The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The P.E.O.P.L.E. Programme: How to Overcome Your Blocks to Success by John Kenny

Episode Date: May 25, 2021

The P.E.O.P.L.E. Programme: How to Overcome Your Blocks to Success by John Kenny Johnkennycoaching.com We create our thoughts, we trigger our emotions, and this determines the ways in which we act and behave. How we react or respond leads to our outcomes, both positive and negative. We all see things in our own way and act accordingly based on our perceptions and the meaning we give to events that have happened and will happen in our lives. Most of us remain in the world of our subconscious, making choices and fulfilling needs based on the things that we learnt many years ago. The most important relationship that we ever have is the one we have with ourselves as it drives the direction of our lives. This book has been written to help you to understand what that relationship is. Do you know where your thoughts come from? Why you feel like you do sometimes? Why you have a compulsion to act in certain ways when you know you may want to act differently? What has been holding you back for all of these years from having the relationships that you want, from achieving in life when you know that you can? The P.E.O.P.L.E. Programme will not only help you to understand all of these things but will give you the tools to ensure you can overcome your blocks to success. Come on a journey with me: see how I managed to change my life. John Kenny was born in 1970 and grew up in Ilford, Essex until his early twenties. He didn't know what he wanted to do as a career until his early 30's as he competed as an athlete, to international standard until he was 25 and found himself at a bit of a loss. He became a firefighter in 2001, after working as a Personal Trainer, but realised that although he wanted to work in a profession that helped people, these were not the right ones for him. He then trained as a counsellor in 2004 and took his first step into the world of personal development. For well over a decade he has worked with thousands of clients, firstly qualifying as a counsellor and then as a coach and hypnotherapist. He founded Interpersonal Relationship Coaching in 2016 which is a fusion of his experiences, knowledge and what he has noticed works most effectively for his clients and creates sustainable change in their lives. He is known as The Relationship Guy. His first book - The P.E.O.P.L.E. Programme, tells the story of his life, how he learnt to see himself and relate to people based on his upbringing and subsequent life experiences. The second half of the book asks you the questions so that you can really understand yourself in the same way and allows you to overcome your blocks to living a successful life. John is also a professional speaker and runs his own personal development workshops to help people be the best versions of themselves and live their best lives.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast.

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So you can see the show there as well. Today we have a most amazing author on. It's John Kenny, and he has written an amazing book, The People Program, How to Overcome Your Blocks to Success. He is also known as the relationship guy. And so we'll be talking today about some of his different things that he does and how he does them and words of advice and coaching that he can give to us over the next little bit. In the meantime, be sure to go see the video of him on youtube.com, Fortunes Chris Foss. Hit that bell, be sure to go see the video of him on youtube.com

fortune's chris voss hit that bell notification button. Also go to goodreads.com fortune's chris voss. See we're reading and reviewing over there. Also go see all of our different groups and channels on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, all the different things out there the kids are listening to these days. Anyway, and this episode is brought to you by our sponsor ifi-audio.com and their micro idst signature it's a top of the range desktop transportable DAC and headphone app that will supercharge your headphones it has two brown burr DAC chips in it and will decode high res audio and mqa files we're using in the right now. I've loved my experience with it so far. It just makes everything sound so much more richer and better and takes things to the next level. IFI Audio is an award-winning audio tech company with

one aim in mind, to improve your music enjoyment of quality sound, eradicate noise, distortion, and hiss from your listening experience. Check out their new incredible lineup of DACs and audio enhancement devices at ifi-audio.com. He is on the show, and so we're going to be talking to him. Welcome to the show, John. How are you? I'm very well, Chris. Thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here.

There you go. It's wonderful to have you. Give us your plugs, your.com, so that people can find you on the interwebs. Yeah, so the website is www.johnkennycoaching.com, and you can find me spread around all over social media. So I know that you're quite big on Clubhouse, so I'm the relationship guy. Oh, Clubhouse, there you go, too. Clubhouse was really hot there in February.

It was really hot. Let's see. Let's talk about this book first, I guess. Let's talk about the book. What motivated you on to write this book? And actually, if you don't mind, let me skip back a bit. Let me get a bio from you. Tell us just, do you want to give us a little bit more depth on who you are, your background, past, and what you got here? Yeah, as you mentioned, I'm the relationship guy. I've been working in relationships as a coach for really specializing for the last three or four years. Originally before that, I was a therapist. So it was a counselor and I met a coach and they said, you can help all these people. You're counseling.

