Shownotes
Aaron McCormick the author of "Unbounded: Journey To Your Within" is Dr. Brad Miller’s guest on Episode 132 of the Beyond Adversity Podcast.
Aaron McCormick is an author, artist, entrepreneur and inspirational speaker whose path to success and fulfillment defies societal norms and expectations in nearly every way.
Raised by a single mom on the South Side of Chicago, McCormick, since the age of 23 was one of the world’s leading technology business transformation sales executives, earning millions and receiving numerous awards and distinctions. He has been honored as “Best of IBM,” an award bestowed upon the top 1% of 400,000 employees, founded several companies and earned an MBA from a top business school with the rare precedent of having no prior undergraduate college degree. McCormick courageously stood up to and escaped the fundamentalist Christian cult in which he was raised, resulting in loss of his universe of friends and family.
With the combination of deep empathy, wisdom, and self-made success in the face of adversity, McCormick ignites the innate ability we all have within to decode our own answers for maximum clarity and self-actualization. Aaron has helped countless people of all backgrounds realize greater fulfillment and success in areas of career, personal power, love & relationships, sales, entrepreneurship and leadership.
https://aaronmccormick.com/about
January 2021
Dr. Brad Miller
Transcript of the Interview (note that the transcript was generated by AI software and there may be some typos)
Brad Miller 0:00
Our author today, Aaron McCormick, he grew up in a very difficult circumstance which we will share, talk to him about in a minute. And he rose into success in the corporate ranks as a salesperson, without the benefits of some advantages some other folks had earning a great deal of money and rising up the corporate ranks. But he found it wasn't quite enough for him to have true success and fulfillment in his life. And he knew that he had to break free of what was binding him up, and to move forward with something else. That is more fulfilling for him. That's what we're going to talk about today. The name of his book, his unbounded journey to your within or author guest today. Is there a McCormick Aaron, welcome to the podcast today.
Aaron McCormick 0:46
Thank you, Brad. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
Brad Miller 0:49
Awesome. Awesome. Well, Aaron, the name of your book is unbounded journey to your within. And so that tells me if you became unbounded, then prior to that something bound you up. So what was it some of the things that bound you up? Or what were some of the challenges that you face, I'd like to hear a little bit about your story.
Aaron McCormick 1:13
Sure, well, the title on bounded, a lot of people might assume that unbounded is the wrong form of unbound, but unbounded actually means to be limitless, or is unbounded is exactly as you mentioned, to lose a specific set of binding or a binding. And what I've realized throughout all of our lives is that we all absorb a bunch of binders, which I consider things that are foreign to our actual essence, if you will. In other words, if you think about when you were born, when I was born, all of us, we have a certain energy, a personality, a spirit, a disposition that nobody ever taught us. But then through the years, it's it starts to morph a bit based upon the energy in our household, our family, heritage expectations of our sex or race, the area we live in, TV, pop culture, just all sorts of things. And we gradually suppress or divert from things that really are what we prefer what brings us joy, what makes us tick. And so we kind of become an offshoot of our original selves. So the concept of unbounded is where we conscientiously go through not just our, our life up to this point, various experiences, expectations, ideals, things that we think are ours, but they may not really be. And we also look at our presence, from relationships to career, you name it, and when we gradually be honest with ourselves, and we find our higher self by pursuing things that are actually not in conflict, we, we find our real joy. So that's the premise of the book. And it covers everything from self, really connecting our own dots. It's a book about the reader really takes you through your own life. And then also relationships, romantic, familial friends, and of course, career, which is where we spend most of our time. That's, that's the book. As far as me. I mean, I was raised in the Southside of Chicago, I'm one of four children, I'm black. My parents divorced when I was four. So I didn't really have a father figure, although I had older brothers. And my life is just full of paradigm busting. I didn't really try to do this, I just tended to recognize that conflict inside of myself was greater than appear not liking me or peers, not liking me or not, don't get me wrong, I at one point, I was very much succumb to my environment, as we all do. And often we stay on that path. But I guess at some point, I gradually began to learn the voice in my head, the energy in my soul, energy, meaning the unspoken thing is not always a word or voice. It's just a feeling you don't agree with it's not quite congruent, that kind of thing. That was a lot more painful to deal with, than appeasing these external forces, family environment, whatever the case may be. And then afterward dealing with that voice nagging or that thing saying that that's not quite what you agree with, or what you feel or think. And so I began to live a lot more intrinsically. And, and it's been an incredible journey to be a novel to follow this one too, because this book is not specifically about my life, although there's some some things I talk about to jog other people's own experiences. It's really about the reader. Sure. Well, you
Brad Miller 4:48
mentioned about how this internal conflict that you had and how you had to make some sort of a transition from the external to the intrinsic somewhere along the line. I would imagine there may have been a seminal moment or a time when you hit a wall or you came to something that was was a life changing moment. Is there such a thing for you? And if so, let's talk about a little bit.
