[0:00] Moving to another country often makes you feel like an outsider. Different language, different culture, different expectations. But what if being an
[0:08] outsider could actually become your greatest advantage? In this episode, our guest shares how the experiences that shaped his life, even the difficult
[0:16] ones, eventually helped him find the deeper purpose. That entire story, you know, from when I was 8 years old to now, actually, I feels like it happened
[0:25] for me in order for me to help somebody else. like it was almost like was made to be able to do this. Um, and I think everybody, you know, listening to this podcast can look from their own life,
[0:34] their past because they will see these moments in their life, it shapes your life. But if you look from the perspective, how can that help me? How
[0:42] can that maybe help someone else or what lessons that I learned that will help me in my life? All of a sudden, you start to grow much more effective way. And
[0:52] when it comes to living in another country, he discovered that standing out didn't have to be a disadvantage. In fact, it could become a strength. If you
[1:01] start looking from the perspective, I'm an outsider. You know, either you shift the meaning like how could that be a benefit to me? How can I make that big
[1:10] difference for that? Like that whole I'm an outsider, the Polish Peter, I use it to my advantage.
[1:15] Today on Almost Local, the living abroad story of Peter Klet. Let's start.
[1:29] I'm a husband and I'm a father of three kids. So that's the number one thing. Um I'm Polish. I was born in Poland and I'm
[1:36] a you know American here that I live in the United States right now. And how the world kind of like sees me who I am is transformational culture. I call myself
[1:44] um human architect. You know, back in the day, I used to, you know, be an architect for building houses. And today, I get to rebuild human beings. I
[1:52] get to build them up. I get to, you know, help them live the life and the businesses that they truly want to have. That's basically what I do, who I am.
[2:00] Interesting. You said you're originally from Poland. Which part of of Poland you're you're coming from?
[2:05] Well, I am coming from all the way down south. There was a city called Zakopane.
[2:09] It's a huge tourist city. Uh we have mountains you know there is a mountain range Tatras mountains that are separating Poland from Czechoslovakia
[2:17] there. So it's a huge tourist area so I was born there very proud of that city.
[2:21] It's it's amazing like a lot of tourists come there and uh so if you ever want to go to Poland I highly recommend you hit Zakopana. I need to check it myself.
[2:29] I've never been to Poland actually. It's one of the the first countries in the list that I need to visit soon. You got to go man. You got to go.
[2:37] So how how was life? I mean, I know that you left Poland very early, but you studied, you grow up until being a
[2:45] teenager in in Poland. How was life there? Yeah. So, well, the first about 8 years, I would say it's kind of rough. I mean,
[2:52] Poland at the time was a communist country. Oh, I mean, we lived in like a 14 by4 room, that was the bedroom, that was the living room, that was my like there was a kitchenet off to the side.
[3:01] The bathrooms that we had were literally so imagine there was a hallway down the middle and off the hallway there was individual rooms where every family lived in. So at the end of the hallway
[3:10] is the public restroom for everybody to use. So that was the first 80 years of my life. And then when I was about 8 years old my parents got divorced and
[3:17] what happened at the time you know this was like ' 80s. United States was the land of opportunity right like I remember hearing from people the money
[3:25] grows on trees share. So I'm thinking wow money grows on trees in United States that's very cool right? So my mom came excuse me came to United States to
[3:34] make money and she was going to be here temporarily to make some money come back to Poland. So from that particular time till about 14 years old I was living
[3:42] with my aunt my uncle in like in their house in a small town. So that was now at this particular point I think
[3:50] communism was about to be demolished and in ' 89 or so they demolished the communism in Poland and uh when I was 14 I came here it was 91 you know between 8
[3:59] and 14 life was good for me cuz I know I had friends it was you know if you know anything about you know um Eastern
[4:07] European countries u big on culture right so we had our own kind of costumes and dances and traditions and everything so
[4:16] I was doing all that in fact my best friend kind of makes fun of me here that you know I'm dancing kind of a thing but I loved it you know what I mean it was I
[4:23] was traveling across Poland and across the uh you know world we were in different festivals life then at that
[4:30] particular time was really good you know and then when I was 14 years old my mom came back to Poland for vacation and
[4:38] about two weeks before she was going to come back here to United States that was my interpretation she sat me and my sister down she goes guess what kids and
[4:46] And I'm like, "What? You guys are going to United States with me?" You know, and I was like, "Uh, no, I'm not. I don't want to go there." And there was that argument kind of like she's like, "Yes,
[4:54] you are." I'm like, "No, I'm not. Yes,
[4:56] you are. No, I'm not." And before we know it, I'm on a plane to United States. So, initially, I didn't want to come here because life was kind of good over there. Hope that makes sense. You know what I mean? But then I came here.
