Episode 148 | Sep 25, 2025

Why You Need to Choose Yourself First, With Hakeem Bourne McFarlane

What if the path to healing and growth started not with reinvention, but with radical self-acceptance? In this episode of Health Coach Talk, Dr. Sandi sits down with motivational speaker, author, and emotional fitness advocate Hakeem Bourne McFarlane to explore the power of choosing yourself: embracing your story, owning your identity, and doing the internal work that leads to external impact.

“Whoever you want to attract, you got to start by choosing yourself. Whatever type of lifestyle you want, you have to develop the characteristics of that version first. If you ever want to blame, judge, or complain, you turn that back onto yourself, because how you feel about it is the only thing you can control.”

Hakeem Bourne McFarlane

From a childhood marked by cultural dissonance to grief, injury, addiction, and incarceration, Hakeem’s life has been anything but linear. But through it all, he found a way to turn pain into purpose. Today, he leads a global wellness movement rooted in nervous system regulation, discipline, and what he calls “inner-size,” the emotional and spiritual work that builds resilience from the inside out. His Choose Yourself philosophy grew from lived experience, and it now empowers others to process their past and claim their future.

In their conversation, Dr. Sandi and Hakeem explore how real transformation happens not through surface-level change, but through systems, structure, and soul work. Hakeem shares his five-part process for reclaiming purpose, beginning with environment and daily routines, and explains why health begins long before you ever step foot in a gym.

For health coaches, Hakeem’s story is a powerful reminder that behavior change isn’t just about habit hacks, it’s about healing. Coaches can use his insights to support clients who feel stuck in their stories, struggle with identity or motivation, or need help finding the discipline to make sustainable change. His message is clear: your gift is not just for you, it’s meant to be shared, and helping others access their purpose starts with choosing yourself first.

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Transcript

Dr. Sandi: I am very excited to bring to you somebody who is a living, breathing example of how to have meaning and purpose in your life. When you have overcome often insurmountable obstacles, you chose a path that is not only personally rewarding, but you have inspired so many others. My guest today is Hakeem Bourne McFarlane. Let me tell you about him. He is a dynamic public speaker dedicated to representing the Choose Yourself movement on a global stage. His mission, to inspire individuals to prioritize their well-being and personal growth while equipping them with the tools to face challenges with resilience and competence. He is also the author of “Choose Yourself to be Chosen: GYM – Grow Your Mind with Innercise,” a raw and inspiring guide born from Hakeem’s lived journey from street fights and felony charges to leading a wellness revolution rooted in discipline, movement, and nervous system regulation. Through the concept of innercise, he teaches how emotional fitness and mental rewiring are just as vital as physical strength. I know you are going to be inspired by our conversation. Welcome to “Health Coach Talk.”

Hakeem: Hey, thank you, Ms. Sandy. I appreciate you having me.

Dr. Sandi: Well, I’m very excited to talk with you. So you have something that you call Choose Yourself. This really resonated with me. It is a great philosophy. Can you describe what you mean by Choose Yourself?

Hakeem: It’s about embracing who we were created to be before the world tried to make you someone you’re not. That’s the underlying truth. It’s about authenticity and balance, but internal balance. And that comes with an understanding. Just expansion and implementing systems into your life that allow you to control the internal dialogue, accept and embrace what’s happened to you, and then be able to exemplify who you are, which then impacts everybody else because you were created to be that version. And it’s not easy. It’s simple, but it’s not easy.

Dr. Sandi: Yeah. Many people are focusing on trying to reinvent themselves or trying to be somebody that they are not. But it sounds like this Choose Yourself philosophy is really accepting what is. And that resonated with me because way back when I was a psychologist, I studied gestalt therapy. And there’s an old saying from gestalt therapy, when you accept what is, you change. And many people are always trying to think, well, things have to be different, or my life will be better when he, she, the situation changes, as opposed to really looking inward. So what led you to adopt this philosophy personally?

