Rise From The Ashes
"Burnout to Brilliance: Great CEOs, No Burnout"
Leadership is tough. Burnout makes it tougher.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Rise From The Ashes is the ultimate podcast for visionary CEOs and executives who refuse to let burnout rob them of their brilliance, legacy, and impact.
Hosted by Baz Porter, this show isn’t just about surviving leadership it’s about transforming it. Each week, we delve deep into the art and science of thriving at the top, combining actionable strategies, spiritual alignment, and raw truths that reignite your purpose and optimize your energy.
Here’s what you’ll get:
- Bold Frameworks: Learn the exact steps to conquer decision fatigue, streamline your mental energy, and reclaim control of your leadership.
- Spiritual Awakenings: Explore the intersection of purpose, alignment, and success to lead with clarity and connection.
- Transformational Insights: Hear unfiltered stories and practical wisdom from world-class leaders who’ve turned their burnout into brilliance.
This isn’t just a podcast it’s a revolution for leaders ready to rise, inspire, and leave a legacy that outlasts them.
Rise From The Ashes
You Already Are What You Seek (And Always Were)
What if everything you've been desperately chasing success, validation, worthiness was already yours by birthright? This mind-bending revelation emerges as the central breakthrough in part two of my conversation with Brian Muka, a former Navy bomb disposal tech turned Freedom Sherpa who spent years trying to outrun his fears through extreme challenges.
Brian's story reads like a cautionary tale for every high-achiever trapped in the validation hamster wheel. "I was trying to prove I wasn't a coward by surfing 10-foot waves, jumping out of airplanes, doing half Ironman races, CrossFit, special operations all of it," he confesses. But the pivotal moment came when he realized this approach was fundamentally flawed: "I can't prove that I'm fearless. It's like the invisible one next to the X in algebra."
This breakthrough shattered everything Brian thought he knew about courage and self-worth. Instead of fighting fear, he learned to dance with it. Instead of proving his value, he discovered it was never in question. Through breathwork, plant medicine journeys, and deep therapeutic work including confronting his relationship with his father Brian made the difficult decision to leave relationships and situations that no longer aligned with his authentic self.
The most powerful moment comes when Brian shares a spiritual metaphor about being asked if he could run the universe keeping the moon at the right distance and every electron in place. This humbling realization led to his life-changing epiphany: "I am already what I seek. I was the whole time, and so are you."
Author of "Your Secret Superpower: Taking Fear to Thrive," Brian candidly shares how his understanding evolved far beyond what he originally wrote. For anyone exhausted from chasing external validation, struggling with imposter syndrome, or trapped in the need to constantly prove themselves, this conversation offers a radical alternative: the recognition of your inherent worth.
If You’ve Been Hooked on These Episodes… This Is for You
If this podcast has been landing deep… if each story feels like it’s peeling back something raw and real in you… then don’t ignore that.
Every guest you’ve heard made the same decision: to stop performing and start healing.
Now it’s your turn.
Take the Silent Collapse Diagnostic. It’s not a quiz. It’s a wake-up tool for women who are done pretending they’re fine.
No fluff. No journaling prompts. Just a straight-up mirror into where you’re silently collapsing behind the mask of success.
If you're serious about reclaiming your energy, your clarity, your life start there.
Because breakthrough doesn’t begin with doing more. It begins with finally seeing what’s been stealing your power.
Learn more about Baz Porter at www.bazporter.com
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. This is part two of whatever episode. This is because I can never remember. I'm again here with Brian and we shared how he rose from the ashes last time, or went down to the ashes, met the devil, had a relationship with the devil, came back and we're now looking at his new self, his freedom Sherpa, the stress to success. Before we get into where you are right now, I've got a question I want to ask you how can people find their own power through fear, not necessarily your method, but their own light within themselves, because you've discovered that yourself, that's the key to it all.
Speaker 2:I wrote a book. My intention was it to be a little more story-filled than a field manual, but basically here's the FM on how to survive life's avalanches Prescriptive breathwork, visualization, prayer, those things. Where is the book located? Is it on Amazon? Yeah, just type Brian Mucha and Amazon will come right up. Your Secret Superpower Taking Fear to Thrive. I did write this for you and I didn't know that other people weren't wired the way that I'm wired. So if you grew up and you're on stage a lot with terrible stage fright and parlayed that into being able to jump out of airplanes at night and then getting fired from what you thought your dream job was, and then going through a divorce right at the most inopportune time at the launch of a dream, done those things. The book is perfect. It's going to work.