[5:06] So,
[5:06] yeah. I mean you're a teenager with your circle of friends and I don't think that there is much many kids in the world that are that want to be taken off out
[5:15] of the c circle of comfort you know the place that they grown up so it is really interesting because majority of the people that I interviewed they took this
[5:23] decision as an adult you more or less you didn't take the decision of moving abroad no like you were taken abroad let's say like this how how was the the
[5:32] transition like uh looking back at the moment how what's biggest challenges of adapting uh in America coming from Poland.
[5:40] Yeah. I mean, so there were some bunch of challenges I would say. So one obviously I didn't speak English. So that was big one. Two because I didn't
[5:47] want to come here, you know. So I remember sitting on a plane and it was like a 10 or 11 hour flight and I'm thinking well what am I going to do there? How is this going to work? Right?
[5:56] And they played two movies. First movie was a movie I don't know if you ever seen this movie by Eddie Murphy called Coming to America. M and the second
[6:04] movie was by Eddie Murphy as well and it was called um the Bever Hills Cop the one where he went to you know LA to you
[6:13] know California over there and I'm watching this movie and I'm thinking wow they might not be so bad I mean they got palm trees I love palm trees that people
[6:22] were talking about that money grows on trees in the United States right beautiful skyscrapers beautiful buildings beautiful cars like those
[6:29] sports cars and all those kinds of things and me 14year-old boy for women those kind of might not be so good bad
[6:36] right and then I land in Detroit as you can know if you know anything about United States no palm trees no palm trees right you know sports cars
[6:44] I mean this is a capital of the uh cars industry kind of thing but you know it wasn't all that so I was I felt like you know because I landed around the it was
[6:52] a Labor Day weekend we got here and then the Monday was the Labor Day and then Tuesday my mom took me to high school to
[6:59] take some tests and figure out how I'm going to fit into this whole thing and uh they gave me some tests and um discovered that I was pretty advanced
[7:08] when it comes to math and those kinds of subjects. So I skipped 8th grade over here. They put me in ninth grade um and
[7:15] they gave me two different ESL classes class English as second language. So and then the next day I think it was Wednesday went to school and don't know
[7:24] anybody. So the first trip was to the principal's office. So go figure. Get here. First trip is principal's office.
[7:30] Now, it wasn't so bad because in the principal's office, I met they gave me another Polish kid who spoke Polish and
[7:37] he was like my kind of like helping me out, right? So, I started assimilating and what I did, one of the first things
[7:45] because I didn't know anything here is look for something that was familiar and for me what was familiar is soccer. So I got myself in the soccer, you know, team
[7:54] on the varsity in high school and I started playing that and I started learning the language a little bit and that's kind of slowly I started getting
[8:01] into this whole vibe over here. So you know that was the one thing another shock that was for me is you know you're in Europe right?
[8:10] Mhm.
[8:10] If you look down the street how many houses on your street are looking exactly the same? Probably not very many. Right.
[8:17] Depend Not here. Not in Bologna that's for sure. I mean they look similar but not exactly the same.
[8:22] Exact pretty much the same right. Well I come to United States and the city that I was in it was called hemic and most of them are like single family houses or
[8:31] they have like a duplexes and they all look exactly the same. And I was like if I ever leave this house how am I ever going to find my way back because the
[8:39] houses look the same streets look the same right? So there that was another kind of like a cultural thing that I had to kind of get used to. But as the time goes, you start to find those little,
[8:49] you know, like at the end of my street,
[8:52] there was a statue of Pope John Paul II because he was here in United States long time ago. So you start finding those landmarks. So the reason why I'm
[8:59] sharing this kind of stuff with you because if someone is thinking about moving somewhere, look for something that might be some familiar like a landmark that you can start seeing,
[9:07] right? Or you connect with certain people that you might assimilate. You know, I was thinking about this while back about like the Polish community and
[9:16] I found out that a lot of the Polish community, I think other communities as well are in like Detroit, Chicago,
[9:23] Toronto, New York and all these kind of areas and I started asking why. And if you really think about a lot of the international airports are there
[9:31] so when people leave a lot of times when you know they land they don't speak the language they start looking for the community nearby and start assimilating
[9:39] in that way. So maybe something that will be helpful for the listeners are listening to it. Sure.
[9:44] I mean I wanted to ask you about school because I suppose it was not easy in the sense of like you arrived in a place that you don't speak a language at all.
[9:51] It's not only the school in the sense of like oh I cannot do the subjects in a correct way but also communicating with other kids getting starting to get
[9:59] friends and so on. Were you in a community with a lot of other Polish people that you could get friends from or
[10:07] Yeah. So there were some Polish people there, you know, Polish kids. But you know what ends up happening is and I know retrospect looking back at it,
[10:15] right? If you get into a place where you kind of like end up they get thrown in kind of like I did in a way, right?
