Nick McGowan (00:01.166)

Hello and welcome to the Mindset and Self Mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan, and today on the show, I’ve got Rooz. Rooz, what’s going on man? How you doing?

Roozbeh Khoshniat (00:12.571)

I’m doing great, thank you very much. That’s good.

Nick McGowan (00:16.694)

I’m excited for you to be here. I know we connected a few minutes before we hit record on this. And there’s a lot of stuff we’re gonna be able to get into, trauma, leaving corporate America, starting your own business, freaking out at times about how the hell am I gonna take care of all the employees, contractors, how are we gonna keep the roof on, all that fun stuff, I guess we can say. But hey man, why don’t you kick us off? Tell us what you do for a living. And what’s one thing that most people don’t know about you that’s maybe a little odd or bizarre?

Roozbeh Khoshniat (00:38.921)

Yeah.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (00:45.619)

Huh, okay, so my name is Rooz. I’m an ADHD coach and I started this practice with my wife. I kind of piggybacked on what she was doing. She was doing therapy. The name of the practice was called Heal and Drive Psychotherapy. And then I decided to kind of like, you know, say, hey, can I join you? Because I had a vision and you know, she was running just the practice, just to keep the lights going. And so we…

joined together and we started this program. As far as something that a lot of people don’t know about me, huh, I don’t know. I’m a very open book person. I always share everything with everyone. But you know what, maybe, maybe not a lot. I mean, I think it’s the close ones know that I have a very bad temper. Like, yeah, like it’s very hard for me. Like…

I do my best to clean a good face, like to keep a good face in front of my clients outside, but if I lose it, God forbid it’s, so that’s one thing anger management, I’ve been working on anger management for a long time.

Nick McGowan (01:59.254)

I would love to say you’re all alone in that. You’re the only fucking person in the entire world that deals with that, but you’re definitely not. I’m sure there are people that are listening to this as they’re listening to the episode going, fuck, I know I deal with this too. And how do you not go off and get crazy at times? And you and I both know that there’s typically trauma that’s involved with that. There are triggers that are involved with that. There are deep things that are involved with that. But then there are also things that are outside of that are just…

Roozbeh Khoshniat (02:04.847)

Oh man.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (02:13.823)

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (02:27.862)

sometimes hard to wrap your head around that can get you angry or upset. Then if you’ve been working on that for a long time, might be a really good spot for us to be able to kick into the rest of this because I wanna get into the journey that you’ve had and all, but that’s something I think that really ties into how you manage your mindset and daily disciplines that you set up. Because if you just went crazy and just were angry all the time, you’d have health problems constantly.

you probably wouldn’t be married any longer. You wouldn’t have a business. There’d be a lot of stuff that happens. And I’m sure some of that is fears, but let’s get into that. Was that something that you realized as a kid that you had some anger problems or have you been able to pinpoint that, look, this really ties back to some traumatic situation that happened or something like that?

Roozbeh Khoshniat (03:19.367)

Yeah. So.

Now that you mentioned it, I’m like a visual guy, right? So I’m like, gonna close my eyes, but I’m like, let the memory pass by. Like, when did the anger start? And I remember when my wife and I were dating in order, I wanted to impress my mom by when I got an anger management book. I’ve never had those bad flashes, I had broke stuff, and yeah, I might break my old thing and stuff like that, but I come from a family that…

Anger was taken very easily out on me. I’m an ADHD kid, still a kid at 45, but it’s been very triggering a lot of times because I look at where a lot of this came from, but again, not blaming, but the society that I grew up, around the culture that I grew up, I grew up during the war in Iran, right? So the revolution, the war.

Nick McGowan (03:58.73)

Hehehe

Nick McGowan (04:18.875)

Hmm.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (04:23.231)

You grow up around teachers that are like, you know, they just serve, they’re dealing with their PTSD, and then you come into class. A lot has happened. But we, a lot of this is like, you know, I picked up from parents and the outside, right? And it unfortunately became a coping mechanism that I, you know, lived with.

managing it, it’s, you know, with having ADHD, it’s very hard to manage impulsivity. And my anger, my, you know, anger management, when it comes to mine right now, I keep saying anger management. Wasn’t that the movie Adam Sandler and the guy I forgot he did? What’s his name? Nicholson. No, Jack Nicholson. Jack Nicholson. It comes to my mind is like he just wants to put his

Nick McGowan (05:01.649)

Hmm.

