79: Matt Young: From Elite Athlete to Inner Work: The Moment Everything Fell Apart

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Cherie Lindberg

Hi, I'm Cherie Lindberg, and welcome to Elevated Life Academy, where we share real stories of healing, hope, and transformation. Tune in to hear how everyday people are rising above and lighting the way for others.

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Cherie Lindberg

Welcome to another episode of Elevated Life Academy and I am your host, Cherie Lindberg. And as always, we always have an interesting guest on the podcast. And today that guest is Matt Young. And we want to let him introduce himself. And as you know, we're just going to see where this conversation takes us. So welcome mat.

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Matt Young

Thank you very much for having me here, Cherie. I'm really looking forward to our conversation.

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Cherie Lindberg

Yeah. So tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey because we this is about, you know, stories of hope and healing. So we'd love to know a little bit about you, Matt, whatever you're comfortable sharing.

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Matt Young

Absolutely. I mean, well, you can probably tell from my funny accent to begin with that I'm a I'm not across your side of the pond. I'm from London, UK, and my journey, if I was to start from way back when was I was a professional football player. So for you guys, maybe soccer player and that was a professional football player for many, many years.

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Matt Young

And you know, football was my whole life. It was who I was. It was how I operated. It was who my whole identity was. But what I didn't realize at the time there was that I used football as a way of suppressing some deeper emotional things that I had going on in my personal life at that time and across my personal life, in terms of my relationships, my living situation, my emotions of what I was dealing with, of self-worth and finance, all these different things.

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Matt Young

And essentially, I used to be this professional footballer who used to try and cover up what was going on. But when the professional football stopped, I was left. Then with a place of where I had to turn face up. Love that. And for me, that led me down a path that was very dark. It was very uncomfortable, to say the least, very painful.

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Matt Young

But the blessing in all of that is that I come out of the other side, thankfully, but with a incredible understanding of one what not to do, but two with how one. I shifted some things within myself and across that time with human psychology and emotion, I become pretty fascinated. So I began to get qualified in different forms of psychology and therapies and hypnotherapy and life coaching and all these different sort of modalities to understand more to a point where now, many years down the line, I'm a coach myself in this way, and I help people from around the world with the very core limiting emotions of anxiety, fear, worries, overwhelmed, stresses, oh, seeds that

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Matt Young

have kept them caged in the same way that I did become free from some of those feelings. And that's why we sat here today.

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Cherie Lindberg

That's why we're here having this conversation. That's great. That's great. Yeah, I you know, I love hearing people's healing stories because we all have to go through that darkness. It seems initially so that we can, you know, persist and get and get to the other side. What were some of the things that helped you initially when you did go into that darkness?

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Matt Young

I would love to give you a straightforward answer and turn to something to say. This was the catalyst for me, but if I'm honest, I think probably what makes me so passionate about what I do now is because I've done so much of what not to do. And so I tried everything possible in terms of, you know, talking to different therapists or going down this route or psychology or enrolling on this course.

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Matt Young

The only thing I personally didn't go down the route of was medication for how I was feeling, tried pretty much everything that I did at that stage, and I felt like an a reason why I suppose got so dark with it was I didn't feel like I have that option or that viability of what was going to help me get out of it.

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Matt Young

And then that's when I suppose I stopped looking outward and I began to look inward instead of saying, looking for someone or something to save me and to suppose heal me, how can I heal me, as you say? And that sort of was a bit of a catalyst shift for me that I would then, you know, speak with these bright minds, speak with these wonderful people who are experts in their field.

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Matt Young

But now I was had a different energy. I was taking on board what they was telling me of and a way of internalizing that for what worked for me, not hanging off their every word as a truth, because then I become so dependent on it. And that was a sort of a key shift. That happened for a lot of pain.

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Matt Young

For me, the moment I went internal was the moment where I began to feel like, right, the answers are going to be within you. There's just going to be some wonderful minds out there who can perhaps show you a better path, if you like.

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Cherie Lindberg

Yeah, I think that's so important that shift and focus is so important because so many people, and I think our culture has us looking outward, looking outward for the thing that's going to make us feel good inside. And you're absolutely right that it's up to each one of us to figure that out, because we each have our own recipe for that.

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Matt Young

Absolutely. I think, you know, we all have used the word recipe there. I love that we all have our own framework of what that looks like to be free and to be emotionally vibrant or whatever that may be. But the one commonality that I think that we share as human beings is that personal freedom will always come from identifying what it is within ourselves, not necessarily hanging off the word of every single person who's done it out there, because that's what worked for them.