Hakeem: Well, I just want to say, you’ll never find peace until you find peace in what you got right now. And if you are trying to create a character for them, and not your character for you, you’ll have a dissonance between who you’re supposed to be and who you’re presenting. And that’s where all the mental health issues come in, the disorders, conditions, anxiety, depressions, because you got that friction knowing dang well you can’t be who you’re supposed to be. And you can be at peace with yourself and at war with the world, or at war with yourself and at peace with the world. And you’re creating a character that is at war with yourself because you’re not being who you should be. And you can’t find your tribe if you’re actually being yourself.

So me, I grew up half Jamaican, half white, too Black for my white friends, too dark for…or too dark for my white friends, too light my Black friends, too corporate for the hood, two hood for the corporate. It just was like that. But I was great at sports. So I found my gift and my gift allowed me to bring everybody together. On sports, it didn’t matter what color you were. So that subconscious program was my way of saying, okay, find your gift, no matter where you are, it will help bring people together. And I understood that because I was the best one. I was the talker. I was the leader on every team. And I always took that pressure of show up, be who you’re supposed to be. And in this context, it was athletics, be the all star, make the catches, be on time, be disciplined. And that was the subconscious programming.

And then we all hit that first time in our life where we experience grief. And a lot of times it’s our parents or our grandparents. Mine is my little brother. He was 6, I was 16. I pulled the plug on him, went in my van and played a basketball game in the same day, buried that grief under a mask of the dream of I’m going to the NFL. So as long as I had that dream, I don’t have to face that grief. This is why I talk about you have to go into your dark days in your past of what you’re suppressing and neglecting in order to embrace the growth and power that came from that blessing in your life, regardless of how bad it was. If you don’t believe in yourself and your creator, you won’t believe in the future and you’ll just keep living the same life. The growth and the power is in the past.

So throughout my life, I went through a journey, which literally resonates with all of us. We all go through a similar type of journey. I’m sure you can probably confirm after this. And upon reflection and healing, I looked back at my story and I looked at the pattern of the journey. And as I reflected in research, I created the Choose Yourself process from my story. Mine was typically you have the life you think it is, then you go into a dark place and you’re in that dark place, whether you’re wearing a mask, whether you’re numbing it, whether you’re being someone you’re not, whether you’re chasing money, looks, achievement status, whether you’re…whatever it is that has you going away from who you truly should be, that can be a dark place. And we stay in there until we get done dealing with our own BS. We get done blaming, we get done complaining, we get done waiting for things to change. We get done waiting for other things to happen for us to be able to be accountable.

And then once that point hits, you go through five steps. And for me, it took me about 9, 10, 12 of those hits to get to that step. And that’s what I talk about in my book is sometimes it takes one person one time. “Oh my God, I lost my arm. I shouldn’t do that again.” Or sometimes you relapse in an abusive relationship over and over, or you keep eating sugar over and over until you get diabetes, or you keep eating processed foods until you get cancer and then you change, or you have a new kid and you finally make a change, but there is going to be a trigger point. And then you have to evaluate your environment, set the foundation with time, energy, and resources around your sleep, routine time management. Then you start to invest in yourself with new choices and new habits, and then you create and contribute to be able to give back to others what you’ve went through. And that’s the process.

So I help people embrace their story, prioritize their time management before and after their sleep and create time to tap into their passion, which then allows us to be more productive and more grateful throughout the day. People don’t understand this because we don’t even know our passion because when we were little, they told us to stop singing in class, but our passion was singing. So a lot of people don’t even tap into their passion or gift. And so that’s the process that came from, for me, putting that mask on a playing sports, and then I went D1 full ride. Ran from it like I did my grief. Went D2. Got into some trouble. Got into the justice system. Dropped out for a year. Had five knee surgeries. That was my first dark place. Went back and lived at home with my mom. D1 to no ride. Full ride to no ride. And then that was the dark place. I hit a trigger point. Got into a huge brawl downtown Minneapolis when I was 19 years old. Wasn’t supposed to be out there. Changed my mind. Went back to school. Went back for four years. Got my bachelor’s degree. Graduated. Had five surgeries. Was All-American and I reunited the vision of playing professional football again.