Nick McGowan (05:10.682)

Yeah. And who else was in that? Was that De Niro or Jack Nicholson or something? Okay. Yeah.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (05:21.311)

suitcase in the cupboard and the girl is trying to take it away from him, right? With ADHD, we get hyper-focused. We become, we get hyper-focused, we’re dealing with a lot of trauma, and we’re impulsive. I’m going to walk you through this. We busted our ass last year, you know, we did a couple of trips and, you know, when it was around December, my wife was like, we need to go on a trip. But I’m like, honey, we just came back from Europe in December. We don’t have the…

we need to go out on a trip because she could see that I was burning. Right. I was burned out and I’m like, no, she’s like, I don’t care if I have to like take money out of my savings and stuff like that. We’re doing it. And then she said, when we leave, you’re going to swear. You’re going to put your phone away. And I’m like, we’re running a business. I can’t put the phone away. I mean, even if I’m not seeing clients, I got to do billing. I got to do this and that. Right. Guess what? I disconnected myself on the 21st. I’m still paying back. Okay.

Nick McGowan (05:53.858)

Hmm

Roozbeh Khoshniat (06:21.103)

I’m like, oh God, look at all these emails. And I want to get angry at it, but I’m like, you know what? Let it go. Let me put it this way. We’re going down the road, and it’s not down, it’s going up the road to a place in California in SoCal called Big Bear. And I got an email from a coach of mine that I worked with and he’s my mentor.

Nick McGowan (06:26.683)

Yeah.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (06:44.931)

And I misread the email and I literally went from zero to 60 That He’s trying to undermine me. I’ve been paying him now. He’s trying to take my thought away and do something right It’s that trauma right that I have dealt with that I you know as I have been Cut around a lot. I trusted a lot of people

Nick McGowan (06:49.89)

Hmm.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (07:10.311)

You know, again, it’s an ADHD trait. We trust very easily. We’re very, you know, fast people. We trust very easily. We fall in love easily, and then we go crazy easily. We lose our, you know, mindset. And in a matter of a couple of, let’s say, turns on the road, literally, figuratively speaking, I was seeing that the business was about to go down and I was gonna lose the business. And…

Hell was about to break loose and If I didn’t have a trusting partner But now you know that I’m not saying everybody to go and find a therapist and get married to one but hey if you find one and if they’re willing to live with you, you’re mine is mine is a saint and she was like I Know you’ve been through a lot take a deep breath I can and

Nick McGowan (07:41.09)

Hmm.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (08:07.771)

And there were moments, even when she was saying that, I felt that she was effing me over. I’m like, how dare you’re letting go of me and you’re taking that guy’s side. And she’s like, what are you talking about? But that’s the level of trauma that I grew up with, that I feel like that if something suddenly changes and I don’t understand what is going on and I feel that I’m kind of like, we all have that fight or flight mode.

Nick McGowan (08:12.79)

Mm.

Nick McGowan (08:25.419)

Yeah.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (08:37.187)

in my thought and my understanding of ADHD and me as a coach, I tell my clients, our fighter flight mode is always on. We’re always in that SOS, amygdala getting hijacked, we’re always in that, you know, and we don’t know how to regulate our emotions, right? So you don’t need to have a saber-toothed tiger. That’s what my ancestors were, right? That’s where the amygdala, right? If they were supposed to see that wooly mammoth or the saber-toothed

Nick McGowan (08:57.518)

Sure.

Nick McGowan (09:03.452)

Mm-hmm.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (09:08.547)

Right? I see a pattern and I start running. I see an email come late from a client or like that. And it literally takes a couple of hours for me, like seconds to go up. And if I can let it go and not let it fester and like, you know, I don’t ruminate on it a lot, it’ll take 30 minutes after that to drop down.

Nick McGowan (09:11.544)

Hmm.