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Matt Young

But that might be slightly different for me. We use that. We use the platforms like this, I think, which are wonderful, to take the nuggets of information, but then to internalize them and apply them in my own life.

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Cherie Lindberg

And how long did it take you to really start to, you know, start to apply them and start to, you know, get some of the, the benefits, the shift that you were looking for.

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Matt Young

Well I think my life I don't want to say my life would be too dramatic, but my life changed in a period of five days. And what people talk about like they have like distinct moments that happen in time, distinct moments that they can remember that there are shifts that might have heard that happened for me, it was not in the adverse like I had this revolutionary breakthrough, but I felt like I had hit rock bottom, that the only way I can go from here is this way.

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Matt Young

And in this period of five days, you know, so much go on in my football career, with my relationship at that time, with things in my personal life, with my finances, that honestly, one day the Hollywood might write a film about it. It was it was absurd. Things went down. And for me, I remember on that fifth day having a sort of an insight to go, you know what?

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Matt Young

You can't keep hanging on to everything out there. You can't rely on these things or these people or these situations to try and make up who young is and try and heal who Matt Young is. You need to go internal from this point, and I would say it was that star that it wasn't just, you know, that from that moment, my life got exponentially better.

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Matt Young

There was some rocky moments, there were some dark places still, but if I look back, I think that was the catalyst for me to begin to change my way of thinking at that stage.

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Cherie Lindberg

Yeah. And how long between that shift did you actually start, like, you know, sharing your gift with other people and saying, hey, you know, this is what worked for me. It might it might work for you. I'd love to support you in going inside and doing your own work.

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Matt Young

That's a great question. And I would say, honestly, I say it was a good 5 or 6 years. Okay. It was a good 5 or 6 years after. It wasn't for me. Like I had that insight because in those first years, two years, three years, like I said, it wasn't plain sailing for me at that stage. I had a lot of work that I needed to do with him myself.

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Matt Young

But when I started to notice those changes, when I started to notice those shifts, when I started to realize and feel myself emotionally being a bit freer, feeling a bit more, this is a bit fast. So this is a bit more me from that place. Then that's when I begun to be a bit more like, I'm gonna talk to my family about this.

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Matt Young

I'm going to see if I can help people in my family. Then it was like, oh, I'm going to speak to friends. And then all of a sudden, I'll never forget this. I went on a run with a friend and we was on this 10-K run. I remember it, if anyone's been to London, there's a famous park in London called Hyde Park, and it's in West London and the loop around Hyde Park, and where we ran was a ten kilometer loop, and we started at Hyde Park.

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Matt Young

And I remember the whole way round, he just sort of said to me, so what's a bit of your background? And it wasn't planned, but it was probably the first time in my life it all just come out and as it's like literally crazy. But as we entered the park, I started talking as we sort of exited the park, 45, 50 minutes later, I've sort of finished my story and he stopped the run and he's like, wow, you.

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Matt Young

You've got to share that. Like, you have to share what you've been through. You have to share how you've dealt with it. You have to. I never knew this about you. I was like, I suppose I've never really spoke about it. And I think that was the real key moment. And then from there that was, you know, 5 or 6 years after, I suppose.

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Matt Young

But then from there things started to really snowballed. I thought he found sort of similarities in that. I wonder if who else I can help. And they that was seven years ago, whatever it was now.

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Cherie Lindberg

And it just started to happen for you. Oh yeah.

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Matt Young

So that's been the journey.

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Cherie Lindberg

Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you so much for for sharing so genuinely with us. I think it's so important for our listeners to know, you know, we talk about living in elevated life and, and a lot of people sometimes listen or watch and I think, oh, you know, you're successful or you've got it going on or this or that, and it's just like, I love having real conversations on here because it's not always been that way.

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Cherie Lindberg

We are all human beings. First, having, you know, this human life and being human is difficult. And I love hearing the different tools people use, the different experiences that they've had. What would you say made you persist in your own healing?

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Matt Young

What made me persist in my own healing? I've always, I think, I know I've had quite an obsessive nature to me where if I put my mind to something, I get hooked. You know, I was the same with my professional football career. You know, after that, I've run marathons and ultramarathons. I'd be the same if, you know, I put my mind to something in any area, I just get.