[10:24] There's not much familiar. Human beings are very good on a basic human level in order knowing to survive, right? So you
[10:33] figure things out. So you know for someone listening to this podcast I want you to consider like even if you go into some different place and there is a lot
[10:41] of things that you don't know about uncertain things there are a lot of comfortable things certain things you can find certain ways to be able to
[10:49] quote unquote survive and start thriving in the community so it's not the end all and for me what it was like I was in the ESL classes one of my ESL teachers was
[10:58] Arabic and she had an accent and the other one was Albanian and he had an accent so my accent And I blame it from those two teachers. You know what I mean? That's how I ended up with this
[11:07] accent. But the point I'm making is like I remember learning the language. And in the beginning I was like, "So wait a minute. Am I Polish or am I Polish?
[11:15] Which one am I?" Because the word looks exactly the same. Right? So when you start to learn the languages and you
[11:22] start to learn the uh the the things in your communities, one thing I discover in that process is it's all about the meaning that we put on those things,
[11:32] right? like meaning that we associate with people meaning that we associate with the culture or the food or the language or whatever it might be because
[11:40] even the word Polish or has a different meaning depends on the context right so if you start looking from that perspective you can ask yourself well if
[11:48] I'm having a hard time in this particular area what meaning am I associating with this what meaning am I putting on this stuff and when you start
[11:56] to ask those kinds of question you start to discover like well maybe I'm giving some negative meaning about this what if I shift ed the meaning about this area
[12:04] or this language or this people or this food and now maybe things start to get a little bit easier for you to be able to go and grow in that new area.
[12:12] Interesting. I was I also wanted to ask because I know a lot of people especially like in moving during teenager times or being a kid they end
[12:20] suppressing their origins 100%. No, like that they enter so much into trying to learn the language, integrate themselves
[12:29] into the culture that they end suppressing your real identity in your case being Polish. Is it something that it happened to you? How how do you
[12:37] manage to you said before no you still do dances and stuff and you seem to be still connected with your roots. So how
[12:44] did you manage to to maintain your well? Yeah, it's a really good question because so one in all honesty there was
[12:51] a period of my time in my life where I tried to get rid of my accent like I tried to eliminate it because I thought it was stupid. I told it was you know
[12:58] people didn't recognize didn't listen to me they didn't understand me and all kinds of different things right so I tried to eliminate the accent and notice
[13:06] in this previous conversation I was talking about the meaning right so what meaning did I putting it stupid accent right so I tried to eliminate it so then
[13:13] at some point I started shifting that meaning so now you know if you really think about this I love my accent it's
[13:21] awesome people you know I speak over at this point I spoke over a hundred different stages here in United states people come up to me all the time and
[13:29] talk to me about my accent. They understand me and all kinds of different things. So where's the meaning? So for a period of time I tried to eliminate that
[13:37] you know accent. Um I the other aspect that was happening the homesickness right because I think we kind of get on
[13:44] this kind of conversation. I remember thinking like man I want to go back to Poland. I want to go back to Poland. So what I was doing I was resisting what
[13:52] was here in the United States in front of me. So the moment notice resisting and again it's a meaning right. So when I let go of that meaning that negative
[14:01] meaning that I want to go back to Poland and things like that now I started seeing and looking for things that could help me here in the United States. I
[14:10] don't want to go too much into that but if you think about it we all have this uh little device in our head called reticular activating system. You know what that means reticular activating
[14:18] system. So it's like our brain has developed itself in a way that we can able to survive. So I'll
[14:27] give you an example. Every single moment of the day we're exposed to about I would say 80,000 pages 80,000 books like
[14:35] regular books like a book like this we're exposed 80,000 books every single second of the day of information all kinds of different information. So if we
[14:44] had to take everything in, we go crazy and think about we just head would explode kind of a thing, right? So this reticular activating system went and
[14:53] learn how to delete and eliminate some information. So now we're getting down to about one page of one book of information. So what does that tell you?
[15:02] That tells you where you focus on, what you think about, what you're looking at, that's what you're going to see, right?
[15:07] And Tony Robbins is this famous I don't know if you know Tony Robbins is but he's got this famous quote says focus goes energy flows. So what I did and I'm
[15:15] like thinking hm well what am I focusing on? What am I thinking about? So when I shifted that focus back then started looking for things that could help me
[15:23] here in United States. I started finding people who were let's say Polish that were kind of here already. Started creating friends started getting out of
[15:31] my comfort zone because I started learning a little bit of English. So I started making friends outside of just Polish kids, right? Playing soccer. It's
[15:38] like a universal language. So I mean it was like a broken English, but we started talking more, right? And connecting more. And that's how I started growing my own little community back then to be able to grow.
[15:49] It's, you know, and now and today to wrap this portion up, you know, as you can see, my name is Polish Peter.
[15:55] Obviously, I'm very proud of the fact that I'm Polish. My I have three kids.
[15:59] They seem to be proud of this fact that they're Polish, right? they have some Polish thing and we I bring the culture into it. When we have like a easterns or
[16:08] we have Christmases, I bring the the culture and teach them the culture from the, you know, old country kind of a thing and and we continue that as we're growing older and older.
