What happens when everything you thought defined you disappears?

In this powerful conversation, Amy Purdy shares how losing her legs at 19—and later facing another life-altering health crisis—forced her to rebuild her identity from the ground up.

We explore:

• Why identity—not circumstance—determines your life trajectory
• The real power of visualization (used by elite performers and in survival)
• How gratitude rewires your physiology and your future
• The hidden strength inside vulnerability and being fully seen
• Turning adversity into your greatest advantage

This is not just a story of resilience—it's a blueprint for becoming more you than ever before.

Connect with Amy Purdy

Website: https://amypurdy.com

Book: https://amypurdy.com/bounce-forward-book/

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GBZNYTGB

About the Book Bounce Forward is a powerful guide to transforming adversity into growth, featuring 21 tools to help you build resilience, reconnect with your strength, and live beyond limits.

Connect with Michael Trainer

Website: https://www.michaeltrainer.net

Book (Resonance): https://www.resonance.biz

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaeltrainer

Brought to you by MTE — More Than Energy, the performance formula designed for those who live life at full resonance.
Trusted by top performers worldwide, MTE blends adaptogens, nootropics, and essential minerals to fuel focus, vitality, and flow — without the crash. Code Michael
Elevate your day, sharpen your mind, and feel More Than Energy. 15% OFF YOUR ORDER:: https://getmte.com/products/mte-daily-energy-wellness?ref=MICHAEL

Action Items

Practice daily visualization to reinforce goals

Cultivate gratitude to shift perspective

Lean into vulnerability to deepen connections

Use challenges as opportunities for growth

Chapters

00:00 The Power of Visualization in Achieving Goals

12:46 Resilience Through Adversity

16:03 Facing New Challenges

20:46 Tools for Overcoming Adversity

24:44 The Power of Vulnerability

42:09 Transforming Through Relationships

47:57 Bouncing Forward: Embracing Change

Michael Trainer has spent 30 years learning from Nobel laureates, neuroscientists, and wisdom keepers worldwide. He's the author of RESONANCE: The Art and Science of Human Connection (March 31, 2026), co-creator of Global Citizen and the Global Citizen Festival, and host of the RESONANCE podcast.

Featured in Forbes, Inc, Good Morning America. Follow on YouTube

Brought to you by MTE — More Than Energy, the performance formula designed for those who live life at full resonance.
Trusted by top performers worldwide, MTE blends adaptogens, nootropics, and essential minerals to fuel focus, vitality, and flow — without the crash. Code Michael
Elevate your day, sharpen your mind, and feel More Than Energy. 15% OFF YOUR ORDER:: https://getmte.com/products/mte-daily-energy-wellness?ref=MICHAEL

In this episode:

• What a nice guy actually is — and why they're often the least honest people in the room
• Toxic shame, anxiety management, and the chameleon dynamic
• Why boys raised without masculine initiation spend their lives seeking feminine approval
• The New Warrior Training Adventure and what it means to be reborn in front of your father
• The Temescal, the coals, and why challenge is the technology of transformation
• Generation Z: the most informed, least initiated generation in history
• Self-discipline vs. accountability — and why accountability wins every time
• The Great Cake metaphor: purpose, men's community, challenge, exercise, spiritual practice, service
• Why making a woman the cake — instead of the icing — is where men most reliably go wrong
• The feminine as weather: why seeking approval from what has no structure will never work
• "It's a sin to say no when you should have said yes"

Resources mentioned:

• No More Mr. Nice Guy — Dr. Robert Glover
• The Way of the Superior Man — David Deida
• 4,000 Weeks — Oliver Burkeman
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being — Milan Kundera
• Touching the Void (film)
• The Mankind Project / New Warrior Training Adventure
• Scott Galloway — masculinity and the failure of elders
• drglover.com
• integrationnation.net

Michael Trainer has spent 30 years learning from Nobel laureates, neuroscientists, and wisdom keepers worldwide. He's the author of RESONANCE: The Art and Science of Human Connection (March 31, 2026), co-creator of Global Citizen and the Global Citizen Festival, and host of the RESONANCE podcast.

Featured in Forbes, Inc, Good Morning America. Follow on YouTube

My grandfather was six foot four. Always in a suit. Captain in the US Air Force. A man of very few words. Throughout his entire life, he never once told my father that he loved him. Not once.

That silence — the gap between what we feel and what we express — is the central wound of our time.

In this episode, I share the story at the heart of my book RESONANCE: what happened when my father decided to break a generational cycle of unspoken love, what my grandfather did with a napkin that said everything his words couldn't, and what I found in my father's desk years later during his final days.

I also explore what Dr. Matthew Lieberman's research at UCLA reveals about why this matters neurologically — how social pain activates the same brain circuits as physical pain, why the Surgeon General has declared loneliness equivalent to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day, and why the Harvard Study of Adult Development found that relationship quality predicts health and longevity more powerfully than diet, exercise, or genetics.

This is not about self-improvement. This is about the question most of us are afraid to ask: can you let someone all the way in?

RESONANCE: The Art and Science of Human Connection publishes May 5, 2026 with BenBella Books / Simon & Schuster. Pre-order at resonance.biz

Michael Trainer has spent 30 years learning from Nobel laureates, neuroscientists, and wisdom keepers worldwide. He's the author of RESONANCE: The Art and Science of Human Connection (March 31, 2026), co-creator of Global Citizen and the Global Citizen Festival, and host of the RESONANCE podcast.

Featured in Forbes, Inc, Good Morning America. Follow on YouTube