But when I went to my first dark place and experienced with substances, partying, people pleasing, I was balancing throughout the four years of college between intention for my team and partying in the off season. I perfected this balance of mask, no, mask, no, mask, no. I still got good grades, I still have a touchdown, but you still ain’t sat with the grief. It’s still in there. It’s breaking your body down. It got you running from every opportunity. It has you indulging in things every weekend because you didn’t sat with your grief. You still have animosity. I haven’t accepted that because you got into the van right after you pulled the plug. This is what I mean have the systems in place to process the emotions. Don’t learn from them. Don’t suppress them. Find a way to process them. Then get over it. And so I thought I was going pro. I wasn’t ready because I was doing that balance. So Cowboys came to my college. I had horrible numbers. Then I broke my ankle and then it was over. So now the mask is gone. The mask since I was 16. Oh, I’m going to the NFL. Gone. First dark place, I numbed it. Still had the mask. I just had to recover my injuries. Mask all the way through the next four years. Once the mask is gone, now what? Now you got to sit with your grief. Maybe, unless you numb it even more.

So I went to my second dark place. Lost my identity. Had my mask on. Sports are gone. A lot of athletes go through this and I speak to athletes about this. Make sure you use sports as a tool to develop who you are and your character because you need that once that jersey is off. Because most of y’all ain’t going to the league. No matter what room I’m in, most of you are not going. And so the second dark place was I was in and out of the system. And then my next trigger point, I went to jail and I was locked up for the last time and eight days I got put into a cell with no pen, no pad, no reading, no shower, no phone calls straight eight days. Never did that before in my life. And I went through four phases. Played the victim, got angry, tried to fit in, and took accountability. And so that’s part of the trigger point.

So out of there, I went deep into sobriety, personal development, started getting…was living in basements, trying to get my life together, still bartending, but wasn’t drinking. I’ve been bartending since 2009, but that’s partying. But I wasn’t bartending for this. I wasn’t drinking for this bartending. And then my uncle made a liquor company in a new category in Mexico and he needed a salesman. So I took personal development, the passion of being with a family, having a felony on my record and not being able to get a job or a house and taking this as an opportunity to pull me out of bartending, out of the industry into sales. And I crushed it, crushed it enough to where I moved to New York. Right when I moved here, the company had some financial issues and we shut down. Another dark place.

But in that, about four years ago, that’s where Choose Yourself was born. And now in that process, I had to reflect on my life and come up with these systems and programs, the foundation, the process, just like you, just like everybody, it comes from a story. We research, get the story, create something. That’s how the truth gets passed down. It may not be the same tool, but they all fix something and you need the whole toolbox for a house. So us understanding the similarities between each other instead of the differences is what allows us to be compassionate. But sometimes we got to get hit on the head a few times. And the timing is to see if you really believe in yourself and your creator.

Dr. Sandi: I love this philosophy and it’s said we fail our way to success. And every time we fail, it’s an opportunity for growth. It’s an opportunity to get to the next level. So I’m personally thankful for my failures. I had a big practice in the ’90s. I was running with psychiatrists. We had a lot of social workers, psychologists working for us, and it failed. It was the age of the HMO contracts. And anyways, I thought at the time, what am I going to do now? But now I’m thankful that it failed because if it hadn’t, if it had been successful, I would still be doing that in the Chicago area as opposed to founding a school to train thousands and thousands of health coaches, which is really my meaning and purpose. And what you said really resonated also that we don’t have to do it alone as well. So we can have a coach, we can have guides. And your philosophy also connects so much with the functional medicine way of thinking about why we get sick. And it’s really digging deep, going beyond symptoms to root causes. I wonder if you can comment on that to see what that connection is. I thought that was fascinating.

