Corbin Heder

Be Kind.

[ALISON WONDERLAND @awonderland]

fuck me up

[The Chosen One @KiDCuDi]

https://t.co/kb2K4hOjux

[ALISON WONDERLAND @awonderland]

NOT CARING WHAT ANYONE THINKS IS THE GREATEST FREEDOM

[Corbin Heder @kingcorb]

Looks fade, energy doesn’t

[canabliss @canablisss]

it is a privilege 2 love so hard

[Mike Posner @MikePosner]

The Transformation
_______________________
December 2022
West Palm Beach, Fl

Tony Robbins events are a strange hybrid of church service and Guns ‘N Roses concert.
Under harsh fluorescent lights, out-of-date David Guetta hits play at absurd volumes, while markedly-uncool-lanyard-name-tag-wearing attendees jump up and down with untamed ferocity.
Something about it feels leftover from the 90’s.
I arrived skeptical and sick. Was this really going to work? I really hoped so.
Tony Robbins took the stage and his gravitas as a speaker was undeniable, even to someone as cynical as me. Like Dad, he was a talker and easily held my attention for every second of his three hour opening monologue.
As I interacted with the people sitting around me, I found out many of them had spent their last dollar to be there. Their marriages, or businesses, or families were all riding on this six day personal growth event: Date With Destiny. I found that kind of intensity to be contagious.
By day three, the conference had taken on a momentum of its own.
Avicii’s song “Levels” blasted out of the speakers echoing like a ghost from my past, reminding me where my life was headed if I didn’t change. Before long, I found myself jumping around with all those lanyard-wearing people I’d judged upon arrival.
The song faded, the lights dimmed, and Tony’s gravelly voice instructed me and the other thousand live attendees to close their eyes.
I felt something of great significance was happening.

TONY ROBBINS: Imagine you are walking through a beautiful green pasture on a perfect day.

For a moment, my snobby intellect told me I was too smart for this kind of thing. But then, against its wishes, I was immersed in an ocean of rolling green hills.
I felt the warmth of the imaginary sun touch my cheeks as the smile-from-deep-within crept across my face. Then, very small against the horizon, I noticed a small figure standing there waiting for me.

TONY ROBBINS: Go closer to the figure. And as you get closer, you can see who it is.

I calmly walked up and over several hills, approached the figure and realized who it was…

It was me.

…Sixteen year-old me. Draped in bad Sean John clothing and angling his face a little to the right of my eyes to hide the dreaded pimples on his right cheek.

TONY ROBBINS: What do you want to say to the younger you? What does this younger you really want? What does he need?

I looked in his eyes. I could sense he wanted to cry, but wouldn’t let himself. I saw how angry he was.
But underneath that anger was fear. He was just scared he wasn’t enough. And he really didn’t want anyone to know that.
He wanted to scream, punch, and cry all at the same time.
I grabbed that sixteen-year-old by the shoulders and I pulled him in for the biggest bear-hug of his life.  Even if no one else did, I saw him. I appreciate how special he is and I told him I will always take care of him, no matter what.
As I write this, I realize how absurd this scene may appear to readers:
Me.
Hugging myself.
In my imagination.
At a Tony Robbins conference.
I myself was vaguely familiar and skeptical of so-called “inner-child” work. But this was different.
As I opened my eyes, I glanced around the conference room and I saw a whole new world. For the first time in my life, I felt like an adult. I realized that my sixteen-year-old Mike’s fears had been dictating my entire life. And I knew that if I continued to live inside the walls he’d constructed, I was destined to die alone with a big-artificially-whitened fake smile plastered on my face. And the thought of that was enough to ensure I never allowed those fears to dictate my life ever again. It was done.
I didn’t need to prove I was enough because I am enough.
I didn’t need to flail around Instagram trying to get people to notice because I appreciate myself.
And I didn’t need to get the whole world to see my inner world because my actual job is to see the inner world of other people.
Two more truths exploded in my consciousness and presented themselves and unequivocally true. How did I know they were unequivocally true? Well, I just did.
If I’m really honest, I think their veracity was recognized by something far beyond my intellectual mind. This is what they were:

My past depression was directly tied to my fear of intimacy. The longer I avoided intimacy, the more pain life was going to give me to wake me up. I had two choices. Face my fear. Or descend further into a world of hurt. I knew what my choice was.
All the pain I’d undergone in my life thus far was the perfect training for me to serve others in the way I was actually supposed to. Life was giving me challenges so I could learn to overcome them. That way I could teach others to do the same. That’s right. As Byron Katie so eloquently puts it, Life was not happening to me, it was happening for me.
I looked like the same person but as I stood in that overly air conditioned conference room, but something about me had changed forever.
I realized I’d been telling myself a lie. The lie was I was a depressed genius whose sadness was rooted in the fact that no one understood him. That wasn’t true.
Depression was not something I had. Depression was something I did.

