Thomas Green here with Ethical Marketing Service. On the podcast today, we have Corey Hilton. Corey, welcome.
Hey, thanks so much, Thomas. It’s a pleasure to be on. I really appreciate the invite.
Would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a bit about yourself and what you do?
Yeah, I’m probably a little bit different than some of the podcast guests you may have had in the past and different in a way that is a little bit misunderstood, I hate to say, by some people. I am actually a former male exotic dancer. So I had a bit of a colourful career running all over north America basically and into Europe at one point. But yeah, that industry is kind of a foregone industry now, especially due to the world situation. There’s not a lot of that entertainment really happening, so to speak. But even before the pandemic came around, it was kind of one of those industries that was slowly fading off anyway, so I was just lucky enough in my own way to be involved in that industry when it was really at its heyday back in the late 80s and the early 90s when it was just a politically incorrect era to a certain degree, I would say.
But at the same time, a lot of the time, I guess you could say the perceptions that some people have of the typical male exotic dancer are probably right in a lot of cases, but I had a very different type of career. And it spanned for 25 years, my friend. So when I started in this industry, I was actually in Canada here, the drinking age is 19, but for myself, I was actually in the bars working, at 17 years old while I was still going to high school. So a bit of a different lifestyle and a lot of people may have led, but when I look back at the whole picture, I really have minimal regrets. I really actually did have some experiences and memories and relationships that I’m really blessed to have actually had and I don’t take that for granted one bit. So I have a very, very long and colourful story, but at the same time, the main thing behind my story is a lot more learning experiences that I can pass off, especially the other men that deal with some of the struggles that I dealt with. So yeah, that’s kind of it in a nutshell really, and Yeah, it just all started here in Canada many moons ago, and now it’s at a point where I’m 52 years old in April and I wanted that excitement back in my life of entertainment to a certain degree.
Now, this is just a little different entertainment, but at the same time, it’s still exciting cause I’m still able to be creative, which is one of my core values. So if I don’t have that creativity in my life, I don’t have that excitement in my life. So it’s good to be back in the entertainment field, so to speak a little bit anyways, even if it’s on a podcast, it’s still awesome. So it’s just great to be able to meet new people like yourself. Well, thank you for the introduction. The reason I wanted to talk to you is because you strike me as someone who has done an awful lot of introspection. You look very thoughtful. Is that accurate? Yeah, very much so. I will say this, I think that sometimes it’s something that a you have to be willing to do it. You have to want to do it just like anything, if you want to lose weight or you want to quit smoking or whatever it is, there are certain things you want to do in life. You have to be willing. but for myself, I was just at a point in my life where I really was willing personally to do that to take that step, and it was the best, one of the best, most, I guess you could say one of the best things I’ve ever done in my entire life, I’ve done some amazing things, but it took me so many years to actually address my own inner issues, so to speak.
And I think that in my own way, I believe that everybody in this world, in their own way, has a certain element, whether it’s a sliver or a massive amount of mental health. I think that went right from the moment that were born. We have an element of mental health. It starts to progress and if it’s not addressed or not really, if you’re not aware of the things that have the, the reasoning behind some of it, it can make a person go through some pretty massive struggles. So for myself personally, I did not address my inner issues at all. And so I literally lived behind my alter ego and I created that alter ego at a pretty young age and from there when I went into the industry, I hid behind the mask of that alter ego for the majority of my adult life. And due to that I had some really amazing successes, and I was at the top of the world in my own way a lot of the time, but I also hit rock bottom really hard a lot of the time when it came to emotional connection and relationships and in particular. So yeah, I had some major struggles with that stuff and you know, that’s not, that’s relative to so many people in the world, it was just for me, I just, it was just three different lenses all.
And so now it’s the introspection side has allowed me not only to focus on where I’m at personally now and the reason why I am, but also it allows me to really be able to relate to where a lot of people’s other struggle where a lot of other people’s struggles are and so that I can really understand where their head is. Sometimes I can’t necessarily, you know, maybe agree with their perspective on certain things, just like anybody, but at the same time I can definitely respect their perspectives now a lot more than I could before, because I’m not just seeing it through one set of eyes anymore. So that’s part of the joy of this whole process. And when I get really get the gratification out of it now is actually helping out other authors and just other people in general who want to address their own authenticity if they’re willing to and to really kind of crunch down that and find the best versions of themselves in their own way. So that’s just my avenue as I guess you could say I’m an author and a coach where that’s just my way of doing it. I mean, I know there’s a lot of people that are in the industry of coaching or speaking that have their road. but this is just the most effective road that worked for me personally and it made such a difference in my life that I want to do is spread the word to others to really be able to help them.
The same way I was able to help myself because I kind of became my own therapist if you want to know the truth, you know? So yeah, it’s crazy road your values. One of your values and if I’m not mistaken, one of your, shall we say specialties is aligning your values with your emotions. You have to share a bit on that. Absolutely. I think that it’s for me this is just, again, I only speak from my own perspective, but it made such a massive impact for me to be aware of those things. And so I just coasted through life to be completely straightforward without really understanding what my values. My really true core values were in the first place. I think a lot of us do. We just kind of go through life as a bit of a slot machine and take what we get as we go along for myself. When I when I really actually took the time to you know, you know, almost like one word, I guess you could say representation. What I did was I took all these core value words that I had. So there was probably, I don’t know 60 or 74 value words in my in my training handbook and went through all of them and just I found the ones that really stood out, the most ones that resonated with me the most and I put a check mark beside each one of them and then I chose the eight top core values that out of those ones that I put the check part down and wrote them down.
