Nick McGowan (00:00)
I’ve learned that self-awareness is the most important part of this. People ask me at times, what does mindset mean? What does self-mastery mean? What does transformation mean? Like, what are all those things mean to you? They don’t really mean anything if you can’t see them, if you are not self-aware of them.

Nick McGowan (00:26)
Hello and welcome to the Mindset and Self Mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan. Today on the show, I’m going to talk about this being my 200th episode of the podcast. When I first started, I had no idea I would get, I don’t know, 40 episodes in, let alone 200. It’s kind of nuts what has happened over the past few years. I’ve had the show now as I record in June. I’ve had the show for four and a half years and I started to plan it maybe

Nick McGowan (00:55)
a little over five years ago, because it took me about, I don’t know, maybe six, seven months to actually get into this and do it all. But when I really think about it, it actually took me six years, like six whole years to do the podcast. I’d thought about starting a podcast back in probably 2013, 14, something like that. I had a social media marketing company with my ex-in-laws at the time and thought maybe this would be a cool thing to talk about social media.

Nick McGowan (01:24)
or something, I don’t know. I looked at it as a way of hopefully trying to bring in leads for the business that I had. I’m glad I didn’t start the podcast at that point because getting the leads isn’t what a podcast is all about. Really the whole point to a podcast in my mind and in my opinion is to be able to share the message that’s on your heart with the ideal people who want to hear it and who can benefit from it. People you can impact with the words you say. I think it’s really cool to put it in a nice and

Nick McGowan (01:55)
kind of silly way that I have anybody that listens to this show, that there’s anybody like you specifically, that you listen to this and you come back for my wit or my sarcasm. I hope that you really keep coming back and tuning in to be able to hear how these conversations go. Not only with my solo episodes, which there’s going to be more of those coming up, but also with the guests. Because what I understand and what I’ve really learned over the past two and a half years is that

Nick McGowan (02:24)
The people who listen to the show are leaders in what they do. You either own a business or you’re a leader in whatever job you work in, or you’re a leader at home. And maybe it’s all the above. And you know that you’ve done a lot of work, but there’s still more work to do. It’s not about grinding or hustling, but it’s about actually being healthy and aligned with what you’re all about. Over the past two and a half years of doing these past hundred episodes.

Nick McGowan (02:54)
There’s been so much growth personally. And I like doing these milestone episodes. It’s a little bit of a recap. If you go back and you listen to episode 100, I literally had clips from different episodes that I pulled in. There were a lot of great episodes over the first 100 that I’d done. I gotta be honest, last 100 I’ve done have been so much better than I thought they were going to be. There were only a couple episodes that were recorded or partially recorded that I bailed on or…

Nick McGowan (03:22)
for stuff that happens. And if you really want to know those stories, shoot me a message. I can share some of that stuff. Some of those things should never have been aired and I’m glad that they weren’t. But I’ve really gotten specific in the people that I bring onto the show because I understand that the core of the show, are three core topics that I talk about. It’s mindset, self mastery and transformation. When I first started the show, I thought mindset, self mastery were the main topics because I was having mental Health problems and struggling.

Nick McGowan (03:52)
because I’d gone through a Divorce right before that, before I started the show and was just trying to have these conversations. I felt like there was a conversation on my heart that needed to be had. And I wasn’t sure exactly how it needed to go about it, but it felt right for me to start a podcast. If you have a podcast of your own, you probably get it. If you don’t have a podcast and you’ve been kicking around the idea of it, then explore that. In fact, if you need help or you want some help or want some guidance,

Nick McGowan (04:20)
Reach out to me. I’ve been doing this for almost five years and have learned an immense amount. And heck, over the past two and a half years with the amount that I’ve learned from the podcast itself, just doing the mechanical podcasting thing, not only just having the conversations with people, the stuff that I learned about the podcasting has been critical in where I’m at now. I have a business where I actually help people who are thought leaders, mission driven and purpose driven business owners who have a mission and purpose on their heart.

Nick McGowan (04:49)
They’re trying to figure out how to best go about these things. But the podcast itself, I’m going to give you a bit of a behind the scenes in a sense. When I first started the show, I tried to do everything I could. All the social media, the website, the newsletters, like every single thing. And if you’ve been around since then, you know, you saw a lot of that stuff. And if you’re on the show at that point, you probably saw I was making like 10, 15 clips per episode. Some of them are really in context and some of those weren’t because I thought I was playing the game right.