Why is your life still shit? Basically. And they showed me that I could tell myself my, a different story from the one I was telling myself over and over again, and got into coaching that way back in 2012. Before that, I was a firefighter in the London Fire Brigade, personal trainer, I was an insurance underwriter. I've done loads of different stuff, but always in the kind of service industry. And it led me to this point where I am now. I've always wanted to help people in some way shape or form this time i don't have to put my life at risk in order to do it necessarily that's true running into burning buildings i i admire the people that can do that that's a lot of smoke you know there is a lot of

smoke luckily enough i don't have to breathe any more in when i've got a mask on there you go there you go yeah so that's how i got into when i didn't know what to do with my life i went to university when i was in my late 20s because I wanted to train to be a teacher. I didn't really like the teaching, but I did some psychology to work with the kids. And that got me on this road to therapy, really. I found it really interesting helping to understand people. Then I went into therapy and had some therapy of my own. And I thought, I really want to help people in the way that I've been helped to understand where I am in my life and like I said then the coaching was the next step forward kind of interesting you did the long way around for teaching then because now you teach there you go I wanted to do it in some way shape or form but it definitely wasn't with

primary school children awesome sauce so you you've got a book you've got a documentary let's start with the book. Tell us why you wrote this book, what motivated you and give us some more details of what's inside of it. Yeah, so the people program was originally a coaching program that I'd written when I first really got into coaching. I wanted to put some ideas down. So I wrote this six part program. And then I thought I'd like to turn it into a course of some kind and I came up with the idea of actually writing a book because I started to write some case studies and some examples when I was writing the book out the program out and it revolved

around me there were some case studies with some clients but then I was thinking how this all related to myself and the journey that I'd been on so I decided to turn it actually into a book and the first half of the book is my story really it's how I understood to learn to understand myself as a person and how I learned to do relationships particularly and so there's lots of different stories in there about how I just had this relationship with me which wasn wasn't very healthy, and how this led to all other kind of self-sabotaging and unhealthy relationships with other people and everything I put my mind to. And that's why it's called Overcome Your Blocks to Success,

because everything I was doing, I was an international athlete in my late teens and my early 20s, and I sabotaged every bit of good stuff that came into my life. I just wasn't allowing it. So I put it into the first half of the book. And then the second half of the book is the six-part program where you can ask yourself the same questions that I asked myself while I was sitting there writing the program in the first place to find those answers to help you to move forward. There you go. And so with the book, do you talk about personal relationships, business relationships, or both? In the book do you talk about personal relationships business relationships or both

in the book it's more personal relationships how i learned to do relationships based on the relationships i had my parents and my siblings and everybody else as i was growing up the kind of personal relationships i had but i am and in the book it's about if you can figure out the relationship yourself then you can improve any relationship that you've got. So it's really about working on your own stuff first before you start involving other people. What you believe about yourself is what you're going to attract into your life as far as relationships are concerned. What I prefer to do is just be as broken as crap and then try and force other people to be better. That's usually how I approach my relationships.

And that's how they feel good around you, right? Yeah, yeah. It's all entitlement and no accountability. I just basically be like, I know I'm fine. I'm perfect the way I am, as messed up as I am. But you really should work on yourself. Projection at the best level. You've got the book and all that good stuff.

And then how did you get a documentary yes i was at a personal development show in london i had a stand and did a couple of talk there and there was a guy who was walking around basically as he was a film producer and he was already working with somebody at the show on a documentary with them and he said i like what you're doing would you be interested i'm going to chat about documentary about stuff that you do i like the way you speak and what you're talking about and we just got involved there and he said, I like what you're doing. Would you be interested in a chat about a documentary about stuff that you do? I like the way you speak and what you're talking about. And we just got involved there. And he said, what would be the kind of thing that you would think people would be really interested in finding out? You talked a bit about your upbringing and how you lost your sense of self as a child because you conformed. And he said that sounds like it'd be a really interesting topic for a documentary.

So we came up with the Forget Me Not, The Child You Left Behind title. In the documentary, we talk about the side of yourself that you don't accept because it wasn't acceptable when you were growing up. So how you've been formed as a child. So maybe when you've had a few drinks and you start dancing on tables

and allow that kind of sense of that young self to come back out again and have some fun, those types of things. And why you might feel uncomfortable with those as an adult and don't really allow yourself to be this whole person that you hide away from people. And it's about how to let that go. And I think finding ourselves from our youthful aspect of innocence and how we had this outlook on the world, I think is really important, right?

Oh, yeah, definitely, yeah. It gives us that sense of that childish freedom that gets knocked out of us as we get older. We don't allow ourselves generally to express how we really feel and who we really are because we're told that it doesn't fit into the norms. We would learn how to behave and we squash those kind of really free kind of elements of ourselves that just let us express who we want to be yeah yeah people just don't get it so how's the documentary been received is it a lot of people

seen it and liked it and gotten uh really interested in fixing themselves as far as i know the feedback's been really good so far. Everybody that's difficult with some of these personal development things, I get a lot of people that I bump into and I say, oh, I've read your book or I've seen your documentary or I've seen some of your talks and stuff. But they never engage with it because they feel like it's a very personal thing for them. And they're like, well, I didn't know you'd read it.