Speaker 2:Turns out it was an N of one. I'm glad I wrote it and it's a cool snapshot into a really vulnerable part of my life. Footprints on the sand, if you will.
Speaker 1:I love that one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and as I look back on it, like I learned it for me. I tried the me process on other people. It doesn't work, so I don't even try. And that breath work's important. But breathing in the way that you were meant to breathe, not the way I breathe, no, I'm in a fear state. Great, just say it out loud. Just acknowledging that fear is present is way more courageous than admitting it doesn't exist. That's a David Dana. It's a man who is aware of his fears is far more trustable than a man who pretends to not be. And then I get to know it. You know this term from our marksmanship days, dope Dana.
Speaker 2:On previous engagements, the fear showed up. What did I do? Oh, I breathed through my mouth a bunch in a panicked state of breath. That didn't work. I guess I should change the experiment. Yeah, so starting to listen, this framework of using an after action review, I had this blow up fight with my partner. How did it happen? It actually happened three weeks ago. There was resentment and we didn't resolve it, or I wasn't sleeping or any of the numbers. So, as a bomb technician looking at the improvised explosive device, okay, here's what it was. Here's what we did. Here's what we learned? How do we prevent this from happening in the first place? So all three levels of the after action review applied to fear and it's minions. So you're like I'm not afraid of anything.
Speaker 2:Cool, cool story bro. Yeah, to fear. And it's minions. So you're like I'm not afraid of anything. Cool, cool story bro. Yeah, like my favorite trick, I'm working with the alpha ceo types. You got anything on your to-do list that was there yesterday? Yep, is that the only time you carried it over from? No, I delay this all the time. Cool, you think it's love? No, it's fear of unworthiness, fear of it being too hard, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So fear's there Studying this since 2011,. Diligently, having done the terror stuff since prove that I wasn't a coward by surfing 10-foot waves, jumping out of airplanes, doing half Ironman races, crossfit, like special operations, all of it. I was trying to prove I wasn't a coward and I realized, like it was never going to work. I can't prove that I'm fearless. It's like the invisible one next to the X in algebra. So how can I dance with it? That's what I learned, that's what we're, that's what we're talking about.
Speaker 1:So the book was the cornerstone, the catalyst, essentially for your realization of who you're becoming now.
Speaker 2:No, it wasn't actually. Really, it wasn't. No, I had that. I had remember when we talked about the unworthiness from my dad, right, yeah, cool. So just imagine the scene for a second. Like my girlfriend's there, this beautiful Reiki master, my parents came down from New Jersey, we're at West Point, virginia, and we're about to skydive. So I rented out the hangar. I have a table set up. I did a 90-minute how to harness your fear talk with books there. 55 Millers and Shakers in Richmond were there and my dad's running credit cards. I'm signing autographs. I can hear the turboprop spooling up.
Speaker 2:It's time and the captain of the airplane not the captain, but the pilot he goes. Hey, Mr Arthur, your plane's taken off, cool. So they did the jump master inspection of my sports shoe on the way in. But before that happened, my dad looks at me and he goes. You know I love you, right? Yes, dad, I'm like fuck, where's this going? He goes. I read your book. Uh-huh, wasn't that good, great. So I jumped in the plane pretty beautiful skydives.
Speaker 2:My editor and I jumped out of an airplane. She did tandem, I jumped with her and we had planned that for two years. Awesome. And I fucking nailed the landings in front of my friends. That was like the coolest part of the whole day. Like I stuck the landing, like this guy's legit, and I just I walked up with the parachute over my shoulder, like I did it. I don't care what you have to say, I fucking nailed it today. But I let that little whisper it wasn't that good germinate for years and I had to do story work around that. Yeah, it wasn't that good in terms of it's not a New York Times bestseller. So if it's not a New York Times bestseller, what's the point? So I didn't show it to anybody.