[16:17] Nice. I mean, it's good to see that you are capable to maintain your roots and can maintain origins and and that fits
[16:25] who you are. That's also like an important part. No, I think um and entering a little bit on the work that you do. I don't know how did you arrive
[16:32] to to become a a personal developer or like a personal architect as you said at the end writing books talking into
[16:39] public stages about uh rebirth and like finding your authentic self and so on. How how did all hap that happen?
[16:47] Well, so yeah, it was an interesting story because so early 2000 I got married and um you know three kids, I
[16:54] was an architect. So, and I don't know if you remember what happened here in 2008 in United States with the whole crash, right?
[17:01] So, the architecture in in Michigan basically like dried up almost like overnight, you know what I mean? Okay. So, I saw the like writing on the wall.
[17:09] So, I started doing a business on the side that was like a marketing business agency was helping real estate
[17:20] that business. I was doing everything myself. So I was spending about 80 90 hours a week just working all this stuff. Now over the period of let's say
[17:28] two three four years what ended up happening I was kind of like not so much with my family you know because I was working so much in the business my wife.
[17:35] So in 2000 at the end of 2010 my wife came to me and she said she wants a divorce. We about 6 months later we ended up finalizing the divorce and at
[17:44] the next two years after that divorce I went into what I called the optimistic depression. So during that particular
[17:50] time I you know had to learn a lot about myself. Who am I? Why you know I can remember asking myself this question
[17:58] like what the heck is wrong with me right? In fact I was saying what the hell is wrong with me right and why is this happening to me and those kinds of things. So I started learning about
[18:06] myself and as I you know went through this awakening period and I got out of that period I was starting to help other
[18:13] people and as I was helping other people you know they were like you should help people because you're really good at it you should be a coach and things like that and that's how cuz I even see that
[18:22] in myself they just telling me so um I was in this mastermind with company called life on there and they kept telling me like you should be a coach so I'm like that's when I started became a
[18:31] coach and and that you know kind of as they say you know rest is story kind of a thing but uh that's how I came about doing this.
[18:37] Interesting. How much of your experience not this in between identity of two countries being an immigrant uh how how
[18:47] all of these challenges and experiences that you win on the way shape the the the speech or the way that you coach things uh into other people?
[18:55] No. Yeah, that's a really good question.
[18:57] In fact like a lot of my people that I coach my clients or students or you know I call them family members because I get so much into their lives is a lot of
[19:05] them are experts a lot of them are immigrants and a lot of the conversation you know I have people who are you know let's say from China or Uruguay or
[19:14] Brazil or where all kinds of different places and there is a lot of commonalities because think about this it doesn't matter if you're here or in
[19:22] Italy or you're in Portugal or wherever there is certain core for human behaviors, beliefs that we all have,
[19:30] right?
[19:31] We're all meant to for survival, all kinds of different things. So, as I am coaching and helping others, a lot of the conversation comes into play,
[19:39] you know, the accent conversation I just, you know, told you I dealt with,
[19:43] try to get rid of something, try to eliminate it and then how do I shift that to now I accept it fully and this is part of me. Well, how many times do
[19:51] we have as human beings go through some stage of life where we want to eliminate something, we want to get rid of something, we don't want it, you know,
[19:59] and it's like this resistance and then,
[20:01] you know, that story is, you know, me growing up here or whatever actually helps others kind of, you know, live their life. So, it's been interwined to a lot of my coaching.
[20:12] So that entire story know from when I was 8 years old till now actually it feels like it happened for me in order for me to help somebody else like it was
[20:21] almost like was made to be able to do this. Does that make sense? Um and I think everybody you know listening to this podcast can look from their own
[20:28] life their past because they will see these moments in their life that kind of start to shape like you know big moments like you move from one country to
[20:36] another it shapes your life but if you look from the perspective how can that help me? how can that maybe help someone else or what lessons that I learned that
[20:45] will help me in my life. All of a sudden, you start to grow much more effective way.
[20:50] Nice. Hold on the on the coaching uh part and we will go back especially to to your book at at the end of the episode. I would jump to to the fast
[20:58] reply questions. I will ask you I always ask the same 12 ones in your case.
[21:03] You've been a long time in in US but maybe it's more like trying to see how it is right now and how do you feel in
[21:10] there. The first question that I have it's like the cultural adjustment. We talk a little bit about it but the one thing that took you quite some time to adopt when you arrived.
[21:20] I would say the language I think you know it was like a 10 months or so the language once I got the language so I could actually
[21:28] communicate with people. I think that was the big one. Social life. How do you meet friends?
[21:33] What do you recommend to anyone who is for example planning to move to the US to to meet new people? Well, like I mentioned earlier, you know, look for
[21:41] the community, you know, like it's interesting, a lot of the communities are based around those big airports. So,
[21:46] see if there's someone in or just start with one person. And then what I find a lot of times is people don't ask questions when they're in a
[21:53] relationships. So, ask, you know, ask someone who who do you know that would know someone like that? You know what I mean? And then if they don't know, say,
[22:00] who do you know that would know someone like that? So, if you're looking for another Polish person, right, you would say, who do you know that's Polish? and they might say, "Well, I don't know
[22:08] anybody that's Polish." And then you can ask a question, "Who do you know that would know a Polish guy?" Right?