I've read it a few times. And so, yeah, the feedback that I do get is all very positive. That's awesome. So most of your clients that you work with in your coaching side what what do they usually come to you with their issues what do you usually find yourself fixing most and if someone's sitting in the audience today and they're thinking i i might need some work what are some of the things you help people with and you usually end up fixing or what's really popular with the people that come to you right now?

Yeah. So the reason the relationship guy came around is that the end of, so we had a lockdown for COVID in March, 2020, people were locked up for three months. And at the end of that, a lot of people contacted me and said, I've just been on my own for three months and I want to know why I've been on my own. It's not something I've really looked at before. I just knew that I was single, but I didn't realize after being on my own for three months that this was a problem. I have to put up with myself these days. Yeah, exactly. Why am I on my own?

Why am I staring at these four on television and got no one to go on these lovely walks at the park with, which is all we were allowed to do at the time? So they were truly trying to understand that. And it generally comes down to three things, that they've had really difficult relationships in the past so that they've had toxic sort of unhealthy relationships or relationships that cause them a lot of difficulties and pain and we understand why that was the case they're avoiding people

so they don't know how to really connect to someone at a deeper level, so they keep going in and out of these surface-type relationships. And some people have just, you know, they focus on their business or their career, and they spend a lot of time putting a lot of energy into that type of life. They've dipped in and out of relationships, but never really found the right kind of person to complement who they are and the drive and the energy and stuff that they've got and they want to try and bring someone like that into their lives yeah that's that's what i

did for most of my life i focused on me and did my thing and uh then you wake up one day and you're like maybe i should make some space for someone else i i did a lot of broken relationships and didn't really fix me either that's probably what i should have been doing more i've come to think of it i should have worked on fixing me maybe a little bit but yeah i was busy i had a good time so i'm not crying i'm gonna crack it out here so but yeah maybe i should have fixed some shit earlier on but whatever but that's the whole reason people should be calling you up and getting fixed yeah at least chris depends how happy you are i don't know i think i'm relatively happy i could be happier though there never seems to be a limit on that one no but we're always working they do say that the

quality of your life is directly correlated to the quality of your relationship it's about finding those quality relationships to make sure your life is the best it can be. Oh, I have that. I've got two dogs. No, I'm just kidding. But I do have two dogs. But no, I think a lot of us went through that kind of cathartic moment with coronavirus where we're like, wow, this is really crazy. And part of it was you're like, I remember when I started, you're like, holy crap, am I going to die alone with the virus? And I'm going to be just living in my little hole in my house,

hiding out from everything, and I'm going to die alone? Like maybe I'll never see another woman. This virus will just kill us all and wipe us out. And I remember going through that. You're just like, wow, man, it sure would be great if I at least had someone here in the house that I liked and had a relationship with and at least didn't feel like I was going to die alone unless they killed me, which a lot of people are at each other's throats in this coronavirus thing. There's a lot of divorces coming. So there's that.

But yeah, a lot of people have this kind of cathartic moment where they're just like, maybe people are more important than we put into it. Maybe relationships are more important than we put into it. Maybe relationships are more important than they put into it. I certainly have made that cathartic thinking go on in my head. We are connected as a species, aren't we? We revolved as group animals, and it's part of our genetic makeup to be part of something with somebody else. It's that drive to have that connection with other people. Otherwise, we don't feel safe.

It was part of our survival. If we didn't have a group around us to protect us when we were born and as we grew up, then we would likely not survive. And it's become a very kind of deeply entrenched way of being as a human being to have those relationships. I was looking at your website you got a lot of video testimonials from people for the coaching you've done other things but what are their what are the sort of things you help people or do you see a lot of people coming to you with problems with yeah they can come with a variety of reasons issues they usually reach some kind of pain point where they can't don't want to carry on with their lives the way that

they are. I specialise a lot because of my therapy background. I've done a lot of work on attachment styles. So whether people have a secure or insecure attachment. I talk about relationship beliefs and relational patterns. So people have generally come to a point where they really want to understand what it is about them or what is it about their lives that they keep attracting certain issues towards them attachment is quite a powerful thing it can

lead to a lot of problems such as depression anxiety and panic certain personality disorders drug addiction eating disorders so people don't necessarily come with that severity for coaching anymore than i used to see quite a lot of people as a therapist in those spaces based on their attachment but attachment has such a wide reaching impact on your adult life so that when i see people you can generally put a lot of the problems down to some kind of attachment issue yeah and it's one of the things i like to focus on with my clients because it has so many so many sort of connotations as we go as we grow up and if we're not if we don't resolve or understand even understand what our attachment is then we'll just

live our lives repeating the same type of patterns and cycles over and over regardless of if it's a personal relationship or not it could be a friendship it could be a work relationship it could just be actually how you live your life if you've got an insecure attachment then you're maybe you're not allowing anything good yeah and running away from everything good in your life so it's a massively important thing to look at yeah i usually pick up all my girlfriends outside of methadone clinics and rehab clinics usually the ones that are escaping from the rehab clinic, I drive them off. I'm like, hey, I've been waiting for you, baby, all my life. And then I wonder why I have problems. So that could be it. I was actually thinking about relationships today

because I was one of my Facebook singles dating groups. I guess I'm a voyeur. I just watch the crap show that's in there. And it's kind of fun to watch sometimes. You're just like looking for diamonds, which it appears to me there are none. But you'll see these people that you see a lot of on Clubhouse too, the Clubhouse app. These people that have these extraordinary mile long lists. I saw this gal put up this list today and it is a page long of everything she wants out of a guy. And I read it and I went and I thought about all the guys I know. And I'm like, I don't think there's a man on the earth. I'm not even sure Jesus in all his perfection.