Nick McGowan (05:19)
by getting all this information out there. I’ve learned over the past two and a half years that that’s not really right. In fact, those of you who don’t know this are gonna know now. So after the first year, maybe a little after the first year, like a couple months or so, I actually had a bit of an existential crisis. I moved from where I was in Florida to New Mexico. I basically went from tropical island living on two golf courses.

Nick McGowan (05:47)
to the foothills of a mountain, living in a tiny home. And I needed to do that. I also apparently needed to break wide open. So when I went through my existential crisis, I literally folded inside out and back out again. And I basically took about a year, year and a half off from most of life. I kept going with the podcast because I felt it was important, not just for me, but for the…

Nick McGowan (06:14)
people like yourself who keep showing up and the other people that are out there that can be impacted by these conversations and the message. But I was struggling. I was going through a lot. I had a lot of childhood trauma, abuse, different things that shaped me. And I needed to break myself of those. Over the past two and a half years, I’ve done an immense amount of healing work, an immense amount, more so than I’d ever done in my entire life. And I thought of myself as somebody who was really into.

Nick McGowan (06:44)
personal development, personal growth, since I was probably 19, but a lot of it was intellectualized and not actually enveloped into my body and somatically tying it together. I didn’t understand what any of that stuff meant until literally two and a half, maybe three years ago. So as I went through the first, I’d say year, year and a half of breaking things down, understanding what I no longer wanted,

Nick McGowan (07:12)
understanding what I absolutely wanted and being a absolute mess as I went through it. uh You can ask my ex partner, she’ll testify to that. There was an immense amount of stuff that I needed to work through and I needed to get through. And that made every single one of these conversations better. That first hundred episodes and that hundredth episode that I did where I did the recap, I thought maybe I’ll do that again. Maybe that’s the thing I do every hundred episodes. I do a recap with some clips and all.

Nick McGowan (07:41)
As I look through my episode guide, this 200th episode would have been six hours long, because there were so many incredible conversations. And I’m not just saying that because I’m a bit biased, but I got really specific knowing that I need to be focused on what my core topics are. That also came from me breaking. And if you don’t know this, I took a hiatus off social media. I actually pulled the podcast website down.

Nick McGowan (08:09)
for a little over a year, maybe a little longer, which note to self, I should never do that again. I screwed up my search engine optimization. I did a lot that I couldn’t actually get back from. needed to start over again. So when I came back to everything and I thought I’m going to put the site back up, I’m going to get a brand new site, I’ll probably get back on social media, but I want to do this all differently. How do I do it? I don’t want to make TikTok videos. I don’t want to point the air things. I don’t want to dance.

Nick McGowan (08:37)
I don’t want to do any of that. None of that feels actually aligned with me. And if you’re a business owner or you work in any sort of business that’s pushing some of these things and they feel off to you, listen to that, dive into that. Because if it feels off, there’s a reason for that. Maybe you just absolutely don’t want to do it because you see everybody else doing it. Maybe you don’t want to do it because there’s something different. And when I sat there in the middle of the desert and the foothills of a mountain, I was like, well,

Nick McGowan (09:05)
What do I actually want to do? I want to have deep conversations that actually change lives and not from a cheesy buzzword perspective. You listen to these episodes. I try not to be cheesy or buzzwordy at all. mean, cheesy a little bit at times because of my humor, but in all reality, like I even say to the guests when they get on the whole point of the show is to talk about the tough situations and challenging chapters you’ve been through, focus on mindset, self-mastering, transformation. But I don’t want to hear about your success.

Nick McGowan (09:35)
In fact, I don’t give a shit about your success. I really don’t. I don’t care about your credentials, none of it. And I’ve had some big people on the show at this point. I tell them, I want to know, and the guests and the audience and you want to know, how did you handle the toughest points of your life? What did you do to get yourself out of it? What about when you had a gun in your hand or you were thinking tonight’s the night where I’m going to end it? How did you get past that and through that? What do you do differently now?

