Meet Mike Strong of StrongLife Coaching

Today we’d like to introduce you to Mike Strong.

Hi Mike, so excited to have you on the platform. So, before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
My first clear memory is at ~3 years old when my mom was carrying me from the car into our house.

Something felt very weird.

I tried to tell her to change how she was holding me, but what my mom heard was gibberish. I went limp.

I woke up in an ambulance. Next thing I knew, I was being stretchered through a busy playground to a helicopter medevac.

I’d had my second stroke. Doctors told my parents I’d be a vegetable.

I blew away that prognosis, relearned to walk and talk (again), and in spite of a limp and weak left side, I was a very confident and charming young boy.

But as I went through school, that confidence faltered. I became insecure about my disability, and my father’s struggles with mental illness made it hard for him to be there for me. I took everything personally and was desperate for people to like me.

I also played the victim to my disability far beyond my true limitations.

I struggled to get people to respect me and forget about romantic attention from women.

Not having a dating life ate at my soul throughout high school and college, and years of therapy didn’t really help.

Therapists and others told me “It’ll get better,” but it just got more and more painful.

Eventually, I found good men’s confidence and dating coaches who changed my life, helping me start becoming more confident and beginning to believe my disability could be a gift. I finally started having a dating life.

But I felt like I was just “getting lucky,” settling for whoever liked me, and I was still prone to being a needy, emotional wreck.

Then I found The Fearless Man, taking things to another level in terms of owning my disability, diving deeper into the depths of my soul to face my insecurities, and embodying bold confidence.

I got in touch with my masculinity for the first time and transformed my relationship to tension and being uncomfortable.

After avoiding anything scary growing up, I’ve now been skydiving six times, and I try to run towards everything that scares me and play bigger in life instead of playing small.

And my dating and sex life now is adventurous beyond what the Old Mike could’ve believed.

When I’m owning it, my disability actually makes me MORE attractive to many women now because of my confidence in the face of it.

Where I felt like I was missing the part of the brain responsible for flirting before, now sparking chemistry with women is often as simple as how I look into their eyes and just saying what I really want to say. Because it’s about confidence, your energy, and connection skills.

After growing into a coach for The Fearless Man, they changed their business model at the end of 2022, so I started StrongLife Coaching last year to continue to help other men live their own Strong Lives.

We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Self-awareness is uncomfortable sometimes.

Facing myself and taking responsibility for: how I’d been playing the victim and playing small and weak, teaching people how to treat me, and pushing women away – instead of those things being out of my control or true limitations – has been painful sometimes.

I also watched other students shoot past me for a while at The Fearless Man when I got to a level as a student where, though not where I wanted to be yet; I was comfortable. That was painful until I chose a different flavor of uncomfortable again and dove back in to the work to face myself even deeper, and then evolving into a leader.

Starting my own business and becoming my own boss unexpectedly has also had its big ups and downs.

Living a Strong Life is a contact sport.

Playing in the Super Bowl is a lot harder and can also be a whole lot more painful – physically and emotionally – than flag football. But would any of those players in the big game rather put on flags?

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I coach men in connecting with their most confident, emotionally intelligent, and connected, boldly real selves.

Our truest, strongest selves are naturally confident and powerfully attractive.

We just have to begin stripping away layers of our ego, insecurities, defense mechanisms, and sometimes traumas to get to the real you.

Women and dating is a big emphasis because it was such a painful part of my life, but StrongLife Coaching is always about looking at how you’re showing up throughout life, and some men come to me specifically to work on other types of relationships and even professional or life goals, because they realize the depth and all-encompassing nature of this style of work.

The dating work is different from most other dating coaching or dating advice.

Both in immersions here in LA and virtually, I work with men on getting out of their heads and into a more conscious relationship with their bodies and emotions so they can better process emotions and be more available for rapid and powerful emotional connection, embodied in their confidence and healthy masculinity, and feeling more free socially.

I have them do this work in multiple ways:

• In-depth in the classroom or on Zoom with models – women I’ve trained to give high-level, honest feedback, help break them out of their shells, and drop the defenses that are pushing women and others in their lives away. We also do in-depth video feedback so clients can see from another perspective how emotional subtleties and blindspots are affecting their self-esteem and their connections – with women and everyone else
• Out on the street in real life through social freedom exercises and approaching strangers
• At home with meditative, internal work

All this takes care of most of the  surface-level things (i.e., what to say or how to flirt, how to handle different situations with women and others, and even body language) that many coaches and dating advice experts talk about strategically, but only take you so far when you’re not getting to the core issues under the hood.

It’s the difference between a compliment being very sexy and creating chemistry…and the same words falling flat.

It’s how I knew it was “game over” in the best way with a woman I met on Valentine’s Day as soon as I said “Hello” because of everything that “Hello” said under the surface and the chemistry that instantly sparked between us.

What matters most to you?
Being real, integrity, and taking full responsibility for everything in our lives is at the core of everything I teach.

Because when we’re not connecting with the women or people we want to or moving towards our goals like we want to, it’s because, at one level or another, consciously, subconsciously, or both, there’s something we’re out of integrity or not being real with ourselves or others about.

When we get real, get back in integrity, and take full, even unreasonable levels of responsibility (to quote “The Slight Edge” author Jeff Olson), that’s when we’re most empowered and most magnetic.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mikestronglife.menscoaching
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mikestronglife

     
Image Credits
Justin Ashcraft