I don't believe in Jesus, but I'm an atheist. But let's just say Jesus was the perfect guy. Everyone said he was. I don't think Jesus would fit that bill because Jesus wasn't driving like Rolls Royces and taking home 400 grand a month. He's just slumming with his buddies all day out at the beach, evidently. So I don't think even Jesus fit that bill. And you see this extraordinary demand list. And I got thinking, I always hear people talk about, I want this set of relationship. I want that. I really want this. I want this. I want this. I want that. I never hear anybody say, you know what? Here's what I have

to give in a relationship. Here's what I have to give. Here's what I want to give in a relationship. Here's what I'm looking forward to giving in a relationship. I never hear anybody talk from that angle. Do you have any thoughts on that or any commentary you'd like to put to that? Or am I just smoking crack on you know whether that's out of line or you can smoke as much crack as you like well we don't it does make sense no i think there's an issue there could be an issue of that because most people that are thinking about what i can give to relationship tend to be people pleasing needy in a way yeah they need to give a lot in order to feel accepted ah so i would suggest that there's a fine line between a perfection list and a want list.

That person would strike me as someone who's got some kind of avoidant attachment because they're looking for reasons not to be in a relationship. Ah, whoa. Yeah, you just threw down some truth there, buddy. That makes sense, man. So it's almost a deflection maybe or like uh just like uh you don't maybe it's a warning is it a warning sign i should watch single doesn't it keeps them because they're always going to find fault they're always they're

going to go you meet a b c and d but you've got this and this so you don't so therefore we're not going to work out they're always looking for a reason not to commit not to connect so i would suggest anyone with a list that's too long that they're trying to make any reason not to be with somebody you just blew my freaking mind i see this all the time on this on clubhouse they have these manifest your husband things and they'll talk about vision boarding i call it a ouija vision board because it's almost mystical and and delusional and they'll talk about what they put on and they'll let me put up like somebody i call it the lebron james or elon musk pick your favorite pick your favorite people and they'll describe men that are completely you're just like i don't know i don't think aliens are that perfect

but you know what? I always thought it was some sort of delusional thing. And then there's no self-accountability or there's no, like, they're like, they got whatever sort of mess they have in their life. And you're just like, honey, I don't know, man. You got to know your place in the dating food chain is what I like to call it. But no, you bring up an extraordinary thing. It's almost, yeah, that makes sense, man. So is it a self-fulfilling prophecy too?

Because I always see these girls, the same girls are usually the ones who are running around on the Facebook dating profiles and clubhouse going, I can't find a good man. I can't find a good man. And you're just like, look at the list, honey. I don't know yeah no definitely that's what they're creating for themselves i do believe in the law of attraction

as a thing yeah because you've got part of your brain called your reticular activating system or your ras which is your i'll find what you're looking for part of your brain and when you go out looking for something then you will always your brain is open to finding it so if i say i'm going to go out and look for as many red cars as i can see the next time i go out my brain will go okay subconsciously you've just switched on a part of your brain which then tries to find all those red cars for you so if you're saying i want this and this in a person then your brain will actively seek that out as it will if you say i don't want this but if you say i don't want this

that's like going to the park and looking to avoid treading in dog shit all you're going to find is dog shit because you just look to avoid so all you're going to keep attracting to your life is dog shit yeah so we do i think it is important that we have a want that we have an idea about what we want we do tell ourselves that the next person I want, not the money, the car, but they're this type of person. They treat me like this. And the nice is just not a nice word. There's some positive qualities about people that you don't want from the previous relationships that you've had. But if your want list is too specific and it's too way out there this guy's got to have this money this

girl's got to have this body and she's got to be a bikini model and whatever it might be you are going to set yourself up to fail because that you and it's the same as you said if someone saying all the good guys are gone or i can't find the right type of person that's a self-fulfilling prophecy yeah i was just going to ask you're telling yourself that there's nobody out there for you so you're really never going to find the right person because you're always going to be looking in the wrong place but then you got a great excuse to run around and complain about it right yeah like i can't find a good man and maybe your standards are like uh way out of control i heard a good thing from a dating coach years ago and they talked about one of the best things to look

for in somebody whose number one value is integrity. Because they will change. They will adjust. They will try and be as truthful as they possibly can in a relationship. There's always the little white lies. Does my butt look big in those pants? Or I don't know what else people lie about. I feel like it's a real thing in marriages.

