The Mindset Mentor - How Your Brain Affects Your Relationships

Episode Date: September 21, 2018

Episode 484 - This is a long one, but a GOOD one! In this episode, John Howard, an amazing relationship therapist, and I dive into how your first relationships as a child affect every relationship you will have the rest of your life. We have some deep psychological conversations and I guarantee you will learn a lot! Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

On holiday, there's nothing like doing nothing. As an Expedia member, you can save up to 30% when you add a hotel to your flight, so you can go out there with great ambition to do absolutely nothing for less. Expedia, made to travel. Welcome to the MWF Motivation Podcast, one of the top rated motivational podcasts in the world. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I come out with a short, to-the-point, no-BS podcast designed to transform you from who you are today into who you want to be. There's no fluff here, just life-changing content. My name is Rob Dial, and the podcast starts now. Welcome to today's episode. If you have not yet done so,

hit the subscribe button so that you never miss another episode. And last but not least, if you have not yet downloaded my free mini course on how to journal, I tell you with complete sincerity, I believe the number one thing that will change your life over listening to any of my podcasts, reading any of the books, any of those things is to start journaling today. And so what I did was I started a free mini course. You can go and download it right now. Absolutely free. If you go to dialedinjournal.com. Once again, D-I-A-L-E-D-I-N journal.com, dialedinjournal.com. You can go there, you can download it for free. And I give you a free 20, about 20 minute video or so on exactly how I journal that I've learned from some of the most successful people in the world. So if you

want to go and download that, go ahead and do so. It will make massive improvements of your life if you start journaling every day. So once again, go to dialedinjournal.com. Today, I have a little bit different of an episode for you. You might have noticed when you looked at it, you're like, holy crap, this episode is long. This is actually my good friend, John Howard, who is, in my opinion, I would say for sure, he is the number one person I've ever met that knows about relationships. And I'm talking about deep relationships. And he interviewed me on his podcast, The Ready, Set, Love podcast,

which I recommend listening to if you're into relationships, trying to better relationships with that significant other or people that are in your life. And we had an amazing time. We thought we were going to go for about 40 minutes. We went for an hour and 20 minutes. So this is a much, much longer episode than you're used to listening for me, but I promise you, I would not put it up unless it was something that was quality. We went into some really, really, really deep stuff psychologically and how all of that affects your relationships and deep intimate relationships, but also everybody

else around you. So without further ado, let's just jump straight into the episode of the Ready, Set, Love podcast with John Howard interviewing me. Rob's podcast, MWF Motivation, has hit number one in six categories on new and noteworthy in iTunes, including self-help and business. And he runs one of the largest self-help Facebook pages in the world with over a million followers and half a billion views in the last 12 months. Most importantly, Rob, you are a super nice guy and a very heart-centered guy. And this is something I've been thinking about a lot because I'm a guy and I've been having a lot of male guests on the show. And I've been thinking to myself, you know what, that's really good because the world needs more nice guys. And I

really appreciate that you bring heart and care to everything you do. You genuinely care about people, but you care about making the world a better place. Thank you. And, you know, some of that may come, I'm just guessing here, from your early experiences and, you know, from not just having everything handed to you, but really having to struggle to figure out who you are, what life is about, how to move through life. And I can really relate. So I wanted to begin just by asking you, you lost your dad at age 15. And that was a really pivotal experience in your life. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how that drove you to do some

of what you're doing today? Yeah. So to give some background, my parents divorced when I was nine because my father was an alcoholic. And then when I was 15, he died unexpectedly from being an alcoholic. Now, I remember that was on, that was November 1st, 2001. My sister's 21st birthday was November 24th, 2001. So it was 23 days later. And I remember I had just gotten my permit. So I was driving the car and my mom asked the question, my mom, we didn't really dive into it. We didn't really talk about it much. It was an interesting thing. She went through a lot of pain with it. My sister went through a lot of pain and we all kind of went through our own pains, but didn't really dive into it. We didn't really talk about it much. It was an interesting thing. She went through a lot of pain with it. My sister went through a lot of pain and we all kind of went through our own pains, but didn't really talk about it a whole lot. And I remember 23 days after she asked the question and I view it as almost like me as a different person where I think,

man, that kid was wise. And what she said, she goes, so what do you think about your father's death? It's been about three weeks. And I still remember exactly where we were in Sarasota, Florida. And I said, I think that if dad were to see how much good is going to come from this, then he would be okay with passing away so early because he was only 48. And I didn't know what that looked like. I remember about six months later, I asked my mom, I was like, is there a way that I could go and speak? And I never, no public speaking at all. I said, is there a way that I could go and speak at,

you know, AA meetings, any of those types of things? She's like, let me see if that's possible. Well, then she checks and you can't go to an AA meeting and speak unless you're actually in AA. I was in Al-Anon when I was a kid. And so that never came to fruition. Well, then what happened was at 19, I got into a company called Cutco. I sold knives and it was my first opportunity to, I always felt like I, and most people I feel, feel this way. I feel like I had a whole lot of potential, but I just didn't know where to put it. I was just, I worked at PetSmart when I was in high school. I was a busser. I worked at a bunch of different places. I was a pizza delivery driver. But then when I finally found this outlet where I was like, I could, I could make something of myself here.

I went a hundred percent at it. I was terrible at first, but it was just the, it was kind of the opportunity. The way I now see it as it was the opportunity out, right. Where I came from in Sarasota, Florida and Bradenton area still to this day is the number one opiate overdose in the state of Florida. And so I had a lot of friends who overdosed. Six months ago, I had someone that I know who overdosed. And that was, you know, what is this, 13 years later from when I first found the company. And so I kind of saw it as an outlet for me to get away from this. And so what I did was I put everything that I possibly could into it. And then people who know about Cutco, it's really, really hard because you're going into people's houses, selling them knives. And I knew nothing about sales. I knew nothing about knives

at 19 years old. And I was walking in and talking to 45 year old women in their kitchen and trying to sell knives. And I knew nothing about what I was doing. You do have a nice smile. Yeah, that's probably what helped. That was it. The other thing that helped is the knives are really freaking good. That's the other thing that helped. I'd be like, just chop stuff up, just try it out, see how it goes. And so I started getting better. But what happened was I hired a guy named Hal Elrod when I was 19 years old to be my coach. I paid him $500 a month, which is more than I paid in rent. I put on a credit card, didn't really have money, but didn't have $500 a month to spend. And, uh, and he, him and his

best friend got me into personal growth. They told me to start reading. They told me to, you know, go to conferences, go to seminars, soak everything up that I possibly could. And what happened was I kind of became my own therapist. I never went to a therapist when I was younger. As I got older, I tried to find them, but, but most of them were like, well, it seems like you've worked through a lot of your issues. I'm like, well, no, I feel like there still might be. Just help me with something. They're like, well, you seem to know yourself better than anybody else has walked in. So I read hundreds of books, self-help, psychology, neurology, all of these, and put them together

and then started training other sales reps. Like you said, by the time I was 24, I trained over 2 sales reps and they were from the age of, you know, 17 to 60. And so I was sitting in front of them and thought to myself, if I'm going to be teaching people something, I better have something to offer. And so, you know, I can't teach anybody, I can't give away what I don't have. And so I thought I need to grow, I need to grow, I need to grow. And I became addicted to it. Well, then when I was 24, I left the company and for about six years worked in sales, but it wasn't fulfilling. I made tons of money. And I left my company in 2015, the company I was working with, I was making over six figures base plus commission on top of it.

And I was just unfulfilled. And I was like, I'm gonna start a podcast and just see how it goes. So I started a podcast, went really well, that took off, did a million downloads in its first year. And I was like, I'm going to see if this translates into video. So I started putting out these short three minute videos, started learning a little bit about, you know, what connects with people and making these videos. And it just kind of took off. And so that's the, you know, from nine years old to 32 years old in a nutshell, what it looks like. It's a straight trajectory. Yeah. Hey, by the way, Rob, can we ditch these headphones? Yeah. Is that okay with you? Yeah. Um, for folks listening, we're, we're, I'm wearing these headphones, which I usually don't wear. And, uh, for whatever reason, it's, it's making it hard

for me to feel connected to you. I'm not sure what it is. I feel a little bit like I'm in a space suit and I'm like, I'm trying to connect with Rob and I feel like I'm in a space suit. Oh my God. That's funny. Um, one thing I'm trying to connect with Rob and I feel like I'm in a spacesuit. Oh my God, that's funny. One thing I really love about you, Rob, is you have this dedication to personal growth. And I think it's really important, especially for the men listening, to just hear a little bit about how you've had a lot of success in your life. You had pain early on, which I want to come back to in a minute. But you're talking about a lot of the success you've had professionally and personally, et cetera. And it's, I think, because of your dedication to getting better, to learning, you know, you're tireless. And even though you've had success, you continue to be really interested. And so for folks listening, you know, who could

stand to learn a few things, but maybe don't bring that level of dedication to it, which is probably most people. Why do you, as a successful man, continue to invest in learning and growth? Why don't you just get arrogant and placent and just say, you know what, I've made it, who the hell cares, you know, F off. Why do you have this quality and how does it serve you? So it started, like I said, where it was, it was me trying to help myself to get out of where I felt like I was. I was trying to change myself. I saw a really good video the other day. Um, Joe Rogan was interviewed again in Jordan Peterson. And, uh, he says, if you have no,

cause there's so many people ask me, how do I, like I like, I'm lucky enough to find something that I'm so passionate about. Like I can wake up and do it every single day. And a lot of people reach out and say, well, I don't have passion. What should I be passionate about? And Jordan Peterson says, you should be passionate about being better than you were yesterday. Don't compare yourself to somebody else today. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday. If you're literally passionate about absolutely nothing, you have no hobbies, why would you

not wake up and be obsessed with trying to make yourself the best that you possibly could? So I think what happened for me at first was, and what I've come to realize in the past, probably 18 months or so, was that a lot of very successful people that I know do this, they're running away more than anything else. And this is why someone who is super successful can't stop working. It's not because of the fact that they're ADD. It's because of the fact that they're trying to run away from something most of the time. And what I realized about 18 months ago was that my entire life has been survival mode. That was it. So we were really poor. I remember having food stamps. I remember having a Christmas where we went to a women's shelter so that I could get toys that way.