Nick McGowan (10:04)
Because again, I don’t give a fuck about your success. I want to know about the real things that have tied to that and correlated to now you being successful. And success means different things for different people. If you’re doing what you want to do and you feel aligned in what you’re doing, that’s success to the extreme amount. But other people say if you don’t have billions of dollars or you don’t run some corporation or whatever, then you’re not successful. That’s their worldview. What does your worldview look like? What do you want it to look like?

Nick McGowan (10:34)
Whatever you want it to be, shape it, shape it that way. So over these past two and a half years, doing these hundred episodes, getting back to what do I really want to do? I want to have these deep conversations. I was intentional about who I brought on to the show. Over the first hundred, it’s a little intentional, but it took probably till about 70, 80 episodes in. Cause I didn’t know, there were things to learn and I had people reaching out to me and people I would meet with and connect with and I’d have them on the show and we’d have

Nick McGowan (11:04)
great conversation at time, but not like I did over the past hundred episodes. And I suspect that over the next hundred episodes, I’m probably going to be in the same spot where it’s going to be like, man, all of these conversations have just been so incredible. How do I share that or encapsulate that one 20, 30 minute episode or something like that? So I, I ask you and I challenge you to go back through the catalog.

Nick McGowan (11:30)
past hundred episodes, even go back through the first hundred episodes if you want to. But these past hundred episodes, there were some incredible things that we talked about. One of the biggest things that I’ve learned throughout all of these episodes and the past almost five years doing this and having hundreds of conversations with people, not only on the podcast, but with the clients that I work with who are other podcasters and thought leaders and people that have conversations on their podcasts, as well as networking, different events I go to or classes, et cetera.

Nick McGowan (12:00)
Let’s learn that self-awareness is the most important part of this. People ask me at times, what does mindset mean? What does self-mastery mean? What does transformation mean? Like, what are all those things mean to you? They don’t really mean anything if you can’t see them, if you are not self-aware of them. Now, you’ve probably heard me joke at different times, and maybe some of you, some of the people who listen get a kick out of it, some maybe don’t. I don’t know, it’s up to you.

Nick McGowan (12:27)
joked about how self-awareness is like opening a door in a fun house and then there’s 40 other doors. Then you go through one of those and there’s like another 4,000 doors and you’re super aware of all the things that happen and the macro moments and all the things that could turn into something as well as the things that would have pushed you in a different direction in the past or maybe are shaping you these days. But being self-aware, the more self-aware you are, the more self-aware you are.

Nick McGowan (12:56)
self aware you are, the more fucking self aware you are. And sometimes it sucks because you see things and you’re like, I’m trying to work on these. I’m doing these things, but right now I just don’t want to. But that also brings in its own set of, I don’t want to say problems. I think they’re uh little activities that we kind of go through. And I find myself at times being self aware of a situation, something that I’m working on still. And I can see

Nick McGowan (13:25)
how I do a thing, why I do a thing. And then I’ll have a bit of a conversation with myself about it to understand what am I exactly trying to get out of it. And there are certain things that I do where I understand like maybe I’m overstimulated with a lot of meetings throughout the day. And I am self aware enough to know I could keep pushing, I could keep doing the thing. could maybe jump back into that project that I started before my couple of meetings or whatever. I could also just grab my guitar.

Nick McGowan (13:55)
and play for a few minutes. I can also just go walk outside. can go do anything else, but I’m aware in those moments at this point to go, I feel like I’m getting a capacity. What feels more aligned for me to do in the moment? What can I do to take a step out of this? And sometimes it’s happened where it’s like a two, three hour step away. There’ve been times where I’ve gotten in the car and just drove because I’m like, I’m just, I need to get out of my office.

Nick McGowan (14:21)
I need to get out of my house. I need to get out of the thing that I’m doing and just get out of here and go drive. And I’ll end up, I don’t know, maybe getting a coffee or something or a Yerba and I’ll just keep driving around, experiencing different things, listening to music or whatever. And then I’ll come back and I’ll get back into the projects that I was doia ng. Sometimes it’s five minutes. I’ll grab my guitar and I’ll play around on an idea or I’ll just play a song that I know or play one of my own songs or just riff or whatever.

Nick McGowan (14:51)
just step myself out of what I was doing to then be able to understand that I have that privilege, I have that space to be able to do that because of the work that I’ve done to be able to get to the point where I’m at. I’m not one of those people that makes billions of dollars, maybe at some point, but I also don’t know if anybody actually really needs that. I think what we really need is to be fulfilled and aligned and to be us at our core.