[22:14] And then you like, "Well, my uh accountant, he works with a lot of people. Maybe I can connect you with him." And then you start to expand your community that way.
[22:22] This six six seven levels of connection are between kind of thing. Yeah. Mhm. Yeah.
[22:30] The next one that I have, it's the language. I mean, you said 10 months of learning English, but how did you learn English back then? It was only going to
[22:38] school or you needed to do extracurriculars.
[22:42] Yeah, I had two ESL classes. I will tell you this, I think one of the best ways to learn the language is as much as I resisted it in a way, it was actually
[22:51] being thrown into Detroit in United States and just learning it right there because you had no choice but to learn it. You know what I mean?
[22:58] And you have to kind of forced Yeah.
[23:00] Yeah. Well, that was forced into it. But you have to also agree that I want to learn this language in your head. I
[23:08] think you have to make that shift because I will tell you this, when I was little, back in Poland between second grade and I think seventh or eighth grade, we were because of the communism,
[23:18] it was a requirement to learn Russian.
[23:20] Okay? I didn't really want to learn Russian. Guess how much you know about Russian. I mean, I can somewhat communicate, but I don't know Russian as well as I know English. You know what I
[23:28] mean? So there is those two parts that are thing important.
[23:31] Interesting. What about the cost of living? Uh how I mean I suppose it changed a lot no from the from when you
[23:38] moved there but how is this right now the living cost of living in US?
[23:43] It depends. I'm going to give you an idea. When I came to United States I remember gas was like 99 cents a gallon.
[23:50] I remember seeing that 99 cents a gallon. today like right now I know obviously depends on the area but um
[23:56] around me the gas is uh $2 like60 $2.70 uh for a gallon and then it depends like
[24:04] if you go to California that same gallon will cost you $68 you know so it depends you know the cost has gone up because of the inflation that's going on United
[24:12] States but uh but you know you can still live here you know money still grows on trees in a way if you know what I mean by that like opportunities are still
[24:20] here you know you can find opportunities ities if you are looking for them. Cool.
[24:24] What about finding a home? How do you find apartments? I mean talking about maybe from Detroit or like the areas that you lived in. Uh what is the most
[24:33] common way of like getting an apartment right now?
[24:35] Well, apartments. So, I mean they have the websites all over the place here.
[24:38] You know, I mean they have apartments.com and they have, you know,
[24:41] Zillow.com is for finding houses. So, I think a lot of people are doing that.
[24:45] And then, you know, if you were to come here, I would say real estate agents. you know, there were still, you know,
[24:51] really good kind of avenue to help people find houses or apartments, but uh yeah, it's in the United States not difficult to find some more place to
[24:59] live. Obviously, if you have money to put towards that, you know what I mean?
[25:02] But, uh there are so many houses and apartments here at there is space. That's for sure. Yeah.
[25:09] The next one that I have is living like a local like one tip that you would give anyone to blend in or one mistake to avoid to uh blend in here. Um,
[25:19] that's a good question. Well, I would say is that don't be afraid to step out of your comfort zone. I think that a lot of times people make a mistake. So, I'll
[25:28] give you an example. My mom um she came here way before me, right? She came here in the 80s. To this day, she barely
[25:35] speaks English. And one of the reasons because the type of jobs that she had and she assimilated herself with other Polish women first and then went to the
[25:44] other job that she, you know, did it was by herself. So she never really stepped out of her comfort zone to start learning the language and many times she says well I wish I would have known the
[25:52] language. So one mistake that people do is they assimilate so much with let's say their own community like Polish community they don't step out of the comfort zone to go learn the language
[26:01] and interact with people who are not Polish you know they're American or some other thing. So I think it's important to force yourself kind of to get out and
[26:09] talk to other cultures and you know it says here that Michigan is like a melting pot because we have so many
[26:16] different countries here. So stepping up for me in high school I mean I've had I was friends with you know Americans and
[26:23] Arabic and you know Albanians and Polish and everybody you know what I mean? So I think that helped me to be able to learn
[26:31] assimilate much better. So step out of your comfort zone, talk to other cultures because think about it this way. If there are other cultures from different countries, they're probably in
[26:40] a similar boat as you are. So they'll probably want to talk to you as well. Yeah, absolutely. Next one that I have,
[26:45] it's uh work life. How do you describe the the work culture?