And then from there I just simply just thought really deeply about it and I thought, you know what is it that you know when I get, for example, when I’m, when I think about the word protection, what’s the feeling that I have behind the word protection? Well, for me personally, it’s safety. So the feeling of safety revolves around protection being one of my core values. So when I was able to do that, I could, I I couldn’t understand really when I’m actually aligned with my core values, how I feel. If I’m feeling really safe in my life, obviously I have an element of protection that is aligned with my authenticity. If it’s if I’m not then I have to understand why that is the case and I know how to address it because it’s revolving around protection. So all I’m saying is this by addressing those and being aware of those and then attaching those, those feelings towards that. Then I actually try to my best to take those eight words and find one core word that represents all of them. So if I’m actually in line with all those feelings, my inner purpose feelings, so to speak is actually harmony. That’s the word that I don’t know. I feel it’s all in line, it’s all harmonious.
So it’s never gonna be perfect, Like nobody’s ever gonna be perfect with that. You can’t perfection is Bs. But all I’m saying is that I try my best to always look at where I’m feeling, even if it’s just on, on a weekly basis, I’ll look at my, for example, my relationships and if I’m not feeling connected in my relationship and I have to ask myself why is it that I’m not feeling connected in my relationships or connected in my relationships I used to stay and then if that is the case, trying my best to bump that up a little bit in whatever way I can. So it’s just always trying to be the best version of yourself and try to keep that vibration that you’re, that you’re representing inside. So that’s as high as possible. So you can actually push that out to the rest of the world in your own way. And it is actually quite an infectious I’ve found because it’s allowed me to really close the door on some inauthentic relationships that I had before and open the door on some really amazing authentic relationships now that have expanded me as a person and just made me better by the people that I’m associated with. And I think we’ve all heard this before when it comes to self-care. It’s the, the top by people that you’re associated with, that’s really who you are, you’re developing into, that’s the clay that you’re basically moulding of yourself.
So, I just do it in my own way through authenticity is all and it’s just because simply really impacted me and made a difference in my life. So then yeah, maybe a better writer, a lot better writer, which is authenticity being another one of your values, I’m guessing. Yeah, yeah. I mean authenticity is more so the overlapping. Like it’s almost the umbrella of my entire process with this, take it off projects. So take it off really means simply, it’s not just taking off my clothes, so to speak. Whereas I, you know, it might be the hook to be able to have people write, read my book to hear some of the amazing crazy stories that I wrote in the past, but take it off really means the layers. It’s just the layers that compound onto life just to take off those layers and really find your authentic self, get naked strip it right down. You know, really get to that point where, you know, I think that are totally one of my favourite writers actually said it as far as in power now is that when you can actually strip it all down and still look at the mirror and be happy with the person that you see, then, you know, it’s, it’s one of those things that it may if you can be naked so to speak and be happy with that everything else in life can really align a lot better because you’re grateful for everything you get from there forward.
So in a lot of ways, I’m very grateful for losing everything that I had in my life, in fact going through the pain and the struggles that I went through. I’m glad that I went through them. I’m glad that I had a mess in my message because it actually created value that I never even knew that I had. It was just literally sitting there that so many people in my life, so you need to you need to write a book, Corey, you should write a book. I should. I mean, I don’t know about you Thomas, but how many people have you had in your life that have said you should write a book or you know, and they said I should write a book even, but they always say they should, but they never take the action to do it right. And so and that takes time and I’m not saying that, you know, everybody’s born to do that, I respect where certain people are in life, where they just don’t have, you know, there’s a lot of stuff going on, whether you have a family, you have kids, I’m just blessed at this time in my life that I don’t have anything that’s distracting me. So I was able to take two years off of life literally and just push away relationship to push away career push away everything and just totally work on myself, which and that really was part of my process with writing my book and it got, as I went along with that, I started to actually see that expanding more and more and it was really cool to watch that process happen because as I went along, I started to realize, oh my God, you know, I actually have something here that’s more of a gift that I can give the world than I ever expected before.
And it just came along through working with an amazing company, quote, daring to share global, that I is my company that’s publishing me. And also on top of that helped me out with doing my edits and stuff. So through that process, it all came back to authenticity and instead of like as an example, like I when I first wrote my book, I might have said something like I felt like this or I was feeling this and I was using the word feel all the time. Well, I replaced the world, word feel in my book quite often when I went back and rewrote it because I actually set a set deal. I would actually use words that represented my core values and the feelings that went behind that. So, I was painting more of a picture as a writer instead of just saying, I felt like this, So it’s just kind of it makes you a far more deep writer and allow you to really paint that picture that the audience really wants to be brought into. And so for myself trying to paint a picture of being a male, exotic dancer again, we come back to stereotypes. We come back to what a what a person obviously perceives as that, but my life was so much different, it wasn’t so magic.
My colleague would story, it was something that really, as I said, started off young, but I worked in Canada and I worked in the US. And I had some just like stuff that happened that most people could never even imagine and I was in such a crazy free bird mode that a lot of people wanted to necessary, not necessarily didn’t want to go and do that career per se, but they might have wanted to know what it was like, whether it’s a female or a male and that’s literally what I do through my entire book because I just Take them for the journey through the 25 years until I hit 43 when I finally retired. It all kind of oddly enough ties back together and it’s a yeah, it’s just a really cool project. It’s something that I never dreamed I would do in my life really, but I’m really proud of it. Overall, congratulations. It’s not easy to be proud of something that you’ve done. So worth touching on just coming back to your values exercise just for a second. I think that in terms of how much you would encourage other people to do that, how influential has it been for you to actually go through your values and determine what’s important to you.