Nick McGowan (15:18)
So self-awareness is one of the biggest things that has really stood out to me, not only over the past hundred episodes, but the 200 episodes and all the other conversations that I’ve had. Trauma was another thing that we talked a lot about. I dabbled on that a little bit in the first hundred episodes, but I got really, really, really deep into it on my own and with my practitioners and my coaches that I was working with. That it was inevitable that it came into these conversations.

Nick McGowan (15:48)
You’ve probably heard me say on different episodes. think a lot of the stuff that we go through as adults really ties back to our childhood. And when people say trauma or childhood trauma, some people will use it as kind of a synonymous thing. Like whatever happened, they just tie it to a childhood trauma. We also as individuals can’t tell them that’s not right. And I say we can’t because it’s not on us to say that something that we experience.

Nick McGowan (16:18)
or hear about, we go, oh, maybe that’s a small T trauma. To them, that could have been Eiffel Tower sized trauma. You have no idea. You don’t have any idea. We don’t know until we start having conversations with people, which is one of the reasons why I Love the podcast. You never know what’s behind somebody’s eyes until you ask and start to have conversation. You build rapport with them to help them feel comfortable to be able to have those conversations.

Nick McGowan (16:46)
And I think that’s an important thing for all of us to remember that there are times where we need to have those conversations, not only just with ourselves, but there are other people. If you’re going through things and you don’t have somebody to talk to, reach out to me, reach out to a friend, start looking for a therapist that you can reach out to. If finances are difficult, there are programs that can help. If you are unsure of what sort of therapies or modalities or

Nick McGowan (17:15)
any experiences you can have to be able to help you. I suggest that you just start with something, start moving, have a conversation, try a modality. Over the past two and a half years, I’ve tried a lot of the different stuff that I can. I haven’t licked the ass of a toad yet. I don’t know if I want to get to that point or even ayahuasca or anything like that. I really have been focused on how do I become more self-aware.

Nick McGowan (17:44)
How do I better manage my mindset and understand what my mindset is actually coming from? And how do I put the intention into the intentional mindset to be able to do things that are really aligned with me? That’s kind of easy to say in a sense. It’s really been difficult to work through and work on. So trauma and self-awareness were two major things that came up over the past, I’d say 200 episodes, but specifically the past 100. Alignment?

Nick McGowan (18:13)
purpose and expression are the other three that come up. And I clump them all together because when we’re aligned on our purpose, it expresses itself the way that it needs to in this day and age. Let’s think about this podcast and me as the host. If I didn’t have podcasting, I’d have done something different like this.

Nick McGowan (18:40)
Maybe a hundred or 200 years ago, I’d have been one of those dudes standing on a soapbox on the corner of a street. I don’t know. This is what this looks like right now. In 2026, we have the ability to be able to have our own, in essence, radio show, to be able to share what we want to share. And I think that’s critical for us to understand that this day and age, where the Technology is and where things are, this is how

Nick McGowan (19:10)
It has shaped for me. If you have your own podcast, you get it. Again, if you’re thinking about your own podcast and you’re probably along those lines too of like, this feels right for me to do. I’m not sure what to do next or how to go about it. And again, I challenge you to just start taking steps or reaching out to people like myself or anybody else you know that has a podcast to ask, how do you get started? In fact, when I first got started, hired a consultant company and I asked them, how did you fuck up? What’d you do wrong? So I can do something different. And I still messed up.

Nick McGowan (19:39)
My first episode, my microphone wasn’t and I’m a musician and an audio file and my microphone wasn’t on. It sounded like I was six rooms away in like my neighbor’s bathroom, but you know, it happens. We got to get through it. So here, here we are 200 episodes later, trauma, expression, alignment, purpose, self-awareness, all of these things tie together.

Nick McGowan (20:09)
because it’s all about understanding who we are at our core, what is aligned for us and what’s helping us or holding us back from doing the things that we feel called to do. If you’re in a job right now, let’s not talk about a business. Let’s just say you’re in a job. If you’re in a job and you hate it,

Nick McGowan (20:32)
You’ve probably heard people tell you before, we’ll get a different job. And your first response, at least in your head is probably typically fuck off. I get that. And I’m not here to tell you, go get a different job. I’m here to tell you, look at what you’re doing, what you like of what you are doing, and then start to make at least incremental small steps toward what that could look like for you to do it differently. I don’t think everybody needs to be an entrepreneur. I don’t think everybody’s an entrepreneur at their, at their core.

