The Balanced Warrior Podcast

In this short power podcast, Coach Paul Melella shares how to use some of our Darkside to serve in accomplishing goals. Most of us have at least two different voices in our heads. If you are like most…you have more than just two voices, right? Most have or can experience what I call a "Dark side." It’s the little voice (or maybe it’s a big voice) inside of us that thrives on anger, and frustration, or can get really pissed off at times. Can you learn how to control that voice? Why would you? Because most of those voices could be extremely strong, confident, and dominant… but the anger is used to push most people past their limits or maybe prove to themselves, or at times others, that you can do things.  

Key Takeaways: 

• Learn to use fear, anger, or frustration to serve you.  
• At times we all have a dark side or experience negative emotions that could potentially hurt us, others, or our outcome. However, when we are aware, awakened, and in control… we can use that dark side to accomplish great things or show others that we can do whatever it is our heart desires.  
• So, learn to control your Darth Vader voice or tame your inner Hulk, and crush your goals!

In this episode of the Balanced Warrior Podcast,  Balanced Warrior Chris Berlow discusses the difference between Motivation and Inspiration and how motivation is temporary, and inspiration is permanent.  In life, we need both to achieve any level of success.  Inspiration is the audacious goal that excites and scares you simultaneously.  It is a mission or purpose that keeps you going and is typically a long-term goal or mission-oriented result, such as my wife just completing her first Ironman.  Many of our clients find their inspiration through their Worthy Ideal, the legacy they want to leave, and the impact they want to make on others.  Motivation is what you do day to day to fulfill your inspiration.   Motivation could be small daily bursts of excitement to trigger action and overcome laziness.  It could be a reflection of your inspiration; it could be a daily routine to prime your mind so you could crush your day; it could be physical exercise; it doesn’t matter as long as you do something to stay motivated every day.  Listen to how Chris shares stories and anecdotes for you to get motivated every day and stay inspired so you can live your best life. 

Key points…

• Inspiration is permanent; motivation is temporary
• Motivation must occur every day
• Find what inspires you to duel the motivation
• motivation comes from priming your mind to win your day

For more information on the content of this podcast, and any other Empowered Mastery programs, be sure to visit www.empoweredmastery.com or email us at info@empoweredmastery.com

This episode is sure to get the wheels turning in your mind as the duo of Mike Mertens and Chris Berlow joins forces to discuss the idea of a “Self made man”; and how much Mike and Chris DISAGREE with the term.  You never know where inspiration comes from, and in this case, Mike was looking for new shirts and came across one that said, “Self-made man” in big letters across the front.  Mike saw it and realized how untrue that statement was.  And, of course, he didn’t buy the shirt.  Chris and Mike discuss the principles of a “Village made man,” tapping into the idea that it takes a village to succeed.  Grandmaster Kim once explained how everyone needs three people in their lives.  They need a protege or apprentice, a partner, and a mentor.   Mike and Chris discuss how all three levels of influence pool together to define the individual.  And to be blunt, anyone who claims to be a self-made person is nothing less than a narcissist.  For every successful person, there is a village behind them that supports them to do so, which is why the shirt should be “Village-made man.”  And it is essential, as Balanced Warriors, to appreciate and recognize those who helped along the way.  

• The first and most influential mentor is your parents.  (Couldn’t have been self-made if you weren’t conceived)
• We could learn from positive or negative influences…follow what you like and leave what you don’t.
• A good partnership is being responsible for one part of business/life so the other could be free to do what they do.
• Balanced Warriors should give recognition, show appreciation, and always pay it forward.

For more information on the content of this podcast, and any other Empowered Mastery programs, be sure to visit www.empoweredmastery.com or email us at info@empoweredmastery.com.

