult.
Michael B. Harris:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I've got my child right here, my inner child.
Cathy Worthington:Well, tell us how did real monkeys in India inadvertently teach you about the monkey mind? And please explain what that is. Yeah.
Michael B. Harris:The monkey mind. I don't I don't know if if you can relate or if you're a listener here. I think that you can is, you know, we go through these moments where our mind starts spinning and, you know, we start feeling this internal agitation. Again, that person cut me off for, I can't believe so and so said that to me. I'm worried about my relationship.
Michael B. Harris:What about my job? And, you know, all this stuff is is swirling.
Merry Elkins:Especially when you're trying to sleep.
Michael B. Harris:It's yeah. It happens sometimes when you're trying to sleep or wakes us up in the middle of the night as well.
Cathy Worthington:Mhmm.
Michael B. Harris:So I was traveling in India A Number Of Years ago, and I was in Agra, and Agra is where the Taj Mahal is. And we're staying at the Taj Palace Hotel. And at the hotel, it's I can't remember whether it's two or three stories. It was three stories, but there's these guys that walk around the grounds with these long bamboo sticks. They're like 12 feet long.
Michael B. Harris:And what they're doing is they're chasing the monkeys away because monkeys are out there. There's trees and there's grass. But the other thing, and I think this would probably stop monkeys better than the sticks, is the hotel in your room next to the sliding glass door at your balcony is a big bowl of fruit. And the monkeys know that. And they come up, they climb up the side of the hotel, and they try to find the doors that are open to get into the room.
Michael B. Harris:Or they'll run up and jump up against the glass because the bowl is right there. So all those I need to do is put the bowl in different part of the room so they can't see it, and they probably won't get as many monkeys there. But, you know, if they open up the door, it didn't happen in my room. It happened with the friend I was traveling in in their room. They came out of the shower, and there was monkeys in the room eating the fruit from that bowl.
Michael B. Harris:Right? Mhmm.
Cathy Worthington:Very. Right.
Michael B. Harris:So I started realizing, and it was kind of a yoga trip, and I was traveling around. This is twenty some years ago, twenty three years ago, I guess. It was quite a while ago. And I realized that one of the things that I do with my mind that I was doing is that if those monkeys came along, I would feed them bananas. Right?
Michael B. Harris:In my head, I was, oh, okay. Let's be nice. Let's give these monkeys some bananas, and everything will be cool. Well, then I realized that they kept coming because they knew they would get bananas.
Cathy Worthington:Mhmm.
Michael B. Harris:Right? So I stopped putting bananas out for them, and then they stopped coming.
Merry Elkins:Oh, I thought you were going to say just shut the door. So, Michael, talk a little bit about your book, Falling Down, Getting Up, and also why did Jay Conrad Levinson, who's known as the father of guerrilla marketing, write the foreword?
Michael B. Harris:Well, Falling Down, Getting Up came about people kept asking me to write the book. They said, oh, you're a miracle and all this stuff. And I still don't like that terminology very much, the the idea of miracles. I think it's just nature doing its natural thing in so many different ways. But people would say, oh, you need to write about this.
Michael B. Harris:How'd you survive? I can't believe you're still alive, all this stuff. So I kept thinking about it and thinking about it. And I I jokingly like to say I thought about it for twelve years and wrote it in seventy nine days. So once I made a commitment to write the book, I made a ninety day commitment to write the book, and I did it in seventy nine days.
Michael B. Harris:I was one of those guys at the local coffee shop in the corner with their cup of tea and their laptop for two hours every day. I was that person.
Cathy Worthington:That's great to have that discipline.
Merry Elkins:Yeah.
Michael B. Harris:And then I showed up and go ahead.
Cathy Worthington:It's so great to make a commitment like that starting in front because Yeah. Is that what you usually advise people when they're writing their own story? Because let's face it, If we we have a story to tell, we should be able to just keep telling it for two hours.
Michael B. Harris:Yeah. Everybody's a little bit different. I mean, certainly, that that way is for me, it worked, and I know it's worked for other people as well. Some people need to speak it. You know, they'll speak it into their phone and then have it transcribed.
Merry Elkins:Mhmm.
Michael B. Harris:Oh. You know? Yeah. There's a lot of books today that are ghosts for it. You know?
Merry Elkins:Some people need to mullet in their mind too.
Michael B. Harris:Yeah. Some people need to sit at home and have a certain window open and, you know, have a bowl of pistachios there. Somebody can go to a coffee shop and and do it. Some people need to wear a certain hat or, you know, some people will handwrite it, some people will do it on their computers.
Merry Elkins:Well, tell us a little bit more about the book and about Sure. Why Jay Conrad Lovenson wrote the foreword.
Michael B. Harris:Well, there's Falling Down, Getting Up. So this is copy of the book. And I had written it, and then I met a guy named Rick Frischman in New York City. I'd flown to New York to try to get some publicity. I hadn't submitted it for publication yet.
