Like John Mellencamp says in his song, “I was born in a small town.”

For me, it wasn’t Indiana. It was Iowa. Carroll, Iowa, to be exact.

The town called itself “Iowa’s Newest City” when I was growing up. Huh? Really? Since when is 10,000 people a “city?” Oh well.

Now get this: There were 10,000 people living there when I was born. There were 10,000 when I left, and I just checked the latest stats online, and it says there are now a whopping 10,017 residents. For 50 years, zero population growth. Now how the hell do you pull that off?

Anyway, let me move on in the timeline. As I’ve taught in my “Dao Zou” course, I’ll go backward first.

In many previous lifetimes, I did a lot of meditating. As far as I can currently see, I was either a monk or a warrior – and I was almost always of Asian descent. I might have even been a “chick,” once or twice. Yawza. Don’t tell anyone though, it’s bad for my image.

Okay, so I did a lot of meditating in all my previous lifetimes. And very little talking. I had a lot of great ideas, but I didn’t speak very often. Well, when I transitioned for the very last time, before this lifetime, I made a vow. A silent vow. I said to myself, “Dude, next time you come through the chute, you will talk and talk and talk. And ain’t nobody gonna shut your ass up.”

This explaineth why I have an unflappable yap, the gift of gab and the so-called ability to turn words into gold.

“What a bunch of bullshit,” you say? Good, at least you’re reading – and so long as you stay mesmerized by my lingo, I have a chance to capture much more than your eyes.

Alrighty then. After listening to my mother read religious books to me at a very young age, and having no conscious idea of what she was reading, I announced that I was ready to heal my brother, who was sick. My mother praised me for this, but for some reason I immediately bottled the ability and put it away for another space and time.

At the age of eight, after getting my butt kicked on a regular basis by my four older brothers, I got involved in sports. The first was wrestling, then it was baseball, then it was swimming.

For some reason, I was very dedicated and disciplined in practicing these sports, even when no one told me to be that way. As I walked to practice each day, I oftentimes became aware that I was having imaginary conversations with myself about success, about what it takes to win – as well as other topics.

After a couple years of training, I got really good at swimming. As for wrestling and baseball, I was decent, but nothing to brag about. Yet.

As the years rolled on I got very fast in swimming and was so-so in wrestling. Baseball became a sport of the past, even though it was my “first love.”

When I got into high school, I chose to spend most of my time working on wrestling instead of swimming. Something about it wooed me. Perhaps the reality that it was incredibly difficult.

I wanted to get good, so I worked hard and set goals. I trained all the time. And during my senior year in high school (I encourage you to get The Unbeatable Man to read all about it), I shocked my small hometown, er, City, of Carroll, when I …. (okay, get the book and you’ll know the rest).

The following year I’m wrestling with my childhood idol and hero, “the legendary” Dan Gable, at the University of Iowa. Whilst there I was a member of three teams that won the NCAA team championships.

Also, while a freshman at the University of Iowa, I was introduced to two tools that began to change me from the inside out. The first was self-hypnosis, the second was chi kung. With each passing year in college, I practiced self-hypnosis. In fact, I practiced it daily, before every practice and before every match.

As for chi kung, I only received a beginning level course of instruction my freshman year, but it planted some very powerful seeds I would never forget.

After three years at Iowa with “the legend” – and after getting in a lot of matches, I came to grips with a very tough decision. Do I leave Gable and compete for a team where I know I’ll be the varsity man – or do I stay and do my best to win a national title in the preseason?” Truly, that’s what it was like being “the man” at Iowa back in the 1980’s. During almost any other era, I would have been the varsity guy, but not that era. Not then. The whole team was beyond “bad-ass.”

So I opted to go where I’d get in a lot of matches, and fulfill my dream of being a collegiate wrestling champion. I chose Edinboro University of Pennsylvania as my new school. The coach there, Mike DeAnna, was a Gable-favorite, and he hired Olympic Gold Medalist Bruce Baumgartner as his assistant. Not a bad crew, eh? Not as good as the Iowa wrestling room, but still, a long ways from being a slouch.