Nick McGowan (09:34.178)

Yeah. It’s good stuff already, man. I think there are, there are a lot of people that go through this shit that don’t really want to talk about it. Um, and we’re, we’re close enough in age. Um, 39. Um, I think we, as people, at least people our age kind of have joked, like if you were an eighties kid, you were used to shit being thrown at you. You were just used to things being yelled or thrown and it was normal.

I remember making jokes with friends in high school, like, Oh yeah, my mom went crazy and threw the remote at me. And then she tried to pick up one of the bar stools. That was a little nuts. And I left the house and blah, blah. Hey, you guys want to go to the mall? I was just fucking normal. It shouldn’t be normal. Um, I don’t have kids. I’m not going to have kids. And I see the people that have kids and they’re like, I’m going to do everything different from what my parents did, but the fucking trauma is still there. It is still there no matter what. Then I want to bring this up because.

People do think that trauma is a thing that you can control where it’s a reflex, it’s a reaction that your body has because it’s within your body. Just like if you’re standing there, like you said about the saber-tooth tiger, most people can’t really relate to that, but I always chuckle with that because you think back to the Neanderthals that were like, fuck, this thing’s gonna eat me. What do I do? Run. But people now, like if you’re walking down the street and a buzz whizzed past you at 60 miles an hour, even if you didn’t get hit,

Roozbeh Khoshniat (10:50.579)

Uh-huh.

Nick McGowan (10:59.722)

Your body would react like it did that trauma response that reflects that just happens and anger is a part of that. So you think back to those situations and in some ways, I don’t know if it really matters what had happened before. It’s what you do with it now, how you process through it and how you relate and how you tie to it, what you brought up with like it could take you 30 minutes. It could take you three hours or longer to be able to actually simmer down.

kind of work through it. I think there are so many people that really don’t want to be honest. And they don’t want to talk about that. Something could happen at 830 in the morning on their way to the office. By two o’clock in the afternoon, they’re still fucking pissed. By the time they get home, wife’s like, Hey, honey, how was work? Fuck off. Or, you know, they just give some, some sort of vibe of like, I don’t even want to be here because they’re still just reeling with that. And it’s in their body.

Now you work with people through this, you actively work on this on your own, but what are the sort of things that you deal with or work through on a daily basis or even in those moments where you go, all right, this is trauma in my body. What do I do from here? What does that next step look like?

Roozbeh Khoshniat (12:12.131)

I don’t call it trauma in my body. I mean, because it’s hard for me. I’m still learning. Even again, living with a therapist for almost 19 years, I know her. We literally celebrated our 19th anniversary of meeting each other in December. And, um, I still don’t call it PTSD or trauma because to me, PTSD, again, I’m. I grew up during the war in Iran and I came to the States and I went back and I remember having teachers that.

Nick McGowan (12:27.086)

Thanks.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (12:42.899)

They went to war, just like the veterans of the United States. I’m not comparing, you know, two different countries. I don’t want anybody to come back and, you know, just send hate messages. But I’m talking about a person that served. You go, you serve, and I served myself for six months back then. In Iran, they’re in the war. But you serve, you come back, and you’re trying to live a normal life. And I saw these, you want to call them veterans, or people that has…

Nick McGowan (13:06.871)

Mm.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (13:13.167)

were during the war, they would come back to school and all it was like, I don’t know, one of the kids would misbehave and it would remind them of what happened. And this person would just, that’s what PTSD registered for me, right? Is that PTSD for me was always, and then when my wife was like a lot of times like, hey, this is PTSD, this is trauma, this is trauma. I’m like, what do you mean trauma? Trauma is like, that’s what like, you know, level, that’s what registered for me. And I…

Nick McGowan (13:25.878)

Hmm, okay.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (13:40.967)

Learning a lot more and like you’re like like, you know about kids you’re talking about it takes a lot of work because You grew up around a narcissistic parent. You grew up around a person that First off nothing my mom She left us You know This is 17 she passed on and But my dad is still around I don’t go blaming him

Nick McGowan (14:02.412)

Hmm.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (14:08.787)

But I look at him and I’m like, I forgive you as much as I can, but here’s the thing, kids don’t come with manuals. I’m not saying them hitting, yelling, screaming, running around with a knife after you, trying to have you calm down, because that was the first thing that came into their mind. We have to remember what kind of shit they went through, that they’re acting like this. But for me as a parent, but for me as…

Nick McGowan (14:17.956)

Mm-hmm.