Absolutely massive. Because what it did was it not only made me I guess you could say more real and comfortable in my own skin because now that I’ve attached those and really take those into consideration other people know what they’re getting when they’re looking me in the eye, they know the person that they’re seeing. You’re not getting one person today and one person tomorrow because I’m trying to sell something that I’m not I’m now serving and I’m actually being real and me. So that’s one aspect of it now on the other side of it to me as far as the way that I look at it is that the more that I can I guess you could say help others to be able to understand what their core values are and they have to do that obviously themselves. Like I can only gently guide somebody in the right direction right? I can’t tell you what these things are. But when they can figure those things out for themselves and then figure those feelings out that are attached to that it can heal old wounds as well. Here’s a great example. This will dive a little into my story but basically I went through working doing shows all over Canada into the US. I met a girl in the US. I got married to this girl in the US. We stayed together for almost eight years. We had this really insane relationship of sex, drugs and rock and roll. A lot of fun, very co-dependent and a lot of ways. A lot of we did a lot of the things right way, but we did a lot of things the wrong way, right? So but we were just flying by the seat of our pants, not addressing any of this stuff. Just rolling and having a good time. Now when I actually was able to align with my authenticity, I was able to speak to my ex-wife after being, I guess you could say, detached completely for 15 years since we divorced. And when we were detached and we were not, I was not being my authentic self. I was pushing off the blame on her. So I was turning around instead of using my thumb. I was saying it’s all your fault, you’re the one that screwed around on me. I was faithful to you for my entire time that I was married to you. I was out there having fun with all these other girls, but I never did anything with any of them the whole time. How dare you be the one that cheated on me. I just pointed the finger occur and didn’t really take any responsibility or accountability for that in any way at all and just continue to say poor me being a victim about it.
And when I finally started using the thumb and saying, you know, maybe it was just maybe a little bit of myself, it started to actually stray from the person that I was when she married me in the first place. And maybe I was just when I really started to look at, okay, as I mentioned, creativity, for example, is one of the biggest things that excites me, keeps me alive and I’m not being creative and not living and dying inside. So when I started to lose my creativity, and I got out of the industry for a little while and then it wasn’t a dancer and I went into another industry, I changed and I changed, not in the best of ways. And so she started to literally fall out of love with that person because I was the one changing, not even realizing that I was changing and not even accepting that I was changing. And so in the end, Yes, she might have taken the action, but I literally pushed her towards that in a lot of ways. So I’m at least 50% accountable for that now and it feels really good to be that way. But on the other side of it, when I was able to actually say that to her and release her from that prison in her mind of guilt and everything else because she was my partner for seven or eight years.
I’m not here to put her in a prison cell for the rest of her life over one action that she did. I don’t want her to live that either. Just so I took a layer off of me of just feeling like okay, it was actually a lot of ways liberating to just get that out or maybe even get out a couple of skeletons in my closet that I held in there for a long time. But all I’m saying is that by doing that she was able to as well aligned with her authenticity and become a more authentic person just by our conversation. So in her own way I was able to impact her by just doing what I did. Like literally leading by example and following my own training and I gave her the exact same option and she rolled with it. And so I’m proud of her for doing that. She’s one of my biggest fans now and I say again, this comes back to that contagious side of it. Like if you’re actually taking the actions and doing it, not just talking about it, but you’re doing it and you’re seeing results from that. Well, other people want those results to and so I’m not here to serve the whole world. I’m not, there’s only a certain amount of people that are willing to go there, but if they’re willing to go there, it can be a game changer.
It can be a total game changer for your life in general professionally and personally, because I was honestly the type of guy for like a long time after I put the dancing game, I was the guy that was a sales guy trying to sell cable phone and internet to people for example, and I was pretty good at it to be honest. I mean, I sell well, but the thing was when things went sideways, it was never my fault ever. I was just always pushing it off on somebody else. Oh it was this reason, it was never me, it couldn’t be me. And so I was because I was living this perfectionism lifestyle in my own mind, still my ego from my past, that ego that could get away with it all on stage, I carried that off into my personal life, into my professional life even after the lights went down, I was still pretending that you know, how dare I be, you know, imperfect, you know, and I kind of looked in the mirror and I was always trying to hit that level of comparison with everybody else and that’s a slippery slope and so now through introspection again, I mean we have been able to really rein that back and you know, I started doing yoga and started getting into progression instead of worrying so much about perfection and trying to get other people’s back and when I’m making decisions instead of just trying to make decisions on my own because sometimes we tend to do that too.
Not even if you’re disagreeing with somebody, it’s always a good idea to really have their perspective on things too, right? So that’s just something that that I was able to address through this whole process. And again, it’s just, it’s not perfection and it’s not, I’m still learning just like anybody else’s, but at the same time, anything that I can pass along is a good coach to be able to help somebody else dealt out to be able to do what I’m doing right now. I’m happy to do because it’s just changed my life and I’m not sitting here saying that I’m a multi-millionaire over it or you know, I’m in some status role. I’ve been in higher status positions before, but I’m really honestly happier now as a single guy with my dog doing what I’m doing. I’m happier now than I’ve been in a long time because I’m really just me and it makes a massive difference. So yeah, that’s the message. I want to pass it along to guys because I had a skewed definition of what man enough was all about the first place. I tried, I tried to play the role of the hunter gatherer, the guy that didn’t cry or the guy who didn’t express his emotions and that didn’t really get me that far really in, you know, in the end I just burst and would end up saying things that I didn’t want to say.
One of the biggest things I say in my book is let the dam break before you down break. Don’t, you know, hold all those emotions in forever because it never turns out good. And in the end, like I said, whether it’s a slow moving emotional freight trainer if it’s a fast when it hits you right away, it’s really kind of sometimes a good idea to take that break and just take a step back and breathe a little bit and ask yourself why you’re feeling the way that works a lot of the time. It’s not necessarily the person that you’re talking to or the event that’s happening a lot of the time. It’s just built up inside of you and you’re saying something for other reasons. Right? So yeah, that’s part of that emotional connection when it comes with authenticity in the first place is really raining that in and being emotionally intelligent. We’re touching on authenticity. And also that moment you referred to when you said something, you said something that you didn’t, you didn’t want to say one of the things I had a question around regarding authenticity as like a positive, I would see a positive, let’s say impact of authenticity.