Nick McGowan (21:01)
I just don’t, just like, don’t think everybody needs to have a podcast. And there are a lot of people that say everybody’s got a podcast. That’s actually incorrect. There are more podcast guests than there are active podcasts. Yes, there may be a lot of people have had podcasts, but most people don’t go past the 21st episode. In fact, if you have a podcast and you’ve gotten past the 21st episode, you are in the top 1 % of podcasters because most people don’t get past that. Let’s not even look at 2020.

Nick McGowan (21:31)
when everybody was pushed home because of COVID. And a lot of people were like, I don’t know what to do. So I guess I’ll become a coach and I don’t know who to talk to. So I guess I’ll have a podcast. A lot of those people ended up figuring out this is really hard. And if you don’t have the skills to be able to have the conversations, to put the podcast episodes together, to be able to produce and create everything and get it all out there, or the finances to have somebody help you. lot of those people ended up trailing off.

Nick McGowan (22:00)
Maybe they got a few episodes in. Maybe they got to 21 episodes, but then they still bailed. That happens. And again, I don’t think a podcast is for everybody. Just like I don’t think a business is for everybody. So if you have a job or if you have a business and you’re thinking, I have to make some changes, I challenge you that you make those changes to you first. And you might hear me say that and go, all right, Nick, I hear you. Don’t give me your leadership bullshit. I’m not trying to give you a leadership bullshit. What I’m trying to give you is

Nick McGowan (22:30)
accountability and something you can actually do on your own. Because if you’re in a spot right now where you’re like, I don’t like what I’m doing, you’ve probably been in that spot for a little bit. You might’ve even said last year or two years ago, I don’t like this job and here you are two years later. Over the past two and a half years, a lot of things that I didn’t like about myself that I needed to work through and needed to better understand, needed to reframe, needed to actually get the trauma.

Nick McGowan (22:59)
out of my cells and my being. And there were a lot of things that I didn’t understand that I did actually like, but I thought I shouldn’t do because I’m a 41 year old man, like playing music. Playing music as a hobby is one thing, playing music to write an album, to be able to actually get your music and your art out there is a different thing. It takes more intention. And that’s the thing that I’ve been kicking around for a long time. In fact, I’ve been working on an album for the past, I’d say five years or so.

Nick McGowan (23:29v
But last year, right around this time last year, I actually reformatted my music card drive and lost everything. So I had to start it all over again. Yeah, that sucks. And I cried a little bit, not gonna lie. As soon as I figured out, I reformatted everything. There’s no unburning the bridges or the ships. So I had to start all over again. And that, in that little moment,

Nick McGowan (23:55)
helped me understand all the work that I’d done before that to be able to be in this spot, to then say, right, well, what do I do differently going forward? That self-awareness that was there. So over these past hundred episodes, with all the conversations I’ve had, the biggest thing that I want you to be able to take from this is self-awareness, alignment, and your purpose expression. Be self-aware in everything you do. Don’t drive yourself crazy, but test it bit by bit by bit.

Nick McGowan (24:24)
what happens at work, what happens at home, what happens while you’re driving, but you start to get a little triggered or a little anxious and start to look at those things a little deeper. Now, if you have a therapist you work with or different modalities that you go through with different practitioners, wonderful. You probably do some of this work. My challenge is just to do more of that and keep at it. Not to say you’re not doing enough, but to be mindful. What?