This episode features a solo presentation by Balanced Warrior Coach Michael Mertens. Michael discusses his opinion towards positive self-talk, and facing up to the reality that it’s not crazy to talk to yourself. In fact it’s insane not to! Everyone listens to and battles with various voices in their head every day. And whether you are parenting or performing, an athlete or an accountant, your daily thoughts are sure to range from positive to negative and empowering or disempowering. So how can you take control of which voice comes through the loudest and most clear? Michael shares his five steps for getting your inner voice focused in a productive way that maximizes your talent and creativity. Listen in an learn…

• What positive self-talk can’t do and, more importantly, what it can 
• The difference between self-honesty and negativity 
• The parenting rule that is a great reminder for how you should treat your own self talk 
• The power of the word NEXT! 
• Why positive self talk takes practice and how to get better at it consistently 

Did you know, the ones who truly learn to get uncomfortable and learn to stretch themselves don’t hit their goals at first …that’s how we know they are lofty goals. When you learn to stick to your basic standards and set non-negotiable levels in your business, fitness, or even how you show up as a spouse or parent. When we set standards around these areas of life, we maintain a strong foundation within ourselves. It’s all about being intentional about your day. Making a conscious choice to be focused on those specific areas of life. This doesn’t mean you have to be or do the best of all time; it means the best you can do today. 

In this episode, the Balanced Warriors discuss strategies to set goals that are aligned with your areas of life and share how to get emotionally attached to make it bigger than yourself. They each give real-world examples related to common challenges, including staying committed to learning, investing in yourself, and continuously providing value in the marketplace regardless of the current outcome. Listen in and learn... 

•  Learn to "Win the Day" by having intentional conversations, intentional workouts, have intentional prospect and client meetings, and most importantly, intentional time with your family that will put you on the path to hit your top goals.  

• Goals should scare and excite you at the same time. 

• Challenge yourself with the 7 X WHY exercise to become emotionally connected to your lofty and scary goals. 

Please be sure to share this podcast with any business owners you believe would benefit from this conversation.  For further information or questions about any Empowered Mastery programs, be sure to visit www.empoweredmastery.com or email us at info@empoweredmastery.com

Have you ever felt overwhelmed? Or feel like you have too much to do and too little time to do it? And worst of all, do you feel like with each passing day you aren’t making progress with the areas of life that you truly care about? The “too much on your plate” scenario plagues many people and is especially common for entrepreneurs. Laboring under the misconception that they need to do everything, they get trapped working in their business when they should be working on it. So, what’s the way out? The answer is the strategy known as “who, Not how”.

I’m this episode, the Balanced Warrior coaches share:

• Understanding how the tasks you take on affect your motivation and productivity 
• Finding and growing team members who actually enjoy and take pride in the tasks you hate. 
• Why even coaches hire coaches 
• What it feels like to reach a point when your team is managing ALL of the core aspects of your business 

For more information on the content of this podcast, and any other Empowered Mastery programs, be sure to visit http://www.empoweredmastery.com or email us at info@empoweredmastery.com

In this podcast, learn how to be the person who gets courageous and learns the skills to thrive instead of worrying about surviving? Most people right now are consumed with fear and worry while others are learning to or have already learned how to thrive during this season. In this episode, the Balanced Warriors discuss strategies to increase confidence and become proactive during uncertain economic times. They each give real-world examples related to common challenges including staying committed to learning, investing in yourself, and continuously providing value in the marketplace regardless of the current outcome. Listen in and learn... 

For more information on the content of this podcast, and any other Empowered Mastery programs, be sure to visit www.empoweredmastery.com or email us at info@empoweredmastery.com

Key takeaways:

• Create clarity about your outcome and continuously focus on what you want to see happen.
• Continue to be a student. Whatever industry or market you are in, continue to be a student and master your craft.  
• Continue to give value. Even if business is slower or potential prospects are hesitant due to uncertainty or fear, continue to provide value, advise, and/or become a resource in the eyes of the consumer.

Feelings change by the day, oftentimes by the hour. So how can we overcome mood swings and how do our emotions pull us away from the mindset and actions that lead to success? In this episode, the Balanced Warriors discuss strategies to increase the time you spend acting on principles rather than feelings. They each give real-world examples related to common challenges, including staying committed to a fitness routine, dealing with workplace conflict, and maintaining a connection with your spouse. Listen in and learn...