Might be let’s say you want to give someone a hug. You know, perfectly innocent hug. But you don’t do it because you’re not being authentic. You’re worried about rejection or whatever. That would be a positive example. But a negative example, let’s say you’re in a bad mood and you feel like you’re going to have a go with someone. Like it’s authentic to have a go at them, but it’s not necessarily positive. So, have you got any thoughts around those examples? Yeah, I mean, look, I’m a guy that was a former bouncer nightclubs too. So, I deal with a lot of that stuff where you’re dealing with drunk people and everything else and you really have to rein in those emotions. Sometimes you could be in a fight every night. So, I was that guy when I was in my early twenties. But I think that that my feelings towards that actually just know this comes back to my own perspective. Again, Thomas is just from my own lifestyle, but I’ll shed a little light on my family background. So my parents who raised me, I was actually raised by my grandparents, so who I call my father is actually was actually my grandfather and grandmother was my mother. And so with that being said, my my grandfather was somebody I really, really looked up to, like a lot of kids with their dad. They really want to, you know, they look up to their father, right? And so for me, I put him in my own head. I put him on a pedestal like I felt like he was superman to me, but at the same time he only had the tools that he had, he had mistakes in his past that he just got passed along from generation to generation. So what I’m saying is his problem was emotional disconnection and bottling everything up. I was literally his problem because he was born in the depression. His mother committed suicide. He was put into at a very early age, drafted to go to war in World War Two. He was in the navy, he was like turned into a robot pretty much. And then so that that emotional disconnection passed along through all my family members. So where I’m kind of going with this is that when it comes to situations like you’re saying, when you’ve got to make a positive or negative thought on authenticity, it’s not, it’s to me it’s not even so much whether it’s positive or negative, it’s just being real and assessing the situation and doing the best for all parties involved.
And so like instead of just thinking about myself now, so to speak, I might just think a little bit more about what that another person is going through a little bit more empathetic and try to really relate to them and understand, like I said, I might not agree, but at least try to get into their head a little bit so that I’m not getting into the massive conflict, I always found that when my father would get into – like it was always something that was not, it was not intentional. He just allowed it to build and build and build and then suddenly it would get to a point where something would just trigger him, it would be just one little trigger and all of a sudden blah. He’d vomit all this stuff out of his mouth. It was not authentic in any way. And then he’d have to rein it back in later on when he felt really guilty about it and say he was sorry for it. It didn’t happen every week. It didn’t, it was just one of those things that will happen very, very occasionally. But because he wouldn’t let it out, he wouldn’t let, he would not let those emotions out. So to me again, it’s not a thing of positive or negative. It’s just if you’re really truly being you, there’s gonna be people that you’re not, you’re not going to deal with anymore that maybe you are selling a different version of yourself.
You know, and then there’s gonna be people that are gonna, they’re gonna see your greatness now that aren’t normalizing you that aren’t that haven’t been in your life before. I have a lot of people that have normalizes me as the male exotic dancer and that’s all labour early have seen me as family friends. They don’t see what maybe you see or they don’t see what the person that I just met sees and so when I introduced myself as who I am now, I have a lot of these new people that are coming into my life going, my God, you’re doing something amazing here. Whereas other people that I’ve known for 20 years are sitting there going on. Yeah. Query. You know, we’ll see how that all works out. It’s not even what they say. It’s how they say it. And you just kind of know. And so we’re looking for support from family members or from people that are close to you that have normalized you, which we all kind of do because we all want their support. Like that’s just natural. A lot of the time you get disappointed by that because further and it could be for multiple reasons. It might not even be all about you. They may even just think that their support isn’t really important. You know, in their own mind, they might think that, right? So you can’t get into somebody else’s head.
And that’s what I just keep coming back to is you can only control what’s going on in your head and do your best to really represent your true, your true authenticity. The best you can and that will positive or negative. It’ll make an impact and it’s almost like to me it’s almost like doing the laundry. It really is. You know, and I’m glad that there’s some relationships that I have from my past that I love those people and I don’t it’s not that I’ve taken them out of my life, I just don’t camp there anymore because I’m not going to allow I’m not going to allow the limiting beliefs or the self-doubt of someone else regardless of how it goes, they are, I’m not going to allow that to come into my own head and flood my head because then as somebody that’s dealt with lack and disconnection and self-doubt if I allow that to even come in for a little bit, it can ruin my entire day and paralyzed. So again, that just comes down to understanding myself and being real and being kind to myself and saying these are the things that can trigger me, these are the things that can hold me back. So if that comes around, take the time, you gotta go to nature for an hour and go do a little walk to get your head straight after you have one of those conversations to figure out why do it, but don’t let it ruin the rest of your day, week, month year.
I mean, I did it for so many years. I did that. We’re doing trying to do it all on my own and you know, I mean, I’ll be honest Thomas when I went through my divorce, I went on a seven year Forrest Gump walk, trying to figure out why, why things happened the way that they did and trying to be Mr fix it and try and push it all off, so much of the blame that I pushed off on other people, but also just sitting there going, well, what did I do wrong? Why me? Poor me. And again, victim mindset limiting beliefs saying, oh you’re not worth crap, you’re, you know, I dropped something on the floor and be like, oh God, Corey way to go, you know, and not really just flowing the way that I should have and I really just believe and I know it’s a little hippy dippy, but I really do believe in just really trying to keep your vibration high and being aware of when it’s slow, you know, I think that’s really important for anybody, anybody can do that really is like realized when we all have our ups and downs. But I think that sometimes when you can be aware of when those, what, what certain events you’re doing in your life are making you feel really amazing and get the goose bumps, be aware of them, write them down, Write those things down.