But you've got to find, I think, really just a good quality person. I try and do that with my life. I try and surround myself with high quality people. People that have integrity, people that are honest, they have a trust level that's high. And I find that if I do that, a lot of stuff falls into place, at least in the quality of the character they have. And that's another thing I look for is quality of character and so that that seems to fill the buttons and the other stuff really doesn't matter and it's not going to matter when you're sitting around on some porch somewhere in your retirement home all that money and cars and houses and stuff is going to matter but hopefully you still have the person you fell

in love with next to you and and uh you still get along there's a values and principles type thing isn't it yeah you need to have similar interests i think as well but again it's like you said it's more important that they have you on the same level what you want from life what you think about life i think it can obviously have differences of opinions but sure like you said i think integrity is a big part you can trust generally trust someone with integrity and feel safe with them with giving them yourself yeah because you know that they're going to treat you with a certain amount of respect and they've got the integrity to tell you if there is something as well that they're not happy with rather than go off and do something that's going to turn your life upside

down yeah yeah it's good balance there were six things I think you talked about in your book on what things to do, et cetera, et cetera. Do you want to share those? Yeah, so the PEEPLE stands for problems. So the first thing we need to look at is what the problems are that we're struggling with. I liken it to a car. You can't really fix your car

unless you've done a diagnostic on it. We need to do the diagnostic on you first and say, okay, what are the problems? What are are the struggles i've got and then what will happen is i've got this also another thing which is the basis behind my coaching which i call the bicycle of that and it's a little diagram and it just explains how we work generally as human beings and part of that is how our thoughts affect our emotions and our behaviors and the most powerful thing that we got there is our emotions and it's what meaning we give to those emotions so once we figure out the problems we can then look at the e which is their emotional part of things so because okay

what emotions do i now get and then we can then figure out the meanings you're giving to specific things by the emotional reactions that you get to things and then after that as i said the kind of your behavior so how you operate so that's the o so how do you behave because of how then you feel so what does what do those emotions trigger inside of you and then what do you do because that do you become aggressive or passive aggressive or do you become people pleaser what kind of things do you then act like because of the emotions that have been triggered then we look at the patterns so one of the major things that we have a tendency to do is repeat the same things over and over again your brain

loves familiarity it like doesn't really like change in a lot of in most people and it will do everything it can to keep you in a familiar comfort zone. And we look at what your brain is doing. So the patterns that you're following through, which keeps you stuck. So why won't you allow yourself to be successful in certain areas? Why won't you allow yourself to be close to people? Why won't you allow yourself to have a successful business? Why won't you allow anything in your life which is going to make you follow through with the success that you could have?

And then we have a look at what the future will look like. So what does your life look like if you keep doing what you're doing at the moment and what kind of problems that might cause? And that's the L, which is the likelihood. And then we kind of look at how you can put it all together. So the final E is enhance. So how can you enhance your life now that you completely understand where you're coming from is how can you now put things into place, which will help you to get the life that you want. There you go. And what John just described is the title of his book, the people, and he's got a dot, dot, dot between each of the letters of the word people. You'll see that in the middle of our screen where his book will be displayed, but he breaks that down and everything else and how to overcome your blocks to success. So this is, I think this is really important because you break down all the different things of what we need to do. We need so many people are like I mentioned before, they're outward

motivated. They're like, what can the world give to me? Or what can everyone give to me? And they're not inward motivated at cleaning up their own stuff. And we need to spend some time fixing our stuff. I'm doing a thing right now where I'm fixing myself. I'm working on how I look, my body weight, my health, my feeling, and working on a book right now. I'm doing some work for myself before I decide to go chase all around the marketplace of life and everything. And I realized there's this time period that I need to go chase all around the marketplace of life and everything. And I realized there's this time period that I need to spend and I need to enjoy the period and do the best I can with it. And then go worry about maybe some stuff in the world or some relationships or other things,

because I want to be at my best self before I do that and, and take care of that. And a lot of people don't approach that. They just go, Hey, I got a whole bag of broken glass here. who wants to party and broken glass and razor blades who wants to party and hey you want to share this bag of broken glass and i'm a complete mess this sounds fun doesn't it and people that are joining have got their own bag exactly and then you're sharing and

then you and then after a while you're like why are we all bleeding here and getting cut this is this makes no sense it's like you you've got to fix your stuff first which is what i'm always working on but somewhere around 100 i think i'll get married and settle down and find the right girl because it's going to take me that long to fix all my broken shit there's still time yeah yeah you like that i i had somebody call me up one time and they go you you'll see in a show that you have six marriages and then eight marriage and then seven like how many times you even married dude i'm like zero that's the joke uh so anyway but it gives me it gives me for great comment this gets a bad reputation i think we need to be self which we need to look after ourselves if you if you look after yourself you've got a lot more to give everyone else that's true that's what kind of

what i recognized my problem right now is i've got way too much to give other people so what i'm trying to do is we're trying to cut a maybe 100 pounds off of all this so that there's a little bit less to give people but maybe it'll be a higher quality i think that's what we're after so i've been losing weight i think I'm down like 30 pounds, if I can brag a little bit on my own show. So taking care of myself, doing healthy, feel better. I felt better than I've ever felt in my whole, probably, I don't know, two decades or something.