For more information on the content of this podcast, and any other Empowered Mastery programs, be sure to visit www.empoweredmastery.com or email us at info@empoweredmastery.com

• How your identity is the biggest driver of your actions and keeps you congruent. 
• The daily habits Chris has that some people mistake as selfish that is actually selfless.
• The importance of pause and reflection between stimulus and response. 
• Don't let your goals, plans and intentions get off track-take control of your schedule, habits, and principles.

In this episode of the Balanced Warrior Podcast, Chris and Mike team up (Coach Paul is at a wedding) to discuss the importance of business owners investing in their team.  The truth is, many companies value the customer over the staff.  Chris and Mike challenge the majority and explain how the staff is much more important than any amount of customers.  Why, because who will take care of the customers if you don’t have a team?  As Mike says, we need to “Take care of the people who takes care of the people.”  

Chris shares how he took his staff of ten on an all-expense paid trip to Mexico at a luxury resort and did so to show appreciation for all their hard work.  Especially coming off the crazy two-plus years of the Covid Pandemic.  While Mike had not taken his team on such a trip, he does explain how he goes above and beyond for his team to make sure they are feeling appreciated and fulfilled.  While we all need to earn money to make a living, most people will work for fulfillment and recognition.  So it is important for all business owners to take care of the team, so the team can take care of your business.  No matter how big your business is.  

Please be sure to share this podcast with any business owners who you believe would receive benefit from this conversation.  For further information or questions about any Empowered Mastery programs, be sure to visit www.empoweredmastery.com or email us at info@empoweredmastery.com

Key takeaways:

1. Your team is more important than your customers.
2. As Mike said, “Take care of the people who take care of the people.”
3. Time equals Love:  Give your team time, and they will always deliver 
4. Staff members don’t need to be best friends, but they need to work together, which is developed from culture.
5. The business owner should nurture and take care of the team, so they can take care of the customers.
6. Always show your team you care and appreciate them.
7. When your team feels appreciated, they will take ownership in the business.
8. The role of a leader is to edify our team, uplift our team, and let them grow.
9. Treat your staff like your family because they are!

In this powerful podcast, Chris, Mike, and Paul discuss how the United States is experiencing a mental health crisis like never before.  Children and adults alike have had their worlds turned upside down and inside out and are struggling to get back to normality.  The recent Covid pandemic left an array of mental health issues which Chris, Paul and Mike give practical solutions to help with the crisis. 

All three balanced warriors agreed that the key to handling any crisis is mindset.  That is, to approach the issue proactively and take the time to prime your mind for success so you could handle anything that comes your way.  Most people live reactively and allow outside influences to affect them and ultimately how they run their day.  For example, the average person will watch the news while preparing for the day.  Well, the news is injecting negativity in your mind before you had a chance to put your guard up.  This podcast helps you develop the skills to keep your guard up and protect your mindset from the outside negativity so you will win your day.

Key takeaways include:

• Protecting your morning ritual at all costs
• Take a daily respite from reality to reset your mind
• Be the protector of your mindset from negativity
• Win the morning…and take care of yourself first
• Surround yourself with the right people that will build you up
• Be aware of your thoughts because that leads to your feelings and ultimately your actions
• Most important, put more love, happiness, and kindness to those around us.

We do have the power to beat this crisis, but we all must do our part.  We need to be the light for others when they can’t see it.  We must be our best selves, take care of our mindset so we can lead, teach, and inspire those around us.  Don’t underestimate the power of positivity and kindness because one small act could make a world of difference to others.  This is the way of a Balanced Warrior!

Chris, Paul and Mike are all parents and who have seen it all.

Chris is now an empty nester, having raised five children, including two adoptees...

Mike has one recent college graduate son who has just started a full-time job in another city, as well as another son who is a high school senior, and the two boys couldn’t be any more different...

And Paul has a teenage daughter and son, both attending high school, and whose interests and activities keep his schedule packed.

All three Balanced Warriors have also helped to “raise” tens of thousands of kids that attended their Taekwondo schools.