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Matt Young

I get hooked on it, especially if it intrigues me, makes me curious, or makes me passionate. And when I started to notice a shift within myself based on where I was, it was that same drug for me, it was. If you've learned this about yourself, how much more can you did? How much more can you dig? How much more can you learn?

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Matt Young

How much more can you learn? And for me, that's been a journey that I don't believe I'm ever going to stop for as long as I breathe oxygen, because that for me. So it just makes me feel so alive that I get so much from it that digging deeper and understanding what speaking to wonderful minds like yourself and learning more and all these different things.

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Matt Young

Because for me, that journey of healing as such is never a destination, right? There's always more of a journey. There's always more that I can uncover. There's always more I can learn about myself. There's always the depths that I can go to, and that excites me. So what keeps me persistent in that, I suppose, is in a backwards way, a work ethic.

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Matt Young

The in really excites me in that area.

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Cherie Lindberg

Well, I hear curiosity too. And that, you know, certainly helps when you're really curious about yourself and your. And you're curious about others. When you were talking about your obsessive nature. Very interesting, because that is basically a characteristic of a of a high performer. They tend to be, you know, persistent. They tend to have an obsessive nature, but they're obsessive about curiosity.

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Cherie Lindberg

Right? Right. And about okay, well, if we just did that and that's possible, what else might be possible? And that's what I'm hearing you say. Like as I uncover more and more, you're discovering more and more is possible.

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Matt Young

Exactly. And very, very similar to yourself, but obviously with the background of what I do, I'm very fortunate that I'll work with, you know, the elite athlete or the entertainer or the musician, etc. this stage, and it's something that I see all the time, the, the most successful people I find are the people who are most, you know, used the word curious, but I say most obsessed with like fascination of what does that mean?

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Matt Young

How does that work? How does that? Because once we understand that, you go deeper into it, you learn more of the mechanics of the underside of it. Then like I like you've just said there. Pardon, it breeds high performance. And like I said I suppose I unwittingly did that myself without knowing at the time it's been a train has probably been with me for a while.

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Matt Young

But in doing what I do now 100%, I always find that the most curious people, always the people who are the most quote unquote successful in any area.

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Cherie Lindberg

Yeah. So in in talking about what you're doing now, what is like one of your most favorite things about what you're doing now?

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Matt Young

One of the most favorite things of what I do now is playing a part in someone or a client uncovering a certain breakthrough, which might be in a breakthrough for me, something where they previously deemed it impossible, now seeing it as possible. And for me, that's the most rewarding side of it, because when I'm working with people from all areas of the world and many different backgrounds and backstories, we all present certain stories and beliefs as to why we are where we are and why we might be caged, and why we might be stuck.

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Matt Young

But when you start to see that become a little bit more the blinkers and you see that side of it, or I might have been privy to an experience that I might have put on for them, where they feel that shift. For me, there's there's no there's nothing that sets me alive professionally more than that.

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Cherie Lindberg

Yeah. No, I, I call that watching somebody like, rise into their potential that's, you know, watching it happen live, you know, and you see them go. I never thought of it that way before. Like the light bulb, the actual light bulb. Go boop. Right over there. Right over their head. Yeah.

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Matt Young

Right. And yeah, I'm sure it's the same exactly in that type of way. Because I think when we start to have that, it's almost like you've just people unwittingly have just opened up a new realm of possibility in their life now. Yeah. And then all of a sudden the pathways start going on. Over time. We're like, what if that happens?

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Matt Young

Then I could do that and I could do this. And that's right. And this is like. And that's the bit that I love. Love.

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Cherie Lindberg

Yeah. So your thoughts on because in order to do that and I've seen this over and over again, but I'd love to hear your thoughts is that they have to shift identities. And so what do you notice about that process with the folks that you work with or even with yourself in that and that? What is that process?

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Cherie Lindberg

And I know it's different for everybody, but any highlights about, you know, shifting that identity, what might need to take place or what you notice with the folks you work with or in your own journey?

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Matt Young

I think it's a really, really, hugely important point that you make there because I think our identity, it shapes everything, but it's everything. It shapes what we deem is going to be possible. We shapes what we're going to deem as viable and whether it's an option for me or not. And when I'm working with someone maybe similar to yourself, one of the first things I'm looking for is what is their identity?

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Matt Young

I mentally and emotionally how they see themselves about this said area. Because if I'm working with someone around anxiety and you know, they their inherent belief about themselves is I'm a lost cause. Nothing's ever going to help me. I'm going to be stuck this way for the rest of my life, because it's been this way for the last ten years, or however long there are.