And which is saying something considering I'm 53 and I'm just almost that old man thing. But a lot of people, they've got to do that. What are some other things that you can help people with and why they should ring you up for coaching and seek your assistance yeah so anyone else has any kind of personal struggles that maybe they then i think that the kind of most important thing is where are you not achieving in life where you think you probably could what's holding you back as far as that's concerned because we can generally figure that out in one or two well generally one session we'll just figure out what it is that you're doing which is stopping you

and mostly based on your upbringing your kind of ideas about life that you learn when you're younger so anything that's holding you back and keeping you from making the right decisions for you how many people you put in first all of the time what else do you put in front of you all of the time what kind of relationship you have with yourself i remember there's a bit in my book i was on i won a raffle once i was in on holiday in spain i think it was and i won this raffle and i had a few drinks and i got up on the stage and the guy said oh what's your name and i went john and i went bright red and i thought well that's really interesting and i thought i was just embarrassed because i was up on a stage in front of 200, 300 people.

And then when I was actually writing my book, I thought, actually, you know what I thought? I was embarrassed to be me. I was just standing on that stage and I said my name and I looked around and I thought, I'm just so embarrassed to be me. It really struck me as a kind of a low point in my life. I've never particularly been very happy with a person i was and recognizing that was a real eye-opener and then i really started to work and i realized how

much i changed from that spot already that i'd done a lot of work on myself already by that point but it really hit me hard that i don't i didn't have a relationship at all with myself that was healthy i really couldn't stand the person i was even though i'd never really done anything wrong and looking back into my childhood i realized that actually i always felt rejected and that i needed to conform and nobody really loved me and all that kind of stuff that i went through as a car as a child but actually how powerful that was when i got into my mid-20s and i just thought i don't like who I am yeah I'm 53 and people still don't like me or love me I need to work you bring up an interesting point that I don't know that I have

a full comprehension of psychology or I don't claim to be one but I do on a podcast I'm just kidding it seems to me like a lot of us when it really comes down you cut away all the noise and flack that we put up and all the stuff we do that's stupid it we're really just that small child like a lot of people sometimes when i see through all their broken glass and their razor blades i just see a small child crying out for help trying to figure it out trying to be loved trying to get some sort of validation maybe from their parents or now they're seeking it through a relationship or some sort of other thing to reconcile that. We're just all sometimes trying to reconcile that small child. And it's that little child who's screaming out for help sometimes, I think inside of all of us.

And I recently discovered that sort of issue, what you're talking about with your small child, with mine, and realized that there'd been someone trying to talk to me for a lot of times that while I was out trying to save the world, this person was like going, hey, could you save me over here? And I was spending a lot of my time doing model of mantra stuff, chasing windmills with chasing windmills and stuff of a Don Quixote style and trying to save the world. Meanwhile, there's a little boy inside me going, man we could use some help over here and so finally i started listening and realizing that that hey and it's really interesting to me how many of us are really just that little child inside just trying to figure it out get some love and some acknowledgement and and trying to work through maybe sometimes some of our childhood issues yeah definitely i think it's statistically as i said about attachment earlier on there's a 40 of the population has an attachment problem

it's it's uh it doesn't matter what culture you come from what country you come from it's around about 40 of people that struggle with an insecure attachment of some kind now how does that work if you could break down attachment for me, what's the definition of that as you're putting it? Yeah, so attachment style is when we're kids, we learn how to attach emotionally to people. And a secure attachment, so there's secure and insecure, which are the two types,

and insecure has three different categories under that. So secure people generally have grown up with love, encouragement, support support they've taught how to soothe when things are getting emotionally out of control they know things are going to be okay so they don't generally get too anxious in certain situations they're okay to connect they trust love they trust affection they trust relationships and therefore they can then on the whole live healthy relationships as they get older. It can be affected by trauma as you get older.

So if you go through some kind of significant trauma, your secure attachment can be affected that way. But then you can have an insecure attachment. So that will have either an anxious attachment. So people that deal with difficulties in an anxious way. So the kids that you'll see screaming, shouting, wanting attention, grabbing older legs and being dragged around supermarkets and whatever they might be, they generally grow up as adults that when they get triggered, they'll start to scream, shout and caught a bit.