Michael B. Harris:And I met Rick Frischman. I didn't know who he was at the time. I had no idea. And we started talking and he's, well, why are you here with this? This is press event.
Michael B. Harris:And I said, well, I'm here because I got this book I wrote. Tell me about the book and yada yada yada. I said, oh, it's falling down, getting up. And he said, I wanna publish the book. And I said, well, who are you?
Michael B. Harris:And he had published all sorts of different people. And I thought this guy's out of my league because, I mean, he was publishing by Henry Kissinger and, I mean, all sorts of big people. And he said and at the time, he was one of the publishers at Morgan James. And he said, why don't you we'll take this to Morgan James. And within a week, I had an agreement written and signed.
Michael B. Harris:So I never had it submitted to 50 different publishers and get all those rejection slips. Oh, no. Lucky. It's just like god works in mysterious ways. Right?
Cathy Worthington:Yeah.
Michael B. Harris:So through, Morgan James, I met Jay Conrad Levinson. Jay Conrad Levinson, which is the father of guerrilla marketing, helped the founder of Morgan James, David Hancock, really start Morgan James. And, you know, we became friends and sent him a manuscript to see whether he would forward the book. And, typically, he had only really forwarded more marketing type books. This book wasn't a marketing book.
Michael B. Harris:Mhmm. But Jay told me later, he says, I read your manuscript twice in the same day as soon as I got it. He says, I couldn't put it down. And he says, the way that I see yeah. It was huge honor
Cathy Worthington:for you
Michael B. Harris:know, to hear this from Jay. And, you know, he said, the way that you came about and you healed yourself was sort of like guerrilla marketing. He says, you know, guerrilla marketing is low cost, easy to implement, processes to do your marketing. And he says, you did the same thing. You did low cost, to implement processes to heal your life.
Cathy Worthington:Yeah. Mhmm.
Michael B. Harris:And one thing I I had to mention is I also got sober at 30. So I've been sober now for thirty six years for a long time.
Merry Elkins:Congratulations. Fabulous. Yeah.
Cathy Worthington:And, Michael, I wanted to ask you for a summation. What would you like our listeners to have as a takeaway today?
Michael B. Harris:Oh, well, I can briefly mention my other book, Within.
Cathy Worthington:Okay. Okay.
Michael B. Harris:So this this book here, anybody can get for free. Oh, okay. They just need to go to my link, and I I think I gave it to you, but it's really simple. It's within.Michael,basinbook,Harris.com/book. So within.MichaelbHarris.com/book.
Michael B. Harris:Oh. And you go there and you can get the book for free.
Merry Elkins:Oh, I'm gonna order it for free.
Michael B. Harris:Yeah. Yeah. And so, I mean, it it really comes back to so much of what we talked about that, really, everything we need is already within us.
Cathy Worthington:Mhmm.
Michael B. Harris:It's just really recognizing that.
Cathy Worthington:I love that. Title within.
Merry Elkins:Do that. Everything we need is within us. That's
Michael B. Harris:It's it's in. It's right here.
Merry Elkins:Thank you. Thank you so much, Michael. Our guest today in late boomers has been Michael Harris, entrepreneur and inspiring author of Falling Down, Getting Up and Within. You can reach out to him if you'd like to learn more about Michael and get his advice on writing your non fiction book at MichaelBHarris.com or go to his Linktree, linktr.ee/michaelbharris. Right?
Michael B. Harris:That's correct.
Merry Elkins:And also, go to within, I just wrote that down,.Michaelb. Finish it for me.
Michael B. Harris:MichaelWithin.MichaelbHarris.com/book.
Cathy Worthington:That's great. And, also, listeners, please tune in next week when we'll be meeting another interesting guest, Mariana Cooper, who's an intuitive life strategist. She'll give us some great insights. Please subscribe to our late boomers podcast on YouTube and take us along in the car and on walk and on your and and subscribe, please. Let us know what gets you inspired.
Cathy Worthington:We're on Instagram at I am Kathy Worthington and at I am Mary Elkins and at late boomers. Please send a link to late boomers podcast to your friends who may not be yet listening to podcast. Thanks again, Michael.
Michael B. Harris:Thank you. It's wonderful to be here, and I love what the both of you are doing. So thank you.
Cathy Worthington:Thank you. We'd love to pray. We're eating it up. We love it. Thank you so much.
Merry Elkins:That's great. Thank you.
Cathy Worthington:Thank you for joining us on Late Boomers, the podcast that is your guide to creating a third act with style, power, and impact. Please visit our website and get in touch with us at late boomers dot biz. If you would like to listen to or download other episodes of late boomers, go to ewnpodcastnetwork.com.
Merry Elkins:This podcast is also available on Spotify, Apple Podcast, and most other major podcast sites. We hope you make use of the wisdom you've gained here and that you enjoy a successful third act with your own style, power, and impact.
