From Personal Tragedy to Trauma-Informed Leadership

become addicted to that. And we don't even understand necessarily what deeper impact it's having. Mika Liberty is a resilient, influential, and mission-driven trial lawyer. She is the founder of Lionhearted leader, the soaring center, and radiant star roasters focused on leadership, empowerment, and positive change. I learned the hard way that pushing down all of your trauma and not working to understand it or working through it can

have a devastating impact on you as a person and as a whole. I was basically in bed, unable to

function because of all of the trauma I had taken on. It is so easy to learn how to protect yourself and to understand what your brain and body are doing, so that you can keep going. The living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. Welcome back to another episode guys of the Inside Success podcast. I'm your host Jason Tyler, and I am joined today by Micah Star Liberty. I got to make sure that I say the star there because

she is the star of the episode that we just finished filming. So we just got out of finishing

“your episode. How are you feeling now on the other side of things of sharing your story?”

Good. I always feel like a weight is lifted whenever I talk about Amber. It's this weird

combination of heavy and a sense of loss but also buoyed because I get to talk about her and honor her memory. Just to give the viewers context, Amber was a childhood friend of Micah's who was a victim of a serial killer. This happened very early on in one of the things that we spoke about a lot in the interview was the concept of trauma and how to deal with it, how to be more informed about it, how to take on trauma. Talk to me a little bit about your journey with this

“very heavy trauma that happened to you so early on in life. Honestly for a long time, the trauma”

just kind of tamped down and kept it moving. Because it's not easy and I was young and didn't really know how to compartmentalize any of it. So I just didn't try not to think about it and what ended up happening is once I started working, I thought about it every day because I thought about Amber every day. It's been a process and we talked about this in the episode but not taking care of ourselves, not dealing with the trauma and trying to tamp it down, just little trauma land-minds

get planted. The body keeps scoring. The body keeps scoring. And you never know when something

is going to come up. There are times where I have some response and I'm like, oh that's a trauma response and I didn't even know that was something I felt trauma over. You just have to be cognizant.

“You have to be cognizant. We're in the age of information though. There's so much”

information readily available all over the place. But there's also a lot of misinformation. There's a lot of places that non-credible sources, there's a whole economy that functions out from misinformation, but we're not going to get into that. No political system, but that's another story for another day, which I do also want to touch on your history and politics. But the whole thing with trauma is people should need to be informed about what trauma is, how the body responds to it. What

what their body is doing without them, a lot of trauma responses, you're not even cognizant though.

that you didn't know that were trauma responses until you could go back and put a name to them. >> Right. >> So like talk to me about your initiative to bring education and bring trauma to the forefront of business and making businesses trauma ready, trauma responsive. >> Mm-hmm. I just think it's so imperative, especially where we are in our society. Today, after the pandemic, everyone experienced all of this trauma and isolation and a lot of

mental health issues because of what we went through. And it's, you know, I learned the hard way, I usually have to go through something to take the lesson away, but I learned the hard way that pushing down all of your trauma and not working to understand it or working through it can have a devastating impact on you as a person and as a whole. I mean, we talked about this a little bit,

but I was basically, you know, in bed and unable to function because of all of the trauma

I had taken on. And it's so easy for those of you out there who've experienced trauma. It is so easy to learn how to protect yourself and to understand what your brain and body are doing so that you can keep going. >> Mm-hmm. And it's funny that you mentioned, you know, when you were going through it, we might have called it a different thing, but the way that we refer to it now is, you know, you have burnout, right? >> Right. >> And especially in a working situation,

like yours, where you're starting so many businesses, you have so many initiatives going on at the same time, burnout almost becomes, like your dance partner, right? You're constantly doing this dance with, I'm approaching burnout. I mean, keep a little bit away from there, or, you know, I'm just going to lie down with burnout for a little bit, and then I'll be back to it in a little, but what advice would you have for people who are struggling with burnout? This is something