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Matt Young

A whole identity is one of self limitation. I'm in this place, so you know what? They might have the brightest ideas, the brightest minds, the brave, the greatest information possible to them. It's not going to resonate because they're in a place of their identity, not being open to that potential or open to that possibility. And so whenever I'm working with someone, it's always the place that I start, which is looking to shift their identity.

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Matt Young

And what I mean by shift their identities, not shift them from a place of control, but allow them to experience whether it will be through a certain practice, a visualization, a meditation dynamic practice that might involve some energy involved where they put themselves in a different emotional vibrancy, a different emotional state that then they can start to go, oh, this actually feels a bit better than that part, because then they can disassociate, and then I get to work with a part of them that feels a bit more open.

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Matt Young

I think on the flip side of that, one of the things that I can talk from absolute experience in this area, I would go and see some wonderful, well-meaning psychologist and, you know, being a professional footballer. I'd see the club psychologists and wonderful minds, but my whole thing was nobody gets me, stands me, no begin to know how I'm feeling.

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Matt Young

And so I'm already, as we say in the football terms, I'm already one nil down before I've walked into the door because my identity is no one gets me anyway. So yeah, I'll share some things, but no one really understands how I'm feeling. And so that just gets reinforced when then I hear some information and I go, yeah, but mine's different anyway.

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Matt Young

So I walk out the door and I identity has just been compounded now because there's a place where I was stuck. Right. So I know this is a long winded answer for you, but I think is such an important point that when I'm working with anyone, the place in where I would start would always be how can we move their identity first and foremost to a place of possibility, open mindedness, solution?

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Matt Young

Because for that place, then we can work with some.

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Cherie Lindberg

There's options. Yeah, exactly. I mean, and you know what I'm also hearing you say is that when you walked into those places, some of those well-meaning folks did not connect with that. They did not recognize the stories that were living inside you. And if you don't have an impact on that story to shift it, like you're saying, you know, it's it's it's going to be that piece.

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Cherie Lindberg

There is a huge thing that's going to be for the possibility for movement for that person. So recognizing the person's identity, the mindset, the stories they tell themselves when they're coming in, like, I agree with you, that's got to be this, this point. Because if you miss that and you're trying to give a bunch of mumbo jumbo about what's going to happen, how help them, it's not going to go anywhere because they're not feeling seen.

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Cherie Lindberg

They're not feeling heard or attuned to based on what you're saying. Yeah.

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Matt Young

100%. And you want to say, I don't think there's much elaboration I need. I think you've hit the nail on the absolute head there. The people need to emotionally have that viability of option before any sort of work takes place.

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Cherie Lindberg

Right, right, right. They've got to really feel that connection with with their person that they're going to be working with. Is there anything that you think would be important for our listeners to hear from you that maybe I haven't asked you?

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Matt Young

I think in terms of importance of what they hear from me. You know, I always have this sort of saying that I say with my clients that my words are cheap. Your experiences are what or what matters. Yeah. And so when I, you know, I work with a client, I always say, I don't want you to be a believer of my words.

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Matt Young

I want you to be a believer of your experiences because that's what's going to stick.

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Cherie Lindberg

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Matt Young

And so for the person who might be listening to this and your listeners who tune into this, I think these words in which we've exchanged here are wonderful. They're great. They're lovely. And I've never diminished that, but they're only ever as good as the way that the person receiving them then chooses to create an experience for themselves as a result.

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Matt Young

And whether that's instead of, you know, trying to find the next best quick fix out there, you know what? Let me look internally and see what it is that I'm really I'm needing to what's the void I'm looking to fill? Or is it the identity side of things where I keep telling myself these stories about what's possible? Or is it that I'm going to see my therapist or my coach and every time I just go and do it and I know I'm not going to be any better, but I just go and do it for comfort.

00;22;43;02 - 00;23;04;01

Matt Young

Because when you start to create your experience around that internally, then you're going to start to see real shifts and changes. I think platforms like what you've created here, Cherie, are absolutely wonderful. They're beautiful, if I may say. They're only ever as good as when people implement the words that they've heard.

00;23;04;02 - 00;23;06;03

Cherie Lindberg

And take it in. Yeah, right.

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Matt Young

And so that would be that would be one of the key things. Because from having a chat with so many people and sure, similar to yourself, people say, oh, you know what? I've listened to your podcast, I've listened to your YouTube, I've seen you on social media, I've attended your seminars and look great, wonderful. But that wasn't the shift, was it?