[26:49] Well, I would say that the majority of work culture here is, you know, like an employee kind of a mindset 9 to5. Um
[26:56] there is a big like my the you know culture that I'm in is entrepreneurial business owner right so I have my own
[27:03] business my I got to a point where my business I work in my business from like 10 to about 2:30 3:00 in the afternoon
[27:11] so I work about 20 25 hours a week and then you know the rest of it is you know for my family and things like that to work really hard to get to that
[27:19] particular level it's you know uh 9 to5 a lot of the uh you know industries here but there is United states there was a
[27:26] lot of people who start their own businesses a lot whether it's like a side gig or ultimately have a business because like I mentioned in the beginning land of opportunity right
[27:35] money grows on tree share so that's why a lot of people do I see a lot of immigrants actually starting them businesses as well here see makes sense what about getting
[27:43] around I mean it's widely know as the land of count of cars no and always moving around um it is it is really like that you depend on having a car 100%
[27:55] pretty pretty much I would say like everybody here almost has a car and the reason like even think about my youngest right now is 18 years old. My middle one
[28:03] is 19 and my oldest is 22. Each one of them has their own car because the way that you know the system is set up here
[28:11] is you have to everything's kind of far apart. So you got to get in a car to drive somewhere. I mean we have buses,
[28:16] we have trains but there's not the major no mode of communication. You know what I mean? I was on vacation in Italy. You know what I mean? The public
[28:24] transportation is amazing. Like we got around, we went from Florence to Venice in a train. It was amazing. But here it's a little bit different. You got to learn the highways and driving a car.
[28:35] That's basically the majority of it.
[28:37] What about the healthcare of this the system? I mean known for being expensive. No, probably.
[28:44] Yeah. No comment. Okay. It's you know it isn't expensive. your insurance. You pay a lot for insurance. And as far as the care, I mean, it's it depends on people.
[28:55] I mean, I have a health situation, my family right now, someone that I know on my wife's side, and I could tell you hours and hours of stories of what's
[29:04] been going on with that particular person as far as the healthcare goes.
[29:07] But I mean, you know, if you have money and you know, you can pay for the insurance, it's going to help you, you know.
[29:14] Next one also is normally pretty much criticized, but bureaucracy. how he's dealing with paperwork, uh, permits. Um,
[29:21] I mean, I suppose if I ask your mother,
[29:23] it would be a different story than what you would tell me. No, because do you pass through different processes? Yeah, it obviously it depends on people,
[29:30] you know what I mean? It's from person to person. Um, I mean, it's a very political system, especially here in United States, right? Um, you got two parties, you know, Republicans and
[29:39] Democrats, and it's kind of going back and forth. um you know you need a driver's license you know you need you know social security and things like
[29:47] that so uh you you know sometimes it takes quite a little time to get those things sorted but uh yeah there was a
[29:54] lot of paperwork that you have to go through sometimes you know and like I said you know you step out of your comfort zone you meet people there's
[30:01] always someone there to help you I think there was a lot of people here in United States and I think it's reason is because United States this is kind of
[30:09] like a melting pot in its own so whether it was that person who came to United States and they made something for themselves or their family like their
[30:16] parents or grandparents came here. I think a lot of people have this feeling of someone helped me at some point I
[30:24] want to help somebody out. You know what I mean? So if you step out of your comfort zone look for people because there is you got accountants, you got attorneys, you got all kinds of
[30:32] different things. You step out someone might be willing to help you out. You know what I mean? But you have to ask the question.
[30:37] I have two more. The first one it's what is the best and the worst part of living in in Michan in your case right now?
[30:44] Well, I would say the worst part I think because today it's it's February, so I would say the winters. When I was a kid,
[30:51] I used to love winters skiing and all the cold. Now I don't. It is crazy when it gets cold here, you know. We had a pretty interesting winter this year. So
[30:59] that's the worst thing. The best thing I would say in Michigan is all the different cultures in a way bring their own little culture in here and a lot of
[31:08] it is food. We have all kinds of food here. I mean any kind of corner of the world we can basically find some kind of
[31:14] a food. So um that's you can go to restaurants and find any kind of food that you want here. That's probably one of the best things.
[31:22] Sounds nice. Tasty mainly.
[31:24] I will tell you this though. when I was in Italy last year and we were in Florence and Venice and then we won Milan. One of the best foods we've had.
[31:33] It was amazing. So, Italy's got I think they top the thing about food. That's the the food. That's Italy. Last one that I have for this section.
[31:42] It's the top tip. If somebody's planning to move there or is moving there, what is your one line advice?
[31:47] One line advice I would say step out of the comfort zone. I think that's the that's the biggest one I think because once you let
[31:54] that go when you start part of the comfort zone you're gonna assimilate a lot better.
[31:58] Cool. Thanks a lot for all the for all the questions on this one. I will switch gears up a little bit here and I will
[32:05] jump to the miniame. I call it limiting belief breaker. So basically I will throw to you a common immigrant belief
[32:13] and then we can discuss a little bit where do you think it comes from uh and and if we need to reframe it or it's a it's something that it's it's really
[32:22] like that. So it's a little bit of getting into get tips of what you normally would do in in your coaching. Yeah.