“that we spent a little bit of time on in the episode, and I think it's super important that we talk”

about it more. We're not talking about burnout enough. >> Right. I think the first thing is,

don't be afraid of it, don't be afraid to name it, don't be afraid to confront it within yourself, get to the root of what's causing the burnout if you can. I think a lot of times, it is easy for us to dismiss what we're experiencing and just say, oh, this is burnout, and this is normal, because this is what this job requires, or this is what this experience needs. You know, there's, I try to teach people that stress can also be interpreted by your brain as enthusiasm or excitement,

and so we can become addicted to that, and we don't even understand necessarily what deeper impact it's having. >> Your brain can assign a dopamine response to stress, and for, and a lot of people don't even really know that you can get dopamine from things that are causing your body stress,

“right? >> Right. And, you know, I try to tell people a lot nowadays, I think everybody's dopamine addicted”

nowadays. We're constantly getting it from our phones. >> Exactly. >> We're constantly getting it from online validation. People, I mean, you hear the term nowadays, people are like, I'm chronically online. >> Right. >> That's not a good thing. >> Right. >> And be aware, like, oh, you know, I'm just chronically online, like, I have too many memes in my phone, or whatever the case may be, but it's an issue that I think we need to tackle in that our brains

are assigning dopamine to things that we're not taking stock of, right? I want to go, let's press re-rind for a second here. I want to go back and this is kind of crazy, but you worked in the Bill Clinton White House. >> I did. Yeah. >> So, let's talk about, let's talk about working in the White House, because that's insane. Talk to me a little bit about just your experience being in, I know we had mentioned it in the episode of, like, how much people knew that, like, how much the work meant.

“>> Yes. >> And that culture. >> Yeah. >> What was that culture, like?”

It was a very tight-knit group of people, and, you know, it's, it's incredible to watch everyone

moving in the same direction to achieve a goal that's not about them. That's about the greater good.

it really was a wonderful experience to see that, to see the camaraderie, to see the commitment,

to see people so selfless that they were willing to spend hours, and hours, and hours, and days, and weeks, helping the country move in a better direction. >> Mm-hmm. In the pursuit of this

“greater goal. >> Right. >> It's so, when you think about, I think about this often, because I'm here”

talking with people who are CEOs, leaders, and when I think about leadership, I think about, there's an analogy that I gave at, you know, a previous business that I had with the former business partner, and it was, we both have the same destination in mind. So we might as well just

carpool. >> Right. >> And I use that analogy all the time when I'm working with people, and we all

want to go to the same place, like, hey, we might as well carpool this, get in the car together, and we'll figure out a way that works for all of us. >> Right. >> When you're, you know, as a business owner and somebody who looks at a problem, and in order to solve a said problem, you know what, I'll start a business about it, which we have to put that on a T-shirt for you. Start a business about it. Because you, I love that. >> Start a business about it. >> My friends who know me, well yeah,

absolutely. >> Feel free to steal that one. I just want like 1% of the proceeds from that T-shirt. That's all I'm asking for. But as someone who, you know, you've created your law firm, you've created all these different businesses that have sprouted from that law firm, what is the importance of leadership and organizational structure within your businesses?

“>> Leadership is super important to me, and I think to every business, because leaders can”

make or break a business. If we're just purely from an economic standpoint, they're decisions, how they treat staff, how well or poorly they take feedback from those around them. >> I, I believe the fifth. I will say nothing about that, actually, in this world government. >> So, um, and they're easy tweaks to make, and they're really the only way to have teams that are in high income earning or generating and client satisfaction

and staff satisfaction. I mean, it's so easy to achieve those things if you are trauma-informed and you have good communication skills. >> Be trauma-informed and have good communication skills. It's not that difficult. And another thing, it's something that I spoke with, I spoke with one of my clients from yesterday, just listen. >> Right. >> Just listen out, because your clients will tell you what's wrong with your business. >> Right. >> Your employees, your staff will tell you

what's going wrong in the business. >> Yes. >> If you just listen, you will understand what problems there are, and then as a leader, guess who you have as your leader, miss problem, solve or herself. It's just that simple. It's not rocket science, a promise. >> But not every

“leader can, can listen without taking a fence or without putting up a wall. So, I think.”