So I remember, I was very cognizant of the fact that we were very poor and I was running away from being in that. And so when I had, even though I had, you know, great amounts of money in the bank and I was doing really well, I was still running. I was still in survival mode as if, as if I was just going to be there forever. And I woke up one day and it came through like meditation and journaling. I was like, why, why am I still going? Like, I don't need to work anymore. And so it was like, why am I still, I, what happened was I woke up and sometimes I wake up and some people probably have this where you wake up and just for some reason, you're just like uneasy. And I had this uneasy feeling of like, I got to get to work. I got to chug my

coffee. I got to go into it. And I was like, I don't need to, why do I still feel this way? And then I went back and thought to myself, I'm in this like survival mode. Like I'm like, I'm just going to live under a bridge if I don't go. And I was like, I don't, I'm not going to live under a bridge. I'll never get to that point. So it started off, I think, as I was running from something. And I feel like a lot of people wake up at 50, 60 years old and they're still like uneasy. They're just, you know, you see people like Avicii who's, you know, making $40 million a year, has everything that he wants to commit suicide. I think a lot of successful people, you know, sure there's some mental disabilities in there, but I think a lot of them, they're trying to run away from something by acquiring something and make them feel like

they're worth anything. But then they realize they can buy cars, clothes, millions of dollars worth of things. Everybody loves them, but they're just not happy inside. And so I thought to myself, you know, what if I just slow down in the past six months have been working very little? What if I just, you know, don't work anymore, but see if I can still make money and still be successful and still impact people. And so, um, I think what happened was, um was for me, it's, it's become, it went from a place of running to a place of serving is what it is now. And instead of trying to make a viral video because it'll give me numbers and make me feel better, the viral video, I have to then tell myself every single digit is somebody watching a video, right? It's hard to take that number and

attach it to a face cause you don't see them. But I've tried to go instead of what's going to be viral is what do people need? And so I, like I said, a few minutes ago, I can't give something that I don't have. I'm nowhere near the point where I want to be. And the more that I learned, the more that I can teach. And if somebody is out there and they're like, well, I don't teach anybody. My question would be, do you have kids? Because you're teaching somebody every single day, every minute that you're with them. Right? And so. It's an important message.

You know, both you and I work with a very affluent, powerful, influential clientele. For sure. Fortune 1000 CEOs, people that are ambitious and people that have spent a lot of time and energy acquiring power and influence. And I see the same thing as well, is that people reach that pinnacle and they're still unhappy. And I think everybody has heard about that, right? But to see it firsthand is different, right? To really hear the stories of what's happening at home, what's happening with their kids. For me, a lot of it is the struggle to have a healthy relationship and how painful that is. And no matter how much

money you have, it doesn't compensate for the fact that you feel rejected or you feel abandoned or you don't feel appreciated. And you're never going to get to that through money. You can only get to that through relationship skill. And people have horrible relationships with their kids because they don't see them enough. And then when they do, they're stressed and tired. And this is a lot of the stuff you deal with as well. And I'm just glad that people are able to hear that someone like you has already achieved success, is still humble, is still curious, is still looking at how to improve, and that success has not made you complacent. In fact, you see growing as a service to continue to help other people get better in their own lives. I want to come back to what happened to you early

on in your life, because you and I have connected on this. I lost my Cuban grandmother who was like my mom and dad when I was nine, you know, and we spoke Spanish in the home and I didn't live with my parents. And when she died, my family was so dysfunctional and lacked communication to the degree that no one informed me of the fact that she had died. We were never able to visit her in the hospital. We weren't invited to the funeral. We were completely shut out, my sister and I, from this event, even though she was our primary caregiver. And, you know, in my family, people didn't say, I love you. There weren't hugs. You know, and I tell the story when I speak just to help people understand the level of dysfunction that I came from. But I feel like the pain that I went through to process that and to be alone through it is what fuels my mission as a human

being. Because it's made me so passionate to help people that feel disconnected and feel alone to learn how to connect and have the skills to have really healthy relationships. I want to come back to your parents getting divorced, your dad dying of alcoholism, the pain that you went through at that point in your life. And what did you start to feel about the world or about what it means to be alive then that has really informed this whole project of service that you're on? You're saying after he passed away? Yeah. So it was, so my, my dad was the very first person that I knew that passed away. And so it was literally like, oh crap, this is real. I remember, I remember being younger and

thinking he was, he would show up to my baseball games drunk. We would go to, you know, we would go to, um, uh, boy Scouts and he'd be drunk. I remember one time we went to the boy Scouts and I had to put the tent up cause he was too drunk to do it. And he fell asleep in the tent. And then I went to the family event by myself. Right. And so it was like that type of, so I remember thinking in my head, I just wish this dude would die. Right. I remember thinking that, but then it happened. I was like, holy crap, this is like, this is real. And so I realized at that point in time, how finite time we have here. And so it's given me this, this, this drive at first, like I said, it was running. Now it's like, I'm, I'm not running from something.

I'm running towards the fact that I have such little time that I need to wake up and start doing things in order to impact as many people as I possibly can. And so, um, it's become, it's, I'm just so aware of how short of time that I have. And I feel like what I've learned and the knowledge that I have, I'm obligated to teach it to people because it helped me so much. And I know that it's helped other people after putting it out there that I have to keep putting out there as much as I possibly can. And so like my podcast is three times a week. I have 471 episodes right now. Like I've not missed a day, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in the past three years. And the only reason why is because of the fact that I feel so obligated to teach these

people. And there's been times like to the point where you start to realize it too, which is funny, where I get messages where maybe I upload it and schedule my episode and it doesn't post, or maybe I accidentally put it the next day and I get messages like, Rob, are you okay? And I'm like, holy crap, these people are actually relying on me to come up and show up every single day. And when you get those messages, and I've gotten messages about quitting their jobs

because of me, and now they're more fulfilled. I've had, the very first one I ever got was about a month after starting my podcast. I was depressed for the past two years after my father's suicide. And you're the only thing that's pulled me out of depression. When you get something like that, you realize that you're not just doing it for yourself anymore. And so I realized that, you know, it might be the number might say a million downloads in a year, but that's a million sets of ears that are listening to me and I'm obligated to try to help them as much as I possibly can.

I think that's a very important message for everyone listening. I'm wired that way as well, but I tend to think of it as a little weird. I'm very mindful of death each and every single day. Me too. You know, I think about the fact that time is short. And in addition to that, we just have no idea what's going to happen. I mean, you know, we could be taken away faster than we even think. And what is it that we want to do with that time? And I was presenting recently with Hal and others at an event. And I remember teaching something and then just looking around and just feeling like it wasn't really being felt deeply enough. And I think you and I have this quality of realizing just how deep things can cut. When I think of relationship life,

I just feel the pain that's there. It's tangible of what it's like to lose your partner or lose your kids or, you know, lose your own health and your life, et cetera. And I remember saying something at this event, like, if you don't know how to say something meaningful from your heart to your partner, imagine them being dead. And what would you wish you had said to them before that happened? And I heard a lot of people kind of like groan and, you know, sigh. I mean, it kind of hit them a little bit heavy, which I think is important for us all to meditate on a little bit, is that sometimes we're a little superficial moving through life. For sure. And it takes life events to really wake us up to the fact that there's this deeper dimension. And I think what you've been able to do is carry that deeper dimension into your presence and your

teaching all the time because of what you've been through. And I feel something similar, which is, I'm just very mindful of the fact that, you know, this whole run could be over in a few days. And what have I said to my partner? And have I really taken advantage of the time that we have? So for everyone listening, here's just a little thing you can do that'll make a big difference in your relationship is go home tonight and say something deep and meaningful from your heart that you don't normally say. And think about what Rob and I are talking about, which is we don't know how much time we have.