What the hell from 1 to 10 how those things make you feel. And if you’re scrolling social media, maybe it’s a three. If your zip lining, maybe it’s a nine or a 10, right? The average them all out To see where you’re standing and if it comes down to it, you’re doing 10 items in a day and you write those all down and you’ve got those numbers and you divide it by 10 now you’re getting your average. And if my average vibration that I have on a daily basis is seven as an example, if I’m scrolling social media and I’m on a three, maybe I might want to adjust what I’m doing that day and bump it up to something that’s actually above a seven so I can keep my preparation types. It’s not just about me, it’s about who I am as a person. If I’m the person that’s stuck in my head, in my, my phone all day and I’m not communicating with people and I’m just sitting there looking at all the negative stuff online. Well, I’m passing a negative vibe and I’m not really that much fun to be around really, you know, and I mean, I, I kind of find that if I’m doing things like going with other authors or with other people that inspire me to be a better person and I’m sitting down having poppy with them and I come out of that meeting, usually my vibration is really high and I feel like I want to go and conquer the world, it’s for a reason, right?
Because you’re in that same energy, you know, I feed off of that, right? So that’s, it’s just, again, just my perspective, I’m not saying that this is, you know, Working for every single personnel there, but it’s just what works for me and I’m not gonna sit here and say that I’m some expert that went to school for 10 years and read and read this sort of a book. But I will say that I would rather if I was in a position where I was a guy that was struggling with black unworthiness, that sort of stuff I could learn from somebody out of a book. But I would rather, in my opinion, to find somebody that’s walked the actual walk and they’ve had the experience because five of those letters and experience are an expert. And so I want to find I want to really talk to the person who walked the walk has went right through that exact same thing as I have. And did I do it perfectly? No, but that’s the thing that I find that I really did something with this book that was special was that I exposed my vulnerability to the world, like literally everything and went full on vulnerable and I don’t know about you. But when somebody is vulnerable with me and they’re telling me their truth, I’m more open to be vulnerable with them.
So that’s where I find that being an authenticity coaches really gratifying because I’ve gone ahead and said, okay, here’s your work for today, This is a video that you can follow, Here’s your workbook refer to chapter one in my book. Look at the difference that the problems that I had with the, with the struggle between truth and perspective and that was at five years old. Maybe go back to a time in your life when you struggle between truth and perspective and maybe it developed a fear of some sort or maybe it develops something inside of you that went into your adult but like me, which just ended up being truthful, it was a fear of heights that I developed from lack of truth and struggling with my perspective. All I ask is somebody to try to relate, try to reflect on their own life and do the same sort of thing and just write it down and just try to find that thing because I can honestly say before I started this writing process before I started this book, I had subconscious blocks that I could not get over that I was trying to figure out why they were there and I could not figure them out until I finished my book. But when I went through all this, I figured them out and I figured out why they were there and it literally released so much inside of me and it really came back to just words, believe it or not and perspective and again, we come back to that whole support thing with family and all it takes really if not, doesn’t necessarily have to be physical abuse or anything like that.
It can just be a little trauma. Maybe somebody like your mother turning around for example and saying, hey, you’re a follower, you’re not a leader At like seven years old that can impact a kid and make them think, oh, maybe I am a follower, not a leader. And it really did kind of pop into my head for many, many moons, but I came to realize through this whole process that she wasn’t, she wasn’t intentionally trying to make me feel that way. The problem was that she was actually speaking about herself. She wasn’t speaking to me. She was actually speaking about her own self-doubt, her own limiting beliefs, and she passed it along to me. It wasn’t that she didn’t love me, just doing the best we can with the tools that she had, right? So I go come back to finding that authenticity. It’s not, it can be really at times like if you’re really trying to align with that, you can say it in a way that you don’t have to be negative, you can say it be real and still be positive about it. So when I refer to people in my life that came into my house that affected my life in some way and I’m not just talking about my physical house, I’m talking about the house between my ears when I had people do that, I realized that they weren’t intentionally doing that.
So I called them in my book the bad apples of good intent and I actually came to realize that a lot of times in my own life I was a bad apple, good intent too, right? So it’s just, again, it’s just based off this whole story and as crazy as it all sounds, you know, I’m really, really happy that I went through the pain, I went really happy that I went through the struggle and if I didn’t, it just, it wouldn’t be the same. And I think that that’s really what it comes down to for a lot of people is that we all go through stuff in life, but at the same time we also don’t really sometimes recognize the value that we’re holding and it doesn’t matter who you are, it could be a garbage truck driver for all your life, You have stories, you have things that affected you and maybe who you are and somebody else in this world can benefit off of that. It’s, it’s a big old world out there. So that’s, that’s where I think I have a good thing going here, you know, that it’s really gratifying, very interesting, interested to get your take on discipline.
Yeah, sure. And then of what I’ve heard around discipline, at least in the online world anyway, it takes a very, perhaps tough, um, emotionless maybe point of view. So what’s your take on discipline and how has it helped you? That one is that’s why I love that question actually, because his, I look at it from a couple of different angles for me, discipline started off as huh, it was almost like A way to find acceptance. It was a derivative of acceptance for me now. For me it was also when I was in the early 20s, that was a kid, that was mediocre, I guess when I was in school, I never wanted to be mediocre. Part of the reason why I ended up working in a bar at 17 years old, but I ended up at 23 becoming a bodybuilder and I really surrounded myself with some of the best in the business, I was fortunate enough to meet some of the biggest pros in the bodybuilding arena and I trained at a gym that was hardcore bodybuilding and so They go to a level of discipline that is above the norm and so what I mean by that is there’s only 1% of the world actually that we’ll take the time to go through an entire bulking phase, entire diet phase, get up on a stage and actually do a full body bodybuilding show and it takes a lot, I mean discipline on another level and I’m and I’m just saying like I did crazy stuff, like I was Riding the bike three hours a day, I was tanning for half an hour, even cooking food all day, you know, besides that in my spare time and training on weights for an hour and a half and making sure that I timed everything out and I was even getting up in the middle of the night and taking a can of tuna and throwing it in a blender with a cup of water and slamming it back to get my protein levels high, right?
