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Transcript

Divorce Isn’t the End: Rebuilding Your Identity as a Man · The Mike Mack Show

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of guys that I deal with, and I was one of them.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: You're pissed off that you're getting divorced.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of being pissed off at hurt, I'm gonna channel that anger towards something productive that changes me radically.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's transformation.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to connect to a higher purpose than myself.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna not only look good for myself, but I'm gonna be a role model to my kids.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna show my ex.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is what you're missing.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Michael Max Show.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: I am delighted, ecstatic to have you all with me today.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're gonna talk about how divorce affects men and how do you overcome a traumatic event like divorce?
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in my line of work and coaching guys on transformation, I run into a lot of guys who have experienced a failed marriage.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is common.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: And as a reflection of that, they allow themselves to go down the rabbit hole.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: They get out of shape, they lose their confidence, they lose their self-esteem, they lose their sense of identity.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I work with a guy, and I can relate to this because I went through the same thing, guys, um I I I turn it around on them.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: I I turn and and and the reaction sometimes that I get is a little bit odd.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: I tell them, hey, you now are ideally positioned to transform.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: You're now in a better up you now have a better opportunity to change your life than you did before when you were married.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And here's what I mean by that, guys.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: When you hit rock bottom, you have no other place to go except up.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: When you feel as if all is lost, all can be gained back and better than ever.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: My job when I work with a man who's gone through a divorce is to say, now we're going to create a new identity.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's what transformation is.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's going beyond your form, it's not just physical.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it's more than that.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: It starts with here.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: It starts with how you think, how you think of yourself, changing your self-concept.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: How do you identify as yourself?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Stop identifying yourself as this divorced man because that's self-defeating.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I understand when a guy goes through a divorce, he's married, been married for I don't know, 10 years, 15 years.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: I have one man that I'm working with, he's been married close to 50 years, and after 50 years, his wife left him.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: He's devastated.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Children, grandchildren.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so now his name is Dale.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Dale, now we're gonna start a new chapter in your life.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna identify as now you are no longer a divorced man, you're a man who's now changing your whole life, a new exciting chapter in your life.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna start by getting yourself in the best shape of your life, because that's gonna radiate into your identity.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: When you see yourself from being fat to being fit, to being from going from having an issue with being functional, walking upstairs to being functional to being lean and healthy, your whole self-concept changes.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: When we create habits, when you fulfill promises to yourself, your identity changes.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: You look at yourself differently, you feel differently, you think differently.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Men, there's no doubt about it, guys.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: When you're coming out of a divorce, it's an emotional, terribly emotional, traumatic event.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: You need to then be proactive.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: You need to say, okay, it happened, now I'm gonna deal with it.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna allow it to affect me, I'm gonna affect it.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna turn this around, and I'm no longer gonna wallow in self-pity.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: The happiest people, guys who come out of when I've worked with a guy, the the guy that be that recovers from the divorce is a guy that has a mission in mind.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's a saying that says, the best revenge is to live well.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: So now we're going to live well.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're going to create an identity, a mission to accomplish that you didn't have before.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's going to excite you.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's going to invigorate you.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: That is going to transform you as a man.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: You now have a greater, a different purpose, a greater purpose in mind than you did before.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how you recover from the divorce, and that's how you go on to achieve something that you never would have thought you could achieve now because you're wallowing in self-pity.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it starts with that first step.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: When I sit down with a guy and we say, okay, let's work together.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to write down a vision for your life.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you want to be physically?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: And by changing yourself physically, how does that affect others?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: How will that affect your children?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Men sometimes tell me, you know, my my daughter feels sorry for myself for me.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: She's worried about me.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Implied in that is that you're feeling sorry for yourself.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta be, you gotta be strong, man.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's within all of us to be strong.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: And to that first step starts with your physical self.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Saying, hey, I'm no longer gonna wallow in self-pity.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna change myself.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna be an example to my daughter, for example, to show, hey, what am I made of?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, dad, you're really coming out of this.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: You've really you re and look, I hate to put it in these terms, but as I said before, revenge is reven the best revenge is to live well.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's in Proverbs.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: The best revenge is to live well.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: The other choice is what?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: To live like be like you're miserable, to give up?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Screw that, guys.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Screw that.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: You almost got to get mad and say, hell no.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna settle for being uh for feeling sorry for myself.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Screw that.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: You go through your mourning process, you know, you mourn the loss of your family, but then you move on.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: You create new memories, you create a new identity of who you are, and who you are is an example to others.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: It is, and when you start to get yourself in shape, here's something that happens.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: When a guy starts to undertake new habits, when he goes to the gym, he makes self-promises to himself, he starts to trust himself, he starts to change.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, this is neuroscience has proved this.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: When you start to do hard things that you don't feel like doing, you change a part of your brain that has to do with inner fortitude, with confidence, and you start to then that's how you transform after divorce.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: You take on a vision and a new mission for your life, and then you take the steps to accomplish that vision.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: You have specific goals.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And what you do is you displace that self-pity, you displace the, you know, the anger, even, because a lot of guys that I deal with, and I was one of them, you're pissed off that you're getting divorced.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Often, you know, the spouse has decided to move on to greener pastures, not always.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's the guy's decision, but either way, it's not easy.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: But if, hey, look, I'm gonna, I'm, I'm, instead of being pissed off at her, I'm gonna channel that anger towards something productive that changes me radically.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's transformation.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to, I'm going to connect to a higher purpose than myself.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to not only look good for myself, but I'm going to be a role model to my kids.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to show my ex this is what you're missing.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: I see that happen all the time.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: I had a guy that sent me an email about recently I started working with him about a year and a half ago, and he said, You know what, Michael?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: My ex now wants me back.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, You know, what are you going to do?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I'm I'm I'm in a good place right now.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you were to ask me a year and a half ago, I would have run back to her.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: I would have groveled on my hands and knees and said, Please take me back.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: But he's changed.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: He's transformed.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: He has confidence.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: He's essentially escaped from a situation which he didn't know at the time was unhealthy for him.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: You get used to being in a situation, even if it's not so good.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then what happens, guys, and this is human nature, when the breakup occurs, you tend to, all of us tend to do is we look at only the good part of it.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: We fail to look at part of that marriage was shit, man.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Part of it, she ticked me off, part of it, she was toxic.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: So getting past that and focusing on a new vision in your life and going out and accomplishing that vision.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's what transformation is about.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's where you find true fulfillment, true contentment.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: You're then going on to an if that's what you want, a better relationship.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Why not?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Look, life, if if you get divorced, it you that's not the end.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: You should look at it as it's just a new chapter in your life that you're going, that you're going to write.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: No one else is going to write it for you.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to write that new chapter.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you have, you can determine how it ends.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's up to you.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's what transformation is about.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's proactive, it's taking control.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's just saying not sitting back and allowing the world to affect you.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: You affect the world.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: I hope this has helped you.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: I can't wait till we talk in our next podcast.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: As always, it's just been awesome.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: God bless you.