Life is short. You could get diagnosed with something. You could be dead. Your partner could be dead. Take this time tonight to really say something, imagining that you no longer have what you have now. What do you appreciate about what you have? And can you put that into words? So Rob, I want to get to some of the work that you're doing now, which is really impressive. You're working with very successful people, some of the work that you're doing now, which is really impressive. You're working with very successful people, CEOs, business leaders who have a lot of monetary success. They have a lot of professional influence and prestige. And what you're realizing with them is that oftentimes

what's holding them back is not professional knowledge or credentials or anything like that, but it's the relationship dimension of their lives that's playing out in their mind. So for people listening, I think everyone listening is interested in how to optimize their personal relationship. But I'm sure a lot of people listening are also wondering how to have more success in life, how to make more money, how to just be a more successful person in all ways. And you're on the front lines of coaching people to understand how to just be, you know, a more successful person in all ways. And you're on the front lines of coaching people to understand how to do that. So what would you say is a pattern that you see when it comes to how people's relationship lives affect their success as individuals?

So with a lot of the people that I work with, like I told you, a lot of them feel like they're running at first. I remember even for me a couple of years ago, I wrote in my journal, why do I feel like I always have to keep running? Like what's this uneasiness? And a lot of very successful people, I find that they have this uneasiness. And so I started asking myself where to come from, thinking about my relationship with my mom, my dad. And so one of the questions that I ask people for someone to be like one of my, if they're in my group coaching, which has a few hundred people or my one-on-one coaching, the very first thing I have to learn about somebody is a relationship with their parents. And so I say, you know, tell me about your relationship with your father. Tell me about your relationship with your mother.

Reason why is because exactly the same thing you teach where, you know, somebody can, somebody can be using their husband and seeing them as a, you know, their brain sees them as a proxy for their dad or their mom or whatever it is. And they see them as that person without them actually realizing it. Well, a lot of people, even people that I coach, they see, you know, their dad and their business partner, they see their dad and their employees, and they don't even realize it, but the same patterns that they created because of the fact that their dad or their mom treated them a certain way, they're bringing those patterns into, you know, the way that they work with everyone else around them. Not just the relationships of people that they're, you know,

significant others, but people that everyone that's around them. And so the very first thing I find out is what's your relationship with your mom, what's your relationship with your dad? And then I ask the question, whose love did you crave more as a child? And usually that question, they're like, well, I don't think I was, I craved anyone's love. I'm like, think about it. You know, whose love did you crave when you were a child? And they're like, oh, you know, for a lot of times, usually from what I find, like 75% of the time, women usually crave their dad's love. Men usually crave their mother's love for some reason. For me, I actually realized that I craved my dad's love because he was never there. And then, so the question that I asked him after that is, what did you have to do to get it?

And then they then have to figure out, okay, I've, I've, I crave my dad's love. So I'll give myself an example. I crave my dad's love. What did I have to do to get it? The thing that was the troubling for me is I realized that there's nothing that I could have done to get it. Right. And so usually there's something along the lines of, I had to be perfect for my dad. A lot of people that I, that I know, um, that have military backgrounds, their parents were in military, sometimes even with, with Asian parents, they're very hard, exactly the same as a military. They bring in this, they, they, they do it from a place of love.

And that's what everyone needs to realize is that everyone does the best they can with what they have. But some people who have military parents, they bring in that, that bootcamp idea, like the way that they, you know, they want their children to be the best they possibly can be. And they love their children and that's what they wanted to be good. But they don't realize that if they come home with a B and they're like, why didn't you get an A? It's not them pushing them to be better? It's not them pushing them to be better. It's them as a child thinking I'm not enough. And that's what it is. Or they come home with an A and they say, why didn't you get an A plus? It's not, they need to realize that

that's not the correct way to raise a child. And I can apply that to myself personally, Rob, because my dad was military and he was pretty darn strict. And if I ever got excited about something I did well or a success that I had, almost always his response was to point out what could have been done better, what wasn't done, what I missed, et cetera. It was a very deflating experience, talking about things that I thought I was doing well to the point where now as an adult, things that I thought I was doing well to the point where now as an adult, you know, I want to be good. I want people's approval. I want to get the A's, you know, and I feel bad about myself if I don't feel like I'm measuring up to some standard that got instilled back then. So I really feel personally what you're talking about. Yeah. And there's that, you know, and so in that

case, I see a lot of times where people feel like they're never enough. The core problem that I've come to realize and that I teach is that almost no matter what someone's upbringing was, even if they had the best parents in the world, they feel like they have this core of I'm not enough. It could be pretty enough, smart enough, good looking enough. They have the fear of failure because they feel like they're not good enough to succeed. Fear of success. Like there's all of these different parts. They have this core of I'm not enough. The average child is reprimanded eight times more than they're praised. We've, and I've thought about making a video called, we raise our children like we train dogs because, and because I do a lot, I read a lot about psychology, you know, children's psychology,

and they don't realize that, you know, if a dog goes and, uh, and poops on the floor, you smack his nose, you put outside, you smack his nose, you put outside. Well, how many times you sit in front of your children? Like, no, don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that. And you, you don't praise what they do well, as much as you actually tell them what they should not be doing. And we're in it's, it kind of pisses me off because I'm always been like, uh, you know, I don't like what society teaches us. We're literally taking this beautiful, most perfect human. Like, and that's just like, I watch kids running around. I saw him in Target today. His kid was running around. He's having a great time. And then his dad like reprimanded him right there. I'm like, you don't realize how much that's crushing a child

to be like, to yell at them when it could be like, Hey, you sit down next to me and be like, Hey, I love that you're so enthusiastic right now, but we're in a place that's a little bit loud. You know, you're being a little bit loud. What do you think would be better? Oh, I could probably hold my breath. I could, you know, be a little bit quieter. All right, let's play a game. Why don't we do this? And you can do that type of stuff where it doesn't, it's not reprimanding, but it's also getting to the same result that you're looking for. You're bringing these really powerful principles to CEOs so that they can understand what's holding them back in life. And I think we use the same principles in relationship health training as well, in the sense, and you mentioned it earlier,

that our partners are proxies for attachment figures that we had early on. And so we may not give our husband the benefit of the doubt because we imagine he'll respond the way dad used to respond. Or we have a knee-jerk reaction to, you know, our wife because, you know, we expect her to do what mom may have done in a given situation. And I think it's important for people to understand how powerful these unconscious scripts are, that we're all playing them out. And it's very hard to be aware of them and really take control of them. And you see this play out in the business world. I see it play out very much in the personal world. And so let's just say

everybody listening is playing this out to some extent without knowing it. And when you go home to your partner tonight, what's going to happen is that you're going to view that person in some way, like you came to view attachment figures in childhood. From that point, Rob, what can people do about that to try to be more aware of those projections, take back, you know, control and power over that script and really start to shape their relationships differently? So I'm old school. And the fact that I think a pen and paper is the best way to do anything. I'm obsessed with my journal. I'm obsessed with self-awareness. I've been asked a question on podcasts of if you could give the entire world a superpower,

what would it be? And I would, I say extreme self-awareness because I think that's the problem is that people are not self-aware. And so an example, you know, immediately when you're talking about how your dad was, and I've seen it play out in many different ways where your dad was always correct. You're telling you how you had to get better, how to get better. Well, you might not realize that you could bring that home to your wife and you don't notice all of the great things she does. All you notice is all of her fricking flaws, right? Or in the exact same situation, you might be a CEO and have 15 employees and not realize that you're doing the exact same thing with your employees, but they might be knocking it out of the ballpark. And all they want is just

a little bit of fricking praise from you because they also view you like a parent. But all you're saying is, well, you made 50 calls. Why didn't you make 55? What if, you know, if you look at your numbers, you know, you're getting one set every five phone calls. If you would have made five more, you would have gotten one more. And so you're not realizing that by you trying to, quote unquote, get the best out of somebody, you're also holding them back. And so... You know where else I noticed it, Rob? Sorry to interrupt. But the example you shared about me, I think is true.

What I also notice is my wife will compliment me a few times and build me up and then say something that's a point of feedback for me. And that'll be the thing that really stands out to me because I'm primed for disapproval, right? So I will latch onto that and feel bad about myself, whereas I could just be celebrating the cool things I did. A hundred percent. Right. And so my mind will just fixate on that. So I have, I have a theory around that. And I try to, whenever I think of anything with humans, I try to relate back to cavemen

and be like, how, how would this have played out as cavemen? Why, why don't, because we're always focusing on the negative. Like I can get, and I have, I have the exact same issue, right? It's been, I've gotten much better at it, but the internet is the most ruthless place in the world. And if you want to literally get, get destroyed, put out a video on the internet and have it go viral. Like I have so many that are just like, this guy's an idiot. Screw this guy. But it's literally like 20 to one, 20 great comments to one negative comment. And for some reason, an hour later,

I was thinking about those negative comments in the shower and I was like, why the hell am I thinking about this? And I thought, okay, well, if we go back to cavemen, you know, if you're walking around and you have, you know, your friend with you that you're in, he eats these blackberries and dies. Well, you want to remember those blackberries more than you want to remember all of the good times you had with him because of the fact that those blackberries could kill you, but not realizing that that's that survival mechanism that still exists in our brain called the amygdala that makes you fear everything or create these fake fears still exists. And so your wife might say all of these amazing things, but then you have this one negative, and you're like, damn, why did she bring this one negative thing up? And that's all you think about.