During my junior season at Edinboro (I redshirted my first year at Iowa), I set a team record for most wins in a single season: 39. And I won the NCAA II national title.

My senior year, I went into the season with more skills, more ability and more “on the ball” than I had as a junior. Yet, in spite of being so much better, my mind was negatively affected. I did all I could to calm myself and allay the fears I experienced, but nothing seemed to work. I finished the year in 5th place at the national tournament. And I was crushed.

After college I moved to California and began a new life as a personal fitness trainer. I set up my own studio and began training high school wrestlers, then adult men and women.

One of my clients, Jack Gouin, introduced me to the book, Psycho-Cybernetics, by Dr. Maxwell Maltz. I not only read the book, I devoured it. It helped me regain my confidence. It helped me overcome feelings of failure and sadness about having such a disappointing senior season.

I began implementing the principles Dr. Maltz taught. I applied them to my business. And everything improved damn near instantly. It was amazing.

Over the years I used the information in Psycho-Cybernetics as well as my study of chi kung, to accomplish many, many goals in many different arenas. In fact, not only did I use the material to help myself become a published writer, I used it to come out of retirement and win a gold medal in shuai-jiiao kung fu, in China, beating the Chinese at their own game.

And wouldn’t you know it, this white boy from an all-white “city-town” in Iowa, went to China in 1993, to do what? To get married. Now let me tell you doubters something, when I saw a photo of my wife, before she was my wife, I instantly knew just by looking at her eyes, that she was “the one.”

There’s a Chinese saying, “Although two lovers may be separated by 10,000 miles, they can be pulled together by a single thread.”

What is this “single thread?” It’s human thought mixed with positive emotion.

Okay, so my wife, Zhannie, came to the United States in 1994, and after hearing me talk negatively about things like money, she looked at me and laughed. This awakened me to the reality that I had a lot of stupid, ignorant and incorrect beliefs about money, business and so on.

So I eradicated all those dumb “I don’t deserve” beliefs about money and got busy writing books and creating programs. None of them sold very well in the beginning because I was broke as shit and didn’t have much going for myself on the self-promotion frontier.

Then an opportunity arose in 1997 to go to China and compete for a world title in shuai-jiao kung fu. I sensed something BIG and began to train vigorously hard. At the same time I came up with an idea to create a product on my training and sell it to raise the funds to go to China and stay for three weeks.

I followed the guidance I believe came to me from above – raised the money with ease, then went to Beijing and won the gold.

Upon my return, sales were okay, but nothing great. So I studied marketing and this thing called the “Internet.”

Within six years of getting on this jukebox, and diligently applying myself, physically, energetically and spiritually – I made a fortune. And I continued doing so until 2010. Then I withdrew in a big way, became much more meditative, much quieter (not supposed to do that, I thought).

Gradually I became less and less interested in more and more things. All I cared about was my family and my health. I wondered, out loud sometimes, what the hell I was doing. I created something out of nothing, now I’m letting it deteriorate before my eyes – and I still don’t care.

Twas an amazing time. Nothing to prove. No one to impress. Not even me.

Sometimes I’d be in hotels and see banners up for seminars, and I’d think to myself, “I used to do that, too.”

I traveled to many foreign countries. I ate like a champ, too. Great pizza in Sicily!

One day, while speaking to a group of men and women I coached, I was shocked when I said, “For the first time in my life I don’t know what is next for me, and the amazing thing is this: I don’t care. I’m fine with not knowing. I don’t have to know. I trust the Tao on this one.”

Over the next couple years I kept thinking to myself, “Okay, I’m ready to get things going again.” But I wasn’t. I still needed more time to play in “space and time” with my study of internal martial arts and chi kung.

And now, I guess I’m supposed to be “kicking ass and taking names” again because I’ve been active since early this morning and I’m still going at it after 2 a.m.

Thing is, this time around, keep the following in mind: The old “Matt Furey” no longer exists. He’s dead and gone. He’s been replaced by the person he came into this world to be. A healer. Perhaps even what you’d call a “peaceful warrior.”

Okay, so I still have a big mouth. But what comes out of it, expletives and all, serve a very different purpose than what I was in the past.

Who am I?

Very good question.

Who are you?

Even better question.