Hakeem: Yeah, the root cause, our bodies, physically, we’re going to experience symptoms before and dependent. They want us sick, right? But not healthy and not dead. And so having a root issue, whether it’s mental, physical, spiritual, we have to create time to be able to do the research and grow your mind. Because we train and choose differently when we know what’s possible. We’ve all had that where we’ve heard a story and we’re like, “Oh, okay, mine’s not that bad.” Or, “Oh, that is possible.” So if we have a condition, a symptom, if we’re playing the victim, no matter what it is, courses like yours, books like mine, you got thousands of resources right on the same screen that you’re hooked on. So if you’re dealing with something, I say learn more about it. And that’s, I think, how you get to the root is you understand first by learning instead of sitting and not doing anything.

Dr. Sandi: Absolutely. And I am such a big believer, and I’ve been speaking a lot about this, but how really it is possible to take charge of your health. A lot of people just think, well, my genes are my destiny and ran in my family, so this is just going to happen to me, without looking at the daily habits, like the choices you make really matter. So what mindset shifts or changes or strategies have you found really helpful to get people to move to first wanting better health, the better state of being, and then making these changes, which are hard and often people start like gangbusters, but then they don’t follow?

Hakeem: Yeah. Obviously any transition is going to be uncomfortable and it’s going to be full of excuses and emotions because you’ve never been there and you don’t know if you’re prepared. And usually the best choices for you are the most delayed. So if you’re not used to delayed gratification, you’re used to sugar, liquor, weed, porn, nicotine, caffeine, it’s going to be hard to work out and not see results in four months because you done desensitized your dopamine. So first thing you can do is start to break free of your addictions because you’re in too quick, too much of a consumption loop to where you can’t find willpower. So take a day off or take the morning off of your nicotine, of your caffeine, stop eating sugar after every meal, stop the processed foods. You can start by eliminating the toxins so that you can find the natural ability inside. And then you make your first steps very small, so small you can’t even skip. I talk about the foundation, which is your nighttime routine, plus you’re sleep, plus you’re morning routine, without people, without screens, without toxins.

I have a 7-hour foundation and I have a 12-hour foundation depending on my day. You got to stay flexible, just like the foundation of a skyscraper. Okay. Flexibility is the key to structure and momentum. So my nighttime routine can be an hour or 10 minutes. My morning routine can be two hours or five hours and my sleep can be five to seven hours, and I can shift that however I want because I’ve been doing it, and that’s what I help provide to people. So the very first beginning foundations I say, plug your phone in the other room. Start with that. Some people can’t even put your phone down. Get a curfew like you’re 12 years old. Get in the house, turn the TV off, read a book. That’s something so easy. It doesn’t take much energy even if you’re obese. Just got to make that first choice because motivation doesn’t come until you see the results. You need willpower and faith. Maybe read some more of your Bible because I’m sick of seeing overweight people. Maybe you need to read the part that says our body is a gift of the Holy Spirit.

So if you really believe in your God exemplified, if you believe in your family and you want to be there for them, exemplify it. Nobody cares what you say. Nobody cares about words anymore. They look at you and they can tell by your habits. So in the morning between your alarm and your digital sunrise, you want to do one thing for the mind, one thing for the body, one thing for the spirit. Mind: read, meditate. Body: stretch, exercise, breath work, yoga. Spirit: prayer, gratitude, reflection. Now, it’s so small you won’t skip. I’m talking about stretch., do three stretches. Write down three things you’re grateful for. Meditate for three minutes. Digital sunset. Put your phone down. Stretch for three minutes. Three things you’re grateful for. Meditate for three minutes. If you can’t do that, then why are we out here trying to help you?

Dr. Sandi: I love that.

Hakeem: You have to show at least a little bit. God is not going to come pick your ass up out the bed. You have to show a little bit. And there is a balance in the universe of people who remind us of what not to do, and if that’s who you want to be, then keep up the good work. Thank you.