In this episode, they discuss what is takes to balance family life with being an entrepreneur and how to grow your business and your children at the same time.

They also discuss the challenges that every parent faces when debating how much freedom and how much structure they should give to their child as they mature.

And remember, just because they are martial arts masters, it doesn’t mean that their kids were always disciplined and focused!

Key takeaways include:

• How to find uninterrupted family time even in the busiest of schedules
• The importance of giving your children permission to fail
• Should you feel guilty for your children’s mistakes?
• Using quantity time as a way to access quality time
• Three things that every child should hear every day

Being a parent is the hardest work that you will ever do and the most rewarding! Listen in and add some more tools to your parenting toolbox!

This episode truly gets to the heart of being a Balanced Warrior, as Chris, Paul and Mike discuss how to “battle back” when things aren’t going according to plan. Whether it be an a frustration with your colleagues at work, your children at home, or just finding yourself in a negative mindset, this podcasts will give you the tools to calm yourself down, adjust your perspective, and start taking positive action. Listen and learn as the Balanced warrior coaches share stories and strategies including: 

• The powerful difference between the decision to "care less” vs being careless
• Clarifying questions you can ask yourself throughout the day to do a self check-in in and make adjustments to your mental state 
• Why Balanced Warriors don’t try to completely eliminate their” dark side”,  but rather learn to harness the energy it possesses. 
• Empowering daily routines that help to keep you centered.
• How to get your energy flowing in the right direction and focus on solutions rather than problems.

At Balanced Warrior, we know it’s impossible to experience a life without challenges. Conflict and difficulties will inevitably occur with your health, money, and relationships. However, it’s how you react to these scenarios that determine how quickly and successfully you resolve them. We know that this episode will provide you with practical ideas to face better whatever life throws at you. 

For questions or comments on this podcast, please visit any of the Empowered Mastery social media platforms or email us at info@empoweredmastery.com. 

And, if you are finding the strategies that we share valuable, please encourage a friend or a colleague to check us out. We all benefit when there are more Balanced Warriors in the world!

Balanced Warrior Episode Nine:  Living in the Creative/Collaborative Plane vs. the Competitive Plane

In this powerful episode, the three Balanced Warriors Mike Mertens, Chris Berlow, and Paul Melella share how they choose to live in the creative plane when it comes to business, and any area they are looking for growth.  Creativity will lead to collaborative relationships, which leads to innovative ideas to uplift whole industries and everyone in it.  As opposed to only focusing on the competition where the attention is diverted sideways instead of where you want to go.  As always, Paul, Chris, and Mike share unique perspectives, some similar and some different on this topic.

A few takeaways to watch out for…

1.We only have a limited of mental energy, be sure to put it towards growth and not only what the competition is doing.

2. Competition is healthy when it is within yourself.
3. Nothing is more powerful than Collaboration with other like-minded industry leaders.
4. A creative and Collaborative mindset is an abundance mindset.

We hope this episode will inspire you to reach out to like-minded individuals and create a study group where you could share ideas and help each other grow. The world is abundant, you just have to believe so.  For questions or comments on this podcast, please visit any of the Empowered Mastery social media platforms or email us at info@empoweredmastery.com.  If anything resonated with you in this episode, the greatest compliment you could give us is to share with those you feel would benefit from what we have to say.  

In this powerful episode, we share how each year we complete a life assessment audit on the Core Four Areas of our lives. I am sure most high-level achievers or business professionals check monthly reports within their companies, have personal trainers or coaches that check your weight, and doctors that complete yearly health assessments.  

However, how many times have you ever completed a total life audit? This is crucial for us to see where we are in the areas of life that are most important to us and pinpoint where we can adjust or improve. To know where we want to go in life, we first must recognize where we currently are! 

A few takeaways in this episode are: 

1. Identify your Core Four Areas of Life and what are the most important tires on your vehicle of life. 
2. Think of your life like a high-performance race car and be proactive with making “pit stops” to fill air in the tires before you have a blowout. 
3. Practice and discipline to check “your score” at the end of each quarter or at half time to finish the race strong.  
4. Have measurable goals for each area of life and specific scheduled action steps that support those goals. 