Speaker 2:It wasn't until I started addressing the relationship with my dad that this stuff really started to unravel, because I did the things. I had zero sales experiments when I left the Navy and in my fourth year I won salesman of the year at a major medical sales company. And then when I was in Costa Rica, I'm like I can't do this. I just finished surfing. I was issued a Mont Blanc pen the day before I was thinking about calling it Fear Sherpa. I looked down at the pen I'm writing my TED Talk with and I'm looking at Mont Blanc, the tallest peak in Europe. That's not a fucking accident. It chills like the synchronization. That's when it started. I started coming out and I decided I'm not walking somebody else's path.
Speaker 1:I love that. That and that's why I like having these interviews with people like you, because you realize at a pinnacle point that you're not conforming to the normality of what society wants to give you or your parents, and then judgments you take in the form of a book, in from your form of your father, in the form of stage work, whatever it is, drives that forward. Yeah, what happened after that? Or can you condense it? Because obviously a lot started that way.
Speaker 2:I had two more years of like hell to suffer through, of course. So I had that realization 2018, june 1st. So, coming off my seven-year anniversary of not being owned by the military or a company, june 1st I submitted my letter of resignation. That's quite a June 2nd, I sold Dirty Head's play and my favorite song, vacation. I love that. I get to live that now. And then on the 3rd, I worked with Brandon. I forget his last name. He's the reason why at wim hof things there's drumming. He brought that to them. Yeah, and I got to play ice mule. You know, at the time I thought he was the third or fourth best wim hof instructor in the world. He's going on to do cooler things from that, and I remember that night we left the breathing event.
Speaker 2:Mark, my language coach, hal, hosted us all at the farmhouse. I was teaching guys how to shoot the AR-15 better, and my wife at the time wanted nothing to do with it. I was like, oh fuck, that was June, october. I went to go meet with Wim Hof. I trained with him for five days in Mount Hood and when I came back, her only question was how are you going to pay for this? I'm like I don't know. I put $65,000 in our savings account as a runway. And then I remember I finished my first click funnels in December. I was all proud of myself. She's like it's about time. I'm like I want a divorce. She's like what? Like yeah, I'm yep, I'd like a divorce. She goes do you want to think about it? No, I have done a fuck ton of plant medicine. I have worked with my therapist for the last three years. I've kept a journal and all the shitty things I needed to work through. I've never been more certain in my entire life.
Speaker 2:And the next year was like, like unfucking those roots right, the narcissist thing was a game we played. And then I moved to san diego, moved to san diego. 12 weeks later it happened and I was like I'm finally there, right? No, I didn't think I deserved it yet. So I lived in my parents house for a while. I fell in love with this fitness model. I was doing the sunday breath fast and we ended up living together during covid. It was awesome, like I thought. I thought I finally found my person, but I could never rest in it. I hadn't earned it yet, like the business wasn't making the money I didn't feel like I deserved there and I found a way to like sabotage that. And it wasn't until pretty recently, like december this year. I'm like that's not it either, and so now living with yael here in long island, like my life is absolutely singing, but it cost everything that was no longer aligned here. Like I, I got rid of the demons here and here to really flourish and to allow myself to be cherished.
Speaker 1:That's the journey you're speaking to something that I know very well from my own journey and for the audience and this is purely for the audience and maybe the relatability to it I could never like myself. For a very long time I couldn't never mind love myself. I didn't like who I was.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, oh, that's that that lands so hard, hard. I am married in 2028. My my call sign was the fat ensign, like 20 pounds soft man I. But I could run circles. I didn't look hard and I didn't realize how much vanity is in the special operations community you know what you're speaking to now is so relatable for a lot of people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's holy shit. I've got all this outside success, and when you were speaking about that, this phrase came to my mind and I can't remember who said it. It wasn't, certainly wasn't me is when am I going to be good enough?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And what you've just done, or in the process of two years of reconstructing, dialing down, et cetera, et cetera. You just realized in that process you are already good enough.
Speaker 2:That's it. I was trying to earn the thing that was already my birthright. It never was going to work. Like amazing, I got to operate on a pretty fine edge and but that doesn't last very long that you can't operate on that edge 100% of the time like I got to dose it enough to know what force feels like and to do it without the light, and you know that better than anybody doing it without the light, and I don't want to do that anymore.
Speaker 2:I don't need to do it alone anymore, I don't need to prove that I'm worth it. And when I was telling you about my, I looked at my wedding pictures, just made a pair of board shorts, a white polo. I was like, holy shit, I was fit, fuck those guys. And like I'm in that shit now. But during my medical sales career it was like a nice hefty 238. I was 208 when I was operating that's what I am now actually and I couldn't take it in. I was doing CrossFit six days a week. My massage therapist was like you need to take a day off.