Like I just did stuff that most people wouldn’t do and you probably couldn’t really even be in a relationship to do because you probably drive your partner absolutely insane. Right? All I’m saying is by I look at discipline almost like a rubber band that stays stretched out if you’ve gone to a certain level and you stretched that rubber band out and you can implement that into other parts of your life as well. And so when I did that at an early age, I found that when I was, if there was a situation where I had the passion and I was willing to go there, I could put myself at that same discipline level that I did when I was 23, all I’m saying is that like when it comes to yoga for example, that’s something that I do right now is the progression of practice, right? Yoga is a practice, it’s not perfection by any means, but when I go into yoga now, if I’m going into the studio or I’m at home I actually stay by that same type of discipline when it comes to my, my, I guess you could say the training that I’m doing and basically the practice to try to make it as as accurate as I can to really just do my best to stay really aligned with my poses, to stay really in my stretch, whatever it is, I try to put my mind in that place, it’s that same kind of level and it pushes me higher than a lot of people normally do.
I just, I have that, that elastic band is so stretched out, that discipline allowed me to build my body to a point where I was able to sustain a long dance career with just focusing on my exterior and do an industry that most people wouldn’t even dream of doing. So I looked at it like that, it’s, it’s like the key to really anything, because when it comes down to it, it is really just taking your mind and tricking it to do the things that your body doesn’t want to do. So if I don’t want to get up at 6:00 AM to go for a run, You know? Well sometimes if they want to hit that goal, I’m going to get up at 6:00 AM to get a run, so it’s setting the goal going forward and doing it, but the key to me with this one now is making it more of a standard than just a goal. So it’s like the goal used to be, I want to be on the stage to be a bodybuilder. But now if I’m taking those things that I did in my body building life and I’m still implementing it into my life, such as maybe it’s, I have my breakfast is egg whites, oatmeal and toast. Maybe I’m sticking to that same structure that I used back then and still implementing some of those things in my life now and making it standard, right?
So I’m living my life more aligned physically, mentally and spiritually now and I’m using that discipline that I learned from back then in all aspects. So it’s not just a goal. Can you tell me about what your goals are at the moment, Corey? Well, you know, right now, I think that, you know, since I just hit the amazon bestseller list with my book in the last couple of weeks and that went amazing and I’m really happy to, you know, hit that goal, so to speak, that really is just the launch pad. So what I’m actually doing, I’m in the process of working with my, with my publishing company to uh, to get basically to the point where I’m actually starting to train people right now. So I’m basically doing exactly what I was trained on from my writing. I’m training other authors within my organization to be better, but at the same time, but I’m using, I’m using that authenticity training and bringing it into my own personal training that I’m promoting on my website as well packaged dealing it with my book because it works literally in conjunction with my book. So it’s kind of a cross reference between the biography that I wrote, which is a personal development book and then the actual training, which is either going to be in a video format if a person chooses or a one-on-one coaching format depends on where they want, where they want to go with it.
And so I’m just really at that point where I’m trying to expand into that market and then I’m going to also be starting my own podcast here within the next month or so and I have a podcast host as well. So I’m just kind of diving into a different arenas right now and I’m really enjoying learning and growing in in, in all of this because again, I don’t know everything right now, but I know I know enough to really make a difference in people’s lives already. So I’m just trying to do the best I can with the tools that I have, just like anybody else. And um, but I really am finding that, like I said, being really, really open to, to, you know, being my true self and being that vulnerable has really, especially when other people have read my book, they’re kind of like my God, like it makes it made such, it hit me so hard in so many areas that I can relate to, that they really want to learn more of themselves, which is really cool, and that’s just off of just reading a story, right? So I just want to start having more of that one-on-one experience, because I was a personal trainer before and it helped people to get a better body when it came down to working out and stuff like that guy by gently guiding them, not telling them what to do, just gently guiding them in the right direction, but they again, and honestly, Thomas just comes back, you’ve got to be willing, you’ve got to be willing, you know, and that’s an and so when I find people that are, you know, not just like I’m not saying that, you know, everybody that I’m doing training for has to have a mess in their life to get it straightened out or anything like that, I’m not even trying to say that I can straighten somebody’s life out, but when a person wants to, wants to address those things themselves and there’s an element, it’s almost, it’s, there’s, there’s a certain therapy element to it, there really is you’re all you’re doing is you’re just opening up and going, okay, well, you know, this is where I’m lacking, this is what I can work on and this guy is going to really kind of show me where, where he was doing that, and I, you know, I want to relate to that and do that work myself.
So, it’s just a matter of, like I said, just showing people the ropes, and then from there they take it and they roll with it themselves, and it’s something that I just felt really, really passionate about what I went through the writing process. So yeah, it just made a massive difference for me, you know, and now that I truly feel whether any direction that I’m going in now, I can make a far bigger impact, a far bigger impact than just trying to sell somebody and I will admit this, I will fully admit this. There was times, you know, between my dance career and being in corporate, where I was just trying to sell somebody and trying to sell a widget to somebody that they didn’t really even need, but it was just something that I was, I had to do, because I had sales targets and I had people over my, over my head saying, this is what you need to do, and that’s just not where I want to be, to meet my biggest goal Thomas. If you want to know the God’s honest truth, I’ll get right down to it is regardless of what direction this whole thing goes in, I want to increase my value to the point and I mean this really, truly mean this with all my heart, I want to increase my value to the point that I can help out others in this world to not deal with the struggles that I went through, but also to the point that you could take everything away from me and strip me down naked again completely, and I could have it all back by next week again because like, I really feel that that part of the lack that has always been in my head due to point fingers and say it’s due to my family background, but it’s not really, it’s all what’s in your own mind.