Enjoy this episode and we hope that it inspires you to check to see what is most important to you, where you have been putting focus towards and what you could do to increase your results to create multidimensional success. For questions or comments on this podcast, please visit any of the Empowered Mastery social media platforms or email us at info@empoweredmastery.com. If anything resonated with you in this episode, and you feel like you received a value bomb… the biggest compliment we can ever receive is an introduction to this podcast and share our show with someone that is on your heart.

At Balanced Warrior we are HUGE fans of the restorative value of spending time outdoors. In this episode, “mountain hiker Chris” and “suburban dweller Mike” discuss how valuable getting in more outside time has been to their physical and emotional health. Included in this episode is:

-How most stressors start within 4 walls

-Mike’s experience training for a triathlon in three feet of space

-Lessons learned from a salamander

-How many miles the average American walks in a week - shocking!

-Why life is simpler on the trail

We hope this episode will inspire you to get up and get out. Grab a friend and share the incredible benefits of sunshine, fresh air, and no boundaries.

Our resident master of mediation, Chris is known for how he manages to stay calm and positive in the face of adversity. So we get him in the hot seat so we can learn what can truly knock him off his center.

This is the episode where Chris shares:

• The importance of having each other’s back as a parent.
• The Mother’s Day dinner where he couldn’t control his temper
• How he supported his children to pursue their passions as a career
• Admits that he’s not a hugger
• The book that only made sense to him ten years later
• How he started his first business with a 10,000 loan at 25% interest!
• His Disney Princess obsession?!?
• What it’s like to climb to the “roof of Africa”, Mt. Kilimanjaro

We get Paul in the hot seat and have him sign a contractual agreement that the will

not provide any inappropriate answers. And he succeeds…Mostly! With his own dynamic personality and signature humor Paul explains…

• Why he believes everyone is disciplined
• How he often struggles with his Darth Vader side
• The secret to his 20 yr+ marriage and how to speak your partners love language
• His end of the night messages to his children
• Positive anchors and the parenting mistakes that he makes
• The one book that he reads every single day
• How he went from knee surgery to a sub 2 hr half marathon in less than 6 months
• The power of knowing your outcome

Mike takes a turn in the hot seat and answers questions honestly including:

• What’s his superpower and when it manifested.
• What’s his “kryptonite” that can get him off track with his goals.
• His biggest parenting mistakes (you’ve likely done this too!)
• What’s “quirky” about him (and that his wife can’t stand)
• His number one message to all listeners

Our hot seat episodes are designed to not only introduce you to each of our speakers but also demonstrate that achieving multi-dimensional success is a never-ending challenge with plenty of mistakes along the way. We fail often too, BUT we fail forward!

The balanced warrior coaches have more than 100 years of combined martial arts experience. In this episode they each explain the life lessons they learned from their martial arts masters. This includes perhaps the most powerful lesson, the Korean phrase “il il shin” which translates to “be better everyday”. Chris, Paul and Mike talk about how they apply this philosophy to business, relationships, and health.

• Chris and Paul’s original Cobra Kai dojo experience
• Chris shares the importance of “Give without memory, and receive without forget.”
• Paul describes the five commonalities that all successful people have in common, and Mike explains why learning isn’t enough.

Listen in as Paul, Chris, and Mike share their own morning routines and learn three different “flavors” of ways to greet the day. Including:

• Paul’s membership in the 5am uncommon club. Mike is NOT a member!
• Chris’ commitment to a morning hot tub and hiking routine
• Suggestions for simple wins to start the day right

Plus…

• What martial arts taught us all about setting the tone before taking action
• The sobering question that Chris asks at the beginning and end of every single day
• Paul’s strategy for family “appointments”
• Mike’s explanation of quality time vs quantity time and which one really matters
• The importance of saying NO
• Treating self-care as part of your responsibility to be the best for others

This episode will help you to appreciate the power of your morning routine and give you a variety of options to make it more meaningful and effective for you.