Nick McGowan (24:54)
is it that’s deeper than the thing that you’ve been working on that could actually help you heal all the rest of it? And then when you look at your purpose and your purpose expression, understand where we’re at in this day and age and understand what you really love to do and what you feel called inside of you to do. I have to be honest, it’s probably not the most clear thing ever. In fact, most people I’ve talked to about purpose

Nick McGowan (25:23)
there was always some sort of like glint of what it was, but it wasn’t until I’d say much later in life or as I got deeper into the thing that they were doing, that they really understood why they love what they’re doing, how it makes them feel and what’s leading them to be able to do it. You typically don’t understand that upfront. In fact, the work that I do with my clients, when I work with them through

Nick McGowan (25:51)
a strategy for their podcast and all. We talk about being able to build out pillar episodes and core episodes that talk about their specific topics. And then a client asked me, well, why don’t I do that upfront? Why do you have me doing that 30, 40, 50 episodes later? Because the amount of work that you have to do to go through that, to then be able to have that conversation because of all the research, all the conversations, all the other things you’ve done along with that. So likewise with you, your business or

Nick McGowan (26:21v
your job or your Family or wherever you’re at. If there are things that you feel are off or not aligned, then look at those and start to ask yourself, what is it about those things that really get me fired up? What are the things that I do now that can help me do that? As a personal example, over the course of my life, my career, let’s say, I’ve done a lot when it comes to uh sales and marketing and operations.

Nick McGowan (26:50)
And there’s a kind of Venn diagram of some of the software. Like if you’re in sales or if you’re in customer service, you’re probably familiar with the CRM. I think of it as a customer relationship management piece of software where you can hold accounts, have all the contact info and all that sort of stuff. I also know what it’s like to be able to run giant productions of things specifically from the sales end.

Nick McGowan (27:16)
and working with operations, marketing, development, all that sort of stuff through different uh situations that I’ve been in, jobs that I’ve had or different clients and projects I’ve worked on over the course of my life. And all of that has helped me with the people that I work with, my clients, my mindset and self-mastering mentees and the podcast mentees, because there’s a bit of a kind of a playground sort of way where we get to be able to play.

Nick McGowan (27:45)
but I also understand what those boundaries are and what systems have in place and all. And this is something I wouldn’t have been able to do three years ago, let alone five years ago, you know, when I was basically starting this off. So without making this episode much longer, I really appreciate you being here. I appreciate you listening. I appreciate you tuning in. I appreciate you sharing. I appreciate when you go, man, what the fuck you just said? I need to do something with that.

Nick McGowan (28:14)
And I hope you are. really hope you are. And if you’re not, I hope that you do. Even if that’s just talking with yourself a little bit and taking some incremental steps to be able to have conversations with other people. I really want you to be able to walk away from this episode, understanding that the next hundred episodes I’m going to do are going to be better than these past hundred. No shade to the guests or even to myself having these conversations. It’s just only going to get better from here. It’s just going to get more and more.

Nick McGowan (28:44)
in depth with everything that we get into. So again, thank you. Thank you for your support. Thank you for being with me on this journey. Thank you for being with you on your journey. And if there’s anything I can do to help, anything I can do to support, share resources, please feel free to reach out. If you’re somebody who’s trying to figure out how do you better manage your mindset and how do you seek self mastery in your own way, reach out to me.

Nick McGowan (29:13)
If you’re somebody who has a message on their heart, just like I do, and you feel there’s a deep purpose and calling to your life, and that podcasting could be a great way to be able to get that out to the world, reach out to me. This is what I do. And I love it because it’s part of my calling to be able to do this. So again, some of the main things that really stood out from the past hundred episodes was self-awareness, purpose, expression, alignment, trauma.

Nick McGowan (29:41)
all of these things tied together. So again, I appreciate you being with me on this journey. Thank you for listening to this. If there’s anything specific you’d want me to get into or more topics that you’d like me to dive deeper into over the next hundred episodes, I’d love to hear from you. You can reach me uh through the website. I check all those. It’s not like it goes to some random customer service person or an admin or anything. It goes directly to me. So I’ll look through all those.

Nick McGowan (30:11)
and would love to hear from you. So again, if there are things you would love for me to get deeper into or topics that are near and dear to your heart that you’d love me to get into, please send that stuff over. And again, thank you so much for listening and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.

Nick McGowan (30:31)
Thanks for listening to today’s episode. What did you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts. If you enjoyed the episode, please jump over to Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you consume podcasts and subscribe, rate, and leave a five-star review. It’s very much appreciated and also helps other people find the show and experience healing just like us. Please also head over to our website, themindsetandselfmasteryshow.com.

Nick McGowan (30:58Nick McGowan)
where you can check out all of our episodes and find additional resources to help you manage your mindset as you seek self-mastery. So with that, thank you and remember, your mindset matters and so do you.