It was nothing more than a set of negative thoughts I repeated in my mind, a slouchy way I held my body, and a false identity I had created for myself.

It was a bad habit. And any habit can be changed.
Mistaking habits for identity leads to suffering.
Distinguishing habits from identity leads to freedom.
So I decided to tell myself a new story.
***

I wouldn’t say Tony Robbins cured me of depression. But I would say Tony Robbins gave me the tools to cure myself of depression.

When I left the conference, I was determined to not slip back into my ways. So everyday, immediately upon waking, I put on my headphones and play the same David Guetta songs Tony used at Date With Destiny. Those songs became the soundtracks to my transformation. And I kept telling myself my new story. As the music blared, I would go for a run or lift weights or move my body in some way while repeating:
I am joy.

I am faith.
I am love.
But I didn’t just say it. I screamed it and repeated it until I believed myself. Every. Single. Day.

In this manner, I kept my transformation alive and literally changed my identity.
I found vast amounts of energy reserves unlock.
My Mom, someone whose very voice used to hotwire my psychology and transform me to a very irritated sixteen year old Mike, became one of my best friends. When she called to tell me she’d had a hard day, I didn’t hear complaining like I used to. I heard someone opening up and being vulnerable because they trusted me.
My base line level of happiness increased tenfold. And, drum roll please: I faced my fear and entered a real, live relationship with a real, live woman. That relationship ended amicably, but eventually led me to my now fianceé who I’m more-than-happily engaged to.
As someone who at times plays a “spiritual teacher” role to my audience on social media, at first I downplayed how much Tony’s event had changed me. I wanted everyone to think that I had uncovered my spiritual wisdom in a more esoteric and cool manner. Perhaps from a Himalayan guru in a cave, or via direct spiritual download at the summit of Mt. Everest, or at the bottom of my ayahuasca vomit bucket.
Heck, even an old fashioned church prayer would’ve been a better story.
But that wasn’t the truth. My spiritual breakthrough of breakthroughs came under those harsh fluorescent lights of Tony’s convention center.
And let me be clear, what’s important isn’t that I had a moment of clarity at Date With Destiny. I’d had dozens of “spiritual moments” where I’d gone beyond my mind. Virginia Woolf called these “moments of being” and everybody has them.
They are moments where everything just makes sense and often accompany child birth, physical exhaustion, meditation, dance, breathwork, sexual union, psychedelic trips, but can also be triggered by absolutely nothing at all.
These are a feature of life and it’s hardly worth me writing you this essay to tell you I had one.
What’s important is how this moment reverberated in my life and still reverberates to this day. The measure of any ‘personal growth’ work isn’t how powerful the moment you had was, it’s how you show up when that moment is over.
And three and a half years later, I am still fulfilled, joyful, and cured of my depression habit.
And let me be clear, life continues to have has its fair share of pain and challenges. There have been health issues, deaths in the family, and breakups. But I’ve learned to ask better questions when the challenges come.
What is Life trying to teach me right now?

By asking this question, the pain becomes the conduit for further expansion, growth, and wisdom. It still hurts. But I use it to take me somewhere I want to go.

We live in an age of cynicism. And for good reason. Our social media feeds are rife with charlatans and “life coaches” who haven’t even figured out how to live their own lives.
But I guess this essay is me shouting from the roof tops: THERE IS HOPE!  Some of these tools actually work! You can change! And every bit of the transformation that I’ve described above is not just for me, it’s for you too.
I’m not so naive to think everyone reading this needs a Mike Posner sized dose of self help. But I do know that even the wisest among us need reminders:
You are much stronger than your problems. Problems are the opportunities from which we grow. You are not who your little mind tells you you are. You are a thousand times stronger. A thousand times wiser. And a thousand times more beautiful,  too.
In fact, when I reflect on my first thirty eight years alive, although I am still very much building the ship as I sail, I realize my greatest achievement isn’t getting famous, writing hit songs, hiking thousands of miles, or even climbing Mt. Everest. My greatest achievement is that I went from a person whose emotional home base was my-life-should-be-better-in-some-undefined-type-of-way to someone whose emotional home base is now joy, faith, and even deeper than those, love.
Though the fears and patterns of sixteen year old Mike still occasionally poke their heads out of whatever dirty foxholes they live inside, they no longer control me. I control them.
Tony Robbins worked.
***

But all this “transformation work” created a weird tension in my life. Even though I’d changed my life, the larger public still saw me as the old me; the guy who sang “I Took A Pill in Ibiza.” Hit songs can be like psychological monoliths. Once you erect them, they’re so big that their shadows stay stuck to you…for years. And everyone views your life in relation to them.