And I’ve spent time traveling across this world two years ago, I was in the Philippines for a month, running all over the place, it was in Indonesia and even walking down the most, one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, in Boracay, you know, in the paradise places, that places, I never even thought that I would have my toes in that sand in my life and I’m standing there in paradise and I still had that feeling of black in the back of my head. But what if the oh, when’s the world gonna come and kick my ask back down the mountain, so to speak? You know, when is that gonna kick me again? And I just came to realize that the food was the boot that I was always worried about coming to kick me back down was actually my own boot. It was my own self sabotage. It was my own saboteur in my own mind, but that last lack saboteur that does creep in there every once in a while and not every day I wake up feeling like I’m gonna conquer the world, There’s just not realistic. But when that lacks Saboteur does creep in there, the only way I’m ever gonna truly get rid of him is to actually increase that value. You know, I don’t think Oprah Winfrey, for example, has a lot of lax saboteur in her head when she wakes up every day, she’s got enough value that she provides the world that that doesn’t even exist in her world anymore.
So that’s kind of my own and my own goal is just to at some point in this life of mine to not have that prison cell of black in my mind. And it’s still kind of there every once in a while, admittedly, you know, I’m not through it, I’m just working on it, but it’s that’s a lot better than it was a couple of years ago. It’s a lot better than it was a couple of years ago, you know, but that again, it comes back to not trying to sell something that I’m not just coming out of me for real and that changed everything. Like even when it comes to my personal relationships, like just the people that I associate with now. it makes a mad difference because you know, I’ll be honest, I was in the status roll, my friend and I had thousands and thousands of friends when I worked in the largest beach club in north America and Florida and everybody wanting to know my name, wanting to get me through the, get them through the door of the club or to be able to be in the VIP section and hang out with the cool kids at the back of the bus or whatever you wanna call it. You know, I’ve had that in my life and it was fun. I’m not going to deny it. It was a lot of fun, but I would truly rather have Five solid flat tire, five friends that I can totally depend on that are authentic, but I know me and I know them.
I know the person I’m looking at in the face for real. I’d rather have five of them and 5000 acquaintances that I barely even know they don’t want a piece of me for the wrong reasons. So that’s the truth. You know, and it’s just, but again, these learning experiences, this wisdom that I got from all this, this came from a massive struggle and it came from addictions and it came from going through a lot of things like again, it’s just a lot of things that a lot of regular people go through, but I just had it amplified to such a higher level because of the emotional disconnect issues that I had and the position that I was in being in the spotlight for so long and being the perfectionist mode. And I just had such high expectations of myself and when they didn’t work out, I was so hard on myself, it’s just so hard on myself and I really, really honestly believe like in my own mind anyway, there’s a lot of superstars in this world that are like amazingly talented people that I personally still, even though they’re long gone now, still look up to it a lot of ways and I look back at their history sometimes and, and you see the most amazing artists, like a great example is like, I always look back at an older guy now and he’s gonna date me a little bit, but I always look back at like Michael Hutchins from an Access for example, and I see his lifestyle and like, he was one of the best entertainers on the planet.
And at the time, like he was like, everybody and their dog wanted a piece of him, right? But at the same time, although you might think that that person had everything going on the right way in their head and they had everything you’d ever want to have, right, Like he ended up in a hotel room by himself calling his friends just looking for somebody to talk to in the middle of the night and ended up committing suicide. Right? Or so they say, so really like, what is the definition of, where do you get the happiness from? You know, I mean I’ve met so many people in this life of mine that have that millions and millions and millions of dollars and there’s some of the most unhappy people that I’ve ever met. Why is that? You know? And then I’ve gone over to the Philippines and walked into the jungle and literally been buying little coco pops little they made out of the jungle. These folks that were literally in the jungle making cocoa and crushing it down and selling it right by a T shirt stand and with no teeth and their kids running around in the back and there’s making chicken skewers and selling little bottles of gasoline and they’re living a basic simple life and they’re happy as can be.
Meanwhile, at the same time while I’m watching that in the Philippines, I get into social media and I’m looking over here at the people that live right next to me in Canada hoarding toilet paper because they’re worried about covid, which wasn’t even a respiratory, was a respiratory disease, but they’re hoarding toilet paper for whatever reason and it’s just the whole thing. I’m sitting there going this all just doesn’t even really make sense because we’re living in the spoiled society over here trying to make sure we have enough toilet paper. Meanwhile, I’m looking over at these people living in the jungle like using a leaf for what they’re worried about over here, you know, and it’s like who’s happier? And so that was like a revelation in my own mind, in my own growth, where I was like I realized in my own way that it’s not, it’s that keeping up with the Joneses and just trying to make yourself look the best you can for social media to airbrush yourself that day to portray something that you’re not doesn’t really work out so well in the end, really? I mean, and so I don’t know, like I come back to that like where I truly feel at this time in my life, I don’t have everything I really don’t, but I’m probably the most complete person that I’ve ever been and doing that in our work.
It’s the hardest work I’ve ever had to do really. But it was the most gratifying. So that’s what’s next for me. It’s sort of like I’ve always been a free bird my friend. So I’m at that point where I’m just trying to increase my value in whatever direction that goes in and I could start a podcast and it could end up being like the best podcasts on the planet in another few months. I don’t know, but I’m going to go ahead and try and you know, do the best that I can with it and enjoy the process, right? And so I don’t know. I think that’s all we can all do is just do the best we can with the tools that we have. But be aware that’s the biggest lesson that I have is just be aware like, you know, take that time to really like understand that side of you because I didn’t do that. I would still be holding on to so much of that stuff and still playing the blame game right now. That would, that would still be, you know, pushing all my problems off on other people and you know, like I said, I’m not here to cry a river and say that I’ve had some horrible life. I’ve just, I’ve had an amazing life, but it could have been so much more amazing, especially when it came down to, you know, my marriage or some of my, my personal relationships that I had, they probably would have lasted a whole lot longer and they probably had a lot better quality.