And they need a bit of chaos in their life. So they overreact to certain things. Then you have an avoidant type person, which is what I was. I learned as a kid that it was better to be by myself to withdraw emotionally because i couldn't cope with what was going on in the house so i would disappear or just shut down emotionally to avoid any kind of pain and then as i grew up i became even more and more avoidant because all the relationships i then experienced pushed me further and further away from connection I desperately

wanted to have a relationship and I always desperately wanted to be loved and feel accepted but I didn't get that as a kid so therefore whenever I got close to people my brain would go this isn't necessarily very safe you need to back off now there's another type of avoidant person which just actually fears relationships completely so they just don't entertain them at all those are guys who are divorced like three times or eight times eight marriages and then you have someone called which is a disorganized attachment which is the the devil of the three because you experience both anxiety and avoidance and that generally comes from an associated sort of childhood trauma you might have seen your father beat your mother or you might have even been beating yourself and the person that you really want to love you and want to care about you and

you want to love them in return is also very insecure to be around and you're trying to avoid it but you really want it it makes you anxious and you get this kind of disorganized way of attaching to people so you don't really know where you stand and it's so incredibly unsafe to be with anybody that it really screws with your brain you might have just cried to me holy shit wow that hit close to home i don't know maybe i i know sometimes it was a shutdown person but shut off emotions and go about your business but i've had i've been talking i i always thought i didn't have great relationships but i'm talking to a lot of people who are married and had relationships recently. And I'm just like, holy shit, I had great relationships. I normally have people that I could largely trust in my relationships, but no one is perfect.

And I wasn't certainly perfect. I think I have some different values back then. But no, man, wow, I'm going to have to rewatch this show and think about some of the things you just said. Because my relationship with my father was tough. He was disconnected too. He was a huge narcissist and disconnected. So I guess I should read your book most definitely. It's going to have got in there somewhere.

Especially with a narcissist parent, because again, you're never going to be the center of attention. You're never going to know where you stand with them because one minute they can be okay with you but if you don't fit into their little mold that they need you to fit in with you're going to face the consequences of their instability it really does screw your little brain as a child because you had no idea where you stand and it's never about you it's never about you of a narcissistic parent yeah which is interesting because we were actually recognized that but still but yeah it's really interesting i spent most of my life waiting for the moment

that i would take power and i think it's 16 i think i did or something but i don't know it's interesting that you give me some uh thoughts to work on which is really great and hopefully our audience too as we part out any words of advice or anything you want to share with the audience we haven't covered i think yeah i think one of the most important things is as the book starts with is kind of understanding your space. To say there's things in your life that you're not happy with, I can almost guarantee it's got something to do with you. Damn it. You can understand if you don't want to project onto everybody else and you've had enough of doing that and you want to take responsibility for everything that you're not happy with in your life then figuring out what it is what part do you play in that is is key to overcoming those

those issues that you've got on the blocks that you might have to finding the right type of person understanding what you attract is really important yeah yeah and what you're attracted to it's always about generally they'll say okay i keep attracting the wrong type of people and why do these people keep picking me why do i always we need to figure out why we're picking them as well yeah something about our subconscious attraction routine that's going on that we go okay there's something about me that's also attracted to them otherwise they wouldn't be attracted to me and we're meeting on this really unhealthy energy that keeps bashing against each other so what is that about so yes i would you know it's a bit of a typical

thing to look in the mirror type thing isn't it really is i've been doing a lot of that where you know i where people that people that were probably good for me and maybe a little more healthy and balanced i would avoid and run away from in fact i'm really good at that or it used to be i'm trying not to anymore but what's that i know the page that you're on there yeah and for the most part i'd run off and be like i'm just gonna stick to blondes so they're that are very top heavy and i'll be happy just blonde models that are top heavy and everything will work out fine and that hasn't worked out very well partially because they're probably they have issues like I do which is it doesn't quite work out but now I'm in a different place

where I'm like when I listen to the lightning strikes and the tuning I go okay let's let's try and find somebody who's healthier and it's hard because you kind of have to override that attraction basis and be like, I need to be less attracted to blonde hairs and top heavy women and maybe be attracted to somebody who has some intrinsic values that are good for me and that I still find attractive. A better balance where it's just not all like, how hot is she? Oh yeah, let's do that. Yeah, let's go all the way. Yeah. I don't care how broken she is. Yeah where it's just not all like how hot is she oh yeah let's do that yeah let's go all the way yeah i don't care how broken she is yeah it's fine yeah and that again

it goes into your avoidance doesn't it you know is that what it is yeah there you go that perfection that we were talking about earlier on with a big log list of what they want you're just going to be choosing people based on your pattern and that's not connecting at a deeper level with anybody because you're going to choose someone that probably that you're never gonna have to do a long-term commitment to and that keeps you very safe and secure in your avoidance you just explained my whole dating life but no recently i figured that out i'm like i need to start when i hear my brain that i need to run away or i need to turn right or left instead of right i need to go no let's let's find out who this person is and