Dr. Sandi: I love that and it is so simple, but following that will lead to such profound health changes and it can become automatic. It becomes automatic habits and it’s amazing how habits can just grow from…and often having the prompt. So BJ Fogg, who is on our faculty and he’s a behavioral scientist and wrote the book “Tiny Habits,” and so talks about like every time you’re waiting for your, let’s say, coffee in the morning, waiting for it to brew, you start to do some push-ups. Well, I started that with squats. I started with air squats and worked up to 50, sometimes 100, and depending on some pain I have throughout the day, and now I associate it. So if I’m waiting for my coffee and I do the, it doesn’t feel right if I’m not doing my air squats because it’s a habit. It’s associated, the prompt and the habit, and then it feels good where I can say, yes, I did it. But it’s really so simple that you just start. And health coaches can help people create those super simple baby steps, really breaking it down into those manageable bits as you’re describing.

Hakeem: Yeah, I love that you have health coaches, and that is very powerful in the beginning because we care about what other people think of us more than we do ourselves because their opinion will make us fear consequences. With only our opinion, we justify consequences with excuses, so we skip the consequence and go to the excuse. When you have someone else, you care about your reputation. This is natural human and this is why I have the Choose Yourself community we meet every Tuesday at 10 a.m Eastern Time where you can come make a claim, and then when you leave, you got to deal with your integrity being shook and you being guilty and fake, but you have to make a claim to someone else first, you know?

Dr. Sandi: Yeah, I think community is critical, and what you’re doing is just so, so important to create those communities. And can you describe that, like, how can communities really create that perfect environment where people change together? And what I find also is it’s that social proof. Like, “Oh, if you can do it, I guess I can too.” And so it is encouragement, they want to be like others in the group, and if everybody in the group are making healthy choices, well, maybe I can do it too.

Hakeem: Yeah, that’s part of it for sure, you start to hear the stories of people who are similar to you. They have kids, they have jobs, and they’re like, “My foundation saved my life.” Like, fine, I should change it. Like, we tell stories and we talk about struggles, successes, and I always give like a 20-minute lesson and have special guests every other week, which I’d love to have you come speak.

Dr. Sandi: Love it. Yeah.

Hakeem: Have you come speak a guest spot on Tuesday. But when I’m figuring out in my journey, as you outgrow old people, places, and things, the transition gets lonely because you don’t you don’t shop the same, you don’t talk the same, you don’t listen to the same podcasts, you don’t scroll the same, you unfollow certain people, you stop talking to your friends as much. And so to find someone who believes in you as that new version is hard because it’s hard for you to exemplify brand new because you ain’t ever been there before in the beginning. Now, there’s three types of people in our lives typically. Generally, you got the people from your past that you left in the last chapter and they still expect you to be that version, but you’re not, and every time you go back around them, they look at you weird because they think you’ve changed. Well, I haven’t seen you in a few years and I’ve done a lot for myself and for everybody. So yes, I have changed. You’re gonna have those people from childhood that will still try to hold you those standards.

Then you have the people who are with you and have been with you since you’ve been through all these issues, ups and downs, went for it, failed, said you wouldn’t do something, didn’t do it, saw you go back out, saw you be late. They saw all these flaws, and because our mind is going to focus on preservation and preserve the ego by being right, subconsciously they focus on the flaws so it’s hard for them to believe in you right now because you haven’t done this, and usually you do this and you mess it up. So they support you, but they may not completely back you up, and it’s hard to tell them something…You have your close people like my mom and dad, my close friends, obviously, but outside of, like, your immediate group, if people have seen you messing up, we talk about colleagues and we talking about peers and stuff like that, you get a little bit different type of support.

But the third person that you have is the people you ain’t never met yet, the person that you can say something to that you can embrace the whole new version and we will believe you, until you lie. And so that hope of meeting new people and telling them a new version and then having to live that up without them even knowing about your past, that might be the little hope you need. It might be a little bit of accountability you need because we don’t even care, we didn’t even ask about it. We just want you to change what you want to change first and then when you’re ready to embrace your story and you’ve got the systems in place, we can. So that’s the power of community is the storytelling support from people who really believe in you and are on the similar journey. That’s critical because people who ain’t on personal development journeys, they don’t even believe what you say. They think your big dreams are friggin’ crazy. They don’t even believe you because they don’t fathom growing, they don’t fathom it, so being around people who fathom it, they can support you. And then also being able to have new conversations with people as well, that’s important for humanity, social species.