>> Trauma response. >> Trauma response. It is. >> I'm going to start doing that to people. Anytime I see someone having a Trauma response, I'm just going to tell her response. >> Name it. >> I'm just going to name it. I'm going to be so annoying in conversation. It's going to be great.

I can't wait. >> That's a huge part of it. And because staff don't always feel safe,

emotionally safe telling the person who signs their check what they think the problems are. But those are the employees you want. The other thing I see a lot is when we're trying to talk about diversity in workplaces and the elimination of bias, and all of those things, which have, for some reason, become controversial, but they should not be. >> We don't need to promise we could have a whole conversation. We could go off on a whole tangent about DDI right now, but I don't

want to turn this into the political bug. >> Right. But the thing to remember is cohesive groups, groups where people feel safe to share outlier opinions or something based on their own experience, their lived experience. Those are the teams that make more money. Those are the teams that do better. >> So why wouldn't we be striving for those teams? >> Exactly. And like I'm a firm believer in

times right now. Everybody is trying to do everything on their own. When I first got my start in

filmmaking, I thought I was a one-man band. I can be the producer, the filmmaker, the editor, the audio technician, the lighting guy. I didn't realize until I had been on an actual film set and worked with real directors that I was working the job of like 15 different people and charging like maybe $1,200 for it. And I was like, all right, we need to restructure. We need to figure this out. As we kind of wrap up here, what advice would you have for somebody who is

dealing with a dealing with trauma, or maybe they might not even know that they're dealing with trauma, right? But they're experiencing the side effects of trauma and they don't know where to go for that help. What advice did you have for them? >> There are 10 of resources online. I also wrote a book that has a bunch of chapters about how to recognize trauma, how to deal with it. One of the

things that when I first started teaching folks how to be trauma informed is I would say look,

there's no script, but it turns out there can be. And if you have discovered that you think you have trauma in a certain area, take a look at the book, take a look at websites that are out there,

“there's also a certification process. If you want to learn how to be trauma informed, there are”

organizations that will certify you. And it helps not just with your own identification of what you're experiencing, but like you said you're just going to start telling people who's trauma, right? Sometimes it takes other people to mirror for us what we're experiencing. >> Approach that with caution,

because not everybody is going to be in the right mindset to hear someone say hey, that's your trauma.

Like you can ruin a relationship or to base off of that, based on even just naming it. >> Right. >> Because some people their trauma response to even calling it trauma is to disengage. Well, cut that off, I don't even want to approach that conversation. >> Right. >> Right. >> And so it's not something other people should diagnose. >> No, no, no, no, no, no. I only do that guys because my dad is a psychologist, right? Let's

preface with that. Let's all just everybody calm down, put your put your weapons away. And with that, you know, as we kind of wrap up here, where can people go to find you online, socials, website, is there an office they might want to go to if they're in the California

“area where they can look up a very great law office. You need to make sure that we're”

working they go, working they go online and working they go in, you know, if we have any viewers in the state of California, where should they go? >> Well, I'm going to give you all the website URLs. >> All the websites. All right. And, you know, for our editing team, make sure we put these up on screen, leave them up there for a good long while so people can write it down and put it in the web browsers. All right. >> LibertyLaw.com. That's the law firm and we help survivors and

victims of crime and human trafficking. Linehearted leader, that's the platform from which we do all of our leadership training and trauma informed training. The soaringcenter.com, sore like a bird, like a phoenix. And that's where we do a lot of legislative advocacy. We do some restorative justice programs for people who would like to get accountability in certain situations, but litigation is not an option. And then we've got radiant star roasters.com and

that is a coffee company that supports women in coffee globally. We give 15% of every bag we sell

“back to organizations that help support women in the coffee industry. >> That's what it was all leading”

up to, guys. All I wanted was to make sure that everybody knows about the coffee. All right. The cure to trauma is caffeine. I'm joking. I'm joking. But with that, guys, that is another episode of inside success. Make sure that you guys go out and check out Micahstar Liberty's episode on Legacy Makers. It should be following this podcast episode very close behind. So just keep an eye out for that. But until the next time, guys, we will see you later.