Speaker 1:I'm like but I'm behind. It's a mental thing.
Speaker 2:I think if I took two more days off a week in my CrossFit career, I would have been a games athlete, but I didn't take the time to rest, like an asshole.
Speaker 1:What did you realize in that? This is all about learning and about experiencing. I want to share with you the journey from what you're doing now, all of that, the shit, the lessons, what did you take away from it, and what's happening in your life right now.
Speaker 2:There's an inflection point, yeah, in every life where four stops working. It's like this just used to work. Yeah, and it used to work, yeah. And here's what I found everybody has their own divine way of breathing and and I like breathing because that's the insertion point for the spirituality, the epiphanies, the next, the involution. We all have our very own way to tap into other energy sources, like for me. If you notice, in this interview conversation I'm doing my Tai Chi Gong, figure eights. I like the way that feels, I like to keep moving, isn't that?
Speaker 2:And then the third thing I have a divine purpose being here, and I didn't learn that until I realized this is a fun story. So I was having a conversation in my holodeck with a creator Brian, I'm going to let you run the universe in one second. You think you can do that? Yes, do anything for a second slow down guy. You realize you're gonna have to get the moon just right, like 10 000 miles too close. You're flooding all the coastal villages. That's gonna be on you.
Speaker 2:2 000, the other way, all women on earth are gonna get the period. Can you do that? Yes, I can. That's orbital geometry. I got it. Okay, you might be able to do that, and I knew I was fucked because there's a second part to this. He said in this 13.4 billion light year universe, it's bigger than that. We'll call it that, for right now, do you know, there's not a single electron out of place and all that. I was like I'm so fucked right now. No, I didn't realize that. Cool, you think you can handle that? No, and the creator goes then shut the fuck up. I had it, I have it, I will always have it. Can you just rest, knowing that I've got you Even better than you can possibly imagine? That's what I had to realize. There was a plan for me.
Speaker 2:When I about face and I look at my life and the women that I've been with, the father and mother, that I picked the career in the Navy, what I did in medical sales, what I did with Fear Sherpa and now Freedom Sherpa. To today it all makes sense. Couldn't have seen it at the time. They're like steps, exactly the same. Bearing that, if I look through the lens of my heart, it makes all the sense in the world.
Speaker 1:It makes zero sense in my logical mind None, but it doesn't have to Exactly.
Speaker 2:That's the 64th jing key, or the 64th I Ching. The path to enlightenment is Sulaiman yeah.
Speaker 1:I love that story. If people were looking for you now and wanted to do breathwork, work with you, even have a conversation, obviously there's linkedin. The links are below can you just verbally say where the people can find you and find your services? And have a conversation with you yeah, easiest thing is a substack.
Speaker 2:Brian muka on substack, read some of the stuff. Send me a message. My stuff's on linkedin too. I have a seven-day guest pass for your audience to take advantage of. Come to the Entrepreneur Experience Campus. There's 11 other people like me in that space. And, yeah, come hang out. Come see if this is your vibe.
Speaker 1:To all the listeners now, people who are watching this when this is being you're watching this. Please go and have a look at this, because I know I've experienced it and I will continue experiencing Brian's work. It does change your life and it changes your perception and reality on what you're doing. Brian, before we shoot off, is there any things that you want to say to the audience? That many parting words, anything else you would like to leave them with before we say goodbye today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would love to whisper this to you, as you're listening, and I really needed to whisper this into the ear of my 22-year-old self, so I'm going to go back in time, with your permission, please. So I invite you guys to do the same thing. I am already what I seek Already. I was the whole time and so are you. Just remember that it's all perfect right now. I just breathe that in and just if you're looking at a mirror or your phone or whatever, like I love you. Thank you, I wish I did that a lot more often and certainly a lot sooner than I started doing that.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you, brian, you're amazing my audience. Please share, subscribe and you will change someone's life. I will see you very shortly. Thank you, I will see you soon. From this, this is Rice from the Ashes podcast, and thank you very much, brian, for joining me on this amazing interview.
Speaker 2:Thank you thank you for having me no, thank you, see you soon.
.png)