Nick McGowan (14:33.676)

Yeah.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (14:37.671)

person that has been screwed over in the business or I trusted someone and they f me up and I’m trying to rebuild that trust or rework around it you know I literally hated my dad when I was a kid and he would just literally like yell smack and it would turn into a physical alteration and it was all about me putting my legs up

on the table, not on the table, like I’m like literally like sitting like this and he would see it, or I would eat with my hands, right? Now here’s the thing, I sit down and again, this is when I can control my amygdala, this is where I can control my, manage my emotions, I sit down and tell myself, well hold on, why is this guy so traumatized? He did not grow up in Tehran, my dad grew up in the province of Iran, right, in kind of like, you know, the outskirts of the villages, right? And

Nick McGowan (15:05.396)

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (15:27.694)

Hmm.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (15:30.823)

The culture that he came from, he tried to live in a very higher culture. So he must have dealt with a lot of trauma like, hey, sit like this, do like this, because in the villages they don’t have chairs, they still sit on the floor, they still might use their hands and eat. He went through that, he tried to change, and when it came to me once, twice, I’m an ADHD, can you not play with my food? Use your floor, do this, do this, and don’t eat like this. Now…

Sometimes I’m sitting there and looking at her like, God, he’s giving me shit, I look at him, he’s still doing it himself. But that trauma exists in me because it’s like, literally it’s come a part of my shadow that is following me because my daughter is sitting there and I am all about being liberal, let the kid do whatever the hell they want. I mean, if we look at our families,

Nick McGowan (16:03.878)

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (16:13.346)

Yeah.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (16:27.355)

My close family, they sometimes joke around like, you let the kid do whatever they want. But they don’t know the amount of hardship that I go through when I either pause or I yell and then I have to run back. I was like, you know what, sweetheart, I didn’t mean that. That’s not what I was trying to do. It’s that, that’s, and I don’t want to blame it on my dad. I was like, hey, my dad did it to me, so I’m doing it. But there’s moments that, you know, she’s doing something and I’m like, hmm. And then I’m like, you know what? No, we made this promise that.

Nick McGowan (16:46.298)

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (16:52.426)

Mm. Heh heh.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (16:57.023)

You’ll go chop your whole hand off before you’ll ever lay your hand on the other LNP. But it’s very hard.

Nick McGowan (17:00.853)

Hmm.

Oh, yeah, I can imagine it’s got to be extremely difficult, especially. And when you think about the, the stuff that parents have gone through, it’s really hard as a kid to be like, Huh, maybe my mom or dad isn’t really upset with me, but maybe it’s trauma. Like, I don’t know if there’s a child that really understands and registers that, you know, it’s not until later in life when you grow up and you’re like, Oh, fuck.

This makes a little bit more sense. I often say to people, you learn a lot from your parents of what to do, but also what not to do and how to go about things or how not to go about things. Um, I’ve even gotten to the point where I make cracks at my mom and dad that at different times I’ll be like, well, you see, that’s one of those things that I should not do. They’re like, ah, fuck off, you know, whatever, but being able to understand that and also empathize with that and understand there must be things that have come from them.

or their background that now relates to you and your life. But then if we go back even further, like thousands of years, all of that trauma is just compounded. It just, it’s part of who we are as people. And if you grow up in a war and you have to go and serve, that’s gotta be extremely difficult to be able to come back. I’ve had different vets on the show at different times. Some people get into some of it, some don’t. Some have seemed to be really great at what they’re doing.

But every single one of them, even if we didn’t talk about it directly on the episode, we talked about it at some point where they’re like, it was tough. It was tough to come back and try to be a civilian or try not to get wrapped into the things that happened before. And that’s really where we look at the daily disciplines to be able to figure out, like you, you just mentioned about the moment where maybe you freaked out or said, you screamed at your daughter or something, and you almost instantly ran and said, I’m sorry, didn’t mean that.

Nick McGowan (18:54.954)

It can be really difficult to come back from those so many time after so many times. But to be able to work through that within yourself for the other people that listen to the show, especially this episode, that have ADHD or think that they may have ADHD and they have anger problems, what sort of advice do you give those as they’re in those tough situations?