But I was done playing the victim. I decided to change my external story, too. For over a decade, “I Took a Pill In Ibiza,” dragged me around seemingly wherever it wanted me to go. My career dictated my life. It was time to let my life dictate my career. I wrote, “I Went Back to Ibiza.”

https://t.co/vBqbLfyrQV

And let’s call a spade a spade, part of my motivation for writing this piece is to get the word out about my song. But that’s not the whole story.

There are three stages to an artist’s relationship to his or her audience:

Stage 1 - Puppy love. This is where you are so excited that so many people love you and you think it will never end. You don’t realize it, but you’re using their attention (and Attention ≄Love), to cover over some part of yourself you don’t want to look at. You think the fact that they adore you justifies all your existence and all your bad behavior in other areas.

Stage 2 - Disillusionment. The dream is over. Some amount of your fans disappear. Or some turn on you and actually become “haters.” Whatever it is, you realize that you can’t depend on your audience for a steady source of significance as much as you thought. This is uncomfortable because those parts of yourself you didn’t want to look at are right there where you left them. And you can no longer delude yourself that they aren’t.

Stage 3 - Service. You go take care of those parts of yourself that you didn’t want to look at. You hug your 16-year-old-Mike. You become an adult. You no longer need something from your audience because you know who you are. At this point, you can actually go back to your audience and instead of trying to get something from them, you are actually there to give something to them.

At times I drop into Stage 1 and 2 but I’d like to think I’m spending more of my time in Stage 3 these days.
And in an age where AI can write darn good pop songs and most people “connect” via little blue text bubbles on small screens,
Art is simply one human saying, “this is what it’s like for me to be human. Anybody else?”
And if we’re lucky, somebody else says, “Yes. That’s exactly what it's like for me to be human, too. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but that song/book/painting/essay said it just right. Thank you. I feel less alone now.”
So this is what it’s like for me to be human:
Beginnings hide themselves in Ends.

Pain eventually turns into beauty.
Challenges + Faith = Growth.
Faith, as I’m using the word here, means trusting that something bigger than me has my back. Simple as that. It’s a letting go of control.

When I wrote, “I Took a Pill in Ibiza,” I had no idea life was going to get this good, externally and internally.
I’m doing a lot of the same things I was doing fifteen years ago. I’m playing concerts, I’m having meetings with record labels, and doing social media posts. But it feels completely different. Instead of obsessively doing it to try to get more money and fame. I’m doing it to serve others and hopefully make a difference in their lives. So after all my spiritual seeking, I haven’t so much changed what I’m doing, I’ve only changed how I’m doing it. And sometimes how makes all the difference.
So KEEP GOING, and remember, it’s never too late to change your story
In gratitude,

mp

ps - in some crazy turn of events, David Guetta, yes the same David Guetta whose songs were the soundtrack to my transformation has made an edit of my new song. God is good! It's out now and you can stream it here. https://t.co/fgIVVI0h6t
Love u.

[Corbin Heder @kingcorb]

The future is now #MNWild

[Corbin Heder @kingcorb]

Even on the bad days, the right people show up

[Corbin Heder @kingcorb]

Life is art

[Corbin Heder @kingcorb]

@MikePosner Dear Michael,
I want to say thank you for your performance at Decadence this year. You made my heart very happy. A lot has changed in my life too. You are a true inspiration and my favorite set of the weekend. Still singing: all I know, are love songs. Love songs❤️

[Corbin Heder @kingcorb]

What a wonderful life

[Corbin Heder @kingcorb]

Thankful for you

[Corbin Heder @kingcorb]

Hey @utahmammoth, I think it would be pretty stellar if the buckets had mammoth tusks

[Corbin Heder @kingcorb]

The world is full of fun and exciting things, but you have to look in the right places

[Corbin Heder @kingcorb]

It feels good now that hockey is back

[felly @fellythekid]

watch your brother that’s yourself

[MOD SUN @MODSUN]

Have faith.

Work hard.

Be positive.

[felly @fellythekid]

wildfire music video going crazy. found itself in some sort of playlist. see you in the comments https://t.co/4PcmfPpeZu

[Tape B @Tapebbeats]

I just wanna be as me as possible

[Corbin Heder @kingcorb]

But I hope for the best. I have to