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Matt Young

What was the shift? Oh, I took what you said and I applied it here. I'm like, there we go.

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Cherie Lindberg

There we go. Yeah.

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Matt Young

That's what matters. Yes, that's the part we've all listened to the lovely, you know, YouTube video or podcast on the way to work. Oh yeah, I'll do that. And we never do it. And then six months later, we go, oh, yeah, I should have done that six months.

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Cherie Lindberg

I heard it's not about here. It's about our experience. Absolutely.

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Matt Young

That would be a key sort of part that I always say, and I say it to my own sort of audience of times, is I say, don't let this be a nice listen. Don't want it to just be like a pod, like a dog dog walk filler, or your commute to work, or you're sat there on the bus, or even now people are in the car going along, going, oh, that was good.

00;24;06;15 - 00;24;21;29

Matt Young

And I would employ people to use this as a catalyst now to take a nugget of wisdom from it. Whatever might have resonated to go right, this is how I'm going to say apply and experience my own feelings towards this, because that's where it changes happen.

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Cherie Lindberg

Absolutely, absolutely. So let's just I'm going to invite you to share a little bit about the work that you do and the folks that you work with, and we'll make sure that we have all your socials so that people can reach out to you. But what what do you do? What do you who do you work with?

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Matt Young

Sure. Essentially, I work with I work with people who feel like they're emotionally stuck with certain limiting emotions. And, you know, my naturally, my my specialty is more so around where I've been myself. Anxiety, fear, you know, intrusive slash depressive thought processes, a place where I was for many, many years and my work really centers around emotionally freeing people from those self limitations because, you know, someone might have been struggling with certain anxious traits for the last ten years.

00;25;19;05 - 00;25;53;18

Matt Young

I understand that I completely, empathetic towards that, and I can understand how hard that must be. But ten years in, one day ago, that wasn't who you were. So why does that mean that that has to be who you are moving forwards. And that's really in the center point of the work of what I do. And, you know, our work at this stage had been very, very happy and very, very blessed to work with people from all around the globe in helping them free themselves from certain limiting emotions that they might have stuck with that, like me, they might have gone down a route of trying so many different things that they felt like,

00;25;53;20 - 00;26;18;08

Matt Young

oh, no one quite gets me, or this isn't quite working for me. And as one of my clients said to me that, Matt, you're the guy that people come to and they've tried everything else. And so that's pretty much where my my work has stemmed from now and continues to grow from. And like you say, we're across social media platforms and website, things like that, which I'm happy to share, where people can have.

00;26;18;10 - 00;26;26;25

Matt Young

And I'm happy to share this with your audience. Completely free resources that can help them and things like this that they can get an understanding of more of what we do.

00;26;26;27 - 00;26;54;14

Cherie Lindberg

Awesome. Well, I just want to thank you for coming and having this great conversation. And, you know, for our audience again, I always say this like, if you found this helpful, listening to what Matt said, like, if you can take some action on this, we would love to hear from you. Whether you let Matt know you heard him or you're, you know, part of the audience of elevated life, we'd love to hear how you might have taken action listening to the podcast, and please share it.

00;26;54;15 - 00;27;06;29

Cherie Lindberg

If it's a nugget for you, it could be a nugget for someone else. So I just want to thank our guest, Matt Young, for being here and sharing his wisdom, and we wish you well on your continued journey.

00;27;07;04 - 00;27;16;13

Matt Young

Thank you very much. And like I say, I really appreciate you having me on. It's a wonderful platform you've got here and echo your thoughts that I hope people take this and implement it in their lives.

00;27;16;19 - 00;27;24;00

Cherie Lindberg

Absolutely. So thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it.

00;27;24;02 - 00;27;47;05

Cherie Lindberg

Thank you for joining us today on Elevated Life Academy. Stories of hope and healing. As you move back into your world, I invite you to take a breath and hold on to whatever stirred something in you from our podcast today. Healing isn't always loud, but it is always sacred. Whether today's story Open Your Heart, gave you a new perspective, or just reminded you that you are not alone.

00;27;47;09 - 00;28;08;13

Cherie Lindberg

It matters. And so do you. Keep choosing alignment. Keep trusting your becoming. And remember the elevated life is in perfect its present. If this episode resonated, share it with someone who needs a little more light. And if you're ready to go deeper in your own journey, you know where to find me. Until next time. Stay ready. Stay rising and stay you.