Roozbeh Khoshniat (19:19.515)

There’s a couple of things. First of all, if we’re working on the future, like when I’m working with my own coach or when I’m coaching my clients, and guess what, I’m going to tell this out, and if anybody doesn’t like it, I don’t give a fuck, I’m going to say it. Because when I became a coach, the first thing that I did, I ran over to my old therapist, which now is my life mentor. I told her, why the fuck did you tell me to become a coach? I can’t even control my own ADHD, and you want me to tell people other advice? She’s like…

I’m a fucking ADHD myself. And I still deal with the same shit. And my wife, and I came to my wife and I’m like, she’s like, it’s not that we’re like, narcissistic people or something like that, but it’s that we, we have our own stories, we for, when we’re sitting there, I’m not judging them. Actually, I kind of, I get what you’re saying, man. Your mom came into your room and said, why isn’t the bathroom clean? And you’re like, fuck I think-

Nick McGowan (19:49.134)

the

Roozbeh Khoshniat (20:17.331)

Shit like you don’t even like it’s that it’s that it’s that rage that we have like right I Am but I can understand it but I can like hey I understand what you’re going through and this is like, you know, let me explain how to ADHD affects it Right, but to answer your question What I do or what I try to do is during the moment. I have become very good at And this is kind of like I don’t know if you saw that

Nick McGowan (20:18.882)

I’m sorry.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (20:45.115)

I’m a little bit into Star Wars, not a big fan, so don’t ask me hard questions. But I’ve learned to become a better ADHDer in my life as kind of like in my path. I would say I’m like, you know, I probably graduated from Padawan into a Jedi or a semi-Jedi right now because I have learned to feel it in my body, right? Where I’m like, when I get stressed out, when I become overwhelmed, I can feel it in my chest.

Nick McGowan (20:49.644)

Ha ha ha.

Nick McGowan (21:07.443)

Mm-hmm.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (21:14.031)

I can feel it in my neck. I will start feeling a disharmony in my body. Because just as I live in California, we’re liberal out here, man. I’m not into putting my shit like that. But I’m being honest with you. If you start looking into, because I tell people, look, when you’re hungry, you feel it in your body, right? You feel the stomach starts growling and you go and get food. When you’re thirsty, you do the same thing. If you’re thirsty, you’re not going to go take a shower because there’s water right next to it. It doesn’t make any sense.

Or when your head is bleeding, you’re not just going to go eat food, you’re going to go take care of the pain. So we need to start learning where is this pain showing up in my body? What am I really doing here? So maybe on the 20th, what was it, a couple of days before Christmas, maybe around the 21st or 22nd of December when this whole incident happened, while I was telling you about on our journey.

I got to do a great job, but now I can literally tell you, it’s like first of all, forget the part that I should have listened to the email or not read the emails and stuff like that. But first off, when I read an email or when I see a text message that can throw me off, I can start feeling the dysregulation in my body. And the dysregulation comes usually from either me hyperventilating, my chest starts to get a little bit…

Like I feel like somebody’s put their feet over here, like they’re pushing down or I’m getting choked. I feel like it’s, every time it’s somewhere else, sometimes I can feel it in my head. We have a word in Farsi, it’s called calafé, means that I just feel like, I don’t know, it’s like, I can’t tell you really, like it’s just like a fucked up feeling, right?

I can’t tell you if it hurts or not, but it’s just, it’s this like, it’s not like boredom, but it’s like, it’s weird, right? I can’t even say it in English, how do I explain it to you? But I feel, I feel upset, right? I don’t know what it is. And as a coach, I knew at that time, my coach would have called like, okay, what is going on? Walk me through it. The moments that I can manage my own…

Nick McGowan (23:15.502)

Mm.

Nick McGowan (23:18.998)

Ha ha ha!

Roozbeh Khoshniat (23:36.415)

trauma, or my own PTSD, or manage my own anger or outbursts about to go 0-60.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (23:45.987)

I ask myself what’s going on here? What is absolutely happening? And am I really seeing the saber tooth tiger or is it just a shadow? Am I over creating this? I mean, I have a great imagination. 88 years, I have great imagination. Is it my imagination that is putting me in this position or is it really, really happening? Like, you know, I get an email late at night from someone and I’m like, oh my God, how dare you? And I get angry, like, no.