Dr. Sandi: Yes. Yeah. Wow, community is really critical. And I love what you said about people who don’t know you, and as somebody who’s…I’m 75 and in my age group, that’s a big problem. People are saying, “I don’t want to make new friends. I’ve got my old friends. I don’t want to go out and join new groups,” because they’re feeling like they’ve already been there, done that, and they’re so set in their ways, and often fear of taking the initiative to get to know new people, and then they end up lonely, which is a huge risk factor for mental and emotional disease. It’s really a problem. So it’s a physical issue as well, loneliness is an independent risk factor. It’s as much as sitting or smoking. So what you are doing with your groups is just amazing. Can you also talk about your book? We’d love to hear about that.

Hakeem: Yeah. Yeah, it’s called “Choose Yourself to be Chosen,” meaning whoever you want to attract, you got to start by choosing yourself. Whatever type of lifestyle you want, you have to develop the characteristics of that version first. If you ever want to blame, judge, or complain, you turn that back onto yourself, because how you feel about it is the only thing you can control. It just is what it is. So if you want to be chosen, you got to do the self-work first. So the book helps you doing that. The whole process helps with evaluating your consumption, not just what you eat and drink, what you’re watching, your screens, your feed, what you’re listening to, podcasts, screens, people, your thoughts, what you’re saying to yourself. It helps with the foundation that we just talked about, nighttime routine, sleep, morning routine, without people, screens, and toxins.

It talks about self-investment opportunities. We’ve got a gut repair solution. That’s the true essence of our theology. Next to the spiritual realm is our gut. A lot of people don’t even have faith because their gut health works 50%. The gut and the mind were combined when we developed in the womb until it was separated by your spine. Your gut tells your mind what to think. So whatever you eat, that’s what goes in your mind. So that’s what we talk about evaluating your environment. But self-investment opportunities like the CYC, like the book, we got a retreat in October. This is when you really are down, you’re like, “Okay, I’m worth it.” At first, it’s like, let me do these little things to change, and then you start to feel the momentum and you’re like, “Oh my God, I want more of this.” But in the beginning, make it small. Make it small. And so the investment component.

And then create and contribute, the next level, is once you feel confident enough in embracing your story, give passion and giving back to your purpose, you can utilize the CYC to develop your own branch. We just launched CYC Kids for parents and caregivers. Launch your own branch and you can host one day a month, and I’ll be there, and you build that community up, and then you can go create your own community and do whatever you want. So that’s the process we’re doing, man, just trying to get people to develop purposeful, intentional, and authentic contributions, whether it turns into a business, non-profit, workshop, event, I don’t care how you do it as long as you’re living in your purpose. It’s not about the money. It’s about being valued for what you are supposed to be.

Dr. Sandi: That is just so remarkable and you really touched on, I think, the basics of living a life well-lived. And positive psychology, when they look at what makes life worthwhile, it has to do with having meaning and purpose in your life, and that comes from being authentic and choosing yourself first because you can’t help anyone else throughout the world unless you are focusing on who you truly are and living those values. So this…

Hakeem: It would be selfish to suppress your gift and keep it to yourself. It’s not meant for you. Your gift is meant to give, which means you need people and you need awareness.

Dr. Sandi: Yes, absolutely. Hakeem, where can people find you?

Hakeem: I do motivational content online and I do Instagram Live free growth sessions, man, and then we got free podcasts, “Choose Your Soul” show. And if you think that this is your mission, if this is in alignment with you, then there’s other opportunities, retreat, I do book launch tours, speaking engagements around the world. And so, Big Dream Hakeem on Instagram, Facebook, and Tiktok, and then chooseyourself.info on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Dr. Sandi: Thank you for that. Well, highly recommended. You are an inspiration to so many and it’s just been a delight to have this conversation with you. Thank you so much.

Hakeem: Thank you, Sandi. Thanks for having me.