It could be three to one, three positive to one negative, but you just remember that negative. And so what I would do if someone wants to be extremely self-aware is sit down at the pen and paper and I preach journaling, journaling, journaling, because of the fact that I think that that's the only way to really get whatever's going on in your head out and actually look at it as if you're a person, you know, a person looking outside from the outside, looking in at yourself and don't place any judgment on it. But you ask yourself the questions like in any question, journaling was really a struggle for me for a long time because Kevin was like, dear diary. And I would just write stuff down. But then I started saying, what if I just ask

myself questions? Because I found out one time when I was younger that a psychoanalyst, you go to them and they just ask you a bunch of questions, right? Reason why you're a great therapist is you ask great questions, right? Like that's what it is. And so I thought to myself, why don't I just ask myself questions and see if I can figure out the answers to them. So then I asked myself the questions, like I said, why am I always running? Why am I not, what, where am I not showing up in my relationship with my girlfriend? Why is my relationship with my mom not the way I want it to be? What can I do to make it the way that I want it to be? And I just asked myself questions. Why do I react to the negative thing that my wife says when there were three things that were

positive? Yeah. Why do I do? And so you, you, you ask yourself all these questions, force yourself to answer them. And that's the easiest way to start becoming very self-aware to interrupt a pattern. You have to become aware of the pattern. That's all that you really have to do. But then what I always tell people is once you become aware of the pattern, what is your default after that? So you might say to yourself, you notice, oh man, I noticed that my, every time my wife tells me something negative, I think I dwell on it and I think about it, right? Well, that's good to know. But then you ask yourself, well, when that happens, what do I do? And you have that default that you always remember and you always go back to. And I always call it like a default positive memory. It could be a default positive

action, whatever it is, so that when it happens, you can start to notice your brain go down that negative pathway, you turn and go in a different direction. I always say it's like a well-worn, it's just a well-worn path in your brain, just like well-worn in a forest. So you want people to identify the positive action they can take when they start to notice this tendency that their mind has. Yeah. And I'm guessing where you're going with this is if people then practice that positive action enough, it becomes more natural. It becomes ingrained. Yeah.

And it starts to get wired in with that negative priming. Correct. So when you have that default thought that's negative or self-critical, you've trained yourself to connect it to this positive action. Yeah. Most people are very visual. So the way I always explain it is, imagine that you're walking through a forest. There's a well-worn path in the forest. It's easy to walk down that path than it would be to chop with a machete, right?

Your brain is the exact same thing. You have well-worn paths, all of these patterns that you've just, just unbeknownst to you, you just created them. So you might have this pattern of going to the negative. And so if you become very self-aware that you're going to the negative and you're going down this well-worn path, you're like, oh, I'm already 15 steps in. Let me turn to the right. And it's going to take time.

You got to freaking take that machete and knock in that new place and get this new well-worn path towards a different direction. But you're never going to stop that pattern unless, number one, you become aware of what it is. And number two, you create a new default that you do every single time, whether that's you stop and you might say to yourself, you notice that you're thinking about the negative. You're like, you know what? I'm going to go to the bathroom real quick. I'm going to close my eyes for 15 seconds and I'm going to remind myself how grateful I am that I have an amazing family and amazing wife, right? And that could be your default that you go to.

And you sit and you give yourself 30 seconds, deep breaths, and you think about that. And then what happens is it's hard at first for you to get away from that. It's hard at first, but you do it 100, 200, 300, 400 times. It's not at first, but you do it 100, 200, 300, 400 times. It's not something you change in the next six weeks, but the next two years, you might notice that you're thinking about how grateful you are for your family and your wife and the people that are around you. And then you think to yourself, wait, whatever happened to that negativity? And it just starts to slowly disappear. You've practiced your way out of it. Correct. You're making a new path in the forest is what you're trying to do. I'm really appreciating this advice, Rob,

because I work with a lot of successful men in particular, and it can be hard to get through to them. They may have certain patterns in relationship that don't work. That part they're aware of. They're aware of the not working part. But a lot of the men I work with are fairly shame prone. And so when it comes to self-awareness, it's difficult, I think, for them to really acknowledge some of their weaknesses, because I think deep down, they might feel bad about themselves and they're used to feeling successful and powerful and so on.

And so this is a personality profile that I think finds it difficult to just open up with their partner, be humble, be soft, be vulnerable, and really look at these things. And I think what you're offering is a way that even folks like that, that may struggle to do it out in the open, can go somewhere in private and really think about this on their own. And not just think about it, but because a lot of these people are also detail-oriented and perfectionist and analytic, that they can write it down, which makes it more concrete. Really think about it. And I love how you're encouraging people to identify the action that they can take. Now, I think I would put a little bit of a twist on it,

and I want to get your thoughts on this since you teach this. But I think for me as a relationship person, the twist I would put on it is if somebody goes and does the journaling and thinks about what behavior they can then engage in, that's the antidote for it. The part I like to tack on at the end there is to bring that whole written project to anybody you're in a close relationship with. I like that. Let's say someone's in a partnership. Because if I do that, I'm just thinking of myself here. If I do that, I think I would derive some individual insight and value from it.

But if I then bring that and read it, for example, to my partner and say, hey, I went off on my own and I was meditating and thinking, and this is what I came up with. And I want to share it with you to make it more alive in our joint life and for you to help me hold me accountable or just help me track it or whatever. To me, that makes it more relational and it potentially grounds the learning in the relationship itself. What's your thought about that? I think it's great. Most of the people that I work with, it's usually the relationship with their parents. And so it's, I usually go back to that, but if you're going straight to someone that you're in a close relationship with my girlfriend, I've, I've for a while was not sharing any of the stuff I journaled. And then I was just like, screw it. I'm going to do it. I was, I was very closed off and I can,

I can come from a, I can tell you this from a person that, that is extreme, was extremely closed off to, I'll tell you anything that from a person that was extremely closed off to... I'll tell you anything that she... Right when we started this podcast, I was like, I'm an open book. Tell me just whatever it is that you want me to talk about, I can talk about. When my father passed away when I was 15, he died on a Thursday. I went back to school on Monday. I didn't tell anybody, I didn't tell any of my teacher, I didn't tell any of my friends. Nobody. To the point where nobody knew about this up until the point... I mean, there was friends that I had up until my 20s that I had no clue my father passed away, right? And so I was just so closed off all of the time. And then I read a book called Daring Greatly by Brene Brown. And I realized that I always thought of myself as like this powerful,

driven guy. But for some reason, I was so... I kind of switched my viewpoint of I'm so weak to the point where I can't even share myself with somebody else. I think I'm powerful, but really this brash or cockiness or whatever it is that's out there is just a lack of confidence to be able to show people. And the way she phrases it is, we think when we're vulnerable with people, that people are going to see us as weak, which is why a powerful man probably can't go and show himself as he sees himself as quote unquote, weak with his wife. He can't tell her all of his deepest things that are going on. But people don't view you as weak when you're vulnerable. People view you as courageous. And the reason why is because people go, I wish that I could do that. I wish that I could be that open. And when you kind of

have to take a step in the dark and go, all right, I'm going to trust this and just do it anyways. Because what happens is when you put yourself out there, it gives people the permission to do the same, right? So I've come to realize is that the more vulnerable that I am, the more vulnerable people get with me. And I can't get deep with people unless I'm already, you know, completely an open book. And this is something you and I connect on, Rob, among other things, is that we both shut down as a result of trauma and were hard to reach for other people. For sure. And I went through a similar experience of going through pain and not being able to talk to anybody about it and just, you know, total lack of support and communication. And so journaling, you know, has been important for me

as well as a way to work through that and dig through that. And just recognizing that a lot of times, you know, you and I have tried to work on this, but a lot of people out there are still in that sort of closed up space. A lot of times it's too scary to open up because we don't trust people and we fear what people are going to do with that information. Maybe we'll be perceived as weak. Maybe they'll use it against us. And when you have to become self-reliant as a kid, you learn how to really protect yourself from people. And it's difficult to ask people to drop that.