Nick McGowan (23:55.567)

Hmm.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (24:15.807)

You know what, first of all, it’s too late. I’m getting, see, that’s the, I’m getting angry. I’m getting frustrated. I should be up at 10 o’clock at night answering emails. All right, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

Nick McGowan (24:20.707)

Hmm.

Nick McGowan (24:26.666)

That’s a good observation too. I think also like setting yourself up for success with that too. Like if you know, I can get upset or angry or anything like that, then in some ways sort of stupidly simple, don’t check your email at 10 o’clock at night. So then I, I’ve had to go through stuff like that too, where I’m like, you know, I want to wake up and meditate longer than I normally have or like incrementally increase it.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (24:32.169)

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (24:51.582)

And as I started with that, there’d be times where I’d have my iPad on my lap. And I’m like, why the fuck am I playing a video game right now? You should be doing this thing, but giving yourself grace, but also just setting yourself up for success with that. Again, if you know 10 o’clock at night, if I read an email, it could be great news, could be okay news, could be terrible news, but it could set me off on some path. And it might be a way to just say, all right, I’m going to step away from this. Now in the corporate America world, like, cause we’ve talked about

before we hit record transitioning from corporate into your own business, being able to deal with that sort of stuff, especially when you’re in a transition of saying, I want to get out of here. I need to do my own thing or I want to go do something different. Being able to look for those cues and really know what your triggers are. And that’s a big thing that I think people can miss or at least just jump past where they’re like, Oh yeah, sometimes I get angry. Why? And what happens? And what triggers you? So what do you help your

clients through to be able to figure out what their triggers are to set themselves up for success.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (25:56.251)

I ask them for them to tell me the story of like the story. Like tell me the story, like you know. And I’m listening out loud about.

My job is to find the trigger for them. My job is to find well, well first of all hold on I tried to help them find the pattern right show them the pattern and then show how the ADHD is playing a role in there and then together we’re looking for the trigger

Roozbeh Khoshniat (26:27.515)

Right? Is it a wrong email that they read? Is it that, let’s say for instance, an email that came from an ex or I don’t know, I mean, it depends on what kind of trauma that we’re talking about, right? Like for me, I found out later in life that I had a, I was very vulnerable to the color red. And if somebody would take a red pen and start scribbling on my page,

Nick McGowan (26:43.594)

Yeah.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (26:54.555)

It would literally make me feel deleted. Like, you’re just sitting there and criticizing my work and stuff like that because that’s what my mom used to do when I was a kid. She would sit there and just take a highlighter or take a whiteout. Guess what? You do not find a whiteout in my house.

Nick McGowan (27:02.552)

Hmm.

Nick McGowan (27:11.15)

good old white out. Yeah. Oh man.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (27:14.151)

Yeah, you make a mistake, you make a mistake. Like, you know, let it be. Why do we have to clean it up in front of everybody? Because they were embarrassed. Now, I would work with them on the trigger and kind of like, okay, so if we found out that the trigger is, for instance, you and Miss, like, you know, for instance, in the particular case of like my daughter putting her feet up on the table, right? And that triggers.

Nick McGowan (27:21.389)

Hmm.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (27:44.855)

I need to talk to myself. I was like, I got two options. Either I’m going to sit down with my daughter and eat, which is going to be very selfish because I’m trying to be a better father than other people. And, you know, my dad was good. He’s always around. Or I have to work on telling myself constantly, like, hey, nobody’s here to judge her. Right? It’s okay for her to have her feet up. Actually, remember, like, the opposite of it.

My daughter is so special. She’ll start dancing in the middle of the night and sing songs, stuff like that. She’s not your normal child. I’m gonna actually celebrate her according to society abnormality that she’s not normal.

Nick McGowan (28:24.366)

Hmm

Roozbeh Khoshniat (28:27.431)

She’ll stand up and start singing in the middle of her dinner because she did that. And actually I was, like literally when I came home, I was listening to some of these fun facts that a client sent me. It was like, I don’t know, again, I’ve not did a fact check on this, but it was like either Mozart or Beethoven, one of them. In a lot of his symphonies he uses, or he has a reference to fart in there or something like that, right? So I went and hugged her.