[32:30] The first one that I have it's I am what I achieve.
[32:34] I am what I achieve. Yes. I think that's a big limiting belief and the reason is because we start looking from the outside right we compare ourselves to
[32:42] someone else like me it was my uncle growing up and by the way all of those beliefs come from when you were a kid so I want you to consider looking at that
[32:51] you know for me I remember growing up watching my uncle build his entire house and all the furniture in his house so he was the you know provider and those
[32:59] kinds of things right so it's all about the chief but I would say the better question is I am who I And I think interesting at the beginning of the
[33:07] conversation you ask who are you right and I think most people create their identities around I'm a doctor or I'm an
[33:14] architect or I'm an you know uh you know lawyer or whatever it might be right and then even either when they retire or
[33:21] when they move to a different country a lot of times that identity goes away so and then they feel horrible bad because they don't know who they are. So I think
[33:30] the better it's not I am who what I achieve it's I am who I am kind of thing who is that person you know what I mean because then when you start looking from
[33:37] the perspective like you who are deep down like you're a father let's say or you're a you know a husband or you are
[33:45] extraordinary leader right I have in my vision it's just extraordinary leader nobody can take that away from me I can put that anywhere in the world kind of a
[33:53] thing right so I think that would be a better way to reframe it nice I always will feel like an outsider yes uh and I'm speaking because I did
[34:02] feel that way. But if you remember I mentioned at one point in this podcast as where focus goes, energy flows.
[34:08] So what that means is think about it this way. If you are driving a Ford and all of a sudden you buy want to buy yourself a new car and you want to buy a Cadillac.
[34:17] Isn't it interesting how all of a sudden you see Cadillacs all over the place which before you didn't right now you see Cadillacs everywhere. So if you
[34:25] start looking from the perspective I'm an outsider you know either you shift the meaning like how could that be a benefit to me how can I make that big
[34:34] difference for that like that whole I'm an outsider the Polish Peter I use it to my advantage to help others at the same time I started looking from the
[34:42] perspective like hm maybe that's a really good thing maybe the fact that I'm from an outsider end I can bring
[34:50] some uh new perspective I can bring something new to the people that I'm interacting with or I can help them, right?
[34:58] One of the things that I find about immigrants and experts is that there are hard workers, right? And sometimes they can end you with 100 hours of work work
[35:07] week as opposed to what if I'm I'm a smart worker, smart, you know, working smart, not working hard.
[35:13] So now, how do I bring this into the fold? Um, and I think outside the end,
[35:18] even if you have to get down to a point of like listen, I'm a human, you're a human. So if you look just from that perspective, you're not an outsider.
[35:25] You're pretty much the same. You know what I mean? So there is a lot of referring that needs to happen. The meaning makes a huge difference when we put our life together somewhere in the outside country.
[35:34] Nice. Next one. I think you touched a little bit about about yourself. No. And the proudness of your of your own accent, but my accent makes me less powerful.
[35:43] Yes. So yeah, I did have that. And I I will tell you this. Most of the times when we have these limiting beliefs, we don't question them. If you think about
[35:52] it, we don't question is it really true that I have a let's say stupid accent.
[35:56] Is it really true? Because when I started actually questioning it, I'm like, you know what, maybe not. And before I had any kind of proof because
[36:03] the way our brain works, we start to find reasons or proof that aligns with our existing belief, right?
[36:11] So if you have that stupid accent conversation in your head, guess what?
[36:14] You're going to find reasons why that is the case. And then when you start to question it and say, "Maybe my accent is pretty awesome." Because I reframed it
[36:22] that when I go and talk to people, I'm going to have to get really good at saying something interesting that maybe people were going to have to pay
[36:30] attention to me to find that words that are coming out of my mouth and understand them. So now I can maybe help someone and I can be that benefit. And
[36:38] now I end up talking about 100 plus stages and it's with an accent and actually I make fun of it. I use it to my advantage. We have a joke in our
[36:46] thing that transcripts are on the back table. There's no transcripts on the back table, but we just make a joke about it. So, you can reframe anything in your life that's going to help you in your future.
[36:55] Nice. I totally agree. I mean, I have accents in all the languages that I speak. So, Oh, yeah. But I speak them, you know, like at least it's it's there.
[37:02] Next one that I have, it's people won't take me seriously because of my background or where I come from,
[37:08] right? People won't take me. Well, I will give you this example. If you're a Polish to listening on this podcast, how many Polish jokes are out there?
[37:16] Probably millions of them, right? There are some of you ever heard of a Polish joke. And the butt of every joke is that Polish people are stupid. That's basically the punchline of every joke.
[37:26] Okay? So if that is the case that that means that every single Polish person would be kind of stupid kind of a thing.