And so in your work, being someone who personally knows the journey of going from being shut down to being transparent, vulnerable, and therefore being able to really connect with people. What would you say to everybody listening who gets this complaint from their partner, right? For whom their partner says, you're too closed. You know, you don't share your feelings. I never know what you're thinking. You don't take responsibility for your mistakes. You never own up to any weaknesses. You're like stone. Uh, you and I have both been there. Uh, what advice do you give people who are in that state to teach them the value of opening up and being vulnerable? Honest. It's, it's honestly a trust thing to trust that it's going to work for me. It's,

I can't, I don't know if there's anything I could tell. They have to see the proof of it is really what it is. And some people are so closed off. And I get this a lot where people are like, I want to start journaling, but I can't even open up to the journal because they're afraid someone's going to find it. Right. Right. Like there's literally my very first journal I have when I was 15. I remember I started at the one year anniversary of my father's death. So I was 16. And I remember writing on the cover, Debbie, do not open this because I was afraid that my mom was going to open it and see all of my deepest, darkest thing. Cause I was like, you know what, I'm going to recollect on how, how I've been in the past year, what has changed with me and,

you know, recollect on, you know, the, the way that I felt. And for some reason I did all this and it was great for me. But the only thing that I think that people really can do, unless you have better advice is, is they have to kind of, like I said, it's a leap of faith. They need to take a step in the dark to be like, I'm just going to try this. If, if you're in a deep relationship with somebody and you want to stay in that relationship with them and you don't open up, it might not, and probably will not work. Or, you know, if they're, they're going to distance themselves because you're so freaking distant from them. Like you're so distant for them that they're probably going to distance themselves.

And if you want to stay in the relationship, you're going to have to change something. And that would probably be a little bit more open with them and at least try it. You don't have to tell them your deepest, darkest secrets, but just give them, open the door, just crack it just a little bit and see what happens. I think you're absolutely right. And I think people aren't happy when they're not opening up fully. You know, if we're keeping secrets and we're hiding what we're really struggling with and what we're ashamed of,

we don't feel known by anybody. And that a sense of aloneness is then infectious. And we don't even know ourselves. And so I totally agree with you that, you know, just telling somebody, hey, you should probably open up and, you know, doesn't really do it because they have to realize the beauty of this. And it's one reason why I love relationship work, because there's only so much we can do on our own

to get past these kinds of barriers, right? Our own self-talk reinforces our defense schemas. Right. And so if I'm a powerful narcissistic man, it's very difficult for my own mind to tell myself that I should be doing something different because everything is reinforced around that. But in a relationship, a relationship obviously is going to stress that and test that and challenge that. And one thing I think can be very powerful is to open up the project to our partner and, you know, maybe not share some shameful thing that we've been keeping hidden, but like you're suggesting, at least get to the outer barrier and say, you know what, I want to start talking to you

about my personal growth project. I want to start really sharing how I'm trying to work on myself. And maybe one day I can be more of an open book. You know, right now that's just something I'm working on, but I want to clue you into that process. And I think that starts to melt the defense a little bit. It makes it relational, which then really helps our brain get a different message about itself. Well, also, if you're a closed off person and there's a pretty good chance you might be in a relationship with someone that's not as closed off as you. So maybe you don't even have to take the first step into the dark. Maybe what happens is they, if you open up this thing and say, Hey, you know, I'm on this journey of personal growth, but I want to kind of be, it's hard for me, but I want

to be a little bit more vulnerable with you. Can I ask you to, we both become a little bit more vulnerable. And then you get into the, yeah, of course. I want to know more about you if you want to know more about me. And then maybe you ask them a question that you want them to kind of take a little bit of a step, like, Hey, what's the, you know, something that comes pop my pops in front of my head. Like, what's the, what's just a painful memory for you that you feel may have affected you for the way you are now. And you ask them that question. They're actually taking the first

step because they're probably more open than you are. So it's easier for them. And once they do, it makes it easier for you because you're like, okay, they're giving a little bit, I can give a little bit, right? Because we're just worried that we're just going to share something with them and that, you know, they're going to, we're going to show that there's just a little bit of a, an opening in the armor and that they're just going to stab us right where the armor is. But if they show their, their opening in the armor before you, you might go, okay, this is a safe place. Right. And if it's not, you know, then making sure to come back to that principle, right? Which is, hey, you know, if I'm going to be opening up, don't take that opportunity to stab me. You know, let's talk about how to create more safety in this relationship.

And one thing I've found is that some partners are really down for that project. And when you speak it, they like it and they'll do that with you. And some partners are not interested in personal growth and learning, and they really just kind of want to be who they are. They don't like feedback. They're not introspective. And that makes it hard to have a healthy relationship. So if you're trying to open up and be vulnerable, and your partner is not treating you well in that circumstance, the next step, I think, is to really ask your partner to be in a learning process of creating safety with you. And if you're with someone that doesn't even take you up on that and isn't even interested in that, you have to seriously consider whether this can be a fulfilling

relationship. Yeah, for sure. These are really tough decisions, but a lot of times I get that question of, well, what's the line between working on things and calling it? And I think that's one of them, right? Is we want to open up and be vulnerable. And you and I, I know personally in our lives have been practicing that with our partners. But if we had a partner that shamed us and attacked us and was mean to us when we're trying to open up,

we'd really have to find out, is this person interested in having a healthy relationship? So what do you do in that situation? Because I have a lot of people that, not a lot, but I have people that I've definitely coached that say the question of Rob, I want, I want to grow and I want to get better. These things I'm learning, I'm in this, you know, this personal growth relationship, but I want to improve myself. My partner doesn't want to do it at all. Is it, and they're married to them. Like, is, is it, is it kind of like,

if they don't come on the journey, then not necessarily what happens. And that's because I'm very curious from, from, from, you curious from all of the feedback I hear from people of what you think should happen at that point. Most of the time, people can stay together, but the relationship has to be flexible, which is part of the definition of a great marriage, is that you have two people that are flexible enough to continue adapting to each other as they change and develop new interests, right? And I used to come across this a lot in spiritual training, because one partner would get interested

in spiritual training, and the other partner wasn't interested in that stuff at all. And all of a sudden, you have this massive gulf between two people. And the answer we would always give is, look, don't talk to your partner about this stuff that you're learning, just show them the fruits of this learning by being more loving, by being more caring, by being more patient, and they'll start to warm up to this spirituality stuff that you're doing. And I think it's similar in relationships. If we want to be open and vulnerable and our partner is not interested in that, I think the first move is to show them the fruits of it, not preach, right? Not make them feel bad for not being interested in this, but show them the beauty

of what can happen when you yourself are vulnerable. As long as your partner isn't attacking you and making it a dangerous situation emotionally for you, I think that works well. But we do have to be aware that in some cases, the partner is so averse to personal growth that as you get healthier, the relationship becomes less healthy. Yeah. Because they think that you're growing away from them a lot of times too. They're like, well, she's changing so much that she might leave me. In fact, we have a disclaimer in therapy when people come in, you know, sort of a weird disclaimer because people come in to have a better relationship. But sometimes we have to say, this may be dangerous to your relationship because if people work on themselves and get healthier, all of a sudden,

they're bringing that demand and pressure to their partner. But instead of it being an arrogant demand and saying, why aren't you doing this with me? You're such a Neanderthal, you know, just bring extra love, extra patience, show them the beauty and the fruits of vulnerability. And if they're mean to you, then you have to check that out and say, Hey, I really want to work with you to create more safety. Would you do that with me? And most people at that point say, yes, I'm happy to learn how to do that with you.

Occasionally you have people that say, no, you know, get out of here, you know, and you have to recognize that for what it is. And so do you feel at that point in the relationship just... It's on thin ice at that point. You know, that's a good time to get into counseling to check that out and verify, is this what I think it is? Which is that my partner essentially is saying, I don't care enough about you to work towards your happiness.

I'm going to stop right here and you make your own decisions about life. And when people take that stand, that could very well be the end of the relationship. Um, and a professional can help diagnose that situation. So, cause I always tell people, you know, like you said, like you can't, you can't go on this personal growth journey and then try to force them onto it. Like a lot of people, I'll give you a perfect example. A lot of people, they want to start a morning routine. And so then they try to force their partner to wake up at six o'clock in the morning. And that's one of the hardest things to do if somebody doesn't want to. Wouldn't work on me.

Right. So it's like, I always say, just be a lighthouse. Have you ever heard like the lighthouse versus the towboat? You know, a lighthouse versus a towboat. Most people like towboats. They go out, they get, you know, what does a towboat do? It goes out and gets all the boats and it pulls them into the harbor through brute force. And that's what most people try to do.