And she was singing the song that she had made up, like, far-night, far-night. And then automatically I wanted to, and I joke around, I mess around with all that stuff, right? Automatically, I have to, a lot of times, remember I’m not my dad. I don’t have to be embarrassed of what my daughter does in front of them because they come from a different culture and they criticize me because now I’m the bad parent not telling my daughter not to use the word fart in front of the relatives or friends, right? So.

I grabbed her and said, you know what, I love the way that you sing. And this kid is like, why dad? I’m like, guess what, you know Mozart? And she’s like, yeah, you brought me the chocolates from Austria. I’m like, yeah, did you know that all his songs were about farts? And then the next moment, I go upstairs and I come down and my wife is like, she’s talking to Alexa on Amazon asking about Mozart’s songs about farts.

Nick McGowan (29:48.68)

Oh, it’s too good.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (29:51.183)

Yeah, and yeah, my Alexa is going off on the back. And now, see, I have learned now, again, I’m not the best parent, but learning around this, right? To embrace her uniqueness, that this kid is so unique, right? Like another trauma for me was I was always criticized. I felt criticized because as a kid, I always liked to take stuff apart, right?

I didn’t have that many perfect toys. So at the age of 35, I started collecting all of my GI Joes from my childhood. Either what my parents could not afford or I had broken or stuff like that. I went through a midlife crisis. I’m selling all of them right now. Shitting load sitting in my room. They’re all boxed up, ready to go. I plug in where anybody wants my GI Joes. I’ll joke it aside. But…

Nick McGowan (30:40.642)

Ha ha!

Roozbeh Khoshniat (30:45.599)

A couple years ago, I literally went to Disney, I bought my daughter this expensive Cinderella, and we were giving it to her for Christmas, and my dad looks at her, and she’s like, huh, just like her dad, likes to tear stuff apart, won’t even enjoy it for two seconds. I felt so embarrassed, and then my wife came back and says, actually, she’s unique, because she likes to see what’s the difference. But he took the clothes off, he’s like, she wants to explore. But he ripped the hair off.

She wants to become a barber. Dude, Beethoven would not be Beethoven. Or like, you know, Mozart would not be a Mozart if we didn’t allow them to explore that with those stuff. Right? My own past trauma a lot of times stops me from allowing this kid to get where you want. I know you and I were supposed to talk about business, but let me go down the road of business. If I don’t stop myself from getting into those moments that I’m like,

God I’m about to make this mistake and it’s going to cost me this and I’m like, you know what? Hold on. Let’s look at the real facts about Right

First off, the best thing that I think I’ve done in my life is to work for myself. A couple of last week when I had that whole episode, I said, I’ll go back to normal work. I’m like, what the f—

There’s no way I can go and work for someone else. There’s no way. And actually, I embraced that because my whole trigger was I don’t wanna go work for someone else. I felt that I’m losing my business and I have to go work for someone else. So second thing I have to remind myself is that quick. How am I doing financially? How much reserve do I have? How many clients? All right, everything is fine. Assurance, right? Someone that is feeling PTSD, someone that is feeling…

Nick McGowan (32:16.712)

Mm-hmm.

Nick McGowan (32:30.039)

Mm.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (32:34.579)

all like you know out of sync they have to be assured and sometimes I don’t need to hear from other people I need people to help me see it by asking me the questions not telling me don’t tell me I’m a good coach help me remind me I’m a good coach sometimes all the pictures like my wife is a hey look at this text that you got a couple of months ago from a client and I read that and they just like oh yeah okay you’re right you’re right I’m at a mistake

Nick McGowan (32:43.164)

Mm-hmm.

Nick McGowan (33:01.09)

Hmm. Perspective. I mean, what a, what a simple yet large concept. Because when you have that and that brings you back to a base and you’re able to build from there, I keep thinking about the parental trauma and the things that like your parents, it sounds like, um, your dad specifically wanted you to have a better life than he did. So he felt like maybe he needs to be a little stronger on things or more difficult or whatever. And.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (33:04.563)

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (33:30.486)

that all comes from trauma. There’s no other way around that. That’s just trauma. And then that continues to open up for you and be able to show you what to do or what not to do, and for you to be able to have that conversation, and especially for your wife to be able to have that conversation with your dad, um, about your daughter, there’s progress that’s happening there, but there are things that your daughter’s looking at with you that she’s learning and you know that.