Aaron McCormick 5:19
There were actually a few key ones. And I think for most of us, we will notice that sometimes there's one big one that is the catalyst for everything else. I just think back to, for example, being in high school, where, you know, most of the people, the examples around me, were either blue collar workers, Southside Chicago, you had a great job as you are doing something blue collar, consistent pay, or you might have been insurance agents, or something like this, which some made really good money. It's a great profession. But it didn't require a college degree. And I didn't have that option for several reasons. One of which is I was raised in a very high controlling Christian religious cult, if you will. And they applied the Bible to the extreme where Jesus just had a simple trade. As we know, as a carpenter, he focused on God's kingdom, he wasn't trying to become something prominent, although with a perfect mind and body, he could have been a richest man to ever live. So anyway, the point is I
Brad Miller 6:19
value system imposed upon you that was antithetical to having certain types of success and breakthroughs.
Aaron McCormick 6:27
Yeah, and in that situation, I had a love of cars. In fact, to date, I've had over 100 cars, but at the time, I'm thinking, Hey, you know, maybe I'll be a mechanic. I started trying to work on cars with my uncle and cold winters in Chicago, bang my knuckles a few times, head, tilt the hands and realize, okay, maybe I'll drive them and enjoy them, I'm not gonna quite work on them. And then I then I decided, Okay, I'll do computer programming. I thought technology is the way the future. And I have a pretty analytical mind started trying to do that in high school, created some apps and stuff was very tedious. And as you can tell, I'm out of a book, and I've been in sales. I'm apparently a very interpersonal kind of human right, I like to interact with people. And I realized, you know, maybe as a sophomore or a junior, I either need to be teaching training, selling, or if I did go to college, a lawyer or a psychologist, people is my space. And so I adapted myself to that path. And I said, what, what if I marry selling or dealing with people with technology, because of my own macro decision was or expectation was that technology would eventually run the planet. And so unbeknownst to me, and also say, against everything else around me, but brothers, uncles, other male figures, I went down that path, and I was a bit ostracized at the thought of being in corporate America, trying to get into technic to technology. The thought was, oh, you'll be, you'll be kind of owned, you know, you look at us, we run, you know, financial markets, or we are insurance agents, we work we spend our own time, it's all ours, and we make as much money as we want, you'll have an eight to five. Little did I know that that decision, which was kind of frowned upon quite a bit and scuffed that would lead me down a path where my low 20s I worked from home, I kept my own schedule, had a six figure salary, plus benefits, I traveled the world, booked flights at my leisure, did power lunches created important presentations and proposals and transformed business in the process. So it was so far in the way beyond and on a different level than the types of problems that the people around me are solving. And both in terms of challenging myself in terms of income, freedom, global travel, all that. And that was purely from just an internal awareness that I don't quite want to do something that's so transactional, valuable, yeah, helping people insurance that's very valuable. We all need it. It's a good career. But I have a very complex mind. And I like to break things down and solve bigger problems. And so organizational behavior in psychology and the complexity of big enterprise software sales, somehow was a perfect fit. But at the time, I made that decision bread at 1617, I had no idea the world of complex software sales, or that this kind of income could be made or that it was, you know, ticked all these boxes for me, but that's an example
Brad Miller 9:25
and it might be saved. Before you go too far. You had several barriers, I assume to get there. I mean, you said you didn't have a college education. And I don't know, I don't know if there are racial barriers or whatever, or socio economic or whatever. But it seems like you had to overcome a few things to have success in that career.
Aaron McCormick 9:43
Without question, and the thing is, I didn't I guess I didn't overly internalize those barriers. I mean, I wasn't clueless, that race is an issue in this country or that most people have a college degree to make a great deal of income. I knew that was the case. All Not all, but a lot of my peers in high school all had college plans and all the counselors were pushing that. And I just knew that was not in my, in my future. I guess deep down, I've always felt that everything was merit based, call it and evety call it a real connection to the soul. Because as I mentioned earlier, we actually are bigger than these bodies, and we are unlimited our higher selves are, the issue is what does our conscious mind believe? therein lies the barriers. And since I really felt that, whatever I wanted to do, I could be great at whatever it is, if I just say, that's what I want. That's what's going to be where that came from. Not quite sure. But I know we all have that capacity. And so part of what I've done is booked for is to help people go through their own experiences, good and bad, their own attitudes, things that have been visible since they were infants, toddlers, there's exercises that take you through talking to family members, and just understanding some of the essence of what you are in your original form, before binders were consumed, and then you go through all the different periods of life where those might have morphed and changed and circumstances where you suppress that sort of thing.
Brad Miller 11:12
Where you break up your book into the self actualization stuff, things we're talking about here now and in your career, aspirations and then your personal relationships, but winding through the the themes that that wind through everything you're talking about here are things that are of the soul, or of the of the intrinsic of the mind are things like joy and empathy. And I would just like for you to take talk a little bit about about this understanding of the power that comes from going to these places, a place greater than yourself, on top of either your spiritual life or your mindfulness, things of this nature, speak to the power beyond yourself how that's part of your transformation.