They try to take their partner or their friends or people around them and just pull them into personal growth. Like you should do this. You should, she's come to this Tony Robbins thing with me, whatever it is. And I say just, but the lighthouse does the exact same thing. The lighthouse gets the boats into the harbor as well. But all it does is it stays in its spot and knows its role. And it shines exactly for everyone to, you know, for the boats to get into the harbor. And what that means is that you work on yourself and people eventually go, wow, man, Rob is changing. So people looking at me five years ago could have been like 10 years ago. Could be like, Rob was such an ass back then. Like people did not like me because I was so brash and I was so

cocky because I had so little confidence that I had to make up for it. Now I can talk and be humble, you know, way more than I ever was where somebody might look at me. Let's say that they knew me 10 years ago and they're like, yeah, I don't really like that Rob guy. And they can look at me now and be like, what the hell happened to him? And then they might ask, well, what have you been doing? And then they see a massive transformation in you. They might go, well, this seems to be pretty positive. Maybe I should ask him or her what they've been doing. And you're still getting, you know, if you're a visual person, you're still getting the boats into the harbor, but you're not doing it through brute force and trying to force somebody to do

something that they don't want to do. Because usually if you try to force someone, their natural reaction is to resist. Absolutely. And then it gets worse. So you're not doing it through pressure. You're doing it through attraction. And I think people often forget that if you want your partner to be more loving, the best approach initially is to be more loving toward them. But instead, we rely on blame and criticism and pressure to try to get our partners to be more loving. We forget, like you're explaining, that the most natural approach is to be more loving toward them and bring more compassion to them, bring more mercy to them the most natural approach is to be more loving toward them and bring more compassion to them, bring more mercy to them, bring more tenderness to them, help them

with what they need. You know, if they're an action oriented love language person, help them around the house, you know, pick up some stuff for them. And the more loving you are, the more people's hearts naturally open and want to reciprocate. And you're right. And even in personal lives, you know, not just in business, we always default to this pressure, you know, blame, criticism thing that just makes people go in the opposite direction. Yeah. Most people, a lot of times, and I come from a sales background, so sales is really hardcore, cocky, like push, push, push, push. And I had a great conversation. I interviewed, um, Jeff Hoffman who started priceline.com and he basically said he never read the book, the dream manager, but the dream manager

is incredible if you're a manager of anybody else. But he said, this is what he used to do with his people. It's the exact same thing. Most people, what they'll do if they're head of sales or they have other salespeople is they push them and push them through brute force. You need to make more phone calls. You need to do this. You need to do this. Jeff Hoffman and the dream manager both say you should manage people through their dreams and what it is that they want. So instead of brute force, you sit down and you say, why are you doing this? And his example was, you know, he sat down with a guy and right before he gave him the job, he's like, why are you here? Why do you, he says, I want to make a hundred thousand dollars a year. He's like, well, you can make a hundred thousand

being a sales rep here. He's like, why do you want to do it? He's like, went deeper and deeper. And the guy said, I want to just buy my mom a house in Florida. They were in New York. She always talked about how she hated the cold. And there were times when they were really poor and she didn't have any money for heat. And so he said, okay, what I want you to do is I want you to print a picture of that house that you want to buy your mom in Florida. And I want you to find that picture and print it out. And he goes, okay. And so he printed it out after we got the job and he took that picture and put it in his cubicle. And then every single time that he walked by the cubicle, he was like, Hey, Tom, how

much closer are you to getting this house for your mom? And he's like, Oh, that's right. And so instead of being like, Tom, get your crap together and make more phone calls. He was like, Tom, remember this house that you want to buy for your mom? And he's like, yeah, I do. And he would naturally make more phone calls because he was not, he was not being, it was, it was more of the, the, he was, he had his why is what he was doing. He had something, the reason why he was going for something versus just like, I'm going to make these phone calls. And it's like the difference

between pushing somebody to try to grow versus just growing and then seeing you grow. You want to grow because you want to become a better person, right? You might become a better person than your spouse or whoever it is that you're with goes, you know what? Holy crap, there's massive improvements over the past six months. Maybe I should ask him or her what they're doing and try to join along with them. You know, I'm thinking what a great question that is in marriage or in personal relationships, because it sounds obvious, right? We should and maybe do ask that question occasionally. But in my experience, people don't ask the stuff that matters. We assume it's sort of spoken, but it's really not. And most of the time it's not right. And I'm just imagining what a great

question that is to ask our partner, especially if we're in conflict, if we're struggling a little bit, which I know many people listening are in their personal relationships, to ask your partner, instead of pressuring them, criticizing them, telling them how they could love you more. That's such a great question to ask, hey, what are you in this for? What are you in this relationship or this marriage for? And to hear our partner say what their personal goal is, because maybe it'll surprise us. Maybe it's simpler and easier than we thought. Yeah. You know, maybe they say, well, I just wanted to feel safe with someone. And all of a sudden you go, oh shit, you know, I was thinking about the sex and the type of house and, you know,

all this stuff. And gosh, I guess I've had my eye on the wrong ball. For sure. And I need to remember that for you, it's really all about feeling safe. That exercise you just dropped, Rob, just seems like a really concise and powerful one for partners to practice. Like Lauren and I, my girlfriend had the conversation the other day, and I was like, why don't we just sit down? And we haven't done yet. This was literally like two days ago. I said, why don't we sit down? Both of us, she now journals. She watched me journal. She never journaled for the longest time. Now this is kind of the example, right? She's seen all of this stuff and now she's got her own journal. She's been journaling. Cause she also hears me talk about it through videos.

She's in the other room. She could hear it. So I think she's kind of learning through osmosis. It's in the background. And, and I was like, why don't we just sit down in the next couple of days and write down what you want more from me in the relationship. And I'll tell you what I want more from you. Because like you said, we just assume that she wants this and I want this, but in her head, she might be thinking that I want something different. She's not giving me what I want, or I'm thinking something, I'm assuming what she wants and I'm not giving her what she wants. And so I might be like, oh, you know, in my head, because I'm, I was for so long, so successful. I'm like, I want to be successful. And maybe that's what's in my head is that will be more impressive to her.

And she might just be like, I want you to watch a movie with me once a week or just sit on the couch and do nothing instead of working. So it's like, I came to that realization when I first started my business and it seemed like she brought it to the front of my mind of like, she was second to the business. And I was just so driven because of the fact that I was like, I wanted to create more security for

both of us, which I know a lot of people that's, that's why men are so, so driven. They want to be secure for their family, but your wife or significant other just might want you to just shut it all down and just talk to them, turn your phone off and go have a nice dinner or something. It's not, might not be a security. It might just be the one-on-one. So there's so many things that we think that they want. I would say most of them are probably wrong though. So we need to probably ask them what they want and then give it to them. I think that's a great takeaway. I've got two final questions for you, Rob. You mentioned your girlfriend and you're in a great relationship and I know you've worked hard on yourself and I can relate to having been more distant

and withdrawn and having to really scratch and claw my way to some relationship skills. Especially for the men listening, why do you work on your relationship? Because what a lot of people say is, you know, actively working on your relationship is a sign that something's wrong. So why would I send my relationship or myself or the world that signal? We just try to get better every day, right? Isn't that what everybody's doing? And so a lot of people are casual about it. They're not dedicated and proactive about it because they don't want to feel like there's a mistake in the system that they have to correct. If they get too official about it, they start to want to feel like there's a mistake in the system that they have to correct. If they get too official about it, they start to worry it sends the wrong message.

Right. But you're in a great relationship. You work on yourself. You've had a lot of success. Yeah. A lot of, I know men in particular, look up to you and admire you. What message do you have for men in general about why it's important to work on your relationship? Um, I don't, the same reason why I always work on myself is because I don't feel like I'm, it can always get better, right? The same thing with my relationship. It can always get, even if it was the most perfect relationship, can't it always get better? Can't we always just push the

boundaries? And I always like to think in analogies, like LeBron James doesn't just stop practicing, right? He he's one of, as of right now, I would say the best basketball player alive. But now I'm going to get all the Michael Jordan people calling in. Michael Jordan's still alive, but he hasn't played. My inbox is going to be full of Michael Jordan emails. Well, it's okay. Cause I still think Michael Jordan, I was obsessed with him as a kid, right? That's, that's where a lot of my hard work came from was watching that as well. And so I'm, I'm the, I actually, to believe it or not,

my mom was completely letting me do whatever I wanted to do as a kid. I had a 23 in the back of my head when I was a kid. If you want to know how hardcore of a Michael Jordan fan I was in front of you. You can get away with it then. But as far as that plays right now, I would say LeBron James is the best. He just got – he switched over to the Lakers. I saw him practicing in the Lakers jersey, which means he's still practicing because he can still get better.

He still wants to get better, right? I believe that I'm still on my personal growth journey, so I can still get better. Until the day I die, I can always get better. I think that until the day we both die, our relationship can always get better. So even if you're in an amazing relationship, why would you not push the boundaries

to just try to get it better? Why would you not push the boundaries to try to get yourself better all the time? And it's just like, if you have, like I said at the beginning, if you have no passions or you have, you know, no hobbies or things where you're just like, a lot of people are just like, what am I doing with my life? Like, why don't you just wake up and try to have a deeper relationship with your significant other? Why don't you wake up and have a deeper relationship with yourself? Why don't you wake up and have a deeper relationship with your children? Like those should be, in my opinion,

you know, in a couple of years ago would have been like, you know, success, success, success, success, just because of the fact that I was just trying to create that security. But then you realize that the security will never be created unless you take a step back and realize that you're creating the fear in your head that security doesn't exist. Well, and when you talk to really, really successful people, as you and I do, you see the evidence right there that they're not happy even at a very high level of financial success because they're suffering in their relationships. They're suffering in their relationship with themselves. They don't feel the way they want to feel. And so each day is a struggle.