You know, uh, you’re having those conversations with her, but she’s also having her own journey and we all get to be able to make those decisions to figure out how do I, how do I do this differently or how do I take that thing? Like I really enjoyed what my dad said here and that was great. And I’m going to take that and absolve that or, you know, take that thing and say that I’m a piece of shit for the rest of my life, it’s on us to be able to figure that out and walk through that. So I’m on that.

along those lines, what sort of advice would you give to somebody that’s on their path toward self-mastery?

Roozbeh Khoshniat (34:35.625)

for.

Getting help and reaching out for help is not easy. I understand that. And I tell everyone that they make a call or they reach out. And I said, you’ve taken the biggest step. Because in the big words of Tony Robbins, 98% of the people don’t have the courage to work on self-development. You being part of this conference, in his words, you’re part of the 2%.

Nick McGowan (34:42.37)

Mm-hmm.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (35:07.235)

I tell people you’re more than part of the 2% because those numbers drop. For ADHDers, there are only 26% of the ADHD population that have been correctly diagnosed. Out of that 26%, a lot of us are scared to come out and ask for help or don’t know where to go and ask for help. So whether it’s ADHD or any other mental health kind of crisis that you’re going to go out and ask for help, there’s help. There’s going to be someone out there that can help, right?

Nick McGowan (35:15.522)

Hmm.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (35:33.607)

Don’t get intimidated with the cost. You can ask for help. We’re here to provide sliding skill and help stuff. And the biggest thing is remembering that this is like a long road to recovery. It’s not gonna be done right away. You might see some wins quickly.

which is usually great, and there’s gonna be those dark moments, and you’re like, I thought I was cured, and I’m like, stop, you’re a coach, you’ve read so many books, I know I told you I don’t read that much, but the ones that I read, there is no cure for this. I’m born like this, this is the way my brain is, and this is how I’m gonna, I gotta deal with it.

Nick McGowan (36:20.262)

It can be difficult to start no matter what, but it’s like a simple, simple law of physics in a sense of just momentum. You start and then you continue to keep moving. And you and I both know that as you continue on that path, it’s not always fucking easy, not always fucking easy. And sometimes it’s really, really difficult to be able to dig into that tough work, but having a coach.

or having a therapist or some sort of accountability partner that can help you through that, um, and help to be able to point things out like, Hey, there’s a trauma there. Or I can see that you, you react this sort of way can help keep you moving along. So we don’t do this all by ourselves, but it starts with us doing that. Man, I appreciate you being on today. I appreciate you sharing all the wisdom that you’ve shared. Uh, before I let you go, where can people find you and where can they connect with you?

Roozbeh Khoshniat (37:12.263)

Um, you can find me on our website. It’s called heel. Heal-thrive.com Heal-Thrive. Um, or you can find me on Instagram. I removed my Instagram off my phone because I was too addicted to it before Christmas. So it’s one of my New Year’s things. If I need it, I’m going to go on my laptop. I’ll do my posts and stuff like that. But I believe it’s ADHD Coach Ruse.

But Googling my name will definitely bring me up. Our name of our program is called Heal and Thrive Psychotherapy and Coaching. I’m located in California and.

We’re here to help.

Nick McGowan (37:56.942)

good stuff, man. And I’ll have all that stuff in the show notes too. So people will be able to find you. And as other people that have listened to the show before, they know that I’m not a big fan of social media anymore. In fact, I made a joke with somebody earlier. I was like, the best part about Facebook is selling shit that you no longer want in your house or your garage. Like it’s easy enough. But yeah, it’s the, it’s, it’s faceless basically instead of Craigless. But Rooz, it’s been awesome having you on the show. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (37:58.363)

I appreciate it. Perfect. Thank you very much.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (38:15.305)

It’s the next goodwill slash my garage sale. Yeah, faithlessly.

Roozbeh Khoshniat (38:27.043)

I appreciate it.