Aaron McCormick 12:00
Yeah, the, you know, the, essentially how you say the power beyond yourself, and I know exactly what you mean. And ironically, it is the power of your true self. But to your precise point, it's not consciously yourself, like we consciously view ourselves to be the physical stature, the educational level, the experiential, the all the things that we know, to be the case, but there's so much that we don't know, it's, you know, I kind of like in the journey are the two options of what animates us, we're either intrinsically animated, or extrinsically. And if we're really far along the path, we begin to integrate the two and we do both very well. But usually, we have a very strong bias, almost every human, by the time they're 12, or some somewhere around that age, are highly biased, one way or the other. They're either actuated by the mind, primarily, or the heart. And the mind is a composition of things that we've learned since birth. And that has shaped us. That's, that's the, that's the path that is usually less fulfilling, it may be extremely fulfilling, meaning you may become popular doing things that you didn't agree with, or you may become rich, or you, whatever, those things, but those are not the real you. And at some point, a correction ends up getting made, whether you're an elderly person, and you realize it, then after you've lost a lot of matters of the heart, family relationships, you know, you sold your soul, so to say, whatever. That's one path, the other path. So the other way to be animated is more intrinsically, where you are in touch with what really feels right to you. And that is your higher self. I also think of it like this, Brett. And the moment we're born. As I mentioned, that animation thing I think we have, who knows how many millennia that thing is, right? I mean, we don't, we don't know the real makeup of our connection with source, whether we get integrated directly into this infinite source of energy, and we actually are God but dispersed out whether we are part of his creation and part of you know, little individual cells that that reflect His infinite goodness, if you will. Who knows. But the point is, we are already more than what we started as. So to the extent that we are able to be aware of and catch the friction when it happens, friction, meaning to the external stimuli that chase at what's already in us. If we overly train ourselves to fold each time that friction happens and follow the external stimuli. We have that many more things to learn to strip away, to get back to the original essence and some of us are wired very early on to to resist that friction. That internal conflict and stay congruent with ourselves. And those are the ones that happen to be very, very successful. Not in money, although that usually too, but super fulfilled, because it didn't deviate too far. And none of there's no better or worse because I believe we all have chosen our journey. And we all learn from everything. Again, if we're actually infinite, this is one of many different learning this particular life that we're in. So there is no better is just how do we connect our own dots, to understand, you know why and how we are as we are. And if we're fulfilled where we are, then no adjustments needed. If there's adjustments needed, you will know them from your own self from your own competence. But you know what I mean?
Brad Miller 15:46
Yeah, well, what I'm hearing you say here is that this is a process that, and it's an ever changing process. And you mentioned in your writing, about human ascension. And I think that's kind of where we're touching on right here. Now, to me, that means trying to arise or get better, but integrate with me this term, you use human Ascension with what you're talking about here about the about the intrinsic values being alignment with your external situation?
Aaron McCormick 16:15
That's a great question. I think human attention is very widely misunderstood, especially by very by people who have chosen in this life to be more brain injured or more ego, not I don't need that, as in I'm all that I mean, the minds of those that are very literal and physical. That's all that matters. They tend to think of Ascension as some woowoo, esoteric, you know, fake, dreamy sort of stuff, but it's extremely scientific. For example, if you were to wire us up to a biofeedback machine, think of it as an EKG, maybe they're probes around the wrist, around the ankles, maybe around the head. And this machine is sending signals into the body and it's measuring output coming back. Well, if they anyone were to show you images of your pet dog, or your child or your favorite hobby, your vibrational measurement or energy goes up and rises. On the other hand, they show you something that scares you. Something that you know, is depressing, as you mentioned earlier, it goes low. So we talked about ascension, that basically means your vibrational essence being as high as it can be. And the way for your energy to be high is for you to be fulfilled in areas of joy and lack of conflict, that sort of thing. So we've all entered lives, or creative lives where we're full of their foot filled with things that actually do not raise our vibrational essence. We go to jobs we dread. We hang out with people that chafe at us, but we're supposed to like them, because of some, you know, superimposed reason, we're relationships that are misaligned. We don't know how to get them on track. So we live these lower, vibrant, low lower vibe existences. And ascension is when we stopped being bullied by our own self absorbed requirements, and fears that stop us from adapting. And so when you finally start to connect, and just do use, so to speak, that's the simplest way to put it. But you do it with full confidence knowing that even when the outsides physical things seem to be going to be, you know, going to go terribly because you're living your truth. When life is really taught you that it only goes better when you live your truth. And so you do without the fear. The absence of fear causes you to attract the very things that you might have always wanted. But you have to really not have the fear anymore, because you've learned your lesson. That's why connecting the dots I keep saying it's so important, because it's not just somebody blabbing off to you, motivational speech, do...