let's see where this goes and i and so i've learned it's weird for me i've made this decision that if i feel like i'm out of my box like i'm off the reservation, the normal reservation of Chris Voss, it's okay. It's okay for me to explore outside that reservation. It's okay for me to go, okay, so let's open the aperture a little bit on the camera and let's explore some people that might be better and look for more intrinsic value qualities of people because I'm getting to the age and I think a lot of people that I'm going to be dating because I'll date 10 to 15 years down. I'm single. I don't have kids, so I can go 15 if I want. I got to get in some better shape here, but to that, I just got to make a whole

lot more money because that's usually how it works for guys. For the most part, I'm getting to the age where no one's really pretty anymore. You know what I mean? And you got to start thinking about how- how, well, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. But that's what I tell myself all the time. I'm a pretty little anyway, but no, I realized that I've, I've really got to find somebody that I can really put up with as a human being that I can really pour my love into and that they'll give me love back. that they may have issues i may have issues but we recognize that we work on it together and someone who has good intrinsic value where i can put up with them regardless of where all of our looks go because in the end people are always

bragging about oh they're looking at little 100 year old couple they're walking down that thing and they're holding hands yeah they're not looking at each other hey that's this is my hot babe wife anymore they're looking at each other going this is the person i love they're beautiful human being and so now my search is more for the beautiful human beings and the people that have good values inside instead of just everything that's busty and blonde that's where you need to be i made the mistake of i like to say that i spent my whole life dating my dad and ended up marrying my mom because i went like most of my relationships have been with very toxic unhealthy violent type of people that needed chaos and anxiety type

attachment which is my dad is i repaired my relationship with my dad as i got older we started to treat each other like adults rather than the parent-child cycle that we were going through i didn't really do the same with my mom and i ended up putting all that stuff to side because i'd repaired this relationship with my dad and my mom's quite passive-aggressive so she's very avoidant the same as me and i ended up marrying someone who was avoidant isn't it weird how that all works i thought i changed myself enough to know what i wanted and then i met this person and none of the triggers went off from before and i thought okay this could be really good and it went further down the line and actually it turned out that she was very much like my mum and it turned out we were both very

avoidant although i was in a really good space that I really wanted to connect every time I tried to connect at a deeper level with her she would avoid and then she would avoid and then she would avoid and eventually I avoided because I couldn't keep going and trying to make the relationship work and then we just end up growing apart and just becoming friends but we both ended up in that avoidant space yeah I think it's really important that you understand where if you haven't healed those relationships from your past as well that you could flip from one to the other as well and learning that was a massive wake-up call for me as well that it really

you said it honed down a little bit more about where i was with myself and when I have that relationship with this person what do I want now what am I really looking for whereas I hadn't really thought about that before I just thought I wanted something different from what I'd already had but it turned out to be different in in a not healthy way that's pretty brilliant it's interesting to me I heard a long time ago that's what we do we get we try and find relationships that are like the ones that fail when we were growing up. And we try and reenact those, recreate them so that we can somehow reconcile them. And the sad part about doing that is a lot of those scenarios shouldn't be recreated because they're built to fail. And so we're just going to fail just like those did. And we are wandering

around sometimes trying to be like, let's see if I can figure out the mystical Rubik's cube, Ouija board way to resolve this. And there just is not. It's just, it's a, if you mix oil and water, you just, you can mix it all day long. It's just not going to mix. You got to come to reality that maybe it's you, not you, but maybe me. It definitely was me. Probably me too. I've probably been there. So give us your plugs as we go out,

John, so people can find out more about you. Yeah. So the best way to kind of see what I do is my, just go to my website, www.johnkennycoaching.com. You can see the book on there, documentary coaching stuff that I offer people. Like I said, I'm all over social media. Just look for that, John Kenny Coaching. You'll

find me on Facebook and everywhere else. There you go. Well, John, I really appreciate you spending time with us today. I've learned a lot. This has been really insightful and hopefully my audience has too. We'll check out your book and your documentary and find out more about you and reach out to you for help because it sounds like you've really got your you've really got a finger on the pulse of what's going on and you can help a lot of people thanks yeah chris it's been a pleasure and hopefully like you said people are going to take some stuff away and put them into their lives straight away there you go there you go change your life so make it better uh don't wait till you're 53 like i did check it out guys you can order his book at Amazon or anywhere

booksellers are available there. The People Program, How to Overcome Your Blocks to Success by John Kenny. Check out his documentary online as well. Go to youtube.com, 4chesschrisfoss, hit the bell notification button so you can see all the different videos we have, all the brilliant authors we have on the show. I'm just always amazed every single day. Also go to goodreads.com for just Chris Voss. Hit that bell notification. Also go to Facebook, LinkedIn,

all the different groups that we have on here. I should mention on Friday, we'll have a brilliant journalist and law professor who's going to be on. She wrote a book with, co-wrote a book

with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She's done a lot of Supreme Court work and that's going to be a really eye-opening conversation, so stay tuned for that. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll see you guys next time.