And so our mind just comes along with us, no matter what our net worth is. And at some point, we have to recognize that real value and wealth is developing our relationships, developing our mind, et cetera. So this translates really well to my final question. Well, here, let me pause you because I think this, and this isn't me trying to sell you, but I will at the same time, I think everybody should go to some sort of relationship coach, no matter how great the relationship is. They should, because they, they're a translator, right? There's a lot of, there's times where I've said to you, I feel like we're just kind of missing each other sometimes. And it's, it's so crazy that, you know, like I'll give you a perfect example. We went to one of my friend's conferences the other day. He does the exact same thing as I do. My girlfriend was like,

holy crap, this is amazing. I'm like, I say this every damn day. We teach the same thing, but she's just, when you have it coming from someone who's not your significant other, it means something different. And so I think that everybody, no matter how amazing the relationship is, if they want to, if they just want to make it better, even if it's amazing, they should go to someone that can go, you know what, they're actually, it seems like this is what she wants and this is what you're giving there. You might have an amazing relationship, but you could just be two centimeters off for making it even better. You know? So I think that everybody should go to, I think that everybody should go to a therapist as far as just, you know, a psychologist or psych, you know, for me, I went to a couple of them and

it's just the, the self-awareness that comes from it, where you or psych, you know, for me, I went to a couple of them and it's just the, the self-awareness that comes from it, where you could think that you're doing amazing, but then you realize like, oh, I'm really making mistakes here in this relationship, or I'm actually really, I have a very low self-worth because all I do is I talk down to myself. So it's, I always view that everything can always get better. And if you need to bring in someone to translate the relationship, whether it's terrible, whether it's great with you and your partner, you should. And I always think that everybody for six months, like just go to a therapist or a psychologist

and see if there's anything that's, if you're not where you want to be, you're the only one holding yourself back. Maybe you should have somebody translate the thoughts in your head and be like, oh man, I didn't realize that I'm actually self-sabotaging myself all the time. Well, I completely agree. I'm a little bit biased, of course, but I completely agree. I go to therapy. My wife and I have been to therapists. We believe in this philosophy of trying to make everything better, you know, month after month, year after year. And I think you're absolutely right. You know, it's the reason why, you know, month after month, year after year. And I think you're absolutely right. You know, it's the reason why, you know, if we want to be really good at a sport, we hire a

coach. If we want to be really good at music, we hire a teacher. It's that objective third-party perspective that's going to see where the growth edge is even better than we can. And my wife and I are both mental health professionals, but we know we're just like everybody else. And we're not going to be able to see what's happening in our relationship as well as somebody else can, you know, sitting with us and having that sort of neutral global perspective on it. For sure. And what's my girlfriend will sometimes say, you're coaching me right now, stop coaching me. But then I could go to someone like you and you could say the same thing and she'll listen to it because there's just not that barrier. So it's just interesting. She's it's just, she's like, don't coach me. Don't coach me. I'm like, well, all right, fine. So we've actually talked about this because she had a friend that, that,

uh, that told her about it where, you know, there's times where it's hard for me because of the fact that of what I do, my girlfriend thinks I might be coaching her. But then she's, she was talking to one of her friends, uh, that she met at this event a couple of weeks ago. And the friend said, the girl she met and she became friends with said that her and she, my girlfriend's own business. I run my own business. This other girl ran her own business and her boyfriend did. And she said, there's some times where I'm just like, I don't want him to coach me on my business, right? Cause women just want to be heard. But if we're coaches, it's really frigging hard not to be like, well, here's a problem. And so she said that her and her boyfriend, every two weeks they sit down and they

can be completely open and quote unquote coach each other on how to improve their businesses or how to improve their relationships. But then any time outside of that, they can't. So they get it out of the system. So it's like, okay, we're sitting down for a coaching session. It's out of our system. How can I improve? Tell me what I can do better. And then they, you know, tell me what I can do in our relationship and then tell me what I can do in my business.

And so it's just like that. I like that idea of getting it out of the system. It's smart. Because you do have this sort of like burning thing in your mind, you know, when you see your partner doing something. You're like, the solution's right there, and you want to point it out. And I don't think it's just male-female dynamics. In fact, I've worked with a couple of female business coaches that have the same tendency of trying to fix every problem that they encounter, and it makes relationships difficult. You know,

like men really want to be heard. Also, we don't want somebody just jumping in and telling us what the solution is. I think anybody that's in the coaching profession has that struggle because you're optimizers. You already know the answer. It's so hard to sit on something and not optimize it. But relationships run on a different currency. Here's my last question for you, Rob. You are the motivation guy. You have been podcasting on motivation for three years. You've been listening to all the problems people have, finding motivation to make their lives better, to get to financial success, self-improvement. The issue I see in a lot of relationships is that people know what the problems are. They're not motivated to work on them. Now, maybe it's shame, you know, they don't like

feeling weak. They don't like their weaknesses being exposed, especially in counseling or whatever, you know, but I think it's more than that. I think there's this sort of pervasive laziness maybe is a judgmental way to approach it. You and I have been through a lot of suffering and pain. So we're sort of naturally motivated, you know, to help make things better because at one point we really needed them to be better. But I see a lot of people kind of resting on their laurels. I see a lot of people being a little bit arrogant about this kind of coasting and saying, yeah, my partner keeps telling me that he needs this and that and the other thing, but you know what, who really cares? And they should probably just accept me for who I am anyways. And there's this sort of less a fair attitude towards relationships, which I think is problematic

because relationships not only need that focus, but they need it sustained over time. Even if we're good right now, you and I are going to change. And next year, we're going to need even other skills to handle all that newness. So what would you tell everybody listening to help them or their partner have more motivation to bring to this relationship self-help project? So it's funny because the reason why my podcast was called MWF Motivation is because I knew the word motivation would be searched a lot on iTunes. And so I was like, let me use it. And what's funny is I've actually come to hate the word motivation. I'll tell you what it should be. And I'm actually changing the name of my podcast to the mindset and motivation podcast. Cause I've noticed a lot

of stuff is, is more mindset than just motivation. But people, what happened was I was like, motivation's amazing. This was three years ago when I started the podcast. And now I tell people motivation sucks. You don't want motivation. What you want is you want drive. So let me give you two examples, right? Motivation is like a match. It's like a spark. You just pull the match and it goes, we might say something to you right now. And you might be like, that's amazing. I'm going to go do this. But then in three weeks, you're not gonna remember this and it's not going to be there. So motivation is a spark. Drive is the thing that keeps you going. So if motivation is just the match, drive is the huge log that just continues to burn and it's hard to put out. And so what I always tell people is you don't want motivation, you want drive. The way to be in a natural question is,

well, how do I get driven? And it goes back to what we talked about a few minutes ago, which is your why. You have to have a strong emotional attachment to something, right? And so the why that your relationship could be would be, well, imagine you not being in that relationship. So you might not be quote unquote motivated to go and make things better. They might as well just deal with it. But what if they decide one day they don't want to deal with it anymore? And then you lose it all. What would that look like for you? So that could be the negative side. Some people are driven by negativity. Some people are driven by positivity. Think about how much better your relationship

could be if you go into it all the time. So I'll give this example because it makes it easier to relate as far as success goes. You have person A, you have person B. Both of them want to make $100,000 this year. Person A just wants to make $100,000. That's all that they know. Person B wants to make $100,000. And the reason why is because, you know, they live in a bad part of town in an apartment. And he knows that if he makes $100,000 this year, he'll be able to put a down payment on his first house and get his children and his wife into a better part of town.

Being in a better part of town, it will give them more safety. So he knows that their children are safe. Also at the same time, what it will do is it will allow them to go to a better high school. And if they get better education, they will probably get into a better college, maybe even get a free ride into college. And imagine what the difference would be if they have their children go to college and get a free ride into college. How much different would their life be? Right? So when things get hard, person A wants to make a hundred thousand dollars.