[37:32] Is it really true? No. So when we start looking and questioning these beliefs you know like I've seen so many people who are coming let's say abroad and they
[37:41] have PhDs in the old country or they have this we start to remember the meaning that we associate makes a huge difference. So look from that
[37:49] perspective maybe you don't know the English you don't know the language that you're in this country but you might not know something that someone else may not. So it's just a different
[37:58] perspective but then when you start to look from that like I took that on myself. I had to learn I mean I wrote
[38:05] the book in English okay it's got 30 some thousand words that I don't would never be able to do that right but one word at a time one word at a time and
[38:14] that's how it ended up happening so just take small steps take small steps and look for the proof that would disapprove that existing belief that you don't want
[38:21] last one before we jump talking about about the book that you just mentioned the last one that I have it's money equals freedom yeah that's a big one and I think about
[38:30] it this way like remember I talked about the money grows in freezing United States. I literally looked for tree money. When I was a kid, I looked for tree money. I couldn't find one. Now,
[38:38] what that actually means to me is there were so many opportunities here in United States. So, does money equal freedom? I'm not so sure because how
[38:46] many times have you seen someone who is very, very, very, very, very successful,
[38:50] got a lot of money, got millions or billions of dollars and they're miserable. So, it's freedom. I think it's more about mind freedom because I've seen people who are let's say don't
[38:58] have a lot of money or someone who is living very simple life you know and they have so much freedom in fact a lot
[39:06] of times when I have students come into me working with me like they have a business and they have this successful business and guess what they're working
[39:13] 80 90 hours a week do they have freedom or now they're tied to the business so we try to simplify a lot of the things in their business and guess what that's
[39:21] when they start to having actual semin free freedom. Freedom actually means, I think, making the choice on your own. What you want to do, you make a choice.
[39:29] It's like today, if I want to go to the gym at 2:00, I'm going to go to the gym at 2:00, right? Or go spend time with my wife or whatever might be. I think that's what it really means.
[39:38] Cool. Nice. Thanks a lot for for all the explanations on on the different perspectives and the different beliefs that a lot of immigrants and people
[39:46] living abroad has. Actually, I want to give you a little bit of a stage to talk about any project that you have right now in your hands, but also of course about the the book uh authentic self
[39:55] repairs that you wrote. Uh but also if you have any other project that you're working on uh or also it would be interesting for the for the guest where
[40:04] can they find you and where they can get in contact with you?
[40:06] Yeah. Well, listen Mark, first and foremost, thank you so much, man. I really appreciate being on the podcast. I love talking about this, you know,
[40:12] immigrants, you know, we get together kind of a thing. So uh yeah so the book that I wrote it's called Authentic Selfrebirth. You can see it if you're seeing on the video actually I think
[40:20] this is the first book ever that you can put your name on the cover. So it will be Mark's authentic self-re you can write on top of it.
[40:27] You can write on top of it like you can write your name on here. So that book is basically a culmination is finding yourself and I think for immigrants is
[40:36] really powerful because a lot of times when we get into this new country or whatever we don't know who we are and it gets back to being authentic self and
[40:43] for me what that means is think about when you were four five six years old were you fearful were you worried about life were you uh you know were you more
[40:52] an unstoppable kind of a person right and so I think a lot of it got lost as we started growing and we started becoming that someone else that we didn't really want to become, right?
[41:02] Like a version of ourselves. So, the book is basically unraveling a lot of those different things. And there's a lot of exercises in the book. It's like
[41:10] a 4D transformational manual. There's links to a videos in the book. There's QR codes you can take a picture of it and takes you to a video that explains more about those kinds of things. So,
[41:20] it's a personal development kind of a a book, but it helps you get back to that authentic self. Now, if someone wants a copy, you can buy it anywhere. That's on Amazon. It's on Barnes & Noble in here,
[41:30] United States. It's on website. They can go to my authenticrebirth.com.
[41:35] That's my authenticrebirth.com. They can pick up a copy there anywhere in the world. And if they want to contact me or get a hold of me, I have a channel on Instagram called authentic selfrebirth.
[41:47] That's authentic self rebirth. want to post a lot of little videos on there like at those reels that talks about those little nuggets I just shared about
[41:54] here about mind about you know your authenticity and all kinds of different things because I think that's what it's needed in the world today there's so
[42:01] much inauthenticity around the world that I think this needs to be more and more and more you know in there so thank
[42:08] you for having me those two websites I think or polishper.com is my main branding website they can go over there and check it out and reach out and and maybe we can connect.
[42:18] Absolutely. So, if you want to check it out, the links of course as always will be in the comment and the description box of the episode. Uh so, if you don't
[42:27] find it, although you should be easily finding them and you can check them out directly in there also to to the book, it will be linked uh in the description.
[42:36] Peter, thank you. Thank you so much. It has been a great pleasure interviewing you. I hope you enjoyed the talking in the podcast. Loved it. for the rest as
[42:44] audience. As always, uh don't forget to subscribe if you like it, leave a review, share it with a friend, build a little bit of community around the
[42:52] podcast as always, and check out uh Peter's websites and book. Until next time, keep exploring, stay curious, and see you in the next episode.