If I had worked as a team with my partner instead of just communicating and doing the old hi honey, I’m home, probably would have been a lot better if I had understood her values and understood her emotional feelings that were connected to those two because then we would have had a more authentic and real honest relationship and maybe even checked in with my partner every so often just to say, hey, how are we doing right now? And if we’re going in the wrong direction, let’s see what we, we can do to address that together. And if we’re going in the right direction, how can we even make it even better thing is, again, it just comes back to like I didn’t do that, I didn’t do that in any of my relationships. I just let it roll and just let the honeymoon phase happen and be like, oh my God, this is so awesome. I’m in love with this person and we have great sex and we have great times and all the rest of this and we party together and it’s so awesome and, but let’s face it, the honeymoon phase, no matter who you are and eventually ends up going away at some point and then then the real part comes into play. So if you don’t understand the real authentic person that you’re together with, it’s bound to have those ties that bind their there, they’re bound to break at some point or another.
They just, it’s gotta happen. Right? So that’s, I really believe that that’s why they called it the seven year itch in the first place is like the old movie, seven year itch. I think it’s just from a matter of people grow and they grow at a different pace and they grow in different directions and if you’re not really willing to work on that and understand that and keep that kind of aligned well, those ties eventually will break. They just will and I that’s why I really believe that has a lot to do with the amount of divorce that there is out there in this generation and That might be a good and a bad thing because completely honest, my grandparents, they were married for over 50 years and yes, they did extend their marriage to that long, but they didn’t have a lot of emotional connection in their relationship and they really held their marriage together based on being forced to because they had kids. Right? And so a lot of people make that sacrifice. So I have kids. So I can’t break up with this partner of mine because we got to hold the family together and I understand that and I respect that, but I don’t know, you know, I think depending on the situation that could be a good or a bad thing and for my folks, you know, they weren’t really that they didn’t, there was not a lot of love you love user honey’s or sweeties or any of that stuff in our house.
We didn’t have that type of stuff. So what did that do to all of us as kids, right? It changed our perspective. It gave us a closed the door for a lot of us and you know, that’s where it shows and in positive and negative ways with my family members. So, again, just coming back to your question, I know you asked a while ago, but when it comes to that authenticity thing, right, it’s like it’s a crapshoot, it’s going to be a positive or a negative thing, but at the same time that’s, it’s never a bad thing in my eyes, if you’re, if you’re just being you, you know, that’s just the way I see it. But yeah, I like the way you see it and I appreciate the authenticity today. If someone wants to learn from you, where can they find you, Corey? Yeah, thanks Thomas like for me to takeitoff.com. And what I will do as well, I’m sorry, I’m just actually, I was gonna do what I was going to do is I’m gonna, I was gonna make a code for your audience members, so for your audience members in particular, what I will do is I’ll add a code onto my website if they’re open to having a look at my book and having an interesting ride and read for 100,000 words and 316 pages, they can basically purchase my book at takeitoff.com.
And if they put in the code harmony in small letters. they’ll get a discounted rate just for being a follower, your podcast. So I’ll do that and also they will get a discounted rate on any of my courses, being the video courses or for that matter, even the one on one training. So yeah, it’s an option to be able to contact me and you can chat with me as well. My chat actually does go to me so you can use that chat as well and I can be found on social media on Instagram at Corey_Hilton. And then I’m just on Facebook as well as Corey Hilton as well. So yeah, that’s my social media handles and, and as I said, you know, I’m just trying to really get people to have a look at the website because it’s not necessarily again going to be for everyone, but you know, if you’re trying to be a better version of yourself and trying to follow the same path regardless of your past, you’re just trying to, you know, find your own authenticity. I’m somebody that can really help guide you that way and not here to solve the whole world as I said, but at the same time if it’s something that you really want to work on that I found that has really helped me to be just a far better person overall and very far more happy person with the person that I look at in the mirror now and yeah, everybody has a way of figuring that out, right?
And I mean, I’m not gonna sit here and say I’m a motivational speaker, I’m not gonna pump a bunch of BS up there. I’m not trying to get everybody rara, I’m just trying to say that, you know, there’s certain guidelines that you can do and there are certain practices and it’s a 12-week program of literal practices every week of just self-reflection. And by doing that for me, Like I said, it made me so much better and that’s the impact I really want to make, especially for guys, you know, men over 30 that have that issue with because we as guys like I’m just gonna say this like I think these guys, like we put so much pressure on ourselves and don’t allow emotion to come into play. And I don’t know like I just I really feel like that there’s a reason why three or four suicides right now in Canada are men. And as a statistic you can’t skew those numbers as realistic and I think that it has a lot to do with the pandemic and not being able to be the hunter gatherer maybe and being disappointed in not being able to do what you need to do at times, so to speak.
But I really kind of feel like again, let the down break before you down break, like just if you gotta cry it out, cry it out, there’s nothing wrong with that. Like its power to be able to actually express emotion where it’s been looked down upon by so many stereotypically in society as a weakness and it’s not a weakness at all. Right. So, and then again, I refer to that as far as vulnerability in my book a lot, where I shed a lot of tears. I really did, but I’m glad that I did because if I didn’t, I don’t even want to know what would have happened, to be honest. So I was I was at a point where I lost everything in my life. I lost every materialistic thing that I had at one point at 38 years old and had to start from scratch and did I did I do it all the right way to recover from that? No. I took a lot of a lot longer than I should have, but at the same time in the end I figured it out and I’m just trying to help other people to avoid having to take that long walk as well and learn it the hard way I’d rather help other guys out to learn it. The easy way, so to speak, is never easy. But I’m just saying a lot easier than what I went through.
So yeah, well thank you for being a great guest today and doing all the good work that you have and Corey, thank you very much.
Thank you, Thomas has been an absolute pleasure. And like I said, happy to be on here and share my story. And I’ve only shed a little bit of light on the actual story and I wanted to leave that for the readers, but if you get a chance to check out the book. It’s entertaining, educational and inspiring in its own way. So yeah, thanks so much.