Person B isn't thinking about the money anymore. When things get hard, person A wants to make a hundred thousand dollars. Person B isn't thinking about the money anymore. When things get hard, they're thinking about their children's faces, their children's future. The fact that I had a coaching client one time where they were in a bad part of town to the point where he was worried that his, he was trying to save his children. His, his, his ex-wife had the children in, you know, long story short, lives in a bad part of town. He was worried that they might get killed. And he was worried that his son might get killed. And he was worried that his daughter might end up getting pregnant at 13, 14 years old. Right? So when I started bringing this up to him, his why was so strong that nothing could freaking stop him. And so when

people look at someone, you can tell when someone's driven, when you look at them in the eyes, because you're like, there's something, there's something behind that, right? And so person A, when things get hard, they're probably going to give up. That's the quote unquote motivation where, oh, I don't know. I do want to change, but maybe they should just, the laws of the fair wind, they should just deal with it. But if person B goes, I want to stay in this relationship and here's the reason why, because I know that if our children see a great, amazing relationship, they're probably going to grow up and have a great, amazing relationship when they get older. If I'm not showing up in my relationship with my wife, then there's a pretty good chance that my daughter might get in a

relationship with a guy who doesn't treat her the way that she should be treated, right? Because you need to treat your wife the way that you want your daughter to be treated because she's probably going to marry somebody that's the exact same way. So what I hear you saying, Rob, is for people who lack motivation, that they need to really drill down on what's important to them, on why they should engage in some personal growth type of activity. And I'm thinking about using this in my counseling practice, because I think it's helpful. A lot of people come into counseling and therapy, but they're not that motivated to be there. And the slightest thing will cause them to stop coming. You know, me running late or, you know, they don't like the air conditioner or there's a loud truck outside for part of the session, or they don't like what happened that day or whatever. And so maybe it's

important for those people, especially for me to help them identify this why that you're talking about. And, you know, if it's a why that doesn't seem that significant to really help them drill down a little bit. Well, how could your life be meaningfully different if we work in here for six months and you're able to conquer some of these nasty ways that you have conflict or that you speak to each other? What difference would that make to you, to your sleep, to your stress, to your health, to your kids, et cetera. I think that's actually really important. And I'm glad that you're making that distinction and talking about it as drive as something that's sustainable. Yeah. Because, I mean, you have to think like the two things that I would think just coming as a, as a male into I'm putting

myself, if I came in and I was not driven, I was, I was like, man, you know, my wife wants to work on this a little bit. Say we're married. We have two kids, you know, typical family. She wants to work on this. And I kind of do, but I've got a lot of the crap that I have to do. Two things would motivate me. Number one, one of two things might motivate me. Number one, the fact that I'm afraid that she might divorce me. And I want the fact that I'm afraid that she might divorce me and I want to, I want to, I do actually love her and I do want to stay in relationship with her. Also part of that is maybe I do want to make her happier. Maybe I could get better. But the other thing that I'm thinking about is I always talk about children because even, even if they, they

don't want to make it work and they're like kind of wanting to make it work for, for the wife, I'm just thinking about the fact that if you have, if you have a like, kind of wanting to make it work for, for the wife. I'm just thinking about the fact that if you have, if you have a son, he's going to treat his wife the exact same way as you most likely, if you have a daughter, well, wouldn't you want her to have a relationship that's incredible and be treated by a male that treats her like the princess that you freaking tell her that she is? Why don't you treat her mom like a princess? Because you have to realize she's not, she's going, I don't remember the exact quote, but I saw it one day and said, you know, um, uh, something about the fact that your daughter's going to marry somebody exactly like you most likely, you know, or there's, there's going to be like, we talked about it, the relationship with your

father and your mother at the very beginning, we're bringing this full circle now is, is, uh, is usually reflecting in, in the relationship with other people around them. So if you're looking at it and you're like, I don't know if I want to make this work for my wife, look at your children and then ask yourself, do you want to make it work for them? Because they're learning from you and they're watching every single move, every single fight, every single time that you snap at somebody else and even snap at them,

and they're going to probably have some sort of turmoil in there. If you don't fix it now, your children are going to have some sort of turmoil, most likely in relationships later on. It's so true. And, you know, I sometimes think to say this to people, but I often don't because it's just so heavy. But I know from experience, you know, working with people long enough that when people stop, when their partner really needs them to show up and they sort of say no to the process of working on the relationship, I know what that's going to feel like 20 years down the road. I know that the likely result is 20 years from now, they're not going to have a good relationship with their children. They're not going to feel

good about themselves. They're probably going to be stressed and lonely. They're going to wish they had more support. They're going to wish people knew them better. They're going to wish they had more care in their life. And I'm almost looking 20 years ahead in that moment when people make that decision. And I feel sad inside because I think about what could happen. In the healthy relationship lifestyle, which is a concept that I'm promoting and a hashtag that I'm promoting, we talk about showing up with curiosity, humility, and dedication. And when people are not interested in personal growth, when they don't embrace life the way that you do and the way that I try to, what happens is we show up in a rigid, inflexible, defensive kind of way. We're arrogant about our strengths and weaknesses. We don't listen to other people. There's no dedication to a growth project, right? There's certainly,

you know, not enough humility or curiosity. And so those three words I want people to really be reflecting on is if you want a healthier relationship, bring curiosity to what your partner is saying. Bring humility, understanding you have tons of weaknesses. Rob and I have tons of weaknesses. We have to work on this constantly. Just because we're preaching, it doesn't mean we don't have to practice it. And it's going to take dedication each and every single day, energy, time, attention. And those three things for me, I think really set people up for having healthy relationships and then helping them like you've brought today, be more successful individuals,

you know, personally, professionally, et cetera. Well, I think, I think, and this is, I can tell you from my own relationship. Um, I think that when you start to work on yourself, it makes it easier to then listen to someone else, you know, give you some constructive criticism. The one thing that my girlfriend has said to me before is, is I'm the easiest person to give criticism to where I just shut up and listen. And the reason why is because I'm on this, this journey of trying to make myself better as much as possible, as well as being a great relationship. And so if I'm sitting out with a pen and paper and going, what am I doing wrong? How can I get better? And even if it's like not even speaking for this, how can I make my business better? How am I

talking to these people around me? How can I make this better? And I'm constantly self-assessing. Then when she wants to bring some sort of assessment to me, I sit and I'm like, oh yeah. Oh yeah. Damn. I never thought about that. Yeah. I probably do do that. Right. And so it allows you to, like you said, be, have humility, like sit there and just listen. Cause 10 years ago, if a girlfriend would have sat me down and been like, Hey, this, this, this, I'd be like, but you do this, this, this, this, this. And I would have brought it up. And it's just like, just shut up and listen. That's the tendency we all have, you know, is we immediately want to interject our own grievances, our own suffering. And we know from brain science that we can't see

our own blind spots. So even if you're the most successful, influential, you know, financially successful person, and you think you've got this life thing figured out because everybody looks up to you and you'd be able to create this massive success. Well, guess what? You still can't see your own blind spots and wherever your life is not working, it's unlikely that you yourself are going to be able to provide the solution for that. And so listening to our partner is so critical. Listening to a coach, listening to a therapist, listening to anybody that has a third party perspective on what we're doing, because it fills in those blind spots that our brain just can't see.

For sure. Absolutely. Rob, thank you so much for coming on the show. Sure, man. This was fun. I really appreciate it. You've dropped a lot of knowledge and I'm really hoping that men in particular really hear what you have to say today. You know, men that are on the fence about working on their relationship, men that have been getting feedback from their partners, but aren't sure they really want to deal with the information. And you know, men that are very successful that think they got this life

thing figured out, but maybe they're not thinking about what that relationship with their kids is going to feel like 10, 20 years down the road, you know, and they're, they're not investing in that right now. So thank you so much for bringing your wisdom to the show. Any parting words for everybody out there? It's fun. I just love that. I just, I just, I just feel like everyone should be obsessed with personal growth. I mean, it's different for me because I've seen it. It's, it's kind of like you have to take a step and then see results and that's it. I wasn't obsessed with it a long time ago, but as I started to see how my life improves, my relationships improve, my bank account improved, everything around me improved. The better that I got, I became addicted to it. And so it's like,

if someone's out there and they're like, yeah, I've been thinking about reading a book, like just read, think and grow rich or something like that. And you'll learn something and then put it into practice. And once you see that work, you're like, man, actually, this is pretty good. Maybe I should try this again. Oh, there's a book on this. There's a book on that. And so it's like, if someone just takes the first step of just reading a book or listening to something, listening to another podcast or, you know, watching something on YouTube, um, it becomes addicting when you see the progress and you become happier when you see yourself progressing. And that part you shared, Rob, at the beginning that you're working with highly intelligent, educated, successful people, CEOs, et cetera, and you're still noticing how

much their life depends on working out these issues that they had in early relationship life, current relationship life. And I see that too. And so, you know, just a reminder to everyone listening, hey, don't be afraid of therapy. Don't be afraid of counseling. Don't be afraid of couples counseling, even if you're doing it proactively, even if you don't think anything is massively wrong, because the limitations that we experience in our lives are very often from these subconscious psychological schemas and scripts. And until we shine the spotlight on that stuff, it's going to be hard to get outside of ourselves and really move forward. So thank you again, Rob, for showing up on the Ready, Set, Love show. And I want to remind everybody that we're going to be running a ratings and review contest here pretty soon,

maybe even with this episode, if we can get it together. And I'm going to be running a ratings and review contest here pretty soon, maybe even with this episode, if we can get it together. And I'm going to be sending you some of my favorite books that have really changed my life and enriched me in important ways. We always want to share books like that with other people. And as a show, we want to share some of the books that have really changed my life. And so I might get some recommendations from Rob as well and see what he thinks might be some good books to send out to you. Uh, so keep your heads up for that. Thank you so much for listening to the show and we'll see you next time. Take care. Well, that's it for today's podcast. If you want the show notes for this episode, they can be found at MWF motivation.com.

Also, if you liked this episode, please spread the love and share it with a friend because it's our mission to help as many people as we can. And to keep in touch, you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook. Both handles are at MWF Motivation with no spaces. Now you know what time it is